Are you going home for Christmas?

It's only six days to Christmas now, and I still have gift shopping to do. Partially, this is due to my devotion to procrastination. But in my defense, it's been hard to remember that it's the holiday season here. 

For the first time, there are no final exams to herald the impending winter break. Work comes and goes every day, indifferent to the smell of pine and the tinkling of faraway bells. Outside, there are no ostentatious River Oaks lighting displays to boast that Santa is coming and he's stopping in this neighborhood first. The French, more or less indifferent to Christmas because they are largely secular -- but also because they are French and indifference is kind of their thing -- don't stroll around babbling "Happy birthday Jesus"  to strangers as if to prove that by having holiday cheer they are living a Good Christian Life. We "bonjour"  and "au revoir" each other as in every other season, guarding our enthusiasm away for some later time. 

Decorations on an average street.

The Champs Elysées (Times Square of Paris) gets into the act though.

Nonetheless, there are reminders here and there that we should be donning our gayest apparel and getting excited for Christmas. For starters, it is a well-accepted fact that holiday cheer commences approximately five minutes after the end of Thanksgiving. Our Thanksgiving was delayed this year, so our Christmas tree was correspondingly pushed back a week. 

YUM. Why do we only eat pumpkin pie one day out of the year?

So thankful.

Once all of the turkey chicken (yeah, we took the easy way out) leftovers were fed to the cat, we set out to find our Christmas tree. 

Mike: in charge of carrying the tree

Catherine: in charge of decorating the tree

Minidou: in charge of being lazy and generally unhelpful

A cockatiel in a fir tree

Holiday time also means family time, so the Bratics' visit to Paris marked a change in the season. They came to visit for five days, which were filled with food, shopping, and wandering the pavements of Paris. 

On the Petite Ceinture, the Paris inspiration for New York's high line park.

Banana nutella crepe!!

Julia's not too excited about having to share.

Being away from friends and family for ten months is incredibly difficult. Even more so during the holidays. Beneath the friendly words of coworkers asking each other, "are you going home for Christmas?" is the unmistakable subtext that you are supposed to be at HOME for the holidays, and home is NOT HERE. The query refers invariably to some faraway "home," whether you immigrated last week or twenty years ago. A reminder that there is a place where you inherently belong, if only you could get back to it. I suppose I could have started this post with a psycho-analytic discussion of my repression of holiday cheer in response to separation anxiety, but it's oh-so-much easier to blame French indifference and insufficient holiday lighting.

Working at UNESCO has given me a greater appreciation for not belonging to a group, and for embracing a culture of my very own, traceable back to my faraway home. Last month, I enthusiastically took up the task of making Polish pierogies at holiday time, a tradition that I shared with my grandmother when I was a young girl, and have continued to share with my father into my adult years. This year was the first time I'd ever made pierogies all on my own.

I think I added too much water to the dough...

I'm slowly getting the hang of these, but they're nothing compared to the little dumplings my grandmother could turn out.

From Charles de Gaulle airport: even reindeer have unique holiday traditions reflecting their origins and culture. 

If there's one thing shared in all cultures across the world, though, it's that the holidays are a time to relax and enjoy yourself. Take a week off of work (or two), travel, eat, drink, visit loved ones, and be merry. My office is closed December 21 through January 1st, and I have a strict policy against having to work on my birthday, January 2nd, so we're taking a nice long vacation back home. Yes, real HOME. Where all your friends and family are, where people pronounce your name right, and where the food is somehow always better. Joy to the world, at least in my little corner of it.

What the holidays are really about: chilling at home.

Rennes and Nantes

Armistice Day

While the US celebrates Veterans Day, France celebrates Armistice Day.  The armistice that ended World War I was on November 11, 1919.  It's a national holiday, so most of the country is off of work.  I decided to take a day off of work at NI (because I'm still working on an American calendar) and make a three day weekend out of it.  We found an excellent fare on the rail company for $34 round trip per person to Rennes, a small city in northwestern France about 200 miles west of Paris.  Rennes is such a small city, so we decided to spend one day there and two days in Nantes, a modern city about an hour (by train, of course) south of Rennes.

 Rennes

We arrived in Rennes Friday night and went to our hotel.  The hotel was about 1/4 mile from the center of Rennes' nightlife, so we bundled up and wandered out to see the city.  Since the city is so compact we were able to just follow the crowds to an area with a bunch of bars.

Rennes is a university town, so it's got more than its fair share of bars.  We wandered into one, got a drink, and hung out for about an hour.

It rained all Saturday morning, but that didn't stop us from exploring Rennes' main market, set in the same streets lined with bars from the previous night.

Roman turret

After we saw all of the market (and tried more free samples than we probably should have) we saw one of the original Roman walls of the city.

Near the far end of the market we found a welcome taste of home: ¡Ay Mexico!  We ate there to fill the missing space in our stomachs hearts for Texmex.  It was delicious. 

A couple of timbered buildings

Rennes has some really cool architecture.  It feels a lot older than Paris because there are timbered buildings all over the place. A lot of the timbered buildings were clearly repaired over time, which showed the city was interested in keeping the old architecture around.  The insides of a lot of shops had exposed timber supports -- some real, some fake -- which gave the city its own unique architectural style.

More cool architecture

Nantes

Nantes is a very different city than Rennes.  It's modern and built up.  What it's missing in the typical small-French-town charm (which Paris desperately tries to cling to) it makes up for in modern amenities.  There may not be cobblestones everywhere, but they're replaced by perfectly smooth pavers.  A lot of the older architecture has been removed in favor of newer buildings, which means that our hotel wasn't drafty and had a full size elevator (although it didn't go to the top floor).

Nantes was one of the major slave-trading cities of Europe for over a century in the 1700s and early 1800s.  The city now has a stirring museum dedicated to the abolition of slavery.

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The elephant!

One of the islands in the middle of the river running through Nantes has a large amusement park dedicated to machines.  The artists there create tons of machines for parades around Nantes.  Every year they create a large fairy tale spread across the city. At the museum there's also a huge animatronic elephant that you can ride.  The elephant holds about 50 people and drives around.  It can move its head and trunk in any direction (independently).  The elephant's legs move and track realistically.  Its eyes open and close. Its ears move, too.  And of course it trumpets.

Oh...yeah...The elephant could pee.  I thankfully didn't see it or get peed on.

Queen Anne was born in this castle

On our second day in Nantes, we went to the castle.  It's been recently renovated, and parts have been rebuilt throughout the centuries, so it's hard to say what's original.  The museum inside details the history of Nantes.  As a maritime city they focus a lot on ships and maps of the river.  It gets a bit old, but it was still worth seeing.

The last thing we did before leaving was go to the Passage Pommeraye.  It's a cool little mall built between two streets in the mid 1800s.  There are a lot of neat stores inside and it's got a big staircase in the middle of it.

Our trip to Rennes and Nantes gave us another new perspective on France.  It also gave us a belly full of crêpes :-).

Crêpey crêpe crêpe crêpe

I'd never been to northwest France, and Catherine had never been to either of those cities (something which is pretty rare for her).  I hope we'll get to travel more in France.  And I definitely wouldn't mind drier, warmer destinations.

Summer recap

Forgive me reader, for I have not been updating the blog regularly. You see, Mike and I have been very busy.

In May, we were in New York City. I spent a few weeks with my favorite people who live too far away from me, and then I graduated from law school.

Three of my favorite long-distance friends (Yi Han, Paavana, and Kyndra) on a cruise on the Hudson River.

Seriously, why did I move away from these people?

It rained sideways during the commencement ceremony. Columbia generously gave out a $4 umbrella to each graduate. And they say a law degree isn't a good value!

Is that soggy regalia I smell?

After graduation, I headed back to Houston to study for the Texas Bar Exam. The three-day exam took place at the end of July. About 25% of out-of-state law students don't pass the exam, which is required to practice law in Texas. So I was a little nervous. Mike was back in Austin at the time, working at the main office of NI and probably being very grateful to not have to deal with bar exam stress. 

Practice MBE day.

Color-coded highlighters. Gross.

I have repressed all memories of the actual exam. It was the most mentally exhausting experience I've ever had. (Spoiler alert: I passed though! More on that later.)

In between studying, I got to catch up with friend in Texas. God bless Texas, and God bless my Texas friends, who always let me pick things up right where we left off nine months ago. They're awesome enough to convince me not to move to Europe full-time.

At Free Press Summer Fest with Melissa.

Fourth of July in Austin. Waiting for fireworks on the S. Congress Bridge.

Midnight House of Pies run with Lily and Rory (and Anna and Sarah!).

Okay they're not really from Houston, but Sarah and Mike came to Houston to get ENGAGED!!!

And of course, there were some furry friends who had missed me while I was away.

Daisy

Lance and Rusty

After the bar exam, though, I was ready for a vacation. So I headed to Peru with Heaven, who also took the Texas Bar Exam (and who's been through just about every important life event with me since age 11).

Don't be fooled by our faces; we hated this place.

I LOVED getting to vacation with Heaven. But I would not go back to Peru. We met a couple of really nice people there, but 95% of our vacation was a series of getting robbed and lied to. Bottom line: if you have to go to Peru, hang out with actual Peruvians and stay away from the entire tourism industry.

By September, we were gearing up for the wedding. I went to Las Vegas for the first time ever with all of my bridesmaids. I didn't expect to like the city so much, but all of the Vegas veterans showed me how much fun it could be. 

Not the real Eiffel Tower.

We also had a bridal shower with my mother's friends, most of whom still can't believe that I'm grown up. 

In my free time during the summer, I ran around planning wedding details. I was so lucky to have my mom with me to help with everything and give advice! In August, she went with me to the campus of Rice University for my bridal portraits. Mike and I met at Rice in 2007, and he proposed there last summer. 

My mom and I at the end of the portrait session.

And then finally, on September 14, it was our wedding day! The hardest thing about weddings are how quickly they fly by. It was hands-down the happiest and most memorable day of my life, and I wanted it to last forever. We felt so overwhelmed by the love of our family and friends, who came from far away just to celebrate with us on our special day. I still don't know how to ever possibly express my gratitude to everyone who went out of their way to be there for us. (Except, of course, to be sure to attend their weddings when the time comes!)

Our family and our best friends (who might as well be family)

What's a wedding without cake?

This is, of course, a blog about our time in France, though. And although this entire post is about our summer outside of France, I'd be remiss if I didn't note that our wedding had plenty of French touches.

La croquembouche!

Des macarons.

As of October, we're back in Paris. (All of us, including the bird and the cat!) And we promise to keep you updated with all of our coming adventures.

Bells of Notre Dame

In celebration of its 850th anniversary, Notre Dame de Paris commissioned a new set of bells. The old set was installed in 1856 and had not been very well cared for. Modern reports accuse the 1856 bell foundry of using inferior quality metals and not even attempting to tune them. Naturally, the bells were in terrible condition and horribly out of tune anyway after 150 years, and everyone was excited for their replacement. The new set of 8 bells was installed in the cathedral just in time for Easter. The bells are named Marie, Gabriel, Anne-Geneviève, Denis, Marcel, Étienne, Benoît-Joseph (they were one pope behind on this one!), Maurice, and Jean-Marie. They join the large bell Emmanuel from the earlier set.

On the eve of Palm Sunday, we went to hear the bells ring out over Ile de la Cité for the first time ever. There was quite the crowd, and for good reason. The short performance was spectacular. After a ritualistic booing of the Paris mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, and a hymn sung by the Notre Dame children's chorus, the bells were rung in order, each adding onto the song of the previous one. I took a short video of the performance that I hope you'll enjoy.

If you want to learn more about the bells, there is a summary on Notre Dame's website in French here. Anglophones can find the NPR story in English here.

Cheval

I was stunned to walk into my favorite Picard (purveyor of cheap frozen foods and godsend of graduate students and working parents in this country) to find the following alert:

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"Les résultats des analyses demandées par Picard ont confirmé la détection de viande de cheval dans les deux lots de lasagnes bolognaises." Yikes.

Yes, the lasagna bolognaise had horse meat in it. But despite Picard's faith that the products are tout à fait consommables, they've pulled the lasagne and chili con caballo from the shelves before anyone got the chance to try it for themselves. I would not have been one of them -- too many years of working with horses has elevated them to pet status in my mind -- but I suspect there would have been many takers here.

France, you see, has always loved horse meat, or at least since the 1789 Revolution. When the peasants overthrew the monarchy, they also slaughtered and butchered the contents of the nobles' stables to feed the starving citizenry. There seems to be a logical gap between wanting to behead the king and wanting to kill and eat every animal associated with him, but we'll assume for now that the peasants were just really, really hungry, since Marie-Antoinette never came through on her offer to let everyone eat brioche cakes.

In later history, French armies took to eating the enemy's horses as a sign of victory and a way to fend of malnutrition on the battlefront. A recipe dating from the Napoleonic campaigns describes how to make a great post-battle stew from the enemies' horses: cut up the horse and cook it in the enemy's armor, and then season with a pinch of gunpowder. ("La cuirasse pectorale des cavaliers démontés et blessés eux-mêmes servait de marmite pour la coction de cette viande, et au lieu de sel, dont nous étions entièrement dépourvus, elle fut assaisonnée avec de la poudre à canon.") Yum. 

These were hard times, though. Much like the 1870 Siege of Paris, during which a food shortage prompted restauranteurs to raid the city's zoos. A Christmas Eve menu from that year features elephant, bear, kangaroo, antelope, and stray cats.

Surely by the 20th century and the arrival of the modern industrial food complex, the French would neither want nor need to eat horse meat, right? Apparently horse meat is very delicious, because although 1870 food critics decried elephant meat as "tough, course, and oily," horse meat remains on the menu. In 2004, 25,600 tons of horse were consumed in France: only a couple of ounces per citizen, but a regular part of one-sixth of the population's diet. Horse meat is fairly expensive, selling at the local horse butcher at about the same price as veal.

Butchers in France always feature smiling meat-producers. Is it a suggestion of humane slaughter, or just a creepy endorsement? 

Despite the horror of English-speaking nations and fair-weather vegetarians everywhere, France is not alone in its consumption of horse. Switzerland, Italy, and Belgium are also major consumers of cheval. Intentional consumers, that is. Tunisia is also an early adopter, judging from this market vendor we encountered in Tunis this weekend.

For the rest of us, we can only shudder and be glad that the lasagne bolognaise wasn't on sale the day we were out shopping.

Prague Blog

Prague has been on my personal to-visit list for a while now. It was one of those places that everyone had been to and loved, but that I hadn't ever made it to. (Also on this list: Berlin, Amsterdam, Budapest, Istanbul, to name a few). Last weekend, I finally checked it off. My conclusion: WHY HAVEN'T YOU BEEN TO PRAGUE YET?

The city is beautiful, an amazing mix of Medieval, Baroque, Renaissance, and Art Nouveau architecture. Although the Czechs were under Soviet control for decades, there are -- thankfully -- very few traces of their particular style of construction in Prague. The subway is a spectacular feat of Soviet engineering that sits out of sight and underground, where it belongs.  The rest of the city is more like this:

Building on the Old Town square.

Saint Nicholas Church (these guys had an anti-Catholic reformation that makes Martin Luther look mainstream)

Obecní dům: the Prague municipal house

I fell in love with Prague's municipal house, a stately Art Nouveau building used for public functions, particularly concerts. 

Ceiling of the main concert hall

Interior of the Obecní dům

Okay, okay, that's all the architecture I'll throw at you. Prague has many merits besides design excellence. The Charles Bridge is one of them. We found ourselves there right at sunset and were treated to spectacular views of the city.

View across the Vltava. Vlatava is Czech for "you will never learn how to pronounce our language." 

View of the Prague Castle.

The Charles Bridge dates from the 14th and 15th centuries. Being the first bridge across the river, it was a huge innovation at the time, because the winter ice was a struggle to paddle across.

Of course we also saw the main tourist attractions: the Astronomical Clock and the Prague Castle. According to legend, the king ordered that the maker of the clock be blinded so that nobody else could have as neat of a toy. The legend is almost certainly false, but it's easy to believe when you see the 15th-century clock do it's song and dance routine on the hour.

Mike with a toy.

St. Vitus Cathedral, at Prague Castle.

Of course, no vacation is complete without a tour of the local cuisine. We were surprised to find really good food in Prague, since Czech food doesn't have a reputation for being spectacular. Their traditional dish, beef with cream sauce and dumplings (sliced steamed bread), was hearty and perfect for a cold day. Okay, the dumplings were really where it was at, but there was some meat on the dish too.

From Paddy, under Creative Commons licensing.

And then we tried a Czech kolache. This is nothing like a Kolache shop creation: little did we know that kolaches are basically stuffed dumplings, not rolls with a tablespoon of jam on top. I sincerely regret not going back for more.

Packed with apricot. Just the right amount of sweet. So addictive!

I really enjoyed learning about Prague on our trip. I seriously considered enrolling in a school program there so that we could stay longer. Maybe Unicorn College?

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