Week 30: Snowy German Visit

Smoking Man, typical German wooden Christmas toy, bought at the Mannheim Christmas Market

A few weeks ago our friends Wolfgang and Sabine invited us to come visit them in Germany and share a goose dinner to celebrate Saint Martinmas. Wolfgang ordered a goose from a well-reputed organic producer in the Northern Germany. Mannheim, where they live, is not too far over the French border and there is a direct high speed train from Paris which normally takes only three hours. We have had many clients invite us to come visit them but Wolfgang is the only one who really made a very specific proposal. How could we refuse? We were very happy to visit this family that we had grown so fond of, and to see them in their native habitat! Besides, going to Germany at Christmas time, the cradle of many of our holiday traditions, has always been a dream of mine.

Of course, when we made this plan a few weeks ago, Europe was not yet plunged into a temporary ice age. Our host family also had some last minute complications. Roderick, their five year old son, developed an angry skin infection just days before we were due to arrive and had to spend several nights in hospital. It was touch and go right up until Friday morning when we boarded the train in Paris, but in the end Roddy had improved, the trains were running, and so we headed off on our next big adventure.

At the Gare de l'Est in Paris, passengers huddled around electric heaters to keep warm. Temperatures hovered around 0º. Trains were delayed as everything in the high speed system was required to slow down considerably. In Paris there was no snow, but the further east we traveled, the whiter the landscape became.

Mannheim was covered with a fairly thick blanket of snow, which more or less scotched plans to visit Heidelberg castle and university (where Rick's grandfather once taught). Someone also had to stay at home and wait for the goose to arrive via UPS, so Wolfgang and Sabine took turns making forays out into the wintery world. We followed along.

We didn't mind at all staying at home. Our hosts have a lovely big house with large windows, allowing us to look out on the Mannheim cityscape and enjoy the warm, Christmasy atmosphere indoors. Wolfgang is the chef de cuisine of the family and he made sure we were well-fed all weekend.

The house is right on the tram line that leads into the heart of the city. We took it into town one morning with Sabine and the children.

Victoria is ten. Both of the children are lovely and intelligent. They don't speak much English yet, and I have no German whatsoever. What German Rick had from studying it in school has mostly vanished. This did not seem to be too great a disadvantage when talking with the children. We became very fond of them. We had our ways of communicating that did not require language.

Roddy was feeling very well indeed. After his hospital stay he was definitely ready for a little fun and activity.

Mannheim, like many big cities in Germany, was pretty much flattened in the war, though a few very beautiful buildings do remain. The center of town is dominated by the biggest contiguous group of Art Nouveau buildings in the world. They are in red brick with grand arched promenades encircling a large park. Since everything was dressed in snow, it was a little difficult to see it all.

The old water tower is very beautiful.

Mannheim is also known as the city where the first automobile was built by Karl Benz.

I was anxious to visit the Christmas market, as Mannheim has one of the celebrated ones. In fact there are two of them. One is large with lots of crafts from all over the world, the other is small with just traditional German craftsmen participating. We visited them both.

The bigger, but less traditional market

bird houses made by hand

One of the things that bonds Wolfgang and Rick is their shared love of great coffee. Wolfgang has a state-of-the-art espresso machine and a very fancy grinder. Morning, afternoon and evening coffees were on the agenda.

By Saturday morning the goose still had not arrived, and more guests were due to come to enjoy the evening feast. Rumors of closed freeways, treacherous roadways and canceled flights made its arrival uncertain. No one could be reached to confirm one way or the other. We headed to the local fresh air market with Sabine and the children to gather some supplies, even though we didn't know what the menu would ultimately include. The day was crystal blue and beautiful, but bitterly cold.

By the afternoon the goose still had not arrived, so the menu was changed to beef roast. Side dishes were organized and in a flash a whole new plan was put into production. We helped a little, and then waited in the living room for the other guests to arrive and played a game with Roddy.

I don't have any photos of our very convivial meal together. Frankly, I didn't miss the goose at all. We had a beautiful and tender beef roast in delicious gravy, sliced thickly and served generously. Side dishes included oven-fried potatoes, mashed celery root and parsnips with carrots and parsley. Everything was lovely. Another couple joined us and we enjoyed getting to know them. Almost all Germans speak English, which is fortunate for us.

I was a bit nervous about getting back to Paris as I watched the snow coming down hard on Saturday evening. The train was a bit late and again had to travel at reduced speed, but in the end our return journey was smooth. Again, the further west we went, the less snow blanketed the ground.

We picked up James and Adric in Paris and arrived home yesterday afternoon. When we came into town there was no snow at all, skies were blue and our house was quickly warmed up again.

This morning was a different story. We woke up to several inches of freshly fallen snow. I was happy to be safe and sound with nowhere to travel for the foreseeable future. Snow is beautiful, but best enjoyed from the comfort of one's own windows. As soon as Emily, Jos and Quinn arrive we can begin to celebrate Christmas in earnest. Once everyone is at home for the holidays we'll be able to more happily sing "Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow."

Week 29: Deck the Halls

It was crazy cold after getting back from London. We woke up to beautiful sunrises, but day after day the view out the window was of what I began to call the frozen tundra. It is rather unusual in our area to have much snow at all, let alone snow that sticks to the ground for several days. The nightly news showed images of the freeways around Paris with traffic completely halted and passengers forced to sleep in their cars. Some furniture stores allowed people who were stranded to use their mattresses and couches. One group of kindly souls went from car to car delivering hot cocoa to those trapped. Weather was the top news story for most of the week.

Winter sunrise

A frozen landscape

We had no need to travel, so the snow and cold didn't bother us so much. We built fires to stay cozy while we began to decorate the house for the holidays. This year we used bay leaves to create our various swags and wreaths. Pines are not readily available to us, even in the forest, whereas bay trees grow tall in the garden.

Wreaths on doors and gates

 Bay leaf swag

 

Guest lounge

 Bay wreaths sprayed with silver

We actually have clients for Christmas eve and evening as well as having our local family. New Year's eve we will host a feast in the dining room for a large group of Parisians. I want the house to look very festive.

An ornament bouquet

I enjoy the holidays tremendously and have been collecting ornaments for many years. It's lovely to live in a home that offers me the opportunity to use them all.

Bay leaves sprayed gold, some of the birds from my collection and green glass balls from the Czech Republic

Next week we will be in Germany visiting friends and immediately afterward the clan will arrive, so this was our only week to get everything organized.

The doors into the studio

The village seems to be on the same schedule. On Saturday a huge tree was deposited on the Place. A crane and about ten locals, including Gilles and the Mayor, maneuvered it into place. There is a special base embedded in the pavement to receive the gigantic tree.

Hoisting the village Christmas tree

In years past I have been less than thrilled with the arrangement of lights, as they are placed somewhat haphazardly and don't necessarily please the eye. I admit to being a bit of a Christmas tree snob, but that is because my mother was very firm about how to arrange the lights and ornaments and especially the tinsel. I remember one year when my father came home with blinking lights. My mother burst into tears. It seemed so crass to her traditional sensibilities. She was very serious about her holiday tree aesthetics, even though in other areas of life she was much more casual. The lights on the village tree blink on and off too. I don't find that particularly cheery. All in all, however, the lights look better this season than in years past.

Bright lights, small village

Saturday also brought a respite from the intensely chilly weather. It was almost like spring, with the sun shinning brightly and the temperature warm enough to melt every last trace of snow. Rick went out to rake up all the wisteria leaves that had fallen with the first hard frost. The vines are practically nude now, revealing the morning dove nest just below our apartment windows. I suppose they'll be back in the spring to reclaim it when the wisteria can once again provide adequate privacy.

A very welcome blast of sunshine

 

A promise of spring

Week 28: Eat, Travel, Shop

Dalston Open Air Market around the corner from James & Adric

Getting to London on Friday morning wasn't so easy. The Eurostar is prone to delay when the weather is inclement, as it was this past week. Luckily, we had chosen a travel weekend well before the holiday rush, so even though several trains were canceled due to snow, competition for available seats was not so stiff as to prevent our journey. In fact, we were able to leave on an earlier train, which in the end got us to London only a bit later than we had originally planned. The high speed train must slow way down when there is ice and snow.

We traveled with Emily, Jos and Quinn. The idea was to see James and Adric's new apartment and to celebrate a belated Thanksgiving together. Emily and Jos participate in a house exchange program which they have used several times. They were able to find a family in London who live in the same general neighborhood as James and wanted to spend the weekend in Paris, so they swapped houses. It worked out extremely well. It is a cost-free solution to world travel lodging!

The house where we stayed was in a wonderful neighborhood on a quiet street. We had a row house, very typical of London's residential areas. The houses, all connected, have tiny front yards and small backyards. They are built  tall, ours had three and a half levels, as well as a cellar, but rather narrow. The use of space is very efficient. We had a nice living room, game room, kitchen on the ground floor, a bathroom on the second floor, two bedrooms on a half floor above and a third bedroom and bath on the top floor. It was charming and entirely comfortable.

Row houses in Islington

Quinn was delighted with the quantity of toys in the house and enjoyed meeting the two family cats.

Quinn likes playing with Ziggy and Stardust, our host family's cats. They're more skeptical.

It was about a half hour walk to where James and Adric live, in the down-market quarter of Hackney called Dalston. It is an neighborhood not unlike Le Pré St. Gervais where Emily and Jos live, originally an industrial area that is becoming trendy as artists, students and bohemians move in. Old factories are converted into lofts and cute restaurants and shops pop up. There is a large outdoor market just around the corner from James' place which is bustling and exotic during the days, with lots of African, Caribbean and Turkish delicacies for sale. We saw a fox there one evening after hours. Apparently lots of foxes live in London.

A very urban school house in James' neighborhood

Hackney has beautiful old buildings

***

On our first evening in town we dinned at a very celebrated restaurant called Ottolenghi. The food was exactly to my liking. They serve small plates of ultra fresh and beautifully crafted food. There is a cookbook available with their specialties and an awesome blog and recipe web site for committed foodies. James knows the manager of one of the new Ottolenghi locations and will be working as a waiter there after the first of the year.

James, Adric and me at Ottolenghi Restaurant

***

Food and eating was certainly one of the major themes of the weekend. The Stoke Newington Farmer's Market was right around the corner from our row house. We visited it for last minute ingredients for our big Sunday evening feast, even though the temperature hovered around freezing.

Stoke Newington Farmer's Market (be sure to read the vendor's entertaining sign)

***

We also experienced lots of the public transportation options. London is enormous, more than twenty times the size of Paris! We traveled by train, the tube (with precipitous escalators that seem to plunge down to the center of the earth), and double-decker buses that drive on the wrong side of the road.

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On the train into London

Riding the Tube

London buses are so much fun to ride

The train stations are beautiful

***

We did get a little sight-seeing and shopping in while visiting. My primary mission was to visit an art store where they sell certain supplies not easily found in France. The store was located in the West End, the theater district. Jos, who lived in London for over ten years and was a founding member of Theatre Complicité, made a great guide. He had lots of stories to relate about this neighborhood that he knows so well.

The West End

Neal's Yard was characterized by Jos as "the Haight-Ashbury of London." At least in the sixties and early seventies, it  was apparently the center of the hippie scene. I loved the vividly painted buildings.

London's Haight-Ashbury

Another thing one has to love about England are all the funny names. We decided that The White Hart is probably the most popular pub name, but a few others caught my eye.

Near Covent Garden

 

 One of London's many famous pubs

Shopping in the West End

Jos wanted to show us the Neal's Yard Cheese Company, the most celebrated cheese purveyor of the British Isles.  I had no idea there were so many gorgeous cheese varieties available.

Neal's Yard Dairy

Who says the British can't make cheese?

***

Theoretically, we were to share in the preparation for our Thanksgiving dinner, but in the end, other than chopping a few vegetables and washing some dishes, James did the lion's share, including choosing the menu, gathering the materials and cooking most of the dishes. Emily prepared a cranberry sauce and relish. 

The menu included:

Cider Brined and Glazed Turkey 

Apple, Sausage, and Parsnip Stuffing with Fresh Sage

Cran-orange Chutney with Cumin, Fennel, and Mustard Seeds

Cranberry Apricot Sauce

Potato and Fennel Mash with Jerusalem Artichokes

Runner Beans and Kale with Almonds, Smoked Paprika and Garlic

Roasted Red Onions with Pomegranate, Orange, and Parsley Gremolata 

Pumpkin Pie with Brown Sugar Walnut Topping

Bramley Apple Pie with Cheddar Crust

 

 Cooks at work

Gluten-free and normal stuffing variations

Two beautiful and delicious pies made by James

***

As well as the seven of us, James invited Omar and his girlfriend Laura to dinner. James met Omar at school, and we know him well, as he participated in the theater festival which Emily directed for several years. He was born in Dubai, grew up in Italy, studied in Paris and is now working in and around London.

 

Omar and Laura

Quinn dressed up and we all enjoyed an incredible dinner. 

Quinn, looking smart for Thanksgiving

The extended weekend was over far too quickly. We returned to Paris on Monday evening and stayed over in Paris. The voyage between the two great cities has become very convenient. We hope and expect to visit London often in the next few years.

Week 27: A Week of Extremes

 

the studio window

The week began with sun and bright skies. It was a welcome change after days of gray. The angle of light accentuated colors and cast intense, interesting shadows. It was a great pleasure to work in the studio in the morning, and an even greater pleasure to walk around the village. We rested for several minutes with our backs against the toasty castle wall and let the sun bathe our faces in delicious warmth.

The church had its doors painted last summer, so they are fresh and vivid, especially against the crystal blue of the sky. The little stooped woman who arranges flowers each morning drives her Deux Chevaux from the bottom of the village. It looks good parked in front.

 

The church of Montmirail, just outside our gates

In our terrace the sun played upon the walls, and the last valiant rose opened in the light.

The Virginia creeper has lost all its bright red leaves by now

 

A white tree rose in the terrace garden doesn't seem to know it's winter

The bones of the lime trees show up starkly against the winter sky.  Gilles will arrive in January and prune them back to their knobby stubs, but first he will festoon them with Christmas lights.

One of the four lime trees on the Place de l'Eglise

After a very pleasant reminder of September and October days, the sky clouded over, hinting that the weather was about to change.

 

Clouds roll in

And change it has! We woke up mid-week to find our view obscured and to discover that the first snow had fallen overnight. The castle grounds out the back window look magical.

The castle grounds

Our morning view

In watching the evening news, I see the long S curve that represents the jet stream, so I'm aware that most of Europe and even corners of North American are experiencing this dramatic plunge in temperatures. In Scotland it is minus 14° and one of the coldest Novembers on record. Apparently we can expect the cold to continue for a few weeks. It's a bit early to be this chilly! In our big house, especially when we have so few clients, we can't keep everything warm and toasty, so we have our comfortable zones, (the studio, the bedroom, the office) which we hustle between. In some parts of England people are receiving an emergency subsidy to cover extra fuel costs. Alas, that is not the case over here, so we keep the fires burning and the furnace low.

We always have a book we are reading aloud to each other, and currently it is The Eternal Frontier, by Tim Flannery, subtitled An Ecological History of North America and its Peoples. It starts out with a fascinating and graphic description of the meteorite that plowed into the earth 65 million years ago, creating the Gulf of Mexico and causing the extinction of not only the dinosaurs but of many other life forms, especially in the Northern Hemisphere, in the protracted winter that ensued. Since then, the continents have floated here and there and the temperatures have varied crazily. Did you know that once upon a time, just a few million years ago, North America was a lot like the Serengeti of Africa, with elephants, rhinos, hippos and other such creatures roaming the savannah? The point is, of course, that the climate does change on earth and natural events do occur which can have profound effects on life. Man, however, never before had the power to influence these events. Thomas Friedman likes to call it "Global Weirding," rather than "Global Warming," since the climate change we're causing does more than just warm up the planet, it sends unexpected storms and extremes of every kind. Each year I feel I note the effects more and more profoundly.

Next week we travel to London to visit James and celebrate a belated Thanksgiving. I will have  photos to share and adventures to relate if the Eurostar doesn't break down in the cold, as it did last year. However, I won't be back before the beginning of next week, so my post will be a day or two late. See you then!

Beautiful but frigid