Merry Aix-mas. Pere Noel Visits Le Bergerie

Waiting for Pere Noel Christmas Eve

The kids plow through their haul, including a new bike (rear)

Toni and Chico show off their new winter wear

Click here for the SmileBox photo gallery

A Holiday Skype-fest

Huddled around the laptop to share the special moments

Skype always comes in handy when living in remote locales such as we do. The sharing of special moments such as opening Christmas presents from Grandma loses little bit of the effect of being there live, but the girls enjoy staying in touch with their cousins one way or the other.

A Waltz through Vienna

Christmas Market in Vienna

VIENNA - After Budapest we trained it to Vienna (2 hours) for a quick taste of Bavarian-style Christmas. It's a beautiful city, especially this time of year. We wandered through the Christmas market and took a horse and buggy ride through the old town. The city was alive with Christmas spirit, and spirits.

An added bonus was connecting with Lindsey's old Ashcroft School friend Emma and her Mom, who now live in Prague and drove to Vienna to meet us. We enjoyed their company and their language skills, and we did a mini tour of the city with them, including a stop at the apartment where Beethoven once lived. Vienna is ground zero for classical music with rock stars like Mozart, Brahms, Schubert and Ludwig himself all calling it home at one time or another.

Beethoven's ivories

We wished we had a bit longer in this great city but I was growing tiered of buying new underwear (still no baggage) and headed back to Aix for Xmas. 

December on the Danube

Budapest is a city of contrast on both sides of the Danube

The thermal baths on a balmy 25 degree (F) afternoon

Healthy eating is not a mainstay of Hungarian living

Femme fatale and her vin chaud

 

The Four Seasons where we didn't stay

We're a long way from home

Swimming with the Sharks

No, not a clip from some cheap Turkish porn flick, this is a typical Budapest scene. A bunch of almost naked 80 year Hungarian guys sitting around in the healing waters of the thermal baths playing chess - out doors in sub freezing weather. Is that your rook or are you just happy to see me?

Buda or Pest

Buda Castle overlooking the Danube from the hilly Buda side

The Parliament building on the flatter, sprawling Pest side

BUDAPEST - We arrived safely ahead of our luggage in Budapest.

After taking an illegal taxi ride into town from the airport (where we got no satisfaction from the baggage services people), we settled into our downtown hotel, a very nice Radisson just steps from the Danube and the Christmas markets -- and the British Embassy, re-assuring in case of any spontaneous anti-democracy uprisings.

A gigantic Advent Calendar at the Budapest Xmas Market

We explored the Christmas market, which I must say was well done - lots of authentic local crafts and food and drink, and live cultural acts all day long on a stage. The weather was appropriately frigid, but nothing a few vin chauds couldn't address. The only thing we ended up buying at the market wasn't at the market at all - clean underwear and extra sweaters at the H&M, a sort of upper scale Target-like chain store from the UK. UK and US chain stores and restaurants are quite prevalent here, blending in not-so-seamlessly with truly majestic old buildings, the natural, rugged beauty of the Danube and the stunningly bland, everyone-is-in-the-same-boat Soviet-era apartment buildings.

My Rotary home boys selling wine and saving the world

We spent the next day braving the cold and wandering around the Buda side of town, the smaller but more scenic and historic side of the city, sitting on top of a hill affording great views. We discovered a new-found appreciation for the history of this place, which was once the dominant empire in all of Europe, thanks largely to their legendary skills in warfare, especially on horseback, as well as their renowned superior intellect (ask any Hungarian and they'll agree...hey, coming from the people who invented the atomic-bomb, the ballpoint pen and the Rubics cube, who can argue?).

Hero's Square honors Hungary's history of kicking its neighbors asses, and protecting Europe from the rascally characters from the south

On Monday, we awoke to news that one of our bags (not mine) had made its way to Budapest. I was resigned to riding out the rest of the trip in itchy H&M underwear.

We had arranged for a tour of the city using a guide who drives tourists around in tiny Easter German 'classic' cars - the infamous Trabant, which could generously be described as a pre-cursor to the Mini (I later read an article on the "micro-car" era in Hungarian history during the 1950s when the Russians wouldn't allow them the build real cars so they used their superior Hungarian intellect to circumvent that restriction and build tiny vehicles that were sorta like cars, but not really...).

The Trabant: built for neither speed nor comfort

The cars are so small we needed two of them for the four of us, plus the drivers and guide. Our guide was a dude named Atilla, a tee-totaling, born-again Christian who proudly declared his opposition to the government in power (something I am sure his father couldn't have done at the same age) - he spoke of his participation in recent protest marches ("until the police showed up with guns - then I decided it was better to watch it all on TV").  I can't make this stuff up.

Atilla met us promptly in the hotel lobby.He rode shotgun in one car and gave the other car a walkie talkie to listen to his tour. Lindsey and I wisely opted for the better-heated of the two 25-year old beauties and we spent the morning navigating road construction and one-way streets through various corners of the city.

After a semi-informative tour (Atilla frequently suggested that one of us should check Google to confirm the answers to questions we posed to him. In between dodging questions, he pointed out properties that he represented in his other role as a real estate agent), we went to lunch at Marta's apartment. The lunch-at-a-native's-house was part of the tour and actually was what we were most looking forward to. Marta's was a young Budapestian who welcomed us warmly into her small, but nicely decorated apartment in a dull residential section of the city (Quarter 17, if memory serves me right - the neighborhoods are not quite as romantic sounding as Paris' Arrisdonments). She was a professional working gal (no, not that kind - but read on) and apparently worked from home. Not sure if her boss knows she moonlights as a private chef for Budapest's tourist crowd, but her meal (parpika chicken - Hungarians are famous for their paprika - pepper - dishes) was good. She spoke English well and was probably more insightful into the local culture than Atilla.

Széchenyi Bath in Budapest. Not for the feint of heart in December

After lunch Atilla dropped us off at the famous public bath house, which we viewed with some trepidation, mainly because our toes were still numb from the morning's tour in the sub-freezing cold. After some debate amongst ourselves, we figured we probably wouldn't see anyone we knew, donned out suits, braved the cold and took the plunge. It was a chillingly refreshing experience to say the least.

I did get chance to explore the city a bit on my own while the girls huddled in the warm hotel room one night to watch movies and eat Burger King. In fact, minutes after taking the photo of Buda Castle above,  I was propositioned by two of Budapest's finest working girls (I use the term girls loosely, no pun intended). 40,000HUF for the pair...Let there be no doubt that capitalism is alive and well in the post-Communist era here.

Suffice to say the Buda Castle makes a better picture.

Welcome to the Cold World

BUDAPEST INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT - Always a warm welcome awaiting in post-Communist Budapest...No wonder the Germans left. Umm, stewardess, can we turn this plane around for Marseille?

Still no bags...we're on the look out for a Macy's at the nearest mall....

European Tour

Suitcase roulette in Brussels. We are 1 for 3.

BRUSSELS - Our mini European tour, with planned stops in Budapest and Vienna, added an unexpected stop over in the EU capital of Brussels. Bad weather and snow have screwed up flights all over Europe, and our flight out of Marseille was one of the hundreds of victims. We missed our evening connection in Brussels and had to be re-booked on a flight the next morning to Budapest.

Only one of our 3 bags showed up in Brussels and had to take a train 20 minutes to the (quite pleasant) town of Leuven in freezing midnight weather to get to the hotel where the airlines put us up. The next morning we left for Budapest not knowing if our bags were with us, but with credit cards in hand confident that we could always shop our way through this dilemma.

Small consolation: Our hotel in Leuven looks out over the HQ of the world's largest beer maker, AB InBev (mountains of Stell and Bud so close but yet so far)

The Christmas Spectacle

No holiday season is complete without the school Christmas show. It's the annual right of passage that every kid - and parent - must endure. Here in France, it's no different.

The day before the big holiday break the whole school assembles in a local auditorium and the kids put on the big song and dance routines. The 2010 edition of  the CIPEC spectacle was an eclectic mix of holiday classics and some interesting modern interpretations, all centered vaguely around the curious theme of "Puss & Boots.".\ Somehow a cat character seemed to tie it all together, although I may have missed something in translation.

Lindsey and her friend Marin perform. Savannah wouldn't let me post a picture of her in her embarrassing red cat costume

Savannah and Lindsey each performed in a couple of the English language acts, in various costumes, and held their own in the bi-lingual finale.

It was a joyous end to the school term and got everyone in the holiday spirit, with a little help from the wine bar in the back of the hall.

Savannah - safely out of her cat costume

Santa speaks French?

Lindsey and Marin got the bon-bons

Santa Claus made a surprise visit to CIPEC today, dashing through the woods to hand out candies to all the kids. Most of the English-speaking kids were surprised that Santa spoke French, and the French kids wondered what part of the French-speaking world this guy actually came from - but everyone liked the free bon bons he gave out with healthy does of Gallic-infused Ho Ho Hos...

Santa is asking for a belt for Christmas

Only one little girl turned and ran, so I guess it was a successful visit, even if Santa didn't know the French words for all the obscure presents the kids asked for. The principal, Madame Pecnard seemed pleased and Santa offered her a handful of Haribo's.

Savannah was afraid to ask - or admit she knew - about the man behind the beard

Looking for Lions in Lyon

LYON - A weekend trip to France's 'Second City' for the weekend of its famous Fete des Lumieres, a city-wide display of various lighting attractions, shows, and avant garde installations. Lyon is a very fun and diverse city with lots to offer, and when you throw in an estimated 4 million people there to take in the light shows, it becomes even more festive.

The light displays are spread out all over the city, some grandiose such as the one that bathes a good portion of the city from high atop Lyon's landmark Saint Jean Cathederale. And some just plain odd, such as the row of giant desk lamps in one of the main shopping areas. A single over-sized lamp display also greeted us at Part Dieu station when we got off the high-speed train (a nifty way to go in France, especially since we have station not far from our house). Board train in Aix at 5:10, arrive Lyon 6:50, plenty of time for an 8PM reservation at a tiny restaurant recommended by Toni's French teacher

Hotel de Ville lit up for the festivities

From the train we made a bee-line to check in at our hotel, located not so conveniently outside the center of the city -  thanks to our typical procrastination in booking a room combined with the overflow crowd that visits the city for this event. Upon check-in we realize that, despite its location, our hotel is the site where Parade de Lumiere was to happen - right outside our 6th floor window. As appealing as that sounds, there's good food to be had (and restaurant reservations were harder to come by than hotel rooms). We opt for the restaurant instead and head into the center ville.

Lyon is a city of neighborhoods, divided by two rivers and protected by a couple of big hills.  The place where we have reservations is on top of its largest hill in an area called Croix Rousse. It's a small hole in the wall named La Belle Etoile, a local favourite and off the beaten tourist path. It's also close to Installation #57, a giant illuminated egg, which would be our first stop on the tour of lights. We're anxious to set out and explore, but only after a traditional and very delicious organic dinner which was offered in a menu consisting of just 3 choices: beef, pork or fish (Lyon, by the way, is considered the birthplace of classic French cooking and the godfather is a guy named Paul Bocuse. We'll go to one of his joints tomorrow. The city has some outrageous number of Michelin starred restaurants and is home to the Bocuse d'Or, considered to be the world's culinary Olympics).

Sufficiently fed, we head out into the cold. Luckily, we have no where to go but down. Literally. We descend steep streets and alleys toward the center of the city, passing several light displays of varying quality and oddities, as well as numerous stands selling much needed body-warming vin chaud ( a warmed wine concoction) at just about every corner. The streets are jammed pack with frolicking revelers and the vin chaud is flowing.

The ferris wheel - great views from the top

Lindsey & Havana in the wheel

The next day we hook up with Isabel and her daughter Havana, our friends from when Isabel and husband Perry lived in TCI. They live in Bourgogne now, about an hour from Lyon. We had stopped to see them this past summer on our venture from Brussels to Aix so it as good to catch up and compare notes on life in France (Isabel is Candadian, and fluent, so her perspective is a tad different).

Right next to the hotel is a giant park, complete with a zoo (somewhat lame, but free, so we can't really complain). Lots of monkeys, some other big stuff (elephants, bears) and a few big cats, but ironically no lions (for some reason we always end up at zoos, which is making us something of conneisseurs on this genre of attraction). We meander through the city's old town, surviving a disastrous MacDonald's experience amidst the maddening crowds, and kill time before our reservation at Le Sud, the Bocuse restaurant Isabel had booked at the very un-French (but only available) time of 6 o'clock. The highlight was a ride on the giant Ferris wheel in one of the main plazas in town.

Lights on the Rhone

After an excellent dinner - steak tartare for me - we head back into the fray to take in some more light shows...and vin chaud. We decide to brave public transportation to get back to the hotel, by passing a cool-looking fire display in the zoo/park.

All in all,I give Lyon 2 thumbs up. We didn't get chance to spend time in any of their famous bouchons, pub-like establishments that are renowned for great food and drink, so we'll have to make a return trip.

A quick tour of the Luberon

LE LUBERON - A meandering drive through the Luberon, the region just north of us, always reveals new wonders of Provence...and good restaurants. The towns of Gordes and Bonnieux are both medieval hilltop villages that are fun to explore. And we stumbled upon, quite accidentally, Les Beries, which are wicked old stone huts that date back probably 1000 years or more (I should know more exactly, but like Lindsey (below), I fell asleep during the video).

Gordes - One of the most picturesque of the French mountain villages

Bonnieux - One of the most picturesque of the French mountain villages...wait. have we been here before?

Les Beries - Yes, they used to live in these things. Brrrr

Wine by the case outside Bonnieux

 

The historical significance was lost on Lindsey. Toni is quite attentive, though. Meanwhile, Candie does her best white, female Samuel L. Jackson impersonation

Letters to Pere Noel

The girls ponder what to ask Pere Noel for

MARSEILLE - The girls found an easy way to make sure Santa, errr, Pere Noel, finds them in France. A stand at the Christmas market in Marseille was a one-stop shop: pens (the cool, real ink kind that you have to keep dipping), paper, envelopes, stamps, even Ol' Saint Nick's address. A very helpful bi-lingual elf was staffing the stand, and patiently walked them through the instructions, and then helped seal the letters with a traditional wax seal on the back of the envelope. Nice.

Hard to write with gloves on

He dutifully explained that there was three different piles he needed to sort the letters into - Really good kids, just OK kids, and naughty kids. Of course, our girls have been really good, so that was the easiest part of the whole process. Trying to translate some of the more obscure Polly Pocket toys into French was a bit more difficult. But we all know Santa Claus speaks every language.

The scene on this chilly, rainy Saturday night was very Christmasy with shoppers bustling around the crowded street, stores open late, and a pretty large Christmas market - although the section we stumbled across (because of its proximity to the parking) was filled mostly with santon displays. This is a big deal in France - huge nativity-like scenes that are actually miniature representations of an entire village. You can buy the figurines in all sorts of sizes and they have people, animals, and buildings of all sorts. And the prices are as wide-ranging as the characters.

Big sister makes sure the address is right

Everything is Blue & White in Marseille!

We like visiting Marseille because it has a whole different energy than Aix - a bit rougher around the edges but fun and exciting in a big city kind of way. Plus, it has an Olympique Marseille gift shop so Candie could pick up a soccer shirt for Patrick fro Christmas. We ended the evening with a boulabaisse quite appropriate for the weather conditions (after which the waiter slipped my wife his phone number in some sort of strange pick-up attempt - she's still got it..by "it" I mean the ability-to-elicit-young-mens-numbers "it", not the number itself. But I think she kept the dude's  number, too). That episode was followed by an American-break at the Starbucks, the only one we've managed to find in all of Provence so far (I am sure my virtual friend Sarah will point out if there are any others!). I made a mental note to return in any case, not just for a taste of home, but because the North African guy working the counter is a Celtic's fan.

Thanksgiving in France

The traditional Thanksgiving spread Provencal style

Our first big real test if we could handle the new lifestyle: Thanksgiving. Not only the blockbuster of all American holidays, but also a traditional big party event for us. Every year since we moved to the islands we'd always host a massive dinner, educating the locals about our late November over-indulgence custom (and feeding them plenty of turkey and beer in the process) and taking in random Americans. Like in France, Thanksgiving is kind of a non-event in TCI - it's not a holiday so everyone has to work and the kids go to school. But Thanksgiving at our house is usually a late night affair, holiday or not.

Here in France, we expected things to be a tad tamer, but we weren't going to back down totally from tradition. We decided to take the kids out early from school on Thanksgiving (but not before they got to enjoy turkey for lunch at the school cafeteria, a nice gesture by Madame Pecnard and the crew). They got home in time to watch the Macy's Day parade, which we streamed over the Internet and set up for all to watch on the computer monitor in the living room.

Toni's pumpkin pies - a big hit with the pumpkin deprived French

We had invited a small group of people - not our usual island SRO crowd - but enough to make it significant - and to worry Toni to death about how to feed everyone out of our tiny kitchen. Our American friends Dave, Audrey and Marin were key to the invitee list, bringing their knowledge and appreciation of the holiday. Our new French friend Agnes and her friend Philippe, joined us, and seemed vaguely familiar with the concept. And our very cheerful and friendly Dutch neighbors, Lannie and Hans (and dog Casper) made the trek up the drive to see what it what was all about. And of course, Candie was here, fully recovered from her chaperoning of Lindsey's birthday party the day before.

The main challenge was securing le dinde, the turkey It's not a common delicacy in France, so we searched  a while to find a place to buy one, finally discovering a butcher not far the house who could not only order us one (no, they don't keep them in stock), but also cook it. All ('all') Toni had to do was prepare the rest of the stuff --potatoes, stuffing, green bean -- ya know, stuff - to surround the bird and we were good to go. I, as usual, was on beverage detail, remarkably easy in France given the availability of good wine and the relatively modest beer consumption here (thankfully so - we have a typically small French refrigerator and ice seems not to have been invented yet here in France so I'm not sure how I would have managed if we needed island-levels of beer - i.e. multiple coolers).

Board games. A bit more civilized than we 're used to

Candie and I set off in the the afternoon to pick  up the prepared turkey at the butcher, only to find the place closed when we arrived. 'Mon Dieu, this could be a minor disaster if they're close for the day,' we both thought out loud (Candie didn't say the Mon Dieu bit - I have picked up penchant for using French terms like that that are easy to say but imply a deeper expertise in the language). Visions of picking through the Carrefour aisles an hour before people would start arriving entered my head. Of course, we quickly found out that they weren't closed for the day, only the extended French lunch hour. We had a couple of quick drinks (Candie: two thumbs down on Pastis) and returned to pick up the bird.

Toni outdid herself with a great spread and every one enjoyed the American style feast, complete with the football games on the PC in the background. The crowd filed out obediently just after 11, which is typically when our island parties just kick in.

Caspar squeezes into Chico's designer couch to sleep off his turkey dinner

But it was a very pleasant, civilized Thanksgiving and we realized we could adjust if we needed to. Quietly afterwards we reflected on how much we do have to be thankful for. And how quickly time was passing on our France adventure.

Bobo and Lindsey's 7th

Lindsey and BoBo le cloon

Today was Lindsey's 7th birthday. We'll always remember when she was born because, like this year, it was the day before Thanksgiving and she popped out like a Butterball turkey (easy for me to say). That was in Londonderry, Vermont - which, in a lot of ways, has a similar rustic, woodsy feel to where we are today in France, especially around this time of year.

Anyway, Toni bravely invited Lindsey's whole class to our house for an after-school fete (school gets out at noon on Wednesdays). All the parents were more than pleased to let their kids walk through the woods to our house instead of having to battle traffic and parking at CIPEC for a day. So, I think every one of the snot-noses showed up, about 20 in total of all backgrounds. Luckily, our friend Candie is here and she helped lay down the law as only Candie can. And Lindsey's best friend's Mom helped out tremendously, too (Audrey - who is very helpfully bi-lingual).
Savannah had decided that her younger sister's party would be a carnival theme and even recruited one of her friends to run the games.

All things considered, it was a reasonably well-run affair. Toni put out a good spread, catering to the various kid tastes - American kids: chips, pizza, soda. French kids: salad, jambon sandwiches, and l'eau avec gaz (funny scene: Eddy the french kid trying to figure out how a juice box works).

The highlight was Bobo, some clown we found on the Internet. His You Tube video looked good and he was the cheapest of the three we contacted. Satisified that he wasn't the French version of Shakes the Clown, we sent him a 50 Euro deposit and hoped for the best.

Although he claimed he works all over the south of France, from Monaco to Nimes, he proved to be a tad directionally-challenged and it took 3 phone calls and a meeting at the MacDonald's to guide him into our house. Once settled in, he delivered the goods with an entertaining (on a 7 year old level) range of magic and balloon tricks. The kids dug it (if their chants of "cloon, cloon" were any indication) and his perfomance occupied about 2 of the 3 hours we needed to fill with activities. Presents and cake and Savannah's games filled the rest.

In the end, we didn't lose any of them, no one lost an eye, and barely anything got broken.

Chico was temporarily traumatized by all the activity, and we can add men in clown suits to the list of things he is not particularly thrilled about. But the bag of French fries he found lying around in a misplaced Happy Meal soothed his pain considerably.

Best of all, Lindsey had a day to remember. She especially enjoyed getting a re-stock of toys, since she left most of hers behind when we came here (mental note: add one more suitcase for the return trip). She was momentarily bummed that Bobo couldn't produce a purple balloon figure for her. But that soon passed as she was deluged with an avalanche of pink and purple shiny plastic-y stuff - even the French kids are into Polly Pockets, thankfully.

Here's the link to the ever-present SmileBox highlights.

Candie est dans la maison!

Fresh off the trek from the islands, Candie hit the ground running. Unloading her extra suitcase of crap we had ordered on line for her to deliver lightened her load considerably.

Candie's courier challenge

Which she successfully compressed for travel

TCI Visitor Count: 12