Train in vain, Melancholy and the infinite cabbage

_{Not the train in question. Use your imaginations, people!}

So, Amynah and I were supposed to go to Geneva this week, at the invitation of a family friend. Friday evening, we made our way to the Strasbourg’s glass-bubble-encased train station (of which I’ll post a proper photo one of these days) and got on the train.

Well, we sort of got on the train. Friday at five is not the best of times to hopping on mass transit of any kind, and the French train authority is not exactly famed for planning ahead. The train was over-sold by probably 20 percent, meaning anyone that showed up any less than 20 minutes early was forced to stand.

And stand we did… the train was scheduled to leave at 5:20, which came a went with a merry wave. At 5:25, the conductor came on the intercom to tell us we would be delayed for about five minutes. Ten minutes later, he made another announcement that we’d be delayed for another ten minutes. Ten minutes elapsed, at which point he made an announcement asking for some guy to come to the engine compartment. Five minutes later, he made the request again, prompting the chattering teenage girls surrounding Amynah and I to joke that they must be looking for someone who knew how to drive the thing.

Finally, capitulating to the inevitable, the announcement was made that our train was to be delayed indefinitely, and that there was another train leaving from a different platform. Amynah and I made our way over there along with several hundred other disgruntled commuters, only to find that the other train was bursting-at-the-seams full, windows smeared with unhappy faces desperate for a gasp of air, the doors manned by blue-suited rail employees telling people they couldn’t get on.

Desperate, we made our way back to the first train, on the off chance there was any chance of making our connection to Geneva at a later hour. Nope.

Left with a weekend in Strasbourg we hadn’t anticipated, my insane and beloved wife suggested we go for a bike ride: to Molsheim, 25 km to the west of Strasbourg, and then to Offenburg, 25 km to the east of Strasbourg in Germany. For anyone interested in the math, that makes for a ride of precisely 100 km (well, 100.46 km, according to my odometer).

Now, unlike some people, Amynah and I are not accustomed to triple-digit kilometerages on our bike trips. However, the distance was not entirely arbitrary: we actually had business at either end of the loop.

We are planning on hosting a little housewarming this weekend – to be seasonal, we’re introducing our non-North American friends here to the aesthetic pleasures of pumpkin carving. That means locating pumpkins, which me managed to do in a little pick-it-yourself market in a village called Dachstein.


_{Perfect pumpkins, prepared for picking}

Pumpkin supply confirmed, we made our way onward to Offenburg, where Amynah intended to buy shoes and have a decent cappucino. And where last week we were biking through wine country, this time our route took us through the redolent pays de chou: Cabbage country.


_{Perhaps we could have saved ourselves some biking an made Jack O'Cabbages instead}

For some reason, it is a point of local pride that Alsace produces 90 percent of France’s cabbage. They normally fail to mention that 90 percent of France’s cabbage is consumed here as well, in the form of choucroute , a dish that is basically a heap of fermented cabbage supporting another heap of foodstuffs derived from pig.

In any case, we had a pleasant ride through the cabbage fields, which are just about ready to be harvested. We were lucky in that sense, after the harvest we would have been obliged to have biked 50 km while holding our noses.

When you don't have anything nice to say...

...post photos.



These are from a bike ride we took this Sunday to Obernai, a town about 40 km from Strasbourg. I've written about the route and its glories before, plus I checked the forecast, meaning that I managed to avoid getting lost, subjected to a rain of toads or any similarly entertaining disasters. On the other hand, it was the first time I'd done the route just prior to the harvest, meaning the fields were dripping with purple orbs of Reisling-to-be. I only took pictures, but Amynah assures me that they were plenty tasty.

Dear Sir

Look who got published in The Economist (a while ago, and on-line, but still, pretty cool).

Hint: it's not me.

More velocipedic villainy - and heroism!

I do not have good bicycle luck in France. Within three months of arriving in this country, I broke my arm, falling off my bike. Three months after that, said bike was stolen outright from my apartment building.

Earlier this year, my seat was stolen. And yesterday, I returned from picking up some quail's eggs for dinner, only to discover that my front wheel had been stolen. Replacing it will cost 50 Euros.

Attached to my front tire was a little magnet, without which the fancy odometer/speedometer thing my sister bought me last year cannot function. Even if I replace the wheel, I will still need that part. Not knowing where I could find one, I emailed the company,
VDO Cycle Computing in Germany, asking for information. Within an hour they had responded, promising to put one in the mail for me today - for free!

So, in return, I'm giving them a free ad - if you ever find yourself in need of a bike computer, VDO Cycle Computing is the way to go. I love mine: it's a basic model, yet still keeps track of trip distances, total distances, average speed, and time of journey. It's very easy to use, wonderful for motivation, and their customer service is great. In Canada, you can get them at Mountain Equipment Co-op.

Un Canadien Errant Part III: Chignecto A-go-go

_{Cape Chignecto Park: all these gorgeous views do get wearisome}

Dear lord, I can’t believe I let that hideous birthday photo sit atop this blog for so long. Clearly, I have no shame.

In any case, I will dispense with the rest of my Canada trip over the next few days. At that point, I’m hoping to get back to my local adventures, such as they are, and possible turn over the blog to a very special guest blogger.

Every year, for the last several years, I have tried to go camping with my friends Tim and Jon. This year, taking advantage of my return, we decided to go to Cape Chignecto Provincial Park for a 51 kilometer, four day hike. Cape Chignecto juts out like an arrowhead into the Bay of Fundy, and has been a provincial park for only ten years.


_{Proof I didn't just download these photos from a tourism website}

We arrived at the park about three hours later than planned (due partially to a truck stop waitress that decided to spend her shift taunting me, much to Jon and Tim’s amusement. I think it was the phrase “chicken weenie” that earned her the extra tip from them). The weather was perfect: unusually for Nova Scotia, there was not a cloud in the sky, and the temperatures were in the low twenties. Perfect for hiking.

Then we started walking.

Chignecto’s main appeal for campers is the view: stunning vistas of sandstone cliffs, topped with wind-warped evergreens teetering anxiously over the blue seas 200 metres below. Problem is, the topography is, how shall I put this delicately, uneven.

Of the 51 kilometers we hiked over those four days, 25 of them were straight up, 25 were straight down, and about one was flat. By day two, what conversation we could manage between gasps for air consisted of a) cursing out Jon, who had picked the route and b) searching for synonyms for “ravine.” (we came up with crevasse, gully, gulch, canyon, fiord, valley… we ran out of words long before we ran out of specimens). We were eventually informed by another hiker that the trail was rated “Level 5 Extreme” which meant that it had portions where one had to climb one meter up for every meter forward. This, with a bottle of fine Alsatian Pinot gris sloshing around in my backpack.


_{Refugee Cove. Being at sea level just meant we had to climb back up}

Nonetheless, we did all eventually find our camping legs, and began to enjoy ourselves. In addition to its natural beauty, the park is redolent with history. Our first campsite at Refugee Cove was a place where the Mi’qmaq helped Acadians hide from the Expulsion. Later, we pitched out tent by a stream running though a former field, one of the few remains the ghost town of Eatonville, a shipbuilding hub killed by the switch to steam vessels.

As usual, I didn’t see much in the way of wildlife: a seal bobbed in the waves below the clifftop where we ate lunch on the second day, a hawk flew so close enough to us at lunch on our third day that we could here the wind in it’s feathers, and a rabbit reportedly saw us off on our third day, but I was too beat from the previous night's festivities (stargazing, throwing rocks at a log, making increasingly non-sensical "Yo Momma" jokes) to bother investigating myself.


_{The privy, in a ghost-field from Eatonville}

In any case, it was gratifying for me to be reminded that while my hikes here in Europe do tend to be enlivened by castles and their fair share of beautiful views, Europe still has a way to go before they can catch up to North America’s wilderness advantage.


_{The inevitable sunset photo, on our own private beach}

It's embarrassing, but I'm 33 years old and still a Virgo.

Well, I did promise I'd post this....


_{Photo and haberdashery, V. Chisholm}

Un Canadien Errant Part II: On to Ottawa!

After Montreal, I continued my Canadian adventures in Ottawa, Canada’s Capital of Boredom (coincidently, also the actual capital). I stayed with my friends Jon and Lindy and their kids Abby and Nate. I managed to catch up with Danielle to talk writerly shop before she fled Ottawa for the more stimulating environs of Rock Springs, Wyoming. I also managed to interrupt Julie from feverishly updating her blog long enough to have a quick lunch.


_{Jon and Abby, in the heritage garden where Jon is a volunteer.}

However pleasant all this socializing may have been, I was a man on a mission. That mission: to uncover the truth of Canada’s invasion of Costa Rica in 1921.

Yes, the Great White North engaged - more than once – in some fairly Imperialistic muscle flexing in the Caribbean region in the early part of the last century. In Costa Rica, the immediate cause was a debt owed to the Royal Bank of Canada. According to a poorly remembered footnote in a book I read five years ago, Canada sent down it’s entire navy (all three ships!) to engage in a little gunboat diplomacy to encourage payment.

Reading this, I had images of blockades, the people of Costa Rica cowering as our warships fired warning salvos off their coast.

The truth, it transpired, was somewhat more polite.

The squadron showed up in one of Costa Rica’s ports, where it was greeted with a 21 gun salute. The three captains were then whisked to San José, the capital, by special train. There, they had a pleasant dinner with the President, and enjoyed an opera in his private box.

Not, to say the least, exactly hostile behaviour. Though legend has it one of Costa Rica’s bluebloods gave the Captain of the HMCS Aurora a dirty look when he applauded after the aria.

This is going to be a gripping article, I can tell.

Next: Camping adventures! Unless I get distracted!

La Canadien Errant, Part I

_{The Cartier monument in front of Mont Royale}

Well, I’m back. I’m still battling jet lag, and the multifarious ways France is conspiring to welcome me back with as much annoyance as I can stand (Lost luggage? Check. Unexpected tax bill? Check. Broken oven? Check. Broken toilet seat? Check).

I’m not sure how to account for the last three weeks in Canada on this blog, especially as roughly 95 percent of my readership saw me during that time and thus can correct the distortions and exaggerations to which I am prone. And what fun is that?


_{Portuguese church on the Plateau}

I suppose the biggest surprise was how familiar everything felt. Our last dinner in Montreal was shared with people with whom Amynah and I have had almost no contact in the last two years. Nonetheless, it felt like we’d last fought over the last shreds of JJ Chicken in a Pot* two weeks ago, not two years.

That is not to say that there were not some moments of culture shock. I was astounded at how different Quebecois is from France-French. I waded in gamely, to some effect, but I suspect I’ll have to lose my Old Country accent to really succeed in La Belle Province.


_{Dilapidated house guarding the corner of Guilford street}

The bigger surprise was how much held up to my snootified Euro-standards: living in a UNESCO World Heritage site has not made Montreal or Halifax look any less beautiful to me. Tim’s is as good as I remember it, notwithstanding my recent taste for cappuccino, and I decided, in future, to refer the Rhine Creek after re-acquainting myself with the mighty St Lawrence.

Of course, my main reason for returning to Montreal, other than friends, was to raid Fairmount Bagels.

The Fairmount Bagel experience starts with the purchase. Located in a tiny shopfront in Montreal’s Mile End neighbourhood, the bagel “factory” has been in operation for roughly 70 years.


_{Where the magic is made}

Walk inside, and you see men behind the counter, cutting broad slabs of dough from a giant mass of the stuff on a central platform. These are broken down and hand rolled into tiny, pale rings, that are then boiled in a honey mixture. These are then placed in their dozens into a wood fired oven that burns 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You can buy bagels here any time of day, meaning there is often a rush on weekends at 3 AM when the bars close.

I bought my first thirty six the day after I arrived, with the intention of bringing them back to Halifax: 30 sesame, 6 poppy-seed. The counter-lady brought me a tiny bag, in which there were nine bagels. When I gently pointed out the error, she replied “You asked for three and six.”

“Well, I want thirty and six,” I said.

“You said three and six,” she insisted, chin jutting.

“Sure,” I said, which seemed to satisfy her enough that she retrieved the rest of my bagels, muttering under her breath.

Despite her disdain for my communication skills, she did pick out those bagels freshest from the ovens. Stepping out onto the Fairmount street sidewalk, dyed black from decades of ground-in sesame oil, I pulled out a golden cherub’s halo, dusted with angel’s dandruff, warmed as if from the love of a benevolent deity, and took a bite.

It was good to be home.

Next: Canada’s Navy goes to the Opera, and other adventures in Ottawa!

* A specialty of New Dynasty on Clark Street, south of Rene Levesque in Montreal’s Chinatown. Highly recommended. I’ve no idea who JJ is, but I remain forever grateful for his poultry.

Farewell, Sami the Finn

_{Yeah, I'm talking about pottery again. But it's manly pottery, with pictures of hockey sticks and muscle cars on them. Those only look like flowers: they're actually crudely drawn explosions.}

Every once in a while, through no particular effort on our own part, we end up having more unusually “Euro” weekends here than even living in Europe would seem to indicate as the norm. This weekend, our last before our grand return to Our Home and Native Land for the rest of the month, was such an occasion.

Saturday, we went through our normal routine of hitting the local farmer’s market. Amynah’s flower guy was so distraught at her impending departure that he doubled the size of her bouquet, free of charge. A hopeful sign for our afternoon’s planned excursion.

At 1PM we met Sami the Finn and a new addition to Amynah’s institute, Belinda the Aussie (surely there’s a better nickname available than that?). Sami the Finn recently accepted a position in Kuopio, Finland. He’s leaving when Amynah and I are in Canada, and so this was our farewell trip with him. Belinda, on the other hand, had only been in Strasbourg for 10 days, and this was her first excursion outside of the city.

Our destination for the day was Soufflenheim, the pottery capital of Alsace. At one point in the 19th century, there were more than 50 pottery workshops in this tiny village, employing roughly 600 people. Today, there are considerably fewer, but the place is famous for the quality of its ceramics.

Over the course of the afternoon, Amynah and I picked up a few pieces, mainly to complete a set of mugs we already owned. Belinda, in need of dishes, also picked up a pair of mugs.

Sami the Finn, on the other hand, is nothing if not extreme. Pottery is apparently no exception. Having spent the last three years in a furnished apartment, to which he never felt the need to add any of his own possessions, he had built up a mighty thirst to own his own dishes. He waited until the end of the afternoon to make his move, after the rest of us were pretty much pottered out.

He dropped roughly 200 Euros in the last store, walking out with an enormous box filled to the brim with plates, bowls, vases, mugs, cups, platters. At some point, the potter himself, sensing a wonderful thing was happening of the store came out, and seeing the small mountain of merchandise piled in front of his cashier, insisted she throw in some free items for the Golden Finn. Sami graciously accepted, and then went out to bring his car around to load it up with his glazed loot.

The merchant, still feeling he had not expressed enough gratitude for Sami the Finn’s largesse, then handed Amynah, who had been helping Sami with his choices, a complimentary bowl. Effectively, she got a freebie for being in the vicinity of a major purchase. Nice work!

On our way back, we drove through the village of Drusenheim. As we passed through the main street, we saw a crowd gathered around a parking lot of colourful, superannuated tractors. We stopped to take pictures as the owners filed into the restaurant on the other side of the street.



It turned out the group was from Germany. I found one that spoke English, and asked him what was going on – an exhibition? Tractor races? Competitive tilling?

“It is a hobby. They are from 1960,” he said, adding, by way of explaining his Teutonic impatience with the discussion, “And now we drink.”

Sunday, we hopped on our bikes, and made our way to Amynah’s institute. Before we got very far, I stopped to ask a couple deciphering a map if they needed directions. It transpired that they were from Mainz, Germany, biking to Basel. I explained I had some experience with this route, and since we it followed the same path we use to get to Amynah’s lab we invited them to follow us. They were pathologists, it turns out, and the man seemed quite pleased to have the guidance. The woman, on the other hand, seemed convinced we were trying to lead them astray, if not kidnap them entirely. Nonetheless, they invited us to visit them if we’re ever in Mainz. As soon as I figure out where it is, I’ll take them up on it.

Anyway, moving on to the main event: Duck! Specifically, barbecued duck, courtest Audrey and Greg, whose hospitality is always a treat, at least when they’re not trying to kill us. We were joined by an Argentinian couple, one half of which is also in Amynah’s lab.

The idea of barbecueing a duck seems pretty French to me, (served with a nice light rosé in the courtyard of our host’s home, located in a small farming village 15 kilometers outside of Strasbourg. Life’s hard). I didn’t manage to take any pictures of the meal, being to concerned with consuming as much of the food on offer as I could.

As an digestif, Greg pulled out a selection of Eau de vie from his kitchen. Technically, he didn’t want me to post this, for reasons of the murky provenance of the hooch, but I doubt the French authorities read this blog, and I’m willing to go to jail to protect my sources on this.


_{Some of Greg's stash. The green bottle is plum schnapps from 1985. One of the clear bottles contains hooch made from holly.}

Effectively, it is against the law to make any more than 10 liters of the stuff without a license. However, it is impossible to buy an alembic that makes any less than fifty liters. This Catch-22 doesn’t discomfit many East of the Vosges, because schnapps-making is a sacred custom that Alsatians believe to be above any liquor control laws those fools in Paris might concoct.

Little Petey's House of Holy Horrors

_{Cheery looking fellow, isn't he?}

So, I was going to the stuffed animal store that specializes in Wild Boars* the other day in order to pick up a gift for my niece for my imminent return home. On my way there, I wandered by the St Pierre le Jeune church. For the first time since I’ve lived here, the doors were open, so I wandered inside.


_{Mural of the Nations of Europe Marching Towards the Cross. FYI: "Germannia" on her steed was in the lead, poor old Lithuania straggling behind on foot.}

I’m sorry I didn’t discover this church earlier – parts of it date from the 4th century, most of the rest from 1250 or thereabouts.** Unlike either of the other major historically important churches in Strasbourg, this one has both a surviving cloister and many Medieval murals surviving inside. For a brief period in the 17th century, it was used by both Protestants and Catholic congregations, who were encouraged to mind their manners through the device of a temporary partition.


_{The cloister of the former chapter house. One day, when I have a back yard, I'm doing it up like this. Don't tell Amynah.}

Anyway, the highlight for me was the secret chamber (well, not so secret as hard to find) with the crypt, a chamber roughly 1500 years old. There’s a small recess in the wall that still contains some poor souls bones. I’m sure he didn’t expect, as he lay on his deathbed, that his mortal remains to be on display for the edification of ghouls like me several centuries later.


<sub>Ye Olde Bone Room. That's a vase in the head area of the body-shaped cavity in the floor, and an old stone coffin to the right.

* These people are very serious about their stuffed animals. I went in and asked for a Wild Boar, and the clerk, detecting my lack of facility in French asked (in French) “are you sure you don’t mean a Warthog?” and then producing fuzzy exemplars of both animals so that I could make my choice. They had a remarkable number of species represented with as much anatomical accuracy as the material and intended audience would allow. It was like being in pillowy zoo.

** As you might have surmised from the church's name, there is an even older St Peter's in Strasbourg than this.</sub>

View of the Spitting Mule?

_{St Thomas, Strasbourg's other Cathedral, as seen from Place des Moulins, in front of our building. The big red building in front of it is an elementary school.}

I don't think I ever bothered explaining the name of this blog. It's taken from my (former) street's name: Vieux marché aux poissons, which I jokingly mangled into View of the marching fishes. It was apt - from vantage of the fifth floor, the masses of garishly clad tourists that would make their way up my street resembled nothing less than tropical fish, nibbling on colourful shoals of postcard racks and souvenirs.


_{The Spitting Mule, as seen from the smaller of our two patios}

Now that I am no longer resident on Old Fishmarket Street, I feel I need to rename the blog title. Our new place is on "Place des moulins," with the Spitz Muhl canal directly behind us (I believe that translates to "hospital mill" from Alsatian, but I'll have to let those readers more familiar with Germannic languages than I to confirm my interpretation). I'm inclined to keep the name the same, not that I think I've exactly built brand recognition with it or anything, but if anyone has better suggestions I'm open to them.


_{The larger of our two patios.}

I'm going to miss this so much

A friend of mine who went to the Congo with her husband at roughly the same time that Amynah and I moved to France, summed up the experience with a turn of phrase I've been using ever since: "It's us against the world."

When we first came here, it was very much like that: my language problems meant that I was even more isolated that working alone in a fifth floor apartment would seem to suggest: going to the bakery was terrifying. I couldn't make small talk with the cashiers, people on the tram, my neighbours.

Over time, however, I began to build up a community: the Postal people know me as Monsieur La Canada, the Bakery people know me as Monsieur le pain cereale, tranché, the local café knows me as Monsieur can't quite pronounce kougelhopf after all this time, I have a barber with whom I can make reasonable conversation, my mail delivery woman says hello when she sees me on the street. It's superficial, but I've made myself little connections here that mean a lot when I've no other social contact in the run of a day.

Tomorrow we move. The new apartment is far superior: larger, two t.v.'s, several rooms, two balconies and cleaning lady that visits once a week. However, even though it's only a five minute walk away, I feel like I'm uprooting myself entirely again.

And giving up the best view in town while I'm at it.

Where is the noisome dairy product please?

_{Don't be put off by the German at the beginning: worth watching}

The other day I noticed a piece of paper had blown in from the street into the entrance hallway of our apartment. On it, in blue pencil was written “Ou est le Munster, s.v.p.” Below that, in the same hand, was written “U E ló múnster sil wu plá.”

I pointed this out to Amynah, hypothesising it must have been given by someone to their visiting grandmother, with a phonetic approximation in her native language (Polish? Portuguese?) of how to ask directions to the Cathedral (which would explain why it was discarded in front of our apartment).

Amynah, on the other hand, thought initially thought it was some kind of strange art project : Munster is a Germanic word for Cathedral, but it’s also a kind of stinky Alsatian cheese (though, to be fair, Amynah believes pretty much everything out of the ordinary is evidence of the surrealist art conspiracy).

It’s been a weird week for language. I met up with my friend Caner on Tuesday, for our usual walk-around town and babble-bilingually language exchange. In the email to confirm the meeting, he had sent me an email saying that he couldn’t meet later in the week because he had to “Prepare his case.”

When we met, I explained that while the individual words in that sentence were correct, I assumed that as he’s planning on visiting Turkey next week, he meant to say he was going to pack his suitcase.

This led to further bewilderment on his part: he had thought that a suitcase was what we call a briefcase, reasoning that they were usually carried by men in suits.

Later in the same conversation, he asked me what the word for “cru” was.

“Raw,” I said.

“Ro-a,” he said.

“No… raw,” I said.

“Rar,” he replied.

I this point I started laughing, and explained to him the one of the French words I had the most difficulty pronouncing was “Roi,” which usually comes out of my mouth something like “raw.”

Thus, we spent the next couple of minutes, until our tongues cramped, attempting to nail this down:

Caner: “The “R” has to come from the throat [making elegant French choking sound]… roi!”

Me: Wah!

Him (attempting raw): rawer!

Me: Hhcraw!

Him: Raoer!

Me: Oauhwa!

The other folks on the sidewalk must have thought we had been raised by unusually inarticulate dogs.

_{* On a related note, I recently learned that “pas terrible” in French does not mean, as one would expect, “Not bad” but actually “awful.” Whereas “terrible” actually means something is good, in the same way that calling Shaft a “Bad motherf**ker” was paying him the highest of compliments. Nonetheless, I find it ironic that my language skill is so poor as to have led to me claiming to have excellent French for the last two years.}

The wurst weekend ever

_{Now that's what I call Art! A fountain in the village of Nordrach.}

There are few better ways to spend a weekend than tramping over a large portion of Germany’s Black Forest, grazing on wildberries, sleeping in remote-yet-so-very-picturesque mountain inns and having the sense that you’re breathing air that has never been breathed before.


_{Hiking through hilltop farms.}

The period beginning the instant a bratwurst thumped onto my plate Friday afternoon, ending the moment the last morsel of boiled bauernwurst slipped down my gullet Sunday afternoon was easily the most pork-intensive of my life. Who knew the world held such a delightful variety of sausages?

In any case, the group of us (including my former French teacher, her husband and their two friends from England) hiked some 60-odd kilometers this weekend, unencumbered with a decent map or a sense of direction (it would have been only 40 km if we'd had either). However, the weather was perfect, the food plentiful, the scenery ildyllic and the two hotel/inns so comfortable that leaving them each morning caused physical pangs of regret.


_{The Waldpension Moosbach where we stayed on the second night. Run by a local couple, they only receive groups by special reservation. It was very hard to leave this place and commence our wanderings again, not least because my new boots were possessed, and were trying to chew my legs off at the ankles.}

How do you say disturbing in French?

This is an actual commercial for an actual soft drink. I've seen it several times in the local cinemas before the feature, but a short version is also on TV. Warning: despite the cast of cute fuzzy animals, to call this ad "suggestive" would be to wildly understate the case.

No lack of self-esteem here

Back before Strasbourg became part of France (in 1689, I believe) it was governed by a council made up representatives from the local guilds: the butchers, bakers and candlestick makers, not to mention the barrel manufacturers, tanners and brewers. These groups ran the city and provided men for the militias that defended the people of the town from the attentions of Medieval warlords.

As a nod to their importance in the city's history, the traditional banners of the ancient guilds are hanging over Rue du dentelles. Most of these either contain geometric patterns or literal representations of the guilds main business: fish for the fisherman, a barrel for the tonneliers and a bunch of carrots for the gardeners guild.



My favourite banner by far, is this one for the baker's guild. It strikes me as being comically self-important, and I can only imagine that it must have been designed with tongue at least partially in cheek. I like to imagine a heraldic specialist describing it thusly: Argent, crowned lion rampant, bearing baguette and pretzel, unsalted.

Water of life

First, thanks to everyone who commented on my previous post, either here, on Facebook or via email. It was a different kind of article for me, in that it was about my family, and I'm glad you all seemed to enjoy it. It served as a nice belated Father's Day/Birthday surprise for my Dad, though next time I think I'll give them a heads up: my folks very nearly failed to read that section of the paper. Anyway, back to our irregularly scheduled programming...

Having been in London over the weekend for a celebration with Amynah’s family, we found ourselves short of food on our return, since we’d not managed to hit any of our usual Saturday markets.

This left Amynah short of her weekly ration of fresh berries,* and I short on bread so, to rectify the situation, we arose at 6:30 yesterday morning in order to visit the Esplanade market before Amynah biked to work.

We went to the cherry guy** to make our first purchases. Amynah and he got into a discussion about griottes (a type of blueberry, I think). He informed us that sadly, they were out of season, but he then explained to Amynah how his wife makes some sort of Christmas treat with that fruit and schnapps. Amynah, as is her wont, made polite expressions of interest in this topic, which prompted the gentleman – an older fellow, whose lifetime of subsisting on cherries and other sugary fruits had, through some strange alchemy, transformed most of his teeth into metal – to pull out a bottle three-quarters filled with a mysterious brown liquid.

It was, he explained as he poured her a shot, an eau de vie (homemade schnapps) made from walnuts – the technique for its manufacture, as far as I could gather, was to mush together a bunch of fruit, including the walnuts, and leave it in the sun for forty days. Amynah declined, so he passed the cup to me. Not wishing to be impolite, I swigged it. He immediately took my cup and poured another, larger shot for Amynah. She explained to him that her religious convictions prevented her from sampling it, but she was sure that his nut-based barn-brewed hooch was excellent.*** Thwarted, he handed the cup back to me, which I reluctantly drained, again.

Thus, I became truly Alsatian: biking home through the early morning traffic with a baguette jutting proudly from a bicycle basket full of fresh fruit, half-sozzled by 7:30 a.m.

<sub>*In summer, our fridge is jam-packed with two varieties of cherry, several baskets of strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries, leaving no room for any non-berry foodstuffs.

** He also sells an apple-carrot juice concoction that is surprisingly not disgusting.

*** It was.</sub>

Skeletons from the family closet

_{Grandpa Tom "TJ" Reynolds, aged 23 or thereabouts, from 1924.}

The Globe and Mail has finally got around to publishing
an essay of mine I had initially written for Father's Day, on a bit of Reynolds family history my Dad an I uncovered just prior to my move to France.

I will thank those parties in the know to refrain from pointing out that my grandfather's sartorial proclivities appear to have been passed down through the generations.

Gimme shelter

Another weekend, another hike. This time it was quite simply a walk in the woods; there were no rocks or gates of the devil, no castles, no mountains. Despite this, we still managed some adventure when Luc, our guide, decided that we were on the wrong path and therefore led us through 400 metres of thick, thorny underbrush to get us on the proper path. Given how itchy my legs have been since, I’m not sure all the vegetation was of the non-poisonous variety (though that does not include, I hope, the mushrooms Amynah picked for dinner).


_{Foxglove, aka digitalis - very poisonous, though not nearly so menacing seeming when you translate its name from English to French and back: "The gloves of the fox."}

On the other hand, we did see a stag, and I learned that Amynah and Luc are apparently coordinating their outfits before leaving the house in the morning.



The day before, we were at a farewell party for our friends Danielle and David. Danielle was my French teacher, and the woman who introduced us to Sami the Finn, along with many other good friends we've made here.* Danielle and David are moving to Great Britain for David's job, and the party took the form of a picnic on the German side of the Rhine. We're very sad to see them go - not only have they been good friends, but they've been an excellent source of English-language movies and books. It was slightly cheering, however, to be biking over the Rhine just as the fireworks from the Foire St Jean Baptiste reached their climax.

Unfortunately, the organizers of the party had neglected to tell us that they were planning on giving the guests of honour a photo montage of their friends here, for which we were supposed to bring photos of ourselves. To my chagrin, Amynah happened to have photos: spares from our recent renewal of our passports, in which we were forbidden to smile. Thus, my farewell gift to them consists of a photo of me looking like I want them dead.

_{* For whom I cannot think of any good, mobster-esque nicknames. Fast talkin' Lama? Breakfast mix Qi? Catalan Carlos?}

728 days and counting...

_{If we end up moving, it'll be around here somewhere}

We’re coming up on an important anniversary on View of the Marching Fishes: two years to the day* since our arrival in France.

It’s an important anniversary, because under the terms under which Amynah lured me here, two years was supposed to be the outer limit of our stay here. However, it seems that her post-doc is subject to the same rule of moving deadlines as the PhD defense that kept me from proposing for three years or thereabouts. So, Strasbourg looks like it might well be my home for the foreseeable future.

Anniversaries make for good occasions for taking stock. I'm more inclined than usual to do so now, first because we're planning our first visit home in August, and we're considering moving out of the apartment that has been our first and only home in France.**

I’m not sure what to make of our time here: we’ve made some good friends, though only a minority of them are actually French. I’ve managed to do some interesting writing, but not as much as I’d have liked. We’ve been visited by nearly everyone we would have liked to have visited though, given that we’re here for another year, I’m a little saddened that there are no more visitors confirmed to which I can look forward.

We’ve certainly managed to do a lot of Euro-travelling: we’ve visited almost every major country in Western Europe except for Ireland. We’ve managed a few Eastern European countries, though I still want to visit more. And, in about a month and a half, we’ll be going to Canada as visitors for the first time in our lives. I’m looking forward to trying out those Montreal bagels about which I’ve heard so many good things.

I think the most surprising thing that’s happened to me since coming here is how I somehow feel at home here. Even with my crappy French, Strasbourg and Alsace have seeped into my sense of self just as Nova Scotia and Montreal did: I’m proud of my latest hometown, in a way that I never thought I could be two years ago, after being told “to call back when I can speak French” when searching for a place to live. My bookshelf is groaning under the weight of books of local history, local legends, local bike routes… I know more about Alsatian history and have seen more of the surrounding countryside than some people that have lived here their whole lives. Still, I’m not going to start speaking Alsatian anytime soon.

I am known and greeted by my post lady, the staff in the post office, my bank, the bakery, the local wine cellar, our favourite café (where I can even now say “Comme d’habitude” for my breakfast order) and a couple of the local restaurants. Amynah is well known enough that she has a whole slew of small-talk she needs to get through at our local farmer’s market before even the smallest purchase. We didn't have that good a track record in our previous home cities. Part of that is that for reasons of ethnicity and language we tend to stand out in a town as small as Strasbourg, part of it that we’ve become part of the fabric of local life.

There’s some good reasons for this: we celebrated our first wedding anniversary here, invented our own Christmas traditions, fought the French bureaucracy together, shared our tiny apartment with each other’s families, were comrades in arms in the Great Mouse War of 2008… it’s been what self-help books once would have called “a growing experience.” And it’s made this place a major part of our lives, no matter how much longer we stay here.

* <sub>The day in fact was the 29th of June, but no one reads this on a Sunday, and besides, something interesting might happen over the weekend that might be blog-worthy.

** I've mixed emotions about this: on the one hand, I'm attached to the view. On the other hand, some goddamned construction worker's been jackhammering merrily away out there for the last three days. I am being driven mad.</sub>