Chartres, Acum 6 Ani

Ma rog, acum 6 ani si vreo 20 de zile dupa cum imi spun informatiile din poze, eram in Franta, Erasmus la Nantes si am decis sa fac o mica plimbare in vacanta dintre semestre. Frig rau, ca si acum, crunt, dar cum toti prietenii erau in vacanta si eu nu, am ales sa plec la drum.

Si am ales foarte bine, am vizitat un orasel simpatic dominat de impunatoarea catedrala Chartres. Catedrala se vede de departe, aflandu-se pe un fel de promontoriu deasupra orasului, terbuie doar sa ridici ochii si o vezi de peste tot. Oraselul in sine e simpatic dar nimic spectaculos, stradute pietonale, cateva atractii de genul o casa acoperita cu bucatele de sticla colorata, un rau cu parcuri pe maluri, dar nu am poze asa ca tebuie sa ma credeti pe cuvant.

Cum va spuneam, se ajunge usor la catedrala, trebuie doar sa ridici ochii. Asa ca de la gara, fara harta, fara nimic, cu fulgii de nea care dansau in jurul meu, am purces spre tinta mea. M-am oprit bineinteles la Oficiul de Turism unde am luat o harta, o brosura cu hosteluri sau hoteluri pentru ca aveam de gand sa raman peste noapte si o brosura cu locuri interesante de vizitat in zona. Interesant este ca Oficiul de Turism se afla pe o strada mai speciala, in sensul ca inclinarea aparenta a strazii nu este cea reala. Apoi am purces spre catedrala.

M-am simtit un pic precum un pelerin, dovada fiind si inscriptia din fata catedralei si pe care am intalnit-o de-a lungul timpului in mai multe locuri de pe traseul pelerinilor si am fotografiat-o aproape de fiecare data.

 

Apoi am intrat in catedrala si am reusit sa obtin o vizita ghidata cu un specialist care s-a ocupat de renovarea superbelor vitralii. Mai jos aveti cateva imagini, rozeta este imensa, nu stiu daca se vede prea bine cat de mare este catedrala, te simti cu adevarat mic pe langa, ghidul ne-a explciat ca asta si este scopul.

Catedrala a fost mereu un loc de atractie, daca acum turismule ste laic, cu sute de ani in urma se chema pelerinaj si lumea se ingramadea sa vada relicvele sfinte. Relicva de aici era o bucata din camasa sfanta a lui Iisus. Cum adapostea una din cele mai importante relicve, numarul de vizitatori era mare, si catedrala trebuia sa fie pe masura, de unde si usile imense.

 Interiorul este si el impozant, detaliile sunt mirifice. Desi imensa, catedrala pare ca se ridica spre cer datorita elegantei sculpturilor gotice.

 Pelerinii moderni sunt atrasi de labirintul de pe podea, probabil ca nu era neaparat o atractie acum cateva sute de ani, dar astazi, multi pelerini il parcurg ca un simbol al calvarului lui Iisus.  Imi amintesc ca in zilele acelea citeam o serie de carti in care un element predominant era un labirint.

Am zabovit un pic in catedrala, dupa vizita, sunt multe simboluri si legende asociate catedralei, din nefericire am uitat multe din ele dar am acasa o carte, scrisa de cel care a fost ghid atunci, si toate sunt explicate foarte frumos. Mai multe informatii gasiti si aici, nu uitati sa faceti o donatie din cand in cand :)

 Cum v-am spus, catedrala este imensa, impozanta, am facut un tur pe afara si mi s-a parut parca si mai mare. In varful acelei cupole verzi este o statuie a Arhanghelului Mihail caer mi-a amintit de Mont St Michel.

La sfarsit am luat pranzul meu improvizat, o salata de ton adusa de la Nantes, in parcul din spatele catedralei, cu vedere spre oras. Pana la urma am decis sa nu raman peste noapte (deh, buget de student), dar tare mi-ar placea sa mai trec pe acolo candva, am vazut multe catedrale si biserici, dar aceasta este unica.

La vache...

Confit de canard

Je l'ai bien mérité ce confit de canard...

Ce matin j'ai fait une heure de spinning assez intense, mais les jambes n'étaient pas au rendez-vous. Pourtant, dans l'après midi, la demi heure de balade en vélo vers centre ville a été très agréable et en plus on a vu un couché de soleil assez magnifique. Moi je dit, j'ai bien mérité ce délice du Sud Ouest accompagné d'un petit Merlot - Beciul Domnesc, pour la touche internationale. Bon dimanche a vous aussi!

Source de l'image: marmiton.org

France, in Plzen

A while ago we had Czech friends over and the common language was...French. For a change, because usually all is in English, at work, with the Czechs, etc. As one of our friends noticed, we felt like in France.

Why? Well the menu for one thing. Galettes bretonnes and Crepes, accompanied by fine Alsatian wine and prepared by a French cook. And because the setting was there, we also put on some French music and watched some funny French movies such as La cite de la peur or Kamelot. So naturally we wanted the whiskey before the finger, that's not false. Good jokes don't sound as good in English as they do in French and that's why French, Czechs and Romanians, all made jokes with the flavour of good Munster cheese and felt transported to another place.

Office talk

I work in a plant but because I'm not an engineer I rarely get to go inside. Instead, I spend my time in the main office: an open space packed with engineers, designers, HR and Finance people, Purchasing and the likes. And my desk is near the printer so I get to see half the open space when they come to collect their documents.

We have here, working together Czehs, Slovaks, many French and me. The common working language for all is English and engineering. And although from very different backgrounds we all use certain phrases and words that are very specific not just to the industry but as well to the company. You have your QRQC, FTA, PPAP that are so specific for the entire automotive industry that they are the basis of ISO TS 16494. And then you throw around VPS, V5000, SQM, VRF and you are a real member of one of the biggest players on the market.

Acronyms. They are the founding stone of our work and everyone throws them around easily. But does everyone know what is behind them? It's not sure. Mostly these are procedures, names of documents to fill, milestones to achieve. If someone is not concerned by more than one phase of the project, he or she will most likely not be familiar with all the terms. I don't think everyone knows what all the letters stand for, but most know the document they refer to. I'm not an engineer but I try to know the name behind the abbreviation. Trust me, it's hard to make an engineer out of an economist.

The other language of this Babylon is the working language, which is of course English. You can hear different accents, and different specific words used by speakers from different linguistic backgrounds. The French are of course the easiest to spot, while Czechs and Slovaks speaking English have a similar accent.

All this intermixing of languages and cultures rubs off on one another. For example I hear a lot of specific expressions or words that come from French (similar structure), that logically should be mistakes made by French speakers, but that are used by the others as well. For example the plural of "month" is "months" but since "th" is difficult to pronounce in French, the singular becomes "monts" thus the plural becomes "montses". And this is being used indiscriminately by French and non French.

In other cases, French expressions are translated literally into English. Such is the case of "Merci de + verbe" which becomes " Thank you to+ verb". When wanting to ask someone to do something, in English, please use : "Please write an email to X. Thank you" and NOT "Thank you to write an email to X". I don't think the expression " to give the TOP" exists in English, maybe it does, but for me it's very French, because it comes from French. False friends are widely used such as "actually" used instead of "currently". I cannot blame this one on the French: Czechs, Slovaks and even Chinese make the same mistake. Past tenses : "I didn't know" becomes "I didn't knew", this is WRONG. I don't know enough Czech to give examples related to this language but I can name some typical things, like the tendency to pronounce every letter, especially stressing the last letters.

School was a long time ago for all of us and I think that for many, the language learned in school is not enough to function in such an environment. Working closely with other people means that inadvertently you take some of the expressions used by the others. Working all day in a different language than your own is very difficult, I can tell you this for sure. Avoiding misunderstandings is hard enough without grammar mistakes and on top of that you have a specific vocabulary. Somehow the specific English and the abbreviations become part of the company's culture and history so that a newcomer will eventually have to get used to this and then things become easier.

As for me, I don't judge but maybe I pay a little too much attention, I admit.. I just like to notice and understand where these come from. as I am being influenced by the way people talk around me; I am being told I'm getting a nice French accent (and I was aiming for Scottish, darn) and sometimes I wonder if what I want to say is really correct English.

The Wine Country

We've spent this week in the Czeh Republic's wine country, Moravia. I know, I know, Czechs and beer and all that, but Moravians, well they love wine. This is for another story, because this weekend reminded me of another one, in a place generally acknoledged as the Wine Country: France. And more specifically Colmar, the Alsatian Wine Capital. Or is the Wine capital of Alsace, or the Capital of Alsatian wine? Oh I'm confused, but you get the point, right?

About Colmar. It's the 3rd largest city in Alsace and trust me, you'll love it. Timber framed houses with flowers at their windows, cobble-stoned streets and the canals of little Venice are enough to make you want to spend a day here. You'll find plenty of things to do. When we were there there was a cheese market and some festivities. Also worth mentioning is the quaint Christmas market that takes place in the streets of down town Colmar: it's one of the best in the Region.

But wait, there's more. Colmar is the home town of a certain Mr Bartholdi, of the Statue of Liberty fame. In fact, when you enter the town you are greeted by his famous statue. The town remembers it's famous offspring with a Museum and several dedicated landmarks.

One of my favorite places in Colmar is La maison des têtes an ancient guild house that bears the heads of five important figures in the town's history. I especially like the interior court yard with trompe l'oeil decorations and chairs under the vine.

Once you've taken a stroll on the nice pedestrian streets admiring the gingerbread houses and of course after you've taken a boat ride on the canals, you must, I repeat, you must go to visit the nearby vineyards. Alsace is the home to some of the best wines in France. They are still mostly unknown so it can be a chance for you to impress your friends with some special wines. Check here for a list of wines from the region. There are some special ones such as the late harvest wines, very sweet and perfumed, a real delight.

In July we went to visit the Stentz family in Wettolsheim, close to Colmar, on the wine route. Oh yes, the names of places here will make you forget you are in France. The vineyard region is just so beautiful with hills on all sides and pretty villages nested between the endless rows of grapevines. You can walk around the villages or take a bike ride in the hills, or you can attend the wine festivals, you'll get to meet lots of interesting people, and taste the delicious wines and cheeses of the region.

The Stentz, as most of the Vignerons Independants, independant winemakers, have a family business that stretches back a few generations. You can imagine the passion and knowledge they put in their wines. Madame Stentz took us inside, showed us the wines we were going to taste and explained a little bit about each one with a vivid passion in her eyes that made me wonder about what it was like to be a winemaker's wife. Here the bottles are arranged in order to give a better tasting experience. The ones in front are the special collections of late harvest and Grand Cru, the best of the best.

We also visited the cellar where they make and preserve the wine. You can see the way the technology evolved, yet the process stayed pretty much the same.Three generations at work here, making the best wines.

We left from Madame Stentz's with some of our favorite bottles, some Gewurztraminer and some Pinot, a bottle of the most surprisingly sweet Riesling and continued our evening in Alsace, in another town with ginger bread houses and colorful window panes.

This past weekend we visited the wine region of the Czech republic, around the town of Mikulov, close to the Austrian border. But this is a story for next time. I have to make a parallel between these two regions because I find there are quite interesting links between the two: people's passion, the love for wine, especially white and the troublesome history, it goes to show that good wine is not just a story of palate. Good wine is all about the heart you put into it.

French is the language of fine dining

So she loves to cook. As a new page of the cook book is turned over, your mouth is left watering, it says : Recette du jour : chanterelle et magret de canard. She also loves to invent and so the tender duck breast will have two sorts of mushrooms and mashed potatoes to accompany it on it's journey to the stomach.

Here's how it's done. You take some potatoes, you boil them in their nice shirt. After a while, you'll know when the time has come, your fork sinks easily in the potatoes, you take them out of the water and start peeling, being careful not to burn your delicate fingers. You mash the potatoes with a little bit of butter, milk and cream and add some salt, pepper and some nutmeg mace (or noix de muscade or nucsoara), for taste.

While the potatoes are boiling you can already start on the mushroom sauce. Or rather sauces because as I told you the girl likes to invent and so does her boy who prepared the sauces. First things first, chop some onions and cook them until they are almost translucent and then add the ingredients of the first sauce : the pleurotus mushroom. Prepare a sauce out of some cream and some moutarde a l'ancienne, which is mustard with grains and pour it over the mushrooms and onions. Then prepare the second sauce by putting chanterelles on the hot pan, adding cream and stirring. Pepper and salt for the taste. These mushrooms are from the agaricus family so quite common, even in Romania.

Now for the "magret de canard". This is a duck's file, cut from a fat duck's chest, more info here (don't you just love Wikipedia?) Just take the tender pieces of meat, put them on a hot frying pan, turn them on the other side when the first one is slightly cooked, you don't want to overcook these babies. And that's it! Add a nice red wine, full of tannins, arrange it all on a nice plate, light some candles and you have yourself a romantic dinner. Bon appetit!

PS. More of my culinary journeys will follow soon.

Samaritaine*

It wasn't the first time she saw him. But this was the first time she really noticed him and his spaniel.

She glanced back. Yes, he was there, still smiling, a tall, brown haired man, wearing sunglasses in this weather. She could see his green turtle neck from under his beige Mac. The dog looked wet and a bit sad, maybe he wanted home already. She felt her own dog jerking the leash to turn around. The guy's dog must be male.

How bizarre, she thought, there, on the bank of the Seine, under the pouring rain, these two strangers decided to walk their dogs. There was no one else around, no passerbys. Was he following her? She knew she'd seen him somewhere else but where? Maybe in the park,but now she really saw him : tall, taller thant her but just the perfect size. Where did that thought come from? He was quite good looking, square chin, brown hair, but she chouldn't see his eyes.

He was comming towards her, she could hear his footspteps on the wet pavement. And there was no one else under the rain. She was intrigued. Strangely enough it didn't even cross her mind to be afraid, she was actually fascinated by this guy and his dog.

The man's smile didn't falter as she half turned towards him. She started walking towards him then. He stopped. He was now looking at her with his brown, soft eyes, still that smile on his lips as if he knew her. She wanted to ask "Where? Who? Why?" but she found herself smiling as well.

She was now looking straight at him. She did know him, she'd known him for a while now. He also lived on the Rive Gauche, perhaps somewhere on the other side of the square from where her flat was(why it was called a square when it was round, she didn't know).

She'd seen him in the street, probably going to work, always fashionable, sometimes in a hurry. She knew he was French, but she never knew his name. How many times did they cross eachother in bakeries and tailor shops? How many times did they walk the dogs in the same park, sat on the same bench, at different hours, different days. How many times did they almost meet?

"Bonjour"

"Bonjour, vous"

"On se connait?"

"Maintenant, si"

*Samaritaine is the name of a famous Parisian Department store, bigger than La Fayette and Le Printemps, it was the place for fashionable and expensive shopping before it was closed for "rebuilding" in 2005. Actually it was a move to restructure the personnel and transform it into office and apartment building so this fashionistas' paradise never reopened. These pictures were in the window of the shop in summer of 2006.

The city that never sleeps

I want to spend a week in New York City.

Je veux passer une semaine a New York.