Weekend in Paris

Well, almost everything was said by empty, I put some pictures on flickr if you want to check that Paris is still beautiful :)

Some tips&tricks:
It's really easy to navigate yourself in Paris, maps are at every bus/metro stop so I didn't even need a map to find anything.
Public toilets are free!
If you want to rest from the cars&people in the streets , have a walk in the riverbank, it's really wide and presence of river is refreshing.
If you want to have a public bus sightseeing for one 1€ ticket, hop on bus no.69 and enjoy the view. For other European capitals, see article at TIME.
If you are a student, enter any school to get cheap coffee and croissant - a rather short student exchange stay :)
French really have problems with african immigrants, beware of your belongings in metro and tourist places!
The Eiffel Tower trick done by me and Juraj can be done only by Slovaks, maybe Czechs :)

www.flickr.com

Why I would never want to live in France

Hello again! Here is my new experience with "french culture". Let's start with very interesting and recent survey - 50% of French totally disagree to following statement - "The free enterprise system and free market economy is the best system on which to base the future of the world." Only 36% of French agree. The numbers are even worse that in Russia! The average values from various countries in the world (including USA, China, Canada, Mexico, India, Russia, Nigeria...) is agreement 65% and disagreement 25%. Nice results, French comrades! See for yourself at GlobeScan Report, page 3.

For yesterday we planned a small trip to Parc du Pilat which is close to Lyon. Nothing special, but at least the spare day would be used for something. So in the morning (11am) we get into the car and I headed to Carrefour gas station to get some gas. Oops, it's Sunday, so it's closed. So I tried another one, the small station with higher prices (I thought that they might be open so they can make some profit!). Oops, nobody there, come on who would work on Sunday! In France, only Arabs do in their shops where you buy things from Carrefour at triple price. And also machines do work. The last gas station was equipped only with stands with credit card payment, so we got our gas. Oh by the way, the credit card could be only French Carte Bancaire, a regular international one does not work. Well they can close their shops, I don't care, but gas stations?? What a great progressive country!

In the evening yesterday, we had a small party to celebrate David's (Spanish) birthday. In the party atmosphere, Maria which is living in Lyon asked me, if I could give her a ride next morning back to city. I asked her&myself why, she can take the bus, can't she? I was quite surprised when she answered that on 1st May - Fete du Travail (Labor Day) there are no buses and no subway. Not just Sunday regime with one bus per hour, but absolutely no connection. You cannot get anywhere! (Well you can just call taxi or have a french bank card to get some gas.) Funny thing is, that Lyon's subway is even not human-operated but the driver is a computer - so it's nice that the machines also get some rest to relax and celebrate!

Today we made a small trip as well. Passing Carrefour, we saw something that really made all of us laugh. We came back to take a picture so I can share it here. Let's name the situation "Stupid French." and make it finish this post in which I have explained why I would never like to live in developed Western European but truly Socialist country called France.

Parties again...

Ok the week with many exams is gone, and a big positive thing were the numerous parties after - a reward :) First, the famous "Tous burre ensamble!" (Everybody drinks together) party here at our dorm, was very fine. On Saturday, another party at the school next to us. Three stages, one with Dj, one with bands, one with student orchestra :) Everybody drunk more than me (well I did not even drink because of the cool atmospehere). More than 1000 people I guess. Some of theme really crazy. Just look at the pictures...

Vieux Lyon

Such a nice day yesterday! I went to my "french class" to St. Georges, Old Lyon. It is not a real class in school, I am just speaking french with Maria and she has to correct me all the time. I hope this will help to pull up my poor french!

When I was there, I took some photos of this ancient part of Lyon which is a mixture of the last 20 centuries and so an Unesco heritage, as the guide says. It has really nice atmosphere with cobblestone streets, historic renaissance houses, steep narrow alleys and of course quiet large churches. The sheltered passages that lead through blocks of houses can be found between the streets, they have served as a protection during WWII bombings. Two retro-looking funiculars climb the slopes of Fourviere mountain on which the quarter is built. One of them goes to Roman ruins, the other one to Basilique de Fourviere. Especially the Roman amphitheatre from 19AD is a great place! While standing on the stage at the bottom, I wondered how it was like to give the Powerpoint presentations in there? ;)

Exams have arrived

So I had the first exam today. It was Business Policy and we had a case study of 20 pages, 5 questions and 3 hours. All of the students finished after those 3 hours... I personally spend 1 hour reading, 1 hour writing and 1 hour just thinking what the hell is everybody writing?! Well not my best performace, for sure.

When we were going back to dorm, we noticed a small rabbit sitting in the middle of road. We started to chase him so he gets lost but he was still running in circles. Probably he was too shocked or... it reminded me of a book of drawings, called The Bunny Suicides. Some samples:


Ok tomorrow morning I have another exam that will last 3 hours and now I am totally dead from today's gym. I need to see the slides, at least...