Christmas

Lori and I had a very quiet and relaxing Christmas this year. I must admit that I have been growing a little weary of life in Paris. A combination of grey skies and too many people, but the festive season has boosted my spirits.

On Christmas Eve we stayed very French with Foie Gras and Champagne.

We had the Foie Gras with slices of Pain d'Épices (which is essentially gingerbread) and a fig and balsamic vinegar compote. I could talk about the spice of the bread with the creaminess of the foie and the tartness of the compote, but Lori summed it up best when she said it tastes like Christmas. It was very good.

On Christmas Day however, we reverted to our old standards. Bacon and eggs for breakfast and turkey for supper.

The turkey was leaner than we are used to and it had more feathers than I like, but it was very good. We had the traditional french dessert of bûche de Noël.

It was a great holiday season for us. The only thing that was missing was friends and family. Last year when we stayed in Paris, we had our friends Linda and Colin visiting us but we were alone this year. Next year we are going to Newfoundland for Christmas. Instead of quiet and relaxing it will be loud and chaotic, but we will be around friends and family so it will be fun. Famous last words.

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Bière de Noël

For our trip to Strasbourg last week, we took the high speed TGV train and when I say high speed, I mean high speed. While we were on board, it topped out at 319 km/h. Anyway, because we were on the train, I took advantage and brought home lots of beer. The Alsace region is the home of beer in France. There are lots of craft breweries and brew pubs and they all brew Christmas beer. It's usually stronger than normal and they will add spices like cinnamon and cloves or things like vanilla and orange peel. Here's a selection of what I'll be enjoying this week.

From left to right they are Noël du Trappeur from Quebec (I actually bought this in Paris a couple of weeks ago), La Noël from Brasserie Storig in Schiltigheim, Papi Klintz from Brasserie Uberach in Uberach, Bière de Noël also from Uberach, Bière de Noël from Perle in Strasbourg and Bière de Noël from Abbaye du Val-Dieu in Belgium (there was a Belgian market in Strasbourg).

I must say that I am really enjoying the Christmas season in Paris this year. I just feel more comfortable with the language and the culture and the food. It is not wintery at all, but the lights, decorations and markets make it feel like Christmas. The beer helps too.

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Le Sapin de Noël

Our recent trip to Strasbourg inspired us to put up a Christmas tree this year. We didn't put one up last year because our apartment was so small. We have been collecting ornaments from our trips to Christmas markets and we bought some lights at our local department store. Trees in Paris are obviously smaller than we are used to because most of them are going into apartments. I once said in this blog that everything in France is half the size and twice the price. I'm not sure what Christmas trees go for these days in Canada, but I've never spent $90 on a 5 foot tree before. Oh well, it's Christmas.

Lori is the tree decorator in our house and her frustration can sometimes overcome her Christmas spirit. There was a point last night that the lights were not cooperating and I thought we were in trouble. Instead of fighting with them, we decided just to live with it and not worry about how they look. We will probably be the only ones to see the tree anyway. Here is our tiny, and slightly sloppy, tree.

We do have some nice ornaments though. We bought this one last year in Vienna.

And this one in Berlin this year.

When you buy a tree in Paris, it comes with it's own stand. They drill a hole into a log and place the trunk of the tree into it. It works great but you can't really water the tree.

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Capitale de Noël

We just spent four days in Strasbourg getting into the Christmas spirit. Strasbourg markets itself as the "Capitale de Noël" or "Christmas Capital" and I must say that I agree. We had a great time and I highly recommend it if you love Christmas. It was a little different than we were expecting though. There is a large public square in the centre of the town and we thought that's where the main market would be, but there was only a small Christmas market. Instead, there are 11 Christmas markets spread throughout the inner-city and the entire core of the city looks like a Christmas village.

Going to Strasbourg is like going back in time. The narrow streets and traditional timber buildings transport you to the 1800's. We just love the way the store owners decorate the outside of their buildings.

This one was a little odd. I'm not sure what Little Red Riding Hood has to do with Christmas and it's a little scary as well.

But the town really looks its best at night. It's hard for me to show the true experience with the camera on my phone, but you get the idea.

Of course a trip to Strasbourg wouldn't be complete without some Alsatian Cuisine and beer.

If you are interested in going, here's a link to their official program - Strasbourg Christmas Capital

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Berlin

This past week, Lori attended a conference in Berlin and I tagged along. I didn't see much of her until Friday afternoon. Her days were full of meetings and lectures, so I explored the city on my own but I was able to show Lori a few of the highlights on the weekend.

Berlin is a very cool city with a ton of history, but it's very different from other European cities. There is very little left of the original architecture because most of the city was destroyed during the second world war. Adding to it's uniqueness, is the fact that the city was divided into four sections after the war and occupied by the French, British, Americans and Soviets. Then starting in 1961 the city was physically divided into two sections by the Berlin Wall. These events have had a lasting effect on the city.

The first thing I noticed; there is construction everywhere. There are buildings going up and new subway lines going in all over the city, but the bulk of the construction is in the former East Berlin section. Berliners just celebrated the 25th Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, but the rebuilding is still going on.

I made it to most of the popular sights while I was touring around. The Brandenburg Gate,

Checkpoint Charlie is the most famous of the entry points into East Berlin.

There are sections of the wall still on display around the city and this is one of the longer sections.

Embedded in the ground are a double row of cobblestones to mark the former location of the wall. There are places that look like the wall went through buildings, but the buildings were built after the wall came down.

 

Here's a funny shot showing two iconic Berlin landmarks from very different times. The Berlin Cathedral was built in 1539 and behind it is the TV tower, called the Fernehturm, that was built in the 1960's by the socialist government of East Germany.

 We had some great meals while we were there. One of the leftover effects of the American occupation is the prevalence  of really good steak restaurants in the city. I ate at a couple of them. One of the restaurants had a Black Angus steak from Alberta on the menu, but they ran out so I settled for the Omaha T-Bone. It was pretty good, but I was a little taken aback when it came out and was already sliced for me.

 Lori did get out for some sightseeing during the week. She went on an architecture tour of Berlin. They did the tour in an unusual way though. They wound their way through the streets of Berlin in a convoy of Trabants.

These were cars built by an East German manufacturer and were essentially the only cars available to East Germans. They were horrible cars when they were built 30 or 40 years ago, so you can imagine how awful they are now. They are only used as tourist attractions now. This was the car Lori was in.

There are sobering sights to see as well. There are museums and monuments dedicated to the Berlin Wall and to the atrocities of the Second World War. This is the Holocaust Memorial and it consists of 2,711 concrete slabs. There has been some controversy around this memorial but I thought it was powerful.

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New Tastes & Old Tastes

This week, we discovered a couple of new favorites and re-discovered a couple of old ones. On Tuesday, I took another cooking class. I wasn't sure I was going to go again, but I had fun and it's a great way to get a better understanding of the French culture. The focus of the class was a dessert called gateau merveilleux. It's made with meringue and whipped cream. It was very good, but a little complicated for me. I think I will just buy it from my local patisserie.

What I really enjoyed was the cheese served at lunch. It's called tete de moine and it's delicious. It's very similar to cheddar but I think it's better than cheddar. The name translates to monk's head because you shave the cheese like the monks shave their head. A special tool called a girolle has been created to do this.

This past Thursday was the third Thursday of November which means it was Beaujolais Nouveau Day. Beaujolais Nouveau is a fresh wine that was made from this years harvest. Legend has it, the workers in the vineyard would rush to make a wine that could be enjoyed at the end of the harvest. Then it started to be sold outside the vineyard and eventually there was a race to see who could get it to Paris first. Now, it's released at 1 minute past midnight on the third Thursday of November. I waited until my morning shopping trip at 9:00am to buy mine. It was pretty good. Definitely not as subtle as most French wine, but it had a nice fruity taste.

On Saturday, Lori and I went to La Defense to see a movie and do some shopping. The Christmas Market opened a couple of days earlier so we decided to wander through. We stumbled onto the Quebec booth (there was no stumbling, I knew exactly where I was going) and we got to enjoy a couple of familiar things we love. For Lori it was poutine

and for me it was beer.

All in all, it was a pretty good week. Tomorrow we are off to Berlin. Lori has a conference to attend and I'm tagging along. I won't see much of her until Friday afternoon so I'll be exploring on my own. It's the first time either of us has been to the German capital, so we are looking forward to it.

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Dutch Beer

For those of you who know me, you know that two of my favourite things are watching hockey and drinking beer. These things are not easily done while living in France, but luckily they coincided this past Saturday night. I have purchased the NHL TV package and I can watch the games through Apple TV, but because of the time difference, it's hard to watch the games live. A 7:00pm start in Boston means that I have to watch the game at 1:00am. I can always watch the game the next morning but it's not the same. On weekends and holidays there are afternoon games that I can watch live and luckily the Bruins played an afternoon game this weekend.

I can often be heard complaining about the poor selection of quality beers offered at my local grocery store. A Dutch co-worker of Lori's heard these complaints and came to my rescue. On a trip back to the Netherlands, she bought a dozen beers for me. They were excellent. I have over looked Dutch beers in the past, but I won't do that anymore.

Good beer and a Bruin win made for a great night.

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Torremolinos

We have just returned from a weekend away in sunny, southern Spain. Most of the time when we travel, we like to get out and explore the local area and discover new things, but this weekend was about rest. Lori has been busy since her return in August and she just wanted to lay by a pool and read. We stayed in Torremolinos, which is on the Costa del Sol, west of Malaga. The beach and the town were beautiful and I recommend it to everyone.

The hotel was not great and I wouldn't recommend it, but it served it's purpose. We had the Mediterranean in front of us and the mountains behind us.

We did get out though. Every morning we would walk along the beach and every evening we would walk along the promenade.

The hotel was all-inclusive so the food was provided. It was OK, but it was geared towards the British tourists, which is fine, but not what I wanted to eat while in Spain. We went for a walk on the first night and I spotted a restaurant that was full of locals. I figured that had to be a good sign and it was. The seafood was so good and so fresh, we ended up eating lunch there everyday. The tuna steak was my favourite.

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VOstF

Lori and I are big movie fans so we really enjoy this time of year. All the movie studios seem to hold onto their best movies until Oscar season. Such a relief after the cheesy, super-hero and teen vampire movies you have endure during the summer.

We should really use the opportunity to watch the movies in French in order to improve our oral comprehension, but I hate watching dubbed movies. It doesn't matter what language it's in, I would prefer to read the sub-titles instead of watching a movie where the dialogue doesn't match the image.
When we look for movies to watch, we always look for VOstF which stands for, version originale sous-titres français. This means the original language is spoken and french sub-titles are used. It's kind of fun to read along and see how certain idioms and phrases are translated.

Of course, my favorite part of going to see a movie in Paris is being able to get a decent beer before the show.

Lori has holidays that she needs to use up, so she took Friday afternoon off and we went to see The Judge with Robert Downey Jr and Robert Duvall. Excellent movie, by the way. I highly recommend it. The theatre is in a shopping mall where Lori works and as we wandered through the mall, I was shocked to see Christmas items in the stores. I had always assumed starting the Christmas season early was a North American tradition, but not so. In fact, it's easier to put out Christmas stuff early here because they don't have to wait for Halloween to be over. Some of the Christmas markets are starting to set up their stall as well. At least they weren't playing Christmas music.

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Family

Working and living overseas can be exciting and fun but there are downsides to it as well. For us, one of the downsides is being apart from family. Even when we lived in Canada, we were separated from our families by great distances, but we were still in the same country, celebrating the same holidays, experiencing the same weather and watching the same sports. Now we feel even more isolated from everyone.

Luckily, we've had family visiting over the past two weeks. First my aunt and uncle came to Paris to celebrate their 30th Wedding Anniversary and then Lori's aunt and cousin met in Paris and stayed with us as well. It was a busy two weeks, but it was a lot of fun. Lori and I hadn't been to the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre in almost a year, so it was nice to see all that again. Our next visitors aren't scheduled until June of next year when Lori's mom and aunt are coming to visit, so I have a few months before I have to brave the hordes of tourists trying to snap photos of the pyramids outside the Louvre.

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Raclette

My aunt and uncle are visiting this week to celebrate their 30th Wedding Anniversary. They are having a great time exploring Paris and we are having fun touring the city as well. Now that we live here, we forget about all the cool places we discovered when we first got here.

Since we have company, we thought it would be a good time to try out our Raclette grill. Raclette is a traditional Swiss dish, but it's popular in the Alpine region of France as well. The grill was given to us by a co-worker of Lori's who didn't want it. The idea is to grill your meat (typically ham or other cured meats) and vegetables on top, while you melt your cheese in little trays underneath at the same time. Then you pour the melted cheese over your ham or potatoes or whatever you are grilling. We had three different types of Raclette cheese. It's very mild and it melts very well. It is a similar experience to Fondue, where it's very social and you cook your food at the table while talking and drinking wine.

It was a lot of fun and very delicious. In fact, it was so good that I forgot to take a picture of the food covered in cheese. I was too busy eating.

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