Emilyisnow

back.

2010-10-07T03:37:00.009-04:00

Hello Internet, it has been a very long time. I'm not sure whether to be sorry about that or not, but by way of an excuse, it probably has something to do with spending my working days with words.

I promised a friend very early this year (or very late last year) that I would do another of my New Year's lists, and well, better late than never.

I decided on only two resolutions this year, but important ones. They both stem from the same belief - that you can't change the world, but you can change how you live in it. Maybe I'm just getting Kantian as I grow older, but I've decided that you can't really judge most actions by their possible results - you really just need to think about what is the most ethical way to live and hope that everyone else does the same. It can get a bit overwhelming, because trying to do the right thing can feel like a drop in the ocean, but I've decided that opting out on those grounds is really more of a cop-out. How can you hold theoretical beliefs on what we all should do, if you're not willing to see them through yourself? How can you benefit so much from your place in the world when you're not willing to give a little thought to what you should do with it? And look, I can't be perfect, but I can try and make the world I live in a tiny bit better, instead of a tiny bit worse. Maybe this is all an exercise in pointlesslness, but at least it's something.

So:
1. Reduce my greenhouse gas emissions by 10% in 2010.

Honestly - I really don't understand why we're still arguing about climate change. Every single single scientific institution of international standing agrees that climate change is occurring, and that we have caused it. Yeah, there are individual deniers, but you know what? I'm going to go with the scientists on this one.

(Incidentally, it makes me utterly rageful when I talk to someone about this and they say something like 'yeah, that's what they say, but why was this winter so cold then?'. Right. Well that proves it then. Please directly pass 'Go' and collect your PhD in Climate Science.)

Now, if that's the case, we should be doing something about it, right? I've gotten pretty disheartened by leaders who don't do the right thing, and people who are wilfully ignorant because it's more convenient. So I'm doing what I can.

Which is this - reducing my my emissions by 10%. This is a manageable amount, and an appropriate amount if we want to continue inhabiting this planet.

You can read more here and here.

(As another aside - I kind of love this quote from the last link above, about politicans arguing about climate change and doing nothing: 'Unless there is a radical change of plan ... world leaders will not only be discussing the alignment of deckchairs on the Titanic, but hotly disputing whose deckchairs they really are and who has the responsibility for moving them. Fascinating as this argument may be, it does nothing to alter the course of the liner.')

2. Give a proportion of my income to help fight poverty

I've thought about this for a while, and I've just never gotten around to it. Inexcusable really, but now's the time. And it's not even that hard when you think about. What good reasons are there for not sharing your relative wealth with those who can't even afford to eat?

And then I read Peter Singer's views on it all, and as ever, the man convinced me. He's just so damned logical! Did you know that extreme poverty could literally be wiped out if the top 10% of U.S. earners gave a proportion of their wealth away? That is freaking ridiculous. It would be a significant proportion for sure, but still small enough that they could continue living in the lap of elegant luxury. They wouldn't have to give up their yachts or anything.

And if that's true, then if all of the world's 'regularly' well-off people (i.e. those that can spare the cash for a coffee every day) gave a very small proportion of their income, then we could achieve the same result. Extreme poverty is literally a fixable problem.

For me, this means giving away about 1% of my income. That is extraordinarly do-able!

You can read more about it all here and here (and it is very interesting too).

====

Perhaps there is an ulterior motive for me writing this all on the Internet. One further conclusion that I've come to recently is that it's important to challenge people's beliefs if you think something is important. I find this really difficult to do - I was brought up to be polite, never to imply that someone might be wrong, to believe that it's ok for people to have their own opinions, regardless of how misguided they may be. Well, I'm not so sure about that any more. I will never aim to be rude to people, and it sure can be hard to talk people out of their comfortable bubbles; however, I've also come to the conclusion that it's really not okay to ignore dangerous thoughts, just out of a fear of being thought 'impolite'.

So here you go, Internet, friends. These are things I think are important. I would really like it if you would have a serious think about them, maybe read the articles I've linked to, and consider making my resolutions yours too. And you know what? They're easy things. Cutting 10% of your emissions might be as simple as turning off all your blinking electronics at the powerpoint when you're not using them. And 1% of your income? You won't even notice it, and you might like the warm fuzzy feeling.

End proselytising.

====

Just two resolutions? Did I say two? umm...well (surprise surprise) there's actually a few more than that. I can't think of them all off the top of my head, but here's a few for posterity:

wear a wider range of my clothes - stop wearing the same three outfits because they're comfortable and no-one sees you most of the time anyway, while lots of lovely clothes languish in the wardrobe because they're too dressy or too wacky
start running again (again)
become a mostly vegetarian (again)
cook at least one new dish per week
visit Sydney
be more pro-active about wordsmithing.

Hmm. Can't think of any more. I'm sure there are more. I might update this list at a later stage.

====

Review of last year's resolutions:

1. Play music - find an orchestra, join a band...whatever. Don't let it slide more. 90%
I joined a band or two and did a bit of teaching. Tick. Now working on actually practising.

2. Watch 1 French film per week 10%
Yeah. I maybe managed 5 French films. Lame.

3. Improve my skills in a visual art (perhaps take a drawing class?) 30%
I took a class or two, no drawing classes.

4. Become a morning person (get out of bed) 5%
I begin to wonder if this will ever happen. Actually I watched this documentary about how more people have heart attacks in the morning, so maybe I should hope it doesn't.

5. Get back to running - 5k before my birthday 20%
Well, this patently didn't happen before the deadline. But I have started again, so that's something.

6. Write one short story per month 0%
Strike out. I did do a bunch of voluntary and fun non-fiction though, so not a total loss I guess.

7. Be more pro-active about being social 55%
I did make a bunch of new friends last year, though I'm not sure being pro-active had much to do with it.

8. Learn to drive a manual car (REALLY this year) 60%
This is another one where the deadline got me. I have started, though.

9. More books/less screens 55%
There are still too many screens, however, there are also more books.

10. Continue to take photos as if i were not in my hometown 55%
I kept this up for a while, and then lost momentum. Time to start again.

11. Continue to cultivate an independent sense of style (even though it's harder here) 12%
Yeah. It's harder here.

12. Become a mostly-vegetarian 70%
I did pretty well on this one, fell off the wagon, and now I'm mostly back on it again.

13. Strike 'should' from my vocabulary 30%
Honestly, mostly I forget. But I think this might be one of those ones where just thinking about it is half the importance.

14. Begin learning another language (Japanese?) 0%
Strike two.

15. Limit my usage of the word 'awesome' to only those situations which truly warrant it. 51%
See item #13.

Average score: 29.53%.
Let's be honest - this is not great. But funnily enough, 2009 turned out to be another one of those years where heaps of life-changing stuff happened. I moved (more than) a few times, got a new job (the first step in a career I'm actually interested in), got a new boyfriend, saved up enough to buy a sweet sweet ride (and one or two other beautiful investement-y items). So in light of the context, maybe 29-odd-% is not so bad. And looking at that list 18 months later reminds me of a few things I might like to have another crack at. So I think I'm ok with it.

And since it is nearly the end of 2010, how am I doing with this year's list? Well. Really? Pretty abysmal. Which is totally unacceptable and inexcusable, since I set myself Important yet Achievable goals this year. Still, there is time to work it. And I have always been a bit of a last minute girl.

Resolution #1 - well, I'm in a rather inflexible living situation at the moment, and I'm pretty conscientious about emissions wastefulness already, so this is proving a challenge. I'm sure the re-vegetarianism is helping, and I am growing my own veggie garden. Maybe I have already made 10%, but I feel in my guts that I should be trying harder. I think the best thing I could do would be to start riding a bike, but honestly - I'm really scared I will fall off and badly hurt myself. This is a painfully true but still crap excuse. Time to try harder! It is lovely weather! Get it together, Emily!

Resolution #2 - I started off trying to put aside a little each week, but somehow it kept getting sucked into bills etc. I am getting a goodly tax return though, so this will be done in a week or so. I am not giving myself a tick yet, because it should not have taken me so long to get around to it; however, I am confident it will indeed happen and soon. The challenge will be to plan better for next year.

As for the other resolutions, well, I'm not doing so good in general honestly. I am doing a lot of stock-taking right now anyway - I am not feeling very happy and I feel that I am stagnating. Having gotten closer to figuring out what I do want, I have gotten too good at convincing myself that it is unattainable, to the point that I don't even try any more. It is time to start making plans again, and more importantly, taking action again. This applies to the small things as well as the big ones, but mainly to the big ones. I have an abiding fear of realising at age 80 that I've wasted my life, but I seem to be doing a good job of letting that fear push me in the direction of making it a reality. Time to wake up!

====
Gosh. 2000 words. How is it that I can dribble on about navel-gazing, but writing about something that people might actually be interested in still feels like the words are my teeth and I am pulling at them?

This is not a very exciting place to end, but this is it I suppose. I wonder if this will be the end of this blog altogether?

Just in case here is a picture. This is all of the drinks I tried from the Asian grocer in 2009:

talking more rubbish, disguised (poorly) as navel-gazing. You've been warned.

2009-02-01T02:04:00.002-05:00

Hello internet, long time no words. It's getting hard to do this introspective stuff now that more people are reading. People I know in the flesh. It was easier when I could just talk about what city I was in this week, and it was easier when this was largely anonymous, but I think the navel-gazing is one of the more useful things I get out of dribbling along here, otherwise all these thoughts are just transient and there's nothing to make me remember them, let alone to hold me to them. I hope you'll bear with me...but if not, you can sneak out now and I'll never know.

Someone asked me about my New Year's resolutions, and whether I was going to rank myself on last year's, like I did the year before. Well, I only had one resolution last year, and I'd say I did about 95% on that one, so that's not bad, hey? You don't get to know what it was though, sorry.

I only made the one resolution last year, because I knew I was going to do a bunch of stuff I wanted to, without having to make a list, or even plan it much beyond 'get on a plane, and see what happens...'. I did achieve a lot in 2008, though I would not say it was a good year. In fact, let us be clear: 2008 was mostly pretty dreadful, but that's not to say I'd trade it in. I'm just trying very hard to remember that it was unfun and to take what lessons come from that, rather than getting sucked in by the revisionist synthetic happiness that my brain's now manufacturing. You know, it's hard to tell people 'oh yeah...Paris sucked'. Because more often than not you get the look that says 'Really? That doesn't sound right. Are you sure you weren't just doing it wrong?'. And then I feel like apologising for being a failed bohemian. Well, whatever, sometimes it's as hard to go against the grain as with it, and I'm fighting to hold onto what was real about 2008. 'Fighting to hold onto what was real...?'. My God. Did I just write that? I can be so pretentious sometimes. Anyway. What is my point? Hmmm. Despite 2008 being largely a sinkhole of blergh, I did achieve a lot and without resolutions. I moved overseas, lived in a city where I knew no-one, learnt another language to a practical standard, saw a fair bit of the world, worked out what I want to do with my life. So I guess I would count 2008 as an 87% successful year, even though I would probably give it a 20% on the happiness-o-meter. But that's ok. It's not all beer and skittles.

And now, despite being unemployed, single, poor and generally not having most of the tangible things I'd like, well, I'm a lot happier than I have been for years. I'm not putting the big stuff in my resolutions, because it'll either happen or it won't, and I doubt a January list is going to help it along. Beginning again is refreshing, but also a bit terrifying. It's nice to have a clean start, but there's not a lot to hide behind, so every knock-back is a bit of a blow to the old self-worth. I've got a couple of things in the pipelines, which is exciting, but generally I'm peeing my pants because if they don't work out it's not far back to square one. Lord I hope they work out. I hate square one. But it's only just February, and hopefully by 2010 I've got the big things sorted out - a job, a career, a home - and I'm still happy like I am now. I'm working on it but I don't think I can plan it. So I'll get back to you on all that next year.

And in the meantime, to keep me honest, here's (most of) my 2009 resolution list of the littler things:

1. Play music - find an orchestra, join a band...whatever. Don't let it slide more.
2. Watch 1 French film per week
3. Improve my skills in a visual art (perhaps take a drawing class?)
4. Become a morning person (get out of bed)
5. Get back to running - 5k before my birthday
6. Write one short story per month
7. Be more pro-active about being social
8. Learn to drive a manual car (REALLY this year)
9. More books/less screens
10. Continue to take photos as if i were not in my hometown
11. Continue to cultivate an independent sense of style (even though it's harder here)
12. Become a mostly-vegetarian
13. Strike 'should' from my vocabulary
14. Begin learning another language (Japanese?)
15. Limit my usage of the word 'awesome' to only those situations which truly warrant it.

Yeah, it's kind of a long list, and that random commenter from a few years ago would probably tell me I should cull it to something more manageable. But I'll be happy with a P1, and being at square one for now at least has the advantage that it will be easier to compare a few steps forward come 2010.

in need of some pithy motivational speaking.

2008-11-25T01:32:00.007-05:00

I've been putting off writing here for a while now - like so many things lately I just don't seem to be able to find the motivation. I lay everything out in baby steps ahead to make it easier for myself, but when you can't bring yourself to take step one, then it's a shaky ladder indeed you're building. In this case I've been planning to write a 'how I feel about being back' post to round off the travel writing, before writing anything else, and now it's been so long since I arrived I've forgotten my first impressions.

Let it suffice to say that I don't regret coming home. The orange blossom smells good, the coffee tastes good, and the sky is the right colour again. I have the strangest feeling here, like I'm the only one for whom this year has passed. It's as if the rest of the world works on Narnia time - 9 months living in Europe feels like I've missed a week here. I'm (mostly) glad for the time I spent overseas, and the things I did and saw, but it feels like I'm back where I'm meant to be, and it feels better.

This is not all I wanted to say on that, but now I am at least on rung one of my ladder.

===

I am giving a lot of thought at the moment to careers/directions/big-life-decisions etc. It's nice to be in a position to 'turn over a new leaf' so to speak, but I also wonder if this is the type of stuff better left to the subconscious, because all this time on my hands is doing my head in. (Clearly, otherwise I'd do something about the amount of cliches in this paragraph).

Meanwhile, I'm reading Michael Pollan 'The Omnivore's Dilemma' which is simultaneously a dry hard slog, and incredibly interesting and enlightening. I would recommend it, but probably with the proviso that you either have a lot of time on your hands or are happy to read it at the rate of a few pages a day. Or you have a more than passing interest in food and agriculture.

One of the things Pollan discusses is how (American) farming practices have changed to reflect the need for industrial efficiency over other criteria. Farms have changed from small affairs, cultivating a number of different crops and animals, to extremely large mono-cultures. The latter is more efficient at the most basic level - growing more per acre than the former and for less money. This is, until you factor in things like soil and animal health, nutrition, transport, subsidies, (oil-based) fertilisers, antibiotic resistance, environmental and public health, and global stability. The big-scale farmers themselves are less and less important or skilled, but on the other hand there are many more employment steps in the chain from production to plate. More diversified farms are arguably less 'efficient' as they require more initial manpower and cannot be replicated on a large scale, but because they require fewer inputs, and don't degrade the resources that they have (in fact quite the opposite) they are significantly more sustainable. In the sense that they're not doomed to collapse.

Traditional investment logic would tell you the same thing - diversify your investments and prosper in the long term. Stick to just one thing and you're in a precarious position.

It's a pretty universally applicable concept: 'Don't put all your eggs in one basket'.

So why is it that at an individual commercial level we feel the need to do exactly that? We go to work, we do something very specialised, most of us don't enjoy it very much, and we look forward to going home at the end of the day and doing something else. Industry decrees that, as a whole, the system is more efficient by assigning one task to one person, one cog for one job. In theory by becoming extremely good at that one thing, we are more efficient. But does it really work like that? Most people waste a lot of time at work distracting themselves in an attempt to force variety into their day. At a macro-level it's a well oiled machine but at a micro-level in reality we're checking our email 15 times an hour and playing typeracer. And how exactly does that translate to productivity on a macro level really? Or does it only work because of all of the things we can't or don't count?

We've come to believe that if we're dissatisfied with doing just one narrow task, it's simply because we have not found the right narrow task: our 'passion'. That once you find it you will be completely fulfilled doing nothing else for 80 hours a week. But is that really true? I don't know so many people who live like that. Most (educated, happy) people I know find their jobs satisfying-on-balance at best. Those who do love their jobs seem to do so because they have personalities inclined to focus on the good elements in their lives, or because they're fortunate enough to have a challenging and varied role, rather than because they are the lucky few who've found their calling. I've no doubt that there are some people who live the dream - they keep the myth alive after all - but I imagine that they are the minority. Most people seem to get by with a balance of liking elements of their job, and recognising it as a means to an end.

I spent at least ten years of my life working towards a career in one of the most highly trained and specialised fields around. If I hadn't changed direction, it probably would've taken me another five years of hard work before I actually had a chance at a stable job, if I ever got hired at all. And this in a field noted for its 'passion' but nevertheless ranked 2nd highest (after flight-traffic controllers) for stress, and lower than prison guards for job satisfaction. What was I thinking? And why do I still feel like a failure for walking away?

Okay, some jobs require specialisation simply because it takes a long time to become very skilled at something very necessary. I'm pretty happy that my anaesthetist took 12 years training to be really good at his craft, and it would be a bit of a waste having him spend 25% of his time sending patients off on the Good Ship Lollipop, and 75% of his time doing random other stuff. But not many jobs require such high levels of training, and nor, would it seem, do many people have the capacity to achieve them.

I don't think we were built to live like this. We've evolved the way we are because to our genetically-identical ancestors, being good at a number of tasks was an advantage. Those who had the ability and inclination to do a number of things (hunting, gathering, building fires, behaving socially, creating tools etc) had a distinct advantage over those who were really good at say, 'information architecture' (what even IS that?) but not much else. Oh hello Mr Sabre-Tooth Tiger, I'm just integrating your database with...*chomp*. Is it any wonder we don't enjoy working like this?

So why is it that we each accept the premise of industrial productivity over individual gumption, whereby faulty number-crunching translates to overall efficiency and high salaries at the expense of job satisfaction? Capitalism only measures currency, not happiness, and it delights in large-scale measurable systems. To get us on side, it sells us the dream of finding vocational bliss by marrying skill and passion. If you're doing it right your mistress will be a hefty salary. That's fine, and if you've managed to achieve it I applaud you, but what if you don't like your job? You'll think it's because you're in the wrong field, not because you're a rounded person being squished into a small square cubicle.

And where does that leave me on my job quest? Do I only feel like this because I'm Gen Why (or whatever the flip they're calling us these days) and my attention span has allegedly been ruined by computer games? I'd like to spend my working time enjoyably and efficiently - I don't want to waste my time any more than my employer does, and I think for me, like most people, that means doing a variety of meaningful tasks. And hey, I'd like to be paid a reasonable sum for doing my job well, because I've swallowed the rest of the dream at least; I'd like a house and a garden please, and I wouldn't mind an iPhone either, while you're at it.

But that's not the name of the game: it's employability vs balance, and as I read the job ads, I find myself continually berated for being well-rounded. 'A jack of all trades and master of none' - that's me. Except it's actually more like 'pretty good at many things, intelligent, reliable, helpful, practical, adaptible and with decent packaging, but not extremely specialised' which apparently is not so a much selling point for potential employees as it is for, say, Swiss army knives.

So here's my real question: what happened to the dream of the Renaissance (wo)man?

compiling her favourite photos.

2008-10-15T09:47:00.002-04:00

considering herself, at home.

2008-10-14T04:07:00.023-04:00

Ah, London. I worked out that in the end I've spent almost a month in London this year: enough for it to feel familiar, enough to feel almost-at-home, like a visitor not a tourist. Still, becuase I've got a pattern going here, more dot-points (sorry Kate) and then finally some words about this city. K? K.

Thursday: to London. Yo! Sushi @ Paddington station. Went to Oxford St, fought with the Apple people again, Primark, the Gap. Collected the rest of my luggage.
Friday: Boden shop morning, Jermyn st (tie). Helped Nhan to the airport with her luggage (novel to be on the other side), Mozart's Requiem at St Martin in the Fields.
Saturday: Flamingos 6 floors up, Kensington High St, Hyde Park (Albert Memorial, Diana Memorial, kids soccer), Harrods (madness and the Laduree for one final macaron), the British Museum (saw the Rosetta Stone, gave up on the crazy crowds in exchange for truffle cake), the Mousetrap, Avenue Q (most excellent, a real highlight!).
Sunday: Windsor Castle (better than Buckingham or Versailles, collections like a storybook), coffee w Sarah.

London is an interesting place and I'm not sure I can express my feelings about it properly to anyone but myself. One of my friend's uncle's lived there for 20 years, and he says that the only people who lived in London are the exceptionally rich, those who grew up there and have never known anything different, and foreigners who're still starry eyed and haven't figured that you can have a nicer quality of life by commuting. That seems a fair enough summary to me: there're bogans (chavs?) here when in Paris they'd be relegated to the suburbs, yet a good standard of living is incredibly expensive , and there are more Australians than in Hobart. Which all makes for a rather odd experience really: it's a huge city so there are always things to amaze; you never really feel like a foreigner, but never really fit in either. Constantly in London I felt torn between different parts of the world, and different parts of myself.

The thing I liked most about London is how much of everything felt so familiar even whilst it was brand new to me. So much of our culture is based on the British, and so much of the British is based on the capital... Tube stops ring bells for Australian suburbs, familiar words like 'ta' and 'bloody' are used here easily though they cannot be in America or Europe, street names recall nursery rhymes, the architecture screams of a certain ABC cop show...

What I gleaned most from London, however, was an understanding of why English people are as they are. Or maybe it's the other way around. English people are a bit dowdy, glum, and deadpan. A M&S sandwich represents a gourmet lunch (actually, they are quite good). There's a murder in London almost every day. The landscape reflects all this: it's grey, a bit grubby and it rains, rains, rains. But despite all this, there are wonders everywhere. Perhaps not around every corner - it's too big for that, but this city has nourished the English language's best writer, it has built (and, ahem, pillaged for) the world's greatest museum, its tube carries a billion passengers a year. London is quite literally, the centre of the world, yet somehow, like the people, this giant city just keeps calm and carries on, but always with a twinkle in its eye.

Bath-ing.

2008-10-14T02:48:00.009-04:00

Here I am again: I find myself in an odd position - I miss the regular writing, but haven't been feeling like finishing off the last few trip entries as something about being at here has blanked out my memory for anything other than being home and content at last. So I'm in the position of wanting to write, but not being able to write because I don't want to write. Stooopid.

Anyway, I'm getting fed up with all the procrastinating, so here we go:

We visited Bath for a couple of days, before the final mad london-home dash. The day we arrived it was raining and horrible. We went for a quick walk before the weather finally got the best of us in the form of a very spectacular umbrella inside-outage. It was one of those giant non-collapsible golf umbrellas and it went WOOMPF and the fabric even ripped from the metal. I must say, for all that it sort of ruins the function of the umbrella, I kind of like it when that happens. You'll be trudging along feeling wet and cold and grumpy, and then all of a sudden there's nothing to do but see yourself as motorists must and have a little giggle. On this occassion we therefore abandoned the tourism and had a long warm dinner at a resto called The Circus.

Wednesday was yet another exercise in fitting as much in as possible to one day. We went to Bath Abbey which was quite pretty, but the thing I liked most about it were all the dedications to people all over the walls and floor. Entire flagstones were taken up by small font accounts of departed people's lives and personalities. It's a shame we've lost that and it has all been boiled down to the impersonal 'First Name, Last Name, RIP, Sadly Missed'. I'd like someone to write something long and poetic and insightful for me and the wind...

We went to the Roman Baths which were kind of underwhelming. The old baths themselves were nice, but the whole thing has been turned into a big museum about it all which I found massively DULL, unfortunately. The funnest thing was tasting the water in the Pump House afterwards, which fyi, is really impressively gross. No more whinging about Adelaide water. The funnIest thing were the signs impressing that the untreated water is dangerous to ingest and even to touch. I wonder if it was always so...I therefore wonder where the health benefits come in...

In the afternoon we hired a car (oooh how powsh dahlink, except it was actually only about two coffees more than joining a bus tour, with more flexibility and fewer socks and birkenstocks). We went to Stonehenge, which was really cool for about 5 minutes, before the cutting wind got to us. I think it would be more worth the visit if it was less of a trek, as it's pretty much how you imagine it. Although it's in a big field filled with sheep which is kind of amusing.

On the way back, we headed for the little village where my mum's family hails from. It turned out to be a REALLY little village (2001 pop: 45) - ie. if you weren't looking for it, you'd probably assume it was a large farm on the side of an 80km/h road hidden by a hedge. It had a letterbox and that's about it. Unfortunately we couldn't really see much, as there was only one access road, and it had a big sign saying 'private driveway'. Still, it was nice to go there, to take my molecules where they haven't been for a few hundred years, and the surrounding countryside and larger villages are ridiculously pretty. We headed back to Bath and had a very standard I-talian dinner.

Enfin, Bath is a really sweet part of the world, but is also sort of exactly how you'd picture it. Thus is is pleasant, but there are no real novelties or surprises. The best bit about this trip though, was that I found some boots. Ok, they aren't quite the magical boots of my dreams, but after 10 years of searching they were close enough to actually make a purchase which is really something. Brown soft leather, round-ish toes, some heel, well-shaped/non-cankle making, appropriate for office or eveningwear, no ugly seams in ugly places, not too cowboy/horseriding/femme fatale/biker/spaceman. Re-sult.

Amsterdamned.

2008-09-30T16:15:00.007-04:00

Sometimes, things are better in theory than in practice.

Take for one, liberalism. In theory, I wholeheartedly support the idea. However, in practice, sometimes, the results are less than pretty. And that is all I have to say on that.

Take for two, our hotel. In theory it was uber-funky, modern and efficient. In practice it was gimmicky, annoying and uncomfortable. And that is all I have to say on that.

So Amsterdam took a little while to grow on me, but grow on me it did. On the first afternoon we went for a random wander with our little time, found the tourist-y areas (and as you imagine this ponder for a moment on the kind of tourism Amsterdam that attracts) and didn't like it very much. The one nice thing that we did see was the Bagijnhof, a serene little complex of old churches, houses and gardens, entered by a secret door.

The next day we got an early start after hardly any sleep (see theory vs practice). We jumped on a bus (which ended up being two busses, and join me, will you? in thanking the standard international deity that ALL of the Dutch, including the busdrivers, speak excellent English) to get to the Aalsmeer flower market, the largest flower auction/distribution houses in the world. The getting there was fun, as we drove through some cute suburbs, with sweet Dutch houses with colourful gardens, and driveway bridges over the canals between the footpath and the roads. The market itself was amazing with huge warehouses full of pallets and palets of flowers, all being hooked together and pulled this way and that by little men on industrial segway-like vehicles. The warehouses were so big that bikes were provided for workers who needed to get from one side to the other! The auction rooms (12 in total) were like large lecture theatres, full of buyers on laptops all focussing intently on the product being wheeled in front of them and the screens displaying the changing price. It was all very cool to watch; however, considering how much effort has gone into making the place tourist-able (purpose-built special walkways around the factory), I think they could really do a much better job, for very little more effort.

After this we headed into Amsterdam itself and went on a New Europe walking tour of the city. This, as always, was fabulous and really gave us lots of insights into the city, both as it is now and in a historical context. It presented the more controversial aspects of the city in an interesting and non-threatening way, as well as introducing the gentler and often more hidden side of the city. By the end I had totally warmed to the city, the gorgeous canals, the live-and-let-live character of the people, the crazy tilting houses (built on an angle to make it easier to get stuff through the higher windows), the polyphonic church bells, the lovely boutique shops (very welcome after city after city of chain stores), and the lilting language, which sounds like a cross between English and German, as pronounced by the Swedish chef. The only thing I didn't like in the end was the cyclists, who are totally, completely, utterly mad. They ride on the bike paths, the streets, the footpaths, the right way, the wrong way, through red lights, at pedestrians.

After the tour, we went to Pancakes! to have, you guessed it...no, wait....poffertjes! (Teeny pancakes!). Then on to Metz & Co, a super fancy department store with a cafe on the top floor serving average coffee, made worthwhile for the spectacular view of the city. We then aimed to fit in a museum before the evening, but didn't quite make it.

During the tour we were taken to La Place: Marche du Monde for lunch - a giant marketplace-like hall with any type of food you could imagine, from sandwiches to salads to soups to steaks to smoothies. You just pick up what you want, take it to the cashier and then sit down and eat it. The food so was delicious, healthy and cheap, that we went back for dinner.

And that was it for Amsterdam. Short, and sweet. (Except for the hotel, which was awful).

ambivalent.

2008-09-28T14:33:00.011-04:00

I was kind of under and overwhelmed by Prague all at once. A lot of it was more beautiful than any other city I've visited - there are so many amazing buildings all packed into one tiny space. There were some pleasant surprises too; it is, for example, one of the cleaner European cities I've visited. But for all of this, I was hoping for something more, something a bit different than everywhere else, perhaps something a bit more... eastern... which I just didn't find. The Czech Republic seems to have modernised very quickly since the Iron Curtain lifted, and although I know I would've found it hard to deal with if it had been gritty and confronting, somehow it just felt unfortunately like more of the same (only surprisingly more expensive). (Which just goes to show how spoiled I am becoming, and I am sure I will eat my words when I am home, and every city no longer has a handful of cathedrals from the middle ages.)

On the plus side, we were staying in a wicked cool hotel, although possibly this added to my malaise - quite honestly I would've been happy to lounge around in there all day every day. It was brand new, but fitted out like the dream of the 60s, with both new and vintage furniture. They also had delicious breakfasts and afternoon teas, and a big big bath. Which is, when it comes down to it, really all I want from life: food and soaking.

We didn't manage to pack a lot in to the 4.5 days that we were there. Perhaps we needed a break, or perhaps we just didn't manage to get inspired by the city quickly enough...

On our first day we did a bit of aimless wandering, and had an average dinner in a fancy art deco restaurant. The next day it rained a lot, but we did a 'free' (suggested tip of AUD$20 per person) walking tour of the left bank of the city, including the old town square, the Charles Bridge, the pee-men, the Lennon wall and the castle complex, among other things. We also saw the 'pee-men' a totally bizarre sculpture of two men peeing onto a map of the Czech Republic. You can sms your name and the pee-men will pee it. So maybe not entirely more of the same...

The following day we did the 'free' tour's other leg: the right bank, where we saw the astronomical clock, the hall where Mozart premiered Don Giovanni, the 'New' Town, Wenceslaus Square, Jan Huss' statue, Kafka's house, and the Jewish ghetto, plus a bunch of other things I have already forgotten. We also went to a crazy shopping mall becuase I'd decided to use the delightful hotel bath to finally try out some Lush products, and we discovered why Prague is such an expensive city. Apparently since the fall of Communism the Czechs have been shopping mad (like, REALLY mad) and there are gigantic Marion-like malls dotted all around the city. Totally bizarre.

On Friday we saw the astronomical clock chime, had a long and seriously delicious veggie lunch at Lehka Hlava (I even had birch sap to drink. Apparently now I will never get kidney or liver disease. Al-right.) In the evening we went to see the Czech Philharmonic play at the Rudolfinium. This orchestra is apparently the 9th best in Europe (although I don't know where they get rankings like that from) and I recognised two of the basoonists names (Frantisek Hermann and Jiri Seidl for any other nerds out there) which is kind of nothing short of amazing. Well, anyway, again, I was slightly underwhelmed. I'd be willing to put it down to perhaps we had bad seats and the acoustics weren't amazing, but they sounded a little wolfish and just somewhat less than perfection (bearing in mind, still 9th best...). Although full marks to the brass, and the silky brilliant solo trum peter.

On the way back from the concert we came across a man on the Charles Bridge playing the New World Symphony on glasses played with water. That was, for better or worse, a more magical experience than the orchestra. Even though techically it's not even the same universe let alone ballpark, this guy was playing the glasses like I would never have imagined, and also putting his heart and soul into it...I was spellbound...until he finished and started playing the theme from Titanic. Well, I guess you gotta please the crowds when you're playing for tips...

On our last day we crammed a few things in that we'd missed earlier: we went to the musical instrument museum which I'd really recommend to any musicians visiting Prague (if only for the white baby grand with disco-mirror tiles). We saw (half of) the Lebkovitz Palace - the former home of a Bohemian prince, restored with all its contents to its family after the Velvet Revolution. It's a simple museum but they have some incredible treasures - like the original hand-written orchestral parts for Beethoven's 4th and 5th symphonies. Butter my bum and call me a biscuit - I did not expect that when I walked in the door! We also had a bit of a poke around the rest of the castle grounds and visited St Vitus' cathedral (which has some beautiful newer stained glass windows) and saw the changing of the guards ceremony. It was all pretty fun, and really enlightened me to how ridiculously old Prague is (the area has been settled since the paleolithic age).

Now we're in Amsterdam - reached by sleeper train direct from Prague, via Germany. I'm not sure mum totally enjoyed the experience, but I had a ball, although not a ball I'd care to repeat in a hurry. Something about sleeping in a moving vehicle, watching all the towns go by and the landscape change, having a nice young man bring me cups of tea and make my chair into a bed, seeing the lovely formulaic German train stations again, all really appealed to me.

tasting Czech chocolate.

2008-09-28T11:00:00.000-04:00

Kofila: Chocolate filled with coffee ganache, but in a cheap kind of way...

Flint: unexpectedly like a slightly nicer Bounty

Lentilky: Czech smarties!

Fidorka: choc/hazlenut wafer.

Margot: chocolate covered milky-way consistency marzipan. Grossness incarnate.

Not pictured: bratwurst flavoured chips. Nice one!

Not pictured: Becherovka - a Czech herbal liquor. As yet untasted.

Not pictured: Pilsener Urquell - the first light coloured beer ever brewed. Bitterer than you'd expect and not so nice, really...

Not pictured: Nogger - the Czech golden gaytime! I wonder what it means...

coaxed into liking Italy after all.

2008-09-23T16:53:00.010-04:00

To steal a Chandler-ism, could Padua BE any different to Venice? There's none of the big famous stuff to see, it's not on the water, it's not 95% beautiful. However, there are also less than a billion tourists, it doesn't smell, the shops sell stuff not rubbish, the food is good, and wait for it, people are actually NICE.

Case in point, the nicest person we came across on our last day in Venice was a lady working at the train station. We actually commented on how nice she was, and she earned this praise by the lofty acts of saying 'thankyou' after we handed over our money, and by smiling professionally as she did it. No more. By contrast, the nicest guy in Padua gave us free plums becuase we only wanted to buy two, not a whole bucket. The rudest person we met in Venice on our last day there bordered on aggression, all becuase I dared to ask if I could exchange a pair of gloves for a more expensive pair. By contrast the rudest person we met in Padua...well...I can't remember one.

Padua is an old city, and it certainly has its pretty bits, but I would not hurry there. However, my top tip for visiting Venice now is to stay in Padua. Sure it'd be cool to wake up next to a canal, but staying in Padua would be a lot cheaper and a LOT pleasanter, and in our case we were staying on the mainland anyway as we literally couldn't find a hotel room actually in Venice proper. The train to Venice from Padua is 20 minutes and they go about every half an hour. It's not rocket surgery, folks.

Anyway, we just visited for the day to get out of horrible Venice. We were deciding between Padua and Verona and in the end chose the former, even though Verona was probably cooler, becuase Padua is closer to Venice, and we figured it would be less touristy which was why we were getting out of Venice in the first place. Heavens to betsy that was a horrible sentence. Sorry. I'm not fixing it though since I've already written it and you've already read it.

We headed straight past Giotto's frescoes (which are apparently the main reason people visit Padua) although we did (literally) stick our heads through the door of the church with the less interesting ones. (The more interesting ones involve a 4 hour wait and an airlock.) We wandered past the old Roman amphitheatre and found ourselves in the city, where a bunch of just graduated medical students were playing the fool.

Padua has some amazing fruit markets which we explored a little, and then headed for lunch in a place the Loney Planet suggested (hurrah!) which had a really delicious bean/pasta soup which I'm going to look up in the big Italian nanna cookbook when I get home. We did a little window shopping and wandered past the Basilica of St Anthony and tried to find the Donatello statue of a cat which proved difficult as it turned out to be a statue of a man on a horse with a name resembling the Italian word for cat. Der. It was nice but very high up and it was a bit sunny to look at properly. We did however find the Piazza in Padua which is the largest in all of Italy - it was really beautiful, with a dual circumference of statues, a moat around the outside and a fountain on the inside. I would've gladly spent the afternoon napping on the lawn there but Ma was not up for that idea unfortunately, and oddly there are no cafes on the square which perhaps I could have coaxed her into. On we went to the botanical gardens which are the oldest in teh world. Unsurprisingly then, they are quite small but laid out really interestingly, having grown from a very formal medical garden. They have a giant palm tree that dates from 1585(!) which inspired Goethe to a poem. After this, we had a little more Grom gelato, thought about braving the post office but decided not to when we saw the line, and then headed back to the train for Venice.

All in all it was one of the underwhelming days that funnily enough seem to be exceedingly the most enjoyable.

overwhelmingly underwhelmed.

2008-09-21T16:15:00.008-04:00

First impression of Venice? It stinks like the sewage they pour into the canals. After 3 days my impression has softened a little to concede that in parts it is quite pretty, but it is still not going down as the highlight of this trip.

The first day went awfully - everything that could've gone wrong did (with the possibly exeption that I didn't die of a stroke on the plane like I thought I would). The short story: 2 hours in the airport trying to get on the bus which we were overcharged for and yelled at about, mum nearly got locked in the luggage compartment under the bus, the toilet in the B&B overflowed, on our hostesses' advice we got stuck in tourist hell for a few hours, on the way home we got really lost from the bus and ended up stranded in the dark in a carpark on the side of a highway. Yes, that is the short version. Venetians are the rudest people I've ever come across, and I can literally count the number of people who've so much as smiled at us on one hand. They range from agressive (the really bad) to just plain sullen (the relatively good). To top it all off my camera has fully packed up and (all of a sudden) refuses to even turn on. I think maybe it's just Venice working its magic. Now I am using mum's for the rest of the trip, and all my photos are turning out grey and out of focus. Urgh.

Yesterday we got out of Venice proper after not enjoying our first day's taste of it. We visited the island of Murano which was basically the same only a bit better because it was less completely overrun by tourists. We had a nice lunch in the sun on the canalside, wandered through the pretty backstreets a little, and after seeing approximatly eleventy billion shops full of tack, managed to find some nice locally made perfume bottles.

Somewhere in there we also caught the waterbus around the grand canal at sunset which was admittedly rather magical, although somewhat marred by the old English lady who kept elbowing me in the head.

Today we tackled Venice again, but this time wandered around the further edges where everything was less touristy. (Notice I say 'less'. It's still mega-touristy, just not Christmas-eve-in-Rundle-Mall INSANE like the middle). We had a few points of reference to visit (a gelati shop, a glove shop, a bead shop, the shipyards) of which we managed to find two, although we didn't really get that lost, I maintain it was more that things weren't where they were supposed to be. Have I mentioned the complete rabbit warren that this place is? It's nutso, half the streets don't have names just numbers and I don't even know how the posties do it. The gelati shop was very nice, but no better than Cibo, and I did buy some extremely lovely soft leather gloves. We also had a super delicious lunch (even after our hostess helpfully told us 'there are no nice places to eat in Venice') - I had black pasta with prawns and roasted tomatoes with a rocket/garlic/oil sauce. Nom nom nom.

Actually this trip is making me realise exactly how influenced Australia is by Italian culture. In some ways I feel more at home here than I have anywhere else because so much feels familiar, and I also think that the migrants must've brought the best of their culture with them (and left the tools at home), becuase every lovely thing I've had has been comparable to the best I've had at home. I am talking about food here again, of course...

There are pretty parts of Venice - it is admittedly awesomely cool being in a city with water instead of roads, and no cars at all, and many of the buildings and views are ridiculously sweet, with the candystriped pole boat parking bays, the painted walls, and the rooftop gardens. However, it's dirty, stinky and the people are totally repulsive. The hidden corners are lovely, and I'm glad I've seen it, but on balance I'm not sure the visit is worth the grief.

Tomorrow we're getting out and going on a day trip - maybe to Padua. Hopefully that will be better.

ready to go back to Lisbon already...

2008-09-19T17:53:00.011-04:00

Day 1:
This afternoon I had my shoes shone. (Shined?). Mum's been on at me to do it since she arrived, since my beautiful brown leather shoes are looking a bit scruffy, after 8 months of travelling-walking. I've been resisting, partly I suspect, out of sheer stubbornness, and as a throwback to the only kind of teenage rebellion I have ever really exhibited (can I hear a 'get a haircut' please?). But I think it's been mainly because there's a sort of pride to be taken in scruffy shoes, shoes that have obviously seen a lot of road, shoes that could tell a few stories if they had the talking kind of tongues, and I was loath to erase that, in the same way that an oenologist wouldn't dream of dusting his collection. Also, I'm a bit pedantic about my shoes, and I'd rather they got a bit scuffed, than treated with some shiny-making, nice-smelling, leather-killing chemical concoction.

But wandering through the city on our first afternoon here we came across an abandoned stool and brushes on the footpath, and at the same time I tried to surreptitiously take a picture of the open bar in the traffic island with a few old men standing around having a late afternoon beverage. I guess I wasn't that subtle, because one of them wandered over and somehow I was having my shoes cleaned. He spoke no English (although I suspect he understood a fair bit), but somewhere in the long-jump pit between that and my complete lack of Portuguese we understood each other.

'Can I take your picture while you're shining my shoes please?'
'No, you'll have to wait 5 minutes - I don't want you taking my picture while your shoes like this, I take pride in my work!'
'Um...fair enough...giggle...'.

It was definitely the best E2.50 I've spent all year, and not just because my shoes are looking better now than they did when they were new. This old man put on a great show - not a spectacle mind you - but he knew what he was doing, and did it well, cigarette firmly wedged in his shoe brush, at least when it wasn't in his mouth. I suspect he's not the most interesting guy in Europe, and certainly not the most beautiful, but (without being a complete middle-class twit, glorifying the working man blah blah) somehow he had more charm than almost anyone I've come across this year.

Why am I telling such a long story? Well, it's a metaphor for how I'm feeling about Lisbon right now. It's a pretty grubby city, and could use a serious bit of spit and polish itself, but somehow I like it here, I really really like it here. The weather's good, but not annoyingly straight-white-teeth, blonde hair perfect, and the people have been bend-over-backwards friendly, whether or not we speak the same language: our neighbour on the plane gave us a list of tips for things to see in Lisbon and made sure we got a good deal on a taxi; the taxi driver from the airport explained (in French) all the sights to us as we went past; the hotel receptionist suggested an itinerary for our few days here; the cafe waiter cracked a joke about how well we communicated despite the fact that I was forced to order in Portuguese (a language I literally speak 2 words of - the obligatory 'hello' and 'thankyou') because he spoke nothing but the native language; the Brazilian dinner waiter gave me his email address in case I ever visited his country and needed any tips. Jolly submarine yellow seems to be the colour of choice here, for everything from tablecloths to trams, and the tiling on all of the footpaths and some of the buildings makes me imagine the Moors who colonised this whole peninsula over a thousand years ago. The policemen drive around on glorified golf buggies and segways. Oh, and this is the home of the custard tart. What more could you ask?

Day 2:
Today didn't quite live up to day 1, but I suppose the wide-eyes couldn't last that long. This city built on 7 hills is gritty, and I have to keep reminding myself that the graffiti and grime, the people lolling about in the streets don't indicate dodginess like they would at home: Portugal has the lowest GDP per capita in western europe, but it's about 20 places ahead of Australia in the peacefulness stakes. Mum mentioned over coffee that she's been as relaxed here as she's gotten since leaving home - I think this is Lisbon. It's not very shiny, and there's no big 'must-see' destinations, but the people move more slowly, and there's more time to savour the sun and the matching yellow scenery.

This morning we hiked up to the Castelo de Sao Jorge - the old castle which dates from 6bc. It was a lovely tranquil spot, but I kept waiting for an actual building, rather than open ruins. Cue Tony Roinson. We wandered down through the muddled streets Alfama, historically the muslim area, and came across the starkly beautiful catholic cathedral halfway down. We wandered through to the Bairro Alto for a moroccan dinner and left rather quickly - I think it's the Hindley St of Lisbon, with all of the coolest shops, restaurants and bars, but with the same confronting first appearances. I suspect we won't go back, although I will always wonder what we might've missed.

The Portuguese language is still rolling around in my mouth and my head - it sounds nothing like I thought it did, but almost like Russian, and I can't understand the sounds of it beyond the numbers, although much of it looks familiar. It sounds less like Spanish than I expected, and in fact our crazy taxi driver told me 'the one thing you must know in Portugal - you must not mention the Spaniards!'. We haven't had any trouble getting around, and almost everyone speaks English, and of those who don't, a majority surprisingly speak French. Despite this, it grates that I am forced to follow 'olá' with '...um...do you speak English?'. I've been spoilt in Britain and France, and even Germany to a lesser extent; I utterly hate the feeling of being in a country where I speak and understand absolutely none of the language - I feel impolite, like a bad houseguest. Everyone, however, has been unfailingly friendly about it, and those who can't speak English just smile and nod at my awful attempts at menu pronounciation. Even that seems the way of life here: smile and nod and continue on with your day.

2nd and last day in Lisbon:
Right now I am in Venice and I have had the WORST day (good luck getting an Italian person to so much as smile at you!) so unfortunatley i'm not in a good writing mood, which is a shame because this lisbon post was going pretty well. But i've been so slack about these updates and i'm so behind that i thought it better to just get moving and finish it off.

So.

We navigated the post office, had lunch in a horrible tourist cafe, but made the most of it by ordereing the most random thing on the menu which was actually not bad - a banana and cheese toastie. We made a trip out to Belem and had the famous pasteis de belem - the portuguese custard tarts. These were incredibly and actually way better than at home, though essentially the same thing. The pastry was so flaky - almost like croissant pastry and almost burnt at the bottom making it all tasty-like. The custard was just set and still warm and you get little packs of sugar and cinnamon to sprinkle on top. So so yum. We bought 2 and then went back and joined the giant line for 6 more, they were so delicious. Whilst out there we also saw the monstery of jeronimos which was really lovely, and also had this great big timeline of the history of the monastery (over 600 years from memory) with another line showing the conurrent events in portugal and another with world events. It really taught me a lot about portuguese and world history in a very short time.

After heading back from Belem we went on a mad shopping trip to pick up a few things - i bougth a filigree peacock brooch which seems to be the thing to buy in portugal and up to this crazy shop we'd spotted earlier selling aprons. It was like something straight out of the 50s - kind of women's home goods, from babies clothes to deoderant to washing powder, and they had these awesome old cross over apron/pinnafore things like my mum's nanna (apparently) used to wear, and iv'e basically only seen on the crazy old italian ladies in my street (i think). Anyway i fully wanted one, and it was quite an experience finding the right size becuase the guy running the shop didnt speak anything but portuguese, but like everyone else in lisbon was so super friendly and between his portuguese and my franglais and a heap of smiling and laughing nodding and hand gestures and guessing we walked out with a couple of nanna aprons. What a souvenier! Then we went up the crazy lift from 1906 that lets you see over the city and had dinner where I *encouraged* mum to have the sardines which she enjoyed eating and i enjoyed watching because they had bones and heads.

Anyway, in conclusion Lisbon was excellent. I liked it as a city, but for me more importantly it really reinforced that all the cool attractions in the world are less important than friendly happy people, a lesson i'm unfortunately re-learning from the other angle here in Venice. Ah well, easy-come, easy-go...

(PS. sorry about my horrible spelling, punctuation etc etc blah. I amm very tired).

enjoying being a tourist more than a local.

2008-09-15T17:02:00.008-04:00

What do I have to say about Paris that hasn't been said before? Well, probably nothing that hasn't been said before by at least one other person, somewhere, somehow, but maybe I have something to say that at least hasn't been said by me.

I wasn't really looking forward to coming back to Paris given my negative experience living there, but I was happy to come back because I knew it was somewhere mum really wanted to see. What I certainly wasn't expecting was to actually find myself on arrival with a feeling of returning home. I actually felt like I was showing Mum around my hometown, which I suppose I was in a way, since it was the first place I was really forced to strike out on my own, and although I certainly don't know the place as well as i know, say, the Australian national anthem (ahem...), I got a real kick out of being able to navigate the metro effortlessly, being able to walk around at least certain areas without reference to a map, being able to point out monuments and places with certainty, and knowing where they lie in relation to the whole.

I also remembered how I used to eat there in courses - salad for dinner, and then 7 tiny desserts: cheese, yoghurt, fruit, mousse, chocolate. It sounds nuts, but it actually ends up being quite light and balanced as it's like an inverse pyramid.

It was also really gratifying to be in a country where I could communicate with everyone, and have a sense of achievement about it. I am really enthused now to go home and continue improving my French, as well as maybe to pick up another language or two, whereas when I left 'for good' I just felt burnt out and frustrated. This time I got a real sense of exactly how quickly my brain is taking in new information in that language now - would anyone like to know the word for 'waterproofing spray'? Anyone? I not only learnt it but also retained it.

I always said that Paris is a better place to visit than to live. I think I proved this true by having a much better time as a tourist than I ever did as a local. And in fact, the only horrible moments we experienced this time around were navigating 'living' issues rather than 'visiting' issues (hello, landlords!). And this time around I got to see almost all of the things I regret missing out on the first time - although of course in a city as big as Paris there's always more to see and do.

I left this time feeling that I'd actually benefitted from my time there, and although I don't feel the need to go again, if I do it'll be like visiting an old (if somewhat cantankerous) friend.

coping better now she has internet again.

2008-09-10T16:31:00.006-04:00

Right. So I've been internetless for the past couple of weeks, and before that I was very lazy about actually writing something about my sporadic 3 weeks in London/Oxford/Stratford/Paris. So in an attempt to catch myself up I'm listing everything that I can remember that I've done, and I'll actually write about it all hopefully at some point when I have time.

London:

When at Gus':

Portobello Road Markets
Walked through Hyde Park from Oxford St
Italian dinner with Gus

At Nhan's:

Chachamoon cheapo Asian dinner with Nhan & Sim, bar afterwards
Visit to Shoreditch for painting, magic sparkly cupcake
Day at Grenwich: through tunnel under the Thames, cool coffee shop/record shop, danced on the Meridian, John Harrison's Clock (tiny compared to earlier attempts - like a big fob watch), laksa in chinatown
Crazy broth making with Nhan
Walk with Emma through oxford circus, leicester square, the river, westminter abbey, coffee
Coffee with Sarah, visit to Harrods, laduree macarons and Maison du chocolat freebies, wandered kensington, asian dinner
Noel Coward show with jonny and emma ('brief encounter')
Indian dinner with Gus
Primark experience with Nhan
More broth with Nhan (sour cabbage soup), ice/coffee
Big day: Camden markets (gumboots), burrough markets (wild boar sausage sandwich, fancy coffee, lovely gelati [bergamot and something pink]), columbia road again, spittlefields markets (closed), bricklane for overpriced indian meal and desserts, Sim's house for sex & the city dvd with Jac.
Colunbia rd again - finally bought print. Peche mignon again (yum), notting hill with school friends - gail's for coffee and flocked wallpaper. Lamb shish kebab and delicious grilled haloumi for dinner, gok wam on telly
Walked from notting hill to nelson's column for dinner with emily from primary school - wahaca mehican, and south african cider
Merry Wives of Windsor, queeen's walk, big ben.

To Edinburgh (previously covered).

Back to London:

Catch up with school friends - more yummy mexican.
Tate Modern
Brunch with alice - fancy yummy
Catch up Sarah again

With mum

Peche mignon for lunch
Big walk: london bridge tube, burrough markets (closed), globe tickets, tate modern 5th floor iew, blackfriars bridge, st brides fleet st (publishing exhibition basement and roman walls), the strand (crazy monument with dragon, royal courts of justice, fancy bank), st pauls

To Oxford:

wandered around the high st
museum of natural history
lunch with J&E at the vault, & coffee at the place
history of science museum (eintein's blackboard)
magdalen college
exeter colege
beer at the tarp
dinner at the eagle and child

Daytrip to Stratford-upon-Avon:

coffee with sarah
holy trinity church (shakespeae'res burial)
river walk
lunch @ courtyard
shakespeare's birthplace house
more fancy cheese from the nice place
high street
new coat
drink at the dirty duck (actors' photos)

Back to Oxford:

Blackwells bookshop
Bodleian tour
Lunch J&E in covered markets (salad)
Coffee
Blenheim Palace (marlboroughs, spencer-churchills), fancy gardens

Back to London:

Tower of London (crown jewels, murdered princes)
Westminster Abbey service (Victoria piece)
South bank, dinner wagammama
Portobello Rd markets (shut), new shoes, notting hill
Globe - Merry wives again - got to stand in the middle
Nhan - chachamoon cheapo asian
Carnaby st, liberty shop, apple shop, dad's shoes
Kew Gardens
Buckinham palace tour, banquet setting, royal icecream
walk to big ben, downing st, nelson's column, whitehall, oxford st, new suitcase

To Paris:

Big walk around Marais, Notre Dame, the islands
Met Sasha: hotel de ville, pain au chocolat et banane, walk around islands (little pointy garden), falafel lunch, walk to les halles, st eustache, rue montorgeuil, past the louvre, up champs elysees, laduree macarons, past arc de triomph, through my old neighbourhood, strawberries, noisette, tube home. Picnic dinner with french 5 part dessert: 2 cheeses, bonne maman yoghurt, chestnut mousse, chocolate, nuts.
corned beef sandwiches from the place opposite L'as du falafel, bought magic shoes, did this massive walk from Sacre Coeur down to the Mosque for mint tea, via Montmartre, a lovely lolly shop, cute arcades (one just for old stamps and postcards), the Palais Royale gardens, the Louvre courtyard, the pont des ARts, the Institute Francaise, teh 6th, a 2nd century amphitheatre (with men playing boules).
Champs Elysees, dealt with bank (hurrah!), my old neighbourhood, went to resto on near Courcelles (good potato gratin), sat down for Marriage Freres cup of tea. I had white tea with agrumes in a pretty glass teapot and an extra pot for hot water. Went home early as I was coming down with a cold.
Louvre, then the Bon Marche, Mamie Gateau for cake and Cuisine de Bar for lunch. Still sick.
Went to Versailles - a billion tourists. Opulent inside, nicer gardesn. Quick trip to Musee d'Orsay.
Orangerie, Amorino gelati, Berthillon sorbet (2x), antique musical instruments shop (rue du pont louis-phillipe), Sainte-Chapelle, more falafel, Notre Dame treasury, picnic in Champs de Mars (proper champagne) and blue Eiffel tower.

Caught up. Sorry it's a bit pants. Something with actual content coming soon. I hope.

in a split-level city.

2008-08-28T12:55:00.013-04:00

The Rundown:
Thursday: Talk on genetic research
Friday: supermarket shopping, afternoon with E/J/G, David O'Doherty evening
Saturday: berry picking, Valvona & Crolla afternoon tea, picnic dinner, One From The Heart
Sunday: Adelaide breakfast, On the Waterfront, Adam Page Solo, Pig Island, crumble
Monday: Frank Woodley, trifle
Tuesday: climbed the Scott monument,
Wednesday: Walked the city: view from Calton Hill, Carlton Old Burial Ground, lunch at Peter's Yard, Greyfriar's Kirkyard, shopping on the West Bow/Victoria St/Cockburn St, throug the old town, fudge, Dunbar's Close garden, down the high street, the Heart of the Midlothian, St Giles Cathedral, outside of the castle, dinner with C&K

The Commentary:
Paul Simon sings that in South Africa he sees angels in the architecture: in Edinburgh I see skeletons. Not literally, but in the old, blackened stone buildings, you can see the bones holding them up. Despite this it feels like a strong place: I've never been somewhere where the city seems so violently forced upon the nature that surrounds it. If you look out from many places in the city, you look directly into wild forest, or the sea, or even craggy cliff faces. Despite its less refined character though, and the fact that it's summer but apparently no one remembered to tell the weather that, Edinburgh reminds me of Adelaide; it's small, easy to walk, there are lots of parks, the people are friendly, the food is good. And they also have a local beverage that outsells Coke. I like it here. The festival brings the city alive, but also crams it full of tourists.The men actually do wear kilts here as a regular wardrobe item: a flash of wind on the North Bridge reveals an old man's tightie whities. So I guess that answers the perennial question of what real Scotsmen wear under their Kilts. You heard it here first.

Trifle Recipe
With some of the horde from the berry picking, I made a trifle. Since we haven't had a recipe here for a long time, and since my friend the ex-professional (michelin star restaurant) pastry chef gave it the thumbs up (wooohoo!!! highlight of my year!!!), and since it seems to be different than the way other people do it (who knew?): here it is. Although it's not so much a recipe as fuzzy guidelines based on what my Nanna used to do...

Cake: I used a bought flan base. Something sweet and spongey should do the trick though. Put this in the bottom of a big glass bowl and soak with something sweet and alcoholic. I used a white dessert wine, and the syrup from the pears. Don't be stingy.

Custard: You could make your own, but I am very lazy and bought some. It was a good one though and had little vanilla seeds in it. Pour this over the cake.

Fruit: I skinned and sliced some pears and poached them with a little sugar, and also used freshly picked blackberries. Layer these over the custard.

Jelly: I used blackcurrant, but you basically want something red/purple/pink I think. Make it the day before and then break it up a bit and put it on top of the fruit.

Cream: Get some kind of whipable cream and whip it with a little sugar and vanilla essence. Don't whip it too much - you want stiff but maleable peaks, not total solidity. Put this over the jelly. Decorate with a bit more fruit.

And there you have it: not rocket surgery.

not really in a writing mood, but doing it anyway.

2008-08-07T06:41:00.010-04:00

One whirlwind week in Stratford-upon-Avon. (Despite the mouthful, one must distinguish [with hyphens] from plain old Stratford which is apparently a London tube stop).

My first day in town was spent recuperating from the long trip from Stockholm. Man, planes really suck. Even though you think it's quicker than, say, swimming, by the time you get to the train to get to the airport, get to the aiport, check in, wait around for a while, your plane is delayed, actually take the flight, get off the plane, get into the city, get out of the city again, it's been like 32 years and you realise you've just lost a lot of good-living years, but on the upside, totally skipped a couple of wars and a recession. ANYWAY. So on Thursday I was taken on a little walk around the city, stopped for a quick beer in the Dirty Duck, and tried to figure out how many of the actors on the walls we recognised. I was also introduced to a new (to me) English soap called Hollyoaks which has terrible plotlines but enjoyably cheerful cinematography. And ex-Bill actors.

On Friday we travelled out to a little town called Moreton-in-Marsh (Despite the mouthfull, English towns, like thesis titles, require punctuation) in the Cotswolds. This was really an exercise in 'sometimes the journey is the destination' as the long bus ride through beautiful landscape is the bit that I remember best. When we arrived we had lunch in a local pub where I introduced Sarah to cider (rather impressively since I'd never had it myself) and we found a delightful little gourmet shop where we stocked up on olives, unusual jams (apple & thyme, banoffee) and a smoked onion. Yes a smoked onion. And why not? Back in Stratford we visited Shakespeare's classroom, since it's fortunately summer holidays and they were using it for a public art exhibition (normally it's still a classroom). In the evening we went a-drinking at No. 1 Shakespeare and the Caz-bar for Adrienne's farewell.

Saturday started off with a trip to the farmers' markets right in the centre of the city, and we added smoked sliced meats, garden sweet tomatoes and bottles of sasparilla and dandelion & burdock. We also ducked into the (sublime) local cheese shop (Paxton & Whitfield) where I told the salesman that we wanted cheese for a picnic, anything good sir, I'm not picky, just sell me CHEESE and good cheese at that. He announced that this scenario was what made his job (nay, his life) worthwhile, and proceeded to charm us with his Jordy wit and stock us with delicious cheeses. Probably I should have married him right then and there, but fortunately, having missed my chance in Stratford (-upon-Avon), there is another branch in London. We sat at the top of a double decker bus to get out to our destination of Coughton Court, a strange experience as you can't see the driver and it feels like you're on an automatic bus, speeding along tiny rural laneways. The view is definitely better from the top though. We picnic-ed in the gorgeous grounds of Coughton Court, and then went for a walk through the 15th century, catholic stronghold tudor estate. In the evening we went to Kate's for dinner and had delicious marinaded veg wraps (which I am totally going to try to recreate at home) and (appropriately) watched 'Get Over It' - a film adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

On Monday I had my first toasted sandwich for months and months and (what with local tomatoes, real Red Leicester and lovely thick slices of christmas ham) it was almost a religious experience and I considered marrying it. In the afternoon we visited Hall's Croft which was the home of Shakespeare's son-in-law, a surgeon. We looked at some dresses in Aspire and had scones at the Crabtree & Evelyn cafe. In the evening we had Indian for dinner at Hussain's, and then I helped out being door-girl at the unofficial International Shakespeare Conference, organised by Gary Taylor who is apparently like, way famous, so I am unashamedly name-dropping even though I do not know enough about Shakespeare studies to know him from Horatio. Anyway, it was quite a good deal in the end, because I was saved from dancing and people brought me drinks.

Oh hallo! I skipped a whole day in there. Sunday comes after Saturday normally, right? Right. So Sunday we visited Anne Hathaway's house (as in, Shakespeare's wife, not the Hollywood actress named after her) at Shottery and had yet another lovely English lunch at The Bell, and more cider (raspberry & lime this time). We ganked some apples from Anne Hathaway's garden in preparation for a crumble and in the evening watched an Agatha Christie's 'Towards Zero' on telly.

So Tuesday now. We went blackberrying along the canal in Wilmcote and had lunch at the Mary Arden pub before visiting Mary Arden's house which is actually 2 houses. The first is the one they *thought* was Mary Arden's house up until 30 years ago or so, and the second is her actual house. WHOOPS. The former is done up like an Elizabethan farm, with animals and people walking around in costume and demonstations on things like shoemaking and cider pressing. The latter has been left as it was when the last occupant left in the 70s - although she had still been living as if it was still the early 20th century. No electricity - cooking over a fire, keeping foods in the cellar, clothes through a mangle. In the evening we made a crumble with the proceeds of the blackberrying and the filched Anne Hathaway apples and I went to see the Royal Shakespeare's Company's production of Hamlet. That was really excellent, and I'm sure an evening I'll remember, as it occurs I'm unlikely to see Shakespeare done better. David Tennant (Dr. Who) was playing the lead, and I recognised a lot of the other actors mostly from The Bill. Which just goes to show there is still value in it, if only becuase it's a good way of keeping up with the who's who of English theatre, as well as the stars of tomorrow. Uh-huh, it's totally justified now. Right.

Wednesday was heading off day, but we managed to squeeze in a visit to the local church (at the end of Sarah's street) where Mr. S is buried. It's actually quite a lovely church in and of itself and it was a nice visit.

My feelings about Stratford-upon-Avon are a bit mixed actually. It's a small place and I think in a week I probably got a pretty good feel for the place and saw most things. But I liked it so much, I'd love to go back someday, even though I'd be doing the same things over. I'm also glad I'm not a Shakespeare scholar (it seems a pretty obsessive lifestyle) but I am glad that I know as much as I do, becuase it made the things I saw really enjoyable. I feel like rural England would be a lovely place to live, because even if your town is very small, there's nice rambles to go on, and it's a small country so you're never a huge train ride from something exciting, but there's quiet to come home to.

But, now I'm in London.

at the end of the road.

2008-07-31T13:50:00.000-04:00

First impressions: jaywalking, cars that stop at zebra crossing, pedestrian crossing signals with sound effects, Volvo policecars, coffee with real milk, a language that sounds half German half Greek, a population with perfect (and I do mean perfect) English.

How to look Swedish and 18-25:
Step 1: Be young & hot, blonde, tanned and lithe.
Step 2: Have an attitue that of course you are fabulous, why would you even ask? And no, I don't try.
Step 3: Wear (super) short shorts, huge baggy tshirt, flat shoes (either basic black or white 1920s tennis shoes, roman sandals or 80s inspired hi-tops). You may substitute (super) tight jeans or a (super) short tight skirt.
Step 4: You must have floppy hair
Step 5: (Optional). Wear giant glasses. GIANT, preferably ugly glasses. Find some aviator-shape wire rimmed ones that your Dad wore in the early 80s.
Step 6: Aim for a look which is a mix of early 20th century fop, early 1980s punk, and trenchcoat wearing serial killer.
Step 7: Look vaguely ridiculous. It doesn't matter if you've sucessfuly completed Steps 1 & 2.

...and the rest.
I arrived on Sunday and on the plane sat next to a Queenslander living further north in Sweden. Funny how that happens. The girl on my other side offered me a ride to my hotel. I politely declined, remembering the rule about not accepting rides from strangers, but later regretted it, when the train from the airport to the train station cost $70 return.

My hotel room is in the basement which means I'm getting good quality sleep since I'm not being woken up by the light. When I arrived I was feeling nasty after having been in transit for 7 hours (only 1.5 of which was actually in the air...oh how I love flying). I discovered that the hotel has a gym, and decided that a run on the treadmill would make me feel better. Went for a run in jeans and socks, since I didn't bring any exercise gear. I did feel better, but the next day I felt worse. I definitely do not recommend using a treadmill with no shoes - it will bugger up your legs and feet good and proper.

On my first day proper I visited some beautiful markets and then went for a walk around the island which is the old part of town, 'Gamla Stan'. It was very pretty and quaint, and I had a coffee at a place where i sat beside some painfully cool locals. Although it took me about 15 minutes into their conversation to realise they were locals - they were speaking English so perfectly I only eventually figured it out by their too uniform television accents. I bought some green glass 70s teacups and tried some Daim icecream. Despite sunburn cream, I got vaguely burnt, something that hasn't happened for a while.

On day 2 I took a cruise around the archipelago in the morning. It was quite nice and relaxing, if a little cold. I didn't realise that Stockholm was built on a series of islands - you are literally never more than a few minutes walk to the sea. I went and had a delicious vegetarian smorgasbord lunch at a place called Herman's on the Sodermalm island, with a beautiful view of the 'city' island. I stayed on Sodermalm and went 'shopping' in the trendy district there (in quotation marks becuase I didn't actually buy anything). Saw lots of bright young things kitted out according to the instructions above. Got back to the hotel and worked out I walked over 15kms that day.

On day 3 I enjoyed a coffee by the water, until a (very) old Swedish man decided I looked in need of company and sat himself at my table. He was dressed according to the instructions above. (Ok, no, not really, but he was blonde and tanned, and definitely had step 2 down). Decided it was time to get moving for the day, so I went to the National museum and saw their design collection (they have my glasses!), the Wasa museum which is all about a 17th century warship that sank in the harbour and has been rediscovered, and the Skansen open air museum, which is like a Swedish Sovereign Hill. All were very cool.

As Nick said, Stockholm is very nice. It's clean and safe and everyone seems happy and relaxed. It's right on the water, and the weather was fortunately beautiful. There's lots of things to do, but if you're feeling lazy, there's also lots of nice spots to just stop and have a coffee.

And now: back to blighty.

doing the supermarket trip in Sveeden.

2008-07-28T13:56:00.008-04:00

From left, clockwise:
Sota; Salta; Plopp; Japp; Polly; Lakerol; Skotte; Brejk; Extra

Sota: 3 flavours of little bears (red, green & yellow), quite tasty but with a texture like old snakes - a bit too crumbly

Salta: Little licorice pellets in what is presumably a cat shape. Not as bad as most licorice.

Plopp: Interesting name. Caramel filled chocolate like a caramelo Koala in square form. Tastes very artificial though, and oddly like something you'd buy at the show.

Japp: Budget Mars bar

Polly: 'With a taste of chocolate, arrak, buttertoffee and vanilla'. Oh man, this one is nasty. It tastes like chocolate coated melting plastic. Apparently arrak is some kind of liqour - not one I want to try now.

Lakerol: Orange flavoured little lollies - like hard tiny wine gums. With real fruit juice! But sugar free, somehow...

Scotte: Chocolate bar with chocolate truffle filling and fruit & nuts. Quite nice but a bit sickly.

Brejk: chocolate, wafer, rice bubbles caramel. Not bad but not rocking my world either.

Extra: Extra seems to be doing a good job of making these drops in a 'local' flavour in every country I've been to. This is not my favourite. I suppose the licorice and rasberry flavours go together ok, but as someone who doesn't like licorice much, let alone artificial licorice flavoured things, this seems like a bit of a waste of good raspberry flavour. Nb. I also found cactus & raspberry, and pear later. The pear is amazing and I stocked up.

Jaffa drink: carbonated, tastes just like the OJ iceblocks you could get in the 80s.

Puck: Oh, these crazy Nords, everything in licorice. Who else would think to make a vanilla icecream, with gooey licorice blobs, covered in salty licorice flavoured chocolate? I should make it clear here that I usually don't like licorice much, although I do sometimes like aniseed flavoured things - fennel for example is one of my favourite veggies. So once I got past the weirdness of there being salty in my icecream, this was pretty good! I think this is one combo where the sweet/salty thing pays off - they kind of balance each other out, and it's quite refreshing.

I also tried pickled herring - well, I had to really, didn't I. It appeared at the breakfast buffet. The sharpness of the vinegar sets of the rotten fish flavour quite nicely actually - if you like the flavour of rotten fish. Which I happen not to. I had to quarantine the neighbouring scrambled egg in the end.

being rocked to her socks by Berlin.

2008-07-26T17:32:00.008-04:00

Made it out of Hamburg ok, and arrived in Berlin. Found my hotel - it was lovely, beautiful, amazing, wonderful. Funnily enough, staying in a place where I felt perfectly comfortable actually inspired me to get out more, so on my first day I found the motivation to go on a 3.5 hour walking tour of the city. It was pretty cool, we saw all the big stuff: the brandenburg gate, the tv tower, the wall, checkpoint charlie, the reichstag, the holocaust memorial, the spot where Hitler commited suice (now a carpark), the French plaza, the opera house. The tour guide was a bit of an arrogant American, but it did away with the need to fill my time up with 'culture' so it freed up the rest of my time.

Friday was a shopping day - I headed around Berlin to the funky stores that the internet told me about. I managed to spend a lot of money without actually buying much, so it was kind of lucky that everything was so overwhelmingly cool that I couldn't choose anything. I had a delicious breakfast at the Jules Verne cafe (oh the Germans, they love their quark) and a delicious vietnamese lunch and apple/mint/soda at Monsieur Vuong, and it seemed that everywhere I went I would find interesting streets with cool things to look at. In the evening I went to see a performance of La Boheme, which was unfortuantley in German, but I suppose it was either that or Italian so it wouldn't've made much difference. But now i can say i saw a proper German music, and it was pretty good if not amazing (thought it's the off season, so even that's a compliment). Got back to the hotel, decided I needed a drink (it had been 30 degrees that day) so went to the vending machine and found it sold bottles of Beck's for 2 euro, and the machine even had a bottle opener built in! I felt like a total bogan walking to my room open beer in hand, but I guess that's Germany for you, and it's totally ok there. Although I'm not sure if graduating to drinking alone is a good or bad thing...

Saturday I packed in yet more culture after having decided not to get sucked into that again. Honestly - it's so easy to feel you have to go and see x, y, z, but in the end you get overwhelmed and don't see as much as if you'd just bought a coffee and people watched. Well, Jules Verne for breakfast again, the gardens of the Charlottenberg castle, then the Bauhaus Archiv (which now has the honour of being the lamest museum I've been to - the gift shop was about the same size as the museum! Lucky I scammed a student ticket, and even it was barely worth it!), a cute shop called rsvp paper where i found some awesome postcards. In the evening I went to see the Blue Man Group (more for Arrested Development that anything) which was pretty cool (a lot of percussion and paint involved) but in the end more gimicky than artistic. Also, there was a lot of audience participation which I do hate, because I don't enjoy myself and I just want it to hurry up and FINISH so i don't have to feel nervous about being chosen and made a fool out of. Afterwards I went to the Pergamon museum and learned all about the Babylonians, before stopping off at an old man bar and having a 'Berliner weiss, rot' which is apparently a Berlin speciality, except it was brought to them by the French who call it a Monaco, and it's what we would call 'red cordial in beer'. Still, due to the superior German beer, it does actually taste better than anywhere else.

Berlin is actually a pretty ugly city - after being flattened during WW2, and then being split in half by the cold war, most of it's pretty new and boxy. But the funny thing is, it feels more inspiring than almost every other city I've visited. Perhaps it feels young and forward looking since it's still in the process of defining itself. But it was great to be somewhere so exciting that I would walk for 10 hours and still feel like doing something in the evening rather than holing up in my hotel room for some zone out time.

Oh fiddlesticks! I forgot to have a Berliner!

hating Hamburg with a passion.

2008-07-24T15:52:00.005-04:00

Hamburg:

Arrive and find my hotel. It is 100m from the station which is excellent for navigating, but unfortunately it's a dodgy area. Heard of the Reeperbahn? Yeah, well, it's not that dodgy, but this city sustains some serious grime and some of it is out my front door. Drug dealers and prostitutes, ahoy there! Find my room is a smoking room and smells. Ask to be shifted and they move me to another smoking room, only with the scent masked by super strong air freshener. Hmmm. Pay E10 for 3 hours of internet. I have no ensuite and have to share a toilet and bathroom with the floor. This is more annoying than it otherwise would be, since for a lower price i could be staying in a youth hostel with the same (or more) facilities. Oy vey.

Decide to get out of the hotel. Go to the post office and thankfully get served by an American and don't have to butcher the German language for postage stamps. Go for a walk up the street on the other side of the train station - the main shopping street I think. Ponder some shoes, play in the lego shop. Have a bagel for dinner. Contemplate whether I'd rather stay outside or go back to the hotel. I'd rather stay outside, but don't fancy walking back to the hotel after dark. Go back to the hotel. Learn how to play all the games on my computer until sleep time.

Sleep badly. Get up at 7am. Decide the risk of running into my dodgy neighbour whilst wearing a towel is not worth the trade off of walking around in my own filth all day, so skip shower. Have a look on the internet and ask at the tourist office about what is fun to do in Hamburg - not a lot of promising information. Visit the Rathaus - it's impressive but not in an interesting square like they usually are. I decide to go to the botanic gardens and the art gallery, and hope that the (large amount of) walking in between will turn up something cool, as it usually does. It doesn't. Hamburg has the most homeless people I've seen since San Francisco, and the saddest beggars since China. On my walk I'm pretty sure I see a leper, picking his scabby feet. Shudder. Big respect for Jesus.

The gardens are nice, and have a good Japanese garden. In hindsight i should've taken a book and stayed there all day since the weather was nice. The art gallery is not terrible but not that interesting either, especially considering how many art galleries i've seen now. The floorplan is totally useless and I wander round completely aimlessly, occasionally butting like pong into attendants who tell me I can't go this way because it's a special exhibition, for which I have not paid. I find the Chilehaus which is apparently the most famous building in Hamburg. It is rather unimpressive. Try to find a nice spot for a good coffee and people watching. This proves impossible, so i settle for a bad but large coffee and view of a wall and stretch it for an hour. Go to a department store and put on my new favourite perfume in an attempt to drown out the smell of the hotel room I'm heading back to. Arrive at hotel. Realise how (relatively) few photos I've taken of Hamburg, and note that this is an indicator of how much this city sucks. Kill time until sleep time. Get up, get on train to Berlin.

climbing a tree.

2008-07-21T15:47:00.001-04:00

Hannover:

Found my hotel: rather dated but spick and span. Get up early, gorge on free breakfast (muesli, cornflakes, moist delicious heavy German grain bread, tomatoes, eggs, yoghurt). In a hurry to meet Gerald - Germans are always 5 minutes early. Notice a red line on the ground - think it divides the footpath for pedestrians and cyclists. Realise a minute later that it corresponds to the red line on my map and is a tourist trail, leading exactly where i need to go! Stop off at a roofless church on the way - empty as a war memorial. Meet Gerald at the 'New' Rathaus - built around 1900 but looks older. See the 3d town models in the foyer - one from now, one from right after the war (what a mess), one from right before the war, and one from the 17th century, when it was a tiny town surrounded by a wall and a moat. Take the elevator up the curve of the dome and get a view on the town.

Go to the Marktkirche - where my great great great great great grandparents were married. Talk to the man and find that I need to get on a train if I want more information on my ancestors. Get on U-bahn and off again successfully, and find the church archives. Find the entry in the church ledger for the olds' wedding - on microfiche in beautiful but barely legible script, but unfortunately nothing else - no clues on who came before them - the end of the line. Ride the U-bahn back into town illegally - both ticket machines are broken. Go back to the Marktkirche and have a good look around and take approximately eleventy billion photos. It is very large and high, but is mostly red brick (including the floor) and appears to have been badly damaged in the war and never restored to the former glory shown in photos hanging on the wall. I donate my unpaid U-bahn ticket price to the new organ project. Outside there is a bookshelf with a glass door - i think you can take or donate books as you like.

Start walking back to the train station (near my hotel) and go in the wrong direction. Half an hour later start again, and make it finally - the weather is dreadful (cold, windy and rainy) and I need to change. Walk to the Berngarten - it is a good 3-4kms and in good weather could be lovely, but it is not good weather. Find the orchid house and take approximately eleventy billion more photos. At least it is warm in here.

Walk back to the city and eventually duck into a few shops to try and beat the weather. End up buying a pair of shorts in a fit of unsubstantiated optimism about the European summer. Meet Gerald and Olga by the Opera House for dinner. We go to the oldest vegetarian restaurant in Germany, and it is delicious. The Germans like quark. (Note to self: try the banana/cinnamon/nut/honey breakfast with quark instead of ricotta). Walk home in the dark and don't feel scared.

I think 1 day here was enough. Hannover is a dull town that got bombed a lot and is now modern and boring. It is like Canberra if Canberra wasn't the capital. However, I had one mostly nice day. There is a lot of green everywhere and huge public gardens. In good weather it could be stunning. And it makes a world of difference having kind people to show you around.

relieved to have a friend once more.

2008-07-20T15:40:00.004-04:00

Bremen:

Arrived: first night spitty horrible weather - I think it's following me around. Either the map or the roads are wrong, becuase i find my hostel street a lot sooner than i should have and it is a lot longer than it should've been. An odd area - expensive row houses, some nicely done up, some clearly graffitid student digs. Stay in the hostel alone for the first night - don't find it any friendlier than any of the hotels - only with shared bathrooms. However it is nice - very basic but clean, but i get paranoid about bedbugs and do some (unconstructive) internet reasearch to calm myself down resulting in a sleepless night.

Saturay Nhan arrives, weather still horrible. We wander into the centre of the city and look around in the markets (green cheese!). Have a great pea and sausage soup with soy sauce - the Bremen version of a pie floater? Go on a tour of the Beck's factory which nhan is surprisingly interested in. Try all the different kinds of Becks' (including the non-alcoholic and girly flavoured ones) as well as Haake-Beck - the local beer. Get rained on (again) on the way out - seek refuge in a Spanish cafe and end up staying for dinner. Back to the hotel and Nhan falls asleep litereally in mid conversation (i thought that only happened in enid blyton).

Sunday: sleep in. Check out, dump stuff at the train station. Go for a wander through the squares of the old town (incl the statue of the Bremen musicians). Find pastrys for breakfast - Nhan asks what something is and the lady turns to me for help translating. HA! Wander down (art deco alley) Boetcherstrasse and then through the Schnoor (cute germany/touristy alleys) and have lunch - clear veg soup and sausage for me and weird speciality for Nhan (minced meat mixed with stuff, an egg, a pickle, beetroot, herring). Rain stops starts stops starts stops, we wander to the student district and reflect that it seems like a really cool place, but unfortunately, being a sunday in europe, everthing is closed. Might have been a better choice for lunch. We have icecream - 'spring mascarpone' for me and 'grass' for Nhan. We stop for a drink (honey/milk, honey/lemon) and I help the waiter's english, and he helps my german. Everyone's happy.

Back to the train station, nhan gets more pastries & tries a mezzo mix. I get on my train with no hassles, nhan leaves for the tram.

Next stop: Hannover.

bringing the (bad) weather with her.

2008-07-18T14:20:00.001-04:00

Well between my disorganisation, and Nuremberg's, we didn't see a lot of each other.

On Wednesday night when I got in, I met Thomas' friend Stefan who took me on a whirlwind tour of the city. He took me up to the top of a carpark for the best view of the city, to Luitpoldhain - the big Nazi rally ground (the one from all the pictures), to have the local finger-sized oven-grilled sausages, and to turn the fountain wishing ring (both the tourist and the local version).

On thursday night I had a big sleep in, and at lunch time had a wander around town. I went to the handicraft town - a little area of the town that still has it's medieval feel (not sure if it's real or reconstructed) where handmade things are made and sold. I made a quick trip to the Germanisches Nationalmuseum (it would've been longer but they randomly decided to close early) and saw the music exhibit, the pharmaceuticals exhibit and the medieval furniture exhibit. All were very cool and again I wished I'd had longer. The museum is built around the remains of an old church(?) so it's quite interesting to wander around as it feels very modern, and then suddenly you find yourself in a very very old part. (Quite the nightmare for navigating too).

I also tried the lebkuche - a specialty spice cake from the region, created in the times when Nuremberg was an important point on the trade route from India. It tasted about halfway between a gingerbread biscuit and a fruit cake.

Today I had no more luck with the tourist stuff. I tried to go and see the dungeon under the Rathaus - turning up at 10am on the dot, as instructed by the lady who told me I couldn't see it yesterday becuase they were closing an hour early (are we sensing a theme?). But this time a differently lady told me the tours were only possible with groups of 5 or more! So I decided to go up to the Kaiserburg complex, which it turns out you can only see on a tour, of wait for it, 5 or more people! Still, it was nice to go up there and wander around the outside of the buildings. It's at the high point of the city too, so there are nice views over the rest of the town.

I chickened out on going to Doku-Zentrum - a big museum on the rise of Hitler & Nazi-ism. Maybe I should've, but I kind of decided that in the end I'm not the kind of person that could go and find it 'interesting'. I would find it really upsetting I'm sure, and I just didn't want to go there. I already know a lot about the war, holocaust etc, and I think I already know what I would see there. I don't think I"m just closing my eyes to it by opting out - rather choosing to focus on the happier things in life instead.

Anyway, all my plans having fallen through, I bit the bullet and put the map in my pocket. I wandered around aimlessly, and actually found some pretty cool things - cute little shops, intereting sculptures and fountains, the river.

Not many pictures this time around - I left my camera charger adaptor (of all things) in Konstanz and there was a bit of a gap between my battery dying and it catching up with me. All's well now though.

I am finding travelling to be rather hard on the stomach. I like food, as we all know, but I do not like paying large amounts of money for average food - something it's very easy to do as a tourist. Thus I have been making friends with Mr Pizza, Mr Falafel, and Mr Muesli Bar. I'm over it already - looking forward to being somewhere with a kitchen again.

going a little crazy at Woolworth.

2008-07-17T13:07:00.000-04:00

Back row: Fruity smarties, Ruppaner Hecker Dunkel Beer, Bodensee Obstler Schnapps, Capsicum Chips, Africola, Lichee Bionade, Bloodorange and Pink Grapfruit ACE juice.

Lying down (clockwise): Rittersport Yoghurt chocolate, Wunderbar, Nussini bar, lemon yoghurt Mentos, Mr Tom Nutbar, Duplo bar, Lime Yogurette.

Fruity Smarties: Are Haribo and Nestle part of the same company? I don't care, because HELLO! these are so good. They're smartie shell on the outside, and gummibear on the insite (no chocolate). I dont normally like gummibears, but these are so fruity and sweet Iam totally converted: banana, peach, orange, apple, strawberry, grape, lemon. One can have too many, however...

Beer: coming soon.

Schnapps: coming soon.

Capsicum chips: So apparently the germans have two chip flavours - paprika,and everything else. These taste just like bbq. Yum.

Afri cola: Schweppes cola in a cooler bottle.

Bionade: Flavoured mineral water. My friend likes this a lot, but although I found it refreshing, to me it was too bland and sickly sweet all at once.

ACE juice: Excellent. A beautiful bright red colour, just like normal ace juice, only with a slight grapefruity tang extra.

Rittersport Yoghurt: Jeez, I dont know what it is, but the Germans, they like their things yoghurt flavoured. I even saw yoghurt flavoured deoderant! This one unforunatelz is not so good - like slightly tangy top deck. A bit sickly.

Wunderbar: Just like a snickers only more creamy and less crunchy. Advertised as peanutbutter/caramel - crunch given by rice bubbles.

Nussini: Layers of nutella and wafer. La-me.

Lemon Yoghurt Mentos: flavour of the year! Pretty much just like regular lemon only they're white and not so tangy. Ok.

Mr Tom Nutbar: Peanut brittle. Wha-ever.

Duplo bar: Chocolate wafer. La-me.

Yogurette: tied for favourite with the gummi smarties. Yum-o. Chocolate coated, roses-texture filling with the flavour of lemon-gelati. Can't wait to try the strawberry one. (Later: tried the strawberry - not so good. The lime was better).

really hanging out for the day when roaming wireless broadband is standard on mobile phones, and she can use google maps on the go to not get so lost.

2008-07-16T01:01:00.005-04:00

Munich: Day 1, Monday

Up bright and early, caught the Catamaran to the other side of the lake to get my train to Munich. All went smoothly, but possibly because I was so busting the entire train ride that I really only had the brainspace to make the correct changes - not to overthink it and stuff it up, or to start panicking.

The panicking and the overwhelming sense of loneliness set in pretty much when I arrived in my (really very nice if basic) hotel room. I'm beginning to sense that this is just a permanent fixture when I'm travelling alone, and I'm just going to have to do my best to crumple it down into a tight little ball in the bottom of my abdomen and attempt to ignore it. I think today it was worse because the contrast with being somewhere comfortable with friends, having people to talk to, was starker than usual. Well, a valuable lesson has been learned - travelling alone sucks. But hey, it's only for two weeks, and I guess it's another friggin' growth opportunity. (Thanks universe, I've had enough for one year).

At this point, Dad chimed in and pointed out that it's a HOLIDAY and that means I get to do whatever makes me happy. If that means being outgoing and climbing all the churches in town then fine, and if it means sitting in my hotel room and reading the internet, well, that's fine too (although regrettably, the latter is a lot cheaper to do at home). So I did do the latter for a while, and eventually levered myself up to go and see a little of the city.

My first impression is that it's a little bit like Lyon, and we all know how much I liked it there. It feels pretty industrial, and all the people are a bit grey and harried looking. But I ventured into the city centre/old town, and found there's actually some pretty incredible buildings. Notably, the (new?) Rathaus which leaves the Paris Hotel de Ville (and in fact, every other one that I've seen) for dead and has a big 'glockenspiel' that plays 3 times a day. I also found the famous food markets here. They were mostly closed by the time I got there, but I think they'd be worth exploring another day. They seem a bit smaller than the central markets, and it's all outside in semi-permanent buildings, but also a bit posher, with more interesting specialty produce.

I found a soup place, and ordered something random, and had myself with a nice dinner of chicken broth with maultaschen (german ravioli). I also had an apfelsaftshorle which is apple juice with something fizzy mixed in (can't quite decide if it's soda water or lemonade) and it's quite a concept I can get behind. You can also order a wine shorle (sweet/lemonade or sour/not sure haven't ordered it) and there's a beer shorle (ie. a shandy) but it's got a different name. If the Germans do it to beer though, it must be ok.

Tomorrow I will try and get up at a suitable hour, and visit the Neuschwanstein castle.

Munich: Day 2, Tuesday
Actually, very little of this was spent in Munich. Just a tasty piece of pizza at about 7am when I got back to the city. I left at 9am to visit the Schloss Neuschwanstein, and due to the super incompatible train/bus timetables it took me the ENTIRE day to do a 35 minute tour. Talk about your tourist trap! So much for German efficiency... Anyway, the castle was pretty cool - cooler inside than out I would say, but no photography inside so I can't share that. Only about 10 rooms in the castle were finished, and all the walls are painted with scenes from Arthurian/Wagnerian type fables. And I do mean all the walls. There's some pretty incredible woodcarving going on there too. It's in a nice spot too, balancing on the top of a hill - a beautiful green foresty walk to get up there. It was the inspiration for the Disney logo castle apparently, and you can kind of see why. Although it goes both ways, because the castle was inspired by fables itself, so I suppose it's a bit circular. I'm tired now. That's all I have to say about today.

Except that 'Schloss Neuschwanstein' is a name clearly chosen to make English speakers sound like that episode of Lano & Woodley where Lano accidentally mocks the lady with the speech impediment.

Oh and also, American tourists. Oh. My. Gawd. Here's a (loud) moment from the castle today:

'You know, maybe crazy King Ludwig wasn't as crazy as everyone thought'.
'Why do you say that?'
'Well, he was obviously very religious...'.

Riiiiight. Becuase there have been absolutely no religious nutters in history. Ever.

Munich: Day 3, Wednesday
So today I actually got some stuff done, partly because the curtains in my hotel room were woefully inadequate and I woke up naturally at about 7am (unheard of) and partly because I realised I had less than a day left in Munich and had barely seen anything.

I had a (expensive, but at least big) coffee in the main square and watched the big glockenspiel/music box type thing at the Rathaus. It's an old mechanised scene on the front of the building that comes to life at 11am. There's chimes that play a song, and there's a king and queen who watch a joust, one knight knocks the other one off and wins, and then a whole heap of lower dolls do a little dance. Really moving (when you think about how impressive it must've been when it was first made) and kind of underwhelming all at the same time.

Keeping in mind Dad's advice about doing whatever I want to do, even if it's not what you're supposed to do on holiday I went to H&M. And tried very hard not to spend any money since it's rapidly dwindling, but was quite unsuccessful. At least the average item price was about AUD$10. Anyway, I suppose I should point out that I'm feeling a lot better today than on Monday. Still not totally comfortable (and Oh how exhausted I am already), but maybe I'm slowly getting used to this solo travelling gig.

I went for a quick tour of the Schatzkammer which is the little museum where they keep the old crown jewels and stuff. Pretty impressive and my camera totally cracked under the pressure of a million photos of shiny things. You can visit the rest of the palace too, which looked pretty awesome but I was on a time budget and I'm kind of getting over looking at old and beautiful places right now...

I walked through the English garden, which was sort of cool, and again, sort of underwhelming. It's a huge big park in the middle of the city, and if I lived there i'm sure i would love love love it. But as a tourist attraction...well...it was just a big park really. Grass and trees. Not as impressive as central park, purely because the city surrounding it is not nearly as mad, and not as pretty as a lot of the other (admittedly smaller) gardens I've seen (including the ones next door in Munich!). There were also these guys surfing on the river that runs through it - mad mad mad. There was really only one (repetitive) wave, and it kind of smelled pretty funky too.

I went to the Deutsches museum, which is a big science museum. I had only an hour and a half left, and I really wish I'd had a whole day (and a German/English nerd friend to explain it all to me). There were rooms for everything scienc-y, from the history of paper making, to the extraction of oil & natural gas - all with actual historical machines (yes, some of them were very very big). There was a section for musical instruments, and there must've been at least 50 pianos (or piano type things), and even a bassoon section with a paper-mache contrabasophon! I also really liked the room with the wind & water mills. Apparently there's even a coal mine shaft that goes 200m underground but I didn't find it. Anyway, that was super cool and I would really recommend it.

Heading back to the bahnhof to get on my train to Munich I grabbed a falafel from teh Viktuelenmarkt as a late late lunch.

In the end I actually quite liked Munich. There are surprisingly lots of grand old buildings (not sure how many have been rebuilt and how many are original) and the streets are wide and there's lots of green. It's still a big stinky city, but I think it's a bit more elegant than many. I particularly liked their system of bike lanes too, whereby the footpath was extremely wide and the half of it (or 1/3 or whatever) closest to the road is divided off for cyclists. It seems a lot safer to me to have the cyclists on the foopath not the road and there did seem to be a lot of cyclists. (I wonder if maybe this is acutally a German thing, not a Munich thing).

Actually, I think maybe it is. I'm in Nuremberg now, and it seems the same here.

Have I mentioned the flags? European countries seem to love their flags, and in France and Spain their respective flags were everywhere. In Germany there are flags everywhere but it's always a big bunch from lots of different countries. Apparently they're still scared about seeming too nationalistic... I guess that's understandable, although kind of a shame, but it does feel a lot friendlier as a visitor to see all the flags of the world around the place, and not just the one that's not your own.

I'm beginning to think there are two kinds of places: the first where people rush around so busy that they don't remember to enjoy life, and the second where people go a bit slower and enjoy being out on the streets, seeing what's happening, having a coffee in the sun and reading a book etc. Usually the big cities are the former and smaller places are the latter, but not always. But I think the former kind, even if there are heaps of amazing things to see, doesn't feel so good, even to a tourist. I'm wondering now which kind Adelaide is...it will be interesting to see when I get back.

psyching herself up.

2008-07-13T11:56:00.005-04:00

This last week in Konstanz has been a rather quiet one, as a lot of the week was spent in other cities, and my time here has been taken up with planning the next few weeks.

I finished my 2 hour tour of the town (it only took me 3 days in the end), and went on a little boat cruise of the lake. My final conclusion is similar to my first impression: Konstanz really is a very sweet little city. I will miss the bells ringing every hour, and the beautiful clear lake 100m down the street.

On Thursday I did a day trip to Zurich (ha!). The weather was perfect which made my day of wandering through the old town very pleasant. I visited 3 churches in all: first the Grossmunster, founded by Charlemagne where I climbed the tower for a view of the city. I have climbed a lot of towers, and it must be doing my bum some good by now! This church also had a beautiful organ with little golden angels all over it. Then I made my way to the Fraumunster, which has some wonderful stained glass windows made by Chagal. Here I found a purse left behind with 100 francs in it, and gave in to the old lady selling postcards. We had a little chat in French (because her English wasn't so good, and my German was worse) and she was so thankful that I'd handed it in! Honestly - it's a worry when it's expected behaviour to steal money in a church! Finally I went to St Peter's Church which has the largest clockface in Europe.

I wandered around the city a little, picking my way through the windy, hilly streets (mostly not on my map) and had a great lunch at Hitl, the oldest vegetarian restaurant in Europe. It was actually pretty posh - white tablecloths and chandeliers, and it was a little on the pricey side, but it was completely delicious. I had some kind of Malaysian eggplant curry, which actually tasted more like a Maroccan tagine, and a homemade organeade. I found myself sitting at a huge dining table in the middle, across from an ex-pat Australian! We had a bit of a chat, and she endorsed my afternoon plan to go to the art gallery. The art gallery itself was quite nice, although they all seem to have slightly underwhelming collections after the Louvre and the Musee d'Orsay. On the other hand, it was very quiet and I could actual enjoy the experience. They have a funny exhibition going at the moment where modern artists create works in and around the older permanent exhibitions. My favourite was some graffiti below an old landscape painting, arguing that it was too good to be the work of the attributed painter!

To finish the day I wandered the streets a little more, and found myself at the Lindenhof, which is a little park at the highest point in the old city, which a sweet view over the town.

Back in Konstanz, I had a delicious pizza dinner with Kathy and Thomas and some of their friends from Hannover, and then a stroll along the lake as the sun set. Olga caught a cricket as big as my thumb in a little jar she had in her handbag. It was very green.

This weekend, we travelled to Freiburg. I was quite keen to go there, since it's where two of my music teachers studied, and it was not at all what I expected. It was a lot bigger than I expected, and the first impressions outside of the train station weren't that positive. But the old city is one of the prettiest I've seen so far, and the quaint medieval canals (gutters) and old paving won me over in the end. It seems to be quite the student city, which gave it a really relaxed air too. Unfortunately, the weather was not so kind as Zurich, and it rained and rained and rained and rained. We had a lot of icecream and coffees, and got quite giggly amusing ourselves when we couldn't venture out from under the big cafe umbrellas (lots of silly photos, paper boat races in the canals, mimicking the accents of all the other tourists wandering around). When the sun came out, we visited the Cathedral which was quite an interesting and pretty one, being made from red stone, which is different than any I've seen so far. We wandered around the old town and the church food market, had a huge German meal (german pork dumplings, sauerkraut, potato salad & pretzel soup) and huge German beer to match. On Sunday we had an equally huge breakfast (bagels, egg, yoghurt, fruit, cheese, tomato, pain au chocolat) and then took the cable car up the mountain into the spectacular black forest. I was amazed at how many different trees there are - I expected one type of pine tree but it was a huge mix of huge huge huge trees.

Then it was back to Konstanz, late in the day. We had a bit of a train mishap (missed our station) so we got home quite late, and slept in the next day. TodayI tried to organise myself a bit and had a final dinner at a nice Indian restaurant where I introduced Kathy and Tom to the deliciousness of Palak Paneer.

And tomorrow I'm off on a whirlwind tour of Germany...

listening to bells, thunder and a piano accordian.

2008-07-07T13:04:00.013-04:00

I made it out of Paris and am recuperating in Konstanz with some warmly hospitable and welcoming friends. I don´t think I could´ve chosen a more contrasting place to Paris, or a better place for a little tlc and chillout time. It all looks so ridiculously German, and although it doesnt have any famous sights, is a perfect pretty town, just right for wandering and relaxing.

Right now it´s a clear but cloudy day, and outside my window there´s an (impressivelz good) accordian player squeezing out the Baroque´s greatest hits. This week there´s also been string quartets, and a white hippy didgeridoo player.

On my first day here, we went and paddled in the river - so clear I saw a fish swim right by my legs.

On the second few days I walked the city - I´m taking myself on a tour following the plan given by the tourist office. It´s supposed to take 2 hours, but with my sense of direction it´s 2 days and not finished yet. It´s a lovely little town, with winding alleys and old corners, so it´s not such a shame getting lost. The ´cbd´is car-free too, which thankfully reduces my chances of getting hit while I look up and marvel, and forget to pay attention to the more practical aspects of wandering the streets.

I´ve had a (big, milky) coffees in a lovelz little place called 'Das Vogelhaus' (The Birdhouse) which has seating on different raised levels, and climbed the Münster (Cathedral) to enjoy the view of the city. On the day that I visited it, they were tuning the big organ, giving the huge space an eerie feel as the pipes wheezed out bland, out-of-tune notes.

I visited the Isle of Meinau, the flower island, owned by a duchess and always in bloom. We saw a huge smiling flower topiary, and a giant dwarf, and took a million photos in the 'Schmetterlinghaus'.

We had dinner in Meersburg, taking the ferry across the lake and climbing it's old hilly streets.

I've eaten lots and lots of icecream, of course trying the stranger flavours first, like walnut, and cinnamon. I've been practicing my (very basic) German, and so far everyone has been super polite, I've gotten what I wanted, and only once has someone switched into English for me.

I've had applejuice mixed with soda-water, wine mixed with soda water, and beer mixed with lemonade. I visited the biggest beer-garden in Konstanz, and (by chance I'm told...yeah right!) there was an oom-pah band playing, all dressed up in red waistcoats and leggings, and alternating playing with drinking (and sometimes just doing both at once). I took a 5 minute walk and straddled the Swiss/German border.

This week hopefully I will take a boat-ride around the lake, make a day-trip to Zurich, and visit Freiburg. Then upwards to the rest of Germany.

writing a very very big post. Hold your horses, here we go!

2008-06-30T01:48:00.000-04:00

This week (in an impossible attempt to see the rest of Paris before I left), I:

Made lentils du puy
Visited Shakespeare & Co bookshop (with a piano!)
Saw dancing rollerbladers outside Notre Dame
More bertillon icecream (twice!)
Walked past l'Hotel de Sens
L'As du Falafel
Climbed the Arc de Triomph
Sales at the Printempts (2 new pairs of shoes)
Vespers at Notre Dame
Found the park at the point of the isle
Visited the Pompidou (like the one with the graffiti music, and the wrapped up grand piano - modern artists don't lack a sense of humour i find...)
Bought some pirate pants
Packed and posted 30kg home
Peach chocolate from l'Etoile d'Or
Pere Lachaise (how the mighty fall...)
Pompidou again
Posh dinner with Jillian (beans, tuna, pannacotta)
Musee d'Orsay
Louvre

So. I'm leaving Paris, first thing Monday morning. All my stuff is packed and off I go.

Why I am leaving Paris.
As it turns out Paris is a much better city to visit than to live in. It is dirty, and crowded, and smelly, and the people are rude, and it's actually kind of depressing. As my friend Andrew said, Paris is a great place to live if you are super rich and/or are bonking someone who is super rich. If that isnt you, then it's not so fabulous. I am looking forward to coming back as a visitor, and knowing my way around the citiy, but I am also looking forward to leaving as a resident.

I didn't like my job very much. The actual company was okay I think (in a relative sense, anyway), and my students were all nice. In the first place, I don't think I'm cut out for teaching. I found it really stressful, and mostly pretty unsatisfying; however, it might have improved with time, I don't know, and I'm sure if that was the only problem I could've stuck it out for 6 months, no problem. However; it pays peanuts. It pays about the same amount of peanuts everywhere I'm told, but Paris is stupidly more expensive than everywhere else, compounding the problem. I found I was spending significantly more than I was earning, even when trying to be frugal, which was not a sustainable situtation. To make it work in the long term (in my opinion), you would need to be: in a relationship and living with someone earning a normal wage OR willing to live on the barest of essentials (see this article for someone else who agrees with me) - ie. horrible apartment and living on rice & pasta. In addition the conditions were pretty horrible - I spent as many hours as I was paid for acutally 'working' on preparation and in the metro. The nasty urine smelling metro. I felt very much like I was being taken advantage of. No thankyou. So, I quit.

The second problem was, my lovely housemate turned out to be collectively crazy as coconuts. Yes, there were two of them. The woman I moved in with had her (male) cousin sharing her bedroom and neglected to mention it when I moved in. Which I kind of could deal with (none of my beeswax after all), but the telling me off like a child when I so much as left a light on for 15 seconds when going from one room to the next and back again, made me feel horribly uncomfortable - I spent my time walking on eggshells in case I got in trouble. Which is not a good way to live. And THEN (here's the coconut bit - and don't freak out becuase it's ok, I've left and I'm safe): the guy sat me down and gently suggested I come up with a 'plan b' living arrangement, because apparently the girl cousin has some rage issues resulting from an inability to deal with her murdered catholic priest father and her Sicilian cocaine dealer boyfriend. BONJOUR! So there's enough holes in that story to build a KI shower out of, but either way I was either living with a crazy lying guy, or just a plain crazy girl. So I decided it was time to move on.

What I am doing next
I am going travelling around for a couple of months and then I'm coming home. First off, I'm visiting a friend in Germany, and then I will go backpacking for a couple of weeks. I am kind of terrified about that, to be honest - shared dormitories, not knowing anyone, your way around, the language...all kind of scares the bejesus out of me. I think it is going to be quite a stressful experience - floating wherever the wind takes me is really not my style. On the other hand, I can go and see whatever I want, and by the end of it all I think I should be able to honestly say that I can face anything. I have vague ideas of where I'd like to go: maybe Hannover, Prague, Venice...but who knows. We will have to wait and see. I'm spending all of August in the UK visiting various friends in various places. I think I will have a good amount of time to see a few very different places and it will be nice to have locals to show me around. Then, unless my plans change (again), it's home again, home again, clippety clop.

But what about Geneva?
Well, I've sort of gone off that idea. For a number of reasons. The first and strongest reason is that I'm not sure I can handle the idea of studying for another two years with no goal at the end. Part of me likes study for study's sake, but most of me is ready to get my teeth into something 'real'. I'm sick of putting off my life to fritter away at uni just because I don't have any better ideas. I think I'd like to go back to uni at some point, but when I have a clearer idea of what I want to achieve from it. I also now do have some clearer ideas of what I'd like to do career-wise, and I'm excited to get started on it. That is the main reason. In addition though, this has been a really hard 6 months for me, and the idea of tying myself into another 2 years of being so far away from my family is not an attractive one right now. Not to mention the fact that my French is not up to scratch - English teaching is really not the way to go about learning to speak French. I could get up to the necessary standard in time, but it would require (really) intensive classes for the rest of my time here (and in fact, I probably needed to start a month or two ago), meaning I would spend all my time and money on lessons, and by the time I arrived in Geneva I would be skint and brain-fried. I think I would rather spend my hard-earned pennies on seeing a bit more of the world.

What I have learnt from all this (warning: serious navel gazing ahead).
Most obviously, I have learnt to speak French. Okay, I'm nowhere near fluent, but I can have a conversation with someone, most of the time understand what's going on around me, and if I don't I can ask for an explanation and understand that. I'm not at a level where I can appreciate the nuance of French vs. English, and enjoy it as a beautiful language in its own right (most of the time I just find it illogical and stupid at this point), but it is really satisfying being able to understand and be understood in a foreign language. I'm actually suddenly nervous about going to other countries where I won't have that luxury anymore. Learning another language was on the life list, and sure, I'll keep having lessons when I get home, but I think I'm far enough along the way that I can definitely tick it off the life list.

I have learnt some stuff about what I want to do for a career. I don't want to go into it yet, because it's still not super clear in my own head, but suffice to say I'm a lot closer now than I ever was. I think I've been waiting for the 'right' answer to come along, and I think now maybe there isn't a 'right' choice, just making the best decision you can, giving it a shot and going from there. So that's what I'm going to do next...

I have learnt that I am not a big city girl. I thought I was - I thought I would like all the hustle and bustle and the million things to do and the cities that never sleep and all that. And there are some things I like - for example, it's great to be able to catch public transport and walk home in the middle of the night without feeling like I'm in danger, because there's always so many people around. And of course, being able to go to the Louvre, the Pompidou etc etc whenever you want is a real luxury. And you'd never run out of things to try/see/do here. But by the same token, you could never really say you 'know' Paris - it's too big and it's changing constantly. I miss feeling comfortable in my space, I miss feeling a part of it, and above all, I miss the space. I really didn't think space was that important to me, but (like so many other things) it turns out that I never missed it becuase I never lacked it. I feel cooped up here, and I'm sure it's just in my mind, but I feel like this city is closing in on me for miles around. I yearn for some wide open spaces, some plants, some life. And the associated feeling of having time and space and freedom to think and move. I think for me, the ideal situation would be living in a small-medium sized town city - one where you could more or less walk where you need to go, but one not so far away from a big metropolis, so when I feel bored I could go and find some inspiration. But here I don't feel inspired - I feel overwhelmed.

Speaking of things I never missed because I never lacked it, I miss my family and friends. Here I am lonely almost all of the time, and even when I am with people, they are not people who know the real me, who have known me forever. I wanted to leave because I felt tied down by that - unable to grow much because the idea of 'Emily' was too fixed in too many people's minds for me to be able to work out what Emily was really like. And it has been a good experience finding out what things have changed about me when they were no longer tied down. But it turns out, I'm (mostly) exactly who I, and everyone else thought I was (what a surprise!), and while it's good to be able to blur the boundaries a bit, it's also good to be able to have one foot firmly in the ground (not to mention, mix metaphors willy nilly). Most of my closest friends are not at home these days, so it seemed like I wouldn't be missing much to travel. But it's sure as hell not better here where there is no one! I have learnt to stand on my own two feet, but I have never felt so lost in my life, and I am ready to find my way home. Maybe it will be for good, or maybe it will just be for a little while and then on to something new again, but either way at least I will know what I have now.

They say that people who moan about Adelaide are the people that have never been and the people that have never left. I think I have proved that true for myself, and about a lot of other things as well. I have a much clearer idea of what's important to me now, which will hopefully make it easier to find that and hold onto it.

I am ready to come home.

packing.

2008-06-24T15:47:00.011-04:00

A whirlwind tour to the UK and then back to the lilypad. Being in Blighty was in a lot of ways a huge relief - for a country I've barely even set foot in before, it felt like home. Imperial leather soap, vending machines with recognisable lollies, poo-free streets, normal milk in normal sized coffee, people apologising when they bumped into me, people wearing colours on the tube....

I didn't realise how isolated I was really feeling in France until I caught myself on the tube spying over someone's shoulder to see if they were reading in English or French. It was English of course, and the rush of relief at the realisation that I didn't need to check anymore was a bit of a worry. I didn't realise until then that I've been doing that unconsciously in Paris in order to make the tiniest imagined connection with total strangers...weird hey?

I lugged all my luggage to Nhan's who will babysit it for me over the coming months. Another wave of relief at the idea that I won't have to drag it around anymore.

Most of the weekend was spent at Oxford. We wandered around the city a little, snuck into the Bodleian (wow. wow. wow.), ate gourmet student food at an outdoor cafe, drank warm beer on the river, took photos of skylines and gargoyles, toured Worcester and Magdalen colleges (saw the deerpark!), had a fryup breakfast, bought too many books at an inspiring bookshop, drank Coopers on the back lawn.

Friday night was the Worcester ball, which was lots of fun, yet different than I expected. Set in beautiful grounds and with men floating around in tails, that's about as far as my imagination got it right. It was more like a slightly damp Womad without all of the music - we spent the night outside tramping between different buildings and tents, on a beeline for the comedy, the chocolate fountain, the little casino with the jazz band, the beer, the pizza, the music, the 'ferris wheel', the bacon butties, the pimms, the henna, the icecream, the gladiators station, the portaloos, the dj & dancing, the cuppasoup, the colourfully lit trees, the strawberries and champagne. And at 6am, we went home exhausted and grubby.

I think Oxford must be a nice place to live. A city as well as a student town, small enough to walk everywhere but big enough to not feel stiffling, it's got beautiful old architecture yet green and trees everywhere. You can travel to the big smoke of London in an hour, or stay home and breathe the fresh air. The only less than beautiful bit is all the English people, who despite my fondess for them, it has to be said are just not as good-looking as their amphibian neighbours across the channel (nor despite embracing of colours do they dress to their advantage).

Sunday and Monday were spent in London, wandering around shopping, eating sushi and dumpling noodle soup and just chilling out at home, in the park or in the next door cafe. Possibly not the most efficient use of my 2 days visit, but I feel a lot better for having a bit of a break, and hopefully in August I'll have the energy to see a little more of the town.

promising to post again soon, with less whinging. Interesting times are afoot.

2008-06-19T04:28:00.000-04:00

This week I:

Took French classes at the Sorbonne (written and phoenetic)
Did some career testing (I'm an INFP if anyone cares)
Went on the Bateau Mouche
Caught up with Rosie
Understood what was going on when a Frenchman tried to pick Rosie up ('I don't like the football, but I do like the women!'...ok, it works better in French)
Had some good Lebanese food
Tried Pastis
Discovered the charmingly (original) 70s bar next door
Went to a Melies film screening
Caught up with Jim
Went to an afternoon tea in the suburbs
Made friends with Shawn the American
Sat on a hill and knitted
Watched The Castle
Had chestnut mousse
Made friends with Cass
Had a cup of tea at the Laduree
Bought some makeup at Sephora
Bought an Architecture in Helsinki cd at FNAC
Tried the new Hermes perfume (ooh! grapefruity!) and one called 'First' which I liked better but comes in an ugly bottle.
Walked in a garden on an old train line
Went to the Paris hammam
Bought a new handbag
Finished my classes
Gave notice
Started planning

lamenting France's colonial past.

2008-06-06T16:42:00.007-04:00

For over four months now I have been drinking the nasty, black & bitter muck that the French call coffee. Well, actually they call it cafe. With an up accent on the e. I drink it, but only because it's the cheapest thing you can buy here, and even though I rail against paying the same price for an awful espresso as I would for a good latte at home, it's still better than spending twice as much for a (perfectly decent) lipton teabag, or even more for chocolate powder mixed with long life milk.

(As an aside, I seriously do. not. get. what is is with the French and the long life milk. They take so much pride in their cheese, yet they drink the most awful boxed milk. My housemates think I'm totally 'bizarre' for forking out for actual fresh milk. [And for freezing bread, but that's another story] AND YET any cafe will still charge you an extra 20c for a smaller dash of said milk in your expresso than the coin you're paying with. Seriously. It smells and tastes like baby spew.)

Apparently the former French colonies grow coffee beans, but of the cheap and nasty variety, and having maintained economic links, that's what the French import. (Having maintained trade links however, has not dragged France into the 21st century socially. Today brought yet another example of the rascism here: my French teacher was encouraging class members to sit next to someone of a different mother tongue to them. She scolded the two Asian girls in the class for sitting next to each other, and upon being told that one was Taiwanese and one was Korean she asked why they didn't want to 'mix with the Europeans' [she presumably meant 'Europeans' like me, and the 60% American class]. And this from a highly educated professional who spends all day every day working with international students. Mon dieu!)

But I digress. So the coffee here is bad, bad, bad. I was never a big coffee drinker at home, but like so many other things, I didn't realise I valued it until it wasn't there anymore. (Sometimes it feels like this whole trip is just an exercise in appreciating Australia more!)

So today I went on a pilgrimage to The Best Coffee in Paris.

I took the scenic route to get there - through the annual St Germain brocant, where I saw single pages of medieval manuscripts selling for thousands of euros, a tiny stall with tens of tiny bottles hanging from the ceiling, each with a single pink flower, and a set of antique marionettes. I walked past a number of lovely shoe shops, down a little street filled with tiny Parisien brasseries with dark wooden beams, offering 3 course meals for 15 euros, and along a road with numerous creperies, to finally arrive at yet another god-awful coffee.

Seriously, if this is what Paris has to offer, I'm really hanging out for England. And when you say that about food/drink, you've really got to worry! (Ok, I don't really think that French food is all that it's cracked up to be, nor that English food is as bad as it's reputation, but it is true that one of my French teachers laughed her head off when I told her that Jamie Oliver, an Englishman, was the most famous chef in the world). I would've been better off at the Starbucks up the street.

On the upside when I ordered my coffee, the baristas complimented me on my (H&M, H&M, always H&M) dress and powers of accessorising. Real French people complimented me WHILE I was wearing red and green. Not grey. Major achievement making the whole journey worthwhile.

taking a new approach.

2008-06-02T16:37:00.003-04:00

I've decided that this weekly cramming all my comings and goings together in one one big prosaic post thang isn't working. So from now on I'm going to do dot points for that stuff, unless I have something more meaningful so say than "I did this, I went there...", and try and write single theme stories about what it's like to live here.

In that vein, this week I:

worked a LOT
went to the Musee du Quai Branly
enrolled in the Sorbonne Summer course
had a very nice Panna Cotta
went to an actual mothers' meeting (quite fun actually)
discovered dried strawberries and cumquats (yum!).

And: the bread. The French are renowned for their bread, right? Well...I find it thus far a rather uninspiring thing. In fact I would go as far as to say that the bread in America was better. Vastly better in fact, although I wouldn't be game to say that aloud here. Perhaps my perspective's just off, but I like bread with lots of...well...bread. The French on the other hand seem to prefer a lot of crust. They are horrified that I freeze bread (just for toast mind you, and don't get me started on their universal preference for long-life milk) but if someone can show me a loaf of bread that's actually got a big enough circumference to make a reasonable sandwich out of, I'd be very grateful. And don't tell me to go and slice a baguette lengthways - it's not the same thing. Maybe it's just not an important criteria here because they all get lunch vouchers and have a 3 course meal on the company every day. Yes, some good sandwiched sized bread please, and if you can manage that, then find me something brown and with big fat grains. My kingdom for a big floppy slice of Tiptop multigrain - I'm dying of bland skinny shite white butterless baguettes. They're called French sticks for a reason - that's what they taste like.

HOWEVER. I figured out what brioche is today (or at least 'brioched bread'...I'm assuming it's the same thing?). It's NORMAL shaped bread, but it tastes like a croissant. Ask me what I'm having for breakfast tomorrow.

procrastinamatating.

2008-05-25T15:25:00.016-04:00

This week in the adventures of the overstressed and underslept:

Went to the embassy to check in - got told to use the internet.
Bought some wool at the Bon Marche. My credit card flinched. No more treats for a while.
Went to the Australian shop (it was open, but there was no beer. Renamed it the un-Australian shop).
Went to the Australian picnic - met some cool people, but was a bit overwhelmed by the huge crowd.
Went for a run, and utilised the wifi in the park (not simultaneously).
Went to the Musee d'Orsay - saw the Degas bassoon painting (it's smaller than my print).

This is all not very interesting, so (to continue the theme): here is my new favourite dinner. It looks like the world's most depressing, boring meal...and ok it is a bit depressing that I'm sharing this and not getting excited about some grand weekend-sucking cooking scheme like I used to, but look, it's actually really delicious, it has all of the food groups (except chocolate), it's reasonably cheap, and it fulfills my (other) current cooking goal, viz: it's fast to prepare (10 mins), so I'm out of the 2m sq kitchen (and out of the way of my housemates) as quickly as possible. Thus:

Ingredients:

1 carrot
1/2 small head of brocolli
handful of pasta (I use brown, because that's how I roll kidlets, but in this case I actually think a more strongly flavoured pasta is a good idea anyway)
1 egg
1 tomato
cheese (I am using emmental, because that's the cheap supermarket cheese here, but cheap cheddar would also do the trick. This is not the place for your fancy pants fromagerie cheese).
1/2 lemon (you can use balsamic vinegar instead)
good olive oil
salt & pepper

Method:
Boil the kettle. While that's happening, start chopping up your carrot into thin rounds, and your broccoli into little florettes. When the water has boiled, put it in a saucepan and begin cooking your pasta. Put a saucepan with holes (what are those called?), or in my case a metal sieve on top, and steam your veggies at the same time. Meanwhile, fry an egg and roughly slice your tomato into the pan as well. Take the veggies off the steamer when they are fluorescent and only just cooked. Undercook the egg a little so the yolk is still runny. When the pasta is cooked, drain it, and mix everything together (breaking up the egg to help make a bit of a sauce) with a dash of olive oil, a good squeeze of lemon juice, salt and copious amounts of freshly ground pepper, and some grated cheese.

You can add other random things that you have if you like - maybe some avocado, or perhaps some nuts.

Eat. Yum. Finished? Good.

Now is the time for your fancy pants fromagerie cheese: dessert. Of course, you could instead have some lovely fresh fruit from the street market nearby, or some chocolate. Or if you're like me, you can have difficulty deciding and have all three. Vive la France.

a little concerned she might be about to lose a toenail.

2008-05-21T17:14:00.010-04:00

Picking up where I left off - I did manage to open a bank account after all of that, AND I did it in French. Yay me!

I spent the weekend with Ellie and her sister Margot. We went for a big walk from the Bastille, past the Hotel de Ville, via Notre Dame, up the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomph. We also climbed (so to speak...in a lift) the Eiffel Tower (pretty cool, but a lot of waiting around for a foggy cold day) and went up to Montmartre and Sacre Coeur. It was nice to hang out with someone from home, and see a few of the tourist sites that I hadn't yet made it to.

Yesterday I used this time to go out to the Vallee, which is like the Paris equivalent of Harbour Town. It cost about 6 coffees to get out there on the train but I went becuase they have a Camper outlet shop. It turned out to be quite the letdown, but it was still nice to wander around and look at pretty things that are still way out of my price ranger (discount Chanel is still many many espressos). On the way back I went to H&M again. I am getting so predictable.

In the evening I had a spontaneous picnic with my Adelaide friend Phil, and then we went to an organ concert in a beautiful old church (maybe even a little cathedral). I don't know the name of the piece, but it was a work by Messiaen written specifically for that particular instrument. It was pretty incredible, and the acoustics were amazing.

Today I went for a run, had lunch with a friend of a friend (protein, yum), and then went to check out the Bon Marche, which was a bit of a letdown. I thought it was like a massive posh supermarket (interesting) but it turns out it's just a massive post department store (not so interesting - seen it before - can't afford it). But they do have a nice wool section - not that I could find what I was looking for becuase it turns out that conversations about pattern substitution are beyond my capability at the moment. I also stubbed my little toe worse than I have ever before in my life and my whole toe has gone black.

I think that is all for this week so far.

Oh no it's not. I discovered that there is a Marriage Freres near me which is a super famous fancy pants French tea house. Right after I had decided that I would try to rein in the spending. That was a resultion which thus lasted for not a very long time. I bought the minimum quantity of a fragranced green tea ('Provence') that the nice man recommended and I haven't even tried it yet (becuase I need to buy a teapot or a teaball...probably the latter - as much as I miss my teapot they're not the most practical of travelling items) and it's making my bedroom smell delicious. Next time I'm feeling like a treat, I think I will buy one of their little tea spoons - they're so cute.

My most happiest thing (can't put it better I'm afraid) this week was that I went to a local brocante (street antique market) and bought some old woden movable type 'E's. Becuase they are French lots of them have accents, and they're all different fonts and I love love love them. I'm thinking I'd like to collect more, but it's such a nice compact, elegant little bunch at the moment that I'm hesitant to tinker with it.

exhausted.

2008-05-15T17:03:00.008-04:00

I realise I haven't written about life in general for a little while now. I probably shouldn't be writing about it now, becuase i'm awfully tired, and i really should go to sleep, but Elli is coming this weekend, so hopefully we will have an excellent fun filled weekend, and then there will be lots to write about on monday, and i will have forgotten all about this week. So i'd better do it now.

Last weekend was a long long weekend. The French do this thing where they randomly put public holidays on Tuesdays and Thursdays and then they 'make the bridge': ie. they take the day in between off too, giving themselves a massive weekend. I unfortunately still had to work.

Actually, i pretty effectively wasted the weekend. But i made it to H&M and bought 3 new tops, and i went to the 'big' park for a run. The 'big' park is 'big' by parisien standards, but it takes about 5 minutes to run around the perimeter, and there were so many people there it felt like merging into traffic. Still they have wifi which is cool. And bathers-clad old peope trying to get a tan. Which is not.

I went to the Galleries Lafayette and the Printemps by accident (i was looking for magic shoes - found them but not in the colour that i wanted). Those are crazy places. Talk about mindless consumerism. Giant posh department stores, with the chanel section next to hello kitty. bizarre. i had a coffee in one of them because the guy looked like he knew what he was doing and it smelled so good. Unfortunately, liek the rest of french coffee, it was not.

I bought my 2nd piece of french cheese to sample - a proper camembert from normandy. Its really good - much stinkier than we're used to, but not nasty. Kind of like that dusty taste red wine gets (tannins?) with a bit of parmy tossed in.

I also bought some more flowers, and made friends with the flower seller. He was one of those flirty market salesman type people who'll charm the socks of anyone to get them to buy their stuff and come back. Well, i'm in need of friends and french conversation, so it worked on me. I'm quite happy to choose him as my local florist if i get french practice thrown in for free.

The teaching is going...ok. I think i could be quite good at it, and i really like a lot of my students, but the transport and all the preparation required is really stressing me out. As is having to find my way around paris on deadlines.

my french classes are going well. It's made me feel a lot better about being here - like i'm actually achieving something rather than just treading water. It's also made me realise though tht 4 hours a week is nowhere near enough. I made a friend in my class - an American and on tuesday we went for a walk in the Marais and had a lovely 3 course dinner (when in Paris...). It really was excellently good...

I made a couple of pilgrimigaes out to yarn shops. they were quite disappoitning - small and cute but with ridiculously lame ranges. I guess french women don't bake and don't knit.Why would you bother when you can buy amazing pastries and clothes i guess.

On the way home from one of my classes i found an amazing park. with a big becuatiful building and avenues of trees and crazy maroon irises. i didn't know they cam ein htat colour.

Today i tried ot go back to H&M to buy a dress that i saw that i liked, but there are 3 shops in spitting distance of each other, and i popped out the wrong metro and went to the wrong two, and then proceded to walk in the opposite direction by accident for a km or two. But which point i couldn't be bothered anymore. I think the lesson to be learnt is to buy stuff from h&m and return it, rather than to sleep on it, becase they're huge and busy and you might not find them again. Maybe i should stop shopping at h&m because i'm sure there are more interesting unique shops around. But the close are cheap and cool.

Tomorrwo i have to open a bank account. To do this i had to make an appointment two weeks ago. So it'd better work or i'll be very cross.

Also, for any knitters out there, i'm on ravelry now.

Sorry this is a terrible post. I am terribly tired.

focussing on the little things.

2008-05-10T14:01:00.004-04:00

Does anyone else remember that scene in Reality Bites where Ethan Hawke is talking about how when the big things aren't working out as planned, you take pleasure in the details, like a quarter-pounder with cheese?
Well, I'm not such a fan of the burgers, and you can look down your nose at me all you like for frequenting such a soulless, awful excuse for a restaurant (and you'd be right), but I went today and got a McFlurry with sprinkles of Daim. Yeah those are good.

wanting things she can't have.

2008-05-09T12:41:00.009-04:00

Want #1:

Want #2:

Does someone want to tell me where all the cool shopping is in Paris? It's eluding me so far.

experiencing a migraine, and still procrastinating.

2008-05-08T16:07:00.006-04:00

Things from recently:

I accidentally left my footer in an email to work, meaning that there's every chance that they will find this blog. Duh. Hi work people! Don't worry, there's nothing incriminating here, no reasons to dooce me...it's just a story about a life about nothing...

Today I went for a run in the local park. It's a big park by Parisien standards. But it turns out that big by Parisien standards is not big by Australian standards. At all. And because there are not so many 'big' parks in Paris, going there for a run felt like merging onto a freeway.

There is a shop at the end of my street that sells nothing but chandeliers. That should tell you everything you need to know about my neighbourhood.

There is apparently a shop here that sells Coopers.

Update: after a massive trek, the shop that sells Coopers is 'exceptionally closed'. Except that 'exceptional' seems to = 'frequent' here. It's rather annoying.

'home'.

2008-05-04T16:56:00.014-04:00

Madrid in 0.5 + 3 + 0.5 days. Dirty, cramped Charles de Gaulle airport. Frisked after setting off the metal detector. I've learnt to pack light. Beautiful, clean spacous Madrid airport. A friendly face; smoking while waiting to meet me at the gate. A clean(er), cheaper metro than Paris. An apartment with a room and a bed just for me. Dirty dishes (bliss). Spain is poor(er), often ugly and run down: graffiti everywhere and the bright warm sunshine illuminates it. A small English bookshop/bar. Tapas for dinner - blood sausage and for dessert: cheese with raspberry sauce. Back to the apartment - supermarket red wine & a film: Death at a Funeral. Talk of religion results in the gift of a hardback.

Up early, the best shower I've had in years - real water pressure and even standing up straight. Hours walking the city: a protest, a speech, a march; plazas, statues, churches, a crypt; red buildings, yellow buildings, pink buildings, painted buildings. Spanish time is all off kilter: lunch at 3pm. A whole chicken, a chorizo, beer & blue cheese to put hair on your chest. A park, a siesta, a calipo. More walking, more beer, more tapas. Spanish time is all off kilter: dinner at 10pm. A giant mound of seafood: prawns, more prawns, crabs, 'turtle toes', flaming firewater, a yellow digestif. Back to the bookshop-bar, a quiz. We won! I can finally forget who played 'Walk the Dinosaur' - it has served its purpose.

Spanish time: up late, churros & chocolate for breakfast, fresh squeezed orange juice, the best coffee for years. A shopping expedition - Spain shows off it's colourful fashions and bargain prices but no luck. A pocket picked and the afternoon is abandoned. I siesta and eat chips/crisps for lunch at 5 - 'peasant' flavour, ham flavour. A barbecue on a balcony: Australians, Americans, Spaniards and a lone Liverpudlian; sausages, steak, salad, sauce.

Normal time: up early. More perfect coffee - homemade tomato sauce on toast, olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper all on the table. Giant flea markets, millions of people. A new handbag for 2 euros and a lot of stripes. More perfect coffee, and some grape juice. A picture in front of the bear. Back to the airport, a 'vegetal' sandwich of eggs and cheese. Frisked again. Duty free perfume, a late plane, a bus right to my door cheaper than the train. Postcards on the way.

in a hurry to sleep.

2008-04-30T18:04:00.004-04:00

Like a yoyo it is - I'm feeling a bit better today.

I had two great classes today - great because I really liked both of my students, and I really feel like I can help them, and that it will make a big difference in their lives if I do a good job. I think it is going to require a LOT of preparation, but it's nice to be doing something meaningful. My favourite student so far has a good level of English but he's so incredibly unconfident (is that even a word? I can't tell anymore...) that he can barely get the words out. He's a lovely man and I just wanted to give him a big hug and tell him it will be ok, that he's really good, that he just needs to have some faith in himself. He's such an interesting person that I really enjoyed talking to him, and I left the lesson feeling great, because in my hurculean effort to radiate calm and confidence for him, I ended up feeling supremely zen myself. Not a bad fringe benefit really.

The bad news is I've managed to lose my debit card. Sheet sheet sheet sheet double sheet.

But it's ok because la-la-la I'm no thinking about it because this weekend I'm going to Madrid.

Yes, Madrid in Spain. Yet another WHOLE NOTHER COUNTRY. I hope they stamp my passport this time.

Lost

2008-04-28T13:37:00.001-04:00

Here you go Elsie: I lied, and here I am writing again already. I hope it gets you through the last couple of days at work.

I've been trying to keep this blog pretty neutral, since I know now a lot of people are reading it. I try to stick to the facts and not let stuff get too emotional. But obviously moving half way across the world is not all beer and skittles, and I would like to look back on all this writing writing writing and have it actually remind me of what I felt like, and not just what I saw.

So, with that in mind.

Jeez, this is hard work. I'm up and down like a yoyo which I suppose is normal, but sometimes it feels like the yoyo always ends up at the bottom, just like a real one. And just like a real yoyo I have no direction other than just bouncing around which is ultimately tiring and unfulfilling and frustrating.

I had my first day of teaching today and it was hard. SO hard. I had basically just planned to chat with them to get an idea of their level. Ok, I had some activities planned, but it was hard to work out what to actually teach them without knowing what they'd already done, and I'm not confident enough to teach them anything without preparing, so my plan (endorsed by the tiny bit of training I got) was to do lots of controlled discussion with my students to get to know them, their level, their needs.

But it turns out 2 hours is a LONG time to talk.

It's a long time for someone whose English is not great, because they won't elaborate much on their sentences so you have to ask a LOT of questions, and there really is a limit to what you can ask someone. It's a long time for someone whose English IS great, because they'll tell you everything they can and then what else can you ask.

My first student was really cool, and kind of made me think I might like to work in advertising. I think I'm going to get along with her really well, and I think I can help her, because her English is great, but her confidence is not.

My second class all seemed really diligent, and I think I can teach them stuff, because they're still at a basic enough level that I can really structure the classes and teach them grammar and so on. Once I learn it myself, obviously...

My third class all had really great English - not perfect, but too good to actually be teaching them rules and grammar, because they know it all, they just don't use it consistently. I got them to explain the French political system to me, and they found it easy. Right. But they apparently don't need their English much - I asked them how often they use it and they said hardly ever. So what am I supposed to do with them? I can't teach them how to speak English because they already can, I can't structure the classes around the report that they have to write for next week, because they don't have one, I can't just chat to them for 2 hours because they'll see through that and get bored with wasting their time.

And the awkward silences. OH the awkward silences. When they happen YOU have to patch them up, and I don't like awkward silences. That's normally the point at which I go and get a drink.

And two hours is really a long time. I can see how 1 hour would be too short, but WOW 2 hours is a long time. I felt like I was flailing and clutching at straws for a lot of it.

And after 3 lots of 2 hours today my brain is fried. I came home and spoke French to my housemates; bad, tired French, but I was so sick of hearing chunky butchered English and beginning to feel like it was me that was getting it all wrong, that it was actually the better option.

So I'm tired and flat. And I feel like I've been tired and flat for 5 months now, which isn't entirely true - although it is true I've been having frequent tired and flat periods for 5 months now, so maybe part of it is just that I'm tired of being tired and flat, over and over again with no sign of consistent reprieve. When I feel like this, I don't feel grateful to be in this beautiful city, I just feel like I want to leave and go anywhere but here. And even that annoys me because it's really such a waste and I know in my head that another life I would've given my right arm for these opportunities that I'm too preoccupied with blah to enjoy.

I thought coming here that living in Paris would be different than visiting as a tourist, and I think that's true, but now I wonder if the tourists actually get the better deal. They only see the shiny, nice, clean bits, and they don't have to deal with the grey grimy reality of a lot of Paris, and they don't have to deal with trying to get on with having a 'normal' life within a reality where you can't communicate with anyone properly, don't have friends, a direction, a life...

Still, I'm not quite climbing on the plane yet. I know that new jobs are hard wherever you are, and whatever you're doing, so even though it doesn't feel like it, I'm trying to tell myself that it'll be ok, I'll figure it out, I'll be good at it, that less capable people than me have done this and lived to tell the tale, that it's temporary, that the worst case scenario is not that bad. I'm starting French classes again next week, and maybe I will make some friends and not feel so isolated here. I'm going to Spain for the long weekend and getting some time away from the intensity of my (ab)normal life here.

No-one said it would be easy. And everyone was right.

learning English grammar.

2008-04-27T05:26:00.015-04:00

Well, it's been a jam packed couple of days.

On Wednesday night, Nhan and I did indeed go to the Louvre, and my new youth card got us both in for free. Nice. That place is absolutely HUGE, which is obvious from the outside, but it really doesn't hit home until you get inside. There's a Virgin megastore in there. Really. We had about 5 things we particularly wanted to see and it took us about 2 hours. Luckily I can go back. As many times as I want. The decoration of the building itself is beautiful - many rooms have lavishly gilded and painted ceilings and wrought iron doors and gates. We saw the Mona Lisa which was amazing - it really does have an awesome presence in the room, but unfortunately you can't get within about 5 metres of it and there's glass over the canvas so for all that you can see, it could be a poster. We also saw the section which is still furnished as it would've been, which was incredibly incredibly beautiful. It's huge and the furniture is so rich and ornate. The funny thing was that the bedroom (one of the Louis' I think) had a huge four poster bed which looked completely out of proportion because of its short length.

On the way into the Louvre we had crepes (or more specifically, a gauffret [like a waffle] with stupid amounts of cream in Nhan's case) and dinner (and Nhan had a pink beer) and a man tried to pick Nhan up in typical French style by telling her she was 'charming' and 'magnificent'. Very funny.

Thursday was spent getting Nhan on the train, which I did not do well at, because she missed it and had to catch the next one. It turns out you have to know which platform the Eurostar leaves from, and waiting for the number to come up on the departure boards is a bad idea. Oh the French. Also, Nhan bought a sandwich and a drink for a set price, but the horrible lady behind the counter charged her the price for the two added together (more) because she asked for them separately and didn't ask for the deal. OH the French. I think that inspired my to get moving on learning more French because I just didn't have the vocab to tell her what a cow she was being. While we were having lunch waiting for the train, I tried Fosters for the first time, and realised why no one drinks it at home.

On Friday morning I went to the Foreigners' office to show them my visa saying I can work with a letter promising me a job to get a letter saying I can work so I can get a contract to actually work. Oh the French. I was expecting it to be a total nightmare, but with typical French efficiency they had two people working to serve a line of about 50 people, but one of them was dealing with European citiziens and students, and one was dealing with everybody else. Of whom there were two. So that worked out quite well. Since I had time up my sleeve, I went hunting for a chocolate shop I'd heard was great, which unfortunately turned out to be closed, but it was ok because I came across the Moulin Rouge on the way. I went and bought a dress (for the girls: navy blue, short sleeves, bubble skirt with pockets) a train ticket, did more English training, wrangled the photocopier, and finally made it back to the chocolate shop - 'L'Etoile d'Or' in Montmartre. It was an expensive visit, but I'm glad I made the effort to get there, because it really is lovely - move over chocolate world. I bought some gifts, as well as some bergamot flavoured lollies (like a cross between earl grey and barley sugar) a few Bernachon truffles (which I stupidly missed in Lyon - one of the few places in the world to make chocolate starting with the actual cocoa beans) which I'm savouring day by day. The lady who owns it is a real character with pigtails and a kilt and was happy to chat to (or chat at, since my French is still not that great) at me for ages. She made me eat a Peach truffle in the shop to see if I would like it since it's her favourite, and she tied all of the bags with a little ribbon, even the ones that I'd told her were just for me.

In the evening I made Anzac biscuits, which was the only thing I could think of to do for the day. I was a bit scared that French flour wouldn't work, so I bought the strongest I could find, and I think it was overkill because they came out very crunchy. Strangely enough the hardest ingredient to find was rolled oats - I went to 4 supermarkets and begged at a bakery before I finally found some! I'm not totally sure that the bicarb soda I bought was actually bicarb either, because it had more than one ingredient... but the biscuits were close enough for jazz anyway, and the flavour was right.

On Saturday I jumped on a bus first thing (I was aiming for the metro, but it went past with my destination on the front, so I ran after it) and then caught a train out to Epernay to meet Jonny and a few of his Aussie friends who came over to France in a camper van for Anzac day. We hung out at their campsite for a little while which was on a river and very beautiful, and then headed into town for lunch, which was bakery pizzas and meringue eaten in a park. It was a beautiful day, and I even got a little burnt, which I stupidly thought couldn't happen in France. Still, I'm not as cross at myself as I should be, because it reminds me of home. Epernay is the most important town in the Champagne region, so we spent the afternoon doing wine tasting. First we went to the house of Mercier and did a tour which was very gimicky - a glass lift 30m down into the caves past still lives of the history of the winery, and then a laser-guided train tour through the underground tunnels where they keep the wine. At the end we tried a glass of their champagne, which no one was very impressed with. After that, we found a wine bar with a 5 champagne tasting menu which was really nice, and it was really interesting to compare 5 very different wines. My favourite was a smoky Brut Grand Cru (Pinot Noir & Chardonnay) from Soutiran in Ambonnay. It was so much more interesting a flavour than any champagne I've ever tried, and i'd definitely recommend it, but I suspect it might be hard to find in Australia, and expensive, because it wasn't even particulary cheap in Champagne, and everything here is at least half the price of at home. Still, having now tried the good stuff properly, I think I've come to the conclusion that champagne/sparkling is just not my beverage of choice. We had dinner after that, and I headed off to the train, grabbing a 'smurf' icecream for the road. I braved the Gare de l'Est on my own at night (I've heard it's dodgy, but it seemed ok to me) and made it home safe and sound to find that my housemates had decided to do my washing for me in my absence...lucky my (still) leaky jeans weren't in my washing basket or I'd now have an almost entirely blue wardrobe by now. Hmmm.

Today I'm hitting the grammar books. Can't you tell?

running mad.

2008-04-22T16:33:00.007-04:00

This week has been slightly mad. I've settled into my new place, Nhan has been visiting and I've been training for my new job as an English teacher.

Nhan arrived on Saturday afternoon, and I met her at the station. We also met one of her rellies who took us back to his place for congee. I've never had congee before! It was quite nice and comforting. By the end of the day we didn't have much time left, so we went to the 6th for a hot lemon drink at Mamie Gateaux since Nhan wasn't feeling well, and some bargain basement French pseudoephadrine.

Sunday was my birthday and I decided to go hunting for some icecream to start the day right. I got lost though, of course, and ended up doing a giant loop of my neighbourhood before finally finding my destination about 2 hours later. I had gelati at Pozetto (fiordilatte and hazlenut) which was good, but nothing I hadn't had before and a capuccino which was heavenly because it actually tasted good. Coffee here is generally bad and expensive. Since I still had a little time up my sleeve, I kept going and visited the Montmartre cemetary. I didn't see much of it but the tombs were beautiful and ornate - even the new ones, so I shall have to go back sometime, and it's defintely inspired me to go and see Pere Lachaise.

I met Nhan at the Arc de Triomph an I opened my presents there on a bench! How surreal! I took Nhan back to my place to show her around and then we headed for the second icecream of the day, coming across Notre Dame on the way. We got to the Ile and lined up at Berthillon for icecream. When we finally got to the front of the queue, I had salted caramel and mandarin, and Nhan had strawberry and vanilla. And wow. No really, WOW.
wow.
wow.
WOW.
Y'all know that I do like my icecream, and this was significantly better than any other icecream I've ever had in my life. It all tasted so...real. Line or no line, I will be going back there again soon, for sure. Repeatedly

We had dinner at Chez Omar, which was fine but nothing special (meat and chips, nasty yellow 'rose', and a surly waiter) and then finished the evening off with a trip to the Eiffel Tower. I hadn't been there yet, and I still haven't climbed it, but it was certainly very beautiful all lit up at night, and it even glittered for me.

Woot. I met Nhan for a late lunch and we went and bought a picnic from Monoprix and ate it at my place. Nhan surprised me with a lovely little raspberry tart with a candle for me to blow out (and a funny story about attempting to buy one candle and matched with little French). We did a little window shopping and then went to see the building where Napoleon is buried (Hotel des Infermieres?...too tired to look it up). Very fancy indeed. We went then to have a beer and pretend to be intellectuals at Les Deux Magots, but like REAL intellectuals decided it was too expensive and went and chilled out in the Jardin Luxembourg instead.

Today Nhan and I met early to have a croissant breakfast, but in true French style our chosen boulangerie was closed. We found another though, and Nhan had a most delicious almond croissant that I would definitely recommend. I headed off for more teacher training and we met up again in the afternoon to sample the fancy Pierre Herme macarons. They're definitely artier, more interesting and more beautiful than the Laduree ones (I loved the Jasmin one which was powdered with silver dust and was delicious) but I think in the end I like the latter better as they're just a little simpler and perhaps more elegant. We ate them on the street before heading to Chinatown for pho (and more pantry staples for me).

Well, this has been a more succinct post than normal, but I am tired and must sleep. I think tomorrow we're going to the Louvre.

shopping.

2008-04-18T17:41:00.004-04:00

This morning I went for a rather abortive tour of the neighbourhood with one of my flatmates but it was still interesting. I knew I was living in a rather posh area of Paris, but I hadn't noticed that that also means a very white neighbourhood. Hmm. Unrelatedly, I'm finding actually that France is a very rascist country (to make a gross generalisation) and that the whole 'liberte egalite fraternite' thing, while it might be accurate as far as the law is concerned, is a complete load of codswallop as far as society in general is concerned. And just because I'm white, people seem to feel totally comfortable sharing their views with me. And then I find myself in this position where I don't want to be rude to a total stranger and I want to make allowances for cultural diferences, but every molecule in my body wants to scream 'WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT??? WHAT CENTURY ARE YOU LIVING IN???'.

Anyway.

This arvo I went and got my yearly pass for the Louvre. 3rd time lucky! It was actually quite easy after all that, and the lady actually told me to smile for the camera so i'm not looking completely mental like in the Pompidou one. Seriously, that guy was having a bad day, and I was his amusement.

Since it all worked out so well, I decided to go and do a little more pantry-staples shopping. I went to the English shop and bought Worcestershire sauce, more vegemite (in a jar!), Coleman's mustard and some salad cream. Exo! Then, because I had still more time after that and it was a direct metro, I decided to go to Chinatown to find a mortar and pestle. Which I eventually did after a long walk through the area (ironically enough, centred on the Place d'Italie). Clever old me didn't think about the fact that schlepping a mortar and pestle home on the metro would be quite enough of a pain, so I bought a heap of Asian pantry things too - coconut milk (which is stupidly expensive in the normal supermarkets here), oyster sauce, sesame oil, edamame and TWO kinds of soy sauce. And some other stuff which I'm sure I've forgotten. I found worcestershire sauce there too at about half the price of the British shop. Oh well. I didn't get any spices, but at least now with my big mortar and pestle I could do something with it if I did find them. The lady couldn't find me the right sized pestle, so I have an extra big one which is very cool - more weight to crush things with but not a stupidly big mortar since I'm just little old me with a little shelf in a tiny Paris apartment. (I hope I'm using them around the right way). And for the first time in France, the lady in the Chinese hypermarket actually checked my signature against that on my card. Most of the time they just seem bemused to make me sign it at all, and once or twice I've had to tell them that it's necessary. Roll on French bank account. And a card with a 'flea'.

It's looking like I'm going to be able to have a lovely window box with herbs and maybe flowers too. I can't wait. Another thing I can't wait for is Nhan arriving for a visit tomorrow. Woooh!

The only other news (news? newsworthy? i think not...) is that I have a splinter on the sole of my heel that I can't get out and due to it's location it's just getting worse and worse with all the walking. Does anyone have any advice?

arrived.

2008-04-17T16:18:00.004-04:00

So finally the big news. I've found an apartment! I didn't want to say anything until I moved in, in case I jinxed it, but here I am! I managed to find it in less than 24 hours, which is apparently a minor miracle in Paris. I've got a big room with a double bed, and windows with shutters and view out onto the street. I'm living about 5 minutes from the Arc de Triomph in very calm and posh neighbourhood, and there's a little outdoor fruit & veg (and bread and cheese since it's France) in a nearby street. I'm super happy because I have all the things I was talking myself into being ok with living without - an oven, a bath, a freezer, a washing maching and even a kettle!

Yesterday was spent ferrying stuff from the old place to the new one - fortunately there was a direct metro line, but it was still a major pain lugging suitcases up and down metro stairs and in crammed carriages.

Today I went shopping and tried to stock my cupboard. It's a bit of an odd thing to do - starting from scratch. I suppose I will build up staples as I go along, but what are the real basic things you need to start with? I ended up with tinned tomatoes, lentils, baked beans (from the English section of the supermarket), pasta, couscous, bread, yoghurt, sugar, salt, butter, oil, vinegar, tea, tomatoes, a cucumber and a few fresh fruits. Have a missed anything essential?

I went to the street market, of course, even though I was told not to because it's more expensive than in the supermarket. I just can't bring myself to do it though, to buy from huge companies when the street stalls have such beautful produce and you can actually see the person who's getting your money. And what's the point of being in France and having markets like that at my disposal if I'm not going to use them! Today I bought these teeny weeny strawberries that were so sweet they tasted like strawberry flavoured lollies - I've never had anything like them.

Tomorrow I am going to find an English shop, because I realised there were a couple of things that I am going to NEED sooner or later: Worcestershire sauce being the first. I think I will have to try and find an Asian grocer soon too, because the Asian sections in the supermarkets here are depressingly lame, and a tin of coconut milk costs more than a coffee. Also I'm going to need a mortar and pestle and I imagine it will be the best place to find one.

Have I mentioned the milk? The French drink long-life milk and I just DO NOT get it. Considering how seriously they take their cheese. I am considered very weird for buying expensive milk that will go off.

The only other thing I did today was to go around to the art galleries and buy abonnements. If you're under 26 you can buy a yearly pass to each of the Louvre, the Pompidou and the Musee d'Orsay for about 10 coffees each. That represents a bargain to me, but I have to get in fast this week and buy them before my birthday. It was a surprisingly big hassle (actually, I shouldn't be surprised at how much of a headache anything is in France by now) and I didn't even get the one for the Louvre becuase of an 'exceptional closure'. I do not think it means what they think it means, becuase they seem to happen ALL THE TIME in this country. But anyway, it meant a lot of walking which was not such a bad thing, and I'll just have to go back tomorrow.

The other news is that I have a job as an English teacher! (Which means next week I'm going to have to learn English grammar...). It'll be teaching business people individually or in small classes, but I'm afraid I don't know much more than that because it doesn't start for another week. In the meantime I have to take the letter promising me a job to somewhere to stamp my visa before I can sign a contract and after that I have to register for social security etc. Welcome to France!

still tired.

2008-04-15T13:22:00.014-04:00

Daylight savings 'on' in France and daylight savings 'off' in Australia has really made communication harder, so I've been up past midnight a lot lately, which coupled with the scariness of everything and all the everything happening so fast here and all the blah means I'm completely exhausted.

I had a job inteview at 9:30 this morning and it was a no go I think. The lady basically told me that since I don't have a tefel (or however you spell that) qualification, they'd hire me becuase they're desperate but I'd basically get the hours that they can't give to anyone else. Yeah, that sounds like a real winner.

I had lunch at L'As du Felafel which is supposed to do the best felafel yiros in Paris. It was quite theatrical becuase I knew the place when I got there becuase it was the one with a line halfway up the street. And it's obviously always that busy becuase those guys were making yiros' FAST. The felafel itself was very fresh which made it good, and they used coleslawey stuff which was an improvement on iceburg lettuce, but I was a bit disappointed to be honest. I think France really needs to get with the program and discover GARLIC.

The felafel place was in a neighbourhood called the Marais, which is traditionally the Jewish area, and is now also the gay area. It also seems to me like it might be quite trendy (it is close to the centre) and there were lots of pretty shops. It also felt a little more village like than big huge city. I think I will have to spend a bit more time exploring becuase I really didn't have time.

I met a friend of a friend for coffee which was really nice and she took me to a little place called Mamie Gateaux in the 6th (which is also where the St Germain area is) and I had a honey and lemon drink and a lovely slice of cake, which tasted a bit like a baked lemon cheesecake studded with apricots. We went for a wander around afterwards, near the Odeon theatre (which we didn't actually find...The Marriage of Figaro premiered there!) and I think that is going to be another area to explore a little more. It was also nice to meet someone new and have a bit of a chat with someone. I am a bit lonely here...

After that I explored a little more myself, bought a flocked notebook and I don't know whether I'm more excited that it's just beautiful or that it's LINED. Have I mentioned that all French notebooks are graph paper? It's so, SO annoying.

The last item of the day was to try to by the yearly Louvre pass that mum found out you can get for 7 coffees IF you're under 26. (They actually exist for most of the big galleries/museums here so I'll be doing a lot of museum information desk visits before Sunday). Unfortunately, the Louvre is closed on Tuesdays, and I had another experience of a French person who SHOULD know what he's talking about (ie. the information guy) giving me COMPLETELY wrong directions. So, I didn't end up getting it. Tomorrow it will have to be.

General observations on Paris are limited so far, becuase I've been preoccupied with job/apartment hunting and also tired as anything. However, Parisian women do not dress as well as I was expecting. In fact I'd go so far as to say that the women of Bordeaux are way out in front. The average level is still better than Australia, but I think if you walked around in Melbourne for a day you'd see more beautifully dressed women than I have here so far. And even the ones that are dressed well, are dressed boringly. Very conservative, plain, and elegant, but black black black black grey black black black good haircut black black black. It's really a bit disappointing, although at least I won't have to try so hard to keep up.

On the upside, Parisians don't seem to be as rude as I was expecting. I don't feel like I'm getting treated poorly when it's obvious that I'm not French, and everybody that I've asked for directions has been extremely helpful. That being said, I've seen a lot of incredibly rude Americans (while I was talking to him, one woman marched up to the Louvre guy who was giving me directions and interrupted [in English] with 'we need the Metro'). So maybe the Parisian reputation for rudeness is actually based on their reactions to impolite tourists, not just tourists in general.

I am very over the metro already. There actually are accordian buskers on them (and they're usually quite good) which is definitely awesome, and yes yes it's very comprehensive and easy. However, I just cannot handle the smell. Ok, I know I said I was going to stop talking about dog poo, and God knows I'd like to, but the good news is there's a lot less of it in Paris than there was in Bordeaux. The bad news is that the French laissez-faire attitude to their own bodily functions seems to express itself most obviously in the Paris Metro. I may well be an uptight Anglo, but that, my possums, is indubitably, extraordinarily ick.

confused.

2008-04-14T16:13:00.017-04:00

I feel like I should write something but I don't know what to write. For once. Ha. I'm sure I'll still manage to write a ton of nothing. My thoughts are fluttering around in my head and I can't seem to grab them by the toe, one by one in any semblance of order. Maybe I'll go chronologically. Because I'm nothing if not original.

Saturday was awful - as previously established.

Yesterday was excellent, but I'm still saving up the good news, just in case.

I spent the afternoon wandering the sights - the Arc de Triomph, the Champs-Elysees, the Tuilleries, the (outside of the) Louvre. I found a huge English bookstore (with Australian cookbooks!) and just generally wandered a long way. I'm sure I didn't go very far, and I must have been circles even though I thought I was aiming in a straight line. The roads in Paris are bigger than I imagined and more of them are still cobbled than I expected. There is really a lot of gilding going on here too.

I had some macarons from the Laduree. What a treat. This is apparently the original place where someone had the inspiration to sandwich the two biscuits together with icing. I didn't think they could really be that much better than the Baillardran ones, but WOW was I wrong. I had a caramel one and an orange blossom one and they were both incredible. The biscuit part was so light that the filling dominated, and the filling in each case was soft and rich plentiful and incredible and very sweet. I think there's something to be said for the crunchier contrast of the Baillardran ones, and they are subtler, but these were just ... wow. The caramel one tasted better than caramel itself. That's impressive. The shop itself was also beautiful - the ceiling and walls were painted with cherubs, lots of blue sky, lots of gilding. I think there's a little cafe part too, but the line was enormous.

In the evening, I went and saw Penelope with Phil. It's a sweet, uncomplicated movie, and I really enjoyed it. And now I want stripey tops, secretary shoes, a long long long scarf. And curly hair. Maybe I should get a perm? But I think I might compromise by sewing a lot of buttons on to my black jacket. Which would also give me an excuse to find the Paris version of La Droguerie.

Phil and I hung out a little afterwards, and it was great to pick his brains about Paris. It was also a real relief to just have a normal chat to someone. I haven't done that for a while...

I slept with one eye open again (or rather didn't sleep with one shut), and the bed butted up against the door. I am sure I am being ridiculously paranoid (what a surprise) and there is nothing wrong but I do not feel comfortable here and I will be glad to leave.

Today I had 3 interviews for teaching jobs, and all were very different from each other. I haven't come to any conclusions yet, but I don't really know that I care. I've still got at least another 3 interviews to go to, so I'm probably better off not getting carried away thinking about it, but in any case, I'm functioning on a total of about 9 hours sleep for the past 3 days, so all my mental capacity is being utilised just putting one foot in front of the other, and one word after the other.

Still, it's looking like in a week or so I should have some semblance of a normal life. That will be nice. I should start looking for French lessons and friends soon. And maybe an orchestra.

Also, it's been hailing here.

feeling a LOT better.

2008-04-13T19:46:00.004-04:00

Oh what a difference a day makes. Yesterday things couldn't have been looking bleaker, and today things couldn't be looking better.

But a. it's 2am
and b. it's all so good I don't want to jinx it.

But I just thought I'd write a quick post so that y'all don't get on the phone to my mother worrying about my mental health.

Oh, how cryptic I'm being...

is in gay Pahwee...

2008-04-12T14:55:00.007-04:00

and is utterly, utterly terrified.

I left Lyon this afternoon (after finally making some friends in my class yesterday), got on a train, and here I am. I found a short term apartment to rent until the end of the month while I find something more long term. Which apparently will be hard.

The girl that I'm subletting this apartment from met me at the train station and brought me back here and showed me the ropes, which was very kind of her. And then she left.

And now I am feeling very, very alone.

I've never lived on my own before. I used to think I'd like it. Maybe I would like it, but right now I can't think straight and the cavewoman inside of me wants to sleep with one eye open in case someone comes through the door in the night.

I feel better on the street because there are people around, and if something feels wrong, I can turn around and walk in the other direction. Logically, there's nothing wrong here. Logically I'm safer inside. I'm safe here in a (relatively) clean, secure apartment with a locked door. On the other hand, I'm in a city of 2 million people and I know virtually no-one. Who would notice if the bogeyman gobbled me up in the middle of the night?

I'm counting down the hours until 1pm tomorrow, when I have an interview for a share house with a lady who sounds really nice. I really hope she is nice, and I get it and I can move in straight away, because it's been about 2 hours, and I'm already sick of feeling so completely isolated from the world. Stuff the 300 euros I just paid for this place for 2 more weeks. I'm getting a glimpse of how tiny and unimportant I really am in the grand scheme of the universe, and I don't like it even one little bit.

I'm counting down the days until Nhan arrives to visit, when I can finally, FINALLY have a hug from someone who knows me.

I had better be brimming with character when all of this is over.

nearly ready to say goodbye to Lyon.

2008-04-10T15:46:00.004-04:00

I was going to save this post until maybe tomorrow or Saturday, but I think life is just going to get busier and busier so I'm taking the chance now. When I should really be online searching for apartments. But it's a bit overwhelming and I've sent about 50 emails, and I think I need to grow some courage and start ringing people on the phone...in French...

Unfortunately I don't have that much news, becuase I've pretty much spent all week since Geneva online. I've decided to bite the bullet and so I'm moving to Paris on Saturday. I'm staying with a daughter of a friend of my aunt (talk about relying on the kindness of strangers!) for a little while, so I really need to hit the ground running. Thus, I've been online searching for jobs, apartments... the good news is that I've lined up 7 English teaching job interviews. The bad news is apartment hunting looks like it's going to be a complete and utter nightmare, if not nigh on impossible. Well, I guess I just have to keep my chin up and trust that somehow, something will work out.

I'm still pretty down on Lyon, although I've had glimmers of interest. I think I've really learnt from this experience that knowing a few people, having someone you can have a coffee and a chat with, and a little bit of sunshine and greenery can make all the difference. I haven't really liked Lyon at all, but the weather's been depressing, I don't know anyone, I don't know the cool places and everything is grey grey grey ugly 80s buildings. It's a big, unwelcoming city, but I don't think it has to be that way. I've come across a couple of pretty little corners that make me wonder if I could have had the opposite experience had things panned out differently, but I still think it's not the easiest city to love.

I missed another class this week becuase I had a big palaver with my train pass. The train systems here are great, in that you can buy an 'abonnement' (I don't know what it translates as...season ticket?) for a given period and then you can use as much public transport as you like. Mine ran out on Monday so I had to recharge it, only when I got to the machine I realised it only took coins (and I didn't have 9 coffees worth of coins on me surprisngly) and it wouldn't accept my Australian credit card. There was no office at my tiny little station, so I bought a single trip to get into the station and then asked one of the attendents at what station could I find an office. Conversation as follows (in French):

Emily: 'I need to buy an abonnement and my Australian credit card won't work in the machine. Where is the nearest station with a ticket office?'. (Nb. I said this perfectly).
Attendant: 'oh, follow me, you just need to use the machine'.
E: 'no, the machine won't work with my Australian credit card'
A: 'oh ok. Follow me.'
E: 'ok'
A: 'here, use the machine'
E: 'um, no. It won't work, see I have an Australian credit card? It won't work'.
A: 'oh ok. You need to go to a station with an office'
E: 'Yes. Which one has an office?'
A: 'Oh good question. Let's go and look at the map. Follow me.'
E: 'I can't. I've just used my single ticket leaving the station. I can't come back in'.
A: 'Oh oops. Sneak back in with me.'
E: 'Um...ok...'
A: 'Oh here, let's look at the map. Here, go to this station'.
E: (looks at the map and realises she's getting bad advice). 'Ok, thanks for your help'.

Emily gets on the train and goes to a different station, not the one the attendant tells her to go to. Waits in line for 45 minutes. Buys abonnement. Decides that it's now 1.5 hours into the 3 hour class and she might as well skip it and do something else. Decides to ask another attendent for directions to where she wants to go.

New attendent: 'Well, what you want to do is, go in that direction for a while, then look at your map and then realise I've told you to go the wrong way'.

Good-o.

I tried to go to UBS (somethingorother bank of Switzerland) to deposit my enrollment fees into the Uni Geneva account. I got quite lost because the building didn't seem to exist, and then I found it in the middle of the road (it was number 1) with a big shut door. A moneyed suited man came back from lunch at that point, and kindly told me that UBS outside of Switzerland is an investment bank, and no that was not going to work. How do I deposit money then? Go to Geneva. D'oh!

Still, on the way I saw actual chocolate coated bread. Only in France hey?

This week has been very up and down for me. Some days I'm excited becuase I'm living in France and because everything's new and different and because I'm about to move to Paris and how amazing is that? Other days I've been down in the dumps because what am I doing here and I'm never going to find an apartment in Paris, especially not in under a week! I'm trying to be a bit pragmatic about it now. Maybe it will work out and maybe it won't, but there's too much unknown information so I can't really know either way. Hopefully once I get to Paris I'll be able to judge the situation a little better.

In the meantime I've had a bit of a brainwave. I came to Europe because I wanted to work out a few things - what I wanted to do with the rest of my life for instance. (Yes, that old chestnut). I thought it would be an active process and I've been quite frustrated with myself that I don't seem to be getting any closer to figuring it out (or maybe I am but it still feels like I'm going round in circles in a smoke filled room, and yes I know it's only been 10 weeks and maybe I'm expecting a bit much of myself). But actually maybe the point is, not that being here will help me figure it out any quicker or better, but just that sooner or later, in its own time and its own way, the answer will come to me (maybe I'll find something I love doing, or somewhere I love being, or I will see an ad for a job that's just too exciting to ignore, or I'll get sick of travelling and want to come home and get a mortgage) and it's not something I can force. And the point of being in Europe is not that it'll help me find the answer, but just that at least until I do I'm spending my time interestingly seeing the world and learning lots of new things, and not just treading water.

like a rainbow.

2008-04-09T16:43:00.003-04:00

The old header.

in love with Geneva.

2008-04-05T17:47:00.007-04:00

And thank the Good Lord because Lyon was really getting me down. (I think I've figured it out - it's not that the city is any less nice, per se, it's just that the people don't seem to care about it. It's not clean, there's no greenery ANYwhere and as such it just doesn't feel welcoming to an outsider.)

I left very very early (it was still dark walking to the train station which was a bit hairy) and I slept for most of the 2 hour train ride. Coming into Switzerland is the biggest cliche though, because suddenly the train is cutting a path between mountain, and there are cows, and the houses start to look like cuckoo clocks. I had to go through a checkpoint, but the immigration policeman barely glanced at my passport - I doubt he could've even told you my nationality.

I headed for the tourism office (after paying CHF2 to use the [admittedly sparkling clean] 'McToilette' [no relation, not kidding])and picked up a map, and then made my way across the Pont du Mont-Blanc and a little way around the lake. I saw the Jardin Anglais, and the Flower Clock (nice, but a little underwhelming considering how hyped they are in all the guides). Around the lake is very pretty, but I thought that too was a bit underwhelming, because after all a lake is just a lake. And then I noticed the Alps... it's a nice spot alright!

I wandered around the Old Town for a while, and enjoyed the tiny cobbled streets (the streets in other parts of the city are wide and clear) and the beautiful old buildings with pilgrim hats. I'm not sure what I expected of Geneva, but I think I had Frankenstein in mind. Although I can see that in the architecture, it was such a beautiful sunny day that the tall sandstone buildings looked nothing but welcoming to me.

After the Old Town I headed for the Parc des Bastions which is just next door. It's quite a large park, with big 3 foot chess pieces, and lots of statues of the founders of Geneva. It's also the home to the languages departments of the University, and what a lovely location - right in the middle of a park, which itself is near the big cultural buildings - the theatre, the conservatoire, etc.

I went to 'Le The' for lunch, which was a Chinese teahouse that the internet recommended. It was certainly funky and quaint, but it was also not necessarily the best value (although not unreasonable) and the service was rather brusque. Also, the people at the table next to me smoked all through my meal, which put me off bothering with dessert. I guess the Swiss must be a bit behind the times on that one...

On the way back from lunch, I chanced upon a huge fleamarket which happens every Saturday apparently. It was fun to wander though, and seemed a bit at odds with Geneva's otherwise posh visage.

Next I went to the Patek Philippe museum, which is 3 storeys of watches. It was pretty amazing. To start with, the intricacy of timepieces that were made years ago, and the declicacy of the decoration that I doubt could be rivalled these days, because the craftsmen (and their patrons) just don't exist anymore. There were watches and clocks in every imaginable form and I suspect the cheapest one in the place would be worth more than my yearly salary, and there were hundreds. It took me a good hour and a half to get through the place, and that was without reading anything (because it was all in French, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your perspective). I would've liked a little information somewhere on how watches actually work, because that seemed to be assumed knowledge, but otherwise it was excellent.

I stopped at a little cafe in the Old Town and sat outside in the sun with a beer. It was so warm I momentarily wondered if I might get sunburnt which I think shows that my whole temperature 'clock' has been adjusted after Chicago and 10 weeks of Europe, because it can't've been more than 15 degrees. The beer was 'Einseidler' and very nice and fruity without being too sweet - I should've known the Swiss would do beer well, becuase of their links to Germany.

I continued to wander and I saw a few other things, including Rousseau's birthplace and the Hotel de Ville among a lot of other pretty buildings and quite a few shop windows. I didn't make it to the UN tour which I would've liked, but it was a bit far by foot, so hopefully I'll get to go back and do that another time.

I couldn't find a (cheap) hotel for the night, so I decided to come home in the evening at the appointed time. I grabbed a kebab/yiros near the train station which was not bad, and the 'spicy sauce' was actually spicy. Woohoo! I realised too late that I forgot to sample the Swiss chocolate. Not woohoo. Not even sure how it was possible.

Overall I really really liked Geneva. Even though there's not a lot of stuff to do there per se, it's so nice and clean and beautiful and welcoming and I enjoyed just walking around for my 8 hours there. I was obviously a tourist but instead of feeling like a nuissance, people were really nice to, me and smiled at me in the street, and generally seemed pleased to share their city. So many of the buildings are old and sandstone, and the city really looks like it's being looked after, with lots of green spaces and flowers everywhere. It's obviously a safe city too, because most people weren't even bothering to chain their bikes up, but just lining them up in the streets. Perhaps it's such a safe city (I walked around like a total tourist all day, map in hand, and never once felt threatened) because it's a very rich city, but I think it would still be very livable. Sure, you could spend a lot of money there quickly if you wanted, but a lot of things seemed comparable to home (and with the exchange rate being about equal it's at least easier to know exactly how much you're paying for eveything) and I think you could search out a high standard of living for a reasonable amount of money if you were willing to look a little harder for it.

Who knows what the future will bring, but I think I could be very happy there.

going to ANOTHER COUNRY for the weekend.

2008-04-04T12:35:00.010-04:00

I'm sorry to report that things are not looking up that much in Lyon, except that I'll be leaving soon. Ok, it's not that bad, but it is kind of ugly and ininspiring and I keep trying to like it, but I'm just not getting anywhere. Well, only a week more. I am going to try and see the tunnels under the city, and maybe the big church on the hill, but otherwise I'm going to use the time to chill out a bit, relax, cut myself some slack, and then start searching for jobs/apartments in Paris. Which all in all is not such a bad thing.

On Tuesday I went to the big Middle Eastern supermarket near my school, which was quite interesting. It wasn't big in the same sense as the other supermarkets here - more like the size of your average IGA. I think the school is in a Middle Eastern/Muslim area because there are quite a few exotic little shops. The supermarket was quite interesting, but didn't have a very welcoming air, and when I tried to leave I couldn't figure out how to open the door. I asked a man behind a counter for help and he ignored me! So I just had to wait until someone else walked through it. After that I stopped in at a little Muslim cafe to buy a juice (they have this brand of juice here [in France] called Pago and they're absolutely divine) and I asked about some sweets they had in baskets on the counter, and the lady gave me one for free!

In the afternoon I went to school, which is ok, but not great. As I said the school is much bigger and more impersonal, and the class is fine, but not a barrel of laughs. I haven't really made any buddies in the class, and although the teachers are good, they're not terribly friendly or jovial. I was wearing my fish necklace and the teacher asked if was for Fish Day. Is this some Catholic thing I don't know about? No, as it turns out, it's just the French name for April Fool's Day. It's basically the same thing, except the standard joke here is to sneak a (paper) fish into someone's pocket. Hil-AR-ious. And of course, eat lots of fish-shaped chocolate. That bit I'm on board with. On the way home I went to the supermarket and bought some ready-made salade for my lunches and found St Agur in the mini cheese 6 for 2 euro section. Nice nice nice.

Wednesday was unfortunately a pretty bad day. I stuffed around all morning and then skipped class because I couldn't be bothered. I probably shouldn't've, but then I decided I was in such a foul mood that I should instead go and do something to cheer myself up. I thought I might go to the funky neighbourhood (the Croix Rouge) becuase I was feeling a bit negative about the city in general and I thought that if I could find somewhere that I liked I'd feel a whole heap better about the situation. Well, it was totally lame. So much for the 'soulful village atmosphere, bohemian inhabitants and lush outdoor markets' that the lonely planet promised! It was just like the rest of Lyon - ugly and commerical and full of bland 80s apartment blocks and depressed harried looking people. I went up the main street and it was just like every other shopping street inthe world only not a particularly good one, and I went down the street that's supposed to have all the artisan shops, but everything was closed, and not even just normal closed but rollershutter closed! And it was a Wedneday afternoon! From one spot there was quite a nice view over the city, but then I took a picture of some meringues in a shop window and then realised the lady was looking at me, so i gave her a big smile and she gave me the sourest scowl i've ever seen in my life. Maybe i should've asked first, but really...So after a couple of hours I gave up and came home, feeling considerably worse.

When i got back to the city I decided I needed a little beer so I went to a cafe and sat down outside...and no waitress came. So i went and sat inside and STILL no waitress came (she was standing at the bar polishing glasses). So I got cheesed off and left. So in the end I felt considerably worse at the end of Wednesday than I did at the beginning. The only good thing that happened was that I found a little rosebush for sale for 1.5 coffees, so I bought it to put on my windowsill. I won't be able to take it with me, but i thought for that price it might cheer me up for a week and a half. But when i was in the shop they had some orchids like my Dad grows so i smelled them thinking that it would remind me of home and i would feel better, but it just made me homesick.

Fortunately Thursday and today have been a lot better. Not great, I wouldn't say... I'm still feeling pretty bland about Lyon in general, but at least they weren't shockers like Wednesday. Yesterday I had a big chat to Nhan, who's arrived in London, and then I went and bought a ticket to Geneva for the weekend! The return trip was only 15 coffees which I thought was a total bargain. It's there and back on Saturday, but if I like it and want to stay overnight, I can just use the return ticket on Sunday instead. I also found a lovely little paint shop. (I swear there's shops for everything here I've seen shops for doorknobs, and shops for bookshelves.

Today nothing really happened again, but when I tried to change some money into Swiss Francs (they're pretty!) I had a bit of a mishap. In a nutshell I asked for 60 euros, and the guy heard 300 (have I spoken about the absurdity of the French number system before???) and I was trying to figure out how I was handing over 250 euros when I thought that the AUD is pretty much equal to the CHF. It is by the way. It all got sorted out in the end, but I suspect I will still get charged some hefty bank fees for him making and then cancelling a rather large transaction on my credit card. The only other thing that happened was that I had to go the loooooong way around to get to school because the building next door is falling down and so the whole block has been roped off by the police.

Still, I'm off to Geneva tomorrow! I kind of can't believe how brave I am, going to ANOTHER COUNTRY for the weekend (it's in capitals because my Australian brain still can't get around the idea that it's possible to go to ANOTHER COUNTRY just for the weekend), with no fixed plans, but hopefully it will be EXCELLENT FUN and I will be able to write a less depressive post in a few days.

getting with the program.

2008-04-01T06:09:00.003-04:00

Housekeeping:

I've set up a Flickr account in order to share my photos more easily. You can click on the link in the sidebar to go and look at them all.

However, I'm still a little scared of the big interweb monster, and therefore any photos with people in them are private. I've sent out an email to all my 'real' people allowing them to access these photos. If I've accidentally missed you and you're reading this, and you'd like to see those photos, please send me an email and I'll be happy to invite you too.

saying hello to Lyon.

2008-04-01T05:18:00.005-04:00

So I'm in Lyon for two weeks now! I thought it would be a good idea to take the opportunity to see another city before I hit Paris, so I'm here taking more langauge classes.

Unfortunately, my current opinion is that Lyon is a bit of a hole. Well, as far as they exist in France anyway. To me it feels commercial, impersonal, big, cold and grey but then perhaps I just haven't found the cool areas yet, or I was spoiled by Bordeaux. Yesterday at least 5 people asked me for money, and a dodgy guy snuck in behind me to the metro, and then gave me the sarkiest thankyou I've ever heard. The metro itself makes the New York subway look welcoming. However; I'm willing to revise my opinion if further information comes to light. On the upside, the footpaths are wider here and people are in a hurry, so I don't feel the urge to headbutt the person in front of me every time I'm running late for class. There also seem to be less crottes on the street, but that could be a function of the fact that there don't seem to be many people out and about enjoying life (and thus, less dog-walking).

Yesterday was my first full day and I got up and went to the school to enrol. It was a bit of a palaver because they made me sit a placement test, even though I just finished one level in Bordeaux at the same organisation. Surprise, surprise, after all that they put me in the next level from the one I just finished. The school here is much bigger, and walking in for the first time I felt like I was back at the first day of high school, and all the cool kids had already set the friendship groups. That's probably not the case, but it wasn't a fun feeling to revisit. I'm taking the afternoon course, because apparently there's less people in the class, but since I ended up having to go to the last class of the session because they run on the calendar month rather than in 4 week blocks, it could be different today anyway.

I guess now would be a good time to give an update on my language level. It's funny because day by day I feel like I'm getting nowhere, but when I look back at where I was two months ago, I've really come a long way I think. I can pretty much have conversations with people now, providing it relates to something reasonably concrete or straightforward (like their day, the immediate surroundings, etc). I'm starting to be able to understand people when they say something unexpectedly (before I used to need to know that they were going to speak in advance), and I'm starting to be able to eavesdrop on public transport. I still feel like I'm talking like an idiot, but I can get my point across one way or another, most of the time. But that being said, I can get thrown for 6 very easily. Like yesterday when a waiter asked 'what can I get you' instead of 'what would you like' and I had no idea what he was talking about. But I think that was a result of actually trying to understand his words rather than just go by body language, so i guess even that's a step forward.

After enrolling and being told to come back for the afternoon session I went to the main city square to buy a weekly bus ticket. The main square really summed up the city for me, because it's a huge space with a gorgeous big statue of a man on a horse in the centre and the rest of it is filled with... red dirt. There's a lot of beautiful old spaces and buildings here, but they don't seem to be valued much.

Thank God for my Lonely Planet, becuase I had some hours to kill and wandering aimlessly didn't seem like a good plan. Lyon sits over two rivers, and I went for a promenade in the old part of the city. Apparently it's heritage listed, but in the end just didn't feel as cool as St Emilion, and the vibe was very dead like the rest of the city. I did stop for a take away crepe at a street stall though, and I think my Mum's crepes have finally been topped. This guy knew what he was doing and was churning out perfectly round, cottony-thin crepes by the pile. Don't feel too bad though mum, because this guy does it all day every day, and it was only a little better than yours. I chose a 'filling' of sweetened chestnut cream which was very nice, but I can't quite decide whether the French approach of just putting a little swipe of filling in rather than a big pile is a good thing or not. It's subtler and I guess it has the advantage of not running down your arm as you walk. But it's not as sweet, obviously.

I had lunch at a trendy modern soup place, which was nice but not spectacular, and with my soup I also tried quenelles (quinoa flavour) which are like French steamed dumplings I suppose, and a speciality of Lyon. Nice, but subtle. I guess this is a theme - the French don't blow your head off with flavour. Apparently Lyon is famed for it's food, so hopefully I'll come across some other tasty treats.

After lunch I went to my class and then home for dinner. Today I've been spending the morning catching up on internet-y things that I haven't had a chance to do easily for months, and hopefully I'm nearly there. HurrAY for wifi.

saying a final goodbye to Bordeaux.

2008-03-31T04:29:00.001-04:00

It's funny how you don't appreciate things until after you're gone. I felt quite ready to leave Bordeaux, but now that I'm not there anymore, I miss it quite a lot. I thought I was just travelling, and I am of course, but now I realise that I actually had made inroads into building a little life for myself there and letting that go is a little sad.

But back to the last week. Unfotunately a lot of it's quite hazy because on Sunday my laptop went bung, and it turns out I really rely on it for everything. EVERYTHING. Including taking notes for things (like what's happened this week). Paper? Pen? What are they?

But before that, I spent Sunday and Monday in the city with Kara and Andrew. We wandered around and went back for another mint tea by the St Michel markets. Despite the fact that it was Easter Sunday, there was actually more stuff open in the city, I guess because people were out and about a bit more for the long weekend. I went into the shop with the lovely dress I wanted, only to find it was so cheap (100 coffees) because it actually was made of three separate parts, and each one was 100 coffees. Not so cheap after all. Kara and I had dinner in a proper French restaurant which was great, because I've been doing my best to eat on the cheap. I had something called 'tournedos' which was a fillet of beef tied into a round shape. The French cook their meat much rarer than in Australia - I ordered it medium ('a point') and it was very very red, but it was also one of the best pieces of meat I've ever eaten, and the restaurant wasn't anything special - just a normal nice cafe/restau. I guess you just have to accept that the French know how to cook things, get over your Anglo fear of blood and get on with the enjoying.

Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday were spent taking the computer to the repairer, which was all a bit of a palaver, but in the end we found an authorised macman, who was a real pro, and fixed it under the computer warranty which really saved me a LOT of hassle. I am even more convinced that macs are the way to go now. Not only did it not completely die in the face of real adversity, the warranty was genius, and the guy was able to type my serial number into a computer and see picture of exactly what the guts of my computer look like. Magic! And even though I'm on the other side of the world, I didn't have to pay a cent. I had a funny experience driving to see him though (the company was in the sticks). We drove past a KFC and my host mother said (in French): 'Oh hey! A KFC! I've heard of that....'. What. The. Apparently it's not very big here. I hadn't even noticed.

On Thursday I tried to make inroad into the list of things I wanted to do before I left Bordeaux. I went to the magic haberdashery shop and spent way too much money on some gorgeous beads and buttons and the most beautiful (and expensive) ribbon I've ever seen. I finished the macaron project, and even went back and redid some of the photos that I wasn't happy with. I went to the Place de Parliament (the funky end of town I disovered late in the piece) and explored a bit. I went and did my best to look in the Grand Theatre. I couldn't get very far, bit it was very interesting because the foyer is all sandstone on the inside, just like the outside and it feels like being in an old Roman building or something. I'm sure the actual auditorium is the opposite becuase I've now seen pictures and it looks lavishly decorated and incredible, and I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to see anything there. I caught up with Holli (another Australian) for a last coffee and bought my ticket to Lyon (15 coffees. Bar-gain). In the evening I went to Kara's and she made me a lovely dinner. I tried 4 French cheeses, fromage blanc, and she made a lovely daal. It was so nice to hang out in someones home, and have a lovingly cooked meal. On my way home, I saw another hedgehog! I wish they would come out in the day so I could take a picture...

On Friday for lunch, I had the most amazing crepe. We went to this little crepe place, and I got a crepe filled with andouille sausage, artichokes, mushrooms and cheese, and it must've been 10cm high! I also had a dessert crepe with home made salted caramel sauce and it was absolutely delicious!

On Saturday I continued with my Bordeaux list. I went to La Poste, and got a little further on my discovery of how it works. It turns out if you send something in a soft envelope (as opposed to a box), it's considered a 'letter' (regardless of the contents) and you don't have to fill in a declaration of what's inside, and you get charged about 1/10 the price. Oy vey the French. I went across the bridge to take some photos of the city. It was a beautiful day and a lovely thing to do, but unfortunately the photos didn't turn out because of all the sun. I went to Mollat (the big bookstore) and looked at the Nez du Vin book, and also at the new 'Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band' cd, simply because that really must be the best band name ever. I had lunch at the Utopia cinema (since I ran out of time to actually see a movie there). I had a nice salad, and it's a beautiful place - converted out of an old church with stained glass windows everywhere. At 4, the gang met up at the local English pub to watch the Oxford/Cambridge rowing race (apparently it's a big deal) and then we went for dinner at a nice little restaurant. I had a gorgeous goat cheese salad (lovely soft chevre, mixed lettuce, walnuts and honey) and then a chicken dish ('Basque-style') which reminded me of Mum's chicken a la Bronhill only not so good (which still makes it pretty good). A lemon cake for dessert with creme anglaise, tilleul tisane (lime blossom tea, just like Proust!) and then a digestif of chilled Manzana which is an apple liqueur. And all for about 10 coffees! It was really great to hang around with all of the people that I've gotten to know in Bordeaux (Nathalie & her husband, Kara, Andrew, Holli, Amy and a few others) and it was a lovely relaxing way to finish my visit.

On Sunday I was up early for my train (and because the start of daylight savings made it even worse) and to spend a little time with the family saying goodbye. Although they could be quite exhausting, the kids were really lovely and sweet and I actually quite miss them. I guess there's nothing like kids climbing all over you to make you feel at home, and seeing how excited they got each time I walked in the door was a nice feeling.

On the train I had too much luggage and it was an imperial pain in the neck.When I left home I took as much as I could because I knew I'd be living away for some time, but now I wish I'd brought one change of clothes and a toothbrush. The train ride was 7.5 hours long, and it was quite nice because (although I tried) I found I could do much without risking feeling motion sick, so it turned out to be enforced quiet thinking time. Watching the countryside go by was nice too, although it's like Australia and once you've seen half an hour of it, it doesn't change much. Everything is just coming out of winter here so there were lots of grey trees and woods, but the grass is the most luminous, lurid green I've ever seen. And they think they're in a drought!

So goodbye Bordeaux! It really is a beautiful, small, clean, safe, and pretty pretty pretty city and I'm glad I got to spend so much time there. I think it was a good introduction to France.

leaving Bordeaux.

2008-03-29T07:59:00.004-04:00

Macaron-A-Day # 14: Cassis Violette

The 14th and final Baillardran ('bay-ee-aahr-droh' with phlegmy French r's if you can manage it) macaron.

This one has been a little while in the works partly because my computer was kaput, but partly because neither blackcurrants or violets are in season here, so I had to get a little creative. My first idea was to get a Kir Royale (a very French drink of champagne flavoured with a little cassis syrup) which also seemed like a nice treat to round off the project with. And it was. (Very tasty indeed, I le recommend, and I don't even like champagne. On the other hand, it cost me 4 coffees, so it must've been made with some serious champagne. That or the waiter saw me coming). Unfortunately the Kir was pretty much the colour of rose wine (ie. not remotely purple), so the photo was not up to my standards, which are rapidly increasing, and unfortunately faster than my talent. .

So I had to do a re-do with some jam and lollies. Quel dommage, hey. This was quite a strongly flavoured macaron, and (if I understood the lady right) the violet is the flavour of the creme, and doesn't just refer to the colour. I would have to say that it did taste more floral than it did berry-y, but on the other hand I don't think it was quite as nice as some of the others, as it wasn't as subtle a flavour. Well, you wouldn't expect it to be with a colour like that, would you?

And the result? Well I would have to say that the lemon was my favourite with rose coming second, and coconut third, and vanilla and raspberry getting honourable mentions. Apparently macarons are a speciality of Bordeaux, but apparently also they're a speciality of every other French city, so hopefully this is not the end of my macaron tasting, although I suspect it may be the end of the photo essay. I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have. It's been a nice little project - it gave a little structure to my week, gave me something a little creative to plan and execute and now I've got a nice little sense of satisfaction at having made something new. Oh, and they tasted good too.

(PS. I wasn't happy with the lemon or raspberry photos, so I went back and re-did them. So I had to eat MORE macarons. Life in France, hey? Anyway, the whole series is here if you want to go back and have a look).

in the merde.

2008-03-24T07:46:00.004-04:00

Might be a bit sporadic for a while. My laptop is currently tombe en panne (completely buggered) ... it should be alright because it will either get fixed or replaced by my travel insurance or the home and contents but I'm not sure how long it will take and in the meantime I'm at the mercy of public technology. Wooh.

PS. Mum, can you find the receipts for the laptop and the APP (warranty) please and email them to me? They're electronic and should be backed up on a cd in my room by the foot of my bed. Thanks.

I wish I knew more French swearwords. My phone is currently marching at least.

UPDATE: My computer is fixed perfectly and I want to marry the magical macman that fixed it for free!

underdressed for the deceivingly pretty French sun. Again.

2008-03-23T09:37:00.003-04:00

This week feels like nothing has happened. That's probably true to some extent - I've been stressed out about not finding a job and I've forgotten to pay attention to what's actually happening now. Mental note - don't do that again.

On Monday I bought some chocolate to send home. The chocolate here for Easter is amazing! Even the lame supermarket chocolate is impressive - life sized chickens, Noddy ('Oui-Oui') statuettes and every other kind of thing under the sun. So you can imagine what the proper chocolate shops are like! The window displays are gorgeous - which is something the chocolate shops have in common with all the other shops. Quite often you'll see a window with a sign apologising for the lack of a display, and telling you that the new incarnation is in the process of being 'realised'. All of this explains why the French phrase for window-shopping translates directly as 'licking the windows'. When they're full of chocolate, yes please! Anyway, I made it to my chosen chocolate shop bought a couple of little treats and it turned out to be the mecca. Not of chocolate though - of bubble wrap! When I saw that the lady had a big roll, I thought 'aha! She must know where to buy it'. So I asked, and she gave me the same line as everyone else...'ooooh. It's very specialised....' but then she gave me a big wad for free. Yippee! I thought this trip would be a good exercise in teaching me not to hoard unnecessary things, but it's actually doing the opposite. I'm collecting all sorts of rubbish (notably Australian postpaks and bubble wrap) because it's very odd the things that are difficult to find here.

On Tuesday I had a bit of a mishap because I was sitting around at home at 7:30 waiting for the family to arrive home, when I got a call from one of my (Adelaide) French teacher's friends who had invited me to the theatre on Thursday. It turned out that the play was actually Tuesday and there'd been a mixup so I had to sprint for the tram! The play was an English one which had been translated into French (I've forgotten what... not one I knew) and it illustrated that if you want to write a weird wacky performance art type thing, a good place to start would be to put it into a language that the audience doesn't understand. As far as I'm concerned the play was about 3 people arguing about where to put a chair, and one of them was wearing a coat with spoons sewed onto it. Fortunately it was only an hour long! (Actually I'm exaggerating - it was quite interesting, but I'm obviously not at the level yet where I can appreciate French theatre). The lady who invited me was very nice, and after the play we (and her three children) went for a kebab (yiros). It was very tasty and just like the ones at home except it tasted a bit fresher, they put chips in (which makes it a bit like an AB I suppose) and they use mayo instead of garlic sauce (not sure if this is standard or just this place). Walking home from the tram, a little animal dashed across the quiet street in front of me. It froze when it saw me, and what do you think it was? A hedgehog! If only it had been day and I could've gotten a better look at it.

Actually this week has really been animal week here. Apart from the hedgehog and the chocolate, there's also been a mouse loose in the house. The family's having a pool built so all sorts of things are coming out of the woodwork. My hostmother is quite afraid of this mouse (which I gather is very small) and walks around with big boots on and makes sure all the doors are closed. There numerous measures in place to trap the blighter, none of which have been successful as yet. I also found a massive huntsman in my little ensuite toilet late one night. I thought about letting it do it's own thing, and then realised that I would have to wonder where it was every time I needed to go, so I trapped it under a glass and saved it for the morning. I waited until the little boy was up as I thought he might be interested. As it turns out, he was not, and I had to put it outside tout de suite! (Which btw, 20 years later explains that Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang song about the 'toot sweets'). Despite me talking about how pretty it was, and 'Look! It's got eyes on it's arms!' and 'Look! How many legs does it have?' he was most unimpressed and a little afraid I think. I also showed him the photos of me with the giraffes at Elsie's wedding. 'Weren't you SCARED???' The upshot of this is that I am now considered superwoman because I'm not afraid of spiders or mice or giraffes. I haven't got the heart to tell him that's it's only because we have spiders that will KILL you at home, and the wussy French ones pale in comparison. Or that I'm more afraid of the dogs here because they might have rabies.

On Wednesday I did my best to do Nhan out of her 'bargain-queen' title, by buying a new pair of shoes for only 2.5 coffees. That's even cheap in dollars! They're canvas flats with a white rubber toe (like Converse's) and a velcro strap and they're black with cherries. Unfortunately it's been stupid and raining and I haven't been able to wear them much. I tried on Thursday and it was a very good exercise in biting off my nose to spite my face. The weather does not care that I'm wearing inappropriate footwear just because I'm cross with it. On bargain day I also bought some more TinTin dvds, and these ones actually seem to work in English. On Thursday I met a friend of a friend of a friend, who was a nice old lady and we had a cup of coffee and then she showed me around the old town a bit.

Friday was a nothing day as far as I can remember because it rained, it rained, it rained and Saturday was rainy too (even hail!) but I went out in it anyway. I had my habitual coffee/internet time, and then I did a little shopping now that I've finally found the funky (if expensive) shopping area. I bought a bunch of fun jewellery (cheap, but not in the end because I bought a bit much) and some reusable plastic straws. I met Kara and we picked up some rose macarons (and Andrew along the way) and went and had more Moroccan mint tea. In the evening I babysat the kids again and it went perfectly. No more tears about 'where's Mummy' and I even translated 'Spot' into French for the evening story. We watched an American kids movie ('Raymond') and it was completely bizarre to watch Tim Allen with a different voice. Often the French actors doing the dubbing sound pretty similar, but this guy's was completely different and it made it really really odd.

Today is Sunday, Easter Sunday and I'm in the city checking my email and hoping the nice weather holds. The family has given me a big chocolate chicken, which is very nice of them, but is making the teeny (chocolate!) puppy dogs I bought for the kids look a bit lame...

I've been applying for au pair jobs, but no luck so far. Fingers crossed. I've decided if nothing comes up by the end of the long weekend, I'm going to book in to do another month of classes, but maybe in Lyon so I can see another city.

hoping the sun stays out until after lunch in the park.

2008-03-22T07:32:00.005-04:00

Macaron-A-Day # 13: Rouge Diva

Jeez. You have no idea how difficult this photo was to take. I'm rapidly realising that travelling is one of those things that's good to do on your own, but better with a friend for so many reasons. We're getting on to the more abstract flavours and I'm having to get a bit more creative. And flexible.

What flavour is this supposed to be? Good question. I thought it tasted a lot like blackberry jam, or that rich raspberry jam that you get in the middle of really good doughnuts from the markets. And with chocolate icing of course. Of course.

hungry.

2008-03-18T07:52:00.005-04:00

Macaron-A-Day #12: Vanille

It's funny isn't it, that vanilla is often thought of as 'plain'. I love vanilla, it's so warm and fragrant, and did you know it comes from an orchid?

This macaron was truly rich and vanilla-y, and the (expensive, artisan) ice-cream tasted quite bland in comparison.

Three very enthusiastic thumbs up - fine holiday fun.

very responsible.

2008-03-16T11:58:00.003-04:00

Wow, I am so tired at the moment. I don't know whether it's the last two months finally catching up with me, today's (relative) lack of caffeine or the fact that I actually got more than 8 hours sleep last night, but whew! Sorry if I ramble even more than usual!

On Wednesday I walked past roadkill for the first time here. On closer inspection it was a hedgehog. Jeez. I guess that's what Europeans feel about us eating kangaroos. After class I went searching for flat shoes to go with my new jeans. I found a perfect pair for 2.5 coffees but they didn't have my size unfortunately, and after that I got a bit picky trying to find as good a bargain, so I still don't have shoes at this point. After that I met Holli, another Australian who I was put in touch with through a friend of a friend. It's funny how that works here - I never would've asked a total stranger out for coffee at home... anyway we had a coffee and went for a little window shopping which was nice. I found a Tintin dvd for 4 coffees (they do exist, although not in a convenient box set) which said it had French and English, but turned out to only have the former. Although it seems that Australia and France are the same dvd region so at least it'll play on my laptop. Anyway. I digress. Holli convinced me that working in an English pub would be a bad idea, and that working as a nanny in Paris would be a much better option so that is the new plan. On Wednesday I also found the most wonderful habadashery shop. It sells just buttons and beads and ribbons and wool and apart from the shop being big but quaint and French, all the things for sale were lovely. I found the best hair ribbon EVER (I think I might be heading back to that phase) but at 22 coffees a metre, I need to check *exactly* how many centimetres my head is before putting a kidney on eBay.

On Thursday evening I went to the cocktail at the school. Here a 'cocktail' is a little party with finger food and wine - no actual cocktails in sight - and they have one at the school once a month. It was in a very small room with a very large number of people and I ate an enormous number of teeny sandwiches because I wasn't sure if I was going to get dinner. I even had one with caviar (have I mentioned that there's a whole shop that sells nothing but caviar here?0 which wasn't too bad! More salty than fishy although I didn't go back for more. The wine was nice but I had a bit of a mishap when I asked for a glass of white. The man asked if I'd like the sweet or the dry. I asked for the sweet and he made me try the dry one first. It was pretty sweet, and I thought he'd made a mistake and I was about to get a glassful of the dry, but he filled my glass with the other and I got a glass of REALLY sweet wine. I've never tasted anything like it. It was as sweet as dessert wine, only, it wasn't as thick. Ho-ly cow. Just like cordial. And since I don't like dry wine, you'd think I would've loved this, but it was actually just way too much. But I guess it must be a standard variant of wine here because no-one else seemed to think it was weird...

After the cocktail we went to a little gathering that the German girl in my class had organised since she was going home the next day. It was at a cute little bistro which turned out to be a seafood restaurant only with a bar and a fire. I ended up having a prawn salad since I sort of felt like I had to order something and it seemed the least fishy thing on the menu. It was ok, but I tried one of Andrew's (giant) pile of mussels and I actually really liked it! It was lovely and meaty and not seafood-y at all! Maybe I'll be converted yet... I also ordered a Monaco, which we learned in class earlier is a beer with pomegranite syrup flavouring (in answer to my question about 'what is the pink beer'...which turned into a big discussion on how to order a beer in France - on tap vs in the bottle and what size). It was quite nice but a bit sweet and probably a waste of the beer because it probably would've tasted the same with fizzy water. I think it might be a nice idea though with only the tiniest dash of the syrup. After the seafood I cracked (by the way, the French love that word...'crack'...it's like a very positive version of 'voila'. Which they also use a lot.) and ordered my French creme brulee. Oh and it was so worth it. WAY better than the ones at home. The custard was really light and creamy - almost more like custard flavoured whipped cream - and the crackly top was caramalised but hadn't quite made it to burnt. Apparently it was a pretty big serving too, so I guess I chose my moment well!

On Friday nothing very interesting happened, except I discovered that the Monaco is not the end to the flavoured beers - on the contrary it is just the only one with a special name. You can ask for your beer flavoured with any number of syrups, and so I tried a teeny weeny beer with lunch (15cL) with mint syrup which I chose because it seemed the least likely to work, and therefore I thought it must be good because otherwise they wouldn't sell it. Please see my comments on the Monaco because they apply here too. Except it did come out a lovely bright green colour!

Saturday was the day for the second attempt to go to Arcachon (you'll remember the first attempt was a washout since the busses don't run on Sundays). First thing went to an oyster restaurant in a town where they catch them. I decided not to go for the 12 oyster degustation, but then at the last minute had a pang of regret, so I asked the lady if I could buy one oyster to taste since I don't really like seafood, but it seemed like probably the time to try one - if I don't like them when they're fresh out of the ocean like that i never will. She very kindly gave me one for free, and I must say, it wasn't completely horrible...kind of like when you've been swimming and swallowed a bit too much seawater. But then I didn't chew it which apparently you're supposed to after all (or so the man shelling them told me...AFTER) and nor did I have lemon juice which makes quite the difference I hear. We got to Arcachon and whilst searching for lunch found a beautiful old merry-go-round. We took a spin (one coffee) and I went on a pretty horse that went up and down just like in the cartoons. We went to a Breton creperie for lunch and I tried a cheese crepe made from buckwheat which is apparently a Bretanique(?) specialty. I wasn't so impressed though - it tasted it bit plasticy - maybe crepes (unlike bread) are just better made with white flour. While we were eating it started raining....and raining and raining and raining. This meant that walking around the town was a washout but we got back on the bus and we drove around the 'winter suburb' which is a very beautiful area of mansions (and I mean serious mansions with turrets and everything) which people own as winter shacks. Not quite Bonnie Doon....Arcachon also still has a school for sick kids to go because the fresh sea air is considered restorative. How very quaint. We made it to the Dune de Pilat (aka the Dune du Pyla) and it kindly stopped raining and the sun came out. This is the biggest sand dune in the world (over 117m high if my French numbers are correct, and much longer) and it was hard work to climb but spectacular from the top. To the left forest, and to the right sea. We had great fun running down the steep slope, which made me feel just like a camel because the sand forced you to run funny. I ended up running around in my socks, because my feet kept sinking and I nearly lost my shoes, which turned out to be the worst compromise because my socks (and pants) ended up very wet from the earlier rain.

On Saturday night I babysat for the family which was good experience if I end up working as an au pair. I was pretty apprehensive about living with kids before I came, but I've gotten to really enjoy playing with them. I just had to put the little boy to bed, and he started to get a bit sad and miss his mum, but with a bit of misdirection (an extra episode of Casper and two stories) the crisis was averted and he slept...the only creature stirring was the little mouse that is apparently in the house and terrorising my host mother.

Today was not very interesting because I've spent most of the day looking at the computer. I went into the city to use the wifi and just missed getting rained on, which was lucky because I've discovered that 4 coffee umbrellas are a complete waste of time as mine is not only bent all over the place, but also turns inside out at a butterfly sneezing and the fabric is half come off. I went to the cool 'asian' place with the eames chairs, and had a reasonably good pad thai and an A.C.E. juice (I figured out why it's called that too becuase it's nothing to do with the ingredients [orange, lemon, carrot] - it's the vitamins in it!) and a banana lassi that was closer to a milkshake. I spent half the day writing my 'dear family' letter which is a necessary addition to my au pair application and since I thought I should write it in French, took me an absolute age. This is not a good place to end, but it's all I have to say and I am very tired and going to sleep now. Ok bye bye.

a little over coffee every day.

2008-03-12T02:34:00.000-05:00

Maracon-A-Day #11: Chocolat Fruit de la Passion

Let me start by suggesting that perhaps France in winter is not the place to buy passionfruit? Wouldn't it have been pretty if I could've found a passionfruit flower though!

This photo also illustrates that these macarons, they do not travel well.

This macaron was a little different from the others because it was passionfruit flavoured, but had chocolate icing. I would say it reminded me most of chocolate fondue - the fruit flavoured biscuit gave it a lovely passionfruit fragranced tang and crunch, but the icing dominated and the overall sensation was that of smooth creamy chocolate. Tas-ty.

writing a blog about nothing.

2008-03-11T02:29:00.004-05:00

This week has been really quite a big one...although maybe it just seems that way because this week I made an effort to note down what I did each day, so I haven't already forgotten it all already.

On Thursday after my class, I randomly bumped into Kara, an American au pair that I met a few weeks ago at the USA-Bordeaux association conversation class. We hung out and wandered around the city, which was fun. We went to a little supermarket because I needed some food, and pfaffed around for ages talking about the differences in what's available here, in the US and at home (in a word: Cadbury). Although the pfaffing probably had more to do with me being indecisive about what to buy for the USA-Bordeaux potluck that evening. I went because I thought it might be a good place to make some possible job-giving contacts. I didn't really have a heap of fun, because there were loads and loads of people there and mingling with strangers isn't really my thing. I did meet another Aussie girl who's working in a British pub and suggested that is probably my best bet at finding a job. I also met a man who lectures at the conservatoire here, who invited me to a concert, and who told me that there's a really good bassoonist here named Jean Marie Lamothe who maybe I can have some lessons with. He even plays German bassoon (!) and a quick google told me he's played with the Ensemble Intemporcorain. Hang on. Let's try that again. Ensemble Contemporain? Intercontemporain. In the struggle to learn French, I'm losing my English and ending up with neither language. It's really quite the problem. Although I guess worse things happen at sea. Anyway, I think he's also played with Pierre Boulez and Frank Zappa. Fingers crossed. I also met a man who made disparaging noises when I told him that we have a large Sudanese population in Adelaide, and he had a big whinge about how horrible the English are. Nice. I also met a French lady who said that anglo accents are actually considered quite pretty, and that I shouldn't make too much of an effort to lose mine. Although it only works to a point: I think 'jay swees Australian, parlay voos anglaiz?' is not appreciated.

On Friday I ran for the bus AGAIN. Seriously it doesn't matter when I get up, the bus always seems to be 300m ahead of me. I think although they're cleaner, more reliable and just generally less rubbish than the Adelaide buses, they still are liable to follow the timetable 'give or take'. The little garcon helped me make my lunch, and he helpfully 'prepared' my fruit box for me. Which meant I had a fruit box for breakfast and a different fruit box for lunch. I had coffee after lunch with the Dutch lady from my class, and we had a big heart to heart which was really nice. We also randomly had coffee in a little teapot shop, and I think we may've found the cheapest coffee in the city, because it cost less for 4 coffees than it usually costs for two. Maybe it's a loss leader.... and they even roast their own beans! After that I did the Macaron-of-the-Day which has left me with a coconut (suggestions anyone?) and then I went to the train station to buy a 12-25 card, which for 25 espressos gives me 20-60% off French long distance train rides for 1 year, which is somewhat better than a poke in the eye with a blunt stick in my humble opinion. I was having a bit of a emo day, so I treated myself to a chocolate from the Bayonne Atelier and christ on a cracker if that didn't cheer me up! I chose a 'bouchette' in a banana flavour. It was a dark chocolate block a bit smaller than an altoids tin but significantly bigger than a matchbox, filled with banana and rum flavoured dark chocolate ganache. With treats like that I am surely in the right country after all!

Saturday was the day for the St Emilion trip. First thing we went to a winery in the region (Chateau Quercy) which was nice, but I'm getting a bit over winery tours (if not the wine). There's only so many times you can hear about how wine is made in a language you don't understand. Also, in my experience they're frigidly cold places and once I can't feel my feet my ability to concentrate on deciphering what's going on dramatically drops, and on this occasion I was so cold I wanted to hit the man who kept asking questions in the head. The wine that we got to try at the end was very nice though - I would say the nicest that I've had so far (not that I've had a lot yet) - although 10am is really TOO early for boozing. We arrived at St Emilion around lunchtime (it's 60km from Bordeaux) by which time it was beautiful beautiful weather and I wandered around with the anglaises for a bit. It's a little medieval village, and it's just beautiful and I think wandering is as good a way to see it as any. The streets are steep and cobbled though, so it was a bit hairy at times. We stopped for a canele and it was the freshest one I've had and it was so great - almost custardy in the middle and still warm. After an hour or two of wandering we went on a tour of the underground of the city. There's tunnels under the village for miles and miles, because it's a rocky area so they quarried it all and then built over the top (don't know how that works structurally but I'm not dead so I guess it's ok). Most of it's not open to the public because lots of it's used (and blocked off) by wineries who use it for storage because it's the perfect temperature and humidity year round. We saw St Emilion's hermit cave (he was a hermit...with disciples...and apparently his first claim to fame was changing bread to wood to avoid getting caught after stealing said bread...interesting...of course this is French information filtered through my brain so I could be a bit off) and the catacombs and an underground church, which is the biggest in Europe carved out of a single piece of rock (ie. the hillside). It was all very interesting and atmospheric. Afterward we sat in the sunshine next to the hillside church and I had a cup of Earl Grey (and I had to ask for milk) and a herb omelette. I don't usually like omelettes, because I don't actually like eggs that much, but now I can attest to the fact that (unlike the crepes) the French actually do know how to do them better. All in all it was a very nice way to spend a day and was a good second step (after Friday's chocolate) in convincing me that this is not such a bad place to be.

Sunday turned out to be a good third step, because lots of things went right. I went to my regular cafe to skype Mum, and she told me that Tim found my favourite ring ever that I lost 6 months ago and thought was gone for good. Then a nice old man at the table next door ordered some teeny cakes and offered me one - it was coconutty and good. Really, the French seem to know how to deal with that particular fruit properly. Nut. Whatever. I met Kara again for the afternoon, and we wandered past this cool looking cafe and then I realised that on the newly painted window they were advertising Asian food. And not French asian food, but the greatest hits of Australian-Asian food - ie. there were about 8 things on the menu and among them were: laksa, pho, red curry, stir fried veg, pad thai, lassi. Oh happiness you are mine again. ALL the foods that I thought I wouldn't find in Bordeaux all in the one little restaurant. And a COOL little restaurant at that - all 50s with those moulded Eames chairs with the zigzaggy metal legs, and a sandpit in the bathroom. I had the laksa, which wasn't the best I've ever eaten, and at 5 coffees significantly pricier than at home, but I don't even care because it tasted like it was meant to, and it was proper asian soup size, and it was just what I wanted. After lunch we walked around a bit more, and since Kara's been here for a lot longer than me we actually saw some great things. She showed me where the Bordeaux equivalent of the Central Markets is (although we were too late and it was closed for the day) and then we went and had a real mint tea at this Moroccan place. It was the proper stuff, made with fresh mint and sugar - just like at the Moroccan soup bar in Melbourne, only you get a really big glass, and for less than an expresso. Happ-i-ness. We ended the day with a trip to the Virgin Megastore (to get out of the rain) and I found the Mika cd which I'd been wanting on sale, and also found that in France you CAN buy the old Tintin cartoons which I loved as a teenager on DVD, and I'm pretty sure it comes with the French AND English options. Unfortunately the episodes are sold separately, and I was hoping for a box set, but I guess you can't have everything. Apparently TinTin is actually a bit rascist, and thus controversial in France (similar to Enid Blyton in English I would imagine). Who knew!

Yesterday (Monday) we had a new teacher in class, which is much better and we started learning the conditional which is good, because although I learnt it before, I really feel like it's something that I'm not confident with, but am finding I need it often. After class I went to the big bookshop (bought a French grammar book, IN FRENCH) with Andrew, the other Australian in my class, and after that I introduced him to the macarons and we had a coffee. It's so silly that it's comforting to hang out with someone from home, even though I don't know him...somehow it feels different than making a new friend from anywhere else. It's also funny how here you seem to skip a few months in the friendships here. I guess it's because everyone's on their own and fumbling for friends so you cut to the chase a lot quicker, but we had a good chat about life, love and the universe, and it was good to get stuff out of my system, as well as have the opportunity to listen to someone else's stuff for a change instead of my own noisy head. After that, I went back to the cool Asian place and had a chai (not so good but at least they HAD it) and used my computer (yes, they have free wifi too). I went to the supermarket in the afternoon and bought two more Tintin books, because I'm nearly finished the last one (only took me 6 weeks!). Funnily enough, the supermarket is the cheapest place to buy them. I got the first one at about 30% cheaper than the bookstore. In the evening I went to the concert at the conservatoire that the man from Thursday invited me to. Holy mackerel was it modern. It started in the foyer of the building (which had a special garden for the occasion i *think*) with three saxophones improvising with multiphonics, quarter tones etc. Then these girls popped up from behind the garden and started doing all this spoken word stuff. Then the whole thing kind of moved upstairs and around the building and eventually we all just followed them into the next building, where it sort of carried on the same way, but on a stage and with cellos as well and more actors. It felt a bit like a happening, except of course that it was advertised in advance. I have no idea what it was about because functional French is still a challenge, let alone poetry (and probably bizarre modern poetry at that) for two hours. There were heaps of people in the audience though - well over 100 I would say. I wouldn't go so far as to say I enjoyed it, but it was certainly interesting and not something that I can imagine floating at home.

Today I am exhausted because I spent the afternoon job hunting. I finally got off my bum and stopped procrastinating, but I tried 6 English pubs in the city and no joy yet. Still, it was kind of good, because I saw a lot of the city. Because my direction was determined by something as random as where the next pub was, I saw lots of little streets and corners that I wouldn't've otherwise found, and I came across lots of cool little places and shops. It was a lot of walking though, and I'm completely worn out. After the job hunting I went to H&M which is my new favourite shop because it is cheeeeep (even by Australian standards) and they have lots of cool cool clothes. I bought some skinny jeans (gasp!) and a nice black jacket (3/4 but lighter than a coat and funkier than a suit). I could've bought about 50 tops but I restrained myself. i'd also like to buy some cute canvas keds-type shoes, which shouldn't be hard because there seems like quite a lot of cheap and cheerful ones around the place. Hooray! I was beginning to think I was just going to have to keep wearing the same outfits until I could afford the Hermes (although if anyone wants to buy me one of their scarves, please be my guest). The only other news is that I figured out what the coloured drinks are that come in the beer glasses. Beer with cordial! You can get all sorts of fancy flavours. I think maybe raspberry is the most popular and some green one, but I've seen banana on the menu so I will have to try that soon. I always liked the coopers with brown lime at home, so this seems to me to be a very sensible extension of that idea. Oh! And I arrived at the house to mail! Hurrah! It really is extremely exciting getting mail from home - like a little hug everytime I open a new letter!

In general things are going ok, although I'm freaking out a bit about the no job/apartment situation. The family here is getting a pool put in, so at the moment, since it's been raining for about 3 days straight now (and I lost my second umbrella in a week today, although it was a very good example of why you should pay more than four coffees for an umbrella) the front yard is pretty much one big mudbath. It's quite treacherous getting to the gate. I have taught the little garcon how to handball with a little kid-sized rugby ball he has. He's quite good, and I found a video of Andrew McLeod explaining the concept on YouTube which helped a lot. Although I'm not completely convinced he's clear that it's not actually a rugby tactic and that Australian football is a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT GAME. Actually on the latter, he's no different than any other French person that I've met. Also, Easter is apparently coming, because all the shops have pretty displays in the windows (at least there's no more Valentine's day stuff) and they're doing a better job than at home. The specialist chocolatiers have amazing animals (there's a life sized rooster in one) and the displays are really impressive. Which is making it even harder to not buy MORE chocolate (I'm getting enough daily by default via the standard French diet). Yikes!

That is all.
For now.

reviewing.

2008-03-09T11:57:00.007-05:00

Beck - the Information
Ok, so I've only listened to this one once, and I bought it six months ago, and didn't get around to it until a week ago. And Beck does tend to be reasonably dense, so maybe reviewing it on one spin (and one spin whilst jogging at that) is unfair. But I don't think this album is his best work. The interesting thing about Beck normally is all the lovely layers to the music which creep out from behind a big fat hook. This album seems really pared back and like it's focussing on the lyrics... except that it's Beck, and it's rare that the lyrics even make sense, let alone convey anything meaningful. It's quite possible that I'm missing something, but I'm rather unconvinced at this stage. And unconvinced enough not to bother further, probably...I'll wait and see how he reinvents himself next time.

Scisscor Sisters - TaDah
Bought this on sale at the Virgin Megastore here...heh. I really like this album - it's nice and fat and 70s disco but without being too cheesy. Well...not TOO cheesy anyway. The lyrics are deliciously angry (well appreciated at the moment), but mostly so ironic and hilarious that when coupled with the disco feel you get pulled into a good mood rather than a bad one. There's some killer lines too - although Molly, you'll be pleased to hear that I'm singing 'push the walls and testify' every time. That being said, I can't seem to get past tracks 1 and 3, which even if you assume it's a great album with a couple of outstanding songs, does still mean that it's not a very consistent album; the kind of album that you can break up into parts that are worth more than the whole.

Radiohead - In Rainbows
Ok, so I know I said I was going to review this soon, but I tried listening to it and just can't do it. Not because it's no good...other reasons entirely which I won't go into here. Anyway though, I was chatting to someone in my class who said it's his favourite since OK Computer, and the 10 minutes that I got into it convinced me that although it's still quite electro and repetitive like the last couple, they seem to have gotten back into lyrical again thank God. So I am provisionally giving this a thumbs up, but there's not a lot of grounding for that, so maybe one day I will come back to it.

Jasper Fforde - The Fourth Bear
Yes, ok, yet another Jasper Fforde filler. This was the last thing I bought in Australia - at the Adelaide airport when I realised I'd forgotten a book for the plane. I didn't read it on the plane, but I've read a little each night before bed to remind myself that, yes, I am actually capable of comprehending the written word. In one language at least. I quite liked this one. The premise isn't as strong as the Eyre Affair books, but then by the last one I thought that had been stretched way too thin anyway. This was nice and clean and self-contained. Witty and enjoyable without being too clever or taking itself too seriously. In hindsight, would've been a good aeroplane choice after all.

Sweeney Todd
So I knew this movie was going to be dark and violent, but I didn't realise quite how depressing the story is. It's one of those 'goodness doesn't exist, all love is doomed, stop bothering now and save yourself the pain' kind of stories. Just what I needed. Still. I think it was well done. I'm not a big Tim Burton fan, because he puts his own creepy stamp on everything which is not always welcome (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory anyone?), but in this case I think it actually worked, since it's a pretty gruesome tale anyway. I was a bit worried about all the violence, as I don't have a strong stomach for that, but it was actually pretty caricatured so it really wasn't the upsetting part of this movie in the end. The lyrics and the music are unsurprisingly clever from Sondheim, and it's been re-orchestrated by that guy who does all of Sondheim's orchestration (can't remember the name now...) and it sounds great with a full orchestra. Johnny Depp can sing surprisingly well, Helena Bonham Carter surprisingly can't, and Sacha Baron Cohen is well cast but believe it or not doesn't ham it up enough.

No Country for Old Men
The new Coen brothers movie. I really should've thought about the fact that this was going to be depressing too, but didn't. Ai. UGC langue d'origin (anglais) - could you please show some fluff? Maybe a (non-rom) comedy or something? Ok Coen brothers movies are usually pretty violent and bizarre, but they're usually pretty funny too, and this one was not. It's the story of a man who stumbles upon a drug deal gone wrong and makes off with a suitcase full of money. He then spends the rest of the film trying to keep out of reach of those who want it back. It's a compelling story, but in the end that's not what's interesting about it and you leave not really caring that a lot of things aren't resolved. I think I've finally figured out the point of these movies though - they're not about plot, they're about the characters. Although it's a reasonably fast paced film (especially at times), it's actually very spacious and elegant and I think it reflects the simultaneous simplicity and complexity of people, and life in general.

pleasantly surprised.

2008-03-07T12:35:00.001-05:00

Macaron-A-Day #10: Noix de Coco

I really wasn't looking forward to this one, because I can't stand dessicated coconut. The coconut drink at Thea makes me gag nearly as much as the Milky Almond Tea. This was lovely though - more like coconut milk than dessicated coconut, and almost like coconut ice but without being quite as sickly. This was so rich and creamy and warm and wonderful, I think it might make it into the top 3 so far!

needing to learn about light.

2008-03-05T23:55:00.000-05:00

Macaron-A-Day # 9: Caramel Fleur de Sel

This was a very subtle macaron. Definitely a lovely caramel flavour, but not nearly as strong as the actual caramels which I ate afterwards.

managing to get up early these days. Mostly.

2008-03-05T23:45:00.001-05:00

I can't remember when I wrote last...I think it was Thursday night. Things have been a bit uneventful since then because I came down with a cold on Friday, but I'm sure I'll still manage to write an ocean. I feel like that Monty Python character who eats too much only I'm spewing out words. Well, I'm sure the forests are grateful for the invention of the blog at least...

I really can't remember Friday at all. I think I went to class, and then went straight home to try sleep. We watched La Mome in class, which I didn't understand at all. Oh hang on. I've already written about this. I must've written something on Friday.

Saturday then. Saturday I slept in because I was sick, and then made a laksa pilgrimage into the city to try and rid myself of all the snot accumulating in my head. (Sorry, that was a charming turn of phrase, but true so I'm leaving it). I arrived too late for soup - all the restaurants close at 2pm, so I got crepes instead. Funnily enough just like at home it seems to be the pancakes places that are open all hours. I had a crepe with lemon and sugar, and sorry to disappoint, but my mum's are better than the real French ones. Well, maybe that's not disappointing - it's closer for most of you. I also went to the ginormous supermarket to buy some citrus. They have counter where you put your fruit on the scales and then a man prints out a barcode for you. I've decided not to buy fruit from there anymore, because I was told in no uncertain terms that I needed to put each separate type of fruit in a separate plastic bag. No, mademoiselle, it's not possible to just stick the barcode straight on your one orange. What a bleeding waste. Kind of ironic since they don't let you have carry bags for free at the checkout.

On Sunday I was still sick so I slept in again. And again I went in search for soup, but all the restaurants were closed because it was Sunday, so I went for the closest thing open which was Indian. I had a Palak Paneer which was nice but a bit Frenchified (I'm sure there was cream in it) and I had a chat with the waiter, which was fine until I asked if there was an Indian/Asian grocer in the city where I could buy spices, and he invited me to his house to have some of his. Um...?

I headed to the big cinema to see the new Coen Brothers movie ' No Country for Old Men' and on the way came across a parade! It was kind of like a poor-man's Christmas Pageant but I have no idea what it was in aid of. I asked a lady and she pretty much gave me the French equivalent of 'just because'. It was a bit lame because the floats were mostly pretty home-made, but it was also kind of fun, because the atmosphere was a lot more relaxed - if you wanted to cross the parade, you just ran across, and some of the people marching were letting off little fireworks. There were also African drumming troupes marching, and which looked like great fun. There were surprisingly a lot of them, and if I was sure I was staying here, I think I'd look into joining one, although ironically I think I'm too European to qualify...

On Monday I went to my new class (they change each month). There's only 6 people (including myself) in this class - three people from my last class, plus a German girl and another Australian! Woo! Actually it's a bit sad how excited I got to meet someone from home, which is silly really, considering there's no more reason for me to be able to relate to him more than any other stranger, but it did make me feel a little bit less isolated. The new teacher is nice, and being in such a small class is great, but I actually feel like the work is easier than last month and I don't think it's just that I'm getting better. Hopefully things will pick up, because at the moment I'm learning things I learnt 6 months ago in Australia...

After Monday's class I went (and figured out!) La Poste. It turns out that it's not at all like Australia Post in that they don't penalise you for wrapping your parcels in whatever you want, and in fact it seems to be the better way to do things. The ONLY bags/boxes that they sell are the pre-paid ones which are not a good deal because chances are that whatever you put in them is much less than the maximum weight that you pay for. If you just rock up with a parcel wrapped in whatever though, you just get charged by weight. On the downside though, it's not very clear where you're supposed to buy boxes and packing material, and as far as I can tell bubble wrap is an extremely specialist product in France because no-one can tell me where to buy it. If anyone ever sends me anything, please include extra bubble wrap. In fact I'm thinking of opening a shop selling aloe vera tissues, bubble wrap and lined notebooks (I can't find anything but graph paper here). I'd make a fortune. Or enough to keep me in macarons at least.

After La Poste I finally managed to make it to a Thai restaurant in time to order some soup. No laksa though, so I had to have tom yum. When I asked the waitress if they made laksa, she had no idea what I was talking about, and when I clumsily tried to explain in French that it's a Thai/Malaysian soup with coconut milk and noodles I didn't get very far. She was like 'oh! it's the other tom yum with the coconut milk. Didn't you see it on the menu?'. No, no it's not. Listen lady, the white girl from Australia knows what she's talking about and it's a DIFFERENT soup! Lucky I learnt to make it before I left home, hey. Especially lucky because there was pineapple in the tom yum. Yes, the kind of pineapple that's NOT a vegetable. Where do they think they are? Australia? (If so they should've put bacon and beetroot in too). I've also come to the conclusion that the French only eat soup as an entree (ie. you can only buy teeny serves) and they can't handle chili at ALL. I asked for a double serve of soup which cost me 6 coffees and it was at least half the size of a normal asian soup at home. Also, the menu promised spicy and IT WAS NOT SPICY. I had to shovel in loads of the provided chili paste because even that was not spicy. Actually my Indian curry was not hot either - and the waiter actually asked if it was too hot. Um? There's chili in here? Actually I should've caught on when my host mother complained that the pre-marinated bbq chicken wings she made were too spicy and she couldn't eat them. Come to think of it, I don't think they even sell chillis in the supermarket. Add that to the inventory in my shop.

Yesterday I treated myself to a coffee and croissant breakfast because I got up too late to make myself any wellness flakes. It feels quite fancy having that in a cafe, but I have to say the croissants are not really any better than (good) croissants from home. Although who's to say I haven't just had bad croissants here. Later I went to Monoprix for some honey and lemons for some hot drinks and I've decided it's my supermarket of choice because you don't have to weigh your own stupid fruit. I also picked up a brochure of historic walks of Bordeaux (in French AND English! Yay!) and in search of macaron props discovered a lovely lovely lovely (expensive) chocolate shop. They make all their own things I think, and it was a bit like Haighs only older and prettier and Frenchier. They had lots of chocolates in big old heavy jars, and candied petals and pretty china and their own macarons which looked a bit more rustic than that Baillardran ones but in prettier colours even.

Today I went for a coffee with the Australian, the German and the Dutch lady from my class, and it was really nice to actually do a bit of socialising. I've been doing my own thing a lot (which is fine, but mainly because I haven't had a lot of choice in the matter) and it was really nice to just sit around and have a chat (in English). We went to this bizarre little cafe with leopard-skin poufs and fake cacti, which turned out to be the French version of Starbucks. Hilariously enough it's called 'French Coffee Shop' (no, I didn't translate that). I've seen it before and I was like...um? duh? I actually had a mint milkshake which was very nice, but the French obviously have a slightly different concept of a milkshake, because I would've called it a frappe or something...icy-slushy-milky anyway. After that I had lunch with the Dutch lady (my d.i.y. sandwich) and then frittered around for an hour or two doing the macaron and checking my email (and gofugyourself...gee I miss having the time to read trashy internet sites). I headed to the tram and realised that it would probably be an ideal time to climb the Cathedral tower which is right next to my tramstop.

I thought the tower was actually part of the Cathedral St-Andre - although they're separated by maybe 10 or 20 metres, I sort of assumed they were connected by the crypts underground. I don't know, maybe they are, but it's actually called the Tour Pey-Berland. It was a bit of a climb up to the top (yay, Napier building practice) but it was a pretty great view. It was particularly cool to see the cathedral itself from above, but it was also nice to see the city spread out below. Old tiled red roofs and chimney pots dominate, and it's amazing to see that the tallest buildings in Bordeaux are still some of the oldest - the churches and the gates. There's not a lot of new high rise in Bordeaux, and it really does make you realise exactly how much of an undertaking it must've been to build those structures so long ago. It was a beautiful clear day, but very very windy up there though, and although I'm not particularly afraid of heights (well, no more so than anything else that I could die from, anyway), I realised when I got down that I was shaking a bit. I think I was mostly scared of dropping my camera and killing someone...

The latest on the phone is that the email is officially dead for a while. I've managed to make the internet work now (without the help of the Orange people, who are not calling when they're supposed to, or if they do it's not an English speaking employee like they promised) but it won't let me open gmail. Which is all very annoying since I've paid for it (and how!), but at least now I'm not going through credit like it's money. Ha. Ha. Ha. I've gotten into the habit of taking my laptop with me each day though, so I'm getting emails regularly, but if there's something urgent an sms is the way to go I'm afraid.

The only other news is that my Anthropologie jeans are still oozing blue (ha! maybe they're just mimicking their owner!) - after three repeats of the salt treatment. Any other suggestions anyone? I'm thinking about taking them to a dry cleaner and seeing if they can do anything, but it's a bit of an undertaking since the dry cleaners here all speak French...

Tomorrow I think I'm going to go to the Bordeaux-American potluck - apparently lots of English speaking business people go, so maybe I can find myself a job. And on Saturday I'm going to St-Emilion (medieval village nearby) with a tour organised by the school. Which worked out well for me, since I'd just decided to go on Saturday anyway and this will be much easier and hopefully include some things that I wouldn't see on my own.

all coffeed up.

2008-03-04T10:06:00.001-05:00

Macaron-A-Day #8: Nougatine

This one was kind of weird, because it actually reminded me of a yo-yo biscuit. Although a yo-yo with the superior macaron texture and lovely little nutty bits and icing with real vanilla bean seeds. But not really nougaty, but actually kind of malty...

Yes, which didn't make sense at all, until this morning I had the brainwave to ask my French teacher if 'nougat' and 'nougatine' were the same thing. 'MAIS NON!'. After a very long conversation, I finally figured out that nougatine is actually what I would call praline (ie. a shattered toffee with shards of nuts). It took a long time because: 1. I don't speak French. 2. The dictionary didn't know 'nougatine'. 3. My brain broke and I couldn't remember the world praline. 4. The word praline in French means something else (a lolly - an almond covered in caramel).

So now this photo makes no sense whatsoever which is a shame because I was quite happy with it.

feeling much better, thankyou.

2008-03-03T06:22:00.001-05:00

Macaron-A-Day #7: Cafe

There's been a little break in proceedings because I got sick and couldn't taste anything.

This coffee macaron was quite nice but sweet and 'instant-coffee' flavoured rather than a really rich deep coffee-bean flavour.

I'm one of those people who thinks that coffee smells better than it tastes, and I think this macaron unfortunately replicated that.

Since this is a rather unsatisfactory review, I'll take the opportunity to mention that a French macaron is a completely different pastry than an English macaroon after all, which sort of explains why they're not the same...

For those in the rainy city, apparently you can get proper French-style macarons at La Tropezienne in Hawthorn, and Baker D Chirico in St Kilda. But I won't be able to compare until I get home I'm afraid

really in need of a trusted second opinion.

2008-02-28T23:45:00.000-05:00

I forgot to mention the other jeans story from Monday. I'm feeling decidedly frumpy here in my loose bootleg jeans, so I went into the Levi's shop to search out some trendier ones. I had an interesting conversation with the sales guy:

Sales Guy: Bonjour....blah blah blah*, blah blah blah blah blah blah?
Emily: Pardon?
SG: Blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah blah?
E: Pardon?
SG: I can speak in English if you'd prefer?
E: Oh! Yes please!
SG: Did you realise those jeans you're holding are skinny leg jeans?
E: Um....yes....
SG: Oh.....ok.....
E: Well, since I've got you. I'm not sure what size I am. The sizes are different in Australia. Perhaps you can help me.
SG: You want to try these jeans on?
E: Yes please.
SG: Ok... I think this is your size. We also have that colour in bootleg. Would you like to try those too?
E: Um....ok....

I'm not sure if he was just trying to be helpful since I was actually wearing my bootleg jeans that day, or if he was implying I probably shouldn't be trying on skinny jeans.

Anyway, the skinny jeans (which weren't terribly skinny, but just kind of straight tending towards skinny) looked surprisingly ok. But after that, and the fact that Levi's are apparently FREAKING EXPENSIVE in Europe, I didn't buy them. But I'm still thinking about it.

* 'blablablah' is actually in the French dictionary. Really it IS. It apparently means 'claptrap'. I'm using it in a more general English sense however...

Today was nothing special, but I had a bit of a silly afternoon. I tried to go to the giant supermarket that I'm told is right next to my tram stop, because I needed bread and vitamin C. But in true Emily style I got lost along the way. Which I'm sort of used to, and I would've figured it out, but a very kind old man stopped to ask if I needed help. So I showed him the tram stop on the map and told him I wanted to go there. He walked me all the way to the there (and said my French was very good!), and as the tram was just pulling up when we arrived he told me to run for it. Not wanting to be rude, since I hadn't explained that I wanted to go to the supermarket, I aborted the giant supermarket mission.

I went to the supermarket next to the tram stop ('Hyper Casino' - different than the supermarket next to the bus stop) and bought a few things (and didn't buy a few things that I could've, like Oreos and those lovely Destrooper almond thins that are so hard to find at home). I ended up at the checkout with some mandarins. The checkout chick asked me a question, and I mumbled a bewildered 'je ne sais pas' at her, since I had no idea what she was talking about. She gave my mandarins to the man behind me in the line who wandered off with them! It turns out you're supposed to weigh your fruit in the fruit section and print yourself a barcode with the price. w.e.i.r.d. Oopsies!

Just watched more 'Oui-Oui' and now I know the word for bagpipes. What a useful program! Also, in French, Noddy sings. SINGS!

Urgh.

2008-02-28T02:14:00.001-05:00

Mararon-A-Day #6: Pistache

You know how marzipan tastes nothing like almonds? And you know how there's a similar problem with pistachios, whereby at, for example, cheap Italian cafes the pistachio gelati tastes nothing like pistachios but rather like the agreed upon idea of what bright green 'pistachio' flavour should be?

Well this was that flavour. Which I don't particularly like, in the same way that I don't like marzipan. Which is not to say that this macaron was bad per se, it just wasn't what I was hoping for.

Oh well. Onwards and upwards!