Holiday in Strasbourg: OPEN DAY

So! After an uneventful Friday night at a youth hostel in Paris (I was camped in the dorm with all the good little Asian girls who were already in bed when I arrived around 11pm; which was great since I had to leave at 6am anyway to catch my train), I arrived in Strasbourg early St Patrick's Day morning for the OPEN DAAAAY.

We like BALLOONS BALLOONS BALLOONS.

Strasbourg is a gorgeous city, and it was a beautiful day to enjoy the sites (and to break in my new floral bubble-dress). The architecture is super purdy, and also I loved the random statues everywhere, including:

I don't understand, but I LOVE IT.

Anyway so yes the university. I was mainly there to visit ITI-RI (the department for interpretation, translation and international relations), but had a general wander too.

They name their departments AWESOMELY. Pangloss is for ITI-RI and other languagey things;
Athena is lawschool - and they even have a statue of her outside the building :D

Anyway, it was definitely a GREAT idea to attend the Open Day; I got to talk to current students in both years of the Master's programme, as well as the head of the department ("the Responsible"), who gave me lots of helpful advice.

Long story short, I'm going to have to rearrange my shit - including mastering my French to a pretty-much-ACTUALLY-fluent level (like, probably with a bigger vocabulary than the average French person), and also restarting up Spanish and (somehow, haha) getting it to a better level than my French currently. And also spend at least 6 months in Spanish. I'll figure it out.

We got to see demonstrations of consecutive and simultaneous interpreting, which was SO FUCKING COOL and is way more exciting to see in real life than in passing on TV. The girl who did the consecutive interpreting had adorable short-hand, and also was a former lawschoolkid and thus older than the other students, which I found comforting. (She said having 'baggage' was better than coming straight from a language degree because than it was easier to specialise in your interpretation areas in the second year of the Masters programme. Also she had fun hair and a cool sense of style.)

We (the potential future students) also got a chance to try simultaneous interpreting! They stick you alone in a booth with a headset and a desktop gadgetty thing that has a microphone in it, then outside in the main room someone else would have a headset and desktop microphone thing - and they'd read out a couple of pages in your choice of foreign language (in my case, it was a speech from the European Commission in French), and you'd interpret into your native tongue.

I did absolutely horrendously, and swore repeatedly, just as I'd warned the guy who was reading out the speech (funnily enough he looked like this floppy haired guy from band days - HANNAAAAH, you know that gangly one who's younger than us, the one who was at Mel's 21st with the smart-arse girlfriend who thought I was completely wasted - yeah, well apparently if you put a French version of that guy in a well-fitted open-collar suit, age him to early 20's, give him some nice cologne, and make him fluently multi-lingual, he's actually pretty attractive).

But despite my epic fail IT WAS SOOOO COOOOOOOOL.

Then I had a look at the lawschool, wandering around aimlessly and probably looking a bit stupid as I often retraced my steps. While buying two pieces of cake from a stand ("Sorry, which one did you want?" "No, both."), I saw some graffiti through the window:

"They want to divide us to rule over us better."
I prefer this to illegible signatures.
(Though "WANK" is fun too.)

After taking a token university pencil from a stand, I decided to attach myself to the Guided Tour that was just starting. But about 2 minutes in, I heard lots of drumming from outside, and decided that, fuck it, I wanted to see what was happening. There were about half a dozen of us on the tour so hopefully the guide didn't mind that I was being rude...

Anyway it turned out that there was a percussion group from the uni playing!

'STRASBOUMBOUM'. I love the name.
The guys on the right are also part of it, they had cowbell things, bahaha.

She was the leader/conductor person, and totally adorable and awesome.
The guy to her left was probably the best, and possibly an actual drummer.

They played for about an hour, and then I wandered around to see other things, passing some hired entertainers on the way:

It took me ages to figure out that the guy on the left was a mime, because he was talking.
Naturally I told him off. They all seemed lovely though, and we had a nice chat.
We took a photo altogether but it was taken by the guy in the black at the back;
I probably should have asked for one too, but oh well.

Later, outside the Palais Universitaire (which isn't actually a palace, but is where the European Parliament first sat), I found Strasboumboum again:

The guy in the pink shirt (left) was getting dancey,
and kept trying to get his two friends (right) to dance too.
I knew how he felt so I joined in and got his friends to come too :D
A photographer-kid who was friends with the group took pictures,
so I'm glad I wore good tights BAHA.

Inside the Palais Universitaire was a display of cool designy stuff, also token three-piece band in a corner by an awesome staircase, and also-also according to the plan of the building there were LOTS OF LITTLE LIBRARIES scattered about.

Then I was tired and sat myself onto the bench outside, and tried to read a bit 'Tristan et Iseult' for my literature class.

At some point, a little girl, her mother and her grandmother passed by. The girl ran to the three balloons (like the ones in the first picture) that were tied to some railing, and tried rather enthusiastically to untie it. After a couple minutes, the mother said that they were running late and had to leave, and eventually managed to drag the girl away.

Since it was almost 4pm (which was when most of the Open Day activities finished), I got out my Swiss Army Knife, cut the string to release the balloons, and went to give them to the girl, who was now in the carpark. The mother was surprised and thanked me; the little girl gawped with the BIGGEST EYES N'AWWW it was too cute.

In other news, here is THE Cathedral of Strasbourg:

Apparently at night-time they light it up and it's super cool.

 And here is some prettiness!

Swans or geese?