This will be my last post while in Paris. I'm planning on wrapping up the blog with a few more posts once I return home, posts featuring life lessons from this program and such.
Things have been winding down since I returned to Paris from Normandy. Although it was tempting to cram as many last-minute adventures into my final two days before the flight home, I decided to take it a bit easier, save ample time for packing, and generally collect myself before traveling 24 solid hours.
So yesterday I slept in until nine, began preliminary sorting and packing, and eventually joined Kierstin and Caleb for brunch at a crêperie down the street. My ham, egg, and cheese crêpe was delicious. In the past I've only eaten crêpes from street vendors, and while those were certainly tasty it was nice to have a plate and utensils as well. The crêpe itself was thinner and crispier and butter-soaked, so that I felt like I was eating a typical American pancake breakfast where the pancake happened to be the plate. And my hot chocolate was yummy.
Then we made our way to the heart of Paris and located the Centre Pompidou, the modern art musuem. I accidentally left my camera in the room, so any interested reader will need to search Google Images for pictures of the building and its contents. It's a strange building with the steel frame on the outside and staircases running up the outer walls like hamster tubes. And it contains strange art. I liked the Cubists much more than I would have expected, and about half of Derain's work is quite good, in my opinion. We can gloss over the other exhibits.
I'm glad I went, but by 4:00 or so I was also glad to leave. One installation in particular was designed to hack visual processing in a fascinating way, with thin rods suspended over a striped background that seemed to move, appear, and vanish with the movement of my head. I'm afraid I was a bit too fascinated and wound up giving myself a touch of motion sickness. So it was nice to get back to the room and rest a bit.
The rest of the evening was devoted to packing. The heaviest things and most fragile things went carefully into my new souvenir bag, and the rest are fitted into my suitcase like a Tetris block arrangement.
After a slow beginning to this morning, Kierstin and I went to St. Sulpice and bought a few last macaroons from Pierre Herme. We wandered a bit and found St-Germain-des-Pres, a church I'd been wanting to visit for a while. Then we walked to the Notre Dame area and visited the flower market once more before finding Caleb and Mir in the line for the Sainte-Chapelle. After visiting with them for a few minutes, I struck out on my own and just walked along the Seine.
It was a bittersweet walk. The air was cool, the day almost fall-like, the river lapping, the city so characteristic...it's difficult to leave behind. I did accomplish a goal that had fallen by the wayside, at least: I ate truffles in Paris, inspired by Caroline Stevermer and a novel I borrowed from Miriam years ago in middle school. They were praline truffles and I ate them as I sat on the edge of the Seine on Ile-de-la-Cite. There's another (admittedly relatively minor) life goal fulfilled.
My wanderings brought me to Concorde, eventually, and then I turned and walked home to the Armenian House. It was a long walk, one that I'd never completed in its entirety before, but I was proud of myself for managing it and pleased to have a chance to savor Paris once more this summer. I followed the M1 and RER B lines back, using the maps posted outside the stations when necessary: Concorde, Tuileries, the Louvre, St. Michel and Notre Dame, Luxembourg, Port Royal, Denfert-Rochereau and finally Cite Universitaire. Ah Paris. Attends-moi, Paris, ne m'oublies pas. Je ne t'oublierai jamais.
I returned in time for the final baguette picnic of the summer, attended by everyone who needed to finish up jars of peanut butter or packs of yogurt - that is to say, attended by (almost) everyone. We had a feast. And then - we drifted away in ones and two, accompanied by hugs and farewells and sorrow. Mir, Caleb, Kierstin, Margaret and I walked in Montsouris Park across the street until the park closed with the sunset, and there were more partings.
And here I am in my room, ready to sleep and head out at 6:30 am tomorrow morning. I'm very much looking forward to seeing my family and my home, but it's difficult to leave the people and the city I've gotten to know over the past two months. It's not the end. We will find each other again, whether by accident or design, in months or years, at a conference or on a road trip or maybe even in Paris. Because we are all coming back to Paris someday, somehow...and there will be the Seine, the Louvre, the streetfronts all of cream, the baguettes and the macaroons, the Impressionists, the Tuileries, the flower market and the buzz of the train doors closing, the vast roundabout with the Arc de Triomph towering above, the Eiffel Tower and the Boulevard Jourdan, and maybe even still that boulangerie down the street with such erratic hours.
There's a Roman amphitheater in the heart of Paris - this city endures. Centuries pass and empires rise and fall, and this city endures. It changes, it grows, bits of it fall by the wayside as others come into existence, but the city remains. So endure a bit longer, Paris, until I find my way back to you.
City of Lights and my comrades-in-adventure: I won't say goodbye, but until we meet again. Mes amis, au revoir.
Monday, July 30, 2012
Sunday, July 29, 2012
The Normandy Excursion
Saturday was a big day. According to Google Maps, I traveled 285 km and back, and I did it all by myself. Good job, me.
The day began with an alarm set for 6:00 am. After packing a small back-sack quickly and jotting down some helpful notes about bus schedules and walking directions, I left my cozy room and took the metro to Gare St. Lazare. (Incidentally, this is the train station Monet liked to paint.) There was plenty of time before my train to find the information desk and unfortunately confirm that yes, I would have to transfer in Caen and yes, I had only seven minutes between trains to accomplish that feat. I was rather worried, but decided to do my best. I'd read online that the trains between Caen and Bayeux run a few times an hour, so I figured I could still recover if I missed one.
So my ride out to Caen passed pleasantly enough, in large part because I immediately fell asleep upon boarding. I was very alert by the time the fateful transfer was imminent, and it turned out to be just about as simple as possible. There are only six platforms or so in the Caen station, and each one has a very helpful monitor listing the locations of all upcoming trains. So I zipped down to the next track and climbed aboard the waiting Basse-Normandie train. Or Haute-Normandie. I didn't pay too much attention and then once aboard of course I couldn't see the writing on the sides of the cars. Anyway.
This ride was only about fifteen minutes, and once in Bayeux I had some time to kill before catching the bus to the beach. As per my plan, I struck out to find the museum housing the Bayeux tapestry, a 70 meter long roll of cloth depicting somebody conquering somebody else and one of them was named Harold. Oh yeah, and the other guy was William. He was a Norman, and he won, so the Normans made a tapestry! The museum was easy to find - I joined a stream of British tourists, the predominant variety of tourist in Bayeux.
At the museum, I received a little audioguide player and the voice of a British man told me the story of the tapestry as I walked along its length. I liked the story and remember it better than I would have remembered a history-book description, although I still didn't manage to put all the pieces together; I just read the Wikipedia article and learned that the climactic battle scene was the Battle of Hastings. Oooh. That took place in 1066! Look at me with my historical knowledge.
After the Battle of Hastings, I caught a bus.
We went rolling off into the beautiful Norman countryside and soon enough fetched up at the beach! Hurrah for the ocean! I woke up in the heart of Paris and was standing on the shores of the Atlantic by noon.
I spent a while enjoying the crashing waves and grainy sand and the rivulets of tide-water running back to the shore. Although the morning had been chilly, things started warming up nicely while I ate my snack of paprika-Pringles (they taste like barbecue-Pringles).
But this particular beach has more than one impression to leave on its visitors, because this was Omaha Beach, invaded by the Allies on D-Day during WWII and eventually taken after staggering casualties. After my initial joy at being at a beach had subsided a bit, I tried to imagine the sights and sounds on the beach that day, and (luckily for my mental comfort) failed utterly. Even the beginnings of imagination left me somber and heavy-feeling. So much humanity ended.
Then I turned my attention to the green hills beyond the beach. In a stunningly ironic contrast, the beach and countryside today epitomize peace and tranquility as the sun gently warms the sands and tall grasses:
But even in such a quiet atmosphere, a closer look gives not-too-subtle hints of the historical violence. Littering the green hillsides are the crumbling concrete remnants of German bunkers used during their defense of the beach. I walked inside some of them.
In the little time I had remaining before the bus came through again, I hurried and found the American cemetery. It just goes on and on. So much humanity ended.
The scale of the lives lost is beyond my visceral comprehension. The beach and cemetery made me feel a heavy, heavy sorrow and a deep historical awe and regret, but I'm glad to have seen them. They're important to remember.
So the bus returned to Bayeux, and I had a few hours to explore the town before my train left. It's a pretty little town, moderately tourist-ized but still retaining its own identity, as far as I, a tourist, could tell. I learned that it was founded by the Romans in the first century CE. That's an old town.
Lovely cathedral, lovely flowers, awful fish and chips, and then it was time to meet the train. The rides back went smoothly, including the crucial transfer in Caen, and I stepped off the train at St. Lazare a bit before 7:30 pm. Day-trip victory!
Before setting out, I was a bit worried because I was tired already and traveling alone. But everything went either according to plan or slightly better than planned, and I was never truly nervous about getting stuck outside of Paris. I did feel that I had to be constantly alert, since there was no one to catch me in a mistake, and constant vigilance is draining. But I suppose even there I had a bit of help; it turned out that a particular young Italian man had independently planned an itinerary almost identical to mine, and we kept running into each other on various forms of public transportation. Although we didn't have much language in common, we were able to work together to figure out things like the bus stops and routes. Thank you, unknown Italian!
So it was a good day, a beach day, a historical day, and above all a long day. I came back to my room and stopped moving for a while. And thus ended the Excursion.
The day began with an alarm set for 6:00 am. After packing a small back-sack quickly and jotting down some helpful notes about bus schedules and walking directions, I left my cozy room and took the metro to Gare St. Lazare. (Incidentally, this is the train station Monet liked to paint.) There was plenty of time before my train to find the information desk and unfortunately confirm that yes, I would have to transfer in Caen and yes, I had only seven minutes between trains to accomplish that feat. I was rather worried, but decided to do my best. I'd read online that the trains between Caen and Bayeux run a few times an hour, so I figured I could still recover if I missed one.
So my ride out to Caen passed pleasantly enough, in large part because I immediately fell asleep upon boarding. I was very alert by the time the fateful transfer was imminent, and it turned out to be just about as simple as possible. There are only six platforms or so in the Caen station, and each one has a very helpful monitor listing the locations of all upcoming trains. So I zipped down to the next track and climbed aboard the waiting Basse-Normandie train. Or Haute-Normandie. I didn't pay too much attention and then once aboard of course I couldn't see the writing on the sides of the cars. Anyway.
This ride was only about fifteen minutes, and once in Bayeux I had some time to kill before catching the bus to the beach. As per my plan, I struck out to find the museum housing the Bayeux tapestry, a 70 meter long roll of cloth depicting somebody conquering somebody else and one of them was named Harold. Oh yeah, and the other guy was William. He was a Norman, and he won, so the Normans made a tapestry! The museum was easy to find - I joined a stream of British tourists, the predominant variety of tourist in Bayeux.
At the museum, I received a little audioguide player and the voice of a British man told me the story of the tapestry as I walked along its length. I liked the story and remember it better than I would have remembered a history-book description, although I still didn't manage to put all the pieces together; I just read the Wikipedia article and learned that the climactic battle scene was the Battle of Hastings. Oooh. That took place in 1066! Look at me with my historical knowledge.
After the Battle of Hastings, I caught a bus.
We went rolling off into the beautiful Norman countryside and soon enough fetched up at the beach! Hurrah for the ocean! I woke up in the heart of Paris and was standing on the shores of the Atlantic by noon.
I spent a while enjoying the crashing waves and grainy sand and the rivulets of tide-water running back to the shore. Although the morning had been chilly, things started warming up nicely while I ate my snack of paprika-Pringles (they taste like barbecue-Pringles).
But this particular beach has more than one impression to leave on its visitors, because this was Omaha Beach, invaded by the Allies on D-Day during WWII and eventually taken after staggering casualties. After my initial joy at being at a beach had subsided a bit, I tried to imagine the sights and sounds on the beach that day, and (luckily for my mental comfort) failed utterly. Even the beginnings of imagination left me somber and heavy-feeling. So much humanity ended.
Then I turned my attention to the green hills beyond the beach. In a stunningly ironic contrast, the beach and countryside today epitomize peace and tranquility as the sun gently warms the sands and tall grasses:
But even in such a quiet atmosphere, a closer look gives not-too-subtle hints of the historical violence. Littering the green hillsides are the crumbling concrete remnants of German bunkers used during their defense of the beach. I walked inside some of them.
In the little time I had remaining before the bus came through again, I hurried and found the American cemetery. It just goes on and on. So much humanity ended.
The scale of the lives lost is beyond my visceral comprehension. The beach and cemetery made me feel a heavy, heavy sorrow and a deep historical awe and regret, but I'm glad to have seen them. They're important to remember.
So the bus returned to Bayeux, and I had a few hours to explore the town before my train left. It's a pretty little town, moderately tourist-ized but still retaining its own identity, as far as I, a tourist, could tell. I learned that it was founded by the Romans in the first century CE. That's an old town.
Lovely cathedral, lovely flowers, awful fish and chips, and then it was time to meet the train. The rides back went smoothly, including the crucial transfer in Caen, and I stepped off the train at St. Lazare a bit before 7:30 pm. Day-trip victory!
Before setting out, I was a bit worried because I was tired already and traveling alone. But everything went either according to plan or slightly better than planned, and I was never truly nervous about getting stuck outside of Paris. I did feel that I had to be constantly alert, since there was no one to catch me in a mistake, and constant vigilance is draining. But I suppose even there I had a bit of help; it turned out that a particular young Italian man had independently planned an itinerary almost identical to mine, and we kept running into each other on various forms of public transportation. Although we didn't have much language in common, we were able to work together to figure out things like the bus stops and routes. Thank you, unknown Italian!
So it was a good day, a beach day, a historical day, and above all a long day. I came back to my room and stopped moving for a while. And thus ended the Excursion.
Saturday, July 28, 2012
Infinite Paris
It's been a very busy 48 hours or so, but now I'm taking a bit of time to relax and blog. This post will cover Friday's activities, and I'll start a new one to describe The Normandy Excursion.
Yesterday I spent over twelve consecutive hours sightseeing and generally bopping around Paris. To begin the day, I met Steve at 10:00 am in a café near the Luxembourg Gardens for a post-program interview. After a nice talk and a bit of camera-shy muttering on my part when the video camera and microphone emerged, I took the RER B out to Gare du Nord and picked up the train tickets to Normandy which I had purchased online Wednesday evening. Okay, let's start counting public transportation lines: just the RER B so far.
Around 11:00 I went back to St. Michel-Notre Dame (still the RER B, but the station has been closed for a week so I had to exit through the Cluny-Sorbonne metro stop - does that count as another half of a line? No, it does not.) and walked the few blocks to Ile-St-Louis where I had seen an interesting-looking shop about a month ago when I was walking around in the night-rain with Margaret. I suspected that it would be a good place to finish my souvenir shopping, and I was correct. I walked the perimeter of the island for fun and then called Kierstin, with whom I had planned to visit the Natural History Museum near the Jardin des Plantes.
We decided to meet at the Place Monge metro stop, so I took the M10 from Cluny-Sorbonne and transferred to the M7 at Jussieu, only a stop away from my goal. (Three lines now!) It only took us a few minutes to find the museum and decide that we thoroughly approved of the fantastically-mustachioed ticket taker with the Indiana Jones hat who looked at our student IDs and let us in free. The ground floor showcased the Gallery of Comparative Anatomy. Wow:
Row after crowded row of wired skeletons of all manners of creature. You name it, it's here. Hippopotamus, toucan, giraffe, wolf, bat, elephant, turtle, tiger, gerbil, dog, snake, manatee, elk... Kierstin and I were fascinated, to put it mildly. We slowly worked our way through the aisles exclaiming over unexpected structures and cunning displays. (Who knew that those little horns on giraffes' heads actually have their own bones? And I find it very plausible that elephant skulls originally inspired the Cyclops myths.) Caleb caught up with us while we were still stunned by...the whales. Whales are really big! And they have hand bones! And some of them have baleen! Which as Caleb said is like an inside-out mustache! And really really big!
Also they have a narwhal. When this fact became apparent, a commotion was caused, because they are so awesome.
Even as I happily perused the specimens, I didn't forget the downside to galleries such as this: I'm sure most of the skeletons were collected in the bad old days by the method of "shoot as many different things as you can." While it's easy to agree that such a method is bad, and I very much hope it's not used anymore, at least these specimens have been preserved and used and are still edifying visitors over a hundred years later. It's better than the things-that-got-shot going to waste, right? Maybe?
No such moral debates cloud the enjoyment of the first-floor gallery. In a word: dinosaurs!
The gallery of paleontology featured dinosaurs and fossils and megafauna like mammoths and the (huge) (terrifying) ground sloth of North America, my personal favorite.
It turns out that, like dire wolves, cave bears are a real thing. Rather, they were a real thing, as opposed to just being dreamed up as ultra-carnivores for fantasy novels. Finally, the upper balcony featured invertebrate fossils (read: lots of really big shells). All in all, the Natural History Museum is one of my favorites of the museums I've visited in Paris. The displays are exotic and interesting, and the museum building itself has that wonderful quintessence of old-fashioned pedagogy: creaky wooden floors, a slightly musty smell, strategically-placed oscillating fans instead of central air conditioning, explanatory posters with typewriter-text painstakingly mounted on faded construction paper...If I couldn't be a physicist, I'd work in an old museum. (Well, there are a lot of places it would be fun to work, and it would actually depend on which one hired me. But the sentiment is there.)
We were done with the museum sometime before 3:00 pm and parted ways under the blessed, blessed drizzle that had unexpectedly decided to deliver us from the heat of the past week. I headed over to the old opera house, the Palais Garnier, the one that pops into everybody's head at the words "Paris opera," the setting for the Phantom of the Opera. Let's see, that involved catching the M5 at Gare d'Austerlitz and transferring to the M8 at Bastille. It's easy to tell when to leave the metro for the opera house because the correct stop is called "Opera." Five lines now total, by the way.
I paid a student-discounted few euro for a pass to poke around the areas open to the public. Yep, it's a pretty building all right. I had a particular overture in my head the whole time, and perhaps I can be forgiven a slight preoccupation with the numerous chandeliers.
Following my self-guided tour, my steps led me down the Boulevard des Capucines to the Madeleine church and then along the Rue Royal to the Place de la Concorde and the Tuileries. Owing to my lack of umbrella, I got to walk in the rain, something I've been wanting to do but had to keep forgoing out of consideration to the computer in my backpack on workdays. Picking up a crêpe sucre from a Concorde vendor, I figured I'd look around for the Musée de l'Orangerie, which I knew was nearby and featured two rooms of the vast Monet waterlilies for which he is so well-known.
I found the museum, and the (stunning) waterlilies, and - a whole corridor full of Renoirs. To think I could have missed them entirely if not for my wandering feet and a whim! The best part? Unlike the M 'O, this museum has no quarrel with amateur photographers.
Those strawberries make me want to eat strawberries. I lingered and lingered until the museum closed for the day and they kicked me out.
As far as I can tell, the Renoirs were part of an incredible private art collection that was donated to the museum at some point and contains a decent number of Cezannes (especially landscapes, hurrah!), a Monet and a Sisely, and a bunch of not-too-post impressionists with famous names like Matisse and Picasso. It was a very nice gallery indeed. And of course the huge Monet waterlilies are stare-worthy for their ethereal colors and textures. Well done, museum, well done indeed.
Okay, now what? I had an hour to kill before meeting the others at 6:45 pm on their way to the restaurant Steve had picked for our end-of-program dinner. Hopefully you won't find me lazy if I tell you that I just sat around in the Tuileries and watched the fountains do their fountain-y thing.
Dinner was great. All of us were in the same place at the same time, something that hasn't truly happened since the beginning of the program. Plus, NSF paid for the food. I was extremely hungry (don't worry, Mom, I had a waffle too in the morning that I forgot to mention) and ordered the roast chicken with mashed potatoes and profiterolles with ice cream for dessert. Mmmmmmm.
I don't honestly remember which metro line I took back to the RER B at Chatelet, but I'll be generous and assume it was the M1, since that's the route I take at least three times a week what with all the museum visits near the Tuileries. So that makes for a grand total of six public transportation lines in one day. I am getting much more than my money's worth out of my Navigo pass.
Back in my room at 10:00 pm, I showered and caught a few hours of sleep, because I was exhausted from the day. But I couldn't oversleep this morning, because I had another big day planned...
Yesterday I spent over twelve consecutive hours sightseeing and generally bopping around Paris. To begin the day, I met Steve at 10:00 am in a café near the Luxembourg Gardens for a post-program interview. After a nice talk and a bit of camera-shy muttering on my part when the video camera and microphone emerged, I took the RER B out to Gare du Nord and picked up the train tickets to Normandy which I had purchased online Wednesday evening. Okay, let's start counting public transportation lines: just the RER B so far.
Around 11:00 I went back to St. Michel-Notre Dame (still the RER B, but the station has been closed for a week so I had to exit through the Cluny-Sorbonne metro stop - does that count as another half of a line? No, it does not.) and walked the few blocks to Ile-St-Louis where I had seen an interesting-looking shop about a month ago when I was walking around in the night-rain with Margaret. I suspected that it would be a good place to finish my souvenir shopping, and I was correct. I walked the perimeter of the island for fun and then called Kierstin, with whom I had planned to visit the Natural History Museum near the Jardin des Plantes.
We decided to meet at the Place Monge metro stop, so I took the M10 from Cluny-Sorbonne and transferred to the M7 at Jussieu, only a stop away from my goal. (Three lines now!) It only took us a few minutes to find the museum and decide that we thoroughly approved of the fantastically-mustachioed ticket taker with the Indiana Jones hat who looked at our student IDs and let us in free. The ground floor showcased the Gallery of Comparative Anatomy. Wow:
Row after crowded row of wired skeletons of all manners of creature. You name it, it's here. Hippopotamus, toucan, giraffe, wolf, bat, elephant, turtle, tiger, gerbil, dog, snake, manatee, elk... Kierstin and I were fascinated, to put it mildly. We slowly worked our way through the aisles exclaiming over unexpected structures and cunning displays. (Who knew that those little horns on giraffes' heads actually have their own bones? And I find it very plausible that elephant skulls originally inspired the Cyclops myths.) Caleb caught up with us while we were still stunned by...the whales. Whales are really big! And they have hand bones! And some of them have baleen! Which as Caleb said is like an inside-out mustache! And really really big!
Also they have a narwhal. When this fact became apparent, a commotion was caused, because they are so awesome.
Even as I happily perused the specimens, I didn't forget the downside to galleries such as this: I'm sure most of the skeletons were collected in the bad old days by the method of "shoot as many different things as you can." While it's easy to agree that such a method is bad, and I very much hope it's not used anymore, at least these specimens have been preserved and used and are still edifying visitors over a hundred years later. It's better than the things-that-got-shot going to waste, right? Maybe?
No such moral debates cloud the enjoyment of the first-floor gallery. In a word: dinosaurs!
The gallery of paleontology featured dinosaurs and fossils and megafauna like mammoths and the (huge) (terrifying) ground sloth of North America, my personal favorite.
It turns out that, like dire wolves, cave bears are a real thing. Rather, they were a real thing, as opposed to just being dreamed up as ultra-carnivores for fantasy novels. Finally, the upper balcony featured invertebrate fossils (read: lots of really big shells). All in all, the Natural History Museum is one of my favorites of the museums I've visited in Paris. The displays are exotic and interesting, and the museum building itself has that wonderful quintessence of old-fashioned pedagogy: creaky wooden floors, a slightly musty smell, strategically-placed oscillating fans instead of central air conditioning, explanatory posters with typewriter-text painstakingly mounted on faded construction paper...If I couldn't be a physicist, I'd work in an old museum. (Well, there are a lot of places it would be fun to work, and it would actually depend on which one hired me. But the sentiment is there.)
We were done with the museum sometime before 3:00 pm and parted ways under the blessed, blessed drizzle that had unexpectedly decided to deliver us from the heat of the past week. I headed over to the old opera house, the Palais Garnier, the one that pops into everybody's head at the words "Paris opera," the setting for the Phantom of the Opera. Let's see, that involved catching the M5 at Gare d'Austerlitz and transferring to the M8 at Bastille. It's easy to tell when to leave the metro for the opera house because the correct stop is called "Opera." Five lines now total, by the way.
I paid a student-discounted few euro for a pass to poke around the areas open to the public. Yep, it's a pretty building all right. I had a particular overture in my head the whole time, and perhaps I can be forgiven a slight preoccupation with the numerous chandeliers.
Following my self-guided tour, my steps led me down the Boulevard des Capucines to the Madeleine church and then along the Rue Royal to the Place de la Concorde and the Tuileries. Owing to my lack of umbrella, I got to walk in the rain, something I've been wanting to do but had to keep forgoing out of consideration to the computer in my backpack on workdays. Picking up a crêpe sucre from a Concorde vendor, I figured I'd look around for the Musée de l'Orangerie, which I knew was nearby and featured two rooms of the vast Monet waterlilies for which he is so well-known.
I found the museum, and the (stunning) waterlilies, and - a whole corridor full of Renoirs. To think I could have missed them entirely if not for my wandering feet and a whim! The best part? Unlike the M 'O, this museum has no quarrel with amateur photographers.
Those strawberries make me want to eat strawberries. I lingered and lingered until the museum closed for the day and they kicked me out.
As far as I can tell, the Renoirs were part of an incredible private art collection that was donated to the museum at some point and contains a decent number of Cezannes (especially landscapes, hurrah!), a Monet and a Sisely, and a bunch of not-too-post impressionists with famous names like Matisse and Picasso. It was a very nice gallery indeed. And of course the huge Monet waterlilies are stare-worthy for their ethereal colors and textures. Well done, museum, well done indeed.
Okay, now what? I had an hour to kill before meeting the others at 6:45 pm on their way to the restaurant Steve had picked for our end-of-program dinner. Hopefully you won't find me lazy if I tell you that I just sat around in the Tuileries and watched the fountains do their fountain-y thing.
Dinner was great. All of us were in the same place at the same time, something that hasn't truly happened since the beginning of the program. Plus, NSF paid for the food. I was extremely hungry (don't worry, Mom, I had a waffle too in the morning that I forgot to mention) and ordered the roast chicken with mashed potatoes and profiterolles with ice cream for dessert. Mmmmmmm.
I don't honestly remember which metro line I took back to the RER B at Chatelet, but I'll be generous and assume it was the M1, since that's the route I take at least three times a week what with all the museum visits near the Tuileries. So that makes for a grand total of six public transportation lines in one day. I am getting much more than my money's worth out of my Navigo pass.
Back in my room at 10:00 pm, I showered and caught a few hours of sleep, because I was exhausted from the day. But I couldn't oversleep this morning, because I had another big day planned...
Friday, July 27, 2012
Rather more bluffing
Life is getting very busy very quickly as our last weekend in Paris begins, so my blog may suffer a bit. I'll try my best to keep it up-to-date and detailed because I don't want to forget the things I do during this extended free time. We'll see.
Yesterday Kierstin and I woke up relatively late at 9:00 am and whiled away a few hours until meeting Margaret and Jay and catching the RER headed out to Ecole Polytechnique. By "whiled away," I mean "practiced our presentations and got dressed in our fancy clothes." Well, Kierstin always wears fancy clothes, by my standards. By 1:00 pm we had met up with the other students and Steve in a small amphitheater in the main building and were waiting for a computer with internet capabilities to be delivered so that we could all retrieve our presentations from UM's version of Sakai. In a stroke of luck, there was an atomic physics conference going on in the hall immediately outside our room, featuring lots of posters and people milling about and, most importantly, free food. We do physics too, so of course we're allowed to take some, right?
The presentations were fun to hear once we got underway. I knew the basics of most of the others' projects, but I finally heard compact and well-planned summaries, so I know a lot more now. The room was rather hot, but we pressed on bravely, helped by a few well-placed breaks. Happily for me, the atmosphere was quite relaxed and informal. I'd expected many advisers to attend their students' talks, but only a few came, and they generally popped in and out quickly. So the audience was basically just us students plus Steve. Not a threatening bunch.
I think my talk went well, which makes me proud. Mélanie made the trek all the way from Cachan, and delayed the beginning of her holidays (I think) just to attend my talk. Thank you so much, Mélanie! I really appreciate it and all of your guidance as I was assembling the presentation. Also the lending of the lab laser pointer. Thanks!
Around 5:30 pm we finished the presentations and headed back into the city. Kierstin and I decided not to leave the RER at the usual stop but to continue to the Musée d'Orsay directly, so as to have plenty of time for our summer-farewell visit. For the past several weeks, I've been visiting the museum alone, so it was a very nice change to have someone with whom to voice my appreciation of the works. Kierstin let me give her a rapid tour of my very favorite paintings and statues, and then we met up with Caleb and Mir and just generally made a quick recap circuit around the whole museum. And we spent the entirety of the final hour before closure in the upstairs Impressionists gallery. Those rooms are still overwhelming. They make me feel the way I expect I might if I'd just been given a million dollars - there's just too much opportunity in front of me. I can't experience it all at once!
We stayed until the bitter end, slowly withdrawing through the exhibit only a step ahead of the workers shooing visitors to the exits. I'll come back. I'll come back. Just you wait, M 'O.
The evening finished with a twilit walk along the Seine back to St. Michel, under a sky that faded red orange leaf green cerulean indigo in the sunset. The payoff from a terribly hot day can be a wonderfully warm evening, and that's how it worked yesterday. We watched the lights from a passing boat on the river throw dappling reflections onto the walls of the stately creamy apartments lining the boulevard. Paris, Paris, Paris...just you wait, Paris. Be patient and I'll come back.
Yesterday Kierstin and I woke up relatively late at 9:00 am and whiled away a few hours until meeting Margaret and Jay and catching the RER headed out to Ecole Polytechnique. By "whiled away," I mean "practiced our presentations and got dressed in our fancy clothes." Well, Kierstin always wears fancy clothes, by my standards. By 1:00 pm we had met up with the other students and Steve in a small amphitheater in the main building and were waiting for a computer with internet capabilities to be delivered so that we could all retrieve our presentations from UM's version of Sakai. In a stroke of luck, there was an atomic physics conference going on in the hall immediately outside our room, featuring lots of posters and people milling about and, most importantly, free food. We do physics too, so of course we're allowed to take some, right?
The presentations were fun to hear once we got underway. I knew the basics of most of the others' projects, but I finally heard compact and well-planned summaries, so I know a lot more now. The room was rather hot, but we pressed on bravely, helped by a few well-placed breaks. Happily for me, the atmosphere was quite relaxed and informal. I'd expected many advisers to attend their students' talks, but only a few came, and they generally popped in and out quickly. So the audience was basically just us students plus Steve. Not a threatening bunch.
I think my talk went well, which makes me proud. Mélanie made the trek all the way from Cachan, and delayed the beginning of her holidays (I think) just to attend my talk. Thank you so much, Mélanie! I really appreciate it and all of your guidance as I was assembling the presentation. Also the lending of the lab laser pointer. Thanks!
Around 5:30 pm we finished the presentations and headed back into the city. Kierstin and I decided not to leave the RER at the usual stop but to continue to the Musée d'Orsay directly, so as to have plenty of time for our summer-farewell visit. For the past several weeks, I've been visiting the museum alone, so it was a very nice change to have someone with whom to voice my appreciation of the works. Kierstin let me give her a rapid tour of my very favorite paintings and statues, and then we met up with Caleb and Mir and just generally made a quick recap circuit around the whole museum. And we spent the entirety of the final hour before closure in the upstairs Impressionists gallery. Those rooms are still overwhelming. They make me feel the way I expect I might if I'd just been given a million dollars - there's just too much opportunity in front of me. I can't experience it all at once!
We stayed until the bitter end, slowly withdrawing through the exhibit only a step ahead of the workers shooing visitors to the exits. I'll come back. I'll come back. Just you wait, M 'O.
The evening finished with a twilit walk along the Seine back to St. Michel, under a sky that faded red orange leaf green cerulean indigo in the sunset. The payoff from a terribly hot day can be a wonderfully warm evening, and that's how it worked yesterday. We watched the lights from a passing boat on the river throw dappling reflections onto the walls of the stately creamy apartments lining the boulevard. Paris, Paris, Paris...just you wait, Paris. Be patient and I'll come back.
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Hitting home
Today was a day of farewells. It was my last workday, and I spent it tidying the papers that had accumulated around my workstation, perfecting (I hope) my presentation and uploading it in various forms, copying my data and summary reports to the LPQM external hard drive...and bidding farewell to Mélanie and to the students and other researchers. Many thanks to all of them for helping me adjust and feel welcome, even though my stay was short and my grasp of French rather tenuous, especially at the beginning. Mélanie, Clément, Silvia, Yijia, Iryna, Yi, Geraud, and all the rest...I hope we meet again someday. It's a small world, right? And a return to Cachan for me is not out of the question. I hope.
Actually, there was one greeting amidst the farewells. Steve (the REU coordinator) is here in Paris now, and stopped by Cachan in the afternoon. So Mélanie and I gave him a quick tour of the lab, and they discussed some unexpected similarities between their own research. An exchange of papers was promised. But Steve will have to wait until tomorrow afternoon to hear about the results of my project. I'm sure the suspense is very difficult to handle.
The evening brought yet another difficult parting. I've visited the Louvre for the last time this summer. Happily, Kierstin and I made it out to the museum a bit earlier than usual, so I had some extra time to visit all my favorite works as well as seeing some new things. There are always new things. This time we wandered through halls filled with vast tapestries and medieval artifacts. Although I've maintained for a while now that the medieval art is generally not my favorite, the works in the Louvre are of very good quality, or so it seems to me with my two months of experience with other Paris museums.
Kierstin had to leave early, but I stayed until the museum closed. I spent a while going through the Napoleon III apartments, which in all honesty I enjoyed much more than the Versailles palace. No crowd, actual furnishings in the rooms, and a carefully-picked collection of masterworks to go along with the architecture - how could I complain? By the way, here's a picture of the Crown Jewels (it's the mostly-white photo):
Then I looked through more of the medieval/Renaissance collection, the high point of which was my delighted discovery of three cases of old navigational instruments.
Throughout the evening, I had been stopping by and seeing my favorites again. The statue courts in particular are some of the nicest places in the Louvre, with their high skylit ceilings and hushed tranquil atmosphere and, of course, incredible marble statues. And with half an hour before the museum closed, I made my way back to the Ancient Egyptian galleries and spent my last minutes of summer-Louvre-time soaking up Egypt the same way I did the first time I visited the museum two months ago. Coming full circle and all that.
All too soon the galleries began closing. It hurt more than I expected to walk slowly through the halls and out to the lobby, looking up at the sunset through the glass pyramid for the last time...the last time for a while. I am determined to return to Paris and to the Louvre. This is just an intermission, not the end. I'm determined.
While they're fresh in my head, I'll give a quick list of my favorite works in the Louvre, at least among the ones I saw. I'm sure there are just as many that would make the list that I just never managed to find. But anyway:
Statues
There are so very many exceptional statues that I have to talk about them first and also can't just pick one. Praxiteles' Apollo Sauroktonos has a face that radiates peacefulness in every flowing line:
And I'm pretty sure that it's not actually possible to carve a sheer veil from marble, so I strongly suspect this sculptor of witchcraft:
Seriously, I still haven't figured out how it works, and I've stared at it several times. I'm pretty sure this next one is Artemis on the hunt; she's lovely.
And even though parts of the work are pretty violent and morbid, the clasping hands of the dying warriors make me shiver every time I see them:
But if I had to pick just one statue of the ones I've seen here, it would have to be Atlanta tying her sandal in preparation for her race. I discovered her tucked away in a corner just last week, and can't look at her without desperately wanting her to move, to finish her sandal-tying, to spring up and run - she's life caught in marble, a demonstration of the type of success to which every sculptor aspires. Here she is:
A photo is such a poor way to express a statue, but it's all I can do.
Paintings
Claude Lorrain remains my favorite newly-discovered artist for his seascapes and sunsets.
And the room displaying Rubens' Medici Cycle is well worth pausing in for several minutes:
But the cake-taker in this category has to be (who else?) Renoir and his readers. Oh Renoir.
It seems unfair to lump most of the museum's art into an "Other" category, but I'm running out of patience finding pictures anyway. The door-guardians of some ancient Middle-Eastern city are stunningly stylized:
And of course the whole Ancient Egypt concourse leaves me reeling, the mummy-case room most of all.
I have been exceptionally fortunate to visit the Louvre so many times (seven by my count) this summer, and especially to have gotten in without paying every time. So many treasures, so much of the best of humanity's efforts, all in one place - I've seen so much and could still return countless times without boredom. Wait for me, Louvre. Wait for my return.
Actually, there was one greeting amidst the farewells. Steve (the REU coordinator) is here in Paris now, and stopped by Cachan in the afternoon. So Mélanie and I gave him a quick tour of the lab, and they discussed some unexpected similarities between their own research. An exchange of papers was promised. But Steve will have to wait until tomorrow afternoon to hear about the results of my project. I'm sure the suspense is very difficult to handle.
The evening brought yet another difficult parting. I've visited the Louvre for the last time this summer. Happily, Kierstin and I made it out to the museum a bit earlier than usual, so I had some extra time to visit all my favorite works as well as seeing some new things. There are always new things. This time we wandered through halls filled with vast tapestries and medieval artifacts. Although I've maintained for a while now that the medieval art is generally not my favorite, the works in the Louvre are of very good quality, or so it seems to me with my two months of experience with other Paris museums.
Kierstin had to leave early, but I stayed until the museum closed. I spent a while going through the Napoleon III apartments, which in all honesty I enjoyed much more than the Versailles palace. No crowd, actual furnishings in the rooms, and a carefully-picked collection of masterworks to go along with the architecture - how could I complain? By the way, here's a picture of the Crown Jewels (it's the mostly-white photo):
Then I looked through more of the medieval/Renaissance collection, the high point of which was my delighted discovery of three cases of old navigational instruments.
Throughout the evening, I had been stopping by and seeing my favorites again. The statue courts in particular are some of the nicest places in the Louvre, with their high skylit ceilings and hushed tranquil atmosphere and, of course, incredible marble statues. And with half an hour before the museum closed, I made my way back to the Ancient Egyptian galleries and spent my last minutes of summer-Louvre-time soaking up Egypt the same way I did the first time I visited the museum two months ago. Coming full circle and all that.
All too soon the galleries began closing. It hurt more than I expected to walk slowly through the halls and out to the lobby, looking up at the sunset through the glass pyramid for the last time...the last time for a while. I am determined to return to Paris and to the Louvre. This is just an intermission, not the end. I'm determined.
While they're fresh in my head, I'll give a quick list of my favorite works in the Louvre, at least among the ones I saw. I'm sure there are just as many that would make the list that I just never managed to find. But anyway:
Statues
There are so very many exceptional statues that I have to talk about them first and also can't just pick one. Praxiteles' Apollo Sauroktonos has a face that radiates peacefulness in every flowing line:
And I'm pretty sure that it's not actually possible to carve a sheer veil from marble, so I strongly suspect this sculptor of witchcraft:
Seriously, I still haven't figured out how it works, and I've stared at it several times. I'm pretty sure this next one is Artemis on the hunt; she's lovely.
And even though parts of the work are pretty violent and morbid, the clasping hands of the dying warriors make me shiver every time I see them:
But if I had to pick just one statue of the ones I've seen here, it would have to be Atlanta tying her sandal in preparation for her race. I discovered her tucked away in a corner just last week, and can't look at her without desperately wanting her to move, to finish her sandal-tying, to spring up and run - she's life caught in marble, a demonstration of the type of success to which every sculptor aspires. Here she is:
A photo is such a poor way to express a statue, but it's all I can do.
Paintings
Claude Lorrain remains my favorite newly-discovered artist for his seascapes and sunsets.
And the room displaying Rubens' Medici Cycle is well worth pausing in for several minutes:
But the cake-taker in this category has to be (who else?) Renoir and his readers. Oh Renoir.
It seems unfair to lump most of the museum's art into an "Other" category, but I'm running out of patience finding pictures anyway. The door-guardians of some ancient Middle-Eastern city are stunningly stylized:
And of course the whole Ancient Egypt concourse leaves me reeling, the mummy-case room most of all.
I have been exceptionally fortunate to visit the Louvre so many times (seven by my count) this summer, and especially to have gotten in without paying every time. So many treasures, so much of the best of humanity's efforts, all in one place - I've seen so much and could still return countless times without boredom. Wait for me, Louvre. Wait for my return.
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Adventures, off-kilter and on
I'm writing back-to-back posts again so that my faithful readership (hello to all three of you!) isn't kept in undue suspense regarding my day today. At work I polished and practiced and fretted a bit about my presentation. Currently, no matter how hard I try, I can't get the time below 13 minutes, and I'm out of non-essentials to cut. Mélanie thinks I'll be fine: "When you really present, you'll be stressed, so you'll talk faster." I guess that's a good thing. Just one more day in Cachan now for me. That's strange. I'll be sad to bid farewell to all of the other lab members.
There was a plan for this evening. I made it myself, and though it was a bit vague I was happy with it. I was going to see the Floral Park out at Chateau de Vincennes (the terminus of the M1 metro) with anyone who wanted to join me. Most of that plan actually happened, too, and more besides!
But for a while things looked doubtful. We began the evening in a group of four: me, Kierstin, Caleb, and Linda. In Chatelet station we lost Linda. An innocent splitting-up of the party became an irrecoverable separation, and our phones didn't work properly in the underground station. After twenty minutes or so, the rest of us decided to continue the journey and try to get ahold of Linda when we were aboveground again. Fortunately we soon heard from her, and she was safe and sound and had decided to head back on her own.
Then the metro seemed to get a bit confused, and sat in one station for a few solid minutes instead of seconds. We had half an hour before the park closed, and I was beginning to release my mental grip on the idea of getting there in time.
But we did manage to spend about ten minutes in the garden, enough to see that it was very pretty, and then we walked in the nearby Bois de Vincennes, a wooded area with sandy trails, for a while before going back to the metro stop. The whole area was green and park-like, a welcome contrast to the busy downtown. On the way back, the three of us stopped off at Denfert-Rochereau for a dinner of crêpes salées (well, two of us - Kierstin didn't have one). Mine was ham and cheese and salt and pepper, the latter two added liberally and unevenly. On the whole, it was quite tasty. To put the finishing touch on the evening, we walked back to the dorms instead of taking the RER. Although the weather was hotter today than any other day so far, by 9:30 pm or so the temperature was excellent. A detour down a quiet, twisty-cobbled street completely overgrown with flowers gave me an idea of where I'd want to live if I ever stay in Paris for an extended period again. I'd say the adventures went well.
There was a plan for this evening. I made it myself, and though it was a bit vague I was happy with it. I was going to see the Floral Park out at Chateau de Vincennes (the terminus of the M1 metro) with anyone who wanted to join me. Most of that plan actually happened, too, and more besides!
But for a while things looked doubtful. We began the evening in a group of four: me, Kierstin, Caleb, and Linda. In Chatelet station we lost Linda. An innocent splitting-up of the party became an irrecoverable separation, and our phones didn't work properly in the underground station. After twenty minutes or so, the rest of us decided to continue the journey and try to get ahold of Linda when we were aboveground again. Fortunately we soon heard from her, and she was safe and sound and had decided to head back on her own.
Then the metro seemed to get a bit confused, and sat in one station for a few solid minutes instead of seconds. We had half an hour before the park closed, and I was beginning to release my mental grip on the idea of getting there in time.
But we did manage to spend about ten minutes in the garden, enough to see that it was very pretty, and then we walked in the nearby Bois de Vincennes, a wooded area with sandy trails, for a while before going back to the metro stop. The whole area was green and park-like, a welcome contrast to the busy downtown. On the way back, the three of us stopped off at Denfert-Rochereau for a dinner of crêpes salées (well, two of us - Kierstin didn't have one). Mine was ham and cheese and salt and pepper, the latter two added liberally and unevenly. On the whole, it was quite tasty. To put the finishing touch on the evening, we walked back to the dorms instead of taking the RER. Although the weather was hotter today than any other day so far, by 9:30 pm or so the temperature was excellent. A detour down a quiet, twisty-cobbled street completely overgrown with flowers gave me an idea of where I'd want to live if I ever stay in Paris for an extended period again. I'd say the adventures went well.
Batobus
And so begins the final week of the program. I've been tweaking and practicing my presentation, with some very useful guidance from Mélanie. My summary report now falls within acceptable parameters, so that's one fewer thing about which to worry.
Monday evening was beautiful - warm but not too hot, with a gentle breeze, sunlight slanting down into the streets and shining on the Seine...
After work I went out to the Notre-Dame area as it seems I often do, and wandered there accomplishing many small sight-seeing goals. I found the Pont Neuf, which is amusingly named the "New Bridge" while being the oldest bridge in Paris. Descending to the river, I strolled around the tip of Ile de la Cité and sat for a while at the edge of the Seine enjoying the evening. There's a little green jewel of a park right out at the end of the island, filled on this occasion with many picnickers.
As luck would have it, the Pont Neuf area is also currently the location of Paris Plages, a summer event featuring quite a bit of sand imported from who-knows-where and mounded into wooden-deck-bound beaches along the Seine. There are umbrellas and deck chairs and pier-style food stalls and potted palm trees - it's a happy idea, and there were many people out taking advantage of the mini-beach.
After an hour or so of pleasant wandering on foot, I decided to take Linda's recommendation to heart and attempt the Batobus: a boat/shuttle service that loops endlessly on the Seine between eight major tourist attractions. I didn't have anywhere else to be, but I wanted to try out a boat ride on the Seine in the lovely evening breeze. So I made my way to the Notre-Dame stop and bought a day pass (rather unnecessary since the boats stopped running in an hour, but the only option) for a student/Navigo holder reduced rate of nine euro and caught the next boat-bus.
And I'm glad I did. By eschewing the windowed-in seating area and standing on the small back deck, I was able to enjoy the breeze and the warmth of the setting sun. I took the loop about halfway around and got off at the Champs-Elysées stop, proud because I knew the downtown area well enough that any stop would have been equally simple to navigate. The familiar museums and monuments took on a new perspective from the middle of the Seine, and I watched the Hotel de Ville glide by, the Pont Neuf and Tuileries and Louvre and Musée d'Orsay and Pont Alexandre III...
But the evening had more in store for me. Upon returning to Cité Universitaire around 10:00 pm, I met Mir, Kierstin, Linda, Margaret, and a dozen Pierre Hermé macaroons that Mir had picked up from the store earlier that day. We sat in the dorm kitchen and had a highbrow gourmet connoisseur macaroon-tasting event, carefully slicing each confection into quarters plus a smidge for Kierstin. So now I've sampled every flavor they carry, and cannot bring myself to pick a favorite. The jasmine one was...hmm, exquisite seems like a good word here...and the pistachio-cinnamon tasted exactly like Christmas. I greatly surprised myself by quite liking the peach-apricot-saffron, but everyone agreed that the basil-vanilla was, despite all odds, startlingly wonderful instead of just startling. We are so cultured and refined and full of macaroons.
Monday evening was beautiful - warm but not too hot, with a gentle breeze, sunlight slanting down into the streets and shining on the Seine...
After work I went out to the Notre-Dame area as it seems I often do, and wandered there accomplishing many small sight-seeing goals. I found the Pont Neuf, which is amusingly named the "New Bridge" while being the oldest bridge in Paris. Descending to the river, I strolled around the tip of Ile de la Cité and sat for a while at the edge of the Seine enjoying the evening. There's a little green jewel of a park right out at the end of the island, filled on this occasion with many picnickers.
As luck would have it, the Pont Neuf area is also currently the location of Paris Plages, a summer event featuring quite a bit of sand imported from who-knows-where and mounded into wooden-deck-bound beaches along the Seine. There are umbrellas and deck chairs and pier-style food stalls and potted palm trees - it's a happy idea, and there were many people out taking advantage of the mini-beach.
After an hour or so of pleasant wandering on foot, I decided to take Linda's recommendation to heart and attempt the Batobus: a boat/shuttle service that loops endlessly on the Seine between eight major tourist attractions. I didn't have anywhere else to be, but I wanted to try out a boat ride on the Seine in the lovely evening breeze. So I made my way to the Notre-Dame stop and bought a day pass (rather unnecessary since the boats stopped running in an hour, but the only option) for a student/Navigo holder reduced rate of nine euro and caught the next boat-bus.
And I'm glad I did. By eschewing the windowed-in seating area and standing on the small back deck, I was able to enjoy the breeze and the warmth of the setting sun. I took the loop about halfway around and got off at the Champs-Elysées stop, proud because I knew the downtown area well enough that any stop would have been equally simple to navigate. The familiar museums and monuments took on a new perspective from the middle of the Seine, and I watched the Hotel de Ville glide by, the Pont Neuf and Tuileries and Louvre and Musée d'Orsay and Pont Alexandre III...
But the evening had more in store for me. Upon returning to Cité Universitaire around 10:00 pm, I met Mir, Kierstin, Linda, Margaret, and a dozen Pierre Hermé macaroons that Mir had picked up from the store earlier that day. We sat in the dorm kitchen and had a highbrow gourmet connoisseur macaroon-tasting event, carefully slicing each confection into quarters plus a smidge for Kierstin. So now I've sampled every flavor they carry, and cannot bring myself to pick a favorite. The jasmine one was...hmm, exquisite seems like a good word here...and the pistachio-cinnamon tasted exactly like Christmas. I greatly surprised myself by quite liking the peach-apricot-saffron, but everyone agreed that the basil-vanilla was, despite all odds, startlingly wonderful instead of just startling. We are so cultured and refined and full of macaroons.
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