Right Brain Feed

We just spent a lovely week in Zermatt. We timed it just right, it was at the end of August, the weather was brilliant, but the crowds were gone. The picture here is the Matterhorn (Mont Cervin to the French) from the walk to Tuferen. Zermatt is a big ski resort, which means that there is a large array of lifts and specialized mountain cog trains to drag you up the hill to some amazing hikes. While the expensive "resort-i-ness" of Zermatt didn't appeal to us, the broad range of hiking you can do under the shadow of the Matterhorn definitely was. There are also tiny little villages (count the houses with no need to remove your shoes) up in the hills that serve really decent food. In fact, there is one trail we were on called the Gourmet Weg. The food was expensive because they have to drag it all up the hill or get it airlifted in, but quite nice in the middle of a hike. I could describe each hike, but I think I'd rather get together pictures and post them. The picture...

At the end of our street, there has always been a grungy crusty dirty building that is currently a school. There is a law in Paris that you have to clean the outsides of buildings every 10 years, and this building has been in flagrant violation. The word in the neighborhood is that the school has wanted to build an underground parking structure, and the neighboring buildings had protested vigorously, and had been able to block or at least stall the parking. The school, in protest, has been not getting its regular (and much needed) cleaning. A few months ago scaffolding went up on part of the building, and it was cleaned and restored. Last week the scaffolding came down, and the picture above shows clean vs. dirty. Quite a transformation. The building looks incredible. I hope this doesn't mean the parking facility was approved.  Living in Paris main page

This is a view (on a cloudy day) from Hautvilliers out over the vineyards of Champagne. Sarah and I spent a delightful weekend in the Champagne region of France. Our neighbors who live next door invited us out for the weekend to their country home. We managed very well despite rainy weather both days. They have a very cozy house in the Marne river valley, with views of vineyards on the hills out the windows. I could feel my stress level go down as soon as we got there, it was just so relaxing and inviting. Here's some of the things we did: Went on a champagne cellar tour in Epernay . They have a gargantuan wine casket from 1880's, it holds 200,000 barrels, and was taken dragged by oxen to the Paris fair in 1889. The tour also included a train tour of their underground cellars where they ferment and store the champagne. I now know plenty about riddling bottles and disgorging sediment. Drove through the vineyards, and walked around Hautvilliers (pronounced "ought vee yay...

Oh, Berlin. We got back Monday morning from our long weekend in Berlin. We had an absolute blast! This photo is taken from the roof of the Reichstag, which is the German Parliament building. This building is where the European portion of WWII ended. After the war, it was substantially changed, and this dome was added a few years back. The dome serves as a reminder that government should be transparent. It was a nice break away from Paris in the height of tourist season. We stayed in a nice quiet area of Berlin, Savigny Platz. Our hotel room overlooked the square, we were right over a few sidewalk cafes. I think we hit the timing just right. We waited until Berlin recovered from it's bout of WorldCup fever, and the city was deserted. We waited in 2 lines during our 4 days there, both of them under 10 minutes! We did some major museum hopping, the 3 day Museum Pass made it really easy to hit a lot of them: Museum of Arts and Materials - fun Art Nouveau glass Pergamon Museum- fantasti...