Strasbourg, Munster and Cologne
June 12, 2012 § 2 Comments
Gentle beams of yellow light interlope on the dark room from the windows by my bed. Outside the translucent curtains, the sounds of laughter, high heels clicking on the cobblestone and waiters pouring the final glass of wine. Occasionally, the waft of a light cigarette floats through the open window from the walkway below. It’s the middle of the night, but Strasbourg isn’t sleepy. And neither am I. (Written about a week ago, when I was jet-lagged, heavy-headed, sitting in a dark hotel room waiting for the sunrise.)
The sun did rise, and my brother and I took a walk along in river in Strasbourg, stopping in at a boulangerie on the way back at exactly six a.m. Unfortunately, we never saw the sunrise because the sky was shrouded in clouds. Still the cobblestone streets were peaceful, mostly deserted save for the few men setting up white tents for the market in an old square and the street-cleaning trunks making their way down the larger roads.
From there, onwards to the mountainous region of Alsace and the Vosges. We twisted around the slopes and mountain passes, passing ski lifts running without snow on the ground, green pastures, studded with wildflowers, on which vosgienne cows — known for their black and white coloring, their delicate faces, a cow species renowned for its beauty (who knew that existed?) — grazed before being called into the barn to be milked. We descended on foot into cool caves, where rounds of cheese, tinged pink of the outside, age for several weeks.
Our final stop was Cologne for the weekend, where we rode bikes along the river (I only crashed once!) and ate “the best” gelato in town. In the backyard, breakfasts of croissants, fresh strawberry jam and steaming, milky coffee. In the evening, crowds of people looking up at the big TV screen displaying the soccer game for what must have been thousands of people. In the early morning, with the birds chirping and the rabbits scampering across the grass, walking home from the club.
Welcome to Euro, take three.
Jet-Lagged in Hipster Town
March 19, 2012 § 1 Comment
Sitting on the S-Bahn platform at Friedrichstraße, watching people spill out of the doors, and then a new set of people shove in. The last straggler running up the stairs to catch the closing doors just in time. People on their way home from work grab a pastry at the kiosk, friends kiss hello and walk off, and I’m just sitting on a metal chair on the platform.
I always seem to have very bizarre experiences in Berlin and this trip has been full of random flashbacks, be it the chocolate castles I saw when I was sixteen or the sketchy night spent here last summer among the rail-side clubs by Oberbaumbrücke, with bottles smashing and voices screaming on the bridge. I must have seen that same bridge at least four times daily since arriving in Berlin on Friday.
As I’ve seen most of the main tourist attractions, we have mostly been bumming around East Berlin, having coffee, eating Korean dumplings and taking pictures of graffiti, which seems to adorn every inch of blank space. I’m eating Bulgarian fried eggs in yogurt-dill sauce on little slices of bread, with my hands, and falafel with chili sauce from the Turkish restaurant fronts. I am also eating Haribo gummies, speaking more French than German, and taking loads of pictures of art.
Well on my way to becoming Berliner hipster? We shall see.
Je me souviens
February 7, 2012 § Leave a comment
I’m sitting in the light of a stained glass window of the library in East Pyne, whiling away a few hours between classes. It’s only the second day of term, and the third day back on campus after break. A week spent up north, in Montreal and Dartmouth, has had the added effect of making Princeton cold feel like a summer breeze. Despite having caught a cold, it’s been easy enough to forgo a jacket this week. Otherwise, this week, being the first and before the monotony of mid-semester, has the benefit of every course and subject appearing fascinating and compelling. Visions of Paris, Eastern Europe and Morocco dance at the forefront, haunted by the cultural problems — immigration, terrorism and the destruction of neighborhoods — that I know will follow the thin veneer of the first two classes. I’ve just ordered over $150 of out-of-print and going out-of-print accounts, fictional and autobiographical, of Moroccan immigration as a testament to the theme of the semester. The question: what is hospitality and what does it mean in relation to our pasts?
When we walked into Artigiani off rue Saint-Denis, we were chilled and feeling vaguely triumphant, having just conquered the eccentricities of street parking in Montreal — check posted sign, check contradictory sign posted below, realize spot is permitted, drive to another side street, recommence parking sign-scouting. We were seated at a table in the middle of the dining room, which was largely empty it being a Monday evening, and handed large menus, written in French but punctured with various Italian words that required numerous explanations. Begin translations, retranslations and finally, successful ordering of food. The waiter, who diligently explained almost every item on the menu including how the fresh gnocchi are made, turned out to be the owner and an endearing example of Italian hospitality. We joined him at the bar for a couple of shots of his family’s homemade limoncello, discussing his hometown outside of Naples, the conviction of the Afghani family that murdered its three “Westernized” daughters in Quebec, the state of the surrounding ski areas and various future vacation plans. It seems like if there’s one thing people can bond over (besides food), it’s having a list of places we’d like to go but have never been. Call it a list of desires — everyone has one but many have no means to accomplish the majority on it.
The rest of the week was filled with touring human creations meant to take you away from the present to a different setting and existence: a snow village of igloos filled out with bedrooms made of ice complete with an ice bar and restaurant, and the biodome which recreates natural animal habitats, a tropical rainforest and northern maple forest among them. Coming back from an action-packed vacation to a class discussing the shadow of the Soviet Union, it’s striking to remember that movement and travel is not yet a universal right and how very lucky we are to be able to learn by seeing different parts of the world first hand.
The Ending
August 23, 2011 § Leave a comment
I was sitting on the ground the other day, in the dirt between the rows of the vegetable patch, picking green beans and yellow peas, and talking to a guy from Australia, who is now studying in Sweden, just outside of Copenhagen, which is one of my favorite cities. As we dug underneath the leaves of the plants, searching for our small treasures, we talked about how this was this third attempt at an undergraduate degree, having started his studies twice in Sydney and consequently dropping out. The first time, he said, he was the middle of an economy lecture when he realized he didn’t want to be doing what he was doing and decided to leave the room. And so now we found ourselves all scratched up from moving wood and trimming vines and sitting in the dirt of a farm in Piemonte.
If you told me a year ago I would be spending the last two weeks of my summer on an Italian farm, waking up at 5 a.m. with the crowing of the rooster, running at the sunrise to the next town over — where you might find another corner store and bar — and tossing and turning in bed in the scorching heat of midday before the evening shift of work started, I would have laughed in your face. As I type, I am sitting in the back of a rickety old caravan, driving up the twisting roads into the mountains, on our way to tomorrow’s market. This morning, I was setting out jams and honeys at another market in Alba, going around to the other stalls to taste pungent organic goat cheeses, slurping out the middles of stringy green figs from sticky hands while walking down the alleys of Alba, white truffle country. My forefingers are red, cut and bloody from hours of cutting out the rotting spots of apples, fallen before they could be picked, and my legs are covered in long red stripes from where blackberry branches have been ripped across them. But there are four containers fill of tiny, sweet blackberries to sell at the market, and a blackberry clafoutis sitting in the kitchen cupboard leftover from dinner last night.
Maybe it doesn’t sound like your idea of a good time. Maybe it’s not really mine either. But there are moments when, covered in sweat, you feel like it might be worth the effort; brief, small moments when it seems like the world has turned itself right side up again. Sitting in the back of a tractor, after three long hours of moving chopped wood close to the house in preparation for the winter, with the wind in my face, my body jumping with every dip in the dirt and gravel road, just might make it worth it. The bite of half a purple fig, the very first one off of the tree, handed to me by the grandmother of my new “Italian family” while berry picking at noon and a spoon of hazelnut goat milk yogurt while sitting on the hammock after driving home from the market. The minute you walk into the one bar in town, a twenty minute uphill walk from the farm, and grab a beer from the fridge, imported from Germany, and ignore the strange looks from men who have spent their entire lives on a stool in that bar. Dipping your hands in the washing basin next to the grocery store, where you can pick up the bare necessities (many types of sausages, milk, and chocolate hazelnut cream filled cookies to name a few) and watching the German and Swiss motor bikers cruise by, the bikes practically parallel to the ground as they round the curves in the road. Scavenging for wild blackberries on the walk home from town, hoping they really are wild, or that at least the neighbors won’t notice us. The red sun rising and falling and collapsing into bed at 10 p.m., exhausted and drunk from the two liters of wine plunked down on the table at dinner. Or maybe it was the spoonful of hazelnut gelato, made from fresh cream and hazelnut cream, the specialty of the area for which there is an entire festival next weekend, from a small teacup at the end of a drawn-out dinner, that seemed to emerge from the storeroom out of nowhere, that really got to me.
The farm makes you crazy, crazy from the heat and the exhaustion, and the never-ending lists of tasks to be completed, and the feeling that you could never shower enough times in one day, or ever escape the sounds of the roosters and the dogs barking and jumping on you and licking your sweat, crazy from the need to get out. It might be the hardest thing this city girl has ever done, committing to two weeks in the middle of fucking nowhere. And strangely, it’s not the work that’s getting to me, not the long hours spent weeding in the sun and the repetition of tossing large branches, some covered in thorns, into the back of the tractor. It’s not the fact that this house is filled with strange smells — most not all that enticing — or that I have been turned off of apple butter forever after seeing the state of the apples that are used to make it, let’s say the cast-offs of better times. Rather the hardest part of this place is feeling like I have been thrown into the work without being welcomed into the home, that they smile and say you are part of the family and then get angry when you don’t understand vague instructions given in halting French, or worse, instructions in Italian to which you can only stare back blankly. The hardest part is hearing the woman tear into her husband after every little thing that goes wrong (and even just when he is slow on the uptake) and having to choke back a second piece of the blackberry clafoutis, which is, after all that, far too cloyingly sweet and made with even the hardest, dried-up berries, because she couldn’t bear to sacrifice any.
So yes, I had an alternate ending to this story, and this post. I had a couple of paragraphs written about not quitting despite being far out of my element. I had paragraphs written about the golden sun setting as I sat in the back of the caravan and about the universal language of the kitchen. But the people and the shouting and the snapping got to me. It’s a beautiful region, filled with mountains and valleys and cresses and rows of grape vines that stretch as far as the eye can see, but I’m leaving. Sometimes you just have to pick up and leave.
Gypsy Soul
August 15, 2011 § Leave a comment
I’m sitting on a regional train heading up the west coast of Italy and kicking myself because I don’t know why I ever thought eight hours spent on a train would be a good idea. And then two hours spent in the train station. And then another one and a half on a bus to Alba. The little boy sitting diagonal from me has long since finished his panino and exhausted the possibilities of playing with the kids in the compartment next to us. The man across from me has removed himself for about ten cigarette breaks since our departure in Formia. My train ticket has been checked five times. And still there’s two hours to go.
I have tried watching the Italian countryside out the window, fields upon fields of sunflowers, the Mediterranean Sea glistening on the other side, children’s clothes and dishcloths hanging out the windows to dry. I’m starving, and already missing the home cooking I had gotten used to, but the rickety cart that bangs down the aisle selling panini and chocolate bars has little appeal.
About an hour ago, we passed the five towns of Cinque Terre, where I spent a weekend at the beginning of July. It was a lazy weekend that somehow managed to jam-pack clubbing in Milano, swimming, sun-bathing and uphill hiking and eating a few too many gelatos and breadcrumb stuffed mussels from high perches overlooking the sea. Now from the train window, I see the rocky shore where we stopped for our first swim in Corniglia and the steep set of stairs that brings you from the Manarola train station to the center of town.
As we arrive in Genova, many of the passengers disembark and I finally have space to put my feet up. Only an hour to go. I start thinking about getting on a plane and going home. It wouldn’t take much longer than this train trip. The little boy is passed out with his mouth and eyes half-open, but I’m pretty sure he’s asleep. His father sitting next to me is reading some inane book in English, very slowly. I’m listening to Colder Weather, and while I’m pretty sure it’s warmer here than it is anywhere else, it seems to fairly accurately reflect this journey. Except instead of road-side diners, I’m seeing a lot of beach town sandwich joints called bars. That is, when I am not seeing someone’s clean underwear hanging out the window. Now both parents are passed out too and I’m trapped in this compartment, right as I was considering tracking down that pitiful food cart and trying to score a Kinder bar.
The famous gelato shop in Gaeta had Kinder flavored gelato. And Snickers gelato, only they called it Mr. Nico. And Nutella of course, only for some strange reason that was one of the flavors they rotated out over the course of the week. Damn, the cart just passed and the man didn’t even look up so I could ask it to stop. Though, it might take me a little while to figure out how to ask that. Maybe I’ll be ready by the next time it passes by.
Sono andata a Gaeta
August 14, 2011 § 1 Comment
When I stumbled into the kitchen this morning at 6:15, early enough for a long run before the sun started beating down hard at 8 a.m., I was surprised to find nonna already awake, with a couple of whole fish in her hands by the stove. She didn’t seem surprised at all to see me though, as she seems keenly aware of all movements in her apartment, just steps from the Mediterranean Sea. I made a gesture to indicate “running” and she replied “caffe?” without skipping a beat. Si grazie.
The caffe is dark and smooth, pressing a jolt of energy into just a small tip of the pot. She heats the water over the flame of gas stove and then pours me perhaps the equivalent of three espresso shots. Sugar is provided, just for me, though I even admit it is unneeded and often opt for just a small splash of milk. Ten minutes later, I am running up the hill to the Mausoleum, and back down around the Aragonese-Angevine Castle, through the old town and along the wharf side of the peninsula. Along the way, stray cats scamper down alleys that are just a flight of stairs, an older woman with a shaggy dog more than half her size gestures at me to stop and curiously asks a question, which I do not understand and for which I have no answer. Along the water, middle-aged men gather near the edges of the parking lots, tanned and pruned from the sun. One or two people take a caffe at the nearby bars, but for the most part the town of Gaeta is barely awake, lazily tossing and turning in the rising heat.
Back home now, nonna sets out the rest of the crostata, filled with strawberry jam, that she made a few days earlier, and a bowl of fresh fruit — green figs, stringy and sweet, small, ripe pears the size of a baby’s fist, and huge, fuzzy peaches. She teaches me how to cut off the top of a fig and peel back the skin, and starts peeling all the other fruits…the peaches, the plums, the pears all become skinless in seconds in her unwavering hands. On the stovetop, brilliant red tomatoes is already roasting with garlic and basil for the lunch she will set on the table at one.
Nonna refuses help with everything but setting the table, you have to fight her to be able to clear it. Her movements in the kitchen, if slow, are deliberate. As she speaks no English, she and I get along mostly with gestures, or her granddaughters translating, though the early morning provides the time to practice the few thoughts I can string together in Italian, pertaining to how long I expect to be gone running that morning. In the afternoons she stays at home when we walk the two minutes to the beach. Long lines of pre-paid umbrellas line the white sand, and the turquoise water is filled with jumping children and guys playing water volleyball, who stop and stare. The girls laugh because they know what the guys are saying, and it usually goes something like “look, she has blond hair!”
We come home, sticky and sandy, skin crusted with salt, in the early afternoon. Lunch is a long, drawn out affair: grilled strips of eggplant folded over melted fresh mozzarella and topped with slow roasted cherry tomatoes from the garden, spaghetti with calamari and tomato sauce. The cheese as a rule, is set out on clean plates only after the rest of the table has been cleared, and then comes huge (and mandatory) slices of watermelon, which are the size of a massive, egg-shaped pumpkin. When, at long last, the table is empty, we are sent back to the beach before dinner.
Dried-plum walnut frangipane tart
June 24, 2011 § Leave a comment
I think the rain follows me. It catches me at the most inopportune moments. Like now when I went out to a café to write in a sundress and then the downpour started. The café is connected to one of the English speaking bookstores for all the expats who still want a taste of home; I don’t mind, I like real espresso instead of instant coffee and the red velvet lounge chairs are comfy enough to wait out the storm. Yesterday the dark clouds came in as fireworks spontaneously rose up over the river. There was never really any explanation of what we were celebrating, which I am learning seems to be the norm here. But we ran to the living room window anyway, which overlooks the town to the west, and watched the lights rise and fall in the distance. I could get used to that.
What is harder to get used to is the food here — displays of dense, heavy dumplings and strange animal body parts (have you ever eaten a pig’s knee before?). The closest I have gotten to eating well here is getting an Italian guy to offer to make dinner for me. Which I don’t think really counts as eating well in the Czech Republic. I am also not going to get used to the produce selection in the supermarket nearest me — vegetable choices range from tomatoes to lettuce to bell peppers…and, that’s about it. In order to survive, I am making huge batches of cashew-berry-papaya granola and eating it with yogurt at all times of the day. The yogurt here is rich and creamy enough to never even think of added sugar. And there is just enough space in my new kitchen to want to spend some time in it.
The church bells are usually ringing as I come back from my run. The butter cuts easily into the flour for savory piecrust. The water boils on the counter. The tea is creamy, because I still haven’t found skim milk. The light streams in through the window, the trees in the backyard garden below are damp with last night’s rain. As I step out the door and onto the metro, I remember to smile and nod when people talk to me. Act like you understand what they’re saying, and no one will ever know the difference. The best part is running down the street and not knowing what the guys are saying to you. It’s like living in a bubble, where you can make up the reality around you.
In the center of town, other languages fly in every direction. The Charles Bridge teems with visitors and reminds me of the Rialto Bridge in Venice. I get frustrated winding through the crowd with the cameras flashing, before realizing, wait, I actually know where I am going! I haven’t taken out a map since my second day here, it seems impossible to get lost. Meanwhile, the winding side streets, with old wooden doors and graffiti decorations, are captivating. The cobblestones are rough on the feet but I know the streets would look barren without them. Small groups of musicians wait around the corner, laze by the river, strumming guitars and blowing into long horns. A climb in a park means looking out at the rowers and sailors on the river as they disappear off into the horizon.
If other cities I have been to have been detailed and ornate, here, walls looks like they were made by hand. The rusticity makes the streets all the more beautiful. That might be one of the main reasons why I love my kitchen here. I feel perfectly in place rolling out a rustic dough on the wooden table, filling it with ground nuts and butter and plopping a few dried plums right in the middle.
The recipe for this tart, fittingly, comes from the book Cooking by Hand by Paul Bertolli.
The Copenhague cookie bowl
January 14, 2011 § Leave a comment
Maybe all the traveling made me a bit delusional and I said I was tired of cookies, specifically Christmas cookies. But that’s wrong, I am most definitely not. Even though Christmas was weeks ago, it’s sunny enough here in San Francisco to run in shorts and this recipe didn’t turn out as I was hoping it would. Though in retrospect, I should have known better because the picture posted didn’t really look like the real thing. For your sake, I’ll explain that the real thing are tiny, thumbnail-sized, hard spice cookies that come in cone-shaped bags around Christmastime in Denmark. My lovely host in Copenhagen brought them home from the store one day and set them out in a bowl, alongside snowballs of candy-covered marzipan and sugar-coated almonds, and I probably went through half the cone over the course of the afternoon. And then, I started seeing them everywhere — at holiday parties we were invited to, beside the cash registers at clothing stores…They go by peppernuts in the states (do you say “the states”? apparently it’s something I picked up in England) but their real name is Pebernødder. And maybe it’s a little late for posting a Christmas cookie, but in my defense I had no kitchen around the holidays okay? Okay, I’m pretty upset about that too.
My lack of kitchen and disappointment over this recipe — the cookies spread too much, weren’t hard or sandy enough, and then they stuck to the pan, but that last one was probably my fault — aside, Copenhagen offered up the best array of food that I saw (and ate) during my time in Europe (and that includes Paris, shocking?). We started off really well the first night with dinner at the Vietnamese restaurant Lê Lê nhà hang. My plentiful bowl of mussels came in a light, spicy broth made with chili and coconut milk. Warm but refreshing, it steeled me for the cold Scandinavian darkness (and snowstorm) and the wind that comes in off the coast. At Jorden Rundt, we stopped for lunch on the way to the Kronborg Castle. Looking out at the water, where on a clear day (which it wasn’t) you can see Sweden on the other side, we were served huge sandwiches piled high with smoked salmon, sprouts and honey mustard dressing. The sandwich was about the size on my head and so incredible I probably would have forced it all down, if I hadn’t been so hungover. Then came dinner at Madklubben where I had fish on top of stewed leeks with apple and potato purees.
Danishes have never been my sweet of choice. Perhaps that is because I have always been grossed out by the ultimate continental breakfast item, the cheese Danish. I mean, that glob of pasty white “cheese” stuff in the middle of a sugary pastry is hardly my ideal treat in the morning. But perhaps I learned a thing or two about Danish pastries — which would probably all go by the word “Danish” in the states but, believe it or not, have actual names the way there is a distinction between “croissant” and “pain au chocolat”— from Lagkagehuset, the popular chain bakery in Copenhagen, known for its great breads and cakes. I also enjoyed æbleskiver, which translates literally to apple slices, though they have nothing to do with apples. They are actually little puffy pancakes, served with a dusting of powdered sugar and jams for dipping or smearing.
I also discovered that all ciders are not created equal. In Copenhagen I learned about the existence of pear, apple and cranberry ciders that are about equivalent to drinking one beer. They basically taste like fruit juice, which besides being a little dangerous, is also delicious. So I started ordering cider everywhere I went about Copenhagen only to discover that British cider is a very mildly sweet, sparkling beverage, which is pretty bland, though if I had to put a taste to it, it would be apple.
After four days shuffling along snow-covered streets in heels and enjoying every minute of it, I realized that I would love to see Scandinavia in the summer. Which means I’ll have to make another trip to Europe no?
My darling little peppernuts, I guess you look cute enough. But no recipe today because I am not entirely happy with them. Calling all Danish grandmothers.
All ye faithful Dubliners
January 10, 2011 § Leave a comment
I’m sitting in a hotel lobby in Dublin on the final leg of Eurotrip 2010/2011 with no working phone, a pounding headache and seven hours to go until I get on an overnight ferry to Liverpool. It’s maybe a little lonely, and I’m so tired of travel that I can hardly manage wandering around my favorite city of the whole trip for more than two hours without becoming exhausted. Such is not the glamorous life of the world traveler. The hotel manager just told me I wasn’t allowed to eat my scone while sitting down in the hotel, which I think is a bizarre rule, and, as protest, I will not be purchasing the cappuccino I was thinking about ordering. This hotel is one of the most bizarre places I have ever stayed, a building caught preserving old-school charm without the renovation and management to make it enjoyable. My room had to be inspected the first time I took a shower because apparently, if you don’t properly close the shower door, which doesn’t actually fit the shower wall, the water drips through the floor into the lobby. The fire alarm went off by mistake my first night here, followed by a loud and continuous ringing that woke up everyone in the building.
Sure the Library Bar is charm itself but when someone stands in the way of me eating Guinness bread and butter, I have a major problem. Nevertheless, whenever I tell a local where I’m standing, I automatically gain “posh” status. I automatically become an art history major with ripped tights, sitting in the dimly-lit bar, sipping an espresso and reading La Chute by Camus. Opps, I actually am reading that. The thing about traveling alone is that you instantly become a philosopher, your people-watching becomes more in-depth, often involving more analyzing, more eavesdropping, I am never forced into restaurants and thus end up eating mostly scones and butter. I can take only 10-minutes for my 11 euro ticket at the Guinness Storehouse, because let’s admit it, it’s a Disneyland centered around the famous beer and more than a little tacky. I took one look at the top-floor bar of the window-encased tower with views of the entire city and headed back down the nine flights of stairs.
But despite all my complaints — really I have become very critical as this trip has progressed — and no matter how many museums and old churches I just can’t bring myself to visit anymore, I can picture myself living in Dublin as I could not in any other city I have visited, save Paris. It is rustic, with an eye to preserving Irish tradition and history — not European, World War II history — and while it is not the postcard-perfect Vienna or the bustling metropolis London, its rougher edges seem comfortably livable. It seems fitting that I would end here, after trekking across thirteen cities, when the edges of my journals are worn and torn and losing color and all my photos seem to blur together into outlines of rooftop views and butter. When I’m watching the sunset at 4 p.m. instead of 8 and I’m somehow still smiling when random people approach me on the street, even though Paris has taught me better than that. It’s funny that in a city whose center has been overrun by foreign chains, the Irish character still dominates one’s world view, that this country, which has failed in so many nationalism movements and rebellions against the British, really restores your faith that national identity still has a place in a world that is becoming more and more globalized.
I haven’t felt this comfortable with strangers in a long time. Because, and this feels funny saying as my family is British, if the Irish kept fighting, then so can I.
A weekend in Lyon
December 15, 2010 § 1 Comment
I arrived in Lyon on the Friday of the fête des lumières in a sleep induced haze brought on from a sleepless night and three early morning hours of dealing with the French bureaucracy getting my visa validated, just days before I leave France for good. I took one look at a metro map which included the entire city’s bus system as well and decided there was no way I could deal with it right then. My cab driver was nowhere near as chatty as I am used to, though it struck me that he was the first French cab driver I have ever seen; he was Lyon-born, while most cab drivers in Paris are recent immigrants, usually from North Africa. My next cab driver was another Lyon-native and I lost track of time — and our route — talking with him about shark hunting in Tahiti.
Once I had checked into my hotel, the situation called for very extended nap, to be woken only by my friend for dinner at Brasserie des Ecoles, a classic brasserie with painted windows for the holidays, where I had a pleasant salade chèvre chaud, which I have been craving and was long overdue. A brief walk around La Croix Rousse, a pint of beer at Sullivans Irish Pub, generous servings of fries with dipping sauces (the mayo given wasn’t a choice) at a random kebab shop and a long walk to Vieux Lyon, I found myself waiting out the night at a late-night bar called the Melting Pub. It would not have been my first choice of hangouts and we quickly made our way to the back, when I staked out a stool—as if on display, one of the guys commented. The bar was one of those places for the people who just can’t let go of the night and for the really tired people who just want to the opening of the metro to come faster. I quickly became part of the second group: after awhile my eyes started to burn from the smoke — the bar allows smoking indoors — and an hour in, I was fighting the urge to itch at my eyes.
But as much as I complain, I love being awake for those early hours of the morning, as the night people and the morning people overlap, men order their last beers at the bar and girls in heels light up their last cigarettes on the walk home while the merchants start to set up their displays, brioches and tarts begin to appear in the storefront windows, but it is still hours before the lines start to form out the door of the famous boulangeries. One such boulangerie in Lyon is the Boulangerie du Palais, where huge lines form for their brioche aux pralines; Lyon has several famous regional candies, one of them being pink pralines which are baked into sweet breads, tarts and croquants. I managed to get my hands on a brioche my last morning in Lyon and once having sufficiently tasted it, gave it to the homeless man I had walked past earlier, who was shivering in a doorstep lighting a cigarette, a pair of ski goggles raised on his head and a rainbow scarf around his neck. When I said “brioche aux pralines” his face light up like a little kid’s and his smile made me forget everything I knew how to say in French.
I had a delicious, fruit and nut packed praline croquant and also sampled other Lyonnais candies: les quenelles, a hazelnut-praline filling covered in a thin layer of white chocolate, and les coussins, a chocolate mousse perfumed with curacao enrobed in sunny yellow or green almond paste and sugar coating.
A trip to the Marché de Noel by the Perrache train station found tartiflette, the traditional Lyonnais potato gratin, slowly cooked with onions, thinly sliced bacon (lardons) and lots of cheese. Stopped to chat with the Quebecois lady selling maple products, and her husband making pancakes with real maple syrup on the crepe skillet, but was disappointed that she didn’t carry my favorite maple sugars, as they are too difficult to transport.
But believe it or not, my days weren’t just filled with eating. We wandered the Parc de la Tete d’Or at night, walking the paths by the lake lined by pots of fire and warming our hands around big balls of fire which shot out sparks, which magically seemed to go out immediately upon hitting the dry leaves on the ground. I took shelter inside at the Musée des Beaux-Arts, where I saw the Louis Cretey-Un Visionnaire entre Lyon et Rome exhibit. I headed up to la Cathédrale Saint Jean at the Fourvière before most of the tourists were out in the morning to take in the city from above. But as the cafes were all closed at the top of the hill and it was clilly out, I headed back down to Bar de la Ficelle for my morning café crème.
Soufflé Days 