Zermatt Hiking

We just spent a lovely week in Zermatt. We timed it just right, it was at the end of August, the weather was brilliant, but the crowds were gone. The picture here is the Matterhorn (Mont Cervin to the French) from the walk to Tuferen.

Zermatt is a big ski resort, which means that there is a large array of lifts and specialized mountain cog trains to drag you up the hill to some amazing hikes. While the expensive "resort-i-ness" of Zermatt didn't appeal to us, the broad range of hiking you can do under the shadow of the Matterhorn definitely was.

There are also tiny little villages (count the houses with no need to remove your shoes) up in the hills that serve really decent food. In fact, there is one trail we were on called the Gourmet Weg. The food was expensive because they have to drag it all up the hill or get it airlifted in, but quite nice in the middle of a hike.

I could describe each hike, but I think I'd rather get together pictures and post them. The pictures really were nice on this trip.

Pictures are at http://suzyinparis.free.fr/Zermatt2006/index.html

Transforming Paris

At the end of our street, there has always been a grungy crusty dirty building that is currently a school. There is a law in Paris that you have to clean the outsides of buildings every 10 years, and this building has been in flagrant violation. The word in the neighborhood is that the school has wanted to build an underground parking structure, and the neighboring buildings had protested vigorously, and had been able to block or at least stall the parking.

The school, in protest, has been not getting its regular (and much needed) cleaning. A few months ago scaffolding went up on part of the building, and it was cleaned and restored. Last week the scaffolding came down, and the picture above shows clean vs. dirty.

Quite a transformation. The building looks incredible. I hope this doesn't mean the parking facility was approved. 

Vineyards for as far as the eye can see

This is a view (on a cloudy day) from Hautvilliers out over the vineyards of Champagne.

Sarah and I spent a delightful weekend in the Champagne region of France. Our neighbors who live next door invited us out for the weekend to their country home. We managed very well despite rainy weather both days. They have a very cozy house in the Marne river valley, with views of vineyards on the hills out the windows. I could feel my stress level go down as soon as we got there, it was just so relaxing and inviting.

Here's some of the things we did:

Went on a champagne cellar tour in Epernay. They have a gargantuan wine casket from 1880's, it holds 200,000 barrels, and was taken dragged by oxen to the Paris fair in 1889. The tour also included a train tour of their underground cellars where they ferment and store the champagne. I now know plenty about riddling bottles and disgorging sediment.

Drove through the vineyards, and walked around Hautvilliers (pronounced "ought vee yay"). In Hautvilliers, we saw the church where Dom Perignon is buried, and the understated headquarters of Moet et Chandon (makers of Dom Perignon label).

Visited Rheims cathedral, and saw it's Chagall stained glass window. Church was in rough shape, the stone used to make it is fairly soft, and has suffered over the centuries.

Visited WWI American memorial and graveyard. This area (Belleau Bois and Chateau Thierry) was where the front between French and German troops was stalled for several years during WWI. The battles in the area became much more real to me as I listened to our neighbors stories about what happened to their relatives during the war.

Ate fantastic food. I'm always amazed by the interest and depth of knowledge that some French people have for their food. "Here, try this honey on your croissant, it was harvested in an area where a lot of chestnuts are grown, and that gives it an interesting flavor", and also a long discussion on why biodiversity in types of apples being grown is important. We have a wonderful homemade egg-chevre-thyme tarte, mixed greens with sauteed chestnuts and smoked bacon, and an intoxicating homemade poire and dark chocolate tarte with almonds.

Had a roaring fire. It was rainy most of the weekend, so our neighbors built a wonderful roaring fire in the huge fireplace. Sipping Blanc de Blanc local Champagne while staring into a roaring fire. Yum. Hard to believe in the middle of August, but it worked for us.

Our neighbors are so delightful, and so kind. It was a very memorable weekend.

Berlin Photos are up

I posted some pics from Berlin. This wasn't an intensive photo trip, just had the small digital camera with us.

Enjoy:
http://suzyinparis.free.fr

Ich bin ein Berliner

Oh, Berlin. We got back Monday morning from our long weekend in Berlin. We had an absolute blast!

This photo is taken from the roof of the Reichstag, which is the German Parliament building. This building is where the European portion of WWII ended. After the war, it was substantially changed, and this dome was added a few years back. The dome serves as a reminder that government should be transparent.

It was a nice break away from Paris in the height of tourist season. We stayed in a nice quiet area of Berlin, Savigny Platz. Our hotel room overlooked the square, we were right over a few sidewalk cafes. I think we hit the timing just right. We waited until Berlin recovered from it's bout of WorldCup fever, and the city was deserted. We waited in 2 lines during our 4 days there, both of them under 10 minutes!

We did some major museum hopping, the 3 day Museum Pass made it really easy to hit a lot of them:

1. Museum of Arts and Materials - fun Art Nouveau glass
   
2. Pergamon Museum- fantastic Pergamon marbles, and Babylonian gate
   
3. Egyptian Museum - bust of Nefretiti is why its famous, but the rest of it was outstanding as well
   
4. Art Deco / Art Nouveau museum - fantastic Zsolnay ceramic collection and extensive metalworks collection
   
5. Picasso museum- too many plastic surgeon nightmares for me. Sarah loved it.
   
6. Musical Instruments museum- walking canes that turned into mini violins, pianos in every way, shape and form.
   
7. Gemaldegalerie - mind blowing Northern European painting collection
   

We also walked down Unter den Linden, formerly East Berlin gone totally Western capitalist (yes, you can see a Starbucks from the Brandenburg Gate). We visited Checkpoint Charlie, and the overpriced museum there, which shows you the different escape methods of escaping East Germany. And we went shopping on Ku'damm, we found German styles, sizes and prices to be much more to our liking than Paris!

We were totally emotionally drained after the new Holocaust memorial. Sometimes you happen on something unexpected, and it really blows your socks off. The top of the memorial is over 2000 cement blocks covering a city block . They are roughly coffin sized, but they are between 2-10 feet tall. You wander down in them and they tower over you. There was an exhibit you could tour which told the stories of victims, and really made you realize that they were individual humans. It also did a bit of shocking you with sheer numbers and scary photos. It made me afraid for the human race to think that people did that. I'm not Jewish, but I left crying. Don't worry, I did manage to recover.

We also managed to make some new friends in Berlin, one of them is a professor at UT, his German girlfriend who lives in Berlin, and also an art teacher from California. The Berliner took us to a biergarten in the neighborhood, which we enjoyed a lot. We also found a great asian fusion restaurant that had fantastic sushi rolls.

And as if this wasn't good enough, everything was *much* cheaper than Paris, which made it even easier to enjoy. Sarah's Birkenstocks were 18 euros, beer was half the price it is in Paris, and our hotel was 51 euros a night. sweeeeet.

We'll definitely come back to Berlin.