Belgium

Before taking up all your time with my blatherings, a quick note: should you not want to read all my painstakingly wrought observations and witticisms and want to skip straight to the pretty pictures, you may do so here.

And now, on to describing a trip that is now two weeks old...

Given that Amynah has been spending much of the last month or so planning for her family’s 8-country, 3-continent visit next month, I was put in charge of planning for the Maastricht visit. This consisted pretty much of e-mailing Babet, booking a couple of hotels online and reserving the car.

Actually researching what there was to do in any of the places we were planning to visit sort of escaped my attention. Therefore, on arrival in Antwerp, we were a little flummoxed as to what there was to do there. All we knew about Antwerp consisted of what little we’d seen of it in diamond heist movies. Even then, those heists usually occur pretty early on in the film with very little time spent in the city.


Thus unarmed, we ventured into town. As is my wont, we immediately located the Cathedral and wandered inside.
The cathedral is home to some pretty impressive wood carving – despite the fact that I am unable to capture the true feel of dark wood carving, I futilely took some pictures of the row of confessional booths, each guarded by a three-dimensional Apostle and their fictional female doppelgangers.


The pulpit was also something to see, supported by four men each representing one of the then-known continents (these were as politically correct as you might expect) and topped by an angel blowing a trumpet (and showing a remarkable dedication to his music, given that he also appeared to plunging to his death).


Here we also discovered that Antwerp was home to Peter Paul Rubens (I would love to say “We were reminded” rather than “discovered” but you, gentle reader, have been too good to me for me to start lying to you now). There were three enormous triptychs there by him. As Amynah pointed out, it was refreshing to see art like this in the milieu for which it was intended.
After some aimless wandering, we headed to the Plantin-Moretus Museum, the one-stop ancestral home/publishing house/printing facility/bookshop of the Reformation-era Plantin-Moretus family. Here, we saw more of Rubens oeuvre, three second-run Gutenberg bibles and a lot of old printing presses.


There was also a copy-editors room, which our audio guide solemnly informed us was a respected and intellectually rigorous profession. As a writer whose blameless prose has been the recipient of numerous unprovoked attacks by these red-ink spewing monsters, I feel somewhat differently (mind you, as an editor whose ass has been saved numerous times by these angels with eagle-eyes, I feel will grudgingly admit they perhaps deserved the best office in the building – bigger even than that of the proprietor).

After the museum, Amynah did some shopping and we grabbed a bite to eat in that most Belgian of establishments, “The Sicilian Pizza House” (before the food people ask – yes, we also bought chocolates and waffles. The latter were far too sweet for my taste).

To wrap up the evening, we decided to cross the river, which is accomplished via the Saint Anna tunnel a 500-metre pedestrian/bike passage that travels under the Scheldt.


After a desultory snapping of the town (European cities don’t offer much in the way of skylines) we caught the tram back to our hotel. And what was the movie playing in our hotel, situated in a city world famous for its trade in precious stones? Why “Blood Diamond,” of course.

Next day was Brussels. I will be up front here: I had heard nothing good about Brussels from anyone, ever. I was probably predisposed to not much like the place.

Brussels did itself no favours, however. We drove in, immediately losing the ring road and ending up in the middle of the city. Our directions were therefore useless, though we appeared to be on a main road. I turned off it and asked a pedestrian for directions to Toisson D’Or Street. He gave us a look as if to indicate we were practically in the wrong city, and told us to turn around and drive to a completely different quarter.

_{The town, the name of which means "House in the marsh." Who the heck builds their city in a swamp? Belgians, that's who.}

We got back on the main road (which, for simplicity’s sake, I will call Waterloo) and headed back. Except it was blocked for construction now, though it had been clear five minutes before. So we followed the rest of the traffic into the city, until it became clear that no one else had any intention of circumventing the detour and were evidently driving to Holland.

So, we stopped in a gas station, and she told us we were actually close to our destination. All we had to do was head back to Waterloo St (which, though some weird space-time flux I’ve noticed European cities are capable of, was now around the corner, despite us having driven three kilometers since the detour) and make an incredibly complex series of turns and we’d be at our destination of Toisson D’Or.

We got onto Waterloo, tried the suggested maneuvers, got lost, asked for directions again. Again, we were told we were close, told to get back on Waterloo, drive straight down, and we’d see the sign for Toisson D’Or. So, we did this, saw the sign, followed it, but since it pointed us to the wrong street, we got lost.

This time, a kind soul told us to follow her, drove us back to Waterloo, turned on to it and stopped: “Here it is!” she said.

Yes folks, Waterloo Street and Toisson D’Or were the SAME GODDAMNED STREET! It had different names for different directions. Why? Who does that? We had in fact been on it as soon as we entered the city, and not one single person deigned to tell us.

Needless to say, I was not too pleased with Brussels at this point. In search of lunch we walked towards the Royal Palace and tourist zone beyond. Now, I don’t want to make fun of King Albert, who I’m sure is a worthy individual, but you have to feel bad for the guy. Where Buckingham Palace has fur-hat clad dudes in red and ill-disguised security forces with automatic weapons keeping an eye on the hundreds of tourists, it is considerably lower key in Brussels. In fact, I’m fairly certain I saw His Royal Highness peek through a curtain and wave in gratitude when I took a picture.

_{Hey Al!}

We headed down to the tourist zone (identifiable by the fact that every single establishment had some kind of TinTin poster in their window, though, to be fair, so did the royal palace). We had lunch –the famed Belgian mussels and fries. As we had, in our hunger and desperation, selected a tourist trap restaurant in the tourist-trap zone, they were terrible – I swear the fries were McCain’s. Strike two.


While we were there, there was also a large immigration protest going on (pro immigration). Amynah and I managed to get ahead of it, in order to walk on streets cleared of traffic. As we walked, we noticed that the sidewalks were crowded with Japanese tourists, cameras at the ready - I'm not sure if they were just really interested in Belgian immigration policy, or if they thought they were about to witness the world's angriest parade.

Brussels most famous tourist attraction is the Mannekin Pis – a fountain with a statue of a young boy relieving himself. They dress him up in different costumes depending on the season and current events – when we saw him he was all dolled up in a suit of armor for some reason. Legend has it that the statue commemorates a heroic six-year old who saved the city from being blown up by gunpowder by putting out the fuse by, well, in the way you might expect. One almost wishes that he didn’t bother.

The white spears

_{This photo has nothing whatsoever to do with the content of this post, as it it clearly depicts cornfields. If you want asparagus photos, I suggest you click the link in the text that follows.}

Before I bore you all with accounts of our Belgium trip, another one for the foodies out there.

Before we left, when we told people we were moving to Strasbourg, most people reacted with “In Austria?” though some thought it might be in Germany. Very few knew much, if anything about the place (this is not a knock against, anyone, I didn’t either).

One friend of ours, however, being a restaurant reviewer and nascent wine snob, immediately responded with “Oooh, the have very good wines there that are perfect for asparagus.” I remember this, not only because of the specificity of her knowledge, but also for the specificity of the wine.

This was further driven home when we were flying in to Strasbourg from Paris. We had a family sitting behind us with a young boy named Henry. How do I remember his name through the haze of that hectic and jet-lagged time? Well, because his Mother kept repeating “Henry, don’t kick the chair in front of you. Henry, you’re probably annoying that man. Henry, please don’t.” I, meanwhile, was thinking, “Henry, the micro-chicken leg and soggy salad they served really left me kind of peckish. Touch the back of my chair again and I’ll be happy to rip your limbs off with my teeth.”

In any case, Henry’s Dad, at one point pointed out the window in an effort to distract the little monster and said “See Henry! Look – asparagus fields!” This stopped Henry briefly, if only through sheer bewilderment. Meanwhile, up front, Amynah and I began to giggle.

All of which to say, asparagus is a big deal here. Despite the claims of some bloggers, they are an Alsatian specialty (along with every other foodstuff you could care to name, up to and including General Tao Chicken, the good soldier having perfected his recipe here while studying Napoleon’s artillery techniques).

To rather slowly get to the point, last night we were invited out for our first Alsatian asparagus meal, at the home of a woman who goes grocery shopping with Amynah in Germany every month.

The season for these things is fairly short, and they are impossible to find after May. Our hosts sincerely informed us that as yesterday being St Sophie’s Day, traditionally the last day a ground frost is possible (Alsace invent frost as well. And ground.) and generally the end of season, we tucked in for our last chance.

The meal started with a quiche, each serving shaped vaguely like an eggy, vegetable-ridden cupcake. Then came the main show – the asparagus. Now, the Alsatian version of this plant is like the one I was familiar with from North America. First, each indivdual spear was considerably thicker and slightly longer. Second, they’re white.

Our host presented us with a bowl of mayonaisse and invited us to tuck into the albino spears with our fingers. At first I demurred, cutting mine into little pieces with my knife and fork, but as our hosts were grabbing them with the aplomb of sub-continental snake charmers I decided to follow suit.

First of all, asparagus are considerably more water filled than you’d think. Also, considerably more bitter in taste stringier in texture. This combination inevitably meant that I’d bite into a stalk, scrunch up my face like a cranky marmoset, only to have to gnaw my way through plant-tendons while smelly plant-blood and watered down mayo dribbled down my arm onto my pants. It was a massacre, I tell you.

_{* Ironically enough, the wine we had brought, recommended by my trusted caviste wasn’t even Alsatian, but rather from the Rhône. Go figure. Our hosts went with a bottle from their own 400-strong collection. They did say my offering was "original" which I am deciding to interpret as a compliment.}

Maark visits Maastricht

_{This amused me.}

Hmmm, I disappear for more than a week and not a peep. I’m hurt.

Well, had anyone asked, I was in the BENELUX countries, which is what the Euro-hipsters call Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Belgium, despite the fact that it makes them sound like some kind of 1960s cleaning product. I am also uncertain why these 2 1/2 countries are lumped in together despite a lack of a common language.

The spur for the trip was an invitation from Babet, a friend of a friend who visited us back in January. She lives in Maastricht, which is in that part of the Netherlands that looks like it’s being pinched off between Germany and Belgium.


_{Babet, explaining a series statues that look like moulded turds.}

Having the typically Canadian attitude that no city in Europe is that far from any other, and anxious not to jeopardize my thus-far perfect attendance record in French we didn’t leave Strasbourg until 7 pm. We immediately ended up in a traffic jam (un confiture des autos) that kept us near home until 8 pm.

The ride was fairly smooth – French highways have a bad reputation for some reason, but I’m pretty impressed by them. We hit the so-called Grand Duchy of Luxembourg at about 9:30, where we stopped for gas.

The wonderful thing about the Grand Duchy (in addition to its Dancing on the tomb of Saint Willibard festival, which I’ll have to visit) is that it is really small, and fairly rich. This means that its highways had streetlights – more numerous and brighter than those in many cities. Twas very civilized.

Under these conditions, we crossed all of Luxembourg in about an hour, including the gas stop. Belgium’s highways were nearly as well lit, though decorated with signs that appeared to be warning us about an aggressive tribe of flying, shovel-flinging constructions workers, who apparently swoop down from the sky to attack passing motorists. These highways also featured two different restaurant/motels located in overpass like structures. Because, after all, nothing adds to a good night’s sleep like the soothing rumble of 18-wheelers passing under one’s bed.


_{This old city entrance was called the Hell's Gate. Way to welcome visitors!}

We didn’t get to Maastricht until 12:30, after some difficulty locating Babet’s boyfriend’s apartment (no one warned us that he lived in a 600-year-old convent). Despite being roughly 2 hours later than we promised, our Dutch hosts were awake and prepared with a selection of snacks.

The next day Amynah and I, armed with a selection of maps provided by Babet, wandered around the town aimlessly. We saw the river (the Meuse from which, with some linguistic contortions, Maastricht gets it’s name), we saw the shopping district, we saw ton of bikes. I am suffering from some serious Dutch bike envy now – there were some sweet rides in this town. And, contrary to expectations, there were very few bike lanes: bikes are not segregated from traffic as they are in Strasbourg, but a full-on, elbows-out army in the thick of the fighting of the road wars.


_{Yes, bikes and the Dutch: big stereotype. I don't care.}

After what was probably one of the best cappuccino’s I’ve had since leaving Montreal with Erik and his two boys, Babet took Amynah and I around on a tour of Maastricht.

The city reminded me quite a bit of North American burgs, though that might only be because I’ve become so accustomed to Alsatian architecture. Almost everything was red brick, making all the buildings look like they were built in the 1940s, instead of the 1490s.


_{Coal barge, with Bridge of St Sevatious in the distance. The end bit was bombed in WWII}

It’s a fairly small city, and Babet explained that up until this century the main industry had been mining, removing minerals from the Netherlands’s hill (yes, I intended the singular. No, I am not one hundred percent sure I’m joking). Otherwise, the main industry seemed to be God – not churches, though there were some impressive ones. On the other hand, the place seemed to be littered with ex-monasteries and convents, most of which seem to have been converted into condos.

For the food-lovers amongst my miniscule and indifferent readership, we intended to feast on Dutch cuisine that evening. However, Erik informed us that “Dutch cuisine” consists mainly of mashed potatoes and boiled vegetables. We therefore went for the next best thing: Indonesian cuisine, which I am happy to report, was delicious. In fact, should you ever find yourself in Maastricht, I highly recommend the Indisch eetcafé “De Branding” on Koestraat, and not just because I wanted to type “Eetcafé.”

Anyway, more photos here.

Tomorrow: Antwerp, where, through inattentive walking, we ended up with diamonds on the soles of our shoes. Those things are impossible to get out.

The bright side

I'm doing an article on research that indicates that Global Warming, and specifically the melting of Greenland's ice sheet, is worse than previously believed. Given that pretty much all recent climate change science indicates that things are worse than we believed, I'm having some difficulty in coming up with a fresh approach to writing this one.

So far, I'm trying to resist the temptation to start with "Good news today for Nordic real-estate speculators...."

Schwartzwald of Babel

Spent the weekend in the Schwartzwald/Forêt Noire/Black Forest. The trip was organized by my French teacher, Danielle – she invited all of her pupils plus a few of her friends. In all there was about twenty of us, with nothing in common other than mutual imcomprehensibility.

Nonethless, it was an excellent time. In all, there were about a dozen countries represented, everyone game for a good weekend of hiking in the hills of the Black Forest.

We arrived at the lodge at around noon. It was a fairly rough place – quite literally in the middle of an isolated cow pasture, without any cows. It’s main vocation is as a cross country skiing post. There were only four rooms for two – Amynah and I were lucky enough to snag one. Everyone else had to bunk together.

Considering that most of us had never met, conversation came easily. We set out immediately, led by Danielle’s dog and the Inn’s resident canine/host, sped on our way by a jaunty harmonica tune played by Danielle’s son.

The skies looked pretty threatening, but that actually worked in our favour – it is only appropriate that the Black Forest be shrouded in gloom, after all. We stopped for lunch overlooking a deserted valley, not a sign of human life disturbing the view.

We headed on just as the skies opened up. Amynah and I were the only ones who were completely unprepared for the rain (despite having been well informed by the German weather service that this eventuality was a near-certainty). However, a couple of folks with waterproof jackets lent us their brollies and we made it too the “tea house” lodge without getting entirely soaked.

After a nice hour long rest there, we headed out once more, under the curious gaze of some German cows. The rain let up pretty quickly and we were back in the lodge by 3 in the afternoon.


_{Back to the lodge}

This being Germany, we then had to participate in some communal nudity – the lodge may not have had private rooms or adequate plumbing, but it did have a sauna. The girls went first, while I played cards with the Niky the Brit, Sami the Finn and Hiroyasu the Japanese guy.

Our turn came. Needless to say, we relied entirely on Sami the Finn to explain the etiquette. I have to say, I’m not a big fan of the sauna concept – fifteen minutes sitting in 85 degree heat (that’s freaking Celsius people!) stops being pleasant after the first five minutes, unbearable after ten for someone of my delicate constitution. I understand why jumping into a hole hacked into a frozen lake seems like a good idea after that.

After we all showered (separately), we headed down for dinner. The innkeepers were unilingual, as was the menu, and I missed the translation that Danielle (who speaks Alsatian, French, German and English perfectly). I therefore decided to order the dish with the longest name on the menu: wildschweinruckersteak mit spaetzel. Apparently, word length is directly connected to cooking time, so I had to wait until everyone else was finished eating before my rump steak of wild boar arrived. Also, they ran out of spaetzel, which is a kind of pasta that I love (the steak was very good nonetheless).

Afterwards, Qi (a Chinese post-doc) suggested we play a game of “killer.” This is a great parlour game for a group of people who don’t know each other: everyone draws a card. All the cards are red except the joker and a black ace. Whoever draws the ace is the killer, the joker is the judge who runs the game. The judge asks everyone to close their eyes, then the killer opens theirs and selects their “victim.” Everyone opens their eyes, the judge says who has been killed, and everyone needs to guess who does it by voting. Whoever gets the most votes has to reveal their card – if they aren’t the killer, they’re dead, and the killer goes free for another round.



A game like this requires a certain amount of energy to be fun, and Qi provided it. Seemingly shy, she turned into a total drama queen (despite having no French and very little English) once the game started. She went out of her way to accuse me (“His face is so red! Why is his face so red? He must be the killer!”) in such an over the top way that it convinced everyone that she was the “killer,” (she wasn’t) thus sacrificing herself so that everyone else would have a good time. Anyway, it made me wish that I spoke Chinese, as there is obviously a wicked sense of humour on the other side of the language barrier: “you accuse me? You must understand – this is serious business! There is a life at stake here!”

I ended up being “killed” twice, by complete strangers both times. And both times, everyone blamed Amynah, as she would obviously have motive. Her defence, which I hardly found heartening, was that she found me too amusing to kill.

The next day was much sunnier and we all headed out for a 10 km hike through the hills. After the bonding through the murders, suspicion, accusation and counter-accusations of the night before, conversation was much easier. Amynah and I even scored an invitation to Aleppo from Lama a Canada-obsessed Syrian (who, incidentally, had killed me with no provocation the night before), which we fully intend to take advantage of.


_{Lama surveys her realm}

It was interesting walking and talking with people – with twenty people, conversations tended to shift according to one’s walking pace, not language. Amynah and I had to make a point of slowing down so that we wouldn’t end up speaking only with each other for the whole trip), as we were consistently at the head of the pack along with the German dog. At one point, I therefore ended up in a conversation with an Italian girl who had very little French and a Lebanese woman who had very little English. My French, I was happy to discover, was pretty much up to the task.

Most delightful yet, at some point Danielle took Amynah and I aside and invited us to another hike for the following weekend. I feel like we passed an audition or something. More photos can be found here.

Disco Death

Busy weekend - spent Saturday and Sunday hiking in the Black Forest/Forêt Noire/Schwartzwald with twenty-odd other folk largely drawn from Amynah's institute. Much fun was had, and a proper write up will follow.

On our return yesterday afternoon, we went to see a live Bollywood-style show, (called, appropriately enough, "Bollywood") along with Strasbourg's only other Ismaili and a few of her relatives.

The show was a travelling production that aimed to bring all the melodrama, paegantry and razzle-dazzle of a typical Bollywood movie to the stage, largely through show-stopping dance numbers.

It was entertaining, though what the largely French audience made of it I can only wonder. It told the story of a girl trying to make it as a choreographer in the Indian film industry, despite the opposition of her grandfather, who wants her to focus on traditional dance, despite having been a legendary Bollywood choreographer in his own day. Needless to say, they stop speaking, he starts drinking and eventually falls on to her deathbed, thus bringing our heroine back to her home village, disillusioned with the industry and looking for her childhood love.

The show rattled though a number of latter-day Bollywood hit songs (many of which, I'm unafraid to admit, I quite enjoy) though many of these were the modern MTV influenced stuff that must have been utterly bewildering to the numerous French and German ladies who had dug actual saris and shlwar kameezes out of God knows what closets, presumably out of respect to this traditional cultural event they were about to witness.

Interestingly, the guy who played her love spoke nary a word in the whole show, prompting Amynah to speculate that he had an undisguisable Cockney accent (the show was in English). She also speculated that he earned a premium for having to perform shirtless through the whole show.

In any case, I enjoyed myself right up until the end when our heroine, having just won a major award for her choreography, dedicates a dance to her recently-departed grandfather - the one who wanted her to focus on meaningful, traditional dance. So, what song does she pick to honour his memory, and to serve as the grand finale for a show ostensibly about the superiority of the old ways? A little tune called "It's the time to disco."

Eyes still smarting from the blinding glare of a million sequins, we stumbled out into the fragrant Strasbourg night, only to discover that Sarkozy won the election. We fell asleep to the sounds of his supporters celebrating in front of the cathedral. Or his opponents forming a rebellious mob. It's hard to tell. One thing's for sure - they weren't doing no disco.

Worst Canadian

So The Beaver (Canada's National History Magazine) is running a contest to name "The Worst Canadian."

As someone who cares about history, I generally loath these "worst/best/most important" type lists. On the other hand, a project like this fits well into my cranky tempermant and I am a fairly frequent contributor to the Beaver, and happy to help them out with their publicity stunt, providing they refrain from the temptation to bring in any of these pompous goobers to act as "advocates."*

Now, a contest like this is going to have some very predicable nominees. Most of the East will nominate the current Prime Minister. Most of the west will nominate Trudeau. Most people under thirty will nominate Celine Dion. Apparently the current leader is Harold Ballard, proving that Torontonians self-regard truly is an infinite quantity.

Because I am fairly humourless when it comes to history, I am going to actually take the question seriously and nominate someone who has been pretty near forgotten by history, which is probably the worst punishment he himself could conceive of. My nominee, is Sir Sam Hghes, a bigoted, incompetent, self-aggrandizing martinet whose mismanagement of the Canadian Forces in the early years of WWI led directly to who knows how many needless deaths of Canadian soldiers.


_{Image from www.Canadianheritage.org}

This delight of a human being built much of his political career on Catholic- and French Canadian bashing. He lobbied to have himself given a Victoria Cross for an action in the Boer War for twenty years after the fact - after, in fact, he had already had effectively appointed himself a General.

When war came, he insisted that the Canadian Expeditionary Force be equipped with material provided by his industrialist cronies, meaning troops were sent into the trenches with cardboard shoes and jamming rifles with bayonets that would fall off.

That he was paranoid and almost assuredly insane does nothing to mitigate his status as the greatest - and deadliest - bufoon ever elected to Canada's Parliament. More here.

So. Anyone have any suggestions for your favourites? Margaret Atwood? Mr Dress-up? The X-Men's Wolverine? Let's hear them!

* _{Excluding Paul Gross, who I quite like, even if I don't know why.}

We are the champions

And as a final note to the relative marathon of blog posts this week (five in three days!), a quick congratulations to my friends and former colleagues at McGill, who recently found out Headway has won the Gold in the Canadian Council for the Advancement of Education "Prix d'Excellence" in the magazine category.

This is impressive for a number of reasons: as a twice-a-year publication with a small budget, it was a minnow in a sea of well-funded alumni magazine sharks. Not to mention, 2006 (the nomination period) was the first full year of publication. And finally, every issue so far has had a different editor, (the last of which has brought it to the current peak of success it deserves, even if I get half the prize money anyway. What? No prize money?)

History comedy

We saw 300 last week, if only so that I would understand all the various Youtube parodies floating around the Internet. And while I know the movie has received much criticism for its historic inaccuracies (which are legion), it's fetishization of militaristic fascism and it's arguably pro-slaughter-the-Mulsims propagandistic slant, I personally found it to be great comedy.

By far, the laugh out loud funniest scene occurred just after King Leonidas had learned that the Persians had found that infamous goat path and had surrounded them (Damn you, traitorous goats!) He gives a rousing, anachronistic speech about freedom, fighting for what you believe, honour etc, in the much-mocked I. AM. SPEAKING. INSPIRINGINGLY. BECAUSE. I'M. YELLING. EACH. WORD. INDIVIDUALLY! As he finishes, his captain, who has just lost his son, approaches him, and a great hush falls over the assembled troops, all of whom have sent the previous hour lopping off Persian heads like they were whiffle balls. The captain, speaking in lower case letters to indicate his seriosity, says "I've lived my life with no regrets. That is the Spartan way. But I wish I had told my son I loved him while he lived."

Honest to God, I half expected "Cat's in the Cradle" to start playing. That kind of comedy requires a sure directorial hand and a brilliant scriptwriter to pull off. The farcical nature of the film was heightened by blood being splattered in such copious amounts you suspect they were using off-camera army of blood-wranglers to toss buckets of the stuff at the actors. That, with other subtle notes of satire like introducing each actor with a panning shot that started with his six-pack and worked its way up, made 300 funniest action-comedy spoof I've ever seen.

Though the Youtube clips are pretty good as well...

More election stuff

Two posts in one day? How lucky are you?

Having indulged at least one of my reader’s thirst for adventure (NB – For the purposes of the blog, “Adventure” is defined as any physical activity that takes me outdoors. Danger need not be a part of adventure, nor novelty) I will now proceed to the deadly serious business of politics.

The second (and final) round of presidential elections are on Sunday. The candidate of the “right,” (such as it is here), Nicholas Sarkozy, is still enjoying the lead. Segolene Royal is still trailing.

It reminds me of Canada, somewhat. “Sego” is doing her best to remind the French that Sarko feasts on foie gras stolen from orphans – hell, made from orphans, just like Stephen Harper's foes accuse him of adopting stray kitten solely for the pleasure of putting them in bags to throw into the Rideau Canal. And, as in Canada, people believe it. But they’re voting for him anyway.

Partially, this is because of a well-documented desire for change. The 35-hour work week and other restrictions on companies are insane, and impose a heavy burden on both companies and job seekers. It also forces the ambitious abroad. I am engaging in a language exchange with a guy here who is learning English specifically so he can leave his contract-to-contract existence and get his highly qualified butt to a country where he can get a permanent job and support his wife and three year old daughter. He’s not alone either. Many of the highly educated and congenitally left-leaning folk we know here want a real change and Sarko is the one promising to do it and nevermind rumours of his habit of terrorizing the countryside during the full moon.

So, Sarko is likely to win it, even though a) no one believes he will actually manage to change anything in the face of the unions and street protests and b) he is very effective at making people think he hates immigrants, muslims and the poor.

The kingmaker in this race is François Bayrou, the “centrist” who came in third. Both Sego and Sarko are prostrating themselves in front of his voters. In a fit of pique or principal (it’s so hard to tell) Bayrou has refused to endorse either.

Jean-Marie LePen, the extreme-right Front National candidate that Sarko was so desperately emulating during the first round has, for his part, called on his voters to boycott the vote entirely. He didn’t try to dress this up as anything but pique however – Sarko had “stolen” his program, leading to his worst showing in decades (10 percent) and didn’t deserve to get in at all.

That embarrassing attempt to remain relevant in the second round probably won’t work. Even if all LePen’s voters got the message through whatever communications network cave-dwellers use, Sarkozy still only needs to pick up 30 percent of Bayrou’s vote to win. Sego, according to the math, needs around 80 percent.

My call? None yet. I’ll wait and see what the Internet tells me.

May Day

Yesterday was May Day which is still an actual holiday in France. In terms of holidays, it’s a bigger deal than Christmas, if the importance of a holiday can be expressed as an inverse ratio of public tranport service (Christmas, the trams ran once every half hour. Yesterday, not at all).

The telephone poles of Strasbourg had been plastered with retro-revolutionary “Take to the streets” posters, so we were unsurprised when our morning was interrupted with loud chanting and music. Turns out the May Day parade was going right by our house.

As a history enthusiast, this was sort of like going to the zoo for a wildlife biologist: Hey look - actual Communists! I thought they were extinct! They followed the much larger union contigents, but they were honest-to-god Communists (not a bunch of teenagers with an ill-understood copy of the Manifesto. Reflecting the hard times they've fallen on in recent years, the Marxists were splintered into about a dozen factions, including the three dudes (one of whom was about 7 years old) representing the Union Senegalese Communists. The largest of the communist groups even had a banner with the faces of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. (Dear Comrades: If I may share just a thought for your consideration. Stalin - really? That’s the face you want on your banners to advertise your ideology? You don’t think he might be even a little off putting for anyone who isn’t a complete sociopath?)

Parade over, we hopped on our bikes to have a nice outdoor lunch with a Canadian family we know here. On the way, we passed about a dozen sellers of fleur de lys. It is a tradition, (strictly enforced” to sell little nosegays of these things on May first. This being France, which has no shortage of rules, you can actually be fined for selling them any earlier than May Day.

Despite my curiosity, we didn’t buy any. Instead, for your viewing pleasure, we did acquire some roses from our friends, whose front yard is overgrown with them. They are now sitting in our plastic water bottle cum flower vase and making the apartment smell nice.

Rainbows and ponies

One of the delights of living in Alsace is the incredible network of bike trails that meander through the countryside like rivulets of melted cheese. Roughly 8,000 kilometres of melted cheese, if one can imagine.

I had purchased a new-to-me bike to replace the retro-styled 400 lb one that was stolen from my apartment lobby in December, yet so far had only used it to make the trip out to Amynah’s lab for my French lessons. Amynah had taken it into her head to go to a town called Molsheim, which is the terminus of a cross-border bike trail (the other end is the German city of Offenburg, where we plan to go next week).

We didn’t end up hitting the road until 3PM (a “getting to know you meeting” with a guy I’m planning on doing a language exchange ended up going longer than I thought, forcing us to have an impromptu lunch, the rough nature of which was revealed by the presence of but a single cheese on the mid-feast cheese plate).

The weather was perfect when we headed out – very little wind, temperatures in the high twenties, only a few clouds of innocent aspect.

We had no real idea how far Molsheim was, nor did we have a clue as to what delights the town held. We weren’t worried about that however - it rarely matters in Alsace, since every village reminds me of still-in-their-boxes collectors’ items: “Each one unique! Get the whole set! Bound to gain value over time!” The only thing missing is a little price tag and certificate of authenticity.

The trip started off well enough. The path followed a tiny canal that seemed too small to be for navigation. Perhaps it had originally been meant for irrigation. As always, we were out of Strasbourg and into the countryside in a time that I still find surprising, accustomed as I am to fighting through the thick cocoon of suburbs that envelope typical North American cities.

It being a delightful afternoon, the path was chock full of Sunday strollers, rollerbladers and fellow velocipedists. Now, despite the fact that neither of us are exactly athletes, we were passing everyone on the path, except for the spandex-tube-clad hardcore dudes on the racing bikes.

Amynah attributed this to our North American impatience, though the fact that we were probably the only ones on the path with any sort of destination probably helped. Not knowing how far that destination lay was plenty motivation to keep up the pace as well.

Not to say that taking it easy didn’t have its merits – farmers fields gave way to quiet woods, in which isolated cottages nestled beside babbling brooks. Horses played in grassy fields while cattle grazed nearby. I think I even saw a little deer cavorting with his talking rabbit friend.

Nonethless, it all merged into a greenish Doppler blur as we zipped past at top speed. For we had to make it the wonders of Molsheim, whatever they might be.

Well, we were not alone. The closer we got to the town, the more the bike path cleared of all the human detritus that was slowing our headling pace. In a way, we thought that we would be able to have a an ice cream to cool down, a coffee to perk up, and then a nice stroll around a quiet French village.

It looked promising at first – we passed an old Jesuit College and city walls before coming to the Medieval city gate. However, once we made it inside, we were immediately assaulted by a veritable army of bugs.

VW bugs. Turns out there was an automobile enthusiast convention in town, and the place was more full of German engineered vehicles since 1944. Like any auto show, it had a semi-proficient country-rock cover band, trophy girls, and mustachioed dudes in cowboy hats (apparently blissfully unaware that VW Bugs aren’t exactly macho vehicles).


I suspect the reason the Buggers (ha!) picked Molsheim is because it is home to the Bugatti Foundation Museum. That this was an Italian motor company makes no difference – the first syllable of the name matches, they make cars, so bring on the Herbies!

Needless to say, the amplified cries of “Est-ce que vous êtes pretes pour rock and roll?” and the awe-inspiring hum of one hundred VW engines revving weren’t exactly relaxing, so we beat a hasty retreat.

Now, despite the fact that we have a nearly unblemished record of being caught in torrential downpours on our Sunday excursions, I decided to tempt fate and stop in a little town called Dambach on the way back, since it looked pretty. These little villages are funny, in a way – it is hard to comprehend how small they are. Dambach, for instance, occupies an area smaller than a shopping mall. You could easily fit Wolfisheim, Riquewihr, Kayserberg and St Marie aux Mines in the parking lot and still have room for the Toys ‘R Us.

SAdly, if Alsace is the West Edmonton Mall of pretty malls, Dambach is the Gap – enticing store front, nothing that interesting inside. On the other hand, if you look closely at the roof of the mansion in the background, you can see and excellent example of the colourful tilework on their roofs.


So we hit the path back, hoping to make it home before dark. Though we were pretty tired from our sprint out, we set a good pace, and since it was close to dinner there was nothing else on the path. Or so we thought.

In fact, the crepuscular hours in France, as in Canada, are prime “flying around irritatingly” time for Mayflies. It was a horror show. They got in our eyes, in our clothes, behind our glasses, in our ears. Any time I tried to talk they’d fly in my mouth. It was horrific. At one point I looked at my bare arms only to see them writhing with hundreds of the little monsters trapped in my arm hairs.

When the first drops of rain began to fall, it was a welcome relief. The cold drops were refreshing, and it seemed to clear the bugs away. It intensified slightly, but not enough to cause real distress, but enough to clear the air of the plague.

_{"What's that idiot doing taking our photo? Can't he see it's starting to rain? Moooo-ve it!"}

Soon, the rain stopped. We passed through a zone where we had brown fields just beginning to burst with green stalks of corn on our right. On the left the canal, and beyond that cavorting horses. Framing it all, an arc en ciel.

I then had one of my God-I-love-this-place moments. It’s all rainbows and ponies here.

About five kilometers from Strasbourg, France decided to quell my ardour, by dumping a few hundred gallons of water on it. First, a rumble of thunder, as if God himself were saying “Pedal fast, little man. Try to outrun my wrath!”

We couldn’t. It rained, and rained. Those few people still on the path took shelter under the trees, looking at us in bewilderment as we zipped by, soaked and trying to see through our fly-speckled sunglasses.

Worse yet, the rain stopped as we got into Strasbourg – apparently it was an extremely localized storm. Drivers slowed to gawk at us, probably certain that we had fallen into a lake.

The laugh was on them, for we were harbingers: as we locked up our bikes in the local parking garage (they have parking garages for bikes here, can you believe it?) the skies opened up again, but this time with the obvious purpose of sweeping all of Strasbourg into the Rhine. Buckets of water cascaded from the heavens while tourists and locals scuttled into doorways to take shelter.

Not Amynah and I though. We strode confidently through the tempest as the townsfolk looked upon us in awe. We would not cower before thunder, lightning, flood, plagues of bugs or plague of Bugs. Not today. For this day, we were the conquerors of Molsheim, Lords of Strasbourg and Viceroys of the Velocipede.

We graciously ignored the plebian muttering of "Ils est fou!" as we passed.

Mars attacks II - Kleingrünvolksflugzeug*

This photo would have gone so well with my previous posting, had I only thought of it. This is located on the German side of the Jardin de deux rives, which is the park that straddles both sides of the Rhine, intended to symbolize the peace and amity of all Europe. Because nothing says peace and amity like a mock-up UFO.


PS - the title, which I'm fairly certain is not a real word, means "little green people aircraft"

Mars attacks!

Me: Hey, did you hear they've discovered an Earth like planet that might have water?

Amynah: Uh oh.

(As long as I'm doing the self-indulgent blogger thing, I may as well embrace it fully. This belongs in the category of blog posts of "conversations that are far more funny to the people holding them than those poor souls forced to read them on the Internet").

Oh jeez, one of these

All right, I have nothing intelligent or interesting to write about right now, plus I should be working. Therefore I will indulge Julie, who “tagged” me to fill this out. I am not doing it in good humour, as it is 28 degrees here, forcing us to sleep with our windows open. This, in turn, means that I was woken up several times over the course of the night, the last time at 3:45 AM by a drunken Neanderthal who was yelling at the top of his lungs while walking up our street. Not yelling anything in particular, mind you, just hollering like a six-month-old that just discovered they can make loud noises with that big hole in the front of their face. So, I’m under slept and thinking unkind thoughts about humanity right now.

Three Names You Go By:
1. Mark
2. Marc
3. Mr Reynolds

Three Parts of Your Heritage:
This makes me cranky. At what point do you get to just say “Canadian?” How many Brits point to their Norman heritage and say they’re part French? Anyway, if “Canadian” isn’t acceptable:
1. Irish
2. Scottish
3. German/Austrian

Three Things That Scare You:
1. Failure
2. Internet message boards
3. Canned peas

Three of Your Everyday Essentials:
1. Air
2. Food.
3. Water.

Three Things You Are Wearing Right Now:
1. A moccasin on my left foot.
2. A matching moccasin on my right foot.
3. My watch

Three of Your Favourite Songs Right Now:
(These are all Johnny-come-lately’s, - I’m not putting perpetual favorites up here, because what’s the point?)
1. Bleeding Heart Show, New Pornographers
2. Mes Emmerdes, Charles Aznvour
3. The Crane Wife, Decemberists

Three Things You Want in a Relationship (other than Love):
1. Sense of humour
2. Patience
3. Intelligence

Two Truths and a Lie (in any order):
1. I love doing Internet quizzes
2. I hate doing Internet quizzes
3. The first one was the lie.

Three PHYSICAL Things About the Opposite Sex that Appeal to You:
1) The parts between the top of the head and the bottom of the feet
2) The parts between the back and the front
3) The parts between the left and the right.

Three of Your Favourite Hobbies:
1. Making up answers to lists like this to make me seem more interesting and well rounded
2. Banjo construction
3. Helper-monkey training

Three Things You Want to Do Really Badly Right Now (But Can't):

1. Shoot an accordionist
2. Fairmount bagels. Cream cheese. My stomach. Now.
3. Stop that damn helper monkey from playing my banjo before the glue has set.

Three Places You Want To Go:
1. A world where I’d get the last five minutes back
2. Japan
3. Congo

Three Things You Want to Do Before You Die:
1. Make sure I’m wearing clean underwear. I’d hate to disappoint my Mom.
2. Remember that my last words have to be clever and/or mysterious. I’m thinking “Shmidt! You bastard!”
3. Umm… clean my desk? No one deserves that burden.

Three Ways That You Are Stereotypically a Girl/Guy:
What’s a girl/guy? My cross dressing days are long behind me, thank you very much.

Three People I Would Like to See Take This Quiz:
Nelson Mandela, Charles Manson, Ringo Starr

Further to the driving permit

Interestingly, Amynah's permit has my name on it as her husband. Mine has no space whatsoever for a spouse. The fact that she's the scientist and I'm here on a spousal visa doesn't matter. She's MY woman, because France says so.

Also, French drivers permits are the cheapest things I've ever seen - it's a pink piece of paper with my photo taped on and a crappy lamination job. My university was making harder-to-counterfeit I.D. cards than that a decade ago.

Clairvoyance

Well, I called it. That is, I called my inability to call anything. With a record turnout (40-odd million, or roughly 75 percent) France chose right-leaning candidate Nicholas Sarkozy (31.1 percent) and Socialist Segolene Royal (25.8)to be their candidates for president.

It was ultra-nationalist Le Pen that tanked, coming in with ten percent while centrist François Bayrou came in with 18.5 percent. None of the other fringe candidates even managed the five percent they require to be reimbursed for their expenses.

In Alsace Sego’s near local-girl credentials got her nowhere: she pulled in 17 percent to Sarkozy’s 36 percent here. Both Bayrou and LePen also did better here than in France overall, with 21 and 13 percent, respectively.

Both the Dernier Nouvelles d’Alsace (DNA) and Le Monde attributed these results to the Le Pen effect: No one wanted a “humiliating” repeat of the 2002 election, where he made it into the second round and voters were confronted with a choice between the right-leaning and ineffectual Chirac and the ultra-right Le Pen.

The right-leaning DNA put a positive spin on it: under an editorial titled “Au revoir le XXieme siecle!” (Goodbye, twentieth century!” they hailed the development as historic for France. The Socialists, they wrote, have never been weaker, Le Pen repudiated and the centrist Bayrou who claimed to beyond the old left-right divide (and who has, as yet, endorsed no one) “though eliminated, will be at the heart” of the second round of campaigning.

His endorsement will be key: one can presume Le Pen boosters, will go to Sarkozy, even as the latter tacks more to the centre in the second round. Segolene has picked up the endorsement of all the leftist candidates, though their combined tally of ten percent of the vote isn’t enough on its own. It’s a measure of how disliked Sarkozy is, as a person, that no party to the right of him (including Le Pen) has endorsed him.

As usual when elections approach, I am in the “a pox on both their houses” category. In addition to a general fuzziness on policy, several foreign policy mis-steps (including endorsing Quebec separatism, not that it did the PQ any good) Royal has called for mandatory singing of le Marseillaises for immigrants and giving a French tricolour to every household. What is this, 1848? Sarkozy, for his part, has chased after LePen’s cadre of troglodytes with unseemly enthusiasm, saying things to immigrants along the lines of “If you don’t like it here, you can just leave.”

Unbowed, I will post another prediction here as we get closer to May 6, the second polling day. I fully expect said prediction to be wrong. However, you’re welcome to throw brickbats my way, or post speculation of your own here.

La presidentielle

_{Boards specially erected for elections posters in front of Strasbourg's city hall. I photographed these in particular because they're just across the street from where La Marseillaise was performed for the first time. Yay historic resonance!}

Today, I became a little more French. I am now the proud owner of a French driver’s permit.* I did so for a few reasons – first, because it is a straight exchange when you have a Quebec license and it will save me from needing to bring my passport every time I want to rent a car. It should also relieve me from having to pay the two parking tickets and accumulated court fines that are attached to my Canadian license. Mark Reynolds – fugitive from justice!

In honour of this auspicious occasion, I bring you my thoughts on the French election.

Several years ago, a combination of youthful idealism, free time and desperate need for money led me to work for a certain political party for a few provincial and federal elections in Halifax.

I was pretty much at the bottom of the chain – my job, along with several dozen other mercenaries and idealists was to do what is called “push polling” on the phone. We’d read a script that would associate our candidate** with grandmothers, apple pie, puppies AND kittens (unless you’re allergic, in which our candidate really likes teddy bears).

Then we’d ask something along the lines of “do you agree with ______ that puppies, apple pie, blue skies and grandmothers are good things?” Then we’d rank them on a scale of 1 to 5 of support. A ranking of 1 meant you were with us, and would then be pestered to take a sign, a ranking of 5 meant you were confirmed for another candidate in which case we’d ask the Sisters of Mercy to pray for your soul.

The poor suckers who said they were undecided were worst off – they’d get called again and again until they gave an answer. This was not a good idea, because half the time in NS when people say they don’t know it really means “no” and they’re just being polite.

The point of all this nostalgia is that even though I was doing mindless, repetitive work, there was a feeling of energy. People talked about the campaign, the “boiler room” was always high energy, even when we all hated the work, and many of us volunteered on other parts of the campaign – putting up signs, doing door to door work, stuffing envelopes and the like. The city – especially in competitive ridings – were plastered with signs. Whole neighbourhoods would go orange, or blue or red.

This is in sharp contrast to France. Electoral rules here are extremely strict. For instance, the media is required to give every candidate – even those running with no organization and unlikely to get 2 percent of the vote – equal time. Given that there are 12 candidates running for president, that means if Sarkozy, (currently leading with 27 percent of the vote) says something worth two minutes of air time, every one of his opponents need to be given two minutes of air time in the same program.

Needless to say, that means that most of the coverage of the election tends to stay away from the specifics of any one candidates platform and focus more on generalities, like poll numbers. For instance, Radio France International’s Presidentielle coverage this morning – two days before the first round of voting - consisted of a statement from a professor who complained that no one was talking enough, or honestly about the economy. Even then, there was nothing about what any candidate was saying about the economy, just that it was insufficient and wrong anyway.

I’m not sure if election signs are covered by these rules or not, but I am blown away that there are so few. The only ones I’ve seen are on central billboards mounted for the purpose, meaning that Sarkozy, Royal (26 percent) get exactly as much space as the Trotskyites and single-issue “tear down the EU” type candidates. I’ve yet to see a single bumper sticker or sign in a private dwelling. Politics seems to be something that is practiced and regulated by the state - the people have very little to do with it.

The political discourse – and the view of politics – is also very different. In the U.S. the word “liberal” is a political slur, implying a left-ish total lack of morality. In France, “liberalisme is also a slur, but implying a right-ish embrace of free markets, globalization and big business. That all of those thing or evil is taken on face value, even by the right. Both interpretations are a bit bizarre for a Canadian who takes small “l” liberal as a compliment and equates (usually) big “L” Liberal with “government.”

Here the left is very left. Segolene Royal, the Socialist candidate, is an actual red-blooded socialist – not the domesticated NDP or British Labour version. Remarkably, she has a half dozen candidates even further to the left of her to worry about.

On the right you have Sarkozy, who in North American terms is about as right leaning as Paul Martin or Hilary Clinton. Further right than him you have Jean-Marie Le Pen, a man generally seen as a crypto-fascist, and yet polls at about 12 percent.

For anyone following the election might have heard of François Bayrou, the “centrist” candidate. He’s doing well – just shy of 20 percent of the vote right now, but no one likes him. Why? Well, someone in Amynah’s lab (echoed by an editorial in today’s le Monde said that it is important to have “a clear vision of society.” In other words, it’s the ideology, not the ideas, that matter. Bayrou, in promising to take the best ideas from the left and right, isn’t playing by the rules. Again, very odd for someone who comes from a country where that is exactly how any government gets in power.

In any case, predicting this one is driving the pundits nuts. Lots of people are ashamed to admit they are voting for LePen (Alsace apparently likes him, though all of his posters are heavily vandalized) and therefore claim they’re voting for Sarkozy, so his numbers might be lower than they look and LePen’s higher.

In turn, Royal has impressed no one during this campaign (she suggested France create a "Sixth Republic" - why not? Why stop at five? And how else are you going to get to the lucky seven?) , but people may abandon Bayrou for her at the last minute rather than risk the embarrassment of having LePen reach the second round again, as he did in 2002. Similarly, the other leftist candidates might bleed support to her for the same reason.

The general feeling seems to be that no one particularly feels that Royal is very impressive, or even competent, but no one likes Sarkozy either, especially as he’s been pandering to the right in order to scoop LePen’s votes (he's also considered a fiscal conservative, even though his spending pledges are, at €72 billion, only €2 billion less than the "free spending" Royal's). That’ll drive off the moderates. There is a huge number of undecideds, and no one has any idea where they’re going to go.

Despite the futitlity inherent in analyzing these numbers, I’m going to indulge in some punditry, based entirely on what I’ve read in the local papers, Amynah's lab gossip, and a random number I found here in the rear area of my pants.

Royal will win it with just over 30 percent. Sarkozy will come in second, also with about thirty. LePen will score less than 20. Bayrou will drop to about 15.

I fully expect to be completely wrong in all of that – I’ve never predicted an election accurately in my life, and being a semi-hermit hasn’t given me any particular insight. However, I’m posting my opinions here if only so people can come back here on Monday and mock me. Enjoy!

*We applied Monday. French bureaucracy is frustrating, but holy heck is it quick. When we went in on Monday, the woman at the kiosk immediately told us to come back with the proper paperwork. When we told her we had the proper paperwork, she almost fell off her ergonomically correct chair. No etranger had ever before accomplished this feat.

**and we called for candidates all over mainland Nova Scotia. Cape Breton had its own phone centre, presumably on the theory that voters there would be put off by mainlander accents trying to tell them what to do.

Rock climbing

It has been a while since I updated, but I have a very good excuse. I have been completely unable to move my arms.

No, I haven’t been attacked by Argentinian water rodents again (that’s a great story, for those who don’t already know it). Rather, I went rock climbing.

We had been invited a couple of weeks ago by Audrey and her boyfriend Greg. Both have been doing it for quite some time – over a decade each. I had idly been asking Greg about it over the aperitifs and he said “You seem really interested. You should come out with us!”

Now, there were two kinds of miscommunication going on here. I was doing what we in the English speaking world call “making conversation.” That’s clearly different from expressing interest.

However, either because Greg misinterpreted my questions or because he is insane (events bear out the latter hypothesis) he told us to come out with him and his rock climbing buddies.

He then pulled out a black and white photo of the cliff to which he wanted to take us. As he handed it over, he assured me that this rock face had all sorts of easy “lines” on it, suitable for a beginner.

“Besides” he said “I’m a fully certified instructor.”

The photo looked innocuous enough – a long line, several different routes, some of which looked like steep hills. How hard could it be? It’s been a while since I did anything manly like this so I said, sure! Let’s do it!
_{Greg in action}

Now, half of me fully expected that nothing would come of this – why would these guys want to go out of their way to drag a couple of newbies up the bunny slopes when they could be doing their Spiderman routines on a hard wall? On the other hand, I started to get kind of excited: it was something new, we’d get out into the country and get some exercise.

Well, two weeks after that dinner (the wine fondue, for those who are interested) the invitation came through. Saturday morning we were to put on those clothes to which we were least emotionally attached and meet a man described to Amynah as “a tall guy with a green Opel” in the Auchon parking lot (Auchon being a steroid-taking result of a WalMart breeding with a Superstore. It’s big, is what I’m trying to say).

So warned, I dragged my camping pants from the bottom of clothes where they’d been hibernating, Amynah put on some crappy capris she hadn’t worn in a year and we were off.

We managed to find the large man and his small car with no problem, oddly enough. WE piled in and introduced ourselves. Phillipe, it turns out, had been doing this rock-climbing (escalade, en Francais) thing for five years. His friend Karim had been at it for six months, and this was to be his first outdoor climb. Niether spoke a word of English.

As we set off, Phillippe turned around and looked at our clothes, ratty and wrinkled as they were.

“Do you have something to change into? Because those will get ruined,” he said.

Otherwise, the drive to Ottrott, where we were to meet Audrey and Greg, was pretty quiet. During the half hour I had time to contemplate things, like, if Karim has been climbing for six months, and this is the first time he’s done so outdoors, is it really a good idea to do this? Also, both Karim and Philippe looked to be in pretty good shape. I type for a living. Am I really ready for this?

Actually, that’s a lie. I didn’t think any of that until we arrived at the quarry. The cliff was a huge drooling beast, way bigger than the picture, in which it was a mere two inches. In reality it was thirty metres, straight up. Thirty metres, for anyone who is counting, is precisely thirty metres more cliff than I’d ever climbed in my life.

We all got harnessed up and Greg found an “easy” run to set the ropes up on. Now, Greg is an ordinary human being, to a casual observer. Get him on the bottom of a cliff, however, and you will very soon have him on the top of the cliff. That’s it. He climbs like Gretzky scores points, like the Habs miss playoffs, like Newfoundlanders club seals – like he was born doing it.

So, after seeing Greg scoot up a vertical face like he was fetching the mail, Audrey turned to me.

“Ok – it’s your turn!”

What? No lesson? Nope. Greg threw down a rope, they attached me to it and told me to climb a wall. So I stepped up to the cliff. I look up – no handhold there. I look down. No foothold there. I look to the side. No elevator button there.

“Now what?”

Well, I managed to get up about three metres on my own. On the first “line” I got up about four metres before Phillippe had to climb up and bodily haul me over a rock face. It got easier after that – if by easier you can ignore the banged knees, abraded arms, strained muscles, bruised abdomen and lumpy head.
_{Me - I'm the little speck in blue pants. Phillippe's in red. Greg is in white, way up there.}

Once I got to the top I was rewarded with a view of the Ottrott castle on the hill facing us. Pretty cool. However, I barely had time to catch my breath before Greg turned to me and said “Now for the fun part. You get to rappel down.”

Everyone has seen rappelling in the movies, and it does look fun – SWAT team members aand rescue personall bounding down walls and sliding down ropes. Like at an amusement park ride. Except you forget something – it involves the biggest “D’ya trust me? of all – you have to deliberately fall backwards off a rock hard cliff into a nothingness that only ends 100 feet below with the stone hard ground. You have a rope, of course, but who the heck believes in ropes?

Nonetheless, I did it. After I finished, I was told that in fact, they had put the never-been-in-a-harness-before beginners on a run that was classified as intermediate. Thanks!
_{Amynah's turn. I won't describe how she did, because it's my blog, and I am determined to rescue a semblance of male pride here}

We all did a few lines and over the course of the day, I noticed that everyone had their own swearing style. I tend to mention Jesus a lot. Karim, meanwhile tended to yell about “professional ladies.” Greg, being trilingual, would – on the rare occasions when he had difficulty – unleash a stream of syllables that must be fairly commonly heard in EU meetings when they’re not going well.

His multilingualism wasn’t a help with his instructions however, most of which boiled down to “C’est facile! Just do it!” I was understanding the French well enough to get instructions: “Votre main gauche en haute… NON! L’autre gauche!” However, asking for directions was a little harder, since my brain absolutely refuses to think in French when it’s a life or death situation (“Now, is ‘I can’t see what to do next’ present tense, future or conditional? And how does one conjugate ‘get me down, now!’?”)

On my second run, which I did without Phillipe’s aid, I made an interesting discovery. I was on a section of cliff, my left leg extended ninety degrees to my body, the sole of my shoe barely making contact with a half-centimetre ridge, my right foot wedged in a crevasse and both hands gripping with all my might to a dead tree stump when I had an epiphany: I’m not having very much fun.

Phillippe yelled at me to move my right foot to another crevasse and then I had a second epiphany: I might be not entirely comfortable with heights. I realized this because although my brain was entirely calm, because I knew I was attached to a rope, my right foot was not moving. It was perfectly comfortable where it was and it was going to stay there – along with the rest of my body, clinging to the rock like lichen – until the fire department arrived to peel me off.

At this point, Audrey helped matters immeasurably by whipping out her cellphone/MP3 player and putting on “I will survive.” I think it was supposed to be encouraging, but off course the first lines hit a little too close to home: “At first I was afraid, I was petrified…”

That helped. I managed to loosen my grip just enough to give her the finger.

Movie review - Sunshine: not so hot

Nothing but spoilers
We saw a film called Sunshine last night, drawn in by the movie posters plastering every bus stop and tram station in Strasbourg.

Going by the posters, it looked like it was going to be a good old fashioned summer blockbuster/disaster flick – something obviously involving a space ship and getting far closer than could possibly be healthy to the sun. Neither of us had heard of it before, which is odd as we both keep up on the entertainment news from home but we went anywhere.

As loyal readers of this here blog know, I generally only review movies here that I hate and I am delighted to report that Sunshine qualifies eminently. I feel bad ripping it apart here – as far as I could tell it was actually a small budget movie, possibly British or Australian, a noble attempt to compete with Hollywood in the dumb-as-a-sack-of-hammers blockbuster department. Criticizing it makes me feel slightly like I’m kicking a puppy.

On the other hand, there is a risk, however tiny, that someone reading this might be tempted to see it and feel I will have failed in my duty were I not to do my utmost to prevent that from happening.

The plot, such as it was, was established in a portentous voice over from the Captain of the Icarus II: “The sun is dying,” he says. His craft, the Icarus II has been sent to kick start our home star by dropping the mother of all atomic bombs into the centre of it before the earth turns into a giant snow cone.

You know it’s serious because he speaks really slowly. You know its dangerous because of a passing reference to Icarus I – the first mission, which went to the sun and was never heard of again. Anyone want to predict what happens next?

The movie stars the guy who played the flaming dude from the Fantastic Four movie, and the guy who played the Scarecrow from Batman Begins plus a lot of what are known in sci-fi movies as Ensign Cannon Fodders: filler characters that will need to be killed off one by one.

Movies set on long-term space missions all tend to fall into two categories: Alien, where sweaty actors do battle with each other, claustrophobic sets and a strange beastie lurking in the air ducts. Or they fall into the Solaris mode, where strange space phenomena make us realize that the Final Frontier is, in fact, our own souls.

Sunshine had no idea whatsoever which kind of movie it was and appeared to fail at both, like Event Horizon but without the budget.

After some brief (and poorly edited) establishing scenes wherein we learn which character is the wise captain, the philosopher/doctor, the arrogant cowboy, the tormented scientist, the love interest and the level-headed female character who takes down the men with her wise cracks, the cowardly yet ambitious second officer).

Suddenly, a fight on the bridge occurs between the cowboy and tormented scientist, handily establishing them as rivals and the main characters. What they were fighting about was never established but never mind! We’re picking up a distress signal!

From whom? Why, the seven-years gone Icarus I! No one could possibly be alive after all this time, could they?

Through a shoddy use of statistics that my scientist readers will appreciate, they decide that if they can pick up the bomb on the Icarus I they will have two bombs and therefore double their chances to jump-start the sun. The fact that something obviously went horribly wrong on the first ship did not enter into their calculations at all. Not surprising – this is presumably only the second best crew earth had to offer, the best one having been on the Icarus I.

So they change course, except they forget to readjust their giant sun shield (damned B-Team!), which is then damaged. Now, call me crazy, but if they have developed the technology to remind us to turn our headlights off when we park our cars, do you think they might have come up with a similar warning system for a space ship that is supposed to save all mankind? A little “beep” or a flashing light or something?

In the process of fixing the shield, wise old captain dies. One down! Why’d you get him to do the introductory voice over if we weren’t going to get to know him?

Problem solved the merry Icarus II continues on to the Icarus I. Arriving, they find that it had been deliberately sabotaged, all the crew are dead. Or are they? No one did a head count and faster than you can say “Alien” the two ships are somehow separated. Leaving the boarding crew stranded. Two more crew die! (take a bow, philosopher doctor! Aurevoir cowardly second officer! You didn’t get to be acting captain long!)

It was at this point that the movie really showed its budgetary restrictions. It was clearly shot in an abandoned factory. Surgeon’s scalpels were X-acto blades attached to electric toothbrushes. The crew zipped along in their ship with those mini-scooters that were such a hit with the kids 10 years ago.

The bad guy – basically a Jesus freak with a really bad sunburn – shows up a starts killing people for about ten minutes (Ensign Fodders – we hardly knew ye! Smarter-than-all-the-guys girl, say goodbye!).

At this point I realized that the Fantastic Four guy must have been terrified of being typecast as a “guy who burns.” I can imagine his meeting with the producers now: “Yeah, I’ll appear in your traveling to the sun movie, but I must insist that when my character bites it, I am frozen to death. In water! Yeah… that’ll teach ‘em to think I’m a one note actor!”

Anyway, lacking the funds for good prosthetics or make up the bad-guy/monster/Born Again Christian was only shown with the super cheesy “wavy screen” technology pioneered on "Dr Who" so that you could never focus on him properly.

In any case, we can all rest easy, because they do end up saving the world and we get to see the new sun being born – apparently the bending of space and time that happens in the heart of the sun makes normal flesh impervious to the force of a nuclear explosions, at least temporarily.

And I learned something. Never, ever go to a movie based on the poster alone.

Oh yeah, visitors

Rebecca and Milan were visiting over the weekend, thus the lack of posts. We took them to Mont St Odile and Kaysersberg as well as around town. WEather was nice enough that we were able to have a five-cheese picnic in Kaysersberg, followed by espressos in an outdoor cafe. Photo is of the very Euro-looking duo there. On the other side of the camera, meanwhile, I am in the process of getting a lovely sunburn, which I mention largely to be a jerk to my shivering Canadian readers.

Now I'm off to French class...

Vimy rant

edit - note added at bottom
I am going to take a break from France posting for a while to post about something that happened in France. Namely the Battle of Vimy Ridge.

I have nothing to add to the sap-clogged rivers of ink that have been spilled on this topic in Canada in terms of the battle’s importance, or its meaning, or heart-rending recollections torn from diaries that were never intended to be plastered all over the front pages of our newspapers. To the best of my knowledge, I have no direct ancestors that served in either of the World Wars, let alone at Vimy.

Nonethless, I’m going to rant. Specifically, about Rudyard Griffiths of the Dominion Institute. You might not of heard of them, but if you’re from Canada you will know their work. Every year, at least twice a year (Canada Day and November 11) they publish a poll which will get heavy, and undeserved coverage in the media, that will purport to demonstrate Canadians woeful lack of knowledge about their history in general and military history in particular.

When there’s a special anniversary, they inevitably pop up again, as they did this year on the commemorations of Vimy Ridge Whenever they do, there is much hand wringing that we are losing our heritage and therefore our sense of national identity and forgetting the sacrifices of bleah bleah bleah.

No one who knows my writing can accuse me of being indifferent to history (Canadian history in particular) but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say something radical: Vimy does not matter. Remembering Vimy does not matter. It is completely inconsequential to understanding Canada, war, or history. Even for students of military history its importance is largely one of improved tactics and the effect the win had on Allied morale– Vimy Ridge itself was strategically insignificant.

I would argue that the deep attachment neo-Tories like Griffiths have for Vimy is of much more historic interest than the battle itself. It mattered once, to a Canada that was young and finding its way in a world that still measured national worth by the length of its muskets. No more. We have new symbols, new beliefs. It is no more natural to worship the dead at Vimy – over and above those at, say, Ypres, who were equally brave and just as dead – than it is to have a once-in-a-decade conniption over the Battle of Stoney Creek (1813).

Interestingly, those countries that participated in the Great War with less of an obsessive need to have a capital “I” identity all pick losses as their “national” battle: Passchendaele for the Brits, Verdun for the French, Gallipoli for the Australians. The tremendous loss of life for little geo-political gain in a war of which the major consequence was to set up another war is not something that can be appropriately remembered by a “glorious victory.” Canada’s fetishization of Vimy is a throwback to an era we have outgrown.

I am not suggesting that we forget the Great War or the men who fought in it, but simply remembering it as “Vimy” or even remembering Vimy divorced from the context of the propaganda that has swirled around it since 1917 is serving Canada’s history and identity just as poorly as forgetting it entirely.

Edit Just to clarify, I fully intend to visit the Vimy Memorial later this year (see comments). My beef is with the idea that knowledge of a single battle should - or even could - be considered a key part of Canada's national heritage and identity after ninety years, over and above hundreds of other equally important events and developments.

For your reading appetite

By popular demand* a post on food.

First, a disclaimer. I am not what food-obsessed people would call a “foodie” (a word I find irritating all out of proportion to how often I encounter it on a daily basis. I’m not an “airy” despite my fondness for that life sustaining collection of gases) and so I might not do so well describing the gastronomic delights I have endured whilst en France. I generally prefer to apply my limited store of adjectives elsewhere. That said, I make no claims that everything described here is spelled correctly, or even described all that accurately - once an ingredient is combined with a larger dish, I cease to care about its individual identity: therefore something is "spicy" not "flavoured with scotch peppers."

My lack of food sense aside, dining at people's homes is probably one of my favourite things about living in France, not least because my being thoroughly smashed on fine wine by the end of the meal is a reliable part of the experience.

It would be hard to know where to start. One of the first meals we had here was with our friends Julie and Sebastien. We had been out exploring the Alsatian countryside, a trip that devolved into a mushroom picking expedition.

On our return, Julie and Sebastien invited in for dinner. Now, it is important to note that this was a completely spontaneous invitation, the equivalent of “Hey, it’s pretty late – you want to come in for a bite to eat?” that would be followed by pasta or pizza in North America.

Not here. First, they pulled out a bottle of wine and a “martini” (which is a type of liqueur here, rather than the mixed drink) offering us a choice of either. While I sipped my wine, Julie busied herself preparing fresh picked mushrooms and magrette de canard in the kitchen. This was followed by a cheese plate with three separate artisinal cheeses (reflecting the improvised nature of the meal – had this been planned there would have been at least four cheeses and possibly six). Needless to say, each course was accompanied by its own wine.

Planned meals are yet more elaborate still. Soon after our arrival here, Amynah’s boss invited all the newbies and their spouses to her place for a traditional Alsatian dinner. Her home at the time was a converted farmhouse about twenty kilometers from town.

On entering, we were confronted with a table full of “bretzels” – giant pretzels, which locals claim are an Alsatian invention. Once everyone was gathered they pulled out the cremant - Alsace’s answer to champagne. Another common apertif is a mix of Reisling and Kir, a cherry black currant liqueur.

Traditional Alsatian cuisine, such as it is, consists of pig in all its multifarious forms. In this case, the main course was a “choucroutte.” This is basically an enormous pile shredded cabbage cooked in wine, atop which are piled a joint of ham, cooked to be so juicy that it dissolved on contact with a fork, sausages, pork ribs and some other swine part I can never identify. All of the local restaurants serve this – though none has measured up to the homemade version we had, largely because restaurant “chou” is generally way too acidic.

This, in turn was followed by a cheese plate which featured (among many other cheeses) munster. Munster is not unlike brie in texture and originates from a town in Alsace not far from Switzerland. Munster is what aficionados would term a “stinky” cheese. I made the mistake of buying some during the heat wave when we moved here and then not eating it immediately. Our fridge inadequate to the 35-degree heat, soon smelled like a locker room. A locker room filled with stinky cheese. It is tasty though – more tart than brie.

Cheeses, like wines and most other foodstuffs, be eaten in a certain order. Just as one does not have a Pinot gris before a reisling, one would not eat brie after munster, nor munster after emmental. I've learned that the convention in restaurants seems to be to present the cheeses clockwise - you start at 12 and make your way around the plate. Remarkably, people will cut off giant pie-sized hunks of cheese at this stage of the meal, as if they hadn't just downed three courses, four glasses of wine and were preparing for a giant dessert.

Dessert was a tarte aux quetches (a quetch is a type of plum) served with Gewurztraminer wine, a very sweet dessert wine which is the pride of the Alsatian vineyards. It’s too sweet for my tastes, but as I am rapidly discovering, the right wine served with the right dish really does improve both considerably. Sadly, I can never remember which wine is supposed to go with which dish, so my nascent wine snobbery is unlikely to develop into an insufferable pretension.

Afterwards, we had the digestif which in this case was schnapps. I had never had schnapps before, associating it with old men and Nazis for some reason, but they too are supposed to be a local specialty (I would not be in the least bit surprised if some Alsatian were to one day serve me pancakes and claim that maple syrup was an Alsatian invention). Shnapps come in many varieties – peach, quetches, myrtle (a local berry), cherry, blackberry and Gewurztraminer, made from grape skins left over from winemaking. Learning that I had not had schnapps before, a fellow guest insisted at a subsequent dinner, on plying me with shots drawn from his considerable collection (this on a day that had started with a wine tasting and moved on to pre-apertif aperitifs before the various wines served with dinner. That I was still upright by the end of the evening was a miracle).

Dining culture is considerably different from North America. If you are invited as early as 7:30, chances are you won’t sit down before nine and will be likely finishing dessert at around 11 PM. On Saturday, when we were invited to a fondue (turkey and veal cooked in wine and boulliaise) we finished at about 1 AM.

Potlucks are almost unheard of, and it is considered by some to be offensive to send people home with leftovers. Amynah is still trying to adapt her tradition of putting all the food on the table at once, buffet-style, with the more rigid local protocols for serving food one course at a time.

Alsatian restaurants are another mystery. One local delicacy that I am rather fond of is the flammekuechen which is a flat bread with sour cream and “lardons” – what we in Canada might call back bacon.** It's light, yet filling and would appear to be an ideal lunch food. So one would think, except most restaurants, especially those in the smaller villages, never serve it for lunch. Lunch is for the huge pile of pork meals. Dinner is for the light meals. Of course, schnapps was traditionally for breakfast as well.

Local restaurants are extremely local. When Zack came to visit a while ago we took him to our favourite Alsatian place, called the Mairie for it’s proximity to city hall. It’s a comfortable place, cozy inside with very friendly servers. The owner, we soon realized, was on a first name basis with every customer who came in. No exceptions (well, us, of course). Everyone who walked in was greeted with a two-cheek kiss, small talk, and seated immediately. Some were never shown a menu – their order was brought to them in minutes, obviously prepared beforehand for their arrival. It felt vaguely like we were intruding on a giant family reunion.

There’s no shortage of other oddities on the local menus – I’ve had both roe deer and wild boar. I’ve developed a real fondness for “spaetzel” which is a kind of spongy, cheese-like pasta. When the Christmas market was on I was feeling munchy so I picked up a piece of garlic bread covered with an escargot butter from a market stall, like one might get a hot dog from a street vendor in Toronto. On the other hand, it's fairly difficult to find chicken. Go figure.

The local produce is excellent as well. There are farmer’s markets almost every day in various parts of the city. Our favourite is the organic farmer’s market, where we get our apples and potatoes and whatever other necessities are in season. One week they had live geese in a pen – for what purpose I’m afraid to ask.


Amynah gets her honey there, which she usually uses for her tea. The honey guy has a vast selection of honeys on display, varying in hue from translucent amber to mud-brown. Last time we went, Amynah asked him his recommendations as to what sort of honey is best with tea. His reply? “Well, there are two schools on this question…” Only in France would there be schools of thought on the niceties of honey-tea combinations.

Food is remarkably fresh here – our green beans are always incredibly firm and Amynah’s raspberries actually look like raspberries, rather than those watery red balloons that come from California. I buy fresh baked bread nearly every day, simply because I have no choice: the big, preservative laden loaves I grew up on don’t exist here, and so I make do with fresh, tiny little things that looked like they were made for Barbie Dolls. I am also pleased to announce that after five straight months of partronizing the same bread shop every morning, they’ve finally deigned to acknowledge that they might have seen me before. This was a big step for me. I feel like a local.

Allright, I’m done. I’m sure no one made it this far, since I was unable to break it up with many photos, as I am generally to busy eating to take pictures of my food, unlike several other bloggers I could name.


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*That would be one person, Tara, who made a request on Facebook, of which I am now a member. See what powers you readers wield over me!

** Montreal readers: Both the Trois Brassuers locations serve this, along with many of the innovations that have been inflicted upon it over the years to make it more pizza-like. Resist! Get the “traditional” if you can.