Windrose

A heavenly good sandwich

2009-11-13T14:10:00.008+01:00

to me is a Vietnamese Bánh Mì like the ones produced in this little hole in the wall store five minutes from our apartement:

The picture above is taken from an article I found after having eaten one of the best Bánh-Mì, ever, at 7 rue Volta in the 3rd arrondissement, near the Arts et Métiers Metro station.

The Vietnamese word "bánh" is a corruption of the French word "pain" - bread. The mayonnaise is home made, the meat is marinated in a tasty sauce for hours and you get lots of fresh vegetables with it too. There is a choice of chicken, pork paté, barbecued pork, and of course beef. If you like it spicy don't skip the sesame-chili seasoning. No MSG. All bánh mì are freshly prepared, cost as of today is 4,50 Euros. Very friendly owner, too. Since she works all by herself, be prepared for a little wait at lunch time. Opening times Mo-Sa: 11.30 - 20.00.

"Elles"

2009-11-12T20:42:00.002+01:00

a themed exhibit from the permanent collection of the Centre Pompidou featuring female artists only.

Very interesting pieces. The one below was the most unusual, I believe, by Czech born Canadian artist Jana Sterbak.

Vanitas: robe de chair pour albinos anorexique

This dress is entirely made out of raw salted beef.

A quote from complexitys:

“…Vanitas could also be about the way time changes our perception of works. On the day of the opening when the dress is exhibited the flesh is raw. Then the meat dries and starts to look like leather. Then every thing is better, it becomes acceptable. This is also true for artist. Some curators prefer to work with dead artists because they’ re less troublesome.”

The church of St. Merri

2009-11-11T21:22:00.012+01:00

is located near the Centre Pompidou. It is quite an old church, the beginnings date back to the 6th century and it still is a very lively parish. It lies on Rue St. Martin which itself is a remnant of the old Roman route that transcoursed Paris from north to south. During the French revolution the church became a Salpeter production place.

What I like about St. Merri apart from the wonderfully grotesque gargoyles on the facade is the music that greets the visitor upon entering the church and the information about Dom Helder Camara, an Brazilian advocat for the poor, archbishop and Novel Peace Prize nominee in 1973.

The present building mostly dates back to the 1550, although there are many newer additions like the altar from the beginning of the 1700.

In this view the old window of St. Merri gives a different perspective on the new building of the Centre Pompidou.

To finish the afternoon in style, we had a hot chocolate in nice little salon de thé, on a road with an almost unpronouncable name: Rue Quincampoix. There is an interesting etymolgy to it, which can be read here (in French)

Discovering hidden passages

2009-11-10T21:18:00.009+01:00

is a great pleasure. I try walking everywhere instead of taking public transport, which so far has worked very well. The walk from the Canadian Cultural Centre through the Tuileries back home to the Marais took about an hour and since I regularly get lost, I discover interesting passages, like the Passage du Grand Cerf or today the Galeries Vivienne, built around 1820. Many of these covered passages, forerunners of today's soulless malls, were left in a state of bad disrepair and even shut down until their revival in the late 20th century.

Frenchification

2009-11-09T10:03:00.009+01:00

of names does not stop at writers' names, whereas in German you would never make a Henry Miller into a Heinrich Miller, or Jean-Paul Sartre into a Johannes-Paul Sartre. But apparently it is la coutume to do this here, as can be seen on this street sign. However, the French rendition of Heinrich Heine's name may be attributed to the fact, that Heine emigrated to France because of political reasons and stayed here for the last 25 years of his life and is buried in the Montmartre cemetery. He became a Frenchman by choice although he continued to love his native tongue. Maybe it can be said that he exiled himself to France physically, but remained in the placeless space of his native language.

Anyway, as Germany is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, Heine and his complicated relationship with his home country seems to be a fitting topic for today's entry.

Heine wrote, among many other things, a collection of poems, published under the title "Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen". Heine makes satirical, bitingly ironic, bitterly critical and melancholic comments about Germany, which he visited in the winter of 1843 on a rare occasion after having exiled himself to Paris.

The very beginning of the poem in 27 "songs" is quoted in translation below. A bi-lingual version can be found at Google Books here.

"In the mournful month of November t'was,
The winter days had returned,
The wind from the trees the foliage tore,
when I tow'rds Germany journied.

And when at length to the frontier I came,
I felt a mightier throbbing
Within my breast, tears fill'd my eyes,
And I wellnight broke into sobbing.

And when I the German language heard,
Strange feelings each other succeeding,
I felt precisely as though my heart
Right pleasantly were bleeding."

At school, maybe in 7th grade, we had to learn Heine's ballad "Belsazar" by heart, a powerful poem about the blasphemic arrogance of the King of Babylon and his downfall. It made a huge impression on me.

La Fontaine des Automates

2009-11-07T10:54:00.004+01:00

As a lover of Jean Tinguely's whimsical mechanical sculptures one has to see the fountain in motion in front if the Centre Georges Pompidou, where the colourful sculptures by Niki de St. Phalle (yes, that is her real name) are transformed into kinetic objects with a charme of their own.

The Centre Georges Pompidou is probably best viewed from the inside. I am not sure I much care for this example of High-tech Architecture.

How to wrap

2009-11-06T14:48:00.006+01:00

two pieces of delicious Tarte Tatin and Croustade au poire into a simple sheet of paper and make it look like a piece of art ...

On plus, it is a very efficient wrapping: very little material is used and the confections make it home unmushed too.

PS: I am missing the first snow storm of the season in NL. Happy shoveling to all. No one believes me, when I say, I love snow, but I really do. Not only from away.

A Promenade through the St. Germain-des-Prés area

2009-11-05T18:25:00.014+01:00

It's hard to believe this area was once outside of Paris.

Below is an image of the square in front of the church of St.Sulpice where I was delighted and surprised to learn that the great French composer Charles-Marie Widor was organist here for 67 years.

St. Sulpice houses the Gnomon a device to measure the exact time of the spring equinox in order to determine the date for Easter. (Poor Dan Brown got it all wrong.)

This organ was built by the innovative Aristide Cavaillé-Coll:

A leasurely stroll from here is the church of St. Germain-des-Prés. Not much is left from the magnificent abbey. Where the little park "Laurent Prache" is today, there used to be the abbey's
cloister.

Today we find a sculpture by Picasso here. The place still maintains an air of peace and tranquility.

A look into St. Germain-des-Prés reveals a mix of styles from Romanesque to gothic. It is supposed to date back to the 6th century and competes with two other churches for being the oldest church in Paris. Dear René's ashes are buried here. You know, the Cogito Ergo Sum guy.

Further on, near the Delacroix Museum, this lovely little square gives a view on the former monastry abbots' humble abode.

This area is filled with bookstores and printers' places. (The one below was strangely filled with Niki de St.Phalle blow ups, like the snake or her famous Nanas.) Of course all the important writers gathered in the cafés like the Flore, The deux Magots (and no, this has nothing to do with creepy crawlies), the Brasserie Lipp and drank themselves to death here. Not on coffee though, mind you.

The Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts is around the corner too. There is an interesting exhibition going on in the midst of the architectural collection. By the way, Auguste Rodin was not admitted to the art school. He tried three times.

Again a few steps away there is art on the street. This time by Arman (1928-2005), a French born sculptor. Here he melds the Venus of Milo with an African mask and a double bass, while at the same time splicing them up. He seems to be referring to Cubism here.

Looking for love

2009-11-04T17:38:00.002+01:00

in the Jardin de Luxembourg:

J'adore

2009-11-03T15:38:00.003+01:00

This is a telling and very comical comment on the state of Canadian cultural promotion under the Harper government with a French language twist:

EDIT: I changed the video to the longer version. Thank you, Heidi!

Dogs say Ouaf

2009-11-02T15:55:00.004+01:00

in French, Wauwau in German, Wangwang in Japanese, Woof in English. How do they say in Finnish, Dutch, Spanish, Italian ... ?

Die Revolution

2009-11-01T19:50:00.005+01:00

fraß die Heiligen, zumindest jedoch entfernte sie die Titel. Man kann sich vorstellen mit wie viel revolutionärem Eifer das "St."aus der Straßenbezeichnung entfernt wurde. Wie gut, dass man nicht sehen konnte, wie die Straße auf der mentalen Karte wohl weiter hieß.

C'est du fun ...

2009-10-28T14:52:00.004+01:00

I feel like I time-travelled or was in a bad Sci-Fi movie or something like that, where books are hallowed objects only to be touched by the chosen few. I was in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Francois Mitterrand Library.

How much red tape can there be to access a research library? This is certainly not the first library I have used but what can I say, I have never ever felt there were that many hurdles between me and the books. And it is NOT a language question. My French is perfectly fine, thank you.

First of all, entering the library rivals any airport security check. After having obtained the access cards to the research library, we tried to add a few books and articles to our accounts, in order to reserve them for our next visit, we then were directed to the "vestiaire" where you have to put all the belongings you want to take into the research library into a see through bag and say goodbye to the rest. You then pass a security gate with your access card like a Navigo card, and find yourself in an area where you expect to be decontaminated or have something evil descend on you to make sure your are one of the elect or and brainwash you at the same time into thinking how grand all of this was. Then you descend into the entrails of one of the four towers by way of a gigantique elevator which equals the attempted grandesse of the The Rooms. At the end new gates await. An information desk, more security gates, blablabla. We only wanted to register our laptops with the system because it takes 24 hours for the registration to work its magic and give you access, but we would then have lost an entire day out of our 15 access days which we purchased before. So we decided instead to alight, go through the reverse procedure, grab some food and a few free Wifi minutes at a café, before an appointment a bit later.

Ah, books! What you do to protect them! Put them in four different towers with four wonderful themes: Tour du temps (Tower of time), Tour des lois (Tower of law), Tour des nombres (Tower of numbers), Tour des lettres (Tower of words) so it takes 45 minutes to get them form the storage place to your desk.

I am not sure I will get it ...

Anyway, on a different note: the power outage is temporarily fixed by connecting big power cables to the neigbouring building through the hall way with signs of "Danger de mort" on them. The Wifi is completely knocked out, our landlord does not seem to fathom the gravity of the problem (for people accessing online journals all the time), the water runs intermittently in the morning.

Ah, Paris!

Kein Internet

2009-10-27T16:27:00.002+01:00

nach dem massiven Stromausfall in unserer Strasse geht das Internet nicht mehr. Bin jetzt leider erst Mal auf elektronischer Tauchstation. Habe gerade bei einer Nachbarin 5 Minuten am Rechner ergattert.

Lonely people and their little dogs

2009-10-26T17:50:00.001+01:00

could be a photo series shot in Paris.

(taken near the Picasso Museum)

Private Paradise

2009-10-25T22:27:00.003+01:00

In the often grey and dreary looking streets of big cities some people manage to create their own little version of a Garden Eden as seen here in the Marais.

A Saturday stroll

2009-10-24T18:45:00.016+02:00

is no fun when it's raining, so we opted for a day in the museum and visited the Musée des Arts et Métiers which is right around the corner from us. So there was no need to pop down one of the rabbit holes into the Métro.

The museum houses some amazing objects, alas it is also very badly lit. The showcases could in fact use some serious updating.

One of the many many pieces we saw today was a timepiece from the era of the French revolution. What a headache a 10 hour day with 100 minute hours and so on would have been. The decimal time never caught on and only one year after its introduction the mandatory use was quietly buried.

An object that we often find mentioned in the context of lighthouses is the Fresnel Lens, one of which was exhibited in a laboratory setting.

In the context of measuring vibrations violins were shown.

Why didn't we have these wonderful geometric bodies to study with at school? They look like chocolates in a box.

A lot of inventions mentioned are French firsts. Not world firsts, but French. Which is all that counts, right?

In case you have read Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum" you know all about the exhibition room in which the pendulum is shown. In 1851 Foucault's idea was to demonstrate the earth's rotation, which was the first experimental proof.

And yes, Madame la Liberté is here too, in a scaled down version, naturellement.

All the things viewed need to be digested intellectually and what better way than some good conversation with some archi-slurpy food. We went to the Marché des Enfants Rouges where I had previously seen the little outdoor restaurants. We had the choice of African-Cajun food, Moroccan, Bio, and others, and finally settled on Japanese food. We were not deceived. For 9,20 Euros I had a nice bowl with rice and wonderfully seasoned mackerel. W. always liked the Japanese curries when we still lived in Kobe, so he went for the curry and was not disappointed. A very nice, casual place with good quality food.

On our way back home, I saw this painted fish on a chimney. Next time, I will take my other lens with me to get a closer look at this painting.

Flavours of Paris

2009-10-23T05:10:00.002+02:00

On my stroll to the covered market "Enfants Rouges", the oldest of the Parisian markets, named after a 16th century orphanage in the neighboourhood which dressed their orphans in red uniforms, I snapped some pictures with the flavours of Paris.

"Bon appétit!"

2009-10-22T09:35:00.006+02:00

-this wish became one of Julia Child's trademarks. As she writes in her memoirs, which I am reading at the moment, she one day decided to finish her TV appearances with this French exclamation.

As you can see, we even have a carved Eiffel Tower sitting on our salad with fresh herbs and a loveley cheese as dessert. The St.Felicien raw milk cheese must be one of our favourite ones. So "Bon appétit" we had indeed.

Earlier in the afternoon we passed a Boulangerie Artisanale on Rue du Temple, where a cheery baker was selling his ware. Of course we had to indulge. We went for "un chausson aux pommes" (an apple turnover), an "Abricotine", and something filled with "pépins de chocolat" and some "crème patissière" which all tasted wonderfully fresh and not too sweet.

We obtained Sim-Cards for our ancient cell phones from Europe and bought subway passes, solved the coat hanging problem and found us some nice, non-dripping candles (why can you not find candles like these in Canadian supermarkets?).

Then we had some major internet problems ... Luckily we could use our phones to send an SOS message to our landlord who promised to come tonight and try to fix it. I doubt he will be succesful as the problem seems to be in the "pre-historic" wall plugs.

Today I'll be exploring the neighbourhood and figure out what it takes to be allowed into the library. A "justificatif de domicile" is the "Open Sesame" for a lot of services, so I guess I need to figure out the least complicated way to obtain this paper.

Also, we are looking forward to meeting with our god child soon.

Yeah, its's fun being here!

In-Between-Time

2009-10-21T12:09:00.004+02:00

is over.

We have arrived at the center of the Ile-de-France our home for the next months. We were very lucky as there was a "SNCF grève" (railway strike) yesterday and we were not affected the least bit.

There are still some major and minor hickups with the infrastructure here, especially with the internet.

Otherwise the appartement is quite nice, but the building entrance at the ground floor level has a dank and musty odour to it that is kind of off-putting. It certainly doesn't make for a good first impression.

Now it's time to venture out, get our bearings in the "quartier", buy a phone, get a subway pass and so on.

We are having fun so far. Work will start tomorrow. Maybe.

Wintery Fall

2009-10-16T20:10:00.002+02:00

The dogberries are bright red here as well, not only in Newfoundland, but not as abundant. So, I guess, we'll have much more snow back home than here. Poor B. has to do the shoveling sans us.

As you may see, I have a new toy, a lens that makes things blurry. Now of course, you may ask, what sense lies in producing blurry pictures ON PURPOSE. Well, photography is not an art because it makes you recognize things, but -among many reasons- because it makes you see things in a fresh way.

Wet snow

2009-10-16T10:28:00.003+02:00

over here, too!

Germany greeted us with wet snow and 9 km traffic jams. "On roulait en accordéon", as the French say. Can't say we missed the traffic. Driving jetlagged on a dark "Autobahn" with construction work going on and with those crazy drivers who think they have to go as fast as their cars allow, and clearly are not thinking that the road could be another issue, has never been my favourite pasttime. (We were passed by a Lamborghini with a roaring motor who ended up in the same traffic jam as we did. So much for the fast "Autobahn".)

But here we are, after a nice visit with friends near Munich, in Franconia, where the local speciality beer is a "Smoked Beer". If you are like me and not especially fond of beer, this beer could turn you off of beer altogether.

So, still no new island in sight, but we'll get there ... eventually.

Bye bye beautiful

2009-10-14T23:27:00.004+02:00

Island of Newfoundland (A Whale Tail Hat Picture was supposed to go here), hello Island of ... not so quickly. We're not there yet.

If it wasn't for my dear friend C. I would actually still be on our beautiful island. However, because of the first fall storm with high winds and even snow and a weather advisory issued by Environment Canada, C. told us, we could reschedule the Air Canada flight at no cost. So we did (and therefore lost about 4 hours in prep time therefore no pics today) and we were just one hour late on both ends (de-icing in St. John's, broken debarking tunnel in Toronto) and are now happily sitting in the AC Lounge sipping hot tea and waiting for our connection.

Ah hot tea, a nice luxury by the way, especially after my heart almost sank to my boots upon check-in. They had re-scheduled me alright, but for a morning flight which of course had already left. The info received was for an afternoon flight. But all is well. There was room enough to squeeze me in.

PS. As will not have escaped my readers, I switched languages. I will in fact be writing in English for the next little while, so my friends in NL can keep track of my whereabouts as well. Comments remain welcome in German, French or Italian.

Countdown

2009-10-12T18:34:00.000+02:00

Noch zwei Tage!

Miam

2009-10-08T18:32:00.000+02:00

Zum Geburtstag im Sommer hatte ich mir eine Eismaschine gewünscht. Seitdem gibt es bei uns selbstgemachtes Eis am laufenden Band. Z.B. dieses:

Pflaumeneis auf einer Meringue mit Matcha und schwarzer Sesamsaat. Die Rezepte sind aus David Lebovitz' Buch "The perfect scoop". Die Rezepte sind wirklich empfehlenswert und sein Blog zu lesen ein Muss, denn nächste Woche dreht der Wind und auf der Windrose wird die Nadel Richtung Osten zeigen. Was das bedeutet, wissen Sie, wenn Sie Mary Poppins kennen.