Amsterdam is one strange place. Despite being the smallest of the major cities I traveled to this term– an hour and a half should cover most of the city proper– it’s by far the most confusing. Most European cities have vibes; even their contradictory elements seems to add together, like the elegance of Madrid’s architecture and the sleaziness of its nightlife, or the seriousness of ancient Rome and the joy for living that many locals possess. I could never get my head around Amsterdam. It’s a carnival of lights and sounds that assault rather than sooth the senses. That’s not necessarily a bad thing– it’s certainly an exciting thing– but it will leave you a little disoriented.

In the daytime the city makes a reasonable amount of sense: it’s one of your classic, cultured old European centers, only seemingly more cultured and more old. Charm overflows from the waters in the day. The houses, particularly in December, look like cutouts from a Christmas village, squeezed together long and narrow with their curled roofs. With an colonial Empire of relatively early prosperity, the seventeenth century houses are remarkably well-built and maintained, them leaning being the extent of damage (I loved how many of the most historic houses proudly displayed their dates on their entrance). The addition of three beautiful cobbled market squares make Amsterdam the city where I most felt like I lived in the middle ages. Then, there are far more bikers than cars, so that no canal bridge was complete without the shine of wheels or the choir of bike bells in the air. You can walk with your parents along those quiet canals and think “well gee, what a beautiful little city!”

And then the night. Like a character in an Oscar Wilde play, Amsterdam seems to drop its good-guy disguise the moment the sun goes down.

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A Disclaimer: This is my goodbye post to Paris, it is not my last blog. I still have a lot of aspects to this exchange to think about, like language barriers. But this one needed to be fresh, and half of it was written on the plane home (so you’ve been warned: this is ‘the emotional one’).

Who knew this would be so difficult? Since when was I so unexcited for Christmas, so afraid of finishing those last couple papers and exams? What was I thinking when I thought five months was a long time? When the clouds unveiled Ireland– its soaking green hills– I could almost see the vast continent beyond; I thought I had an infinite amount of time to explore every nook and cranny, every culture– everything I’d ever heard read studied about Europe come to fruition. Whatever happened I would definitely go to Florence and Berlin, and returning to London to visit my Aunt and good friend was no question. In the end none of that played out, because even though this has been the longest five months of my life– crammed full of so many amazing people, parties, and sights that changed my world– in the end it’s only five months: it’s still made up of days, of weeks, I still need to eat study sleep. A special kind of life maybe, but still life in the end. And now the plane’s landing down in Dublin again– like a movie just rewound– before Chicago. I never got to half the places I dreamed about, but I don’t mind, I will eventually.

Leaving Paris? Now that’s a different story. In answer to my first question, I think it’s safe to say that everyone who goes on exchange knew how difficult it was going to be for me. Going on exchange isn’t like any other part of life– if you have the chance and you haven’t done it yet, get on it! Who cares if it’s a so-called “useless” semester in terms of your degree requirements? You’ll find you end up learning more in that one semester than the rest of university. It brings together students from all around the world in a way that we know can’t happen again (the world is small, but never small enough to pool us all in the same place again). Add to that an exchange system that gives us the freedom to take random courses in potentially different languages, and that goes into overload: sure I’ve worked hard this term, but did it ever really feel like work? People I’ve talked to always have a longing for the place they went on exchange– always vaguely hope they’ll live there someday– and I think part of that comes from the fact that this was never exactly ‘real life’– I wasn’t with Parisians and I wasn’t doing work. These four months have been a dream; as much as I can make comparison with exchange students going other places, there is something different about Paris.

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As the final week closes in on me, everything comes together: I’m trying to sleep less just so I have more time– more time for drinking, more time for Paris (for all those last minute things I left too late), more time for friends. With that, and the more scared I get of leaving this place, I’m probably going to throw a barrage of various ‘last minute’ posts at you about life in Paris (and maybe a random Amsterdam one in there, too). In the last week my Ipod decides, you could say, to go on a little hiatus, so it makes sense to do one a little different today: the music on my exchange. It might seem kind of silly to do one based on music– after all, this is talking about things that might have very little to do with places like Paris itself. But music is very important to me: it has a way of capturing moments the way writing or pictures can’t; I already know which songs are going to bring me back, recreate the scene like I don’t even need to be there. These are those songs:

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Does a city’s transportation represent its city? Are metros like the cities they’re made for?

Not really, at least not when looking at London and Paris. It is rather strange, that Paris’s metro is dirtier than most others. After all, above ground, most of Paris is one of the most pristine cities out there: the marble, the statues, the leafy boulevards and criss-crossed streets; go below and it’s the grime, the noise, the police, and the smells. If you go to Chatelet — the largest station in the world–  just try to spend more than ten minutes there, moving past people, going on endless ramps that tell you it’s going one way to lead you somewhere else, or shake off the nagging feeling that you’ll get mugged. Any longer, and a deadening feeling starts to sink in; this isn’t a metro station, it’s purgatory. If you’re going to get pickpocketed, it’ll probably be there, and if you find yourself there after ten PM, get ready for some of the worst smells of your life. Yeah, I wasn’t the largest fan of Paris’s metro when I got here. It didn’t shape up well against the sleek new models in London, and its metro plan– centering everything around the right bank, leaving the left bank disconnected– seemed counterintuitive. Paris’s metro doesn’t become impressive until you start using it on a daily basis. Because the Paris metro benefits your average, day-to-day Parisian more than the London tube does for your average daily Londoner.

It seems to go against the image the two cities cultivate for themselves: on paper, London has always been the ‘business’ city– the orderly the in-sync, the content over style– while Paris is the aesthetic– style always style, beauty and joie de vivre over efficiency. I’ve found these stereotypes more or less true in other aspects, but with their transport these things seem to reverse. Pick a place in central Paris; you’ll find a metro station within a three minute walk of it. Guaranteed. Sometimes you’ll be on the metro for a while, jumping lines because the connections might not make much sense, but you’ll get there. London’s stations are much farther spread apart, sometimes walking as much as twenty minutes away to grab it. The first thing you’re hit with, of course, is the price: in Paris, a ticket is 1.70 euro and 1.30 in a book of ten, while London it’s upwards 2.70 pounds; in Paris a monthly pass for students is 30 euros, in London it’s above 80 pounds. And where does this extra money go? All right sure, it’s very fancy, but does the higher price make it faster, more efficient? Not really: the tube is famous for breaking down, while the worst I’ve seen using the Paris metro has been the occasional slow-down (except the 12– stay away from the 12). It’s funny because I walked away loving the London metro (see blog 4), but the more I think about it, the more I find that London’s is ideal for tourists. Paris, having the busiest metro system in all of Europe, is for the day-to-day.

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It’s been an interesting four months with Sciences Po. When you say the name “sciences po” to an exchange kid, their immediate gut reaction will be a flashback of that awful morning (or noon/evening depending where in the world you were) when we had to register for courses. I woke up at eight after a weekend of the Winnipeg Folk Fest– hungover and exhausted, my nerves were like an elastic band stretched too far, sitting down to register. Now, I suppose to their credit, they did do their registration online (versus the Sorbonne, where everyone lines up and registers on the first day). But there’s no real online portal, everyone registers at once, with everyone wanting virtually the same English courses. So the time to register came around and it’s hunting season: each course must be registered individually, logging back in for the next. Luckily I registered for the smaller courses first, but there was a moment when the whole site crashed and it seemed like I wouldn’t get into my main lecture, thus setting me back a semester for graduation. Not fun. In the end I was able to get all the courses I wanted, but it was a bit of a battle, and it’s unfortunate when that’s the first experience a student gets of their future school. Perhaps that morning affected my hesitation with the school after that.

By this point, the school has taken up a fifth of my academic career, which seems strange to me, since in many ways the school itself has taken up, what seems at least, like a smaller portion than that. Perhaps it’s the class time. I go to class about half the amount I do at UBC, with classes happening only once a week. In the long run, I think this is a terrible system– having a class once a week loses context, and often loses that bond you might have made with the prof and other classmates (sometimes, when class would get cancelled for that week, it would feel like I hadn’t been to class in months). For a four month exchange, this system was fantastic– it meant I was able to see that much more of Paris and the rest of Europe when I didn’t have class Mondays and rarely Fridays. In the long run, the system disconnects the student from academic life.

Not as much, perhaps, as the campus– or lack of campus– itself. I gotta say it: Sciences Po, you’re bad at making friends. Having yourself situated in the middle of one of Paris’s most bustling and influential neighborhoods has a lot of benefits. It also means students move through without an anchor– they come to class and they leave. The public space the university owns is abysmal, and trying to find a spot in the libraries is like fighting over a carcass after the lions are already on it. It doesn’t help that their welcome program cost two-hundred fifty euros, with those that took it saying it didn’t help anyway. All this made it very difficult to make friends in those first couple weeks; if my roommates hadn’t been so amazing, I would have felt quite lost. Gone are the days of res-life bonding and making new friends over an arts-one coffee.

That being said, Sciences Po provides an interesting lesson on regionalism. I’d never heard of the university before coming to France. In fact, I passed over the school the first and second time I went looking through potential exchange options because I thought the “sciences” meant ‘normal sciences’, not political sciences. None of my friends or family had heard of it either– “oh, Paris? You mean the Sorbonne? No? Oh well”. Turns out Sciences Po is the most highly regarded social sciences university in all of France: of their last four presidents, three graduated  from and Sarkozy dropped out of the institution. You can see, upon entering, that Sciences Po takes itself very seriously: all the administrators wear suits, all the profs are published authors, and all the students are the best and brightest. Or best and wealthiest– seriously, the school’s one block off of Boulevard St Germain and some of these kids, I’m sure, are wearing the stuff that could be bought from these stores. Going to the school, I’m told, is the gold card in life.

So does the school measure up to its shining reputation? Yes and no. I’ve had some pretty distinguished lecturers, including one of the foremost French Revolution profs, and a Race and Immigration prof who is often brought on to French media outlets to discuss the latest race riots in France. Having profs who are so evidently passionate about their own work went a long way in maintaining student interest. Plus, courses are set up for maximum class involvement, with most classes having around twenty kids, and all the kids expected to contribute to discussion and give presentations. It made for a great environment, one which the colossal UBC doesn’t have nearly enough of (the original reason I went into English honors was just so I could have classes which more resembled the sciences po model). Sure, this means you get those kids who speak to hear themselves speak (speak for the grades) about absolutely nothing (good future-diplomats), but ultimately discussions were very engaging. Add to that the incredible internationalism of the exchange community, and I had the pleasure of being involved in some very eye-opening in-class conversations. Isn’t that an ideal university environment? And yes, having a campus in the middle of the city has its drawbacks, but is there anything better than finishing a nine o’clock PM class and coming outside to the center of the buzz, to be rocked back into your energy thanks to the lights and sounds of St Germain, fashion central?

I guess in the end there’s something about the atmosphere at sciences po that threw me off. Everyone seems in conflict with each other here. The administration is more like a police force, with students having to fight for the courses they want, or the fact that they force students to miss no more than three classes at risk of failing the course (even if they’re sick, what the hell is that? Can someone say prison? Or better yet, high school?). These admin guys– in their suits and red ties– will even come into classrooms and check to make sure the prof is actually teaching. My favorite prof was really sick one class and since she couldn’t schedule a make-up class, her pay is getting docked. Meanwhile, the students at sciences po have a rigorous edge to them that drives them to succeed, and many of the classes will post the highest grades in the class (and the student’s names) for all to ‘bask in their glory’. Really, the atmosphere is more similar to Sauder, UBC’s business school, than UBC itself. When all’s said and done, I guess academically the two universities are on par. But UBC offers an environment which encourages cooperation,  helping students as much as it pushes them.  UBC, as difficult as it can be as well, is my home. I don’t think anyone can say the same about Sciences Po.

This blog entry is, more than anything, just a footnote to the last one, since it happened in Rome but didn’t feel right to tack it on at the end.

I arrived at the Termini station on the last day of the Rome weekend nearly three hours before I was set to fly. All the shuttle busses towards the airport leave from the central train station, but the cheapest of busses wasn’t set to leave until 4:15, forty-five minutes– well that’s fine, let’s just get some snacks and come back. We come back at 3:50 and this 4:15 bus is already there, already nearly-packed. When did all those people get there? I rush past everyone and my friend– having a flight three hours later– leaves with a ‘good luck’. Luck wasn’t in the picture today. I push up to the front when a mother manages to shoulder in and grab those last three seats for her and her kids. So the bus pulls away– when’s the next bus? Five o`clock. The gate for my flight closes at 5:50.

I sprint across the Termini station, through the mad streams of rush-hour workers, to the other bus company. Guess what: they also have busses only at 415 and 5. In what world is that an economically viable operation? Two different bus companies, going the same place, leaving at the same time— dealing in an industry where timing is everything? This isn’t the place to rant about Italian infrastructure; this is just a story about what comes next. Would the 5 o’clock get me there in time? The woman shakes her head and instead points to the army of yellow and black taxis at the other end.

When I think back to that day, I wonder if it’s as much what I didn’t do as what I did that made everything seemingly fall apart. Call it the remnants of some Irish superstition, but the one thing I was told– by a temporary Roman resident– that I had to do was throw a coin in the Trevi fountain. If I didn’t, there’s no guarantee I would ever come back to Rome. While I’d walked by it my first night, I didn’t have enough time on my last day to toss it, leaving me strangely anxious as we walked towards the train station. Of course, my far more rational friend snapped me out of it with a quick slap to the neck and a classic “you’re being an artsy idiot right now”. Good old Rob. But now the superstitions come back: maybe what happened after he left makes me never want to come back?

I was in such a fluster as I sprinted towards those cabs that I stopped thinking about what it might cost me, what might be acceptable or what I might lose. One man apparently noticed– fed off of– my distress when he asked if I wanted a taxi. He said the Ciampino airport would cost forty euros. I did a quick run to the metro map, remembering reading about how you could take the metro all the way to the end, then a bus to the airport after that. But I was alone: I had no internet, no laptop to grab internet, no friends left. And I was running out of time. So I agreed. Forty euros, not terrible right?

Except his cab wasn’t with the rest. As we walked ten minutes away from the station I started to realize something was wrong, and then he told me to get into his car, his car that wasn’t a taxi. Why did I get in? It’s probably one of the least logical things I’ve ever done. But I felt so lost– airport so faraway– and all I could think about was making that flight, making it home to finish that essay. Then the moment I stepped in the car, backpack in the trunk, I realized I’d made the wrong choice. This car was falling apart– rust on its edges, no airbag in the front– and this ‘cabbie’ could barely speak English. Well better than my Italian. What was to stop him from taking me to some random far-off area of the city? what was to stop him from mugging me or whatever worse was going through my head at that point? I didn’t know the language, I didn’t know the city. I was alone.

As we drove towards, well, somewhere, he manages to tell me that because of this unexpected traffic (yes, traffic at four o’clock out of the city on a weekday is so strange), he’s raising the price to sixty euros. Grasping onto just about anything, I tried to read his desire to squeeze every penny out of me as proof he wasn’t planning to mug me. It didn’t stop me from melting into the seat. Driving past sometimes housing projects and sometimes open fields, I counted the seconds through my teeth. And when the Campiano signs finally began scrolling by, it didn’t stop the dread.

Because his price was going up. I knew– as the price became seventy became eighty– that he would throw me out on the side of the road if I didn’t accept the new scribbles on the pad between us. At one point I even paid the ten euros for his gas. When we got near the airport he gave me his, apparently final, price: 100. Wow, that traffic sure makes a difference, doesn’t it? When I honestly told him I could only pay 85, he pushed me out on the side of the freeway and threw my backpack out the window. I had to sprint and bang on the window to grab my wallet from his seat.

So I ran across the freeway, walked those last ten minutes to the airport, and bought one big fucking white chocolate toblerone in the duty free. Nothing happened; just get me back to Paris.

Now, this is a dramatic re-write of it; maybe I’m making it into more than it should be. I guess what disturbs me about all of this isn’t what happened so much as what could have. It was the first time in Europe I’d felt truly and totally lost– and not that good kind of culture shock lost Lonely Planet guides tell you about. I was lost in a language I didn’t know at all, alone, without phone coverage. It’s not a stretch to say that anything could have happened (at one point I pretended to be texting my friend as if to show I at least had a working phone). I wish I could end this off with  a clean and tidy message about what I learned from this experience, but nothing comes to mind. It’s hard to say, beyond not taking the cab, what I could have done differently: given myself four instead of three hours before the flight? In the end I learned at least this much: clean off the tourist’s veneer, and Rome isn’t North America, isn’t even Paris. Sometimes that’s exhilarating, and sometimes that’s a little too real. Sometimes it’s a little terrifying. I’ll keep that in mind the next trip I plan.