I Want To Take You Higher

You learn something every day. The day in question was my recent appearance at the English-Friendly Montpellier get-together, held in the Belvedere Room of the Corum. Now, the Corum is the big opera house-cum-meeting facility that anchors one end of the Esplanade, a not horribly ugly modern building that's perfectly utilitarian inside.

I chose this shot because it's at least got some color in it, but the stairs also go off to the right, at which point there are more stairs, which lead to a long passageway with grass in it and onwards to even more stairs. These lead to what I think must be the highest publicly-accessible space in downtown Montpellier, the Corum Terrace. It's got a helipad in the middle of it, and today the wind was blowing hard enough that I'm glad I walked instead of taking my chopper.

Now, if you keep walking, you get to some steps which take you down to the aforementioned Belvedere Room (which, it turns out, is also accessible by an elevator), but let's stop and check out the view.

Here, we're looking approximately south. The brick building in the middle distance is the Lycée Joffre, the local high-school, a former fort (appropriately enough) which still has its star-shaped fortifications. It was plopped down there to remind the locals that Paris was watching them, since they had a tendency to get unruly. On the far right, the Ibis Hotel peeks into the frame, with the Polygone shopping mall to its left and the Polygone office building next to that. It is just possible that, between the first and second (counting from the right to left) of those white high-rises, you can see the Mediterranean. Or so claimed a couple of the students I talked with as we left the conference; I have yet to see the local beach. In the foreground, a pedestrian bridge leads over the train tracks.

This next photo shows some of our lovely urban sprawl.

This is approximately northeast, and shows the train tracks heading towards Lunel, where many of the vegetables I get at the market come from. There's not much of import here, but you can see the Avenue de Saint-Lazaire curving off to the left, on which, in a couple of blocks, you'll come to Montpellier's only Michelin-starred restaurant and hotel, the Jardin des Sens. I haven't been inside, but it seems a rather dull location for a hotel, just a few blocks from the immense cemetery. The food had better be good. In the far distance, to the left, the thing that looks like a castle is the chateau d'eau, or water tower, in Castelneau-les-Lez.

Due north, we can see Pic St. Loup looming on the left, and the mountain with the basalt columns to its right (still can't figure out what that one is). A little closer in is the steeple that sent me on a couple of my epic walks last year. I finally figured out it's in the military encampment, and not accessible to the public.

Looking due west (and trying to avoid a young couple who were virtually having intercourse on the wall -- kids today!) over the historic center, the St. Pierre Cathedral being the most notable thing on the skyline, but the coolest building, which can't really be appreciated from the street, is the Ursuline convent, now known as the Agora, and the center of the annual Montpellier Dance festival. This is pretty much in the center of the photo, with two identical cubes with cone-shaped things on top. And you can see the hill as it rises away from all of this to the left.

A little further on, slightly to the south, the hill is more pronounced:

Here you can see the steeple of St. Anne's on the left. In the foreground the Sully Center, where some sort of international studies are conducted and occasional receptions are held. It has, unsurprisingly, a very nice garden just behind that row of flags.

In the bottom of both shots, the Parc Archéologique's arch peeks out. Here's a better view:

This is a remnant of the old city wall, and there are also some old foundation stones, but nothing terribly interesting. Of more interest are the outlines of the ceramics ovens near the tram-stop just to the right of this, where faience pottery was made (outside the city walls, of course, due to the fire danger). Some examples are shown in the superstructure of the elevator which goes up to the Esplanade.

You can also reach the Esplanade via the stairs you see here, which will take you to the Parc Archéologique.

With this, I've gone about 360º atop the Corum, so there you have it, pretty much the whole dang city. Time to come down off the roof and walk in a straight line to the Comédie and home.

(Note: I had to reduce the size of these photos so that some of the stuff I mentioned would fit on my screen. You can click on them to see larger versions.)

The Lunkhead Dossiers, Chapter 1 (And, I Hope, Last)

So the landlord came over the other day, unsurprisingly, and we had a little chat, at the end of which he asked me to write a letter to him about the downstairs neighbors, the ones I've been calling les Lunkheads here. So, for those of you who think life in France is all rosé wine and croissants, I'm reprinting what he got in his in-box this afternoon.

(For the utterly French-deficient, "pub" is short for publicité, or ads, in this case the advertising flyers which get stuck in our mailboxes nearly every day, and "Ils ne sont pas méchants" means "They're not bad."

* * *

Dear M. Valmier:

As requested, a few notes about the downstairs neighbors. You indicated that English would be acceptable, and since I can give the narrative better that way, I choose to use it. 

When the neighbors downstairs moved in, I was relieved that the last occupants, who seemed to favor videos of women being tortured, played at high volume late at night, were gone. The new tenants had a raucous moving-in party, and of course I forgave them that; I might well have done the same in the circumstances. 

A few nights later, they had another party, during the course of which they took over the courtyard, leaving bottles and cigarette butts everywhere. This lasted until about 4 in the morning. Again, trash was everywhere. Eventually, I think the violin-makers, whose property the courtyard is, had a talk with them, because until last night, they haven't used it again. 

Within a few weeks, a pattern set in: loud gatherings, featuring loud music, happened several times a week. Some nights, they started at about 3 in the morning and lasted until around 7. Every Thursday, there seemed to be a meeting there starting at 20h, and lasting well into the night. They ignored requests to quiet down, from myself and from numerous neighbors shouting out  of their windows. 

It also became evident that they saw themselves as "anarchists," posting political posters about consumerism and advertising in the hallway, and reacting to the "pub" in their mailboxes by tossing it down the stairs. 

Their presence took a turn for the sinister in December. One day, I was leaving the apartment and found my way blocked by two large dogs who'd been tethered to the railing on the stairway. One was looking me in the eye and growling. I've been around dogs all my life, and know exactly what that means. I knocked on their door, and it was opened a very little bit by a young woman. I asked her whose dogs those were, and she said "My friend's." A man, whom I couldn't see, said "Ils ne sont pas méchants," and she slammed the door. I tried to pass them again with the same results. I knocked on the door again and again the same woman answered. She was very annoyed, but I said I couldn't pass the dogs, and her friend should do something. At that point, the door opened wider and a man I'd never seen came out, also annoyed, and yelled at the dogs, allowing me to pass. I turned to thank them and noticed that each of them had one sleeve rolled up. This isn't conclusive proof of what I assume was going on there, but it was suggestive of activities including needles. 

One night, as I sat reading, I heard someone come up the stairs, mutter a few words, and go silent. Looking through the spyhole in my front door, I saw a man lying down on the stairs to the third floor, a can of beer at his feet, getting ready to go to sleep. It was the same man with the dogs, and I believe the dogs were tied up outside my door. He was there for several nights afterwards. One night, the neighbors upstairs had a party, and he came in  and arranged himself in his usual place. Some of the party-goers came downstairs to talk to him, and I couldn't understand what he said (he was very intoxicated), except that he kept shouting the word "respect." Eventually, one of the kids brought him some beer. 

He disappeared when the weather got better, but I started seeing used alcohol pads, needle sterilizers, and orange plastic needle caps just inside the entryway. Given the chip system for entering the house, I can only assume someone had given him a chip. 

During this period, the parties downstairs got noisier. Less music was played, but people shouted, threw bottles at each other, and overturned furniture. More than once, a male-female dispute went into the hallway late at night, and on one memorable evening, at about 4, the screaming woman eventually went into the street, where she kept screaming for another twenty minutes. 

Last night was also memorable: recently, the neighbors have started singing and chanting loudly and tunelessly, not only during the night, but during the day, as well. They're doing it as I write this, in fact, using a bullhorn because aparently they can't yell loud enough. Last night, they also used the courtyard again, although they seem to have cleaned up after themselves this time, but the evening seems to have been capped with a burning of a stack of "pub" just inside the front door; there was a pile of ashes there at 11 this morning. 

I should contextualize these remarks by saying that since all of my business is conducted with the US, which is between six and nine hours earlier than here, I tend to stay up late and get up late. Thus, the bar next door playing music until just before 1 is not a problem. I've also lived around students and young people in Texas (in a university town) and Berlin enough that I can sleep through some noise without a problem. These people downstairs are unprecedented in their disregard for the fact that they live in a community and have to have some respect for the fact that their actions affect other people. It is a measure of the tolerance of all of the people whose residences face our courtyard that nobody has, to the best of my knowledge, called the police on these soi-disant anarchists, and that their spoiled-children antics, which now include throwing their garbage onto the stairway, continues. 

I realize the difficulty in getting rid of rent-paying tenants, but I hope this testimony and that of the many others whose lives have been disrupted by these idiots will help you. 

Best Wishes, 

Ed Ward

Meandering Miettes of May (With Muguets)

If you're French, you get it: the first of May is Workers' Day, a celebration of the honor of labor, a day off from work (although it was Saturday this year), and, in Montpellier, a day when various left-wingers marched to the Peyrou park and listened to punk-rock and speeches while eating plates of varied charcuterie and drinking rosé wine. Although everything -- and I mean everything -- is closed, the market at the Arceaux wasn't, and I went there to get a couple of necessaries, and thus walked through the park on my way and looked at the stalls getting set up. I was just ahead of the parade, which had gotten as far as the Comédie and was waiting to ascend the hill by the time I set out, hundreds of people of all ages carrying banners and handing out leaflets about dozens of issues, and when I returned, the party in the Peyrou was underway, with a not untalented woman-led punk band singing away, and more people than could fit into the park (which itself is blocked by work that may or may not be related to the new tramline), including a lone woman with a sign in Greek and French urging us to support the Greek workers. The focus at the moment seems to be on the Greek bankers, but I guess they won't get anywhere without the workers.

The other way the French know it's May 1 is that you can't turn around without someone urging a bouquet of muguets, lilies of the valley, on you. These seem to sell for a euro a slim bundle, and are, according to my dictionary, where I looked the spelling up just now, supposed to bring good luck. (Man, I like dictionaries with cultural contextualizations!) There were muguet sellers all over the market, even a couple who'd brought their teenage son in his motorized wheelchair to sell them. There were also a bunch of high-school-age kids running around with pots of some plant that looked like it would get a lot bigger, with deep green leaves. I'm not sure if this was another tradition of which I'm not aware or a club raising dough for a project or something. At any rate, I know by this that spring is around the corner, or at least the fruits of spring are soon to appear at that market, and although it's still prone to turn cold, I have happy memories of this time last year.

* * *

Of course, the other thing about this time of year is that on days when I have nothing else to do -- alas, there have been all too many of those recently -- I can get out of the house and start walking around with the camera again. So, remembering Brent's criticism, mentioned in my last post, that I don't do enough to show how cool this town looks, I decided on Sunday to walk through the St. Anne district and try some shots. This is the neighborhood which first convinced me I'd like to live here, where I shot a bunch of photos on my very first visit, and I thought it would be interesting to go back and see what I found.

On my way over, I found the store where French bureaucrats shop:

and the house where a famous Canadian historical figure grew up:

(a closeup of the plaque you can see on the side)

Soon enough, though, I was wandering around the area just below St. Anne's church, which many visitors are disappointed to learn is a 19th century attempt at looking like an old church, although I think there was something there earlier which got trashed during one of the many anti-Catholic riots around here. And although the weather wasn't at its best, there were still lots of enigmatic old buildings to be seen.

These trefoil windows, for instance, are a very old architectural feature, and it's very evident looking at the house that it's been collaged into its present state, the modern window to the lower right being just one of the latest additions. Looking at an exterior like this makes me wonder what the inside looks like: is there, for instance, any interior indication of those trefoils?

Or this place, on the Rue Terral, which is actually old enough to merit a plaque from the city (unlike most of the buildings in the St. Anne) which says it has 13th century details:

Or this place, an obvious collage:

Which, as you can almost see, has this odd symbol on one of its stones.

No clue what it is, and, again, I'm curious what the interior looks like.

Some of the things that look charming are, um, somewhat less charming when you know what they are. Check out this interesting thing coming out of the second-floor wall on the house down the street from where I shot the photo:

But when you get underneath it, you see that this is a splendid example of its type:

Yes, folks, this is the toilet. The bit on the right has only been boarded over, but since this was a nice house (and this is its back end), its owners had a nice place to sit, and given the angle that the street is at, the rains would eventually wash away the leavings and send them downhill -- if the night-soil gatherers, whom I assume existed back then, didn't carry it away first for fertilizer. From the pipe coming out of the other compartment, it could very well still be used for this purpose.

I took lots more pictures -- 35 in all, which is an astonishing number for me -- and I'll be putting more up as atmosphere at some point. As I wandered, on a not-quite-warm Sunday afternoon, I started thinking again about living in this part of town. The buildings seem divided between student slums and nicer places to live, and I'm not at all sure how you can tell, although some of the buildings are clearly not very well kept and have sixteen names on the doorbells. The proof would probably be to walk the streets about 3am around graduation and see what the noise level was, and where, but moving is a very distant thought for me just now, so I'm not going to spend time worrying about it.

The next day, I remembered that I'd opened a demo of Photoshop Elements some time back, and it had a 30-day demo period. I'd also been utterly bamboozled by how it worked, so after 30 minutes or so of messing around I'd shut it down. But long ago a friend had shown me how to tweak photos with it, and because of the weird light on Sunday, the colors were, I thought, a bit off. So I opened it up again, saw I had exactly one day to play with it, and got to work. (For some reason, not all the photos above have been tweaked; I guess I didn't get them all into the folder I was working from). One after another, they snapped into better shape. Cool! Then I had another idea and started playing with the effects. Cooler! Mediocre photos turned into slightly better art!

Then I remembered why I'd opened this application the first time: I'd sent a photo, taken last November 9 after the phony Berlin Wall shindig on the Esplanade, of a magnificent sunset over the Comédie to my pal Marie, who teaches Photoshop, among other things, and asked her how I could turn it into a banner for this blog. She sent back a sample that I liked, all but the typeface for the title, and said "You're on your own." I'd tried to fix it, but failed utterly, and gave up in frustration. Yesterday, cheered by my photo success, I opened it up again, and suddenly it all seemed so easy. I still have no idea what, exactly, I did, but as you can see, between yesterday and today (the absolute last minute this demo will work) I figured out how to do it. I still have to make it all more readable, and I'm not sure how to do that, but I'll probably go back and try to figure it out before the Elements goes poof later today. Or leave it for the moment and go back when I have $80 to buy the sucker. At any rate, a small facelift for spring, even if the image is fall.

And here's the mediocre photo, reworked:

* * *

Another way I know it's May is that the Master's program at the University asked me to participate again. This year's project (last year's is here) was a pamphlet called English Friendly, designed to be used by the city for...well, I'm not sure what. It's packed with information about how the bureaucracy works, which is good, and it's got phone numbers and information about English-speaking doctors and lawyers, which is exemplary, but it's also got random lists of hotels and restaurants and a page explaining French bread and cheese and wine, which is utterly bizarre. It's missing ethnic groceries, of which there are a few, and at least one English-language bookstore, whose proprietor was in attendance and not very pleased. It seems not to know whether it's for tourists (who don't need most of the info -- especially the hotel list, since it's a rare visitor who hasn't already gotten a hotel together) or for students (the culture the authors know best, after all) or for other English-speakers who've moved here because they've got a job with the University, one of the biotech firms, Dell Computer, or whatever.

I was briefly interviewed, and then added to a list of speakers on the topic of integration of Anglophones in Montpellier. I took this as a challenge: would I be able to stand up in front of a room of French students and speak French? I'm quite good at extemporaneous speaking, but the foreign language thing makes me choke even when I know what I'm trying to say. In the end, I stood up and said a few things, but among the things I didn't say were, um, my age, what I do for a living, my disappointment at the closing of the Anglophone Library (although another speaker mentioned, that, thanks), nor did I make any mention my radio work in Berlin and how much I'd like to get my "Blue Monday" program back on the air here (afterwards, the students I talked to were very excited to hear it, so I think it'd fly), and any actually coherent criticism of the booklet. I eventually sat down in embarrassment without getting a fraction of my points across, but it's better than I've done in the past. Hell in 20 more years, I may be able to be fascinating in French. Not last night, though. How frustrating.

Visitors

Good lord, look at my kitchen! There's all kinds of stuff in here I'd never buy: a bag of Cheerio-style cereal, various other snacks, and, in the fridge, some red currants. Ah, but there's a story.

My friend Brent, in Austin, is a lover of good food and wine, and also a guy who gets invited to various rock festivals around the world in the course of his work. Unsurprisingly, his wife Kristen would like to attend some of these, but there's the factor of their young son, who's 4 1/2. But when Brent got invited to this year's Printemps de Bourges, he figured this would be a good occasion for a family vacation. I urged him to come visit here after it was over, but he wasn't sure he could, for some reason. Then the volcano blew.

It was hard enough getting to Paris, because at the same time, there was a rail strike and the beginning of one of France's staggered spring school holidays. They managed to get there, though, and 24 hours later, Brent was in the Gare de Lyon buying tickets for Montpellier. He figured it couldn't be worse than Paris, and it was a damn sight cheaper.

So last week, I met them at the train station, got them to their hotel, and started showing them around. There was only one aspect of this I was dreading: the fact that we'd be getting some fairly spectacular meals that I wasn't going to be able to fully taste. (For those who don't know, I have a sinus condition which occasionally allows me to taste lunch, but shuts down around 4pm, effectively killing any taste sensations which involve the nose. This especially affects wine tasting, as you might imagine).

Until you're presented with one, you don't think about the boundless energy and insatiable curiosity of a child -- and the need to keep him interested and not whiny. I'd long noticed the playground in the Esplanade, with its music-themed constructions, and of course there's a carousel on the corner by my house, but there are loads of other things around here for kids. Probably the most important thing, though, is attitude. People here are okay with kids being kids. In Germany, there was always the disapproving glare, the muttered comment. No wonder German children look so unhappy. (And heaven help you in Germany if you're a mixed-race couple with kids...)

Our first meal was at Le Chat Perché, of course. It's the restaurant I take everyone to first, because it's such a great introduction to the food and wine of the region, and it's affordable. The weather had just started turning gorgeous, so we sat upstairs and got to watch the roof being rolled back. As always, too, I ordered a 2007 Mas de la Serranne Les Griottiers, the kind of big, complex red which always blows people away. It certainly got Brent's attention and suddenly he had a raging curiosity about the local wines. Because taste is so intertwined with memory, I can't remember exactly what else was on the table, although my dinner was a sort of deconstructed chicken cordon bleu, with a hefty breast filet sitting atop some melted Comté cheese and a slice of Serrano ham, flavors which come through faintly, but recognizably.

After a morning in Paris, a train-ride, and dinner, my friends were understandably exhausted, and we stopped by an alimentation génerale, one of the little after-hours markets, for a bottle of wine for them to finish in their hotel room. The guy sold it to us, but gestured and whispered that we should stick it under someone's shirt, quickly, with mutterings about the police. That's how I found out about Montpellier's new law against selling retail alcohol after 10pm, of which I'd been unaware, and which not only makes very little sense, but is going to imperil these little stores, which, as far as I've been able to make out, depend on beer and wine sales late at night for the majority of their business.

Nobody got busted, though, and the next day my friends took a tram down to the aquarium, an experience I recommend to children up to the age of 100. They're about to start enlarging it, although it's still by far the biggest one I've ever seen, as well as the most intelligently-presented. In a kind of welcome-to-France move (as if they hadn't already seen enough of those), the trams went on strike while they were hanging with the fish, which was unfortunate, because the aquarium's right on the tram line. Not finding a cab, they walked back into town, which, as I noted last year in one of my epic walk posts, is one of the dullest walks available here. Kristen and the kid pooped out, but Brent and I went (after calling for reservations: I'm not making that mistake again) to Le Grillardin in what I've now come to think of as Montpellier's Gourmet Gulch around the Place de la Chapelle Neuve. There are three other restaurants there, plus a place selling wraps during the day, and the Chat Perché is sort of on the corner. Oh, and there's a pizzeria which also looks good, and a wine-bar with snacks.

At any rate, we had a superb meal, as I sort of figured we would. The centerpiece was grilled lamb with a garlic sauce atop what was advertised as a galette de mais, which sure sounded like a tortilla. Looked like one, too, except it was a flour tortilla. A very tiny glitch; the lamb was as tender and juicy as one could ask for, although that was about the only quality of it which came through to me. The thick wine list was filled with interesting local bottles, and because I told him it had a great reputation, Brent ordered a 2005 Chateau Puech-Haut "Tête de Bélier" which he pronounced magnificent. There is a certain amount I can discern from good wines, but it's sort of like hearing the bass-line of a good record playing in the next apartment; I'd love to hear it all. Afterwards, we retreated to Mesdames Messieurs, the all-organic wine bar where I'd been just before Vinisud this year, where we had the same wine I'd had with them. Brent was getting more and more impressed.

I had work to do the next day and, not being a fool, I did it, but when dinner loomed, I took off on a walk all over town looking for some places I'd always wanted to try for one reason or another, and then came back and did some research to see what the Internet had to say. Unsurprisingly, a few of them seemed to be all hat and no cattle, including one in what used to be the old public baths behind the Opéra Comique where I'd eaten some years back and been underwhelmed. There were also a bunch of new places in districts where there hadn't been any businesses at all before. But on my way back to my place, I passed Les Caves Jean Jaurès, down a narrow street leading off the square of the same name, which was crowded with students.

It looked homey, the menu looked interesting, and there was a menu enfant, which you almost never see. We decided on it, and it proved to be a great choice. Not only was the enfant happy with his chicken, but his père was most impressed with the wall of wine you get up and choose from after you've ordered. We wound up with this:

which is from Fitou, one of the premium Languedoc wine-growing areas, and one of the few that's always enjoyed a great reputation. As you can see here, this moderately-priced wine shows up in tons of Michelin-starred restaurants, and from what little I could discern, I really want to try this again when my senses are back in order. There was a lot of duck on the menu the night we were there, and I had a duck cassoulet, since I realized that this would be the last night in some time when such fare would be appropriate. And to make the dinner even better, there was a Canadian couple with a 5 1/2 year old daughter a couple of tables away, and she and the kid hit it off well, so that the adults could socialize some.

Brent and I repaired a few steps away for a nightcap at L'Acolyte, a perfectly wonderful wine-bar and restaurant which I was told is a huge favorite during Vinisud.

Isabel, the proprietress (seen on the right) is quite a character, and when she discovered Brent was from Texas, she confessed her love of riding horses among the cattle in the Camargue here and wondered if such a thing were possible there. Well, as it happens, Brent knows someone who puts together tours doing just that. We discussed this with her over a nice bottle of Mas Conscience l'As, from the eccentric Terrasses du Larzac district, which produces some of my favorite wine here.

I'd been hoping they'd want a drive in the country, but by noon the next day it appeared that was not to be. Instead, we went shopping for a picnic in the Halles Castellanes, the covered market at the top of the hill, grabbed a baguette to eat with the cheeses (a tomme from a very local cheesemaker, and a nice hunk of Roquefort Carles, which blew everybody away with its earthiness and light touch), as well as some cherry tomatoes (too early in the season), raspberries, red currants, and radishes. This we consumed sitting in the Peyroux park, only occasionally getting hit on by the fake deaf-mutes (is it possible that all the deaf people in France are Romany? I didn't think so...). After that, a leisurely stroll down the hill brought us to the Jardin des Plantes, Europe's first botanical garden, and again, stuff wasn't really up and running yet (I'll head down there with a camera once it does, trust me) and, after years of neglect, there's finally some renovation going on, and over half of it is closed to the public while that happens.

"I want to hit a home run on our last night here," Brent declared, so it was back to Le Grillardin, which is another of the rare restaurants which offers a child's portion of anything on the menu (as well as take-out service, which is not only rare, but downright weird for a restaurant that fancy -- although we saw a guy leaving with a paper bag which obviously had just that in it). Brent insisted Kristin try that incredible lamb, and he and I went for a piece of beef that, unlike most French beef, was tender and juicy, even though it wasn't a steak, but a, well, a hunk. The nightcap was a couple of glasses of '07 Chateau Capion le Juge at l'Acolyte, as Brent mused on the next day's train trip to Paris and the departure the day after that.

As we met for the short walk to the train station, Kristin handed me a bag of all manner of stuff they weren't going to take home, most of which resides in my kitchen, including the red currants, the raspberries (long gone), the cherry tomatoes (not so hot in person, but perfect on a pizza a night or so later), those Cheerios, and a perfectly hideous lavender corkscrew bearing an elongated Eiffel Tower and the word Paris on it. It was murder getting back to my own cooking after a week of vittles like that, but I learned so much, and had such a good time that I've now got a backlog of to-do stuff once I have this operation and get my nose back.

Brent and Kristin have been following this blog since its inception (as well as some of the others linked here), and Brent, after being here, gave me the very valid criticism that although I'm great at photographing my hauls from the market, I'm really not so great at showing how beautiful this city is. I appreciate that criticism, and will be doing something about it shortly.

Meanwhile, I just know they're plotting how to get back here sometime soon. Some of the rest of you might think about it, too...

Mid-April Miettes

Well, dang. I just hiked down to the market and walked around and there was nothing interesting. The price of asparagus is coming down, but that was about it. Still, it's warm in the sun, the exercise does me good, and any excuse to get out of the house is welcome. As the days get nicer, the excuses get fewer. And it's about time to put down another blog post.

* * *

A while ago, I mentioned the USB keys that the local transport system was selling, with a special introductory offer. Five Euros for ten's worth of credit? Sounded good, plus one could refill the thing on line. This would get me onto the tram and bus system, so I went looking for the details on how to get one. It took a while -- the ads all over the bus stops and tram stations notwithstanding -- but I found out how you do it. All you need is:

* a filled-out application for a subscription to the system

* a photocopy of a piece of identification (passport or identity card)

* an ID photograph

* and a check made out to the local transit authority

which you then mail in to the transit folks and, if you're lucky, get your USB thingy back within seven days. It's called a Clé T@M, and you can read all about it here. And yes, this is a very mild form of the kind of bureaucracy France throws up all the time.

* * *

There's an exhibition of Louis Houdon's sculptures at the Musée Fabre that opened while I was in the States, and it's good enough to warrant an article in the New York Review of Books, but I'm watching the nickles and dimes at the moment (long trips always cause interruptions in the cash-flow, since I'm not working when I'm on them), so I haven't checked it out. Meanwhile, there's a retrospective of twenty years of the holdings of the city's photo collection over in the Pavilion Populaire. I wandered over yesterday, and must admit that, once again, I wasn't exactly blown away. Whoever's curating this collection is big on soppy romanticism, one-liners, and the deadly obvious. The lack of big names is neither surprising nor a detriment: there are a couple of Lee Friedlanders that are pretty good and two rather surprising pictures by James van der Zee, the pioneering portraitist of Harlem, not exactly the first person you'd expect to run into here. I was impressed by a series by Jean-Philippe Charbonnier, whom I'd never heard of, called "Hommage to the Photographer." Taking up an entire room in the show, this portfolio of 27 black-and-white shots is an affectionate and humorous tribute to the street photographer, plying his trade all over the world: Beijing, the Congo, Fez, Moscow, Bangalore, and elsewhere. The rest of the show is hit and miss, but this room made it worth visiting for me. Oh, and so did the image the city's using to advertise it, Michel Maïofiss' "La Joconde: Café Mont Lozère," which is at the link for the show above, and will enlarge when clicked.

20 ans de collection - Fonds photographique de la Ville de Montpellier, Pavillion Populaire, Esplanade Charles-de-Gaulle, open Tue-Sun 10am-6pm. Show runs through April 30.

* * *

With warmer weather comes more street performers, who are of variable quality, mostly dire. The guy who sits on the Comédie shaking one of those eggs filled with sand while blatting away on his digideroo was, I thought, nicely satirized by another guy I saw using a vacuum-cleaner tube for his digideroo, with no noticeable difference in sound. There are a couple of decent gypsy swing bands who mostly play the Saturday market, but who also set up here and there on occasion, a duo playing identical (and expensive-looking) guitars with a narrow oval sound-hole, and Bruno the Bluesman, whose enthusiastic ukulele playing and huge repertoire of songs make him worth checking out if you see him.

But the guys I wonder about are the ones with the pianos. Yes, upright pianos. One of them has an elaborate display of signs and press clippings saying that he's touring the world for peace, and he's a rockabilly fiend, with a large number of Jerry Lee Lewis tunes in his bag. The other one was the one I saw yesterday on my way back from the supermarket, just sort of aimlessly noodling. I wasn't going to stick around, though, because the sky indicated that we were due some rain, which came just as I got into the house. I've always tried to figure out how these guys get their instruments into place, but now I'm wondering how that guy yesterday made out when the heavens opened up.

* * *

Speaking of the supermarket, with the outdoor market being as dull as it's been, one nice development there has been the appearance of Pilsner Urquell. The French don't like beer, that's clear. The vast majority of what's for sale here is extremely sweet, with no noticeable bitterness from hops, and this is because a lot of it has a really, really high alcohol content. There's one you see the street people drinking which advertises in huge type that it's 8.9% alcohol (these beers usually are blamed on Amsterdam or Bavaria, but that's just the brand-name), but the more upmarket ones, too, adhere to this super-powerful formula. Urquell, on the other hand, is only 4.9%, which is more like it, and is nicely hopped. Expensive, though: €1.25 for a 33ml bottle. But unlike the Heinecken and Carlsberg sold here, it hasn't been sweetened for the French market.

* * *

Finally, some changes in the blog itself. You may notice an Amazon widget I threw together the other day, which currently features 20 cookbooks I use a lot. All of them are European-market-friendly, meaning I've been able to get nearly all the ingredients I need in Berlin and Montpellier over the years, and all of them are filled with great stuff to cook. And, of course, if you buy any, I get a tiny amount of pocket change from Amazon, which comes in handy.

And at some point, the banner at the top here will change, although I can't make head nor tail of Photoshop, and haven't been able to get into the various layers of the banner Marie kindly helped put together, based on a photo I took last fall. I'll either figure it out or I won't, but I bet I will, and I'll get it up there when I do.

Reality

While I have reason to hope that some of the activities of the past month will bear fruit, they haven't just yet, so instead of hanging around the house waiting for the little chime that announces an incoming e-mail (work? or just another press release about a band I've never heard of?), I decided to take advantage of a warmish early spring day on Easter Monday by taking a walk.

There's one major road out of town (that I know of) that I've never followed, off in a direction I know I've never walked or driven, so that was the obvious route to take. It branches off of the intersection at the start of the Arceaux, the waterway that brings the water to the newly-scrubbed watertower in the Peyroux park, so it was easy enough to find, and off I went. And went. No picturesque houses, just box after box. There was a huge church whose architecture brought Mussolini to mind. I walked on, knowing that at the end of this would be countryside.

But boy, did it take a long time coming. Eventually, though, I saw a big traffic circle and some green. Just my luck: it turns out I have been out this way before. The green was the park surrounding the Chateau d'Ô, which I'd passed in August when my friend Brett was visiting and we were trying hard to leave Montpellier behind so we could drive into the countryside. It's an 18th century mansion set on extensive grounds, which also include an indoor theater and an amphiteater, where musical events happen and there are readings by famous French authors.

It's also closed on Mondays.

And, to twist the knife a little more, as I stood looking at the locked gates, a blue tram swept by, the same tram line that stops virtually in front of my house.

I'd noticed a sign on the way pointing to the city center down another road, so I hiked back to that and was in town almost immediately. The map later confirmed that I'd left at a sharp angle, and there's a much easier way to walk to the Chateau d'Ô if I need to. Of course, I can also take the tram.

Okay, fine, I thought. The next day there'd be a market. I'd gone to restock some stuff on Saturday, battling the pre-Easter crowds, and noticed a basket labelled "wild asparagus," one of my current culinary grails, even if I can't taste anything. But it was empty. Maybe on Tuesday there'd be more, and I could get a reading on the current agricultural bounty.

As if. The same old root vegetables are there, tomatoes are few and of the sort you could play several points of handball with before they smooshed, there were some sequoia-sized green asparagus stalks priced at buy-a-kilo-or-pay-the-rent heights, and nothing much else. I had to remind myself that the flowering fruit trees I'd seen last week as I took the train back here from Paris were only flowering, and that it'd take a while for the fruit to set and ripen. There were some pale strawberries labelled "Garriguette," but I wasn't convinced.

When I was in the States, people kept asking me about life in the "south of France," as my current residence is announced on Fresh Air. (I know Terry can say Montpellier because she said it a couple of times while we talked when I visited Philadelphia). It's worth noting, then, that while I'm still enthusiastic about living here and all, reality dictates that sometimes you can take a walk and not get anywhere, and sometimes you go to the market and it's the same old same old. Tomatoes will come, as will neat places to visit (if you're impatient for some, check out Gerry's blog, because he does it on a bike). As with the work, I just have to be patient.

Food From Afar

Silly of me to think I wouldn't blog anything from my trip to the States and Canada, but, as I've said, I'm trying to keep the focus on France. Still...

I started in Austin, of course, to attend SXSW, and naturally found myself headed to Mexican restaurants a lot. No new discoveries this trip, although Sazón, recommended from last year, is no longer recommended: the menu has gone mainstream, the service a bit better than you'd get at a minimum-security prison. The salsa's still good, but the experience isn't worth it. Instead, I had a couple of dinners at Azul Tequila, which has one side of the menu Tex and the other Mex, and a list of tequilas which should send any connoisseur into ecstacy. Me, I'm violently allergic to the stuff. For lunch, La Michoacana Meat Market on E. 7th St. is still the best place in town, and I also ate breakfast tacos there on my last morning in town. The egg-and-broccoli one was a bit disappointing, but egg-and-nopales (cactus pads) was fine. Another evening, I wound up in a weird Jaliscan taqueria during narcocorrido karaoke night. Food wasn't anything to rave about, but the scene was pretty amazing. And, thanks to a Facebook recommendation by Mark Rubin, I had superb fajitas, char-grilled, well-marinated, at Enchiladas y Mas, pretty pure Tex-Mex, but a place I'll return to.

The idea, as always, was to eat stuff I could never get in France, which included not only Mexican food, but Indian (my tastebuds failed me there), Vietnamese (how can I live in a country with so many Vietamese people in it and yet no Vietnamese restaurants -- wouldn't those amazing bánh mi sandwiches go over well here?), and, of course, Southern.

I only had two days in New York, so I didn't get up to much, although in one day I attempted a bagel for breakfast (disappointing, but the place was near my companion's place of business and conversation was the important thing), raw oysters and fried clams at the Grand Central Oyster Bar for lunch, and a bunch of great stuff at Grand Sichuan on lower 7th Avenue with a gaggle of friends ranging in age from 14 to 71 for dinner.

Then it was time for a brief vacation. There are two great scenic train trips that I'll take any time I can. One is between Oslo and Bergen, in Norway, so I don't do that very often, but the other is between New York and Montreal, and seeing as how I know folks up there, that's one I try to take every time I go to New York.

The trip starts with the Hudson River on one side of the train, with its odd islands (one with a "castle," which is really the ruins of a munitions company), lighthouses, and magnificent views of the far shore, which included snowcapped mountains this time, then moves on to Albany (hint to travellers: there's a 15-minute stop here and if you hustle you can buy cheaper and better food than the awful Amtrak fare), after which you get treated to Lake George and Lake Champlain, and the occasional small town. The sights on the way back were even better: the weather was awful, but the warm rain hitting the cold water caused sheets of mist to hover over the scene, making it spookier and more atmospheric, if harder to photograph from a moving train.

Two tips for Montreal: my friends were going to put me up, but had an unexpected guest, so I wound up with three nights at a B&B called L'Imprévu, run by a French Canadian guy and his Dutch wife, whose breakfasts are magnificent. It's not downtown, but it is right by a Metro station that'll get you anywhere you want to go. And one night, we went to this place, whose decor is about as glitzy as its business card:

Atmosphere be damned: if you order correctly, you wind up with scrupulously authentic Szechuan food. The New York restaurant's shredded pumpkin with green chiles wasn't there (that was truly stellar), but this place served the best dry-fried green beans I've ever had, a vegetarian home-style tofu that was also excellent (I'm used to it with sliced pork, but sure didn't miss it), and chili chicken which was, unfortunately, authentic in that the chicken was cut into tiny cubes (good) but without removing the bones or cartilage (bad). We started with something advertised as "pickled vegetable salad," which was Szechuan pickled turnip and turnip green and agar-agar, a pain to chopstick, but really tasty. I'd take Fuchsia Dunlop here in a flash! Next time: one of the soups, which are served in a bowl you could hide a basketball in.

* * *

How, some of you may be asking, could I taste this stuff? The answer is: semi. My sinus polyps continue to ruin my sense of smell, and yet I've discovered that I can taste certain things part-way with just my tongue working. I can taste sour and bitter very well, sweet to some extent, and anything fragrant not at all. This meant, for instance, that doing my annual survey of American IPA beers went pretty well, since the bitter hops tastes were pretty much there. But it also meant that, staying at my friend Mike's place in New York, I was sitting, reading, for a couple of hours one afternoon when I heard the key in the lock. Mike walked in and immediately said "Ack! One of the cats shit somewhere!" And I hadn't a clue.

One thing I did in Austin was to visit an ENT clinic, where a doctor examined my nose, said that I did, indeed, have polyps (the plural was news) and an infection (more news) and said that the drug regimen my doctor here has prescribed was a good treatment, but obviously wasn't working. He recommended endoscopic sinus surgery, which will necessitate a CT scan and sticking a baloon up my nose to get the polyps somehow. Fortunately, I have health insurance, although obviously some money for this is going to be needed up front. I had some very optimistic talks with a couple of agents in New York and of course it's too early for anything to have come of them, but I hope to be able to raise enough to get this done this summer.

Right now, though, I'm only a day off the plane and curious to see what tomorrow's market will have in it. The train from Paris yesterday showed a lot of stuff in bloom, but I suspect not much is ready yet. Still: spring is obviously settling in, and it's good to be back.