Bienvenue chez les Cht'is (Welcome to the Sticks)

The Cht'is refers to the northern region of France close to Belgium, which can generally be compared to a strange "redneck-Minnesota-esque" place.  Since there were spots open for a free trip (and the promise of waffles), I went on a school trip to the cities of Lille and Lens this weekend. I was surprised to find myself in the Cht'is. It was a bizarre 36 hours. 

This, uh, interesting art/photoshop display was in the Center of Tourism.  

This is a chain. What is a Nevada plate? What do they eat in Nevada? Also note the XL sizes. 

We were bussed around the town of Lille, all 20 feet of it. 

The architecture was scattered, not quite as much as Barcelona, but still pretty random. That's because a.) they really like painting everything in bright colors (it's a Flemish thing)

and
b.) basically the entire city has burned down at some point or other and they just kept building around the remains (even the cannonballs stuck in the walls)

They also still have up their Christmas decorations. We think that they leave them up all year and just turn them on during the holidays.

This was going to be a Gothic cathedral, but due to lack of funding, it's made up of  all the styles and every material.  The façade is marble, and when the sun shines in, the inside looks like it's on fire (you'd think they'd want to avoid any references to fire). 

We visited a medieval hospital. It is now a gallery. They also discovered that there's a canal flowing underneath, so the walls are cracking. This hospital went up in flames a couple of times because the "fire guard" fell asleep on the job.

Our schedule had "contemporary art gallery" listed as the following event, but there seemed to have been a problem or mistranslation or something. We ended up at this empty warehouse that turned out to be a photography/film/art school. We were given a tour by a video game music grad student. The other handful of students glared at us as we peered at their stacks of cardboard, rolled up film posters, and complicated photo printing machines. 

We drove about an hour out of Lille to get to the highlight of the trip--Le Musée des Gaufres (Waffles) that they lured us in with on the posters promoting this whole weekend adventure. Now, "museum" is a very loose term, as is "waffle tasting."One time, I went on a family reunion to West Virginia. We googled a pierogi restaurant, which turned out to be a woman cooking and selling frozen packages from her garage. That is essentially what the Museum of Waffles turned out to be.  The "gaufrier"/waffle cook was dressed in an apron and toque.  He showed us the various waffle irons he had mounted on the wall (this was the museum part).  Belgian waffles, the fluffy square ones, are actually waffles/gaufres de Bruxelles (Brussels). He did not make gaufres de Bruxelles, so instead we got cold, thin biscuit waffles, layered with a brown sugar spread. They were still tasty. The demonstration and consumption of the waffle biscuit took a grand total of around thirty minutes. We were then loading back onto the bus and drove the hour back to Lille. 

The day was far from over. We still had to see the "piscine," which was a combination of a bath house museum, fountain, textile storage, and random art gallery.  

Have you ever gone to a children's museum and touched the hidden objects as a discovery exercise? This chest labeled "touch" was full of ropes. Just ropes. Every drawer. 

All 20 students who came on this trip and the 3 and a half professors (one of them was not a teacher; I've never seen her at the school actually) all ate together in this charming renovated dungeon. We had a hysterical feast, ending with confusion over the difference between vegetarian, vegan, and lactose intolerant. It's okay because in the end, I got two desserts.

Proof that we are in the Cht'is ^--this Cht'is cup (sounds like slurred "teacup") light

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On Saturday morning, we drove half an hour to Lens. Lens is an even smaller town than Lille, most known for the Louvre-Lens.  The museum was put there to bring culture to a non-metropolitan area. That makes sense since we traveled from a cultural hub to rural West Virginia (just kidding...not really) to see this. We were the only ones there in the morning.

There were surprisingly high-tech devices scattered throughout the museum, including interactive 3D screens that allowed you to take a tour of the Louvre in Paris.  

The Louvre-Lens is made up of about three large, spacious rooms.  They had a nice collection of sculptures. The last room was filled with three futuristic pod-rooms, each containing no more than two paintings. 

After thoroughly exploring the entire museum in about an hour, we were left to explore the street--er, town of Lens for three jam-packed hours of excitement and fun!

This was a toy store, full of life-sized stuffed farm animals.

There was also a pirate restaurant, which was unfortunately closed until 4pm. The residents (who looked uncannily similar to those who inhabit the Jersey shore) and shop owners seemed to decide that 4pm is a good time to get business moving.

We entertained ourselves in the local stores.

For lunch, we got big plates of fries since we're close to Belgium. They were the highlight of this city. I also appreciated this Mayaland and Plopsaland placemat, with an expired 15 euros off admission! There was even a viking pirate coloring page on the back!

After walking around the entire city, we got to spend even more time in Lens with a tour guide. Honking is a wedding custom, and the cacophonous symphony throughout town revealed that many were going on. Still, our tour guide urgently desired to show us the inside of the church. He led the10 of us, uninvited guests, into the back of the church and proceeded to tell us all about the sculptures. At the same time, the bride and groom were saying their vows and their relatives were staring us down. Finally, after a few solid minutes of awkward tension, he had the good sense to lead us out of there. I never thought I'd crash a wedding, but study abroad (especially with NYU Paris) presents many unexpected opportunities.

I triangle Lens, too.

After the drawn out two-hour tour of the one-road town, we had the fortune of getting back on the bus. However, we still had an hour to kill, so the professors thought it would be a good idea to go hike around a mountain of dirt. Lens is an old coal-mining town, so they had many of these dirt mounds.

Weird things happen when you take kids used to living in big cities and put them on dirt hills in rural West Virginia/shady parts of New Jersey/Lens.

Look! It's Lens in its entirety! 

The weather was beautiful, though.

"Qu'est-ce qui se passe?" 

This is my friend Sarah. Her facial expression sums up this whole trip.

I appreciate Paris so much more now. New York, too.