Ardeche River Kayaking

This weekend we made a great action trip to south of France to Gorges de l'Ardeche. We started paddling on Friday afternoon, slept in the camping under the stars and on Saturday finished the Ardeche river experience totalling 30km in two days.

Our group counted 16 people with 8 girls and 8 boys - perfect ratio for two-crew kayaks. I have to mention that thanks to Jeffrey Davis who organized the whole thing, we got a super save for rental of equipment. We put all our things into plastic barrels and mounted them to the boats. Everybody practiced the steering of the kayak and 8 crews set sail.

Girls as captains in the front, boys as engines in the rear - the first-day paddling took us almost 5 hours. Everybody was getting a little bit desperate because the way to our camping seemed to be endless. Water was cold, everybody was wet, sun was on vacations - only Jeff and few beer-drinking guys were keeping the group spirit. One of the boats capsized in the rapids and the crew became so cold and hopeless that they called 112 emergency and got rescued. They got a ride to the camp in a van.

Showers in the camp were just a bit warmer than the river, but putting dry clothes on made a very positive sensation that nobody was feeling for a few hours. In the evening, we did a barbecue and opened few more beers to celebrate the first day without any losses. The legendary characters have beed born on this occasion - Beer Beast (Martin) and Beer Fairy (Maxime?). There were still some bottles full but everybody was quite tired and fell asleep in their sleeping bags. The night was warm, even that we slept outside.

The next day only 6 of 8 boats continued, the crew of remaining 2 hiked instead. This day was much more better than the previous one, everybody was already familiar with the steering basics and what made us much more faster. This time, it was our kayak that sank :))
In the wildest rapids on the river, I had a moment to choose the direction to continue - left or right - in the middle a huge boulder. I chose right because it looked more difficult, but unfortunately too late - we crashed to the boulder by the side of the kayak.

I remember seeing the boat turning over and Lucy falling to the river at the same moment as I. For a few seconds I was underwater being pushed by the current to the face of the rock. I managed to escape and then swiftly crawl-stroked to the floating upset boat. I was glad that I found Lucy at the side of the boat! I braked the boat, inverted it, got in. I pulled Lucy by her life jacket. Our guys that were below managed to save everything that left the kayak and floating down. I was excited, I jumped to the river once again, then opened a beer.

We enjoyed more of the beatiful landscape, the canyons high cliffs made me feel really like if I was in prehistoric ages. Even if it rained a little bit, also the sun showed ocasionally. In about one and half hour, we have finished our river cruise. Congratulations to every one of us that had the endurance to fight with the permanent chill, I bet that this will not prevent anybody to keep nice memories.
(Pictures later today)

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? ;)