Mme Perrin

Our dear Chuppa-Chups, what would we do without her? Probably party all day and night, practically never clean the salon nor wash the dishes, invite anyone we want whenever we want, never worry about anything… Yeah, that would be the luxurious life in Lucie Berger. But no, we’re stuck here with the board school supervisor, as she sees herself (let us not mind the fact that LB is not a board school for years now)… She lives in the school with her husband (who is the school director and a really nice person), in a huge apartment one floor downstairs from us. She is the one that is in charge of our accommodation and week-end/vacation nourishment. And she is the one that doesn’t want us to have any visitors ever (oops, I guess we kind of missed that rule).

There are a lot of stories about her, for example, why do we call her the fridge-bitch: Keiko had some mushrooms and salad that disappeared from her fridge, so she went and asked (frank as she is) the f-b if she had taken her mushrooms. Mme Perrin answered “No, but maybe it was the cleaning woman”…

One late Friday evening we were making cookies in our salon, it took quite a long while so we left the cleaning-up for the morning. But the next day when I wanted to get our key to the diner I found the salon locked. There was also a letter on our message board: “if you want to use the salon, make sure it is well cleaned”. So we weren’t able to have our breakfast and I still don’t know how she had imagined us cleaning up a room with the door closed. By the way, she did it once more some months later just because of three unclean plates.

It was already a long time ago when Marvin and I started collecting all of our empty alcohol bottles into a small cupboard. When Mme Perrin discovered it she immediately assumed that it was all drunk by Marvin. She insisted on cleaning the cupboard and insulted him by telling into his face that she thinks he has a drinking problem. Of course we didn’t clean anything – how could we possibly throw away our precious collection?! After the Christmas vacation, when Marvin came back to LB he found his room full of empty bottles. Yes, she often uses her double key to enter our rooms. I don’t know what she’s doing there but it annoys me as hell! Anyway, don’t think that we’re just a bunch of wussys here or that I’m not doing any small and quietly undermining revolutions. Of course we started our collection again, but this time we hid the key of the cupboard so that she can’t look inside and therefore have any problems about what’s there. If she should ever ask where the key is we’ll just tell that maybe it was the cleaning woman who took it ;)

Before Christmas vacation she gave me money (not a small sum) for food as I wasn’t going home like most of the others. Keiko was the second one staying here. She didn’t get anything, we discussed it and good-old Keiko went demanding right away. Mme Perrin had her money all ready in an envelope, but she wouldn’t have given it if Keiko would not have asked. Plus – she got less than I did just for no reason. There are plenty of other money-stories with her, actually – we’re having problems with that all the time.

But the most irritating about her is the nasty hypocritical nosiness: she always has to know when we are here; when are we leaving, where, with whom and to do what. She always has that disgusting smile on her face that’s so false, you could tell that she loves you as much as the dirt under her shoe. We just really love her, that sneaky, stealing, room-entering, party-ruining, double-faced bitch!!!

Tout le monde

I've been in Strasbourg for over five months now. Some things/people/opinions have changed since I last wrote about the people here, so I'll just make a new round:

Olivier: I still get the feeling that he doesn’t like me too much sometimes, but otherwise he’s a cool guy to have as a boss. I couldn’t say I really communicate to him a lot though…

Roland: he’s continually funny. It wouldn’t be the same without him and to be honest – I’d prefer to have him in charge here. He’s all chill and baila guy and doesn’t take it personally when we make fun of him. He doesn’t love working here too much, so he’s trying to make the dull stuff as amusing as possible.

Virginie: is replacing Audrey. I really like her, she is all about irony and that’s just too funny. Of course, she herself always stays serious. She has helped me a lot with the work and all (moral support), a very professional person, highly educated as well.

Eric B: replacing Aleks. He worked here some years ago and is being really active in organising ateliers and stuff. He is a very nice and friendly guy, but sometimes weird. He asks a lot of questions and tends to take everything personally. And as Marvin said: “He gays on me”… but then again maybe it’s just his paranoia because Eric has a wife and two kids. You never know...

Eric S: still our tutor with whom I don’t really communicate all that much. I get my real support from other people I guess…

Steffi: unfortunately just lately left Strasbourg to continue her studies. She is sooo funny, the way she laughs and everything. We had a huge, you could say – massive – good-bye party organised for her. It’s kind of quiet here without her…

Marvin: what would I do without him?! He is still my best friend out of all the people here. If I have a problem I go to him. If I like or don’t like someone I tell him about it. We mostly share the same opinions about things and people, so making jokes about "things" is our daily routine. We talk about everything, we have parties together, we break the rules together etc. He can sometimes be a really typical guy, but it is mostly forgivable so I don’t really mind.

Keiko: I am so SO sorry for making fun of her before getting to know the real person behind all the weirdness. I just love her, she is so great! She’s really funny and she always says what she means and on top of everything she’s just too nice. She is not afraid of responsibility and organising things, plus she has a great sense of humour. I have learned a lot about Japan from her, including some vocabulary. How could I have been so wrong about her!!! Keiko is great :)

Diana: our Spanish girl who is doing her Erasmus program here. She came and immediately won everyone’s hearts – a really sweet and nice person, easy to get along with. Marvin has special feelings for her (can’t blame him) and she is sometimes our co-conspirator in braking the rules business.

Anna: oh, we could write a book about her, Marvin and I. It would be a grosely funny one. “The thing”, that’s how we call her (le truc de merde). She is getting worse and worse, I think I’m gonna have to dedicate a whole another chapter to her and all the thingy-things. She is the only person that hasn’t really integrated into our group so far and I know more and more people who don’t like her. Strange thing. Gollum.

Chun-Yu: the new Chinese girl, replacing Xiang-Yan since January. She has been here for over a month and I know nothing about her. A rather non-social specie… She doesn’t speak French too well and always says “pardon” for not knowing how to express herself. If we offer her something she usually answers “no merci” in a rather grumpy manner.

Szofia (Sophie): the new Hungarian girl who’s replacing Steffi. She arrived not so long ago and doesn’t speak a lot of French yet, so I haven’t talked to her a lot. But she seems cool and funny, plus she’s the only person who is making an effort to clean our salon, that’s already a plus :)

Mme Perrin: our "landlady" who also lives in the shool with her husband. We call her the Fridge-Bitch because we suspect that she is stealing food from our fridges; and Chuppa-Chups because she is short and small with an unproportionally large head. She is the factor that stops us from enjoying the utter greatness of life and freedom here. I guess she will need an extra column as well.

Fred, PolM and Annabelle: the three students that we (Marvin and I) have become good friends with. We do stuff together outside school (sometimes inside, which is actually a big no-no), that mostly includes heavy drinking. Thanks to them I actually have a life outside this damned place. Thanks guys! If someone in charge would find out that we're hanging out with them it could be big trouble, so don’t tell anyone ;)

I guess that shortly describes everyone I'm more or less in contact with (living/working/having fun together). Closer thingy descriptions coming soon...

PS: some new photos are now up in pilt.ee

Lisboa vol 2

DAY 6 (27/12/2004):
The hard work goes on and on. First planning problems occur. It came out that brothers Steven and Bart had thought of plenty of big important things, but forgot about a lot of smaller but not least important stuff. Everything got quite chaotic and busy and since brother Bart didn’t have a lot of time himself, he entrusted me with navigating a crane. So I spent half of the day hanging under the sealing, putting tissue up using hundreds of safety pins and feeling seasick (did I mention I’m kind of afraid of heights?).
At lunch I met Matthias again and found out that my dear, crazy and beautiful Lithuanian girls have arrived. It was just too great seeing them again!
A long hard day like that just calls for a beer… or two. This time we didn’t bother to go too far and stayed right behind the halls in a small pub where the guys can enjoy German beer.

DAY 7 (28/12/2004):
Here we go! The meeting has officially started. I woke up at 5 AM to run off looking for the Estonians’ welcome place. I had to get there before the others and get an accommodation. This year was special because everyone were accommodated in families. I nearly made it there and suddenly found my Latvian friend Ivars whom I’d met in Macôn. After spending some quality time chatting with Ivars I ran off again to find my parish. Coming out of the metro station I discovered myself in the middle of a Lasnamäe-ghetto. The parish church was a “modern” building of red bricks. The people there were really nice and showed me the way to my family. The door was opened by an elderly lady who started right away speaking Portuguese with me. As I stepped inside I saw another woman and a man in a bathrobe discussing something in the kitchen. No one seemed to care about my presence. They showed me “my room” – a tiny thing with a two-story bed, which I was supposed to share with who-knows-who. I left quickly saying nothing and thanking God for the military base where I still had a bed and the German girls and that I never had to go back to that horrible smelly apartment again.
By the time I got to the halls I was already pretty tired, but there’s still a lot of work to do. Plus, no one but me knew how to drive the crane-thing, so I was forced to hang 6-8 meters from the floor again. By the time we were done (well, my supermotivated colleague Eva did the finishing part) I was absolutely tired to death. I tried to sleep for a while on the podium of the brothers while the choir was having their last repetition, but it was soon dinnertime and I still needed to find everyone to fix the meeting place and –time.
I sat for a while in front of the gate to the food halls, enjoying the masses flowing by. Some guys were playing drums, guitars, a bagpipe and who knows what else and also dancing, I guess what you can call a pre-dinner dance. I remembered from the last year that the circulation team never let anyone stop in the distribution way, so in order to be able to talk to Matthias I stopped at the end of one distribution line and helped a confused girl to distribute the good-old wet napkins. He was of course laughing at me (I don’t blame him) and finally it occurred that my little trick was not at all necessary – this years circulation team wasn’t too organised at that point.
After the first huge evening prayer our group met again to go to Bairro Alto and find a cool place to sit in. At about midnight someone called me. It was a person from the parish saying that the woman I was supposed to stay with had called in sick and wasn’t able to take any people to her place. The poor guy was probably shocked when I told him it was perfect and thanked him :)

DAY 8 (29/12/2004):
I have no more work, no responsibilities and no parish in which I could participate in a discussion group. What a pity, I guess I have to sleep longer… I dragged myself to the halls by lunchtime and after that had a nice walk along the river and in the park. The grass was green and the sun was shining. Nice.
But as you all know me – I can’t live without working (^^), so I had promised to a cool Swedish permanent guy Fredrik that I would help him out in the circulation team. Ok, I actually just wanted to get the orange strip for better access to forbidden areas :D. But I still enjoyed it very much (how could I not) – telling people where to go and where to sit and when to leave. Great. Reminded me of “welcome on the field”.
After work we went again behind the halls to an Irish pub, but since it’s expensive and everyone is tired we left quite early.

DAY 9 (30/12/2004):
I continue working for boss Fredrik, for which he is quite thankful because our team always seems to forget to show up. After work we go sightseeing with Matthias and Tobias (the two permanents). We were offered to buy some hash about 5 times while walking on the streets of the old town (Baixa). We politely refused. When it is time to get back to the halls it came out that the metro was out of order, so we had to search for a bus and were late for work. In the evening we go downtown and find a nice cabaré-type place with red drapes and a piano.

DAY 10 (31/12/2004):
The last day of the year. I’m still working in the circulation (man I love my work!), in fact I was doing such a good job that Fredrik considered giving me his walky-talky.
My free time I spend talking to some people. One Portuguese guy seems to know half of VHK (including Tom and Haiko etc)…
After the evening prayer my new old work begins again. It is time to start taking off the decorations. It really sucked because all the others were able to leave earlier for the mass in the cathedral and we had to do those pointless things until eleven o’clock (which means it was already new year in Estonia). Finally we got away and I ran with Liina to the metro and got to the cathedral all tired and sweaty right by the end of the mass – of course – and about 10 minutes before the New Year. All the people (permanents plus some sisters and other people involved) came out of the church and sang “Cantarei o Senhor” waiting for the fireworks and the new 2005. It was incredibly nice and so touching! Everyone were happy and hugging and all that stuff. Sweet. Then we all went to a parish nearby to have a “little” snack and some juice. (Juice! Can you imagine that! My first champagne-free new year!) Finally the guys decided to have a huge beer in order not to have an alcohol-free new year.
We took a taxi home and there I found someone’s wallet. He wasn’t rich, but at least he paid for my taxi ride. Happy hew year!

DAY 11 (1/1/2005):
Work starts again at 8 AM. Everyone was really tired, but happily we got all the things done in time. It finally got to me that soon all the dear guys would leave so I was feeling very sad. I discussed some extentialistic problems with Fredrik and then we all went behind the halls again to some cool pub.

DAY 12 (2/1/2005):
The last day my dear permanents are in town. I got up early again to drag myself to the other part of the town to see a live broadcasted mass in a monastery. After that the guys had loads of sightseeing plans: first we went to see the tower of Bélem, then we split up (I ended up hanging with Philipp, Daniel and Matthias). They all wanted to go across the river to Aveiro – to see the Jesus. So we got on the boat. As soon as we got on the other side, the bus that was supposed to take us to the right place, took off (not waiting for any passengers). The next one was coming in an hour. The guys decided to walk cause “it can’t be that far”. So we walked in the heat of the sun between the typically Portuguese little houses up the hill for about 1,5 hours. Of course I also tried to hitchhike, but being with three guys it didn’t work too well… Finally we found our way to Jesus, but then discovered that the elevator that takes up to him costs three euros. Instead of that we bought ourselves some beer and drank it sitting in front of the Jesus, looking at Lisbon over the river. Then we took some stones, wrote our names on them and built our own little shrine. The guys stood next to it and even sang a song in Portuguese, trying to get people to give us three euros. No luck.
Back in Lisbon we had a lunch and I went back to the halls wondering what to do that evening. While I was having a beer in the park by the river, the Lithuanian girls called and proposed to do something fun together. So we all went bowling, then played pool with the guys and in the end we headed towards the bars. Finally it was time to say goodbye. Everyone was leaving the next morning to return to Taizé. That made me feel really sad and empty, but then again so happy about how great it all was…

DAY 13 (3/1/2005):
I woke up with the knowledge that everyone was gone. It was scary. I suddenly felt really homesick, wishing to go back to my dear Tallinn, to my friends. In order to get rid of that feeling I went shopping. The feeling stayed, but the next day I was also leaving Lisbon, to hopefully come back again some day. Adeus e obrigada!!!