Monday, March 31, 2008

My first rugby game

We left Jena at around 9am for a 2 o'clock game in Henningsdorf (close to Berlin). When we got there two hours early, because it only takes 3 hours or less to get to Berlin from here, we tossed the ball around until we got hungry...
And decided to go to hang out at McDonald's.
Unfortunately we were only 15 and that's how many people you need for a full team, which means no substitutions and also no pictures of the game. But here's me after the game, still in one piece despite our crushing 69-3 defeat. Good job on that field goal, Kevin. The guys we were playing against usually play in the league above ours, so at least we weren't surprised.
Here's Brent, another Canadian on the team. He usually tells me what the hell is going on when the German gets too complicated.
Post-crushing defeat smoke break. Actually I think only two of them are smokers.
After that we had a beer in the dressing room, a beer on the way back and a beer at the Irish pub. Although we got destroyed (on the field) I learned a lot and hopefully well do better next time. Today I'm sore.

Friday, March 28, 2008

Easter at our house, with progress on the quilt

Unfortunately I picked up something in Paris, and spent the train trip home wracked with fever, chills, and aches. The fever lasted for about three days but never developed into the flu, as I'd expected. Still, it meant that Easter at our house was decidedly low-key, mostly sitting on the couch watching a rented season each of Scrubs and 24, and Jeremi trying to tempt me into eating some more. The cat loved it of course, and was so chill that this was about all the attacking energy she could muster:That's one spoiled pet.

Jeremi didn't spend all the time sitting with me though - he also began sewing the quilt in earnest. Here you can see the first completed quilt block, quite living up to the computer-generated plan, if you ask me.
Now only 63 more to go!

He's employing assembly-line methods for the other 63 though (commonly known as "sweatshop piecing"), and has set up quite a little workshop in our living room.He's already pieced 6 of the pieces out of a total of 21, so progress is most definitely being made. Updates will follow, naturally.

On Saturday I was feeling well enough to walk into town with Jeremi to buy some groceries, and I even managed to make supper on Sunday, though it took me longer than usual. The menu included endives wrapped in ham baked in a mornay sauce, roast chicken with lemons, mixed vegetables, a giant Ukrainian Easter bread, a bärlauch and quark spread for the bread, and parfaits made with quark pudding and fresh strawberries. Bärlauch is a garlic-flavoured herb that's only available fresh in the springtime, and is wildly popular here. According to Wikipedia it's called Ramsons in English, but I don't think it grows in North America at all, so I only know it by the German name. Here's an overview of the feast:Yes, the bread really was that big.
Unfortunately, as always, the carefully made decorations rose a bit too much, and lost their shape. To try to avoid this I added them just before the dough went in the oven, after it had already risen (at least most of the way). As you can see here, the decorations were pretty elaborate.A woven 6-piece cross, 12 ears of wheat, a bird with cloves for eyes, and a nest made out of rosettes.Unfortunately the very lively bread almost exploded when exposed to the heat of the oven, pulling the poor bird's wings off in the process. Next year I'm going to work some more flour into the dough saved for the decorations, so that they're stiffer and can't rise as well. Since it's only something that I'll make once a year (if even then), it may take some time before I master the finer points. Still, it was impressive and delicious.
And one last picture of the cat, as she spent the meal hidden in this plastic bag, poking her head out in the cutest way possible.

Thursday, March 27, 2008

other sights in Paris

On the first day in Paris, Julia had a meeting all day so I went out and saw the sights. Well some of the sights. We had already been in Paris before and had seen the Eiffel Tower, Champs Elysées and l'Arch de Triomphe so I skipped those. After dropping Julia off at l'Université de Marie et Pierre Currie I went to l'Ile de la Cité, a small island in the middle of the Seine river, where I found Notre Dame Cathedral.

Here it is from the south side of the river.
The front.


And the little park behind it with a gothic spire. I felt that the grandiose looking outside looked better than the very dark inside, probably because, in my head, I was comparing to the church we saw in Salzburg which was very bright and lovely.
Crazy looking chandelier displayed on the floor.
Very nice stained glass windows.
It looks brighter here than it really was... and nicer

The altar.
I front of the cathedral is a nice big open spot so you can have an unobstructed view of it and off to the side is a statue of Charles de Gaule on his trusty steed being pulled by his trusty steed puller.

After that I walked along the seine...
... to the other end of the island and met some super chill/urbanized ducks. They were drinking Starbucks! No, not really, but they kept sleeping as I got closer and closer. I was almost on them before they moved at all and they only moved to let me know that they thought I was annoying and had disturbed their sleep. I was probably close enough that I could have grabbed one of them. Trust me, I know what I'm talking about. I've tried this kind of thing before, although never successfully.

Look at those annoyed billed faces.

At the other end of the island was another little park with a surprisingly high lawn to gravel ratio. In our experience, park grounds in cities in France usually consist of large graveled surfaces and sometimes a tree or two. But this park, probably because it was quite small, was all lawn except for the path that went around it. It also had this plaque next to a rock.
If you click on the picture you will probably be able to read it, but of course it's in French. The plaque explains that the rock is from l'Ile Ste Hélène in Montréal and was given to the city of Paris as a testimony to French-Canadian friendship and placed in this park on the 26th of April 1967, the inaugural day of Expo 67.

Then I went back south of the island towards the university to eventually meet up with Julia. On the way I saw
the Fontaine des quatres Évèques (fountain of the four bishops) in front of the St-Sulpice Cathedrale;

the Panthéon, which is a church or was supposed to be a church or designed to be a church, either way there's a lot of important dead people in its crypt like every other church in Europe;
and the Jardin du Luxembourg, which houses the French Senat (the building off to the left not seen in here). Again, a surprising amount of green for a French park. There's also a lot of gravel behind me in this picture.

The next day, we went to buy lots of silk in the Montmartre region where we were staying. You can read about that below if you haven't already.

Sunday we made our way to the Louvre. We walked there and went through the violin maker district. On this street for few block every other shop was a "lutier".

Then we saw the craziest looking McDonald's ever. It's hard to describe but you can see a wooden statue of a king. It's used to be called "le Roi des Bières", the King of Beers. We know that because the name was still the tile work on the floor at the entrance. Notice also the large stork on the roof; not normally associated with McDonald's.
We saw a couple of funny signs:
"Posting signs is forbidden",
Stranger than what, I wonder. (This is of course a poor translation of "vins étrangers", or foreign wines.)

We saw the giant steel spider again in the park behind the Louvre. We also saw this or one like this in London and in Ottawa. I think there's about 8 of them and they roam the globe.


Then we made it to the Louvre. The entrance was designed by Chinese-American architect IM Pei at the request of François Mitterand in the 1980s during a modernization of the museum. Apparently the French were mighty upset at the time that the architect was foreign and that the architecture was so modern. What, you mean Europeans weren't open to change and new ideas?
The Louvre is ridiculously big and houses a lot of historic art. Knowing that we wouldn't be able to see all of it in the hour and a half that we had left before it closed, we stuck to the big thing we had often seen in Warner Brother cartoons, like:La Joconde, the Mona Lisa and;

The Venus de Milo. What you can't see in this picture is all the people taking pictures of Julia inconsequentially in the same room.
We also saw a lot of stuff while going from one place icon to another. Like this headless statue of winged victory.
Julia is also fascinated by how people lived and wanted to see the Napoleonic apartments. Here she's in Naps's modest dinning room.

Only three giant chandeliers. Can you even call that a dinning room?

We also wanted to see the Code of Hammurabi but it had been taken to another room that had a temporary Babylonian exhibit with pieces from the British Museum and we didn't have tickets for than one.

Monday Julia had another meeting. And I went back to the fabric district to get some things we couldn't find last time. After finding almost everything we needed in an exhaustive search of Montmartre, I went up the hill to see the Cathedral; and the view.



There was also a harpist busking.
That night we tried to go see "There Will Be Blood" that was being shown in English at a near-by cineplex but they were sold out. Instead we saw the critically acclaimed "The Orphanage", a Spanish horror movie (with French subtitles) about a woman who grew up in an orphanage and who now is trying to open an orphanage of her own in the same house. It's really scary. In fact, it was so scary that Julia broke into a fever. Actually she got sick but the scariness may have weakened her immune system. She's all better now, but the fever, chills, and aches made the 9 hour trip home the next morning less than pleasant.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Silk, glorious silk!

I've been in Paris since last Wednesday, and Jeremi joined me on Thursday. (He was staying behind for a job interview which was cancelled. Booo!) While I'm actually here for work (one project meeting last Thursday and Friday, and one for a separate project today), I thought it would be a good chance to buy some fabric to make my wedding dress, the bridesmaids' dresses, and even more. I want to make something with a solid bodice and a sort of patchwork
skirt, with different shades and textures of creams (for the bridal dress) and reds (for the bridesmaids). If you're desperately curious about the patterns I'm basing these creations on - I'm talking to you Gloria - you can check them out here and here.

I wanted everything to be made out of silk, and found the selection in Jena to be somewhat wanting. Okay, so it was really more like non-existent. But I knew that I had a trip to Paris in the near future, so I decided that it could wait for the fabric stores there. I looked a bit on the internet about where the best place to find stuff was, and everything suggested the neighbourhood in Montmartre at the foot of Basilique du Sacré Coeur, and so I booked a hotel nearby.

On Saturday we set out on foot to find it, and it wasn't hard. The crowds were the first thing that tipped us off...
...and the ridiculous number of fabric stores.

There was fabric as far as the eye could see...
...and full stores devoted to notions (buttons and zippers and the like, mercerie, in French). There were also a few shops that had bins of discounted clothes, which were completely packed with some very aggressive shoppers. This pictures doesn't come close to illustrating the craziness, but it was as close as we could approach without endangering ourselves.And here we found ourselves at the foot of the hill, looking up at the beautiful church, and behind us stood Tissus Reine, the grandmammy of all the Montmartre fabric stores. We spent the next few hours there, breaking for lunch before heading back for lining, and Jeremi even returned today while I was at my meeting. This place was insane.
Not only was it three floors of craziness, but it had a whole counter along one wall on the first floor (at least 10 m or 30 feet long) which was completely stocked with bridal material, four shelves high. This fabric is rather expensive and somewhat delicate, so you're not allowed behind the counter, but rather have to ask one of the people who work there to bring you down any fabrics that you might be interested in. They don't leave you unattended with them either, so you'd better know what you want before you get their attention. Most of the fabric was available on open tables, but the bridal stuff and anything delicate (laces, things with beads, silk lining, etc.) was kept out of reach. We certainly learned a thing or two about fabric terminology through all this! (Just ask Jer about the difference between a dupion and a faille, he's a pro.)

The store was also filled with these miniature mannequins, about a meter tall, who had beautifully tailored clothes to show off the fabrics. Here you can see me with a few in the background.
While it looks quiet in this picture, and while it was somewhat calm when we first arrived around noon, by the time the store closed at 6:45 it was a nuthouse. Thankfully we'd had a couple of carafes of wine with lunch, so I wasn't freaking out too much with the crowds (or the amount of money that we spent).

Now I know you want to know what we bought, right? In total, around 30 meters of silks, some embroidered, some beaded, in different shades and textures. I know that sounds like a lot, but remember that it's to make and line a bride's dress, two bridesmaids' dresses, a ring pillow, and even a couple flowergirl dresses. (Jer did go back today to get something else for another little project, but that's a secret for now...) And in closing, here's Jer enjoying the bounty.
I'm never going to convince him to sleep on cotton again, after this...