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april in avignon

Saturday, December 31. 2005

sorry, couldn't resist. missy's sis april visited us for christmas. i took a couple photos of the parts of it that i was involved in, which some of you might find interesting to look at. now with captions!

no more spoilers since i think miss is going to cover things in a separate post. it was great to have her here. i got a deeper glimpse into the wonderful world of haywards and thankfully avoided getting my butt kicked at rummy 500!

Posted by seth in whole body at 05:40 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0)

every person...

Saturday, December 31. 2005

on the st. benezet bridge, the "pont d'avignon", there's a little area where the stone, earth, and water all meet. someone has arranged a little spot with a small stone wall, heart sculpture, driftlog, and sitting stone. i've been here a number of times; it's one of my favorite avignon places.

it changes over time. the stone wall wanders like a snake yawning in the sun, but always protects the corner. the sculpture shifts. it's spotless though, free of the kind of trash that ought to float there and stay. it's being tended.

there's a note attached to an old iron spike just above. in one version or another it's been there for a long time. the fluttering white is what first drew my eye to the spot. it used to be an unprotected sheet of paper, but now for the winter it's got a plastic sheath. i think this version has got more careful lettering. i can't tell if the text has changed as well. it seems longer now.

my rough google-translate-assisted attempt:

every person has the right to take part freely in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and participate in scientific progress and the benefits that result.

each person has the right to the protection of moral and material interests deriving from all scientific, literary, or artistic production of which he is the author.

seems a fair balance, and a nice new year's blessing.

also, miss uncovered some more info on the Cézanne studio. this page has a nice photo. here are some more from a different site. the "Panorama 360" link gets you a full spinning view of the main room. see why i want to live there?

Posted by seth in brain, heart at 04:47 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

new pix, a few words

Saturday, December 24. 2005

marvelous mikl sent us my camera that i left in san francisco before we left for france (d'oh!) so i've been taking more photos than writing words lately. i managed to put a bunch up for your viewing pleasure.

a little backstory for some of the categories:

SF: i had to go back to san francisco last week to pick up my long stay visa. i hadn't given myself enough time for france to process the visa application before we had to leave, so beaurocracy being what it is i had to go all the way back to get it. worse, what we thought was a confirmed flight back somehow only ended up being a reservation, so when i got to the marseille airport at 4:30am i found out i didn't have a flight and had to buy it then and there, almost doubling the price. drat. still not sure what went wrong with that. anyway, i got the same flights i'd reserved before and it all worked out ok eventually.

it was weird to be back. i didn't want to get re-sullied with my US thoughts so i tried to lay low and off the radar, with limited success. i'm almost back into the french swing of things.

aix: all the flights to and from the US were at awful hours and required staying a night close to the marseille airport either the night before i left or the night i came back since trains and shuttles didn't run early enough. so miss and i took the opportunity to take a little trip to aix-en-provence, a little town about half an hour away. it's not as ancient as avignon, but it's very pretty.

cezanne did a lot of later work there, and we got to walk through his old studio. a little walk out of town and up a big hill overlooking the town is a small two-story building he had built. it used to be the only building on the hill back in the day, and it still has a great view. the same view of Mt. St. Victoire he used as a study over and over again. neat!

the second floor of the building was his studio. a huge sparse room painted in medium grey, with immense warehouse-style windows on the north wall for maximum light. there was a special tall skinny door to the outside that he could move the large canvases out when they were finished. the place still vibrated with the guy's spirit. i felt instantly calm and productive there and really wanted to stay. he knew a good work environment, and it's rotting fruit on the tables and pictures of naked women on the walls.

holidays: avignon is all wrapped up in bows and twinkly lights. maybe it's partly the progressive portland influence, but i really appreciate the benefits of high taxes spent well by the state. between this, the opera, and the library i feel like the normal citizen is getting a lot better value for money than say emptying the budget into halliburton's pockets. why do i pay taxes again?

missy's sister april is visiting right now. she and miss took a trip to paris while i was in SF, and we're trying to show her the sights of avignon. (there's only like five!) there's a little ice skating rink set up in front of the main market we're going to go to later on. and maybe even go to a mass tonight, for old time's sake. i still get sentimental and soft on christmas eve, and they have churches here like you wouldn't believe.

well, joyeuse fêtes, as they say!

Posted by seth in eyes at 06:07 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

this entry is all about food

Thursday, December 15. 2005

there are some things that i really miss about america right now, and they all belong in the stomach. yesterday, feeling a lack of good food in my life, i went to the super sized hypermarché to buy some harder to find groceries. i know that i shouldn't expect much from prepackaged sauces and food kits from the ethnic isle, but tonight for dinner i made the "cantonese style stir-fried rice mix" and it was so salty and flavorless i almost cried. not exaggerating there. i'm trying to salvage my tastebuds now with some baguette, cheese, and sauccisson sec, but i fear they may be too far gone for tonight so i will drink some vanilla coke that i've been stowing and finish off the meal with something predictably, trashily, good.

of course i should not be looking at grocery store isles for amazing food, but at produce stands and boucheries and my own imagination. but as of late i've been culinarily uninspired and the meals that i've attempted have been disappointing. and our kitchen is difficult to work in. we went down from a sad three square feet of counter space in portland to oh-so-very-very sad one square foot, so when cooking i often have to put things on the floor and the aforementioned echoey apartment acoustics when i do this, or any cooking activity for that matter, produce a jarring clatter that insures an unrelaxing cooking experience. we only have two burners that are very close together, and the bigger of them doesn't heat up as much as it should and we have a toaster oven instead of a regular oven. so while it seems that we got a bad deal somewhere, in actuality all of the places we looked at had measly kitchens, most even more so. for a supposed land of food, apartment dwellers aren't given much to work with.

this food homesickness, while usually low-grade, is exacerbated right now by seth's absence. he is in san francisco right now getting his visa and eating. he has been relaying tales to me of all the wonderful food there, with pavlovian effect.

when we've eaten out here we've had some good food sometimes, but not with the success ratio as say, portland dining. and portland is not necessarily a culinary capitol. but i'm realizing what makes american food so great is that the best of it isn't american. burritos and udon, green curry and chicken tandori, ethiopian stews and pho. i miss all of this so much and you just can't get it here. what you can get is moroccan food, which has been our favorite meal so far. but the asian restaurants have been, well, weird asian hybrids: thai curry with chinese vegetables and vietnamese shrimp chips. these cuisines are so good on their own, but it doesn't follow that they'd be good all melangé.

and then there's breakfast. i know, i've mentioned it, but i love big breakfasts and the french just don't understand. seth and i went to aix-en-provence the day before he left, and my lonely planet revealed that there was brunch at one of the restaurants. i was so happy because the only brunch in avignon is 55 euros. but then we got there and it was 28 euros which is just really hard to justify spending, especially since only one of us is a brunch hound, but then again we used to go to breakfast nearly every sunday, so if you add all that up.... okay, so instead we had some italian for lunch, provencal for dinner, and during both seth ended up with the better meal. and the next day i awoke, hours after seth left to catch his flight, and went to have a breakfast. saw a sign advertising brunch for 9.50 euros. finally. but it was an otherwise traditional french breakfast - bread, butter, jam, coffee or cocoa, and juice - with the addition of a savory part that filled a hot-out-of-the oven ceramic dish: two runny dippy eggs, one broken, and two big fatty bacon slabs all mangled together. don't they understand? bacon is only good because it's fried and crispy!

i will soon be praising french cuisine, i know it, but for the meantime i think i will long for the food that i cannot have. ye salad roll, ye yakisoba. eggs benedict, you soft pillow of bliss.

p.s. okay, as stated, i'm needing a little cooking inspiration. so if anyone has suggestions for cooking sites they swear by, or favorite cookbooks or even personal recipes they'd like to share, do let me know. what i'm looking for are good simple recipes that, given our limitations, involve a minimum of preparation steps and not too exotic ingredients. pastas need not apply.

Posted by missy in stomach at 13:41 | Comments (9) | Trackbacks (0)

new wine

Wednesday, December 7. 2005

on the third thursday of november each year (mandated by french law) the new wine is released into the world. and everyone parties. apparently half of all the beaujolais for the year is shipped or drunk that first night.

this is the same fruit that was celebrated as grapes only a couple weeks ago during the harvest festival (we just missed that one). i didn't know you could make wine in that short a time, but i guess there's a little urgency.

most of the hubub is about the beaujolais nouveau. but avignon is a little farther down the valley than those guys. our area makes some similar wines, and so the focus is on the region's own produce, calling it primeur, which apparently means generically "first fruits". i sensed a little rivalry.

that night, the whole town floods into the main square in front of the pope's (old) palace. winemakers set up tents and hand out thousands of small glasses of wine for free. we got there a little late and had to settle for tiny plastic cups. no matter. and they sell cases and cases of wine in the process.

it's a madhouse. it's like arena rock for middle aged french people. we squeezed up and got our first samples and quickly found out why everyone was so extra-loopy at 7pm. it's really strong! our french teacher had warned us about it earlier that day. she wasn't going because she didn't like new wine. too much alcohol and it tastes too young.

well, really what do i know about wine? what does "young" taste like? but we (ok, *i*) have been doing a fair amount of firsthand research on wine since we got here. estimates close to the mark are about 45 bottles so far. recycling piles up quickly. there's a little 8-slot wine rack in the kitchen that i try to keep well-maintained. the main goal going in was to get used to it, get accustomed to it quickly so that understanding could come sooner. miss and i love to dissect good food now, and i was looking for the same thing with the national icon. well it worked, and i have a fair idea of wine qualities now, even if i can't remember particular regions or vinyards exactly.

but i told you all that to tell you this: new wine really tastes new! like a brash young meerkitten it's all scraggly and feisty and bites your tail. it's bouncy and prickly and troublesome. not something i'd buy every day, but pretty fun when you roll with it.

there was also a samba band playing! they came from marseille and were dressed in construction workers outfits, with hard hats and flourescent vests. very reminiscent of the ice cream socialists, but with rhythm. they were a small outfit, but really fun. they had a capoeira group with them that dance-fought on the steps of the palace (that's the first photo). very exciting. and speaking of small outfits (yuk yuk) we felt worried for them since it was winter coat weather outside and they were in pretty skimpy duds. not south american climate, but they were moving enough to keep warm.

things started thinning out as the wine dried up. the square slowly emptied, with people carrying home white boxes, six bottles each, of the new stuff. lots of broken stepped-on wine glasses all over the cobblestones.

we walk to the main central square, the place de l'horloge ("clock square" that doesn't actually have a clock). lots of restaurants. we decide to eat at a nice looking moroccan restaurant that's not too pricey. each table has a bottle of primeur on it. oy! it was a fantastic meal. mine was braised lamb, prunes, and sliced almonds. missy got a huge couscous dish. it came in three bowls, each enough to feed two people, that you assemble on your plate. also excellent. lamb and veggie stew and couscous. it turned me on to turnips, which i've been making a lot since then. we were too hungry and amazed to get a photo of it. maybe we'll go back! we had a chat with some nice french women at the next table over who had ordered exactly the same two things.

that was about it for the night. eating took us two hours, which was pretty neat. no one pressures you to vacate, and we were in no rush. it's a nice pace; nice to give a meal that amount of time. our dinners are getting longer at home now too.

on the way i snapped the photo of hobbit-clothes, then it was quick to bed. a new early night record for me, for sure.

Posted by seth in stomach, brain at 18:48 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0)

bread crumbs and hobbits

Wednesday, December 7. 2005

i've come to accept that for the next months i'm going to be living in a world of bread crumbs. it's ok, it's the price of eating yummy crusty fresh bread every day. it's just a little shocking, the things you never expected to be shocked by.

it does make some things easier. miss was making chicken parmesean the other night. all we had to do was drop the cutlets on the dining room carpet, flip, and fry.

suresure they're all over the kitchen and dining room and all in the keyboards of our computers. that's to be expected. but i find them in stray corners of closets and in the bathtub. maybe they're mobile. maybe they attach like burrs to your clothing to gain farther reach. or catch and ride the drafts through the halls.

we've got an inside joke that it's mice. seems every time one of us buys tasty bread or chocolate when we get it home there's a small bite taken out of it. it never happens to the turnips for some reason.

anyway, this photo is about another mythical avignon creature: the halfling. there's stores that sell 1/3 scale adult outfits. and i've actually seen tiny people in the stores and in the streets. like sub-4' sized. and there's a number of them. if the archeological remains of a race of small humans was recently discovered in indonesia (and they were pretty recent), it's not unimaginable that their relatives could be living amongst us now.

Posted by seth in whole body at 18:34 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

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