This is the toilet room (literally) in my hotel in St. Etienne. The hotel had recently been updated. Many European bathrooms have the toilet in a separate room, which is nice in many ways. However, it does take more space overall. Notice that this toilet flushes by pushing a button on the top; most have some kind of button on top of the tank.
The shower/wash room in my room. This room was large by our standards. This is the first time I've seen a shower with a solid, immobile door and an opening which cannot be pulled closed.
The towel rack was the room's heating unit, which then provided a heated towel!! This was a first for me too, and I felt like I was really being pampered.
Some future date I'll explain the story about my dean and toilets in Europe....stay tuned!!
On Saturday, Charlotte, the main clerical support for the international program at St. Etienne, picked me up and we went shopping first. This is one of the main shopping streets; we admired the building in the center, but the top certainly isn't the usual French architecture!
These young women were on a street corner, and Charlotte's comment was that this must be "a hen party". Evidently this is the female version of a bachelor party, toned down. The women do silly things during the day and then go out for drinks in the evening.
In the afternoon, we joined international students for a tour of the St. Etienne Mine, now closed. This tour took over an hour and included going down into the mine, stopping at various points for televised portions. The entire thing, however was in French!! I used my FLIP camera to take movies of each section, and maybe our NMU French professor will be able to tell me what I saw. I didn't understand this room, but evidently uniforms hung from the ceiling. During the tour, the men were seen working in their underwear at some points, and naked except for something similar to loincloths in other portions of the mine.
I've been intrigued with the popularity of Converse-type tennis shoes over here. This is Charlotte's pair; she says people tell her she has rainbows on her feet!
We met Betty and her husband Andre for dinner Saturday evening in a "Buffalo Bill" restaurant which is modelled on their version of the Old West. Here are the restroom doors.....
...and never before in my life have I used a red toilet!! Note that this one flushes with a button imbedded in the wall. Some day, I may do an entire blog on toilets---long story involving our recently-departed College of Business dean and my comment about what I learned when I first travelled internationally.
St. Etienne was a very pretty city, and I greatly appreciated my time there. I spent time with Betty, with Charlotte, and had dinner with their dean, a man from Finland who has been there a month. I was quite impressed with him and quite impressed with the program. I hope we're able to continue our contacts in the future.
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