**written on dec. 22
so! merry christmas! happy holidays! as ´ol blue eyes just reminded me, in these times we only need to think of the truth in the old saying "God is in his heaven, and all is right with the world". indeed.
am in marions kitchen, listening to her and kalla speak deutsch, curled up on the sofa together, happy as larks, christmas candles burning and neil diamond on the stereo. i just finished the first part of my preperations for tomorrows yultide get together, at which we will be serving a variety of fresh baked cookies, a cheese log (lord, i feel old...but is rosalynn carters recipe, apparently, so i love that), cheese straws (lots of cheese), guacamole (random, but delicious), and the infamous egg nog! bit worried cause we got the bourbon at the aldi, some mystery supposed-kentucky distillery...i mean, i dont want to kill anyone or anything. but i think it should be fine. and the truth is, i think bourbon only...interestingly affects southerners, as it is in our blood to drink the stuff and go buck wild, so they should be spared anything but a mild headache, worse come to worse. i´m sure it will be perfect! i hope to make mimi proud tomorrow. and aunt sally, as richard described those cheese straws and it sounds as tricky as a souffle...
ok, so where was i...
oh, marions class and singing christmas carols.
i had gone with kalla´s class bowling the day before (was great! we bowled and then kalla took me to the christmas festival in essen, which was beautiful and we ate and ate and shopped and i almost got lost but some kids found me and it was just a great day), and while the kids he teaches were for the most part pleasant to me, they didnt say one word. had no idea what to expect from marions class. we arrived very early in the morning, dropped a load of christmas celebration stuff in the classroom, and walked briskly to the cafeteria for a cup of coffee (my second). when we returned 30 minutes later, the class room was full of students and was decorated adorably, especially considering 80% of the class is muslim and doesnt even celebrate this holiday of ours. marion introduced me and i waved and everyone mumbled something and smiled and seemed excited to have me. we ate breakfast together, yummy fresh rolls and meat and cheeses. the class was wonderful in that you could tell that they all knew each other really well. everyone seemed to be friends and like they knew each other personally. there was joking and conversation and shouting from one end of the table to the other, and it was a very happy celebration. in the middle of it two other teachers came in, and seemed to be very well received. we all ate and one girl passed around homemade muffins and then the teacher asked the class to go around and say what they felt about the past semester and every student talked for a while, which was so different from what i have experienced, when a teacher asked the class a broad question and everyone starts to look at their nails or pretend to be asleep.
later there was the christmas carols\ kareoke hour, which was great. we sang rudolph the red nose reindeer, etc, and everyone sang along. during kareoke hour i was minding my own business, just witnessing the scene and picking at my nails, when one of the cute turkish boys started asking me questions in english. this got a huge rise out of everyone around him, and there were hoots and giggles as he came and sat next to me and offered me a chocolate. he was very nice and spoke nice english, and this encouraged some of the other students to talk to me as well. one boy asked if it was "hard" to live in america. assuming he meant, like, hard to immigrate and find a job and become a functioning citizen, i began to launch into my "well, lets consider the american dream..." speech, but realizing that he probobly knew about as much english as he had just uttered, he was spared, and i asked, "not really, why?". turns out alot of the kids had this totally weird vision of america which was granted to them by the TV, a vision wherein america is a tragic, violent, brutal country, with police and gangs and guns and hospitals and pervert priests and KKK meetings, etc. i laughed and explained that, good lord, no, we´re a very gentle people, come visit some time and see for yourself! then they asked if the girls were good looking and i assured them they were, so now everyone is planning on visiting.
after i bid my turkish boyfriend adieu, marion and i went into duisburg, where there is a beautiful mosque. we went inside, and aside from the smell of feet and the slightly damp (but unbelievably plush!) carpet, it was stunning! there was a giant golden chandelier in the middle of the room, which marion explained that some people found tacky. i loved it, though. it shimmered and looked beautiful and had engravings of prayers all the way around it (was a series of large golden circles), and when you walked underneath and looked up it lined up with the writing and colors on the ceiling. i was impressed and overwhelmed.
**present day
so, the christmas party went great! poor marion was a little nervous before hand, as she says she doesnt entertain often and is always worried a fire might start or the wine will run out and people will turn into an angry mob, and i assured her that everything would go flawlessly (i make this a personal quest when hosting and i generally succeed and ina garten says, even if you arent done cooking, just hand the guests a beverage and put some music on and they will be fine but that, of course, the best hostess is a hostess who is present, not slaving in the kitch- bah! anyway, not important). bottom line, i made sure all food was fixed ahead of time and that the plates were decorated nicely and marion looked beautiful and was an incredible hostess and annika did her unintentionally perfect part by serving the guests way too much eggnog in their glasses, which no one seemed to mind (or know the difference), and kalla is of course kalla and could make fantastic conversation with a stump and he kept everyone happy and entertained. the food was pretty good. the cheese log was actually not bad, considering that it was something that i never ever in my life thought i would make because, i mean, eww. but since the germans dont have cheddar cheese (which is fine with me, i abhor the stuff) i substituted with gouda, and used sour cream instead of mayonaisse and i dusted the top with hazelnuts and served it with raspberry preserves...and the cheese straws were more like crispy little biscuits but still spicy and delish (odd, though, that my crackers turned out more like biscuits, because whenever i do try to make biscuits they turn out like crackers...hmm...), and the guacamole needed salt (but i think that was just my demented tastebud problem) but was great, and the cookies were also sort of like biscuits (hm?) but very fluffy sweet wonderful biscuits, and the eggnog...mmmm. i think it would have definitely made mimi proud. especially since i messed up the converting (cups from liters or something? metric stuff...) and put 3X as much bourbon as the recipe called for. had a slight suspicion that the recipe wasnt exactly the recipe i was used to "drinking" anyway though, so i think it tasted just like normal.
christmas was wonderful! the house was decorated and warm, and christmas eve morning kalla and annika and i decorated the tree. their trees look slightly different then ours do, sort of like theres alot of branches at the bottom and then the yget soarse up top, so the ornaments at the top hang off the end of lone branches and it looks like beautiful weights holding the tree in balance. their tree is simple and lovely and made me so, so happy.
we went to a catholic church christmas eve, which was nice. kalla and i took communion. then we came home and made a nice dinner, some sort of swedish fondu-type dish with chicken and pork and a variety of vegetables, and like six different types of dipping sauces. we drank champagne and ate and talked and it was nice. gifts came afterward, and i was spoiled, of course. marion and kalla and annika have done more for me than i need or deserve, and all i can hope is that i was a good enough guest to merit even a fraction of their kindness, and that one day down the road i can repay them for all of this. im already cooking up some ideas...
christmas day annika and i went running (cultural), and that evening marion and i went and saw Australia, the new baz luhrman flick with nicole kidman and that shockingly gorgeous man hugh jackman (is adorable, marion for some reason pronounces his name "huge" jackman...makes sense, of course, in a variety of ways, so i dont correct her). the movie is fantastic, so ladies, go see it and swoon.
yesterday we went to marions parents house in rinteln, germany, about 2 hours away from here toward berlin. the town is incredibly old, built in the middle ages, and looks like something plucked out of a cookie-cutter-image-german-beer-mug catalogue. her parents house is huge, and fun, lots of rooms with secret ladders to top floors and attic spaces and rooftop balconies. her parents were great, especially her mother, who doted on me and hugged on me and told me all about ehr trip to visit my grandparents in cornelia in the 70s. there were artifacts from this excursion and others that marion had made to the US all over the house: stencils of the big red apple, photos of aunt beth, supposed letters from mimi. it felt strange and comfortable, like i had been there before which, in a metaphysical way ((if you want to go there...) i suppose, i had. we all went out to a wonderful dinner, and marion suggested a dish of wild pig, which i devoured, and annikas cute cousin lilly smiled at me and spoke random english words alot which made me happy.
oh! i remember...the other night, christmas night, marion and kalla and i were playing a game with his two beautiful daughters and his son, and the game was this thing where teams of two are given a word, a thing or a phrase, and they have to take turns saying words in order to build a sentence that describes this words e.g. the word is "tree"...so i would say "seeds" and marion would say "grow" and i would say "from" etc...and marions and my word was "potato". so naturally i thought "ireland"...so i make the first word of our sentence "irish", thinking the senetnce could turn into something like "irish people died because these blasted things went sour" or something. but when i said irish, marion looked at me like i had said...i dont know, japanese, and it came out eventually that no one aside from me at the table had ever heard of anything pertaining to the irish potato famine. and i assured them that probobly 75% of americans, upon hearing the word potato, would think of irish people. am i right? i mean, i couldnt make this stuff up. i could not make up a famine. was v tragic and serious. definitely.
so anyway.
today i worked on my italian for about 4 hours, if not more if i include vocab studying during the car ride. i made 200 vocabulary flashcards and did some sentence structure research and i now make it a point that when i communicate with anyone italian in email or on facebook i always write in italian. and they love it. and i have been told several times now how much i am improving! yea! honestly, i love germany, i have had an incredible time, and i cannot wait to go to berlin (!!!), but i want so so badly to go back to italy. it feels right to me, it feels, as ive said before, like home. so on the 9th of january i return to roma, and i can hardly breath till i get there...
but oh, berlin! just you wait...
Monday, December 22, 2008
Thursday, December 18, 2008
germany, for mimi
is 8am and i have already been awake for an hour and 20 minutes, as i was invited to come along with marion to her work today for the christmas party that she has with her students. apparently we are going to sing songs and eat alot of food and have a secret santa. marion, as i wrote last time, is constantly concerned with my "being bored", and has made a huge effort to entertain me these past several days. she and kalla and annika have done a great job. aside from the time i spend sleeping (not too much, but im on a v. different schedule than them i.e. late nights late mornings vs semi-late nights absurdly early, productive mornings), studying italian via work books and movies in italian (the royal tenenbaums and breakfast at tiffays!), and cooking (yea!), i am pretty much always engaged in some activity or another. last night, for example, i accompanied annika to kickboxing class. was really fun, actually, though my knuckles are raw from punching (annika?). and yesterday during the day, i spent many an hour with karl heinz and his school class on a trip into Essen. we went bowling, which i am awful at, and then kalla took me to the essen christmas market, which was beautiful and i ate way too much good stuff. the night before marion and i went to a play, "same time next year". it was performed at a small theatre in duisburg, and was all in german. i enjoyed it, the acting was good, and every now and then i could pick out little words and phrases that i remembered from my years of german.
i can honestly say that i am totally, completely 100% happy and comfortable here. their house is an oasis if ever there was one for a ragged, war-torn italian refugee. i can study in peace, i can wash my clothes, i can talk to marion into the wee hours of the morning about all variety of things, i can take walks and baths and watch movies and listen to christmas music and cook and eat (i am getting rather plump, actually...). everything is wonderful. they are the kindest, most generous, loving people and i am honored to call them family. their house is decorated like a little christmas shop, trinkets and santa clauses and lights. the christmas tree is in the backyard, as they dont bring it in and decorate it until the night before christmas (our christmas or theirs, actually? i.e. the 24th or the 23rd...ill ask). the backyard is scattered in cute lighted bushes and the floors are heated so you dont get cold walking on the marble. i think this evening im going to take an orange and stick some cloves in it and bring it to a nice 64 second boil (they have one of those wild stoves that uses magnets to boil water really fast. i love it).
i suggested to marion that we make mimis eggnog, and marion ran with the idea and decided that we should have an eggnog party right around christmas and have the neighbors over. so we are going to make eggnog and aunt sallys cheese straws (please send recipes) and i might make some little quiches or something and we´ll have a little party and i cant imagine anything nicer.
ugh, god, i am getting so fat. cant move really.
so i found out that my next internship, in ROMA, doesnt begin until january 12th, as the italians are even lazier then the americans and have a major, massive christmas vacation (like a month! totally my kind of place). so i will be with marion until the 29th or 30th, and then i will go to Berlin to crash with costa or billy in that wonderful city until it is time to make my way back to italia. a nice interlude, and i hope to come back to italy with a new lease on the whole ordeal. id like to think ive learned some lessons and gotten acquainted and i can go back composed and ready for farm life.
i´ll blog all about this fun day at school with marion later, as i am in the middle of it right now. germany is awesome.
the way i think i will recap cormons is to put a little tid bit story at the end of each blog from now on...so lets see...
...did i tell you about that coffee shop in downtown cormons? i would walk down there from my dorm, down these little rambling roads, large stone walls or little houses on one side, grape vines for miles on the other. the town would loom up and i would follow the curving cobblestone into the square. it was what you would imagine. tall, flat building fronts with rectangular windows a shutters, frescos or molding near the red shingled roofs. the town is small, and pretty much always empty, except for a few older men or women loitering in front of the wine bars and cafes. the town is dead silent. there are cats walking around, but they wont ever let me pet them. some of the windows are so old that the glass has began to run, making the windows look wavy and like water, thicker on the bottom which eats the light and makes shimmering reflections onto the walls across the street. the stores sell fresh baked bread, sweaters and shoes, meats and cheeses, toys. i have been told that the population of cormons is 7,000, but there is no way this is true. it seems to be just me sometimes. the coffee shop is refreshingly tacky, a weird combination of modern, polite, british formality, small town ice cream parlor, and they advertise flavored syrups to add to your coffee, with a sign that reads, "make your morning to a flavor". makes no sense. i love this sign. they have the tv on silent, game shows, and the top 40 radio station on. i always take the table in the back corner, because there is a small tank that holds two little turtles (tartaruge!). the turtles are nicer then the cats, and i can hold them and talk to them and they climb on my hands. the best part is that when little kids come in for ice cream, they always come to the tank and i get to talk to them in my simple italian. the man who works there is my friend. we dont have anything to say to each other, really. he speaks no english and i am always there studying my italian, and hell ask me how its going and ill tell him its going well. we smile alot and he brings me cappuccinos and glasses of wine, and the best part is that when i order a glass of wine i get snacks as well, finger sandwiches or cookies. when i walk by the shop on my way home from somewhere else, i look in and we wave to each other. im a regular.
the train station in cormons is another place that i frequent, though not necessarily willingly. since i have to take the train to and from school everyday, im there quite alot. there is that sweet old man working there, the one i mentioned in an earlier blog. but there is also a beautiful woman, in her late 20s i would imagine, brunette and sweet looking, like aunt keli, slim and green eyed. we always see each other around town, and when we do she exclaims (and i mean seriously, exclaims, not just says) "ciao!" and waves and smiles brightly. i see her at the coffee shop, at a restaurant, in the supermarket, on the street. we are friends. the other day i was at the counter, buying an espresso and a ticket to gorizia, and she was making this fantastic looking drink for an old man (the best part about the train station, by the way, is the bar. old men pack into the little bar there from morning till night, and they drink wine and eat ham and play cards and talk, all day long). so shes making this drink that is like this: she pours red wine out of an unmarked wine bottle into a metal canister, one of those used for steaming the milk for cappuccinos and lattes. she then adds a cinnamon stick, fresh grated nutmeg, a few herbs which i didnt get a good look at, and a couple slices of apple. then she steams this up using the espresso machine, and the smell of christmas fills the air. i watched her make this, and asked, "cos´e´?" ("what is it?"). she explained and asked, "tu vuoi?" ("you want some?). i grinned and nodded of course. she poured me a little espresso cup full of the steaming wine, and then poured the rest into the tall glass for the old man. he watched her do it, and noticed, of course, that she had given me a good 1\4 of the wine, and he snickered and raised his glass in a toast. i thanked him very much for his generosity and tried the wine, which was just what the doctor ordered on a freezing cold italian day when one has hours and hours of beuracracy and train travel to look forward to. i just thought it was so wonderfully italian, her just giving me some of the wine, because we all knew he wouldnt mind. thats the spirit of these people; generosity, community, family, wine for all, toasts and salutations at any hour of the day (was 10am).
ok, more later, time for christmas caroling with marions class!
i can honestly say that i am totally, completely 100% happy and comfortable here. their house is an oasis if ever there was one for a ragged, war-torn italian refugee. i can study in peace, i can wash my clothes, i can talk to marion into the wee hours of the morning about all variety of things, i can take walks and baths and watch movies and listen to christmas music and cook and eat (i am getting rather plump, actually...). everything is wonderful. they are the kindest, most generous, loving people and i am honored to call them family. their house is decorated like a little christmas shop, trinkets and santa clauses and lights. the christmas tree is in the backyard, as they dont bring it in and decorate it until the night before christmas (our christmas or theirs, actually? i.e. the 24th or the 23rd...ill ask). the backyard is scattered in cute lighted bushes and the floors are heated so you dont get cold walking on the marble. i think this evening im going to take an orange and stick some cloves in it and bring it to a nice 64 second boil (they have one of those wild stoves that uses magnets to boil water really fast. i love it).
i suggested to marion that we make mimis eggnog, and marion ran with the idea and decided that we should have an eggnog party right around christmas and have the neighbors over. so we are going to make eggnog and aunt sallys cheese straws (please send recipes) and i might make some little quiches or something and we´ll have a little party and i cant imagine anything nicer.
ugh, god, i am getting so fat. cant move really.
so i found out that my next internship, in ROMA, doesnt begin until january 12th, as the italians are even lazier then the americans and have a major, massive christmas vacation (like a month! totally my kind of place). so i will be with marion until the 29th or 30th, and then i will go to Berlin to crash with costa or billy in that wonderful city until it is time to make my way back to italia. a nice interlude, and i hope to come back to italy with a new lease on the whole ordeal. id like to think ive learned some lessons and gotten acquainted and i can go back composed and ready for farm life.
i´ll blog all about this fun day at school with marion later, as i am in the middle of it right now. germany is awesome.
the way i think i will recap cormons is to put a little tid bit story at the end of each blog from now on...so lets see...
...did i tell you about that coffee shop in downtown cormons? i would walk down there from my dorm, down these little rambling roads, large stone walls or little houses on one side, grape vines for miles on the other. the town would loom up and i would follow the curving cobblestone into the square. it was what you would imagine. tall, flat building fronts with rectangular windows a shutters, frescos or molding near the red shingled roofs. the town is small, and pretty much always empty, except for a few older men or women loitering in front of the wine bars and cafes. the town is dead silent. there are cats walking around, but they wont ever let me pet them. some of the windows are so old that the glass has began to run, making the windows look wavy and like water, thicker on the bottom which eats the light and makes shimmering reflections onto the walls across the street. the stores sell fresh baked bread, sweaters and shoes, meats and cheeses, toys. i have been told that the population of cormons is 7,000, but there is no way this is true. it seems to be just me sometimes. the coffee shop is refreshingly tacky, a weird combination of modern, polite, british formality, small town ice cream parlor, and they advertise flavored syrups to add to your coffee, with a sign that reads, "make your morning to a flavor". makes no sense. i love this sign. they have the tv on silent, game shows, and the top 40 radio station on. i always take the table in the back corner, because there is a small tank that holds two little turtles (tartaruge!). the turtles are nicer then the cats, and i can hold them and talk to them and they climb on my hands. the best part is that when little kids come in for ice cream, they always come to the tank and i get to talk to them in my simple italian. the man who works there is my friend. we dont have anything to say to each other, really. he speaks no english and i am always there studying my italian, and hell ask me how its going and ill tell him its going well. we smile alot and he brings me cappuccinos and glasses of wine, and the best part is that when i order a glass of wine i get snacks as well, finger sandwiches or cookies. when i walk by the shop on my way home from somewhere else, i look in and we wave to each other. im a regular.
the train station in cormons is another place that i frequent, though not necessarily willingly. since i have to take the train to and from school everyday, im there quite alot. there is that sweet old man working there, the one i mentioned in an earlier blog. but there is also a beautiful woman, in her late 20s i would imagine, brunette and sweet looking, like aunt keli, slim and green eyed. we always see each other around town, and when we do she exclaims (and i mean seriously, exclaims, not just says) "ciao!" and waves and smiles brightly. i see her at the coffee shop, at a restaurant, in the supermarket, on the street. we are friends. the other day i was at the counter, buying an espresso and a ticket to gorizia, and she was making this fantastic looking drink for an old man (the best part about the train station, by the way, is the bar. old men pack into the little bar there from morning till night, and they drink wine and eat ham and play cards and talk, all day long). so shes making this drink that is like this: she pours red wine out of an unmarked wine bottle into a metal canister, one of those used for steaming the milk for cappuccinos and lattes. she then adds a cinnamon stick, fresh grated nutmeg, a few herbs which i didnt get a good look at, and a couple slices of apple. then she steams this up using the espresso machine, and the smell of christmas fills the air. i watched her make this, and asked, "cos´e´?" ("what is it?"). she explained and asked, "tu vuoi?" ("you want some?). i grinned and nodded of course. she poured me a little espresso cup full of the steaming wine, and then poured the rest into the tall glass for the old man. he watched her do it, and noticed, of course, that she had given me a good 1\4 of the wine, and he snickered and raised his glass in a toast. i thanked him very much for his generosity and tried the wine, which was just what the doctor ordered on a freezing cold italian day when one has hours and hours of beuracracy and train travel to look forward to. i just thought it was so wonderfully italian, her just giving me some of the wine, because we all knew he wouldnt mind. thats the spirit of these people; generosity, community, family, wine for all, toasts and salutations at any hour of the day (was 10am).
ok, more later, time for christmas caroling with marions class!
yall, im dying. i just saw, on facebook, this album made by someone whom i am not sure that i know but i am positive i must have met 100 times in cormons, and it was an album with pictures from the parties in cormons (including the famous "tu vuo´fa l´americana" party, and the chocolate party!!!), entitled "life in cormons", and i am in alot of the photos, just tagged as "mericana", which i think is hilarious, and i saw all these people that were a part of my life for this tiny beautiful bubble of time and my heart aches so badly for that weird life that i had there that i just dont know what to do. i dont even know what to say. the thing is, 60% of them i didnt know their names. 80% of them, if i saw them on the street sometime in the future, i would just wave and smile and say ´ciao!´. i love them all, though. they were fixtures in one of the strangest, most seclusive, beautiful periods of my life, the most seclusive beautiful period of my life. cormons. and they were characters in something that i couldnt have even dreamed up if i had tried. and they were so so kind to me. and the other 20%...the ones i know for real and keep in touch with and would hug so tightly if i ever saw them again, like marko (the gorgeous serbian) and martin (the incredible argentinian) and giulgio (italian, and so so good to me, we sang songs together) and so many others...
we were stranded together in this place that only fate could create and we had fun and...
im going to blog asap, about my life in cormons. because i never want to lose this, i want to keep this, i want everyone to know, at least some of it...
to be continued...
we were stranded together in this place that only fate could create and we had fun and...
im going to blog asap, about my life in cormons. because i never want to lose this, i want to keep this, i want everyone to know, at least some of it...
to be continued...
Sunday, December 14, 2008
paris recap 2
hm...monday in paris. this is the day when quinn and i had our little fight. it was kind of cute, in a way. no sense going into detail.
that night we went to the Champs-elysses (sp?? french is not my strong suit) christmas market, which was positively magical. all up and down the great boulevard there were little white cottages decorated with blue and white twinkly lights and fluffy, fake snow and selling all manner of miraculous christmas goodies. food, wine, gifts, trinkets...one particularly amazing booth which i totally patronized had a sign that said "fucking party here!" and was playing techno music and offered 10 of the most delicious, crisp oysters i have ever had the pleasure of eating and a glass of white wine for 10euro. is quite an experience, really, standing in the freezing cold, slurping oysters out of their shells, tasting the ocean and listening to pounding house music while at the booth next door some old lady is buying a pair of socks with the hand-stiched image of a reindeer and having trouble paying because she dropped her coin purse into the fake snow and all the french people are gathering around chattering loudly and helping her to dig her coins out. love christmas. love france. did not think i would, for some reason (love france). i dont know, the first time i went to paris i didnt like it very much and i thought the people were a bit snotty and i always figured the french boys would be very smart and aloof and not talk to me. but could not be further from the reality! the french people were some of the kindest, most down to earth, helpful, insightful, genuine people i have ever met. they were so so sweet to us, and so easy to talk to, just as chatty as could be, and yes, incredibly smart. and they make possibly the worlds best food. so i love them.
the rest of paris was a dream. we saw a celebrity, a notorious crack head who was married to kate moss, at a restaurant and angela and he got into an argument which was possibly the greatest scene i have EVER witnessed. we shopped, we ate incredible food, we rode the subway alot, we saw cute boys. angela went to museums. quinn and i did not (but we did go to the paris ghetto!! ask quinn about that one, was baffling and hilarious and you should really hear that from quinns mouth as she is the authority on such things). one night quinn and i woke up at 1 am for no reason whatsoever except that we had fallen asleep at like 9 and our bodies werent use to going to bed so early. all of use woke up, actually, and we were all a bit annoyed cause it was now 1am and we were wide awake. so quinn and i went on a walk. we walked for a good 45 minutes, through the quiet, cold streets of paris. neither of us said a word to each other, we just walked and thought until we felt sleepy enough to go home. one of my favorite memories. i love my sister.
wednesday we took a train to aix-en-provence. i ended up being literally thrown onto the train by an attendant right as the doors slammed and the train started to depart (they do not mess around with their time schedules, not used to that) and ended up sitting on the floor of a hallway the whole 3 hour ride. was nice though, i had a big window and i could lay back by the heater (yes the trains have heaters, also not used to that) and watch the french country side go by. was stunning.
we arrived in aix-en-provence and sweet frederic picked us up and drove us to his apartment. was cozy and exactly what we needed after freezing, rain sodden paris, and we watched the godfather and i was pleased to note that i could understand about 65% of the parts in italian.
aix-en-provence was beautiful, a classic french town, cobblestoned and befountained and the people were incredibly atractive, like out of magazines, and it was great. angela had to leave friday morning, which was sad.
then we went to montpellier for the weekend, the city where frederic grew up, and a city that i have been hearing about for years from my friend teresa who insists that it is the best place ever and totally where she wants to live. i understand why she feels this way. montpellier is stunning, really beautiful, and fun and lively. the people are good looking and have that look of living in a perfect mix of big city and small town, where you never get bored but you never get worn out, either. the food was incredible, and frederic and i went out to a club with some of his friends and it was a blast.
saturday quinn and i were invited to have lunch at frederics parents house. before my trip to france, frederic kept asking what i wanted to do, and i insisted that my primary goal was to eat boullaibaisse (again, sp), a fantastic, typical, oh i forgot what you call it, poor-people-of-france-ate-it-when-they-were-poor-but-now-its-expensive-as-hell-cause-they-arent-poor-anymore-and-now-its-just-art food (the word i was looking for is "peasant"...), made from left over fish parts, cooked in a broth of heavy garlic and herbs, and served over crispy croutons with a spicy maionaisse. sounds weird, but its heaven, i assure you. we went to frederics house, and his mother, who is possibly the worlds most adorable person ever, was bussing around us offering tea and fresh olives and cherry tomatoes, and his dad was very talkative and asked probing questions and had alot of encyclopedias on the shelves and his sister was pretty and there with her fiance. i felt a bit stiff and formal due to the fact that a) this was possibly the worlds nicest, most normal, clean, wholesome family, all apple cheeked and bepearled and kindness and smiles and kisses on the cheek (**3. in montpellier you kiss 3 times. in paris only 2. it gets positively confusing, and the worst is when either you try to kiss the 3rd time and the other person doesnt, at which point you look like a fool and "take wind", and the very worst is when the other person goes in for the third kiss and you dont and then you feel awful at having made such a faux pas...france is hard sometimes, but v. beautiful e.g. constant kissing) and b) it seemed that the consensus between frederics family and...frederic (?!) was that i was frederics sort of girlfriend (?!) so this whole thing had this terrifying meet-the-parents vibe, and even though i am not, was not, and wont be frederics girlfriend (nothing against the boy, hes wonderful!) i still felt all this pressure to like...behave properly because i really, oddly and of course, wanted them to like me. wasnt hard, though, they were funny and made good conversation and lunch was amazing. the best part was watching quinn behave so oddly polite and formal and even frederic had to laugh afterward, saying hed never seen quinn so sweet. alot of "oui, s'il vous plait" and "merci beaucoup" and other french niceties. i ate like a horse, the food was PERFECT and even quinn was moved enough to TRY A BITE OF FISH (i was shocked), though she promptly gave up and frederics mom was kind enough to make her a filet of veal instead, which quinn said tasted "like a pork chop", and she ate the whole thing. after the boullaibaisse we sampled a selection of cheeses, one of which quinn deemed "tight", and then a fantastic fruit salad with pomegranate and passion fruit and mango was served with a variety of ice creams to chose from to put over the top (was hilarious, we were passing around the ice creams, and one of the cartons said in french-but-english-too that it was "caramel and vanilla" and quinn grabbed for it and frederics mom was like, "that one is-" and quinn said, "oh, i can read it!" and practically shoved the whole carton in her mouth, exclaiming that it smelled like a vanilla candle from the Body Shop. at this point a fruit fly or something landed on my lip and we both burst out laughing at each other, confusing everyone at the table, except for frederic, who was, in his way, quietly patient and amused). after lunch we retired to the den for a small pressed coffee, which i, of course, managed to spill all over my sweater and down my arm and then tried to ignore in manner of if-i-dont-aknowledge-it-no-one-will-notice, the kind of ploy that does not work when quinn is around, who immediately burst out laughing and called me a fool or similar, making frederics mother, frederic, the sister, and the fiance all start grappling for a rag, some soap, a dish towel, and anything else conceivable to help in a spill, while frederics father tried to play along with me, keeping the conversation going. was bright red and stuttering. and again, frederic was patient and amused.
after lunch there was a wine festival downtown (whew!), all local varieties of grapes, and you pay 2 euro and walk around and taste and swirl your glass and, if you are a pro (i´ll get to this later) you spit into a bucket, but if you are me, you just drink it. the wines were perfect and the festival was great except i could feel quinns eyes like daggers telling me shes fucking bored, she wants a bagguette and she wants to go home. by this point of the trip i didnt bother to argue. we left. went home and called it an early night.
6am frederic called, he was waiting outside to take us to the train station. 11am quinn and i arrived back in paris. 2pm we stopped in a mcdonalds so quinn could eat. 4pm quinn dropped me off at my bus station. 8pm, my flight home, thought would die, practically threw up on board when the plane did a 5 second nose-dive, promised myself i would never fly again. 10pm: back in italy. and i can honestly say i have never felt so relieved. i dont know why, france was perfect, france was beautiful, it was a blast, it was sophisticated and intellectual and the food was top notch and i had my sister and my friends and the boys were soooooo cute and the clothes were exsquisite. but when i got to my raggedy little train station and bought a 2euro panino col prosciutto and a cafe and i heard "il treno, regionale, 9245, directo a TRIESTE CENTRALE, arriva a binario 2" i felt like a great fist of love had socked me in the stomach. i felt like i was going home. i rode to cormons, arriving at 1am. pitch dark, starry sky. my castle was aglow on the hill. made my walk back to my dorm and breathed and felt like i had stepped into another century and was exactly where i was suppose to be. and it was one of the best, most reassuring feelings that i have ever felt.
that night we went to the Champs-elysses (sp?? french is not my strong suit) christmas market, which was positively magical. all up and down the great boulevard there were little white cottages decorated with blue and white twinkly lights and fluffy, fake snow and selling all manner of miraculous christmas goodies. food, wine, gifts, trinkets...one particularly amazing booth which i totally patronized had a sign that said "fucking party here!" and was playing techno music and offered 10 of the most delicious, crisp oysters i have ever had the pleasure of eating and a glass of white wine for 10euro. is quite an experience, really, standing in the freezing cold, slurping oysters out of their shells, tasting the ocean and listening to pounding house music while at the booth next door some old lady is buying a pair of socks with the hand-stiched image of a reindeer and having trouble paying because she dropped her coin purse into the fake snow and all the french people are gathering around chattering loudly and helping her to dig her coins out. love christmas. love france. did not think i would, for some reason (love france). i dont know, the first time i went to paris i didnt like it very much and i thought the people were a bit snotty and i always figured the french boys would be very smart and aloof and not talk to me. but could not be further from the reality! the french people were some of the kindest, most down to earth, helpful, insightful, genuine people i have ever met. they were so so sweet to us, and so easy to talk to, just as chatty as could be, and yes, incredibly smart. and they make possibly the worlds best food. so i love them.
the rest of paris was a dream. we saw a celebrity, a notorious crack head who was married to kate moss, at a restaurant and angela and he got into an argument which was possibly the greatest scene i have EVER witnessed. we shopped, we ate incredible food, we rode the subway alot, we saw cute boys. angela went to museums. quinn and i did not (but we did go to the paris ghetto!! ask quinn about that one, was baffling and hilarious and you should really hear that from quinns mouth as she is the authority on such things). one night quinn and i woke up at 1 am for no reason whatsoever except that we had fallen asleep at like 9 and our bodies werent use to going to bed so early. all of use woke up, actually, and we were all a bit annoyed cause it was now 1am and we were wide awake. so quinn and i went on a walk. we walked for a good 45 minutes, through the quiet, cold streets of paris. neither of us said a word to each other, we just walked and thought until we felt sleepy enough to go home. one of my favorite memories. i love my sister.
wednesday we took a train to aix-en-provence. i ended up being literally thrown onto the train by an attendant right as the doors slammed and the train started to depart (they do not mess around with their time schedules, not used to that) and ended up sitting on the floor of a hallway the whole 3 hour ride. was nice though, i had a big window and i could lay back by the heater (yes the trains have heaters, also not used to that) and watch the french country side go by. was stunning.
we arrived in aix-en-provence and sweet frederic picked us up and drove us to his apartment. was cozy and exactly what we needed after freezing, rain sodden paris, and we watched the godfather and i was pleased to note that i could understand about 65% of the parts in italian.
aix-en-provence was beautiful, a classic french town, cobblestoned and befountained and the people were incredibly atractive, like out of magazines, and it was great. angela had to leave friday morning, which was sad.
then we went to montpellier for the weekend, the city where frederic grew up, and a city that i have been hearing about for years from my friend teresa who insists that it is the best place ever and totally where she wants to live. i understand why she feels this way. montpellier is stunning, really beautiful, and fun and lively. the people are good looking and have that look of living in a perfect mix of big city and small town, where you never get bored but you never get worn out, either. the food was incredible, and frederic and i went out to a club with some of his friends and it was a blast.
saturday quinn and i were invited to have lunch at frederics parents house. before my trip to france, frederic kept asking what i wanted to do, and i insisted that my primary goal was to eat boullaibaisse (again, sp), a fantastic, typical, oh i forgot what you call it, poor-people-of-france-ate-it-when-they-were-poor-but-now-its-expensive-as-hell-cause-they-arent-poor-anymore-and-now-its-just-art food (the word i was looking for is "peasant"...), made from left over fish parts, cooked in a broth of heavy garlic and herbs, and served over crispy croutons with a spicy maionaisse. sounds weird, but its heaven, i assure you. we went to frederics house, and his mother, who is possibly the worlds most adorable person ever, was bussing around us offering tea and fresh olives and cherry tomatoes, and his dad was very talkative and asked probing questions and had alot of encyclopedias on the shelves and his sister was pretty and there with her fiance. i felt a bit stiff and formal due to the fact that a) this was possibly the worlds nicest, most normal, clean, wholesome family, all apple cheeked and bepearled and kindness and smiles and kisses on the cheek (**3. in montpellier you kiss 3 times. in paris only 2. it gets positively confusing, and the worst is when either you try to kiss the 3rd time and the other person doesnt, at which point you look like a fool and "take wind", and the very worst is when the other person goes in for the third kiss and you dont and then you feel awful at having made such a faux pas...france is hard sometimes, but v. beautiful e.g. constant kissing) and b) it seemed that the consensus between frederics family and...frederic (?!) was that i was frederics sort of girlfriend (?!) so this whole thing had this terrifying meet-the-parents vibe, and even though i am not, was not, and wont be frederics girlfriend (nothing against the boy, hes wonderful!) i still felt all this pressure to like...behave properly because i really, oddly and of course, wanted them to like me. wasnt hard, though, they were funny and made good conversation and lunch was amazing. the best part was watching quinn behave so oddly polite and formal and even frederic had to laugh afterward, saying hed never seen quinn so sweet. alot of "oui, s'il vous plait" and "merci beaucoup" and other french niceties. i ate like a horse, the food was PERFECT and even quinn was moved enough to TRY A BITE OF FISH (i was shocked), though she promptly gave up and frederics mom was kind enough to make her a filet of veal instead, which quinn said tasted "like a pork chop", and she ate the whole thing. after the boullaibaisse we sampled a selection of cheeses, one of which quinn deemed "tight", and then a fantastic fruit salad with pomegranate and passion fruit and mango was served with a variety of ice creams to chose from to put over the top (was hilarious, we were passing around the ice creams, and one of the cartons said in french-but-english-too that it was "caramel and vanilla" and quinn grabbed for it and frederics mom was like, "that one is-" and quinn said, "oh, i can read it!" and practically shoved the whole carton in her mouth, exclaiming that it smelled like a vanilla candle from the Body Shop. at this point a fruit fly or something landed on my lip and we both burst out laughing at each other, confusing everyone at the table, except for frederic, who was, in his way, quietly patient and amused). after lunch we retired to the den for a small pressed coffee, which i, of course, managed to spill all over my sweater and down my arm and then tried to ignore in manner of if-i-dont-aknowledge-it-no-one-will-notice, the kind of ploy that does not work when quinn is around, who immediately burst out laughing and called me a fool or similar, making frederics mother, frederic, the sister, and the fiance all start grappling for a rag, some soap, a dish towel, and anything else conceivable to help in a spill, while frederics father tried to play along with me, keeping the conversation going. was bright red and stuttering. and again, frederic was patient and amused.
after lunch there was a wine festival downtown (whew!), all local varieties of grapes, and you pay 2 euro and walk around and taste and swirl your glass and, if you are a pro (i´ll get to this later) you spit into a bucket, but if you are me, you just drink it. the wines were perfect and the festival was great except i could feel quinns eyes like daggers telling me shes fucking bored, she wants a bagguette and she wants to go home. by this point of the trip i didnt bother to argue. we left. went home and called it an early night.
6am frederic called, he was waiting outside to take us to the train station. 11am quinn and i arrived back in paris. 2pm we stopped in a mcdonalds so quinn could eat. 4pm quinn dropped me off at my bus station. 8pm, my flight home, thought would die, practically threw up on board when the plane did a 5 second nose-dive, promised myself i would never fly again. 10pm: back in italy. and i can honestly say i have never felt so relieved. i dont know why, france was perfect, france was beautiful, it was a blast, it was sophisticated and intellectual and the food was top notch and i had my sister and my friends and the boys were soooooo cute and the clothes were exsquisite. but when i got to my raggedy little train station and bought a 2euro panino col prosciutto and a cafe and i heard "il treno, regionale, 9245, directo a TRIESTE CENTRALE, arriva a binario 2" i felt like a great fist of love had socked me in the stomach. i felt like i was going home. i rode to cormons, arriving at 1am. pitch dark, starry sky. my castle was aglow on the hill. made my walk back to my dorm and breathed and felt like i had stepped into another century and was exactly where i was suppose to be. and it was one of the best, most reassuring feelings that i have ever felt.
back in action, paris recap 1
ha! am back. have no clear idea as of yet where i´ve been in the interim, either, in manner of high school year books where theres just too much to say to the kid youve known since 1tst grade, so all you can write is "what a long strange trip its been", or similar. except later, at some quiet moment down the road when youve had a minute or two to digest the implications of the time that has gone by and time to process the events and symbols and hidden secrets and beauties, then (then!) you write another, much more eloquent letter to that kid youve known from 1st grade (only in your head,though, cause hes off at college somewhere, dating and lerning and working for some Republican senator from South Carolina and just in a totally other world by now, and maybe at thanksgiving youll run into him at the Back Porch or something, which will pretty much be the only thing yall have in comon anymore besides shared playground experiences and we-were-both-in-the-assembly-in-the-marietta-high-school-gym-when-we-got-the-announcement-on-9\11, etc)and you say, hey, that time we got in trouble for popping the chocolate milk bags with those pointy capri sun-style straws in the lunch room in 5th grade? that was fun. thanks. because in the end, its those tiny, funny memories that make up our lives and give us pause.
i am not on drugs, i promise. but alot has happened and i feel very at peace about it all.
so, i believe i left you, dear reader, on my second night in paris. i had found quinn, we had made it back to our hotel, a long well deserved nap was taken...frederic called and woke me up, and we made plans to meet latish for more dancing. quinn and i dressed in our best urban-chic american-girl-in-paris-when-it´s-negative 2 degrees celcius-wear and took a rather complicated stroll through the parisian subway system. quinn, btw, was a native new yorker in her past life and is a mad genius at navigating subway trains and maps, and got us to the stop for the eiffel tower, pretty much the only thing quinn had an inclination to see is this great city, in about 20 minutes flat. we emerged from the underground with instructions to turn left, walk around a corner, and the eiffel tower should be somewhere in sight. i was walkng ahead of quinn, and when i turned the corner and saw it i grinned, i knew this was going to be good: i motioned to quinn with my pointer finger, a gentle "this way darling, look here...", and she walked up, turned the corner, and had an absolute spastic fit. the eiffel tower was huge, gigantic, looming up bright blue and shimmering before us. quinn screamed and flapped her arms and startled the nigerians selling miniature eiffel tower key chains and the pigeons that are often times their only customers. hopping up and down in ecstacy, quinn bounded to the edge of the railing and sighed a completely contented sigh (v. v. rare for this child). we stood and gazed and waited for its on-the-hour sparkle-fest. is miraculous, when it sparkles, the light bounces and shimmers on the grass, on the water, and in the windows of all the surrounding building, giving the impression of being in outer space at hyper speed with stars and comets flying all about and the great planet parisiana rushing toward you in some speed related to light years.
around midnight we met up with frederic and his friend, another boy named vincent, who looked like the cartoon character speed racer and was terribly adorable in a strictly parisian scarf-thrown-nonchalantly-over-the-shoudler-arrogant-grin-and-hand-rolled-cigarettes kind of way. we went to a club and met up with frederics other two friends from the night before. this night was incredible and impossible to describe, really. just madness. and margharitas. and the DJ played ´twist and shout´ and quinn and i talked about funny things grant use to do (she remembers alot!) and the french boys were all too cute and funny for words and taught me french phrases which i promptly forgot and quinn took about 150 photos which will all be on facebook someday. at 5am the club closed, and we wandered out into the streets. the consensus was that we were all hungry, and speed racer said he knew a place. we piled into 2 different taxis and sped off into the night, quinn and i singing twist and shout for the ammusement of the taxi driver. "the place" was not waffle house, not by a long shot. the place was Au Pied de Cocbon (google it) an all night parisian landmark that specialized in (?) pork products. they had guys in fancy suits opening the door for you and plush red velvet chairs and mirrored walls. the clientelle was the hippest-of-the-hip, all obviously wealthy, women dressed in sequined dresses with their hair boufonted high looking like they stepped out of Vogue, and guys in slightly rumpled tuxedos laughing into their champagne flutes. the air hung with the light smoke of expensive french cigarettes and tinkling conversation bounced through the chandeliers, and i felt right at home. i ordered froi gras and a diet coke, pascal had the beef tartar, quinn had french fries ("pooooom-frites!"). by the time we left the subways had reopened, so we made our way back to the hotel. 3 hours later (10am) i got a call from the front desk wanting me to verify that i knew a ms. angela jackson and that, if so, she was waiting in the lobby for me to come retreive her. considered telling him "i have no idea what you´re talking about, leave me alone" and going back to sleep, but figured would be mean to leave angela in the lobby just because i was unable to move my legs. pulled myself up and crawled into the lobby and embraced my darling angela and without more than 5 words to each other we went back to sleep.
several hours later the sweet frederic called and said, so even though its pouring rain, would anyone like to go to Montemarte? could not imagine a nicer place to see in the rain (v. optomistic because is paris), and we toured that famous neighborhood on the hill in a beautiful drizzle, and then took a warm cup of cider at a sidewalk cafe (inside, though, not on the sidewalk). that night quinn and angela and i took a long dnner of french onion soup and red wine and fresh bagguette and camembert and talked and listened to music and caught up. we found a little bar down the street that was open, and the boy working there was, quinn will back me up on this, the cutest boy in france, and he talked to us about tattoos and wrote me a map to a tattoo parlour which we did not patronize, and angela made quinn and i laugh till we almost peed our pants, and then we all came home and pushed our beds together and snuggled and watched ´home for the holdiays´ and fell asleep dreaming of america...
i am not on drugs, i promise. but alot has happened and i feel very at peace about it all.
so, i believe i left you, dear reader, on my second night in paris. i had found quinn, we had made it back to our hotel, a long well deserved nap was taken...frederic called and woke me up, and we made plans to meet latish for more dancing. quinn and i dressed in our best urban-chic american-girl-in-paris-when-it´s-negative 2 degrees celcius-wear and took a rather complicated stroll through the parisian subway system. quinn, btw, was a native new yorker in her past life and is a mad genius at navigating subway trains and maps, and got us to the stop for the eiffel tower, pretty much the only thing quinn had an inclination to see is this great city, in about 20 minutes flat. we emerged from the underground with instructions to turn left, walk around a corner, and the eiffel tower should be somewhere in sight. i was walkng ahead of quinn, and when i turned the corner and saw it i grinned, i knew this was going to be good: i motioned to quinn with my pointer finger, a gentle "this way darling, look here...", and she walked up, turned the corner, and had an absolute spastic fit. the eiffel tower was huge, gigantic, looming up bright blue and shimmering before us. quinn screamed and flapped her arms and startled the nigerians selling miniature eiffel tower key chains and the pigeons that are often times their only customers. hopping up and down in ecstacy, quinn bounded to the edge of the railing and sighed a completely contented sigh (v. v. rare for this child). we stood and gazed and waited for its on-the-hour sparkle-fest. is miraculous, when it sparkles, the light bounces and shimmers on the grass, on the water, and in the windows of all the surrounding building, giving the impression of being in outer space at hyper speed with stars and comets flying all about and the great planet parisiana rushing toward you in some speed related to light years.
around midnight we met up with frederic and his friend, another boy named vincent, who looked like the cartoon character speed racer and was terribly adorable in a strictly parisian scarf-thrown-nonchalantly-over-the-shoudler-arrogant-grin-and-hand-rolled-cigarettes kind of way. we went to a club and met up with frederics other two friends from the night before. this night was incredible and impossible to describe, really. just madness. and margharitas. and the DJ played ´twist and shout´ and quinn and i talked about funny things grant use to do (she remembers alot!) and the french boys were all too cute and funny for words and taught me french phrases which i promptly forgot and quinn took about 150 photos which will all be on facebook someday. at 5am the club closed, and we wandered out into the streets. the consensus was that we were all hungry, and speed racer said he knew a place. we piled into 2 different taxis and sped off into the night, quinn and i singing twist and shout for the ammusement of the taxi driver. "the place" was not waffle house, not by a long shot. the place was Au Pied de Cocbon (google it) an all night parisian landmark that specialized in (?) pork products. they had guys in fancy suits opening the door for you and plush red velvet chairs and mirrored walls. the clientelle was the hippest-of-the-hip, all obviously wealthy, women dressed in sequined dresses with their hair boufonted high looking like they stepped out of Vogue, and guys in slightly rumpled tuxedos laughing into their champagne flutes. the air hung with the light smoke of expensive french cigarettes and tinkling conversation bounced through the chandeliers, and i felt right at home. i ordered froi gras and a diet coke, pascal had the beef tartar, quinn had french fries ("pooooom-frites!"). by the time we left the subways had reopened, so we made our way back to the hotel. 3 hours later (10am) i got a call from the front desk wanting me to verify that i knew a ms. angela jackson and that, if so, she was waiting in the lobby for me to come retreive her. considered telling him "i have no idea what you´re talking about, leave me alone" and going back to sleep, but figured would be mean to leave angela in the lobby just because i was unable to move my legs. pulled myself up and crawled into the lobby and embraced my darling angela and without more than 5 words to each other we went back to sleep.
several hours later the sweet frederic called and said, so even though its pouring rain, would anyone like to go to Montemarte? could not imagine a nicer place to see in the rain (v. optomistic because is paris), and we toured that famous neighborhood on the hill in a beautiful drizzle, and then took a warm cup of cider at a sidewalk cafe (inside, though, not on the sidewalk). that night quinn and angela and i took a long dnner of french onion soup and red wine and fresh bagguette and camembert and talked and listened to music and caught up. we found a little bar down the street that was open, and the boy working there was, quinn will back me up on this, the cutest boy in france, and he talked to us about tattoos and wrote me a map to a tattoo parlour which we did not patronize, and angela made quinn and i laugh till we almost peed our pants, and then we all came home and pushed our beds together and snuggled and watched ´home for the holdiays´ and fell asleep dreaming of america...
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