We Get Around

I mentioned last week that we were heading to Munich for Thanksgiving #2. What I didn't realize is that we'd also get to see a bit of Stuttgart (while waiting to switch trains), a lot of Bavarian countryside, and the Austrian Alps! Highlights included:

Panda pooped in the huge park in central Stuttgart from which you can see the former royal residence, the current state parliament, the opera, and - in this picture - the state theater .In case you're keeping track, Panda has now pooped in at least three states (GA, NJ, MA) and three countries.

We perused the wares, sights, and smells of Christkindlmarkt in Munich's Marienplatz (where you can also find the not-so-new, gothic-out-the-wazoo Neue Rathaus). We did not try Glühwein, the mulled wine that everyone seemed to be enjoying in festive mugs (it's served hot).

Saturday evening we attended Thanksgiving Dinner II chez Maggie's first cousins once-removed (or, Maggie's mom's first cousins). You'll notice that, as traditional as the rest of the meal was, we could not avoid socking away massive amounts of delicious beer.

Sunday, we took a spin through Bavaria and saw three castles. Neuschwanstein, constructed by crazy Bavarian King Ludwig II (my namesake!) as an homage to Richard Wagner's creative genius and influence, was Disney's inspiration for Sleeping Beauty's castle; in the same town, the much less crazy Hohenschwangau is very yellow; Linderhof is more of a country chateau than an honest-to-goodness castle. To get from Schwangau (the town at the foot of Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau) to Linderhof, we drove through the Austrian Alps and enjoyed the views.

The entire weekend was basically made possible by the incredible hospitality of Rebecca (Maggie's second cousin) and her boyfriend Moritz. We stayed at their lovely apartment, shared excellent food, and enjoyed their company throughout our excursions within Munich and throughout the Bavarian countryside. Thanks so much, and see you soon in Paris!

One Year Ago

[This was supposed to post automatically on Friday, but I guess I didn't set it up correctly.]

Last night's dinner was both delicious and fun - we met new people, enjoyed new Thanksgiving dishes, and we did it all in Paris, which provides a fun twist to all the festivities. But we also missed friends and family back home - Maggie and I both called our respective families (who were all still gathered around the table) as soon as we got back from Rachel and Adam's. So it makes sense to look back at where and how we celebrated Thanksgiving last year. Similar to this year, we celebrated twice: first, in Somerville, pot-luck style, with friends; then, in Woodstown and Wilmington, traditional-style, with my family.

I wonder where, how, and with whom we'll celebrate next year?

Flemish Foodfest Part 1

Happy Thanksgiving!! Just in case you were wondering, Maggie and I are attending two Thanksgiving dinners: tonight, we're joining some other American expats at the apartment of our friends Rachel and Adam (we're contributing a banana cake and stuffing); tomorrow we're taking the train to Munich to have another dinner with Maggie's first and second cousins who live there. We'll spend the weekend in Munich and come back Monday - oh, and we're taking Panda.

But before that happens, I wanted to celebrate Thanksgiving (a food-centric holiday if there ever was one) by finally describing some of the Flemish food we ate on our trip two weeks ago. And as with all our posts recently, there's too much information to give all at once, so this will also be in parts.

In Lille, at A la Renaissance, Maggie ordered carbonade, which is the typical Flemish dish. It's beef stewed in beer, chocolate, and pain d'épice (gingerbread), usually served with some version of potatoes. As Belgium is known for having invented French fries, both times we ordered carbonade it came with fries.

I tried potjevleesh, a terrine of different kinds of meat (pork, rabbit, turkey, beef) served cold and held together by a kind of gelatin. I liked Maggie's carbonade more, but this was good too, especially if you like meat.

Our night in Bruges we dined at a disappointing establishment called Poules Moules, which (as you might guess from the name) specialized in chicken and in mussels (moules-frites, or mussels with fries, is a "specialty" of Belgium, although I'm sure you can get better mussels elsewhere). So I won't talk about that meal, except to say, don't go to Poule-Moule.

Luckily before we left Bruges we enjoyed some amazing chocolate (for which Bruges is famous) and a waffle (which is more of a Brussels/Wallonie thing than a Flemish thing, but what the heck.)

The chocolate came from Van Mullem Servaas Patisserie/Salon (believe it or not, that's written on the little slab of milk chocolate), the waffles from one of many tourist-oriented stands scattered around the old city.

Aside: We just got back from dinner at Rachel and Adam's, and cannot believe we're going to do this again Saturday. Right now, I can't even conceive of putting any more food in my stomach for at least three days. When we post pictures of all the incredibe (and surprisingly gourmet/non-traditional-for-Thanksgiving) food we just had, you'll understand why.

Sarah's Visit - Part I

A photojournal of the first day of Sarah's visit:

Nostalgie: Sarah standing in front of the door we entered to get to class back in 2003 during our Spring Term Study Abroad program.

Sculpture and fountain in front of the Eglise Saint Sulpice, just around the corner from "our school."

Lunch: croque monsieur (me, seen here) and salade de chèvre chaud (Sarah, not pictured).

Dessert: "Opéra" for me (above) and Tarte Chocolat for Sarah (below).

Surprise, there's coconut inside! Yum.

Self-portrait in front of the Pyramide du Louvre. First try. We should start a business.

Flanders Panders

I was going to post about all the delicious food we had in Flanders, but I want to save that for when I have enough time to do the topic justice. So for now, enjoy some of the patterns and lines that grabbed our attention over course of the trip.

Courtyard of Brussels' Hôtel de Ville

Warehouse along train tracks between Kortrijk and Brugge.

Typical Flemish tile pattern, floor of Brugge Stadhuis

Ceiling, Brugge Stadhuis

This row of seats in the choir of Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk (Notre Dame en français) kept the Knights of the Order of the Golden Fleece sitting up straight when they had a chapter meeting during the months the Dukes of Burgundy spent at their northern capital, Bruges (as opposed to their southern capital, Dijon). (In case you're like, "whaaaaa?" one of my generals topics last summer involved studying a series of masses probably written to celebrate the Order and pay homage to its Burgundian leaders. So I was really excited to see these seats, and the coats-of-arms of each member of the Order painted on the walls above them.)

Sarah visited!

IMG_0867
Originally uploaded by kaiserstein

This is just one of many wonderful photos snapped during my friend Sarah's recent visit. We walked all around the city, visited several different museums, and ate tons of delicious food. Stay tuned for more stories!

Miscommunications

We interrupt our regularly scheduled Flanders-centric programming to bring you an update from the end of last week. Maggie's college friend Sarah visited from Wednesday afternoon to Sunday morning, and great fun was had by all. Except Thursday night.

See, Richard Strauss's Salomé is playing at the Opéra, and as Salomé is just about my favorite opera ever, we decided to try for rush tickets. We were all going to meet at 5:30 to get in line, but Maggie called at 5 to let me know that she and Sarah were second in line, and that I didn't need to come. They'd get the tickets and return home for dinner, then we'd all go back together. So I made a spinach, tomato, and red onion quiche.

Then I checked my phone and saw that Maggie had texted me right after our phone conversation to say that she had already picked up some surprises for dinner, and all I needed to do was get bread and make salad. Oops. Miscommunication #2.

#2?? What happened to #1? Here's what happened: Maggie called back around 6:15 to say that the ticket windows were just opening, so they probably couldn't make it home. Thinking I'd bring dinner to them, I packed up some quiche, salad, and water, and headed out. Two minutes later, Maggie called again to say they had mistakenly gotten tickets for a ballet rather than Salomé. That's weird, I thought. I didn't know they were giving a ballet tonight. Maybe I got the date wrong. When I arrived at Bastille, I called Maggie to find out where they were (they had gone to get bread) and she told me to meet them across from the Uniqlo. That's weird, I thought. I didn't know they'd opened a Uniqlo at Bastille.

It was only when I happened to pass by a poster advertising the evening's cultural offerings that I realized, with disbelief, the nature of Miscommunication #1.

We were at different opera houses.

Maggie and Sarah had gone to the Palais Garnier - you know, the one that looks like an opulent opera house.

I, on the other hand, had gone to the place where I knew Salomé was playing, which looks very little like an opera house, and which is always called "l'Opéra Bastille," while the older building is commonly called "l'Opéra".

Miscommunication #3 actually occurred between Maggie/Sarah and the establishment of the Opéra (Garnier). These ladies never looked at the tickets to see what time the ballet started - since Salomé was supposed to start at 8, they assumed the ballet started at 8, too - and when I called Maggie to tell her that we were in different places, I also ended up informing her that the ballet started at 7:30. So we weren't going to have time to eat, and I had to rush over from Bastille.

Ultimately, I arrived a few minutes late, but luckily we had "loge" (ground-floor box) seats, so they could let us in even though the performance had already started. The evening was split into three ballets by three different choreographers. The first ballet was minimalist through and through, with musical extracts from Phillip Glass's Einstein on the Beach, the dancers wearing only primary colors (and green), and the "set" consisting of a screen on which was projected many slowly moving, primary colored-lines, which created accidental optical illusions. The second ballet, choreographed to Georg Ligeti, was most notable for having made two-way mirrors out of the scrims. It was also the première run of that ballet. We didn't stay for the third ballet, due to the combination of miscommunications, dance semiotics incomprehension, ultra-repetitive/unpalatable music, and hunger. Luckily the NYT published a review of the evening, and you can see pictures and read all about it there. (That's 6 articles about Paris or Parisian events just this week.)

We learned the following lessons: always specify which Opéra you're meeting at. Never bake a surprise quiche. And if you find yourself disliking whatever's being performed at Opéra Garnier, you can always draw strength from the heavens above:

Ceiling art by Marc Chagall.

In Bruges Part III: Sounds of Two Cities

This is what Bruges sounds like around noon on a Friday:

You hear the ringing of the bells in the belfry, the tower that houses the privileges of the city of Bruges (and the tower that figures so prominently in the city's namesake film). You also hear the horse-drawn carriage that pulls tourists around the central square (from which the following picture of the belfry is taken) and you hear the preferred form of transportation for the locals - bikes!

As a completely unrelated complement to that soundscape, here is what I sound like playing Schubert's Shepherd on the Rock with Anne-Chantal Carrière, soprano (who performs frequently with the chorus at the Paris Opéra), and Dominique Fournier, piano, who happens to be the French husband of an American organist and scholar (Carolyn Shuster-Fournier) whom I met in the microfilm room of the BN one afternoon when I recognized her name (from footnotes in a few articles and books I've read) on a box of film. I struck up a conversation, mostly in the interest of getting help on my dissertation and making a new contact. She asked me what instrument(s) I play, I said clarinet, she exclaimed, "But my husband needs a clarinetist for a concert he's giving in a salon in the 9th in April!" and I said, "Sign me up!" We rehearsed Shepherd on the Rock for the first time on Saturday, and it wasn't terrible. Except at the very end.

NYT hearts Paris

This morning, the lead story in the Travel section of the New York Times addressed three topics close to our hearts: Paris, history, and food. In the article, Tony Perrottet walks in the (massive) footsteps of famous gourmand Alexandre-Balthazar-Laurent Grimod de la Reynière, who reviewed all of the most famous establishments of the early 19th century - including the newest kind of eatery, the restaurant - in a series of food "almanacs." Only a few of the places reviewed by de la Reynière remain today, but most that do are still high-quality (and high-price) institutions on the Paris food scene. Le Grand Vefour, in the Palais Royal, is one of them.

Alas, most of Paris outside the first six arrondissements didn't exist when de la Reynière wrote his guides, so Perrottet can't help but perpetuate the canonization of the city center as the best/only place to find good food. (See, for example, the interactive map the NYT put together to accompany the article.) Luckily we're here to set the record straight! I'm pleased to present our very own gastronomic map of Paris. It's a work-in-progress, and we'll keep adding restaurants, boulangeries, and purveyors of fine food and drink as we hear about or visit them. Feel free to send along recommendations!

View Eat, Drink, and Be Merry: Paris in a larger map

In other news, the NYT has devoted at least five articles to Paris just in the last week. Does that feel like a lot to anyone else, or do we just notice more because we're here? The NYT writers must be looking for excuses to travel . . . just like musicology grad students . . .

In Bruges Part II

Just after arriving in Bruges, our couchsurfing host, Tom, took us on a three-hour tour. [♫A three-hour tour!♫] We crossed and re-crossed the canals that make this picturesque city the "Venice of the North" (along with Strasbourg and Amsterdam, which share that title). Now, the only boats you see are those shuttling tourists around the various sites.

Tom, a history and Dutch teacher, took us to places most tourists don't see and shared wonderfully obscure (but totally relevant) factoids. One of my favorites:

Just above the entrance to the skinniest building in Bruges (left of center) you'll see the following figurines.

It's a little hard to tell from the picture, but they're stevedores, and they're carrying the building just as they'd normally carry goods from the ships that docked in Bruges' canals when the city was the largest port in the world, in the 15th century. The figurines denote the building's role as headquarters for the stevedores' guild, which was a kind of nascent union/lobbying group looking out for the stevedores' financial interests. Neat, huh?

The only thing Tom couldn't explain was the architectural predilection in Bruges for terraced roof facades. Any ideas?

Thanks, Tom, for the great tour and for your wonderful hospitality!

Cautionary Tale

Most people who come to Europe with chargeable American electronics (laptop, cell phone, iPod) know they need an adapter. We knew, too.

Plugs look like this in Europe.

Outlets here provide a 220V current, whereas in the US they provide a 120V current. Maggie and I came with 8 adapters - some we'd accumulated over the years, some we bought just to have for this trip. Out of all the gadgets we brought with us, only one used a charger that couldn't accept a 220V current - my Phillips SoniCare toothbrush. (Maggie's newer model was fine.)

So I bought a converter. Not to be confused with an adapter, which merely changes the shape of a plug - but does nothing to the current - a converter actually changes the size of the current. My toothbrush charger could only handle a 120V current, so the converter took the outlet's 220V and magically turned it into the needed 120V. Until tonight.

Converters are much bigger than adapters, and often have LEDs.

I set up my toothbrush in its charger, plugged in the charger using an adapter, and came back later to find that it wasn't charging. Well, yeah, of course - because I didn't plug it into the converter. And because I didn't plug it into the converter, the 220V current fried my 120V-loving charger. And now I can't ever use it to charge my toothbrush again.

Moral of the story: never confuse an adapter with a converter. Try not to bring electronics whose chargers won't accept a 220V. And don't look too closely at my teeth while I wait for my new charger to arrive.

In Bruges Part I

In Bruges, there's a greenway that encircles the oldest part of the city. Here's one way they mark the bike lanes:

Dogs of Paris

Just because Panda gets most of our attention doesn't mean we can't notice other dogs. Here are two of our favorites so far:

This one is wearing what is basically a Parisian uniform: a black-and-white striped shirt (and no pants!).

This next dog is getting a work-out in the Canal d'Ourcq:

We will never let Panda be anything like these two dogs.

La Brûlerie

Seeking refuge from the rain in Lille, we stepped into an inviting café/teahouse just next to the Wazemmes market, called La Brûlerie.

The selection of teas was fabulous. I had a tchaï bio (organic chai) that was deliciously spiced, hot, and milky. Louis got a "cappuccino" - in quotes for real because instead of frothy, foamy milk, it was topped with a mountain of whipped cream!

If you get a chance to pass through Lille I would highly recommend stopping in to La Brûlerie when you're in need of a break from all that shopping you'll do at the market!

More Lille

We planned our trip so we'd get to spend one full day each in Lille and Bruges, but it didn't quite work out that way. Thanks to a last-minute rush to get Panda one more vaccination before she went to the kennel, we didn't arrive in Lille until Wednesday evening (instead of early afternoon), so we only had a few daylight hours on Thursday to explore. We split that time four ways:

1) We checked out the "famous" market at Wazemmes, the outdoor portion of which was similar to the Marché aux Puces in Paris, or Cowtown in New Jersey; the indoor portion of which was much like the Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia (fairly swank, high-quality stuff). The building around which the Marché takes place (Lille's own, well-preserved "Les Halles") is quite nice too.

2) We visited the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille, one of the premier Beaux-Arts in France (supposedly second only to Paris). Again, I was as impressed by the building housing the collection as by the collection itself. Highlights: Velasquez, Rodin, arch-arcade hallways, the modern extension behind the building (which reflects the older building beautifully; everyone wants their own glass-pyramids-at-the-Louvre kind of thing), I could go on . . .

3) We walked around the Grand Place, Place Rihour and Vieux Lille, all of which was fine, but not too distinctive. (Sometimes it seems like every city in Europe has a pedestrian-only shopping district centered around the "old" part of town (including a central square) characterized by winding, narrow streets first laid out in medieval times and recently gentrified to attract tourists like us.)

The Grand Place

Lille's Opera, just off the Grand Place

4) We ate at an amazing restaurant we stumbled upon quite randomly. It's called À La Renaissance, and the food we savored there deserves its own post. Coming soon.

We left Lille after spending almost exactly 6 hours touring the city. Clearly, we're going to need to go back, and since it's only an hour from Paris, it's possible to make a day trip out of it. Anyone want to join us?

Culture Rapide

Just across the street you'll find a funny little "place" bordered on two sides by streets and on the other two sides by graffiti- and street art-covered walls. You've already seen what it looks like at night. Part of the allure of the place is the bar/café that claims a decent chunk of its square footage with small tables and chairs. In fact, based on the signage, the place and the café are indissociable.

I'm talking about Culture Rapide, which not only satisfies basic requirements for a corner bar/café but is also a concert venue, hosting lots of spoken word, blues, and slam poetry performances. I only just got around to checking out the inside last weekend, when I convinced a few college friends to meet me there (right across the street = easiest meet-up ever). The verdict? Based on the décor, Culture Rapide is one of the hipster-est, grungiest, grittiest bobo hangouts around.

While we were there, a raconteur got up on the tiny stage in the corner and started storytelling. We didn't really understand, but that didn't matter. Culture Rapide is a cool space, its food/drink offerings are excellent, and it's 500 ft. from your favorite people - clearly worth checking out.

Lille v. Cracovie

First stop on our whirlwind mini-sightseeing adventure last week: Lille. Once again, we found a great host via Couchsurfing. While we were on the train, we received a text message from Xavier, our soon-to-be host, saying that he had some extra tickets to a basketball game, and would we like to come along? Never ones to turn down random and potentially interesting opportunities, we were more than happy to take him up on the offer.

Here we are, with our host, post-basketball game:

And here's a shot of part of the crowd and the delightful clown mascot/pump-up-the-crowd-guy.

But wait - here's something I bet you weren't expecting... (and neither were we!) the basketball game we went to was professional, and women's. SO. Awesome. The Lille team is known as the Entente Sportive Basket Villeneuve d'Ascq, or ESBVA and is part of the Ligue Féminine de Basket.

Watch this video to get a little taste of the sweet, sweet basketball action and hear from three of the players themselves, including former Wisconsin Badger all-star Joelene Anderson!

Oh, and I cannot forget to mention one of the highlights of the event: the pep band, Les Z'hurlants! This video comes from their official website [warning, there is unstoppable (but really awesome) music at this site... best not to open this link at work]:

What an adventure!

I leave you with a not-so-great action shot that taken right from my seat because I was too stunned to leave it: I was at my first-ever professional women's basketball game... in Lille, France!

A taste of things to come

We're back from Flanders!! (When I said we were going to Belgium, I really meant Flanders, since Lille is technically in France, but Lille, Bruges, and Brussels are all historical centers of Flemish culture.) We'll be posting about our experiences traveling this weekend in batches over the next week, so as not to overwhelm anyone (especially ourselves). For now, consider this picture our e-postcard to all of you - hello from Bruges!

Every good Belgian beer has its own glass and its own bottle, each idiosyncratically shaped. If your server places your glass and/or bottle without the beer's name facing you, you should immediately leave the establishment.

Coffee Grounds

You already know how much we love coffee. So it's no surprise that we buy fresh grounds and make our own. Part of it has to with a need/desire to faire les economies, as they say - to save money. Another part of it has to do with quality. "But you're in Paris!" you protest. "Surely every corner café has the best coffee 1 euro 20 cents can buy!" And you're right. We're not the first to note that at Parisian cafés, you get what you pay for.

So where do coffee snobs go for grounds? Normally I wouldn't know, since I'm no coffee snob (talk to Maggie). Luckily, though, we've randomly stumbled on two of the best places in the city to get beans, ground or whole. One is mentioned in the blog post I just linked to: Café Amazones, 11 Rue Rambuteau, 3rd arrondissement. That's where I got the snazzy coffee beans-container you can see in an earlier post about coffee. (Even if you're not into coffee, you should at least check out Rue Rambuteau. Starting with the Centre Georges Pompidou at your back, walk east along Rue Rambuteau from Rue Beaubourg to Rue des Archives, ending at the Archives Nationales. It's about 2 blocks, and it's jam-packed with all of the tiny artisanal food stores you could ever want, some of them high-end, most of them just your normal neighborhood places.)

The other place we've found is Torréfaction Guiraud, 21 boulevard de Reuilly, 12th arrondissement. "Torrefaction" means roasting, and when we happened by during an epic walk with Rachel and Adam, we were drawn inside by the sight and smell of the roaster itself:

Talk about witnessing the processing of your food or drink. We bought two bags of grounds on the spot and have been very pleased with the results. And we're not the only ones.

In a city full of coffee, we're surprised by how few torréfacteurs we've seen. People mostly seem to buy their grounds at the supermarket,or stop by the corner café for a quickie. In any case, we're happy to combine quick fixes at the café and the tastier (and ultimately cheaper) coffee we make at home, thanks to Café Amazones and Torréfaction Guiraud.