Kitchen Diaries

Porque hay cosas locas en este mundo.

Articulo (un poco recortado para no aburrirlos con detalles):

El Tiempo.com, Abril 19 de 2007 -

Niña recién nacida en Argentina tiene abuela, bisabuela, tatarabuela y cuadriabuela

La familia: la madre, Jorgelina García; de 19 años; la abuela, Silvia Alzugaray, de 38; la bisabuela, Teresa Martínez, de 54; la 'tata', Teresita Rodríguez, de 71, y su madre Laura Villega, de 90.

Desde que Ariana Jacqueline Premet llegó al mundo hace tan sólo una semana, es la niña más buscada de Argentina al convertir a su familia en la única que se conoce en el país integrada por mujeres vivas de seis generaciones.

Buscados por todos los medios de comunicación, la familia de Ariana lleva toda la semana atendiendo al teléfono preguntas por la recién nacida y por su "clan" de mujeres.

Los términos trastatarabuela o cuadriabuela fueron creados por los especialistas en genealogía y aún no han sido incorporados al diccionario español.

"Todas hemos sido amas de casa. Gracias a Dios tenemos buena salud", coincidieron las integrantes del clan después del nacimiento de Ariana, quien además tiene cinco tíos, uno de ellos de ocho meses.

Buenos Aires
Efe

No wonder my mom says I’m like Mr. Magoo.

Warning: Getting a cab at Place de Clichy at 4:50 on a Friday morning is impossible. If you, like me, have a bus to catch that leaves at 5:20 for the Beauvais Airport (I HAD to take the bus because taking a cab to that airport would probably be more expensive than buying a car) because you have a Ryan Air plane that leaves for Madrid, you should plan for at least an hour waiting to get a cab. Otherwise, you might miss the bus, or like me, you might catch it from its rear behind and scream frantically for it to let you on.
Well, I’m exaggerating, but the driver had already closed the doors and started the engine running. If he hadn’t been a nice guy, he wouldn’t have let me on, because he had to open the baggage door again and wait for me to run to the ticket office and get my ticket.
But the story ends happily because I am now writing this from Madrid.

Joder, ostia macho (you know, like Misun and Carlos say it), que dia.

ps. I didn't forget my passport this time.

Weekend roadtrip to Normandy

Here’s a picture of the weekend roadtrip, in two segments: Friday night, hour by hour, and the other days in my typical stream of conscience.

Carlos and I were sitting in Culture Biere on Thursday night and decided that this weekend could not be spent in Paris; it was raining, there wasn’t much going on, and all around it was the best weekend to leave Paris. But Friday morning I told myself we weren’t really going to follow through with the idea of going on a trip- it was too out of the blue and train tickets were expensive.

(Here's a picture a photographer took in Culture Biere, because of course we are very important people and they needed to have us on their website)

Now, here’s the hour-by-hour of the decision to leave:

5ish pm- After a little reading, a little work, and a lot of procrastination, I fell asleep.

7ish pm- I called Carlos and found him in a complete state of euphoria (like a little kid when they’re excited about a trip) and so I started looking for train tickets to not ruin the 2 year old’s dream.

9ish pm- After a very long time of looking for train tickets and only finding absurd prices, I called Avis and made a reservation to rent a car because it was only a fraction of the cost of two train tickets. There’s a catch: Avis only had stickshift and Carlos can’t drive because he’s a wittle, wittle, under-21, baby. That leaves me driving stickshit; I mean stickshift, in Europe, for the first time. I learned to drive in Colombia in a jeep from the Stone Age, and so I convince myself that I still remember how to drive stickshift, even though it has been six years.

A bit after 9pm- “Carlitos… yeaiiiiiiiiii! Pack and come over, we have a car and so we should probably figure out where we are going.”

9:50- After an extremely protracted, exhaustive 3-second discussion of where we wanted to go to, which consisted of me posing the question and Carlos responding very authoritatively, “Normandie,” I start packing and Carlos started looking online how to drive to Normandy from Paris. You might be wandering where in Normandy. Wherever the stickshift car and my ‘France on a Budget’ guide would take us.

Around 10:30pm- Leave my house.

10:57 (exact time- it says so on the contract)– We signed the Avis contract and got the keys from the car rental, which closes at 11pm. Some of you may be thinking that it was cutting it too close. I call that Snappelin’ Austrian-like efficiency.

After scaring Carlos to death about how I couldn’t drive stick shift, almost crashing into the garage door as I took the car out of the Parking place, cruising in our Fiat Panda and having dinner at a place where the Arab pizza man was sure all women were a mix between a goddess and the devil (because he explained this as he made our pizza) we finally left Paris at midnight.

3:20 am (Saturday): We arrive in Honfleur, our first stop. There are a couple of recommended hostels in my guide, but none of them are open.

We wondered around for a while (and had a cat follow us the entire time) and then decided to go back to the Ibis we had seen at the entrance of Honfleur. It was four in the morning by now and Carlos could drive for two minutes, right? We reached the Ibis and had a car behind us. All of a sudden, the seemingly regular car, metamorphosed into a bloodcurdling thing with blue lights on top. My nerves were racking. Three huge, intimidating policemen and a dog (I’m not kidding, they had a dog) got out of the car and asked Carlos why we had stopped, and he explained we were going to the hotel. They asked where we were from, at which point I obviously screamed ‘COLOMBIA!’ (No, I’m kidding- I kept it to myself and avoided getting deported) and upon hearing Carlos’ “Spain” response, said good night. They got back into their car, took the blue lights off, and almost as quickly as they had scared us to fatality, left. I felt the air going into my lungs again, but the trembling lasted about 30 more minutes.

At seven thirty in the morning (after only three hours of sleep) I got a call from Tony, Misuncita, Pablo, OT, and Manue, who were celebrating Misun’s birthday at 3912, to say hello. It was an amazing surprise, and I almost cried. But I was too asleep to cry. (Honfleur)

On Saturday we walked around Honfleur and visited the beaches of Normandy, and ended up finding another Ibis in Caen, the capital of the Basse-Normandie region to spend the night. We went out to ‘El Che Guevara,’ and I promise it has been one of the most incredible places I have found in France. The ambience was great, with sand on the floor and some of the best mojitos I’ve had. The music was all classics, and the people we met at the door were great. So we danced and drank with them, exchanged e-mails and promises of future visits (including an invitation Carlos got to go to Algeria), and of course never heard from them again.

Eighty percent of Caen was destroyed in WWII, and so the city, rebuilt in the 50’s and 60’s, is not exactly an architectural cloud nine. But its college-town feel and the palace of William the Conqueror make up for it. (Church in Caen)

On Sunday we drove to Rouen. You would think that from Caen to Rouen we would find at least one place to have lunch in, but no. Nothing, nada de nada. I’m serious. We stopped at a pizza place along the way that finally had an ‘OPEN’ sign. I wasn’t very happy with the thought of pizza, but my stomach was even unhappier with its growling and the gastric juices. We had had bread for breakfast, and I had had bread for dinner the night before. Which reminds me, I didn’t tell you about dinner. Carlos wanted oysters, and insisted they could be eaten without cooking. I ate three, and my decency ran out. I felt terrible after he had spent an hour opening every shell of the dozen and a half oysters we had bought, but when I saw the thing move when I poured the lemon juice on top, I couldn’t handle it. So much for being educated and eating everything, with the slithering salty oyster every ounce of politeness I had in me died. So I had bread, while I watched poor Carlos eat the rest of the 15 oysters that were left and apologized profusely.

So back to the pizza place- it was 5pm, and it was open. We walked in, and just to make sure, we asked if it was open. ‘Yes, we’re open’. Ok, so we ask for a pizza. But the pizza place, which only made pizzas and was allegedly open, would only make us a pizza after 7pm. So we left the OPEN pizza place and headed for Rouen, hoping we would find something else.

We got to Rouen at about 6pm, and nothing served anything salty to eat. All we found were sweet-crepe places, and ice creams. What is with these people? No one has lunch/dinner on Sundays? So we ended up eating at the very gourmet Quick. I have to confess, the salad wasn’t terrible. I mean- it could have been worse. It could have been open, but only serving two hours later.

Finally we left for Paris, and returned our Fiat Panda right on time, again in the Snappelin efficiency of 10 minutes before the Avis closed.

Passport-less, illegal and apt for deportation

I have the tendency of forgetting everything, but this time I really crossed the line. The international-line of forgetfulness. I was meeting my mom in Geneva for the weekend, and since I had a dissertation due on the Monday I got back, a friend had offered to look over it and correct my grammar/writing style atrocities.

Well, I end up going to sleep at three in the morning, right after packing and correcting the paper, and waking up at 4:30 for my 6 o clock train. I get to the station on time, get on the right train; everything seems to be just as a responsible person would have done it. So I close my eyes on voiture 18, place 53 and fall asleep for 3 hours of beautiful sleep. About fifteen minutes before getting to Geneva, I wake up and hear the voice of the girl next to me asking her mom what she was holding in her hands. The mom explains that “La Suize c’est pas chez nous” and so they need identity cards.

Shit, my passport.

Wait, wait, let me paint the picture for you. You know that sound that fingernails make when you scratch them against a blackboard added to the headache from not having a good night’s sleep in a long time? Well, I heard that, along with the voice inside my head telling me I was going to get deported back to… France? US? Colombia???

It was my first time in Switzerland, I hadn’t gotten off the train, and I was already there illegally. I start praying. Kinda like when I cooked for my birthday, but this time it was praying in addition to cold sweat on my forehead and a horrible headache.

So I get off of the train, and as I am passing passport-control, I explain to the officer I left it in Paris.

By now I was thinking- What are passports, seriously? What are these paper things that define “where” we are from and how hard it is for us to get in and out of certain places? What are nationalities and countries, and what in the world are PASSPORTS? How can a piece of paper, that doesn’t even have your criminal record on it, determine anything about your life? And yet it suffices to go through immigration with a Colombian passport in any developed country to realize that it matters a lot. To whom? I’m not sure, but it matters.

I vote we get rid of this bureaucratic idiosyncrasy and if necessary start carrying around our criminal records. That says a lot, not a piece of paper that determines where you were born or where you were naturalized. Ugggh.

Back to the story- the second officer I talked to asked me my nationality, where I lived, why, etc. etc, and told me I could either go back to Paris, and come back to Geneva, this time making sure not to forget the passport, or “take the risk of staying.” So of course, I inquired if by ‘risk’ he meant I would get arrested as soon as I crossed the sliding glass doors into apparent freedom. He explained it was a 200 Euro fine, but that I would not get fined immediately, only if on the day I returned to Paris I was asked for it again and didn’t have it.

So of course, I go the illegal way and take the risk. The train ticket would have cost half of the fine, plus the three hours of travelling that I could be spending with my mommy and the headache again.

My train on the way back was at 5:00 in the morning. Apparently bad people don’t travel that early because there was no passport control in Geneva or Paris. Fiuf.Now to the fun part- I had an incredible weekend with my mom. Geneva is like camp for adults who want to make the world a better place. You have the building where you cure everyone, Medecins sans Frontiers, the building where you make sure everyone is getting sufficient medication, OMS, the building where you make sure no one fights, ONU, and the building where you make sure workers have fair pays and nice environments. Really, its like the city of the future, for the alleviation of humanity from its own nature. I loved it.
We saw the United Nations of babies in a park- one of them was having a birthday party (probably turning 2 years old), and you could see all of his little friends were all from different continents and their parents had to communicate via a translator, or their fifth language, English or French. Seeying those 2 year olds I understood why 53% of Geneva’s population holds a foreign passport.

Geneva was really amazing. Maybe it’s the fact that I grew up in Colombian hecticness, but I don’t think I could ever live in such a calm place, but it was a great trip.

iCharge – well maybe I don't.

I am well aware that the French are known for being a lot more straightforward in their approach to strangers (and maybe the stereotype is true of some few sketchy people), but I didn’t know I could get something free from that.

For those Mac owners who know just how many products come with an i before it, you can probably relate to my need to only use Mac chargers, Mac organizers, and as soon as they start making it, an iLife. I had been looking for an apple store to buy a charger for my laptop, fit for the two-stick crazy electrical plugs that French walls come equipped with, but I didn’t need the entire charger, just the adapter that I could change on my own charger. (For you non-Mackers, the charger of most laptops has a little piece that comes off that you can change for any other Mac adapter, either a little piece, or a cable that will extend your charger).

Well, Mac doesn’t sell anything less than a 40 Euro travel kit that comes with every little plug you will ever need to use while on the terrestrial planet, and I really only needed the French one. I contented myself with using the typical 2 Euro converter that I had bought at BHV and thanked the 25-year old salesman.

As I was leaving the store, I remembered I needed an ATM and turned around to ask him if he knew where I could find one of these distributing machines, and he told me he would look in a map. I was thinking- Wow, I need to get one of these maps that have ATM’s painted on them. When he got behind the counter he passed me a cable and told me that they didn’t sell the adapters, and that he didn’t know why, and told me to take it quickly, because he could tell ‘in my eyes’ that I needed it. How corny, and life saving at the same time.

The cable he had given me didn’t have a price tag, a sensor chip, nothing. It was only wrapped around in a perfect Mac-out-of-the-box way, and so before the 40-year-old woman (who I assumed was the supervisor) came back, I thanked my guardian angel, and left. Cable included.

Tea at the Ritz

Right after the pig exhibition, I had agreed to have coffee with a friend in Place Vendome, in the Bar Vandome. I knew it was in the Ritz, but I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

It was out of this world. It was ridiculousness at its maximum expression. First of all, I was late to meet my friend who had asked me to go there. I ran, and lost two of my friends who caught up with us later. Except they almost weren’t allowed into the freaking place because it stinks with pretentious, pompousness and you have to be just as ludicrous to be there. Of course, none of my friends were expecting this, and our lost-student faces probably told the guards that there was no chance we had the budgets to be there.

But finally we sit down, and order tea. Except tea is not just tea. Its tea, and more biscuits and sandwiches than you can handle, and…. drum roll… the ‘house’ champagne.

In short, it was a three-hour event, that included amazing little cookies and biscuits and earl-grey, and champagne, and bathrooms with hot towels so you can dry your hands, and some of the most self-important people I have ever seen, and last but not least, an absurd bill.

I understood how shocked Julia Roberts’s character was at the sight of the hotel in Pretty Woman. Ok, it’s a stretch. But really, too much preposterousness. Later I found out there are songs about this. Why do I live in a permanent mental lapsus?

It was quite an experience, and truth be told, I had fun playing along. But it's checked off of my list of things to do.

Pig’s Art

A good friend of mine is taking a class on Contemporary art, and he has decided he detests it. Not the class, the art. I’ve been trying to figure out if I like it, or not, but there are so many different artists and styles that I can’t really know. We went to the exhibition of a Belgian artist, Wim Delvoye, who has a pig farm in China (to avoid punishment for animal cruelty) and he tattoos and stuffs them to make his exhibition. In short, one of the rooms had a video showing the pigs being pigs, and another room had the tattoo-ed, stuffed pigs.

They are a set of unpretentious, kind of cute in their own pinkie, chunky way, pigs, and yet something, maybe the lighting in the place, killed the mood. Too bad because I would have really enjoyed looking at dead pigs.

(This is Louise, with her elegant Louis Vuitton; he uses a lot of well known brands and patterns)

I’m being facetious. No, I don’t think I consider that art, no I wouldn’t have one in my living room, and I hope if I ever have kids I won’t take them to museums of contemporary art and have the poor kids come bawling out of there because of dead pigs, and have to wake up at 3 in the morning because they’re having nightmares of these creatures.

Contemporary art is too much about the individual interpretation, and I am not sure I like that. I don’t want to have to do the work that the artist should have done himself. It’s like going to a restaurant and cooking your own meal, and then giving credit to the magnificent chef for letting you do it. Bollocks.

Maybe I’m too simplistic for it. I wouldn’t fill my house with corny mountain ranges and paintings of lake houses and my dog, but I want something I couldn’t have done myself. Throwing a pile of garbage together and calling it art is not for me. I am not saying art has to be visually pleasing- in fact, I find Dali a little troubling at times, but it is full of hidden pictures, and he reuses some figures, and I enjoy looking at the ensemble of his creativity.

But seriously, pigs?

Sickness and Ooeiness and Gooiness and Rain

An attempt at a poem to my newfound love, Actifed, which I will recur to again and again.

Last week I got a cold, one of those ooey, gooey colds. It came with monsters in my throat, and rain that came pouring down my nose. It made an iron of my forehead, and of my feet icicles instead, to complement my hands were drink shakers, and my armpits, great bread-bakers. I went to a pharmacist, who said, ‘You should take some Actifed.’ What an amazing piece of advice, though she charged me twice the price.

Clearly I'm not Neruda, but you get the point.

God said, let there be a keychain in the rain.

For those of you out there wondering, yes, I am still alive. Two hands, feet, legs, all complete. I do the checklist when I get home every night.

Today I was biking under the rain (getting wet because I still don’t have a raincoat) to meet Ana for coffee, a friend of a friend who goes to Sciences Po. I get to Sciences Po, and realize that my keys are not in my bag. Since my landlord is out of town until the 5th, and I don’t feel like sleeping in the metro, I start to panic under the rain. When Ana met me at Sciences Po, I don’t think she met a decent human being. Imagine the way a cat gets when you get her wet- that was me. Unfortunately, my problem was not the rain but the keys.

So there were 3 possibilities:
1. I could have dropped them at the bike parking place after unlocking the bike
2. There was a bus, one of those huuuuuge touristy buses full of cameras and maps and very lost, jet-lagged people parked on Rue Blanche letting people off. Since this is a one-lane street, I rode on the sidewalk to get past it, and when I descended the sidewalk, I did it the brutal way. Obviously everything in my stomach (and therefore my bike’s basket as well) jumped, and the keys could have fallen out then.
3. The street that passes directly in front of the Louvre is really, really, really bumpy. I normally avoid it, but since it was raining, and the sidewalk is compact dirt, I didn’t want to get all muddy. They could have fallen out as my brain was trying not to be mixed with my intestines.

I couldn’t leave my bike just anywhere without tying it because it would get stolen, so Ana and I tried to take the metro. Except you cannot get on a metro, or on a bus (we asked) with a bike. I call that mechanical discrimination, and being afraid of the competition. So I part Ana in the I’m-a-wet-cat way and left the bike at a friend’s house not too far away from Sciences Po, where they have a bike parking lot. When I finally got out of the metro at Pigalle, it was already dark. Not knowing if I would find my keys and if I had a place to sleep that night, I was now in the stage of I-am-a-wet,-homeless-cat-and-I-want-to-cry.

I ran to the place where I park my bike, and there, sitting under the rain and a lot of mud, was my orange keychain with all of its door-opening properties. The baker right next to the parking saw what had just happened and came outside and told me- I saw the keys but decided to leave them there for the owner to find them. I was not longer a wet, homeless cat. Now I had my fiuf-face and he said, ‘you have a lot of luck’. Damn right, and now I also have a raincoat.

Two Wheels, Some Metal, a Basket and a Lock

Introduction: The metro in Paris is the easiest to use that I have ever seen. There is rarely ever a wait of more than 4 minutes for the car, and with its 16 lines covering a total of 211 kilometres of Parisian rails, you can take it absolutely everywhere.

Problem: Despite its effectiveness, it takes me about 35 minutes to get from my house to Reid Hall or Sciences Po, so I was spending at least an hour, possibly two, a day underground. It is smelly, crowded (at least during peak hours) and just all around unpleasant time.

Solution:








Bike. My mom’s cousin suggested this brilliant idea, and we went to get it together. It takes about the same time to ride my bike than to take the metro to go to Reid hall, and on my way to classes I pass by innumerable sights and monuments depending on the routes I take. On top of the exercise I am getting, I get to really see Paris to and from absolutely everywhere I go.

For the future: Please pray that it will not rain until I get a raincoat.

Le bonheur de la merde

I have started to consider walking on dog poop a lucky thing, because it happens so often that there has to be some derived benefit to having your shoe smell the entire day.

All Aboard

I don't really have his permission to publish it, but my stepbrother wrote to me on my birthday something genial which I couldn't refrain myself from putting on here:


Welcome to the 21st level, all aboard please.

Please keep your wallets empty, your hands outside the vehicle at all times.
Please refrain from riding tricycles or even bicycles,
No poppers or poptarts allowed.
You may stick your chewing gum below the table, aisles with music playing at all times.

In the event of intoxication, please assist your friends first, and then place a ten dollar bill in the bouncer’s hand.

There will be late meals served, past midnight and 4:00 a.m., preferred menus “a la carte”, because a diet is like crack.

All kids, children, babies, toddlers, infants, small children, children, big children and even bigger children, NO CRYING PLEASE,
We are entering the legal age benchmark and threshold for non-legal minors.

As we pass all fears, the robe looms at a closing distance,
With deans, profs, lights and speeches that smell like leeches,

We know, (or better we think we know), that we are wise and old, yet there are many things that we have not been told.

Please behold because its been foretold, that we are now entering the legal age benchmark and threshold for non-legal minors.


All aboard.

0 intoxications, 1 social life back on track, and 21 candles

My birthday was absolutely amazing, and I gave myself one of the best presents I have ever given me. All wrapped in a red bow came an exquisite wake up call.

February 12th I realized I had been in France for exactly a month, and that my birthday would probably be one of the most depressing because I was terribly far away from those who would genuinely want to celebrate it with me. But while I sat on my butt trying to decide whether I should start crying, go to sleep or eat some 74% chocolate, it came to me- all I really had to do was start calling people and invite them over. I don’t think I had ever actually made myself something for my birthday, since my family and friend’s have always taken care of celebrating properly by their own initiatives, but given the circumstances duty called.

So I decided to have a dinner party. I started calling friends, and surprisingly everyone was ready and willing, and that made it infinitely easier.

The harder part was figuring out what to make. I really like cooking, but it was necessary that for once it turn out right. I went for chicken in red-wine sauce (because I had a bottle of red, cooking wine) and a quiche I had learned to make last the summer with my host mother. My French teacher of first semester is now in Paris, and she had given me her mother’s recipe for crepes- so that was dessert.

The quiche was nothing short of a miracle- the pastry of the quiche came ready to be unrolled onto my pan, and the rest was vegetables, eggs and emmental cheese, which I also bought already grated. Here’s the tricky part- the cheese was supposed to be Gruyere, but Monoprix was out of big bags of gruyere râpé, and it was supposed to have cream but I forgot to put it in (I now have this huge pot of cream sitting in my mini-fridge awaiting its trash-fate). To top it all off I didn't have a recipe where I could check at what temperature I had to cook it in, so I put it in too high, and then burnt the crust because it was cooked before the eggs. Fortunately the only part of the crust that was really burnt was the borders, so I just took off the burnt edges when the rest was done.

The last, key, ingredient in the quiche was a couple of Hail Mary's I threw in to attempt to save it. Don’t ask how, but it worked. I know I will get all your sceptical remarks eventually, but be warned that if you say anything I will make you a quiche and force you to try it.

The chicken in wine sauce was also a lot of luck. At first the chicken turned a disgusting purple colour thanks to the wine, so (I kid you not, this was my reasoning) I decided to add balsamic vinegar to make it more brownish and less disgusting-purplish. Then I spotted a bottle of mustard I bought last week at Dijon and added a teaspoon because it's yellow and would hopefully tone down the purple. And then salt and pepper, but just because they are basic.

I knew the flavour would be fine, I was just afraid for the colour. And if food comes in through the eyes, what was this disgusting purple thing I had cooking in my kitchen?

After an hour of sitting in the pot cooking slowly, the chicken got a tan and everyone was happy. Fiuf.

Fortunately people in Serbia eat a lot of crepes and are on time to dinner parties, because Milena showed up and made the crepes. I attempted the first six on my own, but I burnt my fingers, the crepes, a wooden spoon and my desire to ever make crepes again.

Everyone and their mothers showed up with flowers, and that made me very happy. Everywhere I look in my 39 m2 apartment has flowers, I love it. Another friend brought champagne, and another made me a cake I could write sonnets about, so the birthday was complete.

I had such a great time that I realized all I need to do to get my social life back to its normal order is to call people. Si, descubrí América en un vaso de agua.

An Acute Case of Parisitis

There is an abominable, centralist idea that Paris is France, and the rest is, well... the rest. And even though this city is absolutely gorgeous, I do think it is worth it to wander around the smaller cities and towns because there are a lot of beautiful places to see; different, granted, but beautiful nonetheless.

It is an obligatory part of the Reid Hall program that you stay with a French family (that you have never met before) for a week, in Auxerre, Lyon, Besançon or Aix-en-Provence. Despite my open-mindedness about France dehors Paris, I spent a week of hell in Auxerre, but please let me explain why before you jump to the conclusion that I am a spoiled, megalopolitan brat.

For starters, I am a firm believer that it is all in the head. I spent a good part of the week thinking that I could be seeing any other place in France that was not as depressing, and the mentality didn't help.

Auxerre is not bad at all- 40,000 inhabitants, centuries of history (of course, like most places in France) and very beautiful churches and things to see. My problem? The family I was staying with does not live in Auxerre but 40 minutes away (by car) in Laduz that is of the impressive size of 301 inhabitants. 302 counting me for one whole week. I could walk around the town twice in half an hour, and the architecture was nothing out of this world. If you wanted to buy a loaf of bread in this town, you had to order it from the neighbour who makes the bread, so that you could pick it up the next day. Impressive change from Paris where there is a boulangerie in the places where you least imagined you would find one.

The weather didn't really help because the vast majority of activities were outside and it was between –2 and 5 degrees, cloudy, grey and all around dreary. Your mouth might be watering at the thought of 0-degree weather if you are in the North-Eastern United States right now, but it is not precisely pleasurable if you are being forced to take a tour of something you would rather see in the summer. We visited innumerable places that I couldn't help but wonder how beautiful they would be if the sun was shining and there were actually people around; I can't tell you how many tour guides told us, "c'est dommage que vous venez dans cette époque parce que en été c'est vraiment sympa." Well, gee, thanks.

My host family organized every activity and they were actually really nice. They gave me more cheese and wine and exceptional food than I have ever had in my life, and the host mom taught me several recipes. If any of you want to volunteer, I need guinea pigs to try them on and test my cuisine-memory.

The last day we went to a cave with Palaeolithic paintings that was absolutely beautiful and worth the entire week in obligatory Abaddon. I would do the whole Auxerre-trip to see that cave again. The cave deserves its own little entry, so I will leave my thoughts on it for another time.

Enamoured With the City of Love

As cliché as this may seem, I have discovered a completely different Paris than the one I saw in the summer. Paris is an attitude, but it is not self-evident. Past the 6th arrondissement, past the Luxembourg and the spotless boutiques of Les Marais, past having hour-long coffee breaks at St Germain-de-Pres and the sunsets at the gardens of the Palais Royal, I have discovered another city. Paris is definitely an attitude. It’s not just the easy esprit and consumption- it is a way of life.

At first I wasn’t entirely happy with where I was living. I was seriously considering talking to my parents about moving, and I couldn’t help thinking that the entire area around (oh, you have to love) Pigale was one big, risqué, titillating, and suggestive, voluptuous brothel.

But just by walking around I have discovered so many interesting things about my neighbourhood. Past the sex-shops the 9th is charming and full of life. Not to mention, Jean-Paul Gaultier lives two blocks away from my house.

The only reproach I have for my original insensitivity towards this part of the city was my lack of vision- a sort of lack of curiosity vis-à-vis another beautiful, flirtatious side that Paris has to offer. And so I am incredibly lucky to be living high in the 9th arrondissement, because I get to see the gilt-edged corners of the 6th and 7th arrondissements during the day, and the night life in all its diversity of the 9th and 18th. Reducing Paris to the Rive Gauche and nothing north of the Champs Elysées is an adamant view that does not render this city justice.

(Here's a map so that this may make more sense)

The Bleaching Powers of the Seine

Oh, France. Pays de la liberté, l’égalité, et la fraternité. But is it, really? Something struck me in the metro: The lines that go from north to south are full of diversity, from people’s heights, skin colours, accents, and odours, in the periphery of the city, and are more bleached-white around the Seine.

Why is this?

And why are the nicer metro lines, 1, 14, etc, all around the river?




We went to a session at the Assemblée Nationale and the vast majority of representatives are men. Maybe there are more who weren’t present, but out of at least 100 people I could only spot one black functionary. I didn’t anticipate it because this is not representative of what I could see in the metro, or around the city. Maybe it is the recent increase in immigration from ancient colonies, which would explain the delay in the assimilation, but it was still very astonishing.

Because Introductions Are Necessary

After two spectacular days in Calima I got home at 10 pm to pack my bags and leave my stuff in order to leave for Philadelphia. Like the December break, the January days in Philly were absolutely marvellous. My friends organized a surprise good-bye party for me the night before leaving, and I had an amazing time. The headache of the day after was not as amazing, but it was definitely worth the aspirin.

I arrived in Paris in the morning of the 12th of January and met with the owner of the apartment that I am renting. It was not exactly evident how to bring two suitcases, of at least 25 kilos each, up seven floors, but by personal experience I can tell you it’s not a walk around the park.

One headache, five back strains and two Motrins later, I felt installed in my apartment.



In my state of jet lag and sleepiness, I went to get a cell phone, to change the Traveller’s Checks (the most useless, expensive and inefficient method of travelling) and to see Carlos, a friend from Spain who has been abroad the entire year.

I have decided to make 'paris' a synonym of enchanting. For every possible reason. One day I had five hours between classes and I went to the Louvre to see a part of the Ancient Iran exhibit. I was leaving when I realized you can make a masterpiece with time in Paris- Where else in the world can you take time in between classes and turn it into two hours in the most visited museum of the world?



Art History students in France can enter national museums for free, and very conveniently my id says I am an Art History student. That lets me enter the Louvre as many times as I want without sseing my student budget suffer an 8-Euro loss (more like expense, really) everytime I want to visit the Venus de Milo.