Le pain de la France
is a complicated subject. There are rules involving bread, and you had better not screw it up. At the beginning of the meal you are given bread, and you place it on the table, not on your plate. You may eat your bread, by tearing off chunks, with your appetizer but not your soup (in southern France--in northern France, you tear off chunks of bread and float them in your soup, or place slices of stale bread in th bottom of your bowl before serving the soup) as well as your main course. Between appetizer and main course, and between the main course an the cheese, however, you are not to eat your bread, because that would signal to your host that you haven't had enough to eat. You eat bread again with your cheese. In Northern France you also mop your plate with your bread after each course until it is clean.
Vocablary list of the day:
le livre de recettes (recipe book)
la cuisinière (stove)
la casserole, la marmite (pot)
le micronde (microwave)
l'evier (sink)
le robinet (faucet)
le dessus (countertop)
le four (oven)
le frigidaire (fridge)
le tiroir (drawer)
le placard (cabinets)
la porte (door)
la table (table)
la poignet (handle)
le feu (burner)
le bouton (control)
lq passor (collander)
le lateau (tray)
le panier (breadbasket)
le balaï pour ballier (broom to sweep)
la pelle (dustpan)
la boîte (box; container)
le presse de jus (juice press)
Things I like about France:
1. The food. Mmm. I must have eaten 8 kilos of cheese by now...
2. The people
3. Eating in separate courses
4. Roundabouts
5. French language
6. Bakeries and fromageries
7. Drinking tea or coffee from a bowl
8. The historical sites and places
9. The ocean
10. The temperature in S. France
11. Gardens
12. The metro
13. The style
14. Watching people make glass
15. Walks on the beach or by the sea
Things I don't like so much
1. French driving
2. French motorways
3. Toll roads
4. Lack of bike lanes
5. Crazy motorcyclists
6. The price of fruits and vegetables
7. Not speaking French very well
8. All of the people living on the Cote d'Azur
9. The tourists (what, who, me? Are you kidding? I'm no tourist)
10. The odd parking restrictions
You may notice a theme: food=good, sea=good, traffic=bad
Things I want to cook when I get back:
1. Beignets d'aubergines ou de fleurs de couragette
2. Asperges au vinagrette
3. Graitn de pommes de terre
4. Vinagrette
5. Champignons a l'ail
Showing posts with label france. Show all posts
Showing posts with label france. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Monday, April 02, 2007
Vignettes of my trip....
Learn at least please, thank you, excuse me, help, and I'm lost in whatever languague. After this point, the best you can do is point, nodd, smile, and look desperate.
Never wear white tennis shoes. Those who wish you ill will spot you at a hundred yards, And those, such as myself, who find such tourists amusing, will also spot you, and secretly laugh maliciously. Also advantagous are multiple pairs of (comfortable) shoes, in case of inclement weather, necessity of matching outfits, blisters, dog poo, or any of a number of eventualities. Hate your feet, hate your life.
Being cold = catching cold. Watch out.
The bread in France is good. For a whitebread country, pretty damn fantastic. I didn't try the bread much in Spain but what I did try wasn't good. On the flipside, as a whitebread country, I would ocasionally trade my as of yet unexistant firstborn for some Schwarzbrot or Dinkelvollkorn.
You drink hot drinks from a bowl. Not a cup. I find this strange, somehow cool, and dangerous in that one serving is the size of half a can of coffee.
Meals are eaten in courses. First your vegetables, then your meat and hot foods, next salad, then the cheese, then the fruit, and sometimes even a dessert. Word to the wise, don't fill up on the first course or you won't make it to the cheese course without exploding.
And the cheese is fantastic, which it should be given that there are 375 different kinds and none from the region of Antibes. Too hot for cows, I guess.
Ask and ye shall receive, and try it first in French. Switching into English when at first they don't understand does not make it easier for them, and not even for you.
Beware of people who talk to you for no reason.
"So I speak English too." "So I see." "I learned it, you see, but it was a punishment. You know this one? A man is arrested by the police and they tell him, you have two choices. Either you go to prison for three years or you learn English. Okay, I learn English, he says. So they put the headphones on him and after ten minutes he says, wait, wait, I take it back, send me to prison!"
A toilet may consist of a hole in the ground. Beware while flushing.
French motorway are not for the feint of heart. Navigation may be tricky, and roudabouts are your best friend. Just keep going round and round and round and round until you figure out where the hell you are. Oherwise you end up on a tollway interstate to somewhere, with exits every half hour.
Je ne sais pas, où je vais, ou ça j'avais jamais bien su. Mais si jamais je le savais? je crois bien que je n'irais plus.....
Never wear white tennis shoes. Those who wish you ill will spot you at a hundred yards, And those, such as myself, who find such tourists amusing, will also spot you, and secretly laugh maliciously. Also advantagous are multiple pairs of (comfortable) shoes, in case of inclement weather, necessity of matching outfits, blisters, dog poo, or any of a number of eventualities. Hate your feet, hate your life.
Being cold = catching cold. Watch out.
The bread in France is good. For a whitebread country, pretty damn fantastic. I didn't try the bread much in Spain but what I did try wasn't good. On the flipside, as a whitebread country, I would ocasionally trade my as of yet unexistant firstborn for some Schwarzbrot or Dinkelvollkorn.
You drink hot drinks from a bowl. Not a cup. I find this strange, somehow cool, and dangerous in that one serving is the size of half a can of coffee.
Meals are eaten in courses. First your vegetables, then your meat and hot foods, next salad, then the cheese, then the fruit, and sometimes even a dessert. Word to the wise, don't fill up on the first course or you won't make it to the cheese course without exploding.
And the cheese is fantastic, which it should be given that there are 375 different kinds and none from the region of Antibes. Too hot for cows, I guess.
Ask and ye shall receive, and try it first in French. Switching into English when at first they don't understand does not make it easier for them, and not even for you.
Beware of people who talk to you for no reason.
"So I speak English too." "So I see." "I learned it, you see, but it was a punishment. You know this one? A man is arrested by the police and they tell him, you have two choices. Either you go to prison for three years or you learn English. Okay, I learn English, he says. So they put the headphones on him and after ten minutes he says, wait, wait, I take it back, send me to prison!"
A toilet may consist of a hole in the ground. Beware while flushing.
French motorway are not for the feint of heart. Navigation may be tricky, and roudabouts are your best friend. Just keep going round and round and round and round until you figure out where the hell you are. Oherwise you end up on a tollway interstate to somewhere, with exits every half hour.
Je ne sais pas, où je vais, ou ça j'avais jamais bien su. Mais si jamais je le savais? je crois bien que je n'irais plus.....
Monday, March 26, 2007
Paris, je t'aime...
Ohje... well, I am happy to report that I survived Spain with all limbs and my sanity intact.
When I last left you, dear reader, our conference was going to hell in a handbasket, at least as far as I could tell. As far as the office was concerned, nothing worked, no one wanted to fix it, and we were all hanging on by the skin of our teeth and trying not to get into the weeds. The registration team had no materials left to give out and were fending off angry participants deprived of their bags and complementary 50mL of olive oil. Apparently the first lunch was a disaster, with long queues and no vegetarian food, and things were just not working out.
There was a meeting. The kind of meeting that involves all the highups of both parties, and their respective translators, and it is a meeting-to-the-death, the mother of all meetings, where decisions are made that affect the lives of us minions in a very tangible way.
It resolved to be a bit of a clash of cultures--aside from the obvious differences between Germany and Spain, there are the linguistical problems: not only can the heads of the organisations not speak untranslated with one another (though the need for translation provides the opportunity for possible faux pas to be moderated through the mediator/interpreter), it is not possible for those of us working in the office to talk to the other parties for materials, problems, issues, or vice versa. There were also different understandings of 'on time' and vegetarian (in Spain, fish is vegetarian. I had to eat fish or starve. I was so happy to find something neither fish nor fried that I was eating salad for breakfast.)
There are some people who worked until 2 AM compiling the exact lists required by our partners before any material was reordered, but in the end we managed to get more bags, more programs, more badges, more everything. There wasn't enough, but it worked out.
After that it got better. Aside from perpetual uncertainty as to whether or not lunch required a ticket, and because of the negotiation, the conception of vegetarian was narrowed somewhat to better reflect the expectation of us northern Europeans.
The sessions ran well. Aside from minor difficulties, everyone's presentations more or less ended up where they were supposed to be and we were able to actually work and not constantly have to solve everyone's small problems (print new badges, fix mistakes in the participant's list, etc).
We didn't sleep much, though for Thursday and Friday that was because we went into town for Tapas, an adventure that managed to have three taxis deposit their respective cargo at two different restaurants of the same name on the same street, and only after excessive calling did we manage to meet up.
Tapas.... man, I love the culture and I love the lifestyle, but southern Spain is the definite birthplace of fried fish. Small fried fish, large fried fish, tater tots of fish, croquettes, fried calamaris, fried shrimp, and for variety gazpacho, tortilla with potatos and usually fish, and spinach or mushrooms, usually swimming in oil. If I get offered a fish in the next two weeks I will beat the person with it.
And it is impossible to hail a cab in Sevilla. After tapas one night, the group split up. One group left at about midnight, but couldn't find a cab and ended up hanging out in a bar waiting for the proprieter to close because he offered to personally drive them. The rest went for a slightly inebriated walking tour of Sevilla at night, passing a procession practicing for Easter. Ariving at some dodgy looking disko-like bar, some people decided to stay and others, myself included, wanted to go back. We were five people, though the one guy split off to go have a pizza, and we stood on the street corner like executive prostitutes without a trick. Trying to try our luck at another spot we recollected our fifth companion whom we left after finally landing our elusive green-lighted prey. The first group got home at 2 AM, we got home at 2 AM, and the third group at 3.
Saturday morning we collected those of us were conscious and clean at 10 AM and headed by bus into town. We wandered the streets, bought ceramics and stamps, and generally just soaked in the atmosphere and the sun, me with my idiotic backpack, erasing whatever doubt may have yet existed that I was a stranger to this land. And upon driving off in my taxi for the airport, I realized I had left a bag behind, and had to spend 20 minutes driving through one-way streets to retrieve it. Enter airport, check bag, wander, eat an apple, wander, drink my water before security, go through security, get felt up by first guard, get questioned in Spanish, get felt up by second guard, wander, board, fly, sleep, disembark, wander, retireve bag, eat, check bag, wander, go through security, sleep, drink coffee, wander, shop, drink more caffe con leche, sleep, board, fly disembark, retrieve bag, fend off the advances of the handsome french taxi driver, and....find my mother.
It had been eight months since we'd seen each other, a wonderful meeting. The friends with whom we would be staying were picking me off, and on the way home we did a nighttime tour of L'arc du Triomphe and le tour d'Eiffel.
Et j'ai parlé français.... je comprends beaucoup, j'éxplique de ma vie, je peux répondre aux questions qu'on m'a posé. Demain, je vais écrire plus longue....
When I last left you, dear reader, our conference was going to hell in a handbasket, at least as far as I could tell. As far as the office was concerned, nothing worked, no one wanted to fix it, and we were all hanging on by the skin of our teeth and trying not to get into the weeds. The registration team had no materials left to give out and were fending off angry participants deprived of their bags and complementary 50mL of olive oil. Apparently the first lunch was a disaster, with long queues and no vegetarian food, and things were just not working out.
There was a meeting. The kind of meeting that involves all the highups of both parties, and their respective translators, and it is a meeting-to-the-death, the mother of all meetings, where decisions are made that affect the lives of us minions in a very tangible way.
It resolved to be a bit of a clash of cultures--aside from the obvious differences between Germany and Spain, there are the linguistical problems: not only can the heads of the organisations not speak untranslated with one another (though the need for translation provides the opportunity for possible faux pas to be moderated through the mediator/interpreter), it is not possible for those of us working in the office to talk to the other parties for materials, problems, issues, or vice versa. There were also different understandings of 'on time' and vegetarian (in Spain, fish is vegetarian. I had to eat fish or starve. I was so happy to find something neither fish nor fried that I was eating salad for breakfast.)
There are some people who worked until 2 AM compiling the exact lists required by our partners before any material was reordered, but in the end we managed to get more bags, more programs, more badges, more everything. There wasn't enough, but it worked out.
After that it got better. Aside from perpetual uncertainty as to whether or not lunch required a ticket, and because of the negotiation, the conception of vegetarian was narrowed somewhat to better reflect the expectation of us northern Europeans.
The sessions ran well. Aside from minor difficulties, everyone's presentations more or less ended up where they were supposed to be and we were able to actually work and not constantly have to solve everyone's small problems (print new badges, fix mistakes in the participant's list, etc).
We didn't sleep much, though for Thursday and Friday that was because we went into town for Tapas, an adventure that managed to have three taxis deposit their respective cargo at two different restaurants of the same name on the same street, and only after excessive calling did we manage to meet up.
Tapas.... man, I love the culture and I love the lifestyle, but southern Spain is the definite birthplace of fried fish. Small fried fish, large fried fish, tater tots of fish, croquettes, fried calamaris, fried shrimp, and for variety gazpacho, tortilla with potatos and usually fish, and spinach or mushrooms, usually swimming in oil. If I get offered a fish in the next two weeks I will beat the person with it.
And it is impossible to hail a cab in Sevilla. After tapas one night, the group split up. One group left at about midnight, but couldn't find a cab and ended up hanging out in a bar waiting for the proprieter to close because he offered to personally drive them. The rest went for a slightly inebriated walking tour of Sevilla at night, passing a procession practicing for Easter. Ariving at some dodgy looking disko-like bar, some people decided to stay and others, myself included, wanted to go back. We were five people, though the one guy split off to go have a pizza, and we stood on the street corner like executive prostitutes without a trick. Trying to try our luck at another spot we recollected our fifth companion whom we left after finally landing our elusive green-lighted prey. The first group got home at 2 AM, we got home at 2 AM, and the third group at 3.
Saturday morning we collected those of us were conscious and clean at 10 AM and headed by bus into town. We wandered the streets, bought ceramics and stamps, and generally just soaked in the atmosphere and the sun, me with my idiotic backpack, erasing whatever doubt may have yet existed that I was a stranger to this land. And upon driving off in my taxi for the airport, I realized I had left a bag behind, and had to spend 20 minutes driving through one-way streets to retrieve it. Enter airport, check bag, wander, eat an apple, wander, drink my water before security, go through security, get felt up by first guard, get questioned in Spanish, get felt up by second guard, wander, board, fly, sleep, disembark, wander, retireve bag, eat, check bag, wander, go through security, sleep, drink coffee, wander, shop, drink more caffe con leche, sleep, board, fly disembark, retrieve bag, fend off the advances of the handsome french taxi driver, and....find my mother.
It had been eight months since we'd seen each other, a wonderful meeting. The friends with whom we would be staying were picking me off, and on the way home we did a nighttime tour of L'arc du Triomphe and le tour d'Eiffel.
Et j'ai parlé français.... je comprends beaucoup, j'éxplique de ma vie, je peux répondre aux questions qu'on m'a posé. Demain, je vais écrire plus longue....
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