No, I'm not throwing in the towel on France. In fact, things are rolling rather smoothly on the otherwise-maddening-bureaucracy side. And despite less ethnic food, shorter opening hours, and overpriced cocktails, I still like Paris better than New York.
But hot damn, I want to be on Air France's inaugural Airbus A380 flight between Paris and New York. Firstly because it'll give me some serious travel geek cred. Secondly, because New York and I still have some unfinished business. (Three days simply wasn't enough.)
Sure, tickets went on sale for the first "official" A380 flights a while back, and many people who already had flights on AF001 and AF002 between CDG and JFK were surprised to have been bumped to the new supermegajumbo. But I wanna be on the maiden voyage. They give you cool shit on these things. And yes, I know that they are auctioning seats for this particular flight, but I'm too poor for that.
That said, I still want to take my wife on a brief trip to New York, and it's still going to happen.
How? Because you are going to watch the video below over, and over, and over again.
Why? Because you're generally a nice person, and you can't wait to hear about what it's like to fly the A380.
No really, how and why would watching this video do anything? Because Air France is holding a "lipdub" (lipsync) video contest, and three winners get on that coveted flight.
So without any further ado...
If you wanna be really awesome, click on the video above to go to the YouTube page and give me a 5-star rating. And if you wanna join me on this flight (if I win) leave a comment. In French. (Those are the rules.) Because according to said rules, people who leave the most "fun" comments will win a New York/Paris ticket. Not bad, huh?
Stuff people are asking
Beyond wanting to know how watching a video will get me on a flight to New York, people have been asking a ton of questions. Here are the answers.
THE SONG
No, I am not singing, nor playing any instruments. The song itself was commissioned by Air France and is performed by French artist PV Nova. I selected the "electro" style. "Rock" and "Hip Hop" were also options, but I wanted to stay true to my geeky genre of choice.
The lyrics are pretty simple but optimistic. If there's enough demand, I'll provide a translation. In the meantime, here's the original PDF of the words.
THE CONTEST
The video will be judged by a jury, but another factor is how many views it gets on YouTube. So please, view view view view!
Also, I've been alerted that I've broken the rule about how the video is supposed to be one continuous shot, and not edited. This seems not to have bothered them, as they accepted it and put it up on their YouTube channel along with many others, so I guess I'm not DQed.
THE LOCATIONS
This was shot in Paris, New York, and on an Air France plane over the Atlantic. I found out about the contest just before my Atlanta/New York trip, during which I had to shoot a ton of video anyway. So I grabbed some footage in New York (some with the help of my friend Julien), a tiny bit of cell phone video on the plane back to Paris, and the rest was shot in Paris over the couple of weeks after my return. Poor Alannah had to bear most of the burden of holding the dinky camera steady while I shouted out director orders, much of the time in freezing conditions.
GEAR
I hadn't previously tried out the HD camera I got for work, so I took some test shots at the airport when - Eureka! - I realized I could start making a video for this contest. While a little of that footage is from said Sony HD camcorder, the majority is made on the Sony Webbie, a cheap, toy-like HD camera I picked up in the States. The on-plane shots were taken with my iPhone, since I was in a window seat and couldn't easily go get either HD cameras out of the overhead.
The video was mostly edited in Final Cut, taking up probably 12-14 hours of my evenings and a weekend, primarily while sick, not including all the rendering time between edits. Don't I deserve to win?
ANY MORE VIDEOS IN THE FUTURE?
Ever since the rousing success of my YouTube videos from Japan, I've been amassing a collection of video footage of all sorts of stuff. Not in a creepy way like that neighbor kid in American Beauty but like most people take photos. I continue to take tons of still photos, but video has really caught my attention - especially with how cheap and accessible HD is.
That said, in two years, I've edited together maybe 3 personal videos, none longer than two minutes. And it's hellaciously time consuming. I'm not sure if the results are worth it.
If you think otherwise, then please, click the ever-loving shit out of this video, rate it high, leave your comments, and help me win this thing. Then I'll know it's time to make more videos.
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Back from a Land I Thought I Knew
This is my first post in quite some time, as I haven't really been traveling to new lands to write about. I know, I know... I'm right here in one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world, with high speed train tracks radiating like the oft-compared bicycle spokes to all points in Europe. I'm within transit distance of two international airports, and if I lose any semblance of sanity and want to fly RyanAir, there's a third airport within reasonable distance. I should be populating this blog with all sorts of stories that scream, appropriately, "Omid Abroad!"
The thing is, I have a job. My wife does not, and by the good graces of labrynthine French immigration policy, can not. This means that not only do I not have time to fly/train off to various parts of Europe - as close as it may all be - we're also flat on our ass much of the time. So anyone who thinks we're living a glamourous life in Paris should check themselves. The cost of living is higher, our combined income has been cut in half, and I'm too damn tired to do anything in my free time anyway.
Enough bitching, though. To be honest, we have traveled. We spent our year's leisure allowance on a trip to California and Washington this summer. Sure, that's exciting for some people, but other than the pleasure of seeing our family and friends (and attend weddings and see new babies), it's like a Thanksgiving trip home, not a vacation. "Travel" is only a functional part of a trip like this. Even when road-tripping the entire west coast of the United States, it's all familiar territory. Nothing to write home (nor blog) about.
Why, then, am I now bothering to write about my more recent trip to the US? Particularly one mostly mandated by and covered by work? One where the lack of sleep and aching fatigue at the end is due more to nights spent actually working than hedonistic overindulgence?
Because in less than two year's time, the United States of America has become a foreign land to me. After 21 months of living in France, I find myself as bewildered and bedazzled in America as the poor saps who have to be finger-printed and retina-scanned when they arrive in the country.
Of course, this could be because I went to Atlanta.
I made friends with another American in Paris this summer, and when I told him my next trip back would be to "the ATL" (as therappers locals call it), his words of advice on his old stomping grounds were, "Vaya con dios." Not very encouraging. I chalked it up as perhaps some deep-seeded resentment against one's old home, much as I dislike the suburban wasteland surrounding San Francisco, and thought to myself "It can't be that bad."
It can.
From the moment one lands in Atlanta, it feels as back-assward and fuck-tarded as possible. That's because once you arrive at the airport, you pick up your baggage, cruise down the concourse and... Check your bag again. Then you exit the baggage claim area... And go through security. Mind you, this is on the way OUT of the airport.
IN WHAT BATSHIT CRAZY WORLD DOES ONE HAVE TO CHECK HIS/HER BAGGAGE AND GO THROUGH SECURITY TO EXIT AN AIRPORT?
After waiting at the carousel to pick up my luggage (a second time), I managed to find a shuttle to get to my hotel for the week...
The W Midtown Atlanta Hotel, like other W hotels, is nice. The rooms are well-appointed. Service is adequate for business. And the decor is modern chic. They call it "Techno-Glam." My US colleagues better summed it up as "Ghetto Fabulous."
As shiny and new as everything seems, it's all of cheap build quality: Made more to look good than perform well. Like all the Chrysler 300Ms and similar cheap luxury cruisers pulling up out front, there's a lot of flash but not a whole lot of substance. The parallel was sadly true with Atlanta itself.
There's only one downtown Atlanta, but three "centers" with glimmering highrise buildings and public thoroughfares. Going by my cursory rounds through them, many of these buildings are half (and some fully) empty. On our first jaunt out - on a Sunday - some colleagues theorized that being in the Bible Belt, it was unsurprising that things would be closed on the so-called day of rest. But this is capitalist America, I reminded them. Someone's always up for makin' some money. Apparently, that someone is whomever hung up all the "FOR LEASE" signs on all these buildings. Religious observation, my ass...
Certainly, though, there is some charm to the whole Bible Belt thing. I don't mean the whole quaint closed-on-Sundays thing. We have that in France and I actually do appreciate having one day a week that's not all work and commerce. I mean the earnestness of outwardly religious folk, especially in the South. I mean, where else would you see the Je-bus? Hellfire coming from the front wheels and all!
In an economically depressed and/or disadvantaged area, sometimes religion is the only light that shines for people. And if it helps them keep their chin up and stay motivated, then more power to them. It's oddly comforting that the force keeping a Downtown Atlanta crackhead from attacking you is the Bible-thumper intervening to teach him the Word. Divine intervention? Maybe.
The other interesting thing in areas with an economically lower stratum: Public transit! While in world metropolises, underground and elevated trains are how the masses get around without the hassle of car ownership or traffic, in sprawly American places like Atlanta (or Los Angeles) they're the domain of people who can't afford cars to get to their jobs serving the upper strata.
MARTA - Atlanta's transit system - is somewhat limited, the subway stops are pretty far in between, and your chances of being accosted by a crackhead at the station is pretty high. On the other hand, it runs smoothly, moves fairly quickly, and the cars are spotless. In fact, MARTA puts the San Francisco Bay Area's BART to shame in terms of cleanliness. Although the cars are practically identical, MARTA uses shiny plastic seats and linoleum floors - surfaces that can easily be kept clean. BART for some reason uses bum piss-absorbent cloth upholstery and shit-absorbent carpeting.
It's while riding the MARTA train between fancypants neighborhoods like Midtown and Buckhead that the economic disparity starts to get in your face. (Sometimes literally.) One of the things I love about Paris (and loved about San Francisco) is that the glam and the grit are interwoven, within mere meters of each other. Sure, both have their wealthy enclaves far from the seedier districts, but in general there is much more of a mixture. I didn't feel this in Atlanta. Between the wealthy, well-to-do "islands," I found run-down tracts and many have-nots hanging out in them. I wondered how often they're run off by the doormen and valets of the highrises in thenicer areas, surrounded by manicured greenery. I felt a true sense of segregation. The only thing they really share is that there are shit-tons of parking lots. More parking spaces than people.
While I find this sort of extreme stratification a bit depressing, I still think it's terribly fascinating. More so than the CNN or Coca-Cola tours some of my colleagues were happy to indulge in. Why didn't I bother with those? Well, I'm not partial to lousy sensationalized news nor high fructose corn syrup-based soft drinks, so why would I want to see the PR version of how they work? That'd be like me taking visiting vegan friends to a French foie gras farm.
Also, I worked too much to go sightseeing. Night and day. It's what I do at these company events, and why I get sent thousands of miles and get to stay at (somewhat) fancy hotels and order room service. I sleep a couple of hours a night, and mostly stay confined to the event. As such, one might think that I'm not qualified to judge Atlanta since I spent the better part of the week cloistered in my "Techno-Glam" surroundings. But I'm pretty seasoned at this stuff and I had seen enough.
As the BET Hip Hop Awards rolled into town at the end of the week - and with it all the rappers and their entourages in their 300Ms (and sometimes real luxury cars) - I got an even better glimpse at Atlanta. In the elevator with Big Someone and Li'l Someone-Else, one said to the other, "Man, it's all rappers in this hotel this weekend." The other replied, "It's all rappers in the ATL all the time. Everyone in Atlanta's a rapper."
The elevator door opened to the smell of insanely huge amounts of unsmoked weed. By the time evening rolled around, the entire hotel floor (or several of them) smelled like a Rastafarian wedding. And can you blame them? If I had to live in the 404, I'd want my reality to be as blunted as possible, too.
I've been to numerous places around the world. And numerous places around America. Yet I'd never been so happy to get on a plane and get out of a town as I boarded a Delta flight at Atlanta airport that Saturday.
I tweeted that day, "On the way back to civilization." (Gotta love in-flight Wi-Fi!) A few people mistook me to mean that I was on my way back to Europe. I was actually on the way to New York. My father-in-law then joked "Atlanta must be bad if you call NYC civilization???" Hey, I needed to decompress before coming back to Paris, and flying via New York actually cost less anyway.
But New York City? Civilization? My in-laws weren't the only ones questioning my sanity.
Despite my love for farms, mountains, and the great outdoors, I'm a city boy. Words cannot express how much I dislike suburbs, suburban sprawl, and big parking lots. I love the city and will counter anyone who says city life is awful. Anyone who tells me that you can't breathe in the big city obviously hasn't heard of this word: Rooftops.
Or parks. Or playgrounds. Or well-planned public spaces. Efficient transit. Bars. Restaurants. Amazing ethnic joints.
Certainly, you can get these things in suburban-sprawl-land, but not in the sort of concentration that a place like New York offers. When I wasn't sleeping (which is what I do after working without pause for a week), I breathed in, drank up, and - mostly - ate whatever NYC could offer. To me, my brief jaunt to New York was a chance to rest, catch up with friends, and partake in a three-day orgy of food and drink.
Of course, one can't live on halal street carts and trendy ramen alone. I walked up and down Manhattan, strolled through various parks, and got introduced to the community gardens of Alphabet City. One of them even has a bit of urban beekeeping going on!
Here, I was, in one of the rough-and-tumble neighborhoods around the East Village. As my friend explained about Alphabet City when we made our way to his Avenue D apartment, "Avenue A, you're alright. B, you're brave. C, you're crazy. D, you're dead." Yet somewhere between Avenues C and D, I was in a tranquil garden, enjoying the harmonious buzzing of honeybees.
Take that, Atlanta!
The final night of my sojourn in New York, we went by one of the Lower East Side hipster hangouts, the Cake Shop (which actually does serve cake), to drink some beers and catch some live music. On the bill, they had four bands. None of whom I'd never heard of, none of whose songs I knew, but any of whom could probably hold their own at any of the crazy overpriced venues of Paris.
Admission was only four dollars.
Of course, this is probably because for every rapper in Atlanta, there are ten indie-rockers in New York. It's the economics of things, and New York has more than enough supply to meet demand.
I've spent much of the time here trading in blanket generalizations. And maybe I'm wrong. Perhaps rich and poor hold hands and sing "Kumbaya" as they stroll through some amazingly cool parts of Atlanta. And I'm sure there are folks in Jersey or Long Island living a much more fulfilling life than they ever would in Manhattan.
Frankly, I'd love to find out more about that.
Yes, I can easily cross one of the surrounding borders and then write and write and write about different lands and funny customs and show you how to use the odd contraptions therein.
But sometimes it's going on a business trip to a land I once thought I knew that raises the most questions.
The thing is, I have a job. My wife does not, and by the good graces of labrynthine French immigration policy, can not. This means that not only do I not have time to fly/train off to various parts of Europe - as close as it may all be - we're also flat on our ass much of the time. So anyone who thinks we're living a glamourous life in Paris should check themselves. The cost of living is higher, our combined income has been cut in half, and I'm too damn tired to do anything in my free time anyway.
Enough bitching, though. To be honest, we have traveled. We spent our year's leisure allowance on a trip to California and Washington this summer. Sure, that's exciting for some people, but other than the pleasure of seeing our family and friends (and attend weddings and see new babies), it's like a Thanksgiving trip home, not a vacation. "Travel" is only a functional part of a trip like this. Even when road-tripping the entire west coast of the United States, it's all familiar territory. Nothing to write home (nor blog) about.
Why, then, am I now bothering to write about my more recent trip to the US? Particularly one mostly mandated by and covered by work? One where the lack of sleep and aching fatigue at the end is due more to nights spent actually working than hedonistic overindulgence?
Because in less than two year's time, the United States of America has become a foreign land to me. After 21 months of living in France, I find myself as bewildered and bedazzled in America as the poor saps who have to be finger-printed and retina-scanned when they arrive in the country.
Of course, this could be because I went to Atlanta.
I made friends with another American in Paris this summer, and when I told him my next trip back would be to "the ATL" (as the
It can.
From the moment one lands in Atlanta, it feels as back-assward and fuck-tarded as possible. That's because once you arrive at the airport, you pick up your baggage, cruise down the concourse and... Check your bag again. Then you exit the baggage claim area... And go through security. Mind you, this is on the way OUT of the airport.
IN WHAT BATSHIT CRAZY WORLD DOES ONE HAVE TO CHECK HIS/HER BAGGAGE AND GO THROUGH SECURITY TO EXIT AN AIRPORT?
After waiting at the carousel to pick up my luggage (a second time), I managed to find a shuttle to get to my hotel for the week...
The W Midtown Atlanta Hotel, like other W hotels, is nice. The rooms are well-appointed. Service is adequate for business. And the decor is modern chic. They call it "Techno-Glam." My US colleagues better summed it up as "Ghetto Fabulous."
As shiny and new as everything seems, it's all of cheap build quality: Made more to look good than perform well. Like all the Chrysler 300Ms and similar cheap luxury cruisers pulling up out front, there's a lot of flash but not a whole lot of substance. The parallel was sadly true with Atlanta itself.
There's only one downtown Atlanta, but three "centers" with glimmering highrise buildings and public thoroughfares. Going by my cursory rounds through them, many of these buildings are half (and some fully) empty. On our first jaunt out - on a Sunday - some colleagues theorized that being in the Bible Belt, it was unsurprising that things would be closed on the so-called day of rest. But this is capitalist America, I reminded them. Someone's always up for makin' some money. Apparently, that someone is whomever hung up all the "FOR LEASE" signs on all these buildings. Religious observation, my ass...
Certainly, though, there is some charm to the whole Bible Belt thing. I don't mean the whole quaint closed-on-Sundays thing. We have that in France and I actually do appreciate having one day a week that's not all work and commerce. I mean the earnestness of outwardly religious folk, especially in the South. I mean, where else would you see the Je-bus? Hellfire coming from the front wheels and all!
In an economically depressed and/or disadvantaged area, sometimes religion is the only light that shines for people. And if it helps them keep their chin up and stay motivated, then more power to them. It's oddly comforting that the force keeping a Downtown Atlanta crackhead from attacking you is the Bible-thumper intervening to teach him the Word. Divine intervention? Maybe.
The other interesting thing in areas with an economically lower stratum: Public transit! While in world metropolises, underground and elevated trains are how the masses get around without the hassle of car ownership or traffic, in sprawly American places like Atlanta (or Los Angeles) they're the domain of people who can't afford cars to get to their jobs serving the upper strata.
MARTA - Atlanta's transit system - is somewhat limited, the subway stops are pretty far in between, and your chances of being accosted by a crackhead at the station is pretty high. On the other hand, it runs smoothly, moves fairly quickly, and the cars are spotless. In fact, MARTA puts the San Francisco Bay Area's BART to shame in terms of cleanliness. Although the cars are practically identical, MARTA uses shiny plastic seats and linoleum floors - surfaces that can easily be kept clean. BART for some reason uses bum piss-absorbent cloth upholstery and shit-absorbent carpeting.
It's while riding the MARTA train between fancypants neighborhoods like Midtown and Buckhead that the economic disparity starts to get in your face. (Sometimes literally.) One of the things I love about Paris (and loved about San Francisco) is that the glam and the grit are interwoven, within mere meters of each other. Sure, both have their wealthy enclaves far from the seedier districts, but in general there is much more of a mixture. I didn't feel this in Atlanta. Between the wealthy, well-to-do "islands," I found run-down tracts and many have-nots hanging out in them. I wondered how often they're run off by the doormen and valets of the highrises in thenicer areas, surrounded by manicured greenery. I felt a true sense of segregation. The only thing they really share is that there are shit-tons of parking lots. More parking spaces than people.
While I find this sort of extreme stratification a bit depressing, I still think it's terribly fascinating. More so than the CNN or Coca-Cola tours some of my colleagues were happy to indulge in. Why didn't I bother with those? Well, I'm not partial to lousy sensationalized news nor high fructose corn syrup-based soft drinks, so why would I want to see the PR version of how they work? That'd be like me taking visiting vegan friends to a French foie gras farm.
Also, I worked too much to go sightseeing. Night and day. It's what I do at these company events, and why I get sent thousands of miles and get to stay at (somewhat) fancy hotels and order room service. I sleep a couple of hours a night, and mostly stay confined to the event. As such, one might think that I'm not qualified to judge Atlanta since I spent the better part of the week cloistered in my "Techno-Glam" surroundings. But I'm pretty seasoned at this stuff and I had seen enough.
As the BET Hip Hop Awards rolled into town at the end of the week - and with it all the rappers and their entourages in their 300Ms (and sometimes real luxury cars) - I got an even better glimpse at Atlanta. In the elevator with Big Someone and Li'l Someone-Else, one said to the other, "Man, it's all rappers in this hotel this weekend." The other replied, "It's all rappers in the ATL all the time. Everyone in Atlanta's a rapper."
The elevator door opened to the smell of insanely huge amounts of unsmoked weed. By the time evening rolled around, the entire hotel floor (or several of them) smelled like a Rastafarian wedding. And can you blame them? If I had to live in the 404, I'd want my reality to be as blunted as possible, too.
I've been to numerous places around the world. And numerous places around America. Yet I'd never been so happy to get on a plane and get out of a town as I boarded a Delta flight at Atlanta airport that Saturday.
I tweeted that day, "On the way back to civilization." (Gotta love in-flight Wi-Fi!) A few people mistook me to mean that I was on my way back to Europe. I was actually on the way to New York. My father-in-law then joked "Atlanta must be bad if you call NYC civilization???" Hey, I needed to decompress before coming back to Paris, and flying via New York actually cost less anyway.
But New York City? Civilization? My in-laws weren't the only ones questioning my sanity.
Despite my love for farms, mountains, and the great outdoors, I'm a city boy. Words cannot express how much I dislike suburbs, suburban sprawl, and big parking lots. I love the city and will counter anyone who says city life is awful. Anyone who tells me that you can't breathe in the big city obviously hasn't heard of this word: Rooftops.
Or parks. Or playgrounds. Or well-planned public spaces. Efficient transit. Bars. Restaurants. Amazing ethnic joints.
Certainly, you can get these things in suburban-sprawl-land, but not in the sort of concentration that a place like New York offers. When I wasn't sleeping (which is what I do after working without pause for a week), I breathed in, drank up, and - mostly - ate whatever NYC could offer. To me, my brief jaunt to New York was a chance to rest, catch up with friends, and partake in a three-day orgy of food and drink.
Of course, one can't live on halal street carts and trendy ramen alone. I walked up and down Manhattan, strolled through various parks, and got introduced to the community gardens of Alphabet City. One of them even has a bit of urban beekeeping going on!
Here, I was, in one of the rough-and-tumble neighborhoods around the East Village. As my friend explained about Alphabet City when we made our way to his Avenue D apartment, "Avenue A, you're alright. B, you're brave. C, you're crazy. D, you're dead." Yet somewhere between Avenues C and D, I was in a tranquil garden, enjoying the harmonious buzzing of honeybees.
Take that, Atlanta!
The final night of my sojourn in New York, we went by one of the Lower East Side hipster hangouts, the Cake Shop (which actually does serve cake), to drink some beers and catch some live music. On the bill, they had four bands. None of whom I'd never heard of, none of whose songs I knew, but any of whom could probably hold their own at any of the crazy overpriced venues of Paris.
Admission was only four dollars.
Of course, this is probably because for every rapper in Atlanta, there are ten indie-rockers in New York. It's the economics of things, and New York has more than enough supply to meet demand.
I've spent much of the time here trading in blanket generalizations. And maybe I'm wrong. Perhaps rich and poor hold hands and sing "Kumbaya" as they stroll through some amazingly cool parts of Atlanta. And I'm sure there are folks in Jersey or Long Island living a much more fulfilling life than they ever would in Manhattan.
Frankly, I'd love to find out more about that.
Yes, I can easily cross one of the surrounding borders and then write and write and write about different lands and funny customs and show you how to use the odd contraptions therein.
But sometimes it's going on a business trip to a land I once thought I knew that raises the most questions.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Lost in Luxembourg
I've been back from a short trip to Luxembourg for a couple of days now, but it's taken me a while to recover enough to write about it. I've been wearing my baggiest pants, hiking socks, and some highly unfashionable sandals while I recuperate, looking so hideous that I don't want to venture outside for fear of being deported. I'm tired. I'm bloated. My feet are destroyed.
Our mission was twofold: To meet up with my friend and fellow fan Alex – who now lives in Germany with her husband Thomas – so we can go see the very first stop of Depeche Mode's "Tour of the Universe"... And to drink beer. We were successful on both counts.
While in my hardcore-fan-for-whom-nothing-is-ever-good-enough, the concert was fairly decent (I was hoping for better for Alannah's first!) and just to be at the first show of the tour at a smaller venue was a distinct pleasure. Tickets had sold out in mere seconds, so we knew we were among the privileged few at Luxembourg's Rockhal.
In this same venue, home to Luxembourg's biggest concerts, the beers - as in big drafts in pint cups - were only 2 euro each. I'll say it again: Pints of real (i.e. Luxembourgish pilsner, not Bud or Miller) beer for only 2 euro.
Luxembourg, being a world financial capital, is one of the most affluent places on Earth. Yet we found that - like at the Rockhal - everything is cheap. Not just beer.
With it being Octave, the Luxembourgish Catholic period observed after Easter, the Place Guillaume II was turned into a special fair, with stands featuring everything from cotton candy to nougat to carnival games. And, of course, plentiful beer and food on the cheap.
One thing we've missed since moving to France is street food. As much as people may mention kebabs and crêpes, there really is no street food in Paris. Occasionally, you can buy a grilled ear of corn from a Pakistani immigrant roasting it over a can full of charcoal in a shopping cart – and believe me, it's some seriously sublime stuff – but in general, you're unlikely to see Parisians munching on the street.
Scratch that for Luxembourg. Even at 10:30 in the morning, it wasn't unusual to see a local tucking into a giant sausage sandwich and several beers. Personally, I opted for the speck/lard sammich to go with my brews.
We also sampled grompere kichelcher (potato pancakes, German style) with apfelmüs, Luxringer (barbecued bratwurst), Currywurst, and anything else they'd hand us for just a few euro coins at the stands.
Vegetables seemed to be few and far in between, so in order to stay regular, we figured we'd try the uniquely Luxembourgish specialty of gezwickelte beer. This is an unfiltered brew available exclusively at Mousel's Cantine, downhill from Luxembourg City in the Clausen/Grund area, and well worth the hike. I complemented our waiter on the simple but remarkably delicious, smooth beer (I was expecting something more hoppy, tangy, or even gritty) and he proudly boasted that this is the only place you can get it - because they make it out back. (The big Mousel brewery itself has long moved to another city.)
After putting down litres of the stuff (4 euro a Stein, not bad), we thought it might be a good idea to find our way back toward our hotel and get some dinner before Alex and Thomas arrived in the evening.
Easier said than done.
Much of Luxembourg is – thanks to the Pétrusse river cutting a winding swath through it – hilly and zig-zaggy. There are very few straight lines from one place to another. So although we had followed our waiter's instructions to get back, we wound up somewhere in an ancient neighborhood in the Grund, without much of an idea where we really were. Not a big deal, considering the area is really quite charming and cute.
"Hey, there's a bar!" Alannah said, noticing the skulls in the window of the Aula Cafe. "Let's go inside," I replied.
And that's how we ended up having a liquid dinner.
We'd intended to have a quick beer and a pee-break and make our way to a restaurant for our first proper meal, but the Bofferdings went down too smoothly and the bartender and locals were too friendly. We ended up camping out for several hours, downing the aforementioned beers, as well as house specialties of honey and banana liqueurs. They even put on a ton of Depeche Mode on the sound system when they found out we were in town for the show. Class all the way.
Finally peeling ourselves off the barstools, we again took directions and made our way toward what we thought was the center of town. Somehow we ended up walking alongside what seemed like a highway. Night had fallen, and I went into a service station to ask for directions. They seemed a bit taken aback that we were on foot, telling me we had to go two kilometers in the direction from which we'd just come. Shit!
That one wrong turn cost us our intended dinner. We'd made it to the restaurant just as they'd decided to stop serving, the smell of steak and what had to be the best garlic sauce ever wafting through the air. I grumbled all the way back to the Gare part of town. At least the timing was right and we were able to meet up with our friends who'd just gotten in from Germany.
Luxembourg, despite speaking French and having a lot in common with France, does not keep French dining hours. So our only choice for dinner was... McDonald's. This isn't so awful, as I have this weird quirk about wanting to try the Golden Arches in every country I visit. (Verdict: Nothing to write home about.) But also because this was the same McDonald's that Alannah had come to on her very first trip to Europe. In fact, at this McDonald's, oh so many years ago, she had eaten her very first meal in Europe.
I'm still laughing at her about that.
But I shouldn't. I fully understand. After all, she could've arrived after 9-freakin-P.M.
At bedtime, we both realized that - despite it having been only a year since leaving the US - we've already become French. Dinner before 10:00pm just seems sort of... abnormal.
The Agony of Da-Feet
I awoke early the next morning. Not because I was excited to see my favorite band at an exclusive show in a small-ish venue. But because of serious pain in my right foot. All the hiking, climbing, and generally being lost had taken its toll – I'd either strained or hyperextended my foot. And the steady diet of fat, nitrites, and beer probably didn't help.
So we made it the morning's goal to hit the farmer's market, to see if this country does actually consume anything that grows on plants that wasn't once a hop or barley.
After a nice sit-down petit déjeuner of coffee, croissants, and orange juice (4€ as opposed to 9€ in Paris), I painfully soldiered on to the market, which had been displaced farther away from the center of town because of the Octave fair.
It was sorely disappointing, with few stands and most of them selling the same stuff as you'd find at the more run-of-the-mill Parisian markets. Alannah did find, however, some treviso, a particular kind of radicchio she'd picked up and fell in love with in Italy last year.
The four of us marched back toward the old town to hit up the Octave fair once again for some munchies, loading up once again on sausage-type-goods. If you can't beat 'em...
As midday approached, we headed back toward the train station to make our way to Oberkorn, just a few stops past where the evening's concert would be. There's no reason for any person to go to Oberkorn unless A) you live there, or B) you're a Depeche Mode fan.
The band played their only other Luxembourg show there back in 1982 or so, and wound up naming a B-side after it - "Oberkorn (It's a Small Town)"
It is, indeed, a small town. The train station is maybe about 50 metres long, has no gates or fences or anything to keep you from just walking across the tracks to get to the other "platform" (read: sidewalk), and their claim to fame appears to be a community swimming pool that has a waterslide.
On the other hand, their gleaming, modern local buses put most public transit in the US to shame. (Not that it takes much.) And they have the most perfect pavements on the face of the Earth. No joke. I wonder how much beers cost here...
Our incredibly trivial, deadhead-like pilgrimage over and done with, we got back on the train to go to Rockhal. (Their tickets are good for all public transit in the country of Luxembourg on the day of shows. Sweet.) We were among the handful that had arrived insanely early to be the first ones in, wanting to be right up front, after all.
Unfortunately, I had to return to Luxembourg to put my photography gear away at the hotel (the No-Cameras rule applies only to SLRs, apparently) which meant coming back later with a bigger crowd to find the others and regain my position in line. This meant a lot of "Excuse me," "Pardonnez-moi," and other niceties while stepping on the toes of people who surely thought we were just trying to cut in line.
And that was the case - not because I wasn't polite, nor that I couldn't say in several languages that I'd been there earlier and was rejoining my friends... But because there was the (I hate to say typical, but that's how it is at these shows) Eastern European contingent who had indeed cut in line to go be at the front. In fact, one fine example of such post-Iron Curtain louts was right in front of Alex and Thomas, a gargantuan couple who had absolutely no consideration for anyone else.
As luck would have it, when we made our way to the front of the stage once the gates opened, so did these two jackholes, who despite being in a great spot right by us, had to make a show of trying to push even farther. (As though they could get through the one person and steel bars separating them and the stage.) Further into the evening, there were a few more denizens of countries-that-should-never-have-been-let-into-the-EU trying to shove and muscle their way to the front, earning a few elbows in the ribs from yours-truly.
I finally understood why so many European fans - despite the wide availability of general admission floor tickets - prefer to buy seats a bit off the floor. While the crowds here are generally incredibly polite and respectful of personal space, there are always a brutish few who try to take advantage of the politesse and forcefully jockey for better position. I noticed at a show in Paris - in a much similar situation - that Alannah and I were among the few who resisted and fought back.
Make your own WWII analogies.
The show itself was pretty good. It had its high highs (some decades-old songs being dusted off, Martin Gore giving the performance of a lifetime), its low lows ("Peace" is the worst live Depeche Mode song ever, Dave Gahan still tries too hard on stage, Peter Gordeno should simply be hanged until dead), and as-expected parts (can we drop certain "standards" from the setlist yet, guys?). But again, it was the privilege of being there, and taking Alannah to her first DM show, that made it worthwhile.
Despite the irritating dickhead quotient.
Best of all, despite continuing to be on my feet non-stop since early in the morning (and with exception for time spent on the train), my right foot did not fall off. In fact, by the night's end, I couldn't even feel my feet anymore.
Home
This was our third train trip outside of the country since moving to France. But for me, at least, the trip home actually, really, truly felt like we were going home. Back to our city. To our neighborhood. To our apartment. Our little nest. Where we actually, honest to god think of when we say "our home."
The night before leaving on this trip, I booked us our tickets to go back to the US for vacation this summer.
And for the first time in ages, I'm not looking forward to it.
Don't get me wrong.
I want to see my friends. My family. My old colleagues.
I want to have a hoppy Seattle microbrew, California wine, and Crunchy Cheetos.
I want to see the Pacific Ocean, the Sierra Mountains, and the Puget Sound.
You know - all those things people vacationing on the West Coast get to do. Before going home.
Entire photo set at Flickr
Our mission was twofold: To meet up with my friend and fellow fan Alex – who now lives in Germany with her husband Thomas – so we can go see the very first stop of Depeche Mode's "Tour of the Universe"... And to drink beer. We were successful on both counts.
While in my hardcore-fan-for-whom-nothing-is-ever-good-enough, the concert was fairly decent (I was hoping for better for Alannah's first!) and just to be at the first show of the tour at a smaller venue was a distinct pleasure. Tickets had sold out in mere seconds, so we knew we were among the privileged few at Luxembourg's Rockhal.
In this same venue, home to Luxembourg's biggest concerts, the beers - as in big drafts in pint cups - were only 2 euro each. I'll say it again: Pints of real (i.e. Luxembourgish pilsner, not Bud or Miller) beer for only 2 euro.
Luxembourg, being a world financial capital, is one of the most affluent places on Earth. Yet we found that - like at the Rockhal - everything is cheap. Not just beer.
With it being Octave, the Luxembourgish Catholic period observed after Easter, the Place Guillaume II was turned into a special fair, with stands featuring everything from cotton candy to nougat to carnival games. And, of course, plentiful beer and food on the cheap.
One thing we've missed since moving to France is street food. As much as people may mention kebabs and crêpes, there really is no street food in Paris. Occasionally, you can buy a grilled ear of corn from a Pakistani immigrant roasting it over a can full of charcoal in a shopping cart – and believe me, it's some seriously sublime stuff – but in general, you're unlikely to see Parisians munching on the street.
Scratch that for Luxembourg. Even at 10:30 in the morning, it wasn't unusual to see a local tucking into a giant sausage sandwich and several beers. Personally, I opted for the speck/lard sammich to go with my brews.
We also sampled grompere kichelcher (potato pancakes, German style) with apfelmüs, Luxringer (barbecued bratwurst), Currywurst, and anything else they'd hand us for just a few euro coins at the stands.
Vegetables seemed to be few and far in between, so in order to stay regular, we figured we'd try the uniquely Luxembourgish specialty of gezwickelte beer. This is an unfiltered brew available exclusively at Mousel's Cantine, downhill from Luxembourg City in the Clausen/Grund area, and well worth the hike. I complemented our waiter on the simple but remarkably delicious, smooth beer (I was expecting something more hoppy, tangy, or even gritty) and he proudly boasted that this is the only place you can get it - because they make it out back. (The big Mousel brewery itself has long moved to another city.)
After putting down litres of the stuff (4 euro a Stein, not bad), we thought it might be a good idea to find our way back toward our hotel and get some dinner before Alex and Thomas arrived in the evening.
Easier said than done.
Much of Luxembourg is – thanks to the Pétrusse river cutting a winding swath through it – hilly and zig-zaggy. There are very few straight lines from one place to another. So although we had followed our waiter's instructions to get back, we wound up somewhere in an ancient neighborhood in the Grund, without much of an idea where we really were. Not a big deal, considering the area is really quite charming and cute.
"Hey, there's a bar!" Alannah said, noticing the skulls in the window of the Aula Cafe. "Let's go inside," I replied.
And that's how we ended up having a liquid dinner.
We'd intended to have a quick beer and a pee-break and make our way to a restaurant for our first proper meal, but the Bofferdings went down too smoothly and the bartender and locals were too friendly. We ended up camping out for several hours, downing the aforementioned beers, as well as house specialties of honey and banana liqueurs. They even put on a ton of Depeche Mode on the sound system when they found out we were in town for the show. Class all the way.
Finally peeling ourselves off the barstools, we again took directions and made our way toward what we thought was the center of town. Somehow we ended up walking alongside what seemed like a highway. Night had fallen, and I went into a service station to ask for directions. They seemed a bit taken aback that we were on foot, telling me we had to go two kilometers in the direction from which we'd just come. Shit!
That one wrong turn cost us our intended dinner. We'd made it to the restaurant just as they'd decided to stop serving, the smell of steak and what had to be the best garlic sauce ever wafting through the air. I grumbled all the way back to the Gare part of town. At least the timing was right and we were able to meet up with our friends who'd just gotten in from Germany.
Luxembourg, despite speaking French and having a lot in common with France, does not keep French dining hours. So our only choice for dinner was... McDonald's. This isn't so awful, as I have this weird quirk about wanting to try the Golden Arches in every country I visit. (Verdict: Nothing to write home about.) But also because this was the same McDonald's that Alannah had come to on her very first trip to Europe. In fact, at this McDonald's, oh so many years ago, she had eaten her very first meal in Europe.
I'm still laughing at her about that.
But I shouldn't. I fully understand. After all, she could've arrived after 9-freakin-P.M.
At bedtime, we both realized that - despite it having been only a year since leaving the US - we've already become French. Dinner before 10:00pm just seems sort of... abnormal.
The Agony of Da-Feet
I awoke early the next morning. Not because I was excited to see my favorite band at an exclusive show in a small-ish venue. But because of serious pain in my right foot. All the hiking, climbing, and generally being lost had taken its toll – I'd either strained or hyperextended my foot. And the steady diet of fat, nitrites, and beer probably didn't help.
So we made it the morning's goal to hit the farmer's market, to see if this country does actually consume anything that grows on plants that wasn't once a hop or barley.
After a nice sit-down petit déjeuner of coffee, croissants, and orange juice (4€ as opposed to 9€ in Paris), I painfully soldiered on to the market, which had been displaced farther away from the center of town because of the Octave fair.
It was sorely disappointing, with few stands and most of them selling the same stuff as you'd find at the more run-of-the-mill Parisian markets. Alannah did find, however, some treviso, a particular kind of radicchio she'd picked up and fell in love with in Italy last year.
The four of us marched back toward the old town to hit up the Octave fair once again for some munchies, loading up once again on sausage-type-goods. If you can't beat 'em...
As midday approached, we headed back toward the train station to make our way to Oberkorn, just a few stops past where the evening's concert would be. There's no reason for any person to go to Oberkorn unless A) you live there, or B) you're a Depeche Mode fan.
The band played their only other Luxembourg show there back in 1982 or so, and wound up naming a B-side after it - "Oberkorn (It's a Small Town)"
It is, indeed, a small town. The train station is maybe about 50 metres long, has no gates or fences or anything to keep you from just walking across the tracks to get to the other "platform" (read: sidewalk), and their claim to fame appears to be a community swimming pool that has a waterslide.
On the other hand, their gleaming, modern local buses put most public transit in the US to shame. (Not that it takes much.) And they have the most perfect pavements on the face of the Earth. No joke. I wonder how much beers cost here...
Our incredibly trivial, deadhead-like pilgrimage over and done with, we got back on the train to go to Rockhal. (Their tickets are good for all public transit in the country of Luxembourg on the day of shows. Sweet.) We were among the handful that had arrived insanely early to be the first ones in, wanting to be right up front, after all.
Unfortunately, I had to return to Luxembourg to put my photography gear away at the hotel (the No-Cameras rule applies only to SLRs, apparently) which meant coming back later with a bigger crowd to find the others and regain my position in line. This meant a lot of "Excuse me," "Pardonnez-moi," and other niceties while stepping on the toes of people who surely thought we were just trying to cut in line.
And that was the case - not because I wasn't polite, nor that I couldn't say in several languages that I'd been there earlier and was rejoining my friends... But because there was the (I hate to say typical, but that's how it is at these shows) Eastern European contingent who had indeed cut in line to go be at the front. In fact, one fine example of such post-Iron Curtain louts was right in front of Alex and Thomas, a gargantuan couple who had absolutely no consideration for anyone else.
As luck would have it, when we made our way to the front of the stage once the gates opened, so did these two jackholes, who despite being in a great spot right by us, had to make a show of trying to push even farther. (As though they could get through the one person and steel bars separating them and the stage.) Further into the evening, there were a few more denizens of countries-that-should-never-have-been-let-into-the-EU trying to shove and muscle their way to the front, earning a few elbows in the ribs from yours-truly.
I finally understood why so many European fans - despite the wide availability of general admission floor tickets - prefer to buy seats a bit off the floor. While the crowds here are generally incredibly polite and respectful of personal space, there are always a brutish few who try to take advantage of the politesse and forcefully jockey for better position. I noticed at a show in Paris - in a much similar situation - that Alannah and I were among the few who resisted and fought back.
Make your own WWII analogies.
The show itself was pretty good. It had its high highs (some decades-old songs being dusted off, Martin Gore giving the performance of a lifetime), its low lows ("Peace" is the worst live Depeche Mode song ever, Dave Gahan still tries too hard on stage, Peter Gordeno should simply be hanged until dead), and as-expected parts (can we drop certain "standards" from the setlist yet, guys?). But again, it was the privilege of being there, and taking Alannah to her first DM show, that made it worthwhile.
Despite the irritating dickhead quotient.
Best of all, despite continuing to be on my feet non-stop since early in the morning (and with exception for time spent on the train), my right foot did not fall off. In fact, by the night's end, I couldn't even feel my feet anymore.
Home
This was our third train trip outside of the country since moving to France. But for me, at least, the trip home actually, really, truly felt like we were going home. Back to our city. To our neighborhood. To our apartment. Our little nest. Where we actually, honest to god think of when we say "our home."
The night before leaving on this trip, I booked us our tickets to go back to the US for vacation this summer.
And for the first time in ages, I'm not looking forward to it.
Don't get me wrong.
I want to see my friends. My family. My old colleagues.
I want to have a hoppy Seattle microbrew, California wine, and Crunchy Cheetos.
I want to see the Pacific Ocean, the Sierra Mountains, and the Puget Sound.
You know - all those things people vacationing on the West Coast get to do. Before going home.
Entire photo set at Flickr
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
