Caroline
Travels volume 2
hi
I’m Caroline. I studied abroad at L’Université Sophia Antipolis in Nice, France last summer where I co-founded an Android app. I like photos and writing and coffee and new friends, so I’m having a go at the whole self-publication thing.
chapter two Nice
Bonjour Biot “There is a little bit of a surprise for you...” Roosi, the French equivalent of an RA at Université Sophia Antipolis, hands Caroline the key to her single dorm balanced on top of a stack of sheets. “Your room has no electricity at the moment, but someone is coming tomorrow to fix it.” So, exhausted, sweaty, and smelly our heroine moves into her dark room, relieved to finally have sufficient wifi. Provisions such as toilet paper, food staples and shampoo are pushed to the margins of her subconsicious as the realization that she has finally made it to Nice sinks in. She is not exactly in Nice - she is about 45 minutes by bus outside of the city and located across the street from HP France’s headquarters as well as a massive golf course. There is conveniently a huge supermarket, electronics store and group of Resto U’s across the street, but Caroline is still very disoriented at first. Arjun, a sophomore she had shared the airport shuttle with, offers to join her for dinner at the sports bar which happens to be 16 most unnecessary Euros of beef carapaccio and Heineken. Arjun doesn’t speak a “lick of French” as most other people on the program, and everyone goes door to door throughout the evening to put a voice to all the faces and names from the Facebook group. The whole program is very disorganized. Most people don’t know if class starts tomorrow much less where to meet if it does. Apparently there is homework - a music video without sound or text but Caroline is in too lazy a daze to do much about it. She talks and meets and writes much later in her dark room, and is so content to be in a country where she can kind of understand the language.
Rosé !
After a ridiculous lecture and ridiculous in-class assignment, the group of 50 UC Berkeley students are released to somehow make it to Nice and back with selfies with some monument. Clues about the monument are encoded in an email everyone must pore over in teams of four. It is thus that Caroline is paired with Garrett Lemons, Kartik and Tiffany. The group eventually makes it up the Promenade d’Anglais by hiring a bus by chance, walking in circles, taking pictures by the court house and Palais d’Mediterranea, convinced they had made sense of the hidden message. Four failed attempts to connect to wifi, a beer, and a free city guide from the local bookstore later, the group finally finds the Villa Manessa on the Promenade. With about an hour to spare, they obtain two bottles of wine and sprawl out on the pebbly storm beach. The scene is perfect with the most perfect indigos and turqouises of the surf splashing about their feet as the rosé quickly disappears. Caroline and Garrett Lemons talk about forming a “DGAF” group that will be laid back enough to enable the team members to visit Nice during the trip, but rigorous enough to produce a reasonable prototype by the end of the trip. They are ultimately absorbed into a group en route to the wine bar by the golf course as soon as they return home. Caroline is wooed by a 32 year old Frenchman who buys her free wine. She eats, shoo’s (the man away), and leaves, goes to bed smelling of wine, having just given a 32 year old the wrong number.
Food is an interesting topic. Caroline is situated in a single dorm room across the street from which there is a shopping complex complete with supermarket, wine bar, electronics store, post office, bank, pharmacy, and four or five bars and cafes. These bars and cafes are wildly overpriced for the HP employees who work at headquarters across the street. Pots, pans, plates, bowls and utensils are similarly overpriced and will only be used for three weeks. Caroline accepts the challenge of living off assorted cold food in an oversized mug/bowl hybrid for a month.
Caroline receives 36 drunk messages from a stupid boy in Berkeley one night, mulls over all the myriad ways she should respond to him, and then it hits her in the midst of tanning on the French Riviera: she owes nothing to a stupid boy in Berkeley. She owes nothing! She could shout it, she feels absolutely liberated by that one thought.
Our heroine is hugging her valuables to her chest on the overnight ferry to Corsica, drinking some warm champagne. The loud Americans of the program The entire program is riotously drinking in honor of the Fourth of July while a lounge full of Frenchies and Corsicans try to get some sleep on the floor or doubled up chairs. Caroline teaches Egyptian Warfare (in French!) to a trio of young French musicians, but is promptly shushed by an elderly Corsican trying to get some shut eye. By the time the Americans arrive in Corsica at 6 AM, they are all some combination of hungover, sleep-deprived, and ill. Isabel, the token peppy tour guide, whisks the group away in a charter bus to breakfast in Place de St. Nicholas, and then to Bastia on the East Coast. The Corsican landscape is breathtaking with its clementine and olive groves accented by the occasional Roman ruin. The bus whizzes over tight bridges and between pastel stucco homes, and around and over crystal clear rivers and aqueducts. The billboards and storefronts are in hybrid French and Italian, and Caroline learns later that Corsica has its own language that is officially a fusion of both. They arrive in a harbor somewhere on the East Coast of Corsica, change into swimsuits, and hop into three motor boats that whisk the Americans past more seaside Roman fortresses and into a calm turqouise bay. They have about three hours to swim and snorkel in the warm surf, jump off ruins into the water, kayak, and visit the assortment of tiki bars assembled at the mouth of the bay. Caroline feels like a regular Nicole Diver from Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night, blissfully doing a breast stroke along the shores of Corsica, or with wind through her salt-lightened hair on a boat that is racing its friend to the harbor. Back at the harbor, our heroine has the best moules frites of her life, ignoring the fact that Zachary has just called her pretentious to her face. Zachary wouldn’t know good taste if it were staring at him in the face, steaming in the most perfect white wine sauce.
“...abobve a sea as mysteriously colored as the agates and cornelians of childhood, green as green milk, blue as laundry water, wine dark..”
F. Scott Fitzgerald “Tender is the Night”
After the Corsica trip, Caroline, Jenelle, Arjun and Savanah head to Nice the next Sunday morning via the train from Antibes for the sole objective of finding “cool looking streets” and walking along them. On the Place de Massena, Caroline blissfully buys her ticket for Friday of the Nice Jazz Festival, and walks away quite literally gleeful at the prospect of seeing the Gipsy Kings live in less than a week. They happen upon a Sunday market by the Cours Saleya and buy the most amazingly fragrant green tea, hike up the Camine de la Courtina, a scenic staircase offering panoramic views of the entire city, and tan on the beach as Arjun watches the Wimbledon men’s final in the nearest bar. Caroline incurs mild heat stroke and shrugs off a minor sunburn. Exhausted, the group returns back on the 19:07h bus in order to make it to the grocery store before it closes.
the
P laylist
Bebete Vaobora - Jorge Ben Jor
Sexotheque - La Roux
Hip Hip Chin Chin - Club Des Bellugas Luna De Fuego - Gipsy Kings
Magalenha - Sergio Mendes Chan Chan - Buena Vista Social Club Mas Que Nada - Sergio Mendes She’s On Fire - Bo Saris
All 300+ participants gather in the courtyard of the Post Modern Sophia Antipolis tech campus, and cluster in fives around large blank canvases on easels. Their first assignment: make and sell a work of art for the highest price, and win a helicopter ride to Monaco. After two days of team building exercises, Caroline establishes her team: Jenelle (the business psychology wiz), Kristian (the Norwegian MBA), Maciek (the Norwegian programming superstar), and Anne (the Norwegian marketing specialist).
The team is still uncertain as to what app concept to pursue. Yesterday, they discussed some kind of traveling app, but today they are discussing an app that can facilitate getting ready every morning. And then, the brain blast: a social alarm clock. Just before lunch, the team decides on calling the app Noosta, a misspelling of the Swedish word nousta, meaning to rise. And since Noosta sounds a little like “rooster,� it was decided that the logo should be a reconceptualized rooster. Caroline is selected to have lunch at Amadeus, a travel booking giant headquartered in Nice, that sells its technology to all of the major travel companies .
Gipsy Kings Caroline hurriedly purchases a brick of a pay-as-you-go SFR phone, changes out of her “school” clothes, and rushes to catch the last direct bus into Nice. It is now an oddity to see Caroline and Jenelle solo as they have become inseparable in just two weeks. Caroline is going to see Gipsy Kings. She pretends to be interested in the forced conversation she is making on the bus, but really she is too distracted by the fact that she is going to see the world famous group she has listended to over countless dinners growing up. “Are you going by yourself?” Alexandra, one of the slower bus goers asks Caroline. Caroline turns around and in a seeringly proud murmur replies yes, yes she is in fact go-
ing solo.
The rest of the Berkeley group rushes off to respective bars, but Caroline struts right down Place Massena to the entrance of the tremendous venue. Black dress, vintage earrings, red lipstick, and our heroine steps through security feeling as fabulous as one can feel alone at a jazz festival in France. Once inside, it only seems natural to walk around both stages that comprise the Nice Jazz Festival. It’s a stunning urban park setting, and Caroline helps herself to socca - the chickpea flatbread that is a Nice speciality - and rosé as she bobs along to Robin McKelle & the Flytones. Finally it is 22:30 and Caroline elbows her way to the front of the main stage, sandwiched between some French women in their sixties. When Nicolas Reyes takes the stage, it feels as though the entire city collectively heaves a cry of worship. This sound of pure adoration is unlike anything Caroline had ever experienced. Everyone is singing along, dancing, smiling at neighbors, and the Place Massena has turned into a massive salsa club. Caroline begins to worry about catching the last midnight bus out of Nice, and just as she is about to leave, the first note of Djobi Djoba sends a shiver down her arms. Each word that the crowd sings along to is heartbreakingly enunciated, as if everyone had grown up to the same song, just like Caroline. And halfway around the world, Caroline feels more at home than she has in a long time, with the hundreds of other single thirty-yearolds at heart here dancing and singing by themselves because, truly, normal people just wouldn’t understand.
Caroline sleeps on the charter bus, listening to Gipsy Kings’ “Solo Por Ti” en route to Monaco. The tour guide speaks terrible English but is so unabashedly in love with the second smallest country in the world to worry about it. They drive through a very long tunnel that is rolling grassy plains on the way in and stunning Mediterranean cliffside drive on the way out. Welcome to Monaco. They see the hairpin turn that killed Grace Kelley, all of the famous resorts down below with their private beaches and harbors, and the perforated facades of the more modern condominiums dominating much of the center of the city. Monaco is a cooler color scheme with pastel stucco, turquoise beaches, brilliant white yachts spreckling the coast, but accented with more grandiose touches of marble, Italian masonry, and Greco-Roman tile. Public elevators ferry pedestrians up and down cliff faces to hidden sidewalks and pockets of lush gardens.
The group watches the changing of the guard, the mechanical shuffling of blindingly immaculate white uniforms and tomato red tassels, and then is led by the tour guide, Patrick, to the reserved cafe where everyone indulges in a three course meal complete with filet du saumon, quiche, flourless chocolate cake, and two bottles of chardonnay per table. Jenelle manages to steal away a third bottle for later after asking nicely. The group reconvenes at the Musée Oceanographique where everyone gets bored within five minutes and wanders off to get gelato. It is then off to Monte Carlo which is too well kempt for comfort, too gaudy for earnest appreciation, and too snobby for Caroline’s cheap cotton dress. But the Grand Prix track is as impressive as the plethora of Italian sports cars of every year and make parked outside of ATM’s and bathrooms. This fusion of new wealth and old wealth permeates every aspect of public space, and is beautifully manifested in the architecture of the Casino. The group’s last stop on the Monaco tour is the gorgeous medieval city of Eze perched on a magnificent bluff around which wraps the Jardin Exotique. Ali, Jenelle and Caroline summit the fortress and enter the 700+ year old cemetery. As Jenelle pulls out the stolen bottle of wine, she wonders aloud, “Is it really bad to drink in a graveyard?” The three polish it off anyway with their crepes thousands of feet over the Mediterranean.
Despite
Caroline and Jenelle’s complete exhaustion after a full day trip, they decide to try to make it to Nice’s only night club, High Club. They recruit Jorge and Evelyn, the eighteen year old little sister of Elar the Estonian who saved Jenelle and Caroline in the teargas episode. The four spend over an hour waiting for the 1 Line, and meet up with a huge crowd of Norwegians and Estonians as soon as they get on the bus. The whole group takes the last train into Nice from Antibes, ambles about Gare de Nice in search of cheap munchies, and then finally splits off. Jorge returns from a Chinese takeaway restaurant with an entire bag full of egg rolls. These are some of the most delicious egg rolls Caroline has ever had and she is sure she smells of mushrooms and oil many hours later. The quartet sits on the beach for a while, waiting for night life, admiring the cinematic quality of the lights along the Promenade d’Anglais. The dark surf sprays just lightly enough upon the bottoms of their toes, and Jorge tells really great jokes as the night
progresses. Finally, someone gets a text confirming another Berkeley subgroup has checked into their AirBnb apartment a few blocks away and that they have begun the festivities. By the time the four arrive, the party is in full swing, and people are twently minutes away from heading out. The club lives up to the expectations that come with being the only night club in a major tourist destination. It is packed, filled with beautiful people bathed in jewel tone strobe lights, shots are 10 Euro each, and the dance floor is a total grab bag of people, styles, moves, and smells. Everyone’s whitened teeth gleam purple in backlights, everybody wants some, and Caroline is having the time of her life, dancing the macarena in a huddle of Estonians. Finally, it is time to grab the last EIA shuttle bus out of Nice, and everyone finds seats in the back with some Danes. Despite everything, Caroline has a very coherent conversation about architecture and the Singluarity with the Dane, Nicolai, sitting next to her and they part with a stiff nod and a friendly happy trails sign off.
Promenade des A n g l a i s le
Caroline and Jenelle wake up fairly late on Sunday morning, and eventually decide to explore the beaches of Antibes. As soon as they get on the bus, they recognize Priyesh and Anish whom they had met the week before, and are invited to join them at the beach along with an entire slew of CIV people. This includes Salvador, the Portuguese casanova, Bastian, the Estonian heartbreak, Stian, the Norwegian Viking/standup comedian, William, the design student from Iowa (or was it Illinois?), Luca, the Italian badass, Priyesh, the English business student, and Anish, the San Jose State genius. The group grabs popsicles and such at a Monoprix and lays out on a gorgeous beach with views of the coastline Antibes fortresses.
Juan-les-Pins
They play ninja for hours, splash each other in the surf, watch as Priyesh tries to swim to Nice but comes back and consequently throws up, and make small talk over warm wine. Martin, Caroline’s Norwegian heartbreak, arrives along with Maciek and his friend Hermann. Shortly thereafter, the entire group relocates to the Colonial, a pub in the center of Antibes to watch the World Cup final between Argentina and Germany. Shoulder to shoulder in the medieval quarter of Antibes, Germany fans jump on tables, wave huge flags over their backs and drink copious amounts of beer. When Germany wins, what feels like the entire city starts screaming and running up and down streets, beers are spilled, and Queen’s “We Are the Champions” blasts on every other bar’s outdoor speakers. When the group is finished dancing around on a roundabout, William pulls out a business card from his pocket, and dials the number for a “boater’s taxi,” a dirt cheap taxi service a girl he had met at a bar told him about. Sure enough, a Mercedes van pulls up and promises the extra five of them that he will come back for them as soon as he drops off the first half of the group. Martin, Salvador, William, Jenelle and Caroline wander off toward the harbor where Salvador and Martin strip down and dive into the water, just because.
the
Uniform
Lundi
Team Noosta is all smiles and jokes as they receive more customer validation of what they believe is a solid concept. Much later, Caroline and Jenelle break in to the Sophia Antipolis campus to watch the Bastille Day fireworks off of the roof of the Startup Garage.
The team is still on track to produce a working prototype by the end of the week. Caroline produces a 3D printed phone case/speaker hybrid and wows the team.
Mercredi
By Wednesday, team coffee breaks have become a permanent fixture of the Noosta work ethic. Everyone knows how everyone else likes their coffee, and are rapidly becoming better and better friends. Later, Caroline and Jenelle host about 15 people from CIV (the non-Berkeley dormitory) in Caroline’s studio apartment for pasta carbonara.
Caroline wakes up at 5:45 AM to go to the flower market at Cours Saleya. While the oven-fresh croissant is well worth the transit, she is exhausted for the rest of the day and takes power naps throughout her Thursday.
Vendredi
Mardi
Jeudi
Caroline and Jenelle wake up early for the Valbonne Friday morning market, and the stressful bus ride is well worth the 6 AM alarm. They walk away with copious amounts of soap and nutella crepes, and later that day establish a Facebook page and website for Noosta. Much later that day, they go to Nice with the Norwegians for dinner, drinks and more drinks on the beach until they are whisked away on a 2:30 shuttle.
Les Iles des Lerins Caroline slips on the last few articles of clothing that aren’t in the hamper yet and is whisked away to Cannes for the day by the same tour bus with the same tour guide from Monaco. On the way to free time in Cannes, Patrice recommends to Caroline and Jenelle an indoor market he and his wife frequent. It is here that the girls find the most beautiful roses, most delicious olive bread and the most sumptuous pluots and lychees. They shop around afterwards at a flea market in the main square where Caroline buys a pair of vintage earrings, and then a white linen dress with cobalt embroidery and tassles. The entire group then takes a twenty minute ferry to les Iles des Lerins, and scatters among fortresses, beaches and huge eucaplyptus
groves collectively whistling with cicadas. Caroline, Jenelle, Maciek and another Norwegian girl, Mariana, wander the tidepools before crossing over to the other side of the island to tan and swim on the sandier shallow beach. They spend hours in the same place, the sounds of cicadas blurring into the gentle breaking of waves. A word comes to Caroline’s mind: bliss. And it’s funny how the same word comes to mind in as blase as situations as eating a burrito, at least in the context of school. And maybe there will be another scene in a few years and that really will be bliss, and this will just be nice. And that’s thrilling, but also kind of pretentious. So this is bliss, for now, and that’s more than enough.
And then
Caroline and Jenelle go clubbing in Juan-les-Pins with a few friends later that day. After free promotional Bacardi goodies, some gelato, some interesting screwdrivers, being ushered into a club for free with free champagne to boot, leaving that club within twenty minutes because claustrophobia, meeting Jorge and friends at the Hemingway, making sandcastles on the beach, ordering 17 Euro chicken nuggets (two rounds because it’s 3 AM and the girls’ stomachs are black holes), catching Sandra’s 3:45 AM shuttle, the girls fall asleep on Kristian and Marius on the way home, say some things, and have the most satisfying nine hours of sleep.
Caroline wakes up in a stupor, feeling nearly reborn after so much sleep. After much internal deliberation, she decides to head to Nice solo to museum hop, wander and eat something good. Working off the Google maps page she downloaded at home, she makes it to a secret-ish staircase nestled between several residential complexes leading up to the Musee Marc Chagall. The walk itself is delightful, and compels her to walk all the way up the Boulevard Cimiez to Musee Matisse. By the time she gets to Parc des Arenes ,she is drenched in sweat, and cools off in the groves of the huge public park.
The museum itself is a country style tomato red house, and houses the succession of Matisse’s work throughout his time living in Nice. From the Jazz series, Orientalisme odalisques, and sculptures, the entire collection represents the convergence of different art styles in Nice in the 20’s and 30’s, and how Matisse interpreted and reacted to a changing world. Impressed, Caroline leaves through the gift shop and explores more of the park, skirting the Roman ruins, watching an entire grove with a web of amateur slackliners.
Monday
through Thursday before the final pitch is more than enough stress and aggravation for Team Noosta. They won’t have an app for purchase on Google Play by Friday, but they will have a working prototype, Thank God, according to Maciek. Caroline and Jenelle are fumbling through research on market size, company shares, statistics on sleep, and the revenue model for a standard freemium app while Kristian and Maciek build a website that kind of works, that none of Noosta’s 200 fans on Facebook know about. Caroline, Maciek and Kristian plan to continue working on Noosta remotely after EIA with the help of the team’s mentor, Mart. Although EIA has reaffirmed her belief in the human potential to do incredible things like start a company in under four weeks, the last day of final pitches leaves a bad taste in her mouth. Caroline begins to comprehend the massive roadblocks gender stereotypes pose to female entrepreneurs. From the total lack of female lecturers to the inability of the male majority to take the female minority seriously during final pitches, it is clear that European Innovation Academy is helping penetrate a male-centric startup world. Ken Singer, the Berkeley professor and MIA mentor to Noosta, not only participates in a drinking game with other Berkeley guys in the back of the lecture hall, but cheers for several male Berkeley students as their female teammates, also from Berkeley, shrug off the obnoxious favoritism. But in stride with the theme of the entire program, in the words of Gina Davis, “If you can’t join ‘em, beat ‘em.”