Maxence Leclerc

 Now I will talk a bit about the city of Erie !

Erie is in the state of Pennsylvania and has approximately 210 000 inhabitants. It is on the coast of the lake Erie, needless to say that the sunsets over the lake are magnificent!

Erie is a very interesting and lively town. Indeed, every day of the week has a special event:

On Mondays, there is a “car show”. People with ancient cars gather on the bay front for the pleasure of the eyes of the people walking around. It is very interesting to discover the different American brands such as Chevrolet, dodge, Chrysler or even Corvette through these old models.

Every Tuesdays is the “Eight greats” Tuesday  night. That is because for 8 weeks, every Tuesdays, a local “famous” band plays on the bayfront. This allows me to discover the local folklore while meeting new people!

Wednesdays is beach night. Either a band plays, soccer or volley tournament or other random activities or even all of them, depending on the number of people that attend.

Thursdays is “Block party” night. For the evening, the town “closes” a block  and people gather in the streets, have something to eat and drink while another band plays. The difference is that the bands on these block parties are usually unknown. This allows new talents to be discovered! The only bad thing for me in this party is that alcohol, as in the rest of the US, is forbidden for under 21’s. I would have liked to enjoy a fresh beer on these hot and festive evenings.

Finally, on Fridays, different festivals are organized to collect money for charities. Either organized by the red cross, the salvation army or the cancer research, they are always offering activities, music, food and drinks to spend good time with local people for a good cause.

To conclude I can say that I do not have time to get bored as I discover every day a new aspect of the local culture and I find this extremely fascinating!

Erasmus is almost over now and before everybody starts to leave one by one and in order to have a souvenir that involves everyone we decided to organize a lipdub in the dormitory with as many Erasmus as possible.

A lip dub is a type of video that is made by filming individuals or a group of people lip synching while listening to a song.

This was very hard to organize as we needed to have everybody at the same place at the same time. Then we needed to choose a song that represented our Erasmus and that suited everyone. The rest was just pleasure, laughter, joy and… Repetition!

I do not appear on the video as I was part of the “production team” that made the video.

Of course the quality of this video isn’t professional, however we had a lot of fun making it and we will remember all the times spent together every time we will watch it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5hF9ij_QvA

ENJOY!

The town of Pécs is full of interesting facts:

In the middle of the XVI century, the Turkish invaded, pillaged, burned the town of Pécs and  built a mosque with the bricks of the church they destroyed on the Kiraly square which is the biggest square in the town center. However, many years later, Catholics finally regained the town, but instead of rebuilding a church, they just put a cross on the top of the old mosque which is still there nowadays.

Near the town center of Pécs, we can find some metal fences where lovers come to seal their love forever by attaching a lock to the “wall of locks” already present and throwing the key so that nothing or nobody can ruin their love for each other. This is quite famous in the region and the town had to install more fences because the original one was starting to collapse under the weight of the hundreds of locks.

The town of Pécs is famous in the country for its « szalon » beer. Indeed, the factory is located just outside the town. It is possible and very interesting to visit this factory as it is part of the cultural heritage of the baranya region. It is also possible to have special prices on the cans of beer if you buy them directly from the factory (1 can of 0,5L is almost 0,40 €) which is what most of the students do, Erasmus or not.Moreover, this factory is about 3 minutes from the Erasmus dormitory. Coincidence or strategic location?

In Pécs is one of the, if not THE, tallest inhabited building in the world. Indeed, just outside the town center, you have this massive building that looks quite old and dirty where nobody lives. At night, if you pass by it, there are no lights in the windows, which is very spooky, some people even say it is haunted. The reason they cannot destroy it is because of the houses that surround it: it is a too dangerous operation. Moreover, it is too expensive for the town to have this building repaired with the necessary security measures, so for the time, it is rotting in Pécs.

In 2010, Pécs was voted as the European capital of culture. This title was a very good thing for Pécs as they used this opportunity to renovate the different buildings of the town, but also to change some things in Pécs such as the Kiraly square and the main street which were accessible by car but today is strictly pedestrian. At last, this title has been extremely beneficial for the town and even the country as it has improved their image and of course fueled tourism.