Monastaries and Chem Labs

So, seeing as it's almost this weekend, and that it's likely to be exciting, I should probably talk about last weekend, which was, in fact, exciting.

I tagged along with a bunch of people heading out to Grenoble to listen to math. There I found out that it's required for a French math department to have an Espresso machine, and that Espresso is something that always happens after Lunch. It's happened every time after lunch in Lyon, and it happened in Grenoble. Nobody brings it up or anything, but everyone just naturally goes straight from lunch to coffee. They serve themselves a little aluminum pillow-looking thing, pop it into the machine, take a tiny mug from the communal dish rack, and wait for the espresso to slowly drip out. And then they all stand around the kitchen/ lounge area talking about whatever it is.

And the coffee is very strong. That's another thing I learned in Grenoble. I was very very hyper at the end of that day.

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That was Friday. That evening, some of us who went to Grenoble stayed behind. Ok, the Russian contingent stayed behind, and the French people went back. Russian people seem to herd together a lot, and I'm not too sure why. At any rate, this time, I herded with them.

We took a two hour bus ride to a little town in the mountains (pre-Alps) near Grenoble. I was very impressed by that driver. I mean, the bus is huge, the roads are narrow and switch-back-y, a couple of times it was sharp turn and sharp drop to our side . . . it's an art to drive a bus through that.

The next day, we are joined by two Romanians and a Mexican. We all spoke French together. And we went out for a long hike up almost a kilometer to the crest of a nearby mountain. Which is a wonderful story of feasting and scaling slopes and evading wolves.

The feasting occurred mainly at the beggining/ middle of the hike, where feasts of food and picture taking substituted swiftness. They didn't really need, to, I think, and in retrospect, I really wish we didn't have to take a break every half hour (that's what it felt like). But the Romanians had polenta, and we had yummy soft French cheese that was distributed with the chopsticks I brought. And when we got to the top of the tree line, the views were incredible.

When the pretty views really started to happen, the trees dissappeared, and the trail was on a slope covered in apple-sized rocks and random tufts of grass. We were going, going and at some point, I realize that we're no longer walking so much as directly scaling the slope, finding footrests and handholds in tufts of grass. So, we did what any other lost people looking over a giant slope would do: we sat down, and took lots of pictures. (While some people went out to find our trail, of course.)

It was ok, though. We had just found an, um, creative way to get to the next part of the trail. Of course, by this time, it was already late. We had, at most, two hours of daylight left for us. So we think about this, and decide to go over the crest of the mountain, and down the other side, where the trail is a lot faster. Where somehow this turned into doing a loop (very well worth it for the views) and going back the way we came.

Luckily, it turned shadowy pretty much right when we got back to the gravel roads that would take us back to our town. And just then- we heard howls! It was great! Whereas before, not even the fact that it was gonna be night soon could keep people from taking photos, now, nothing would make us go slow! To be honest, the noise we heard was probably the sound of dogs. We were pretty close to places people live. But in terms of speeding us up- it was magical!

So we came home in the night. Luckily, again, the moon was almost full, so it wasn't all that dark. And after ten hours of walking around, we came back to our hotel.

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That was that part. The title of this post, now that I think about it, refers entirely to Sunday. Sunday morning, we had a few hours before the bus took us back to Grenoble. So we split up and wandered around the area. Now, in this area, there is a monastary with a very long history. And so a couple of us went to see the monastary museum.

The museum itself was pretty interesting, especially the way these guys live (or used to live). They had these cells, where they'd get fed through a little double-door window thing. I don't think it said for how long at a time they'd be cooped in, but it was impressive.

The most important thing about this monastary, though, in my opinion, is the fact that it produces alcohol. At the museum, they said that it was invented most likely by a monk looking for the philosopher's stone, or a way to turn base metals into gold. And it involves something like 250 types of herbes. I bought a flask, and it really does taste like herbal tea vodka. Which sounds weirds, but trust me, it grows on you.

So, then we barely catch the bus, get to Grenoble, and I become an apprentice chemist. I met a friend of mine when I got back to Grenoble, and she is a chemistry post-doc. She had to set up an experiment, and I was curious, so I tagged along. And it wasn't fair that she got to play with everything herself, so I got to play with some of the stuff she was working with. Mostly, my job was weighing and pipetting. But still, it was fun.

We did leave the lab eventually, and went for dinner. But I'll definitely come back and then I'll have much more to say about Grenoble.