Photos Galore

Greetings everyone,


This isn't a real blog post (stay tuned for one each from Sara and myself), this is just a heads up about some new and newly-organized photos on our Flickr site.


This photo update doesn't include our very latest pix (Sara's brother's visit, our trip to Andorra, etc.), but those will be up soon as well.


As for the photos that are here, they're in five categories:




















"Best of Paris"
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7531775@N04/sets/72157600216028298/

These are the best of the artsy and scenic photos taken between January and roughly May. They include (just to pique your curiosity) Napoleon, cucumbers, a big orange dog, the French election, the moon with an arm through his eye, and Easter Vigil. The newest photos are at the top, the older ones are at the bottom. The title of this category is a bit wrong, since there are some non-Paris photos here (including the one at left, from London). You should be able to see this category online whether or not you have a Flickr account.
















"Best of Paris People"
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7531775@N04/sets/72157600215618739/
These are the best "people pictures" taken from January to May (newest pix first), mostly in Paris, but not entirely. They include the visits of my mom, Sara's parents, Jess, and Norm and Amanda. They also include pictures of Sara's "little friend" Angie from French class, my beloved former host mother Iris, Sara's French teacher Elodie, my friend Beth and her mega-cute kids, and way more of Sara and me than you ever hoped to see. You DO need a Flickr account to see these, so if you can't get to them, let me know and I'll send you an invitation.

"Best of Pre-2007"
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7531775@N04/sets/72157600308969413/


These are my best pictures from the years leading up to this year. Many are scans from paper photos, so the quality isn't perfect, but still pretty good. These include earlier Paris pix, but also Adams Morgan, Argentina, Los Angeles, the Bahamas, and others. You don't need a Flickr account to see these.




















"Best of Portugal"
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7531775@N04/sets/72157600215589239/
"Best of Portugal People"
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7531775@N04/sets/72157600215978738/

These are the pictures from Sara's and my wonderful trip to Portugal with friends Jamie and Carey back in April. The first batch are the artsy or touristy pix, the second batch at the people pix. You don't need a Flickr account to see the first batch, but you DO to see the second batch, so if you have trouble, send me an e-mail and I'll tell you how to get access to them.

Hope you like them!
Josh

Greek Feet and Spas

It will be a true miracle if I am fit for normal company after my brother’s visit. I had forgotten what a wacky dude he is, and sharing 300 square feet with two boys for two weeks is surely ill-advised. But, once I got over the initial onslaught of Beavis and Butthead-esque jokes, I quickly started to have a really great time.

On day two, while we were eating olives, he was drinking a beer, and I was sipping wine, David said, “Come on, when was the last time we spent this much time together?” I guessed 1997…or 1994…we weren’t sure, but I’m glad to have this chance to get to know David better and to share some European Adventures with him, though I think we are both a little curious about how this “family time” will go.

Yep, the unofficial Mayor of Chesterton is here in Paris. We’re trying to get a state dinner set up, but we’re not sure that we have room in our schedule, even if the wine would no doubt be good. You know how busy visiting heads of state can be--just ask my brother. As he stood outside of the Louvre and I snapped a photo he declared that "it only made sense for the Polish Prince to visit a French palace." Yes, he really is that absurd.

We did an abbreviated version of “Paris Highlights” tour for the first two days and then skipped right to the good stuff. Yesterday, we saw Pere Lachese—the famous cemetery; today we saw the catacombs—the site of hundreds of thousands of bones from Paris throughout the years all artfully displayed 50 feet below ground. We stopped on the way home for a pastry though, so the day wasn’t entirely death-themed.

Josh told David that tbhe two themes of his visit will be “Shut up and eat it” and “Damn that’s old”. In the “Shut up and Eat it” category, we started with cheese, which is going remarkably well. He did object to one saying it smelled “like Greek Feet”, which may or may not be true (having never smelled such feet), but it was a cheese that was a little much even for Josh and me, so that was fair. We figure pate and other meat products are still on the To Do list.

In the “Damn that’s old” category, we’ve enjoyed showing David roman ruins, Notre Dame (which we assured him was actually build before the lovely football school in Indiana) and other historical sites. I think he’s honestly amazed by what he’s seen and when we’re not cracking jokes, I think we’re all learning a little bit more about Paris and each other.

Other highlights of the first few days of David’s tour:

1.) Determining if any French people (or vehicles) are actually bigger than David

2.) Josh taking David to the last public urinal, which is outside of a prison


3.) Drinking various beers at numerous cafes


4.) Catching up on the latest news from the Indiana electricians' union


5.) Snarfing Greek Sandwiches (which seem to have no resemblance to Greek Feet) on the street


6.) Sleeping until noon every day

1. 7.) Hearing David’s ongoing commentary on French women, which seems overwhelmingly positive

8.) Deciding whether we are going to visit a spa this weekend

I know the spa may not seem to fit, but I think it will be amusing, if not entirely relaxing. Our other Pluta Family European adventures will include a trip to Girona, Spain and Andorra—one of the smallest countries on earth, which is reachable only by bus from Spain or France. I agreed to the four-hour bus ride if I could go to the aforementioned spa, with David and Josh as escorts. If we don’t get deported, it will be fun.

When I asked David after dinner if we should have some quality conversation, he looked at me like I was a moron and said he had a book to read. I said just as well because I had some work to do and maybe in the end, 300 square feet is more than enough room, and we may even agree to do this again in another few years.

sPg

Barter and Raw Food

Life continues happily, yet mostly uneventfully in Paris, which is why I’ve been a bit quiet. But, true to form, there have been at least a few moments that have seemed blog worthy. Here are two glimpses of Paris that seemed worth sharing.

Will work for food—Josh and I have been fortunate enough to find just enough work for the lifestyle we would like here. We both work about 15 hours a week and that gives us plenty of free time and a few euros in our pocket. Over all, we are enjoying a fulfilling and simple life. So, you can imagine my surprise when Josh concluded a dinner at a great little crepe restaurant by (essentially) saying to the owner, “I’ll translate your menu into English and you can pay me in salted butter caramel.” If you can’t remember what that is, it’s perhaps Josh’s favorite Parisian food—caramel that has a perfectly delicious balance of salt in it. I guess all his flea market expenditures earlier in the day inspired this—or, perhaps he’ll do anything for a little salted butter caramel. And fear not, Josh’s new Parisian barter system doesn’t end with caramel, he’s also possibly doing some translation work for an association of scotch makers, drinkers, and aficionados. As Josh says, he would have spent money on either of those things anyways, so by not working for money but for caramel/scotch, he’s just avoiding the middle man.

Raw food diet—I thought the other day, “Oh goodness, it’s happened” and by “it”, I mean my adapting yet another newly-formed habit inspired by France that seems will be virtually impossible to re-create once we return to the States. My most recent and most troublesome France-only habitis my new found love of raw food, and more specifically, raw meat.

Maybe its primal, maybe this is just what happens to Midwesterners who love meat but can’t build a fire very well or maybe some things just really are different in France, but over one four day stretch, I ate just one single solitary meal that had any cooked food in it—the rest of the meals involved raw tuna, raw salmon, beef carpaccio, and steak tartare. Yes, I love them all and find that I crave them.

Having a stomach of steel, I’m not worried about any health effects and I also am betting that if a restaurant bothers to serve these things, they must trust the source of the meat. And really, I have a hard time believing that raw meat is actually the most dangerous food habit I could have when seemingly everything here is sold is some raw form: raw milk, unpasteurized cheese, etc, etc. Not a single French person has ever seemed alarmed when my raw meat habit gets brought up in conversation.

So yes, now one of my favorite café lunches is steak tartare—basically hand-ground raw steak that looks an awful lot like raw hamburger—and a salad. Even Josh has gotten into the idea. At a recent meal, he tried Carpaccio du tete de veau, roughly translated as “raw veal face”. When he ordered it, I said, “Josh, I’m so proud of you.” And then thought, “What the heck kind of screwed up compliment is that?!?”.

Rumor has it that there is a new Ethopian restaurant in Virginia that has two kinds of raw meat dishes that are worth having (this according to Eve Zibert—Washington Post Food critic). It seems promising. Maybe Josh will start learning Amharic and then he can offer to translate the menu in return for a serving or two of “gored gored”

sPg

RIP House Wine

[A lament, context explained below, to be sung to the tune of Don McLean’s “American Pie”]
Bye, bye, our beloved house wine
I dragged my suitcase to the wine place
But ‘twas gone, I yelled “Fie!”
Seems a euro doesn’t buy what it did at one time
At least our livers are breathing a sigh
Our livers are breathing a sigh…


Far be it from anyone to suggest that Sara and I are anything but goal-oriented. Soon after our arrival in Paris, we focused with a white-hot laser intensity and thoughtful, rigorous process on our number one priority. Not finding Sara a job, not getting us health insurance, and lord knows, not getting our phone hooked up.

Our real first goal—locating and selecting a wine that we both enjoyed and could afford to drink on a daily basis despite our limited budget.

I was our designated wine buyer, and I would return from frequent trips to the local Franprix market with a selection of red wines chosen mainly based on price. After a couple less-than-successful sorties, Sara suggested that my two euro ($2.70) price ceiling was a failure, and that in the future, I should plan on staying about three euros ($4.05).

On my next trip, I dutifully bought two bottles in the new price range, but I also mischievously bought a 1.8 euro ($2.35) bottle of a variety of wine (Saint Chinian) we’d previously enjoyed, but closer to the three euro price point. If I had a better poker face, I would have tried to pass the 1.8 euro bottle off as a three euro bottle. But instead, I just explained my rationale to Sara: “We like the three euro Saint Chinian, maybe we’ll like the 1.8 euro kind…)

The rest is history (figuratively), until sadly this week the rest was history (literally). The 1.8 euro Saint Chinian (and later the same winery’s Corbieres wine) became what Sara and I called “the House Wine,” imbibed daily with our solo meals and shared liberally with dinner guests. Even French dinner guests were impressed by the quality of the wine and its low price point. (The attached photo from months back was meant to show the chaos of laundry day but instead additionally captured an impromptu shot of a house wine bottle at dead center, demonstrating its ubiquity…)

Subsequently, we found the House Wine at Leader Price, a mini-Shoppers’ Food Warehouse-type store for just 1.25 euros. Given that this year we have plenty of free time but not much spare cash, it became a roughly monthly ritual for me to drag my wheeled carry-on suitcase the fifteen minutes to this store, load up with a dozen or so bottles of House Wine, then drag it home and we’d be stocked for a month.

After a couple of months of doing this, in a disconcerting portent, Sara and I noticed that the House Wine had disappeared from the shelves of the nearby Franprix market (where the House Wine was first discovered). We hoped for the best, but when I arrived at Leader Price for this month’s pilgrimage, the House Wine was gone.
Given the thousands of French wine producers, the dozens of wines they each produce, and the fact that production changes each year, it’s not that surprising that this wine seemingly vanished. It’s almost more surprising that we were able to keep finding it for nearly five months.

But the House Wine didn’t die in vain. We have since found out that Saint Chinian, Corbieres, and the other wines of Southwest France are currently some of the best values on the wine market. Known for decades as producing high quantities of low quality wine, the Southwest is now straightening up its act and trying to win back its good name. We learned this “back story” to our House Wine at a wine tasting class, and have since put it to work in buying good but inexpensive bottles of wine at the store and in restaurants. Our discovery was reinforced when, in a recent radio interview (http://www.radiofrance.fr/chaines/france-info/chroniques/expat/index.php?chro_diff_id=295000112&m=3), Bernard Portet, a French winemaker who was one of the first to see the potential of the Napa Valley in the 1960s, said, “The Languedoc [a southwestern French region] is the California of tomorrow.”

We can’t buy our exact bottle of House Wine any more, but what it taught us was how to pick similar wines from the same region that provide us with the same price/quality benefit of our old friend.

Whenever a French king would die, it would be proclaimed “Le roi est mort; vive le roi!” (The king is dead; long live the king!). This meant that the death of the one king triggered the debut of the reign of his successor, and that both were worth commemorating. So, all I can say now is “The House Wine is dead; long live the House Wine!” The King is dead, but we know where the royal family lives…