Well I got up pretty early on Sunday to go on a wine tour of the Aix en Provence Region. I knew nothing about wine before going, but I figured it would be a nice way to see some of the French countryside around Marseille. The guide was extremely nice; she just started running these private tours a year ago after she had worked for a company as a public relations worker who would take visiting business clients on tours of the vineyards. It’s a very small and personal business that is limited to six people a tour mainly because her van only fits 6 passengers. She picked the five of us up at our hotel and took us to 3 different vineyards. The first one was about an hour away so some of us fell asleep in the car. Chateau La Dorgonne was one of the smaller vineyards that only distributed local region. I learned that there are not only white and red wines but also rosé wines, and the differences depend on the type of grapes used and how long they are exposed to their skins after being picked. We then went on a short tour of the Aix en Provence city center. We ended up having lunch in the city with our guide. I was quite surprised when after we sat down our guide took out a bag and started rolling a cigarette. Smoking in France is quite different than in the US. We’ve talked with some of the French students back at SUPAERO about it, and apparently they get all the same lectures growing up about how smoking is bad for you, but for some reason there remains a high percentage of the population that still smokes. And this was the first time I had seen anyone roll their own cigarette. Anyways, we were deciding on what to order and someone suggested ordering a plate of escargot for us to try. After the other convinced me I tried one. It was exactly as our guide said it would be which was a garlic taste since they put so much garlic in when they cook it that you don’t even taste the snail. Our guide ordered one of the other French foods Americans hear about, steak tartare. We explained that a dish like that would be hard to find in the US since we have many rules about the consumption of raw meat. After lunch we headed out to our second vineyard, Chateau Vignelaure, which distributed all over the globe. We saw the fermentation tanks then went about 20 meters underground to see where they store all of the bottled wine from past years. Our guide then showed us a huge room where there let the wine sit in barrels for about 6 months then bottle it. The owners had a tunnel from this area to the original fermentation area. Tunnel was filled with artwork given to them by various artists they have become friends with over the years. Overall, the entire landscape was quite breathtaking. It was then onto the final vineyard that is quite young, but has already won many awards. I ended up buying two bottles of rosé wine from them to take back home as gifts for my sister as a wedding present. We then headed for our hotel after getting some last photos of Chateau Paradis. Once we were back in Marseille, we went out to a restaurant our professors had suggested the night before. It was quite amazing to say the least. It may have been a little expensive, but it was worth it. I even tried canard (duck).
After eating breakfast, our group packed up our stuff to put on the bus. We had a few hours free before we had to meet up for lunch in downtown Marseille. Around two o’clock, we headed out to Aix en Provence to spend the night there so we could make it to Eurocopter Tuesday morning. I was still quite tired and had already seen the sites of downtown Aix en Provence so I went to bed early that night.
Our technical visit of Eurocopter was Tuesday morning. Again we weren’t allowed to take pictures, but that’s a big more understandable than with Airbus since Eurocopter makes a lot of military helicopters. It was pouring rain which a huge rarity in the Southern France Regions, but apparently the GEA Program has brought rain with them during their visits over the past few years. The first stop was for a presentation by the Educational Outreach and Public Relations departments. We were then able to take tours of the production lines for the rotor hub and the final assembly line. The final assembly is composed of about 10 stations with three lines of assembly. Included in these stations are the static testing and ground testing. They are then wheeled outside for water tests and flight tests. We then ate lunch near the facility before heading via bus for Toulouse. We had dinner at the SUPAERO cafeteria and afterward one of my friends was wondering how to access to the gym’s rock wall. We asked a random student who ended up being one of the students that does it regularly. He told us about a small rock wall setup in the basement of our dorm, and we made plans to meet him the next day to try it out.
After a nice weekend by the coast, it was time to head back to classes on Wednesday. For the next few days we had to cover aircraft structures beginning with a two hour lecture followed by French, lunch, and three more hours of lecture. It was kind of a long day, but we were still interested in checking out the rock wall cave in our basement. I’ve been rock climbing before, but that was about 7 years ago. I must say it’s much more difficult than I remember, but it was quite fun just watching all of us get so far then fall flat on our backs. Afterward, we headed up to the foyer to watch the Brazil and North Korea soccer game. If you’ve never watched a soccer game in a foreign county especially a World Cup game, you need to experience it at least once.
For Thursday, we had labs over at the ENSICA campus of ISAE on the other side of Toulouse. We took the bus over in the morning and split up into three groups of about 10. I started with the landing gear lab which consisted of a short background by the professor then half of the group was going to apply the load to the landing gear and the other group was in charge of monitoring the results on the computer and printing them out. Our professor then walked up through how to calculate the theoretical responses to the loads we applied. After comparing these theoretical and actual we were able to determine that our theoretical model was quite accurate to the lab. After lunch at ENSICA, my group rotated to the composite materials lab. This professor gave us a more in depth background to composites, and then we made our own carbon composite plate. It was going to take all night to dry the composite, so we didn’t get to take it home immediately. There was a metro station right next to ENSICA, so we just took the metro back to SUPAERO. That night it started pouring, so we decided to just eat in the Foyer. I must say some of their food is a lot better than the cafeteria’s food.
Friday was another trip to ENSICA for our last lab session. Our half an hour bus ride to campus soon turned into a two hour bus ride in and out of the Toulouse area because our bus driver got lost. It was quite the adventure that made us an hour late, so our professor had to rush through their respective labs. My last lab was the wing rib lab about tension and compression. It was quite similar to the landing gear lab in the setup and analysis. We had lunch at ENSICA and headed back to SUPAERO. Our afternoon lecture was canceled because the professor had an emergency come up. I just spent the time relaxing in my room since I was going to go out later that night to listen to some of my new SUPAERO friends play in a band. It actually turned into quite the French and Spanish experience since they were performing at a bar with a Spanish theme. The band was very good, and the flamingo dancers made me want to go to Spain over my break even more. Around midnight, we were heading back and ran into other people who were just heading out. Since I hadn’t been to a French dance club yet, I decided to join them. It’s very similar to an American club because all of the music is either American or British, but it was fun to just go out and dance.
I slept in quite a bit on Saturday, but sometimes it’s necessary. Earlier in the week I had found out that the Toulouse Pride Festival was on Saturday, so I went to go check that out around 4pm. I’ve never been to a Pride Parade before, but I recommend it. I was very surprised to see the size of it especially on a rainy day. There were hundreds of people around the Capitole and that was where the Parade ended, so there may have been even more along the route. What was even more impressive was the huge presence of LGBTQ Allies. After looking around the area to check out the festivities, I headed back to do my laundry before I had to pack for Poitiers. We’ll be leaving for Poitiers on Sunday morning and spending a week there to study at the ENSMA campus. It’s been a fun week, and I’ll post again sometime next weekend to give updates on Poitiers, Futuroscope, and Biarritz.
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