The Land of the Ch’ti

Last Saturday and Sunday a group of assistants and I visited Lille, the land of the Ch’ti. The word “Ch’ti” designates not only the people who live in the region called “Nord,” but also the dialect that they speak and a brand of beer. It’s very difficult to understand, even more so than Québécois (which the French enjoy making fun of). It snowed the whole train ride up, and because of the weather we arrived later than expected so we weren’t able to drop off our bags at the hostel before it closed for the afternoon. After trudging around in the snow for 45 minutes we found a restaurant that was open for lunch and warmed up. I didn’t think that France would be cold, but for the past week or so it has been colder than normal. Just to give you an idea of how cold that is, on the news last week they talked about how it was warmer in Greenland than in France.

Once we got into the hostel and dropped our bags off we headed out to the Christmas market where we browsed the selection of 100+ booths while sipping on onion soup and vin chaud. After we’d seen all that there was to see, we headed to the main square where a 150 foot Ferris wheel was waiting for us. Why we thought it was a good idea to go on an open Ferris wheel when it was freezing cold, windy and sleeting I don’t know, but once it had finished loading passengers and we weren’t stuck at the top it was actually really fun.

One of many vin chaud booths.

The Ferris wheel.

View from halfway up.

The weather improved on Sunday and we spent the afternoon walking around Vieux Lille. I had planned to go to the Christmas market in Strasbourg – which supposedly is one of the top 5 best in the world – but when I saw that a one-way ticket is 97€ even with my 12-25 discount I decided to pass. Tatiana, one of my teachers at the collège, is from Strasbourg and while she said that it is really nice, the market isn’t that great because it’s all the same stuff. But the real reason it’s so popular, she said, is because of the lights… maybe next year.