Right Brain Feed

We zipped on the Thalys high speed train to Cologne last weekend. As an American, it's easier to fit into German culture than French culture. Germans dress down a little, aren't babuzzled by our big American smiles, and don't have the small formalities that the French have in everyday life. Don't get me wrong, we've both fallen head over heels for France. We'll be lifetime francophiles, but it is still fun to bop over to Germany. Cologne is great for a short trip. We started Saturday morning with a tour of the monstrous cathedral. The cathedral was built in spurts over several hundred years, but they did a decent job of keeping a consistent look. I had trouble picking a picture of it for the blog, I wanted something with people in the foreground, because you need that to grasp the scale of this beast. I was shocked at how grungy the poor thing was, I guess I'm spoiled by the freshly cleaned Notre Dame down the street at home. I'm wondering if they ...

Suzy and Sarah have found religion in the form of French religious holidays. A French holiday called Assumption Day snuck up on us, I didn't even know I had a 3 day weekend until Friday night when a friend told me. It was a nice surprise. We had a blast of a weekend. We started with Champagne with two friends from the UK that live in the building, then they took us to dinner at one of their favorite places. It was great! I had scallops with a different risotto. It was almost like barley with a thick cream, it was extremely delish! Sarah and I also tried Pastis (anise flavored drink). It was interesting, I'll probably have it again. Saturday we rushed to Darty and bought a TV and DVD player. The language barrier just keeps slapping us down when we get off the beaten tourist path. Everything is a struggle, but it is all so interesting because it is different than the US. After Darty, we caught the train to Giverny to go see Monet's Gardens. I won't mention the fact that S...

I keep putting off a post on our trip to Vienna. Part of that is because I've been sick, and part of it is because we had so much fun in Vienna, I wanted to take some time to blog it. I'm feeling better now, so I wanted to get some memories down before they all seep out of my head. We were able to spend a full week in Vienna, and we timed our visit just right. We had beautiful brilliant early Spring sunny days. We snagged a nice Interhome appartment week long rental right in the heart of downtown. Vienna was the eastern most outpost of western European civilization, and the ruling seat of the Hapsburg Dynasty for a loooong time. Every Hapsburg king and queen seems to have built their own palace in Vienna, so the city is filled with interesting architecture, and nice gardens. Since we had a week there, we spent plenty of time hanging out in the gardens. We also got in the habit of going to coffeehouses in the afternoon, which is a popular thing to do. Suzy got in the habit of ha...

Another chateau we toured. This one spans a river. In the 1500s it was a gift to Diane of Poitiers from the king of France. She was the mistress of king Henri II. This made Catherine de Medici, the queen, jealous. After the king died in a jousting accident, Catherine threw out the king's mistress, and took over Chenonceau for herself. Harumph! Since this place was designed by women (everybody who moved in liked to add on), it has a nice comfortable feel to it. Chambord has a "I am King, hear me Roar" feel to it. Chenonceau's rooms are comfortably sized, with well placed windows looking over the river. Perhaps "I am Martha Stewart, hear me Roar"? I bet it is a knockout view in summer because it was really nice even in the dead of winter.  Living in Paris main page

On Saturday, we went in search of a new jacket for Sarah. Well, we never found the jacket, but take a look at everything else we stumbled upon walking around Paris in the spring. A cow dressed in a flamenco dress (they are all over town : http://paris.cowparade.com ), a mime dressed as the devil, a group of mongolian chanters, and a hippie playing an aboriginal digeridoo. We also had some dang good tiramisu gelato along the way, and finished with a pint at the scottish pub. Somehow that helped lessen the anguish of not finding a jacket. Clothing stores in Paris just ain't working for us. Everything resembles the "Juniors" section of Dillards, only weirder and 3 times the price. Lovely. We also went to the Bastille market this week. Yum. Fresh roasted chicken, fresh made chevre and thyme ravioli, lettuce that looks like it was picked 10 minutes ago, deep red strawberries, and monstrous gargantuan eggs. Both of the mombo eggs we've opened have had double yolks. I've...

Sarah and I took a great two week trip to Italy at the end of September. We went to Venice, Verona, and Florence. Venice Photo Album Venice was beautiful, as long as you stayed away from the "Follow the Umbrella" tourist groups. The back waterways were great to explore and get lost in. There were endless interesting photos waiting to be taken, and it was generally quiet and relaxed. Around San Marco/Rialto was a different story. (insert rant on cruise ship tour groups here). It was interesting watching Venetians do things by boat that we typically see done by truck: Uhaul, mail boat, furniture delivery, laundry pickup. We really enjoyed Murano, where they let you wander into glass blowing workshops and watch the guys work. We will go back in a few years during low low low season, and try to see San Marco's interior, we just couldn't face the long long line this time. Verona photo album We kicked back in Verona for a few days, it was a great place to just soak in Italy...

We're in the final stretch, as I write this I am surrounded by fragrant French movers packing up the apartment. They've been packing since 8am (it's now 3pm), and haven't gotten to the rather large amount of glasspacks that need to happen in the kitchen. There is something very unsettling about 4 strange men handling your stuff. We've definitely got the 'B' team, since everyone (including regular movers) is on vacation. It took two of the movers over 90 minutes to pack the futon. Is packing a futon really 3 person hours of work for people who are professional movers? Hmmmmm...... One of our weekend activities was rather nerve wracking. We have been unable to find someone to take the kitchen cabinets. So at 5am on Sunday morning, we snuck downstairs, and ..... left them in a discrete place around the corner on the sidewalk. We actually see this happen a lot in Paris, and we couldn't figure out another solution. Everyone is gone in August, including people...

Yesterday was the French equivalent of our July 4th. I must say, they really get it right here. By the end of the day, I was ready to trade in my passport for a French one. I began the day waking up to the sound of the national guard's horse division practising their trumpet and drum routine that they would be playing in the parade. I stumbled out of bed and we had coffee and went to the park. Sarah and our friend Beth went running, and I sat on a park bench and tried to see just how low I could get my pulse. On the walk back along the river, we watched all the different French air force planes fly directly over us, including the jets that were rigged to disperse tricolore (red, white, blue) out their exhaust. A while later I was hanging out on our balcony, camera at the ready, to see if the planes were doing a second pass. They didn't, but several clusters of helicopters flew over, and monster tanks went hauling butt down rue Saint Antione. After a while I heard strains of the...

We just got back from a week in Vienna and a short nip over to Bratislava, Slovakia. Bratislava is a really bizarre place. It's a broad mixture of many different things. Elegance from the 1800 Hapsburg dynasty royalty, cute domed church towers, funky crumbling Art Nouveau, 40 years of Soviet rule (including lots of blocky concrete), sad little public transportation trolleys, and a gussied up downtown pedestrian area where there are trendy bars and restaurants. Throw in a _completely_ unrecognizable language (hello, 10 cents will buy you a vowel), fantastic cheap beer, nice hiking close by, and that's Bratislava. Of course, you are still wondering about the bizarre picture here. That was our hotel. I kid you not. We weren't to thrilled by it, it was run by supplement popping hippies pretending to be artists (mind the paint and brushes on the breakfast table). The inside of the room was..uhhh...somewhat lacking in cleanliness. We've stayed in plenty of dumps before, that ...

Spring has sprung in Paris! This weekend Spring made its first appearance in Paris this year. There really is something special about springtime here. Everybody packs the streets, and enjoys the good weather. The picture at the bottom is the quai on Sunday, it is closed to motorized traffic every Sunday. Today it was packed. Sarah and I sat on the edge of the river for a while, soaking up sunshine and springtime happiness. Both Saturday and Sunday we had lunch guests, but we did manage to get out both days for a nice walk. Saturday's walk came with an added bonus, Suzy snagged a boules set for playing petanque. It's a game popular with older men in Europe in the park. I snapped a pic in this bakery window, they really are "workin" the patissiere artistry. The bakery (Miss Manon) isn't one that I shop at, it's all flash and no substance. But I have to admit, they have a dang good window display. Sarah and I are continuing our Wednesday night trips to th...

We had a fantastic time in Italy. We spent 5 days in Sorrento, a town on the Amalfi coast. It's just south of Naples. There are several small towns clinging to the cliffs over the Mediterranean. This picture is of Positano. There is an amazing bus ride from Sorrento to Positano along the coast. The dramatic cliffs make for a scary road with cars squeezing by each other. We had Positano gelato (candied orange bits and nutella flavored) after lunch. With so much coastline, we of course had amazing seafood. Fresh grilled fish, fresh langostinos and shrimp. And we were right next to Naples, where they invented Pizza. We pigged out. We splurged on a nice meal our last night, and had a truly amazing red italian wine served in monstrous red wine glasses. Sarah will have to tell you about the wine, she enjoyed it a lot. We did some hiking close to Sorrento, and swimming off the coast to help work off all the good food. We stayed in a villa converted into a hotel. It was a little run d...

We traveled last weekend to Nancy, France. It is a 3 hour train ride east of Paris. Nancy is where Art started at the turn of the 20th century. Sarah and I are both big Art Nouveau fans, so we enjoyed it a lot. The city provides a map with all the Art Nouveau architecture on it. We walked and walked looking at different buildings. It was really cool because there were a lot of houses with interesting Art Nouveau detail on them that weren't by a famous architect. This made the whole town fun to walk through. I've posted some pictures, but I want to caution you. If you aren't an avid architecture fan, you might have trouble wading through them. Nancy Art Nouveau album We also ate at a famous brassiere, Brassiere D'Excelsior. There is a picture posted in my album that shows the ornate interior. I had some nice profiteroles. Profiteroles are vanilla ice cream filled pastry puffs smothered in warm dark chocolate sauce. This place brought a gravy boat of chocolate sauce ...

There is just something about throwing open the shutters in your hotel room, and stepping out onto a balcony with a nice view. This photo was taken from our balcony in Assisi. We had a nice view out over the Umbrian countryside, and also a view (not in this pic) of bits of the Basilica St. Francis. We had a great time here, the place is quite crowded by day with day trippers running around in clumps with their tour guides, but in the morning and evening it it just magical. Wandering around pedestrian streets, with beautiful views around every corner. We did a nice hike in the countryside up into the hills around Assisi, and I don't think I've ever climbed so many stairs in my life. The city is still rebuilding some from the 1997 earthquake, but it's basically finished, and looks great. The food here was fantastic, a lot of grilled meats including grilled umbrian sausages and the best lamb chops I've had in my life. I had a fresh pasta with a black truffle sauce tha...

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...

Spring has sprung! Warm weather, blue skies and sunshine have hit Paris. The trees are leafing out, sidewalk cafes are bustling..... and Paris is locked in demonstrations and riots over the CPE law. Students are going bonkers over a law intended to encourage employers to hire young workers because the law also makes it easy to fire the workers. We spent the weekend walking the streets, enjoying the sunshine. We ended up closer to the Sorbonne than I had thought we were, and saw the street that's barricaded off by police, and kept noticing the large number of policemen on the streets. Police headquarters across from Notre Dame looked ready to launch large riot patrol with vans lining the streets. Tuesday is another mass transit strike. This afternoon we discovered that the opera singer has returned to Place des Vosges. The square was packed with people, but no one was on the grass yet, since it's off limits until April 15. On the way back from Place des Vosges, we ran into ...

  Suzy got her first Paris haircut ... from a woman who doesn't speak a lick o English. She dove into my hair with her scissors flying. Uhhh... If we measure in weight of hair chopped off, I definitely got my money's worth. Thank the Goddess we have plenty of Aveda with us, I think I'm gonna be using it. Living in Paris main page

While we've been here, we've met some really nice expats. For one reason or another, we've all found ourselves living in Paris. Some through HRC, some are friends of friends, others through expat groups. There are over 100,000 native English speakers living in Paris. Saturday we went to an expat picnic in the park, we had a good time, even with the weather turned chilly. About 75 people turned out. I guess that's why this is on my mind... The dilemma is this. While we cherish our French friends, the conversation comes with a tax. If we are speaking in French, I have the vocabulary of a three year old. If we speak in English, I'm monitoring myself to not use weird American lingo, and to use more periods than commas in my speech. We have friends that made a decision to move over here, not just for a few years. They moved with the mindset of blending in, and not having the dreadful end-date that creeps up on you. They haven't gone the expat route because they wan...

This week has been a busy but fun one. On Wednesday (June 21), we had the yearly Fete de la Musique. All sorts of musical performers are scheduled all over the city in open air free concerts. We saw all sorts of stuff. In the upper right of the pic was our favorite, a guy playing Spanish, Turkish, and Moroccan music in the courtyard of Hotel de Sens. We also saw a cuban band, a classical woodwinds concert, and the odd group in the upper left. Their instruments looked like a bunch of trumpets glued together. We also saw the Gay mens chorus (drowned out by two other choral goups), and a bit of Cesaria Evora. All of this was within a 10 minute walk of our apartement. There were other concerts happening all over France, the news said the next morning that there were over 20,000 concerts in France at Fete de la Musique. It was fun, you really felt like the city was out celebrating summer. This weekend was also Gay Pride weekend in Paris. Wow. There was a march from Montparnasse to Bastille,...

Two of our closest Paris friends (Beth and Vivianne) left to move back to Sydney yesterday. We will miss them dearly. They were wildly entertaining, and we could always count on having a great time when they were involved. I caught a massive cold (probably on the flight back from Texas), so I had to miss our goodbye dinner with them. So au revoir, Beth and Vivianne. We will miss our endless bottles of Champagne, death creatures, blogging novel titles, Paris mexican food, pears and roquefort, screaming at World cup finals, The Green Fairy, Jardin des plantes, Vivianne's mexican cuisine, hangovers, the Festival of Vivianne, and long stories about Australia. The expat experience can be like this. You can meet other really interesting expats, and you easily bond over your shared experience of temporarily living in a foreign land. And then you part and go your separate ways. 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...