C'est du fun ...

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

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

could be a photo series shot in Paris.

(taken near the Picasso Museum)

Private Paradise

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

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

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!"

-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

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

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

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

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

Noch zwei Tage!

Miam

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.

Erneuerbare Energiequellen

Das klingt doch einfach zu schön! Neufundland als Vorreiter für erneuerbare Energiequellen.

This 10-minute video tells the story of how Newfoundland and Labrador is using technology to harness renewable, clean energy at opposite ends of the scale: the mega-project scale of the Lower Churchill River hydroelectric transmission link; and the isolated village scale of the Ramea wind-hydrogen-diesel project.

Wer die Kontroverse um die Strommasten und die zu schlagende breite Schneise, vielleicht durch den "Gros Morne"-Nationalpark, verfolgt hat, wird sehen, dass auch hier nur mit Wasser gekocht wird und längst nicht alles zu Ende gedacht worden ist.



EDIT 8.10.: Dass es in Neufundland nicht wirklich um die Umwelt geht und der Titel "erneuerbare Energien" ein Feigenblatt ist, sieht man daran, wie mit der Verseuchung in Buchans umgegangen wird.

Es gibt etliche Vorschläge die Energieversorgung zu dezentralisieren, anstatt wieder mit so einem megalomanischen Werk daherzukommen, aber das passt wohl nicht in die Mentalität der hauptsächlich rohstoffausbeutenden Länder.

Bücher

Zum 25jährigen Bestehen des Harper Collins Imprints "4th Estate" gibt es dieses Filmchen "This is where we live", eine Hommage an die Bücher, die unsere inneren Welten bevölkern.

This Is Where We Live from 4th Estate on Vimeo.

via Chitime

Seit ich endeckt habe, dass ich auf dem Crosstrainer auch Bücher lesen kann, habe ich seit Mai etwa folgende gelesen:

"Le Figuier sur le toit" von Marguerite Andersen

"On Chesil Beach" von Ian McEwan

"A short history of tractors in Ukrainian" von Marina Lewycka

"The Darren Effect" von Libby Creelman

"Hitlers Wien. Lehrjahre eines Diktators" von Brigitte Hamann in der englischsprachigen Ausgabe

"Buddenbrooks" von Thomas Mann

"The Unfolding of Language" von Guy Deutscher

"Das Wetter vor 15 Jahren" von Wolf Haas

"The Okinawa Program" von Bradley Willcox et al.

"The Unfortunate Passion of Hermann Broch" von José María Pérez Gay

"Die Schrecken des Eises und der Finsternis" von Christoph Ransmayr

"The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, the World's Most Astonishing Number" von Mario Livio

Ich habe bestimmt noch einigeBücher vergessen. Zu lesen, während man läuft, ist tausend Mal spannender und befriedigender als zwangsweise im Fitness-Studio Fernsehen zu schauen. (Das sind die Bücher, die ich neben dem Studium gelesen habe. Bücher, die ich für's Studium lese, kann ich beim Laufen nicht lesen, weil ich ja Notizen machen muss. Da könnte ich sonst noch eine ganz lange Liste hinzufügen.)

Es ist nicht leicht,

in der Diaspora zu leben, auch wenn es sich lediglich um die Brezeldiaspora handelt. Aber dank der ausführlichen Beschreibung auf der Webseite von Andreas Börner über die Art der Laugenlösung und mit Angaben von Bezugsquellen haben wir uns endlich daran getraut.

Mit einer Abwandlung dieses Rezeptes haben wir gestern leckere Brezeln zustande gebracht. Der Teig ist sehr geschmeidig. Da mir das weiße Mehl ausgegangen war, haben wir weißes Vollkornmehl genommen und etwas mehr Wasser.

Bestellt haben wir das Sodium Hydroxide bei AAA Chemicals in den USA. Die kleine Packung hat 8USD gekostet, der Versand 23$. Allerdings haben wir keinen günstigeren Gesamtpreis bei einer Bestellung irgendwo in Kanada bekommen. Die Packung reicht uns eine ganze Weile.