Have Dog, Will Travel

Before leaving for Munich, we did a bit of research to make sure that Panda was welcome on both French and German trains. As you've already guessed, it turns out she was - under certain conditions. You're supposed to carry a muzzle with you, in case a neighbor is uncomfortable with your dog's gaping, bloody jaws. Also, a neighbor can ask for you and your dog to be moved. Dogs under 7 kg don't need tickets (it's assumed they can travel in a small bag and/or on your lap) but dogs over 7 kg require reduced rate or children's tickets.

We also read that conductors rarely ask for a dog's ticket, so we decided to play it by ear and only buy a ticket for Panda if someone asked us to on the train. In four ticket-checking situations, only once did a conductor inform us that Panda needed a ticket - and that was probably only because we mistakenly drew attention to her. (She had just chewed off her harness, and we were busy trying not to let her sprint down the aisle in search of the dining car.) Most of the conductors didn't even seem to notice her as she lay quietly at our feet.

All in all, traveling with Panda by train was a pleasant experience. And the single ticket we had to buy was still cheaper than boarding her at the local kennel. Still, I can't help but wonder whether Panda might have gotten to Munich faster on her own four feet . . .

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 . . .