This is me and my friend Jutta (pronounced you-tuh). We were in the same class together while studying French in Nice, France and we became instant friends. She was one of those people that I liked as soon as I met her. We laughed all of the time and even went on vacation together (we spent a week together in Senegal). When I lived in Nice I lived with a French woman named Christianne.
Christianne was such a lovely person and a serious cook. She would make dinner and I would be amazed at how delicious everything was, and she was never impressed with how great of a cook she was. And since you know how much I love food I would go to class the next day telling everyone how luscious the meals were where I was living and my classmates weren’t happy because their host moms weren’t cooking for them. After a month or so Yutta had enough of living with her host mom and she asked if she could live with me and Christianne and thankfully the answer was yes.
Yutta and I walked to school together, laughed together, and between her friendship and Christianne’s cooking, my year in Nice was bearable. Jutta is the only person I ever met that put ketchup on her salad. She said, “Do you put ketchup on your burger? Well, it’s the same thing. A burger has lettuce so what’s the difference?” And she understood my love affair with McDonalds. In fact, one day I was really upset and crying and she said as she rubbed my back, “Do you want to go to McDonalds?” She got me.
Unfortunately we lost track with each other and I have no idea where she is or how she is doing, but every time I see a picture of her or reflect on my memories of living in Nice I am very happy that she was such a huge part of my life.
I took these pictures when I went to visit Jutta in Copenhagen (that’s where she was from) and I’ll never forget that trip. I was so excited because it was my first time there and I was snapping pictures left and right and Jutta couldn’t understand what in the world I was taking pictures of. As we were walking over the bridge I said, “Oh! This is lovely! I have to take this picture!” and she looked at me, looked at the view and said in disbelief, “I just don’t see what you see. How do you think that is pretty?” She didn’t like Copenhagen at all, she thought it was a horrible place and meanwhile I was in awe of the architecture.
These pictures were taken when we still used film and I haven’t gotten them transferred digitally so I took a picture of the pictures in my photo albums which is why the pics are a bit grainy.
