Stade Charlety

Here are some pictures to go with my previous post about the French v Spain match of the World Cup on Tuesday. The first two show the crowd, and the last one shows what a French crowd does to demonstrate enthusiasm after a goal: burn stuff, naturally!

Allez Les Bleus!

Until last night, I had been decidedly underwhelmed by the enthusiasm of the French for their World Cup team. A colleague told me that, after their exit from the cup after the first round in 2002, the French people were pessimistically expecting failure, and kept their hopes down to avoid disappointment. For last night's huitième de finale, I joined thousands of other soccer fans to watch the game at Charlety Stadium, an older stadium which is used mainly for track and field events and happens to be a 3-minute walk from my apartment. The stadium was opened to the public for free, funded by the City of Paris, and the match was shown on the big screen (it was not so-o big). The crowd was made up mostly of teenagers and families with children, and it was lots of fun to see. The game was actually pretty exciting, although I listened to the radio broadcast at the same time to supplement my weak knowledge of the two teams. I went home after the halftime and listened to the game on the radio, and then of course I was obliged to listen to the honking horns and cries of joy from the street. I think, finally, that the French now believe in their team. I'm still sticking with my pick of the host team to win it all, though. And maybe one day I'll find it interesting enough to watch a whole game!

A Friend in the Louvre

I kept telling myself to go to the Louvre Museum, but it seemed to me to require the dedication of en entire day, and of course an entirely free day is a rare thing indeed. So, I finally just bought an annual pass, in fact a membership in the Societé des Amis du Louvre, or Group of Friends of the Louvre, so I could take my time and appreciate all there is to offer at a leisurely pace, on a whim even. One Sunday I was leaving after a couple hours in the section of Egyptian artifacts (note: a couple hours is not enough to see the Egyptian collection!) and I passed this sculpture set into the wall. It faces several others that are about 10 feet tall, and is related to a story about a father and son. But when I saw it, I thought "That's exactly how I feel after a day trying to draw presentation schematics using MS Powerpoint!"

Fruit Salad-Crêpe

Today I was feeling really hungry in the afternoon, around 4 pm, I'm sure you know what I mean, and also sick and tired of looking at my computer. So I walked down to my favorite crêperie on the rue Mouffetard and had one of the recent additions to their menu of crêpes. It was the standard crêpe smothered with Nutella, then wrapped around a mixture of fresh fruit: kiwi, oranges, apple, strawberry, and probably other fruits I didn't identify while thoroughly enjoying it. It had the taste of a fruit-in-chocolate fondue combined with the soft eggy-pancake texture of the traditional street-vendor crêpe. It's wonderful to eat in Paris in the summertime!

Update - June

The season of travel seems to have taken me sort of by surprise, so I haven’t been updating my blog as well as I probably should have. I finally bought a decent digital camera, though, so I should be putting up some more pictures soon. My sister has a fantastic camera, which she used when she visited me for a week. We ate so much cheese that week that I hardly feel like touching the stuff now! And I live in France! After my sister visited I went to the US for a week, which was pretty relaxing, except for having my former Ph.D. advisor suggest that I become a high school teacher. Not only is it not what I’m interested in, but I’d have to go back to school to get my certification! Ugh, depressing.

On a brighter note, my dad is visiting me for a week, and it seems like he is really getting a feeling of Paris life. I found a tiny hotel for him, for 35 euros per night, not far from where I live. The room doesn’t have a toilet, but it does have a shower, and for any cheaper you’d probably have to go to a youth hostel. It’s close to bus and metro, on the southern edge of Paris. In case anybody is interested, it’s Hotel Montsouris-Orleans, 35 rue Beaunier, 75014. Tomorrow, my dad starts a self-guided trip to Italy for a couple weeks, and then he is going to Copenhagen to join an Elderhostel tour of Scandinavia. Altogether, he’s rambling around Europe for six weeks (he started out in Amsterdam). I’m so impressed by his sense of adventure – he doesn’t plan on finding a hotel in Rome until he gets there!

Myself, I took a trip to Barcelona in April. It was fantastic. The most impressive two things were the architecture by Gaudi and the pride of the Catalan people. In a close third is the impressively late dinners of the Spanish people. We never started before 10 or finished before midnight! Here is a picture from the roof of the Gaudi building called La Pedrera, with his unfinished Sagrada Familia Cathedral in the background.