violetismycolor

Mom's Weekend at OSU...

This weekend is Mom's Weekend at OSU.  There aren't a lot of things on the schedule for a boy to do with his mom (fashion show, Mom's Weekend Tea, pottery demonstrations, IFC sing, etc.) so we are looking for alternative things to do with ourselves.  Some ideas are hiking and/or biking, lots of eating, going to see Spiderman 3.  The important thing is to spend quality time with Ross. 

I am totally looking forward to it.

movies galore...

Amazingly, the last four movies I have been to have been wonderful. 

First was the German film, The Lives of Others.  It is a powerful story about East Germany's Secret Police before the wall fell.  Scary, but so well done.

Next came The Namesake.  This film is about an Indian family and their lives in the U.S.  It is a powerful film about family and how immigrants mesh their old and new cultures. 

Last week, we saw The Black Book (Dutch-directed by Paul Verhoven).  It is set in WW2 Holland, and is about the Resistance and the Occupation of Holland.  My mom was a teenager in Holland at this time and the movie was very true to everything she has told me about what life was like then.  It's a must-see.

Last night, we saw the French film, Avenue Montaigne.  It is about the intersection of the lives of 4 very different people...a waitress, a tv-soap star, a concert pianist, a dying man who is selling off the art that he collected over a lifetime.  Fabulous.

I DO note that three of these four films are not American.  Hmmm...

the tudors...

If you go to the Showtime website, you can watch (for free, password is king) the first two episodes of The Tudors.  It is fabulous and, I think, pretty realistic to what life was like at the court of the young Henry VIII. 

Being a bit of an amateur historian of the time (my favorite historical time period being 1500 - 1560), I have a pretty large personal library of books about England, France, and The Holy Roman Empire at this time.  Henry VIII was reputed to be a very young, handsome, smart, athletic monarch.  He was also volatile and had great hubris, which led him to his own personal demons...playing out in his choice of his five wives and their eventual sad lives. 

This is definitely television worth watching.  And given my own personal interests in the material, lots of fun for me.

shock, but no awe...

I spent the day feeling so sad.  I couldn't believe that we have had another school shooting.  But this one's death toll was just so high.  And to make matters worse, we know someone who attends school at Virginia Tech.  Adam's good friend, Jim T., is a grad student there.  Jim spent lots of time at our home in Adam's growing-up years...and they have stayed friends ever since. 

What a relief it was to finally see Adam's email, that said (regarding Jim):

Just letting you know he's ok.  Apparently when it happened he was in
one of the buildings right next to it.

I imagine that Jim's parents were freaking out, as I would have been if this would have happened at St. Andrew's, Colgate, or Oregon State.  I feel so very sad for the families of all those who died or were injured today. 

stories from the road...

Navigation

John gave me a Tomtom (GPS mapping device) for Christmas.  It gets me around wherever I need to go without getting lost.  I love it.  For our recent trip, I purchase the Western Europe Maps for my device and was it worth every penny!  It saved us tons of time and frustration.  Starting off in Dijon, where the  medieval streets are not only narrow and winding out/around every which way with the added confusion of multiple one-ways and bus-only, we could not have found our way between our hotel and Bonnie's apartment without it. 

It also helped with advance planning, when we were trying to figure out how long it would take us to get places, as well as helping find tourist attractions, restaurants, and parking.  Incredibly useful device! 

John was frustrated at not having adequate paper maps, but it didn't bother me at all.

French customs

One of the things that most French localities have not changed in a hundred years is their 2-hour-lunch policy.   Many tourist sites/shops/bakeries/sandwich shops still operate on the schedule of being open from 9 to 11 a.m., then closed from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., then open again from 1 to 4 p.m.  Some of the most popular tourist attractions and their surrounding towns have changed and are open a full day, but if you get out to the less popular ones....well, forget it.  That means that you don't arrive to see something at 10:45 a.m., or you'll be kicked out in 15 minutes and then wander the streets to find something to eat, only to find that your dining choices are either extremely limited (if you're lucky) or non-existent. 

We went out to a chateau at Ancy-le-Franc, in the remote countryside...trying to get there for a 1 p.m. tour...only to find that all the bakeries/sandwich shops/brasseries were closed till 1 p.m., with the only exception being one local hotel that served hot lunches.  If one wanted any choice of what to order, one had to have the 5-course-lunch (too expensive and too time-consuming).  We had to order the 3-course lunch, which included no choice...salad of the day, main course of the day, dessert of the day...and $20 per person.  The salad was good, the dessert was good, the main course....veal liver, root vegetables, potatoes mashed with red cabbage...was horrible.  I hate liver, as does John.  I managed to force down about 1/3 of the liver before my wretch-response made eating any more impossible!  BUT we got to our tour on-time...in fact, we were the only people there for the tour and so got a private one, all in English.  But still...

Global warming

We had incredibly good weather.  In fact, it was about 70-degrees most of the week...even in Grindelwald, Switzerland, which is high up in the Alps.  In fact, the Alps got very little snow this winter and the local businesses had really suffered.  It was wonderful for us but...

Making friends

On John's birthday (April 3), we had dinner with Bonnie's host mom-and-dad and Bonnie's Colgate professor at a nice Dijon restaurant.  French and English was flowing/mixing/being butchered for the whole night, but it was so much fun.  Jean-Paul and Corinne (Bonnie's host parents) just love Bonnie and she loves them.  It has been a very positive experience for her.  They said that students they have hosted in the past have often spent most nights out partying but that Bonnie had become a real part of their family, sitting and doing homework while they all watched TV at night. 

We met the most interesting man on our train ride to the top of the Eiger in Switzerland.  He is a NASA engineer who is responsible for building entire rockets, whose dad was a CIA agent, and who told the most interesting stories and gave us some insights into the U.S. government that we didn't have previously.  We ended up inviting him to have dinner with us (Swiss-style cheese fondue at our hotel), and talking the night away.  Heavenly.

In Paris, we met our dear friends, Bill and Nada, at a fabulous little restaurant called Le Grenouille (means 'frog) and had a wonderful time getting their take on the impending French elections, etc.  These times with family and friends were the most precious memories of the whole trip, for me.

France/Switzerland redux...

We're home!  And exhausted!

Pictures are up in a photo album here.

 

   

at the top of the world...

We are literally feeling that way (at the top of the world)...and then, we are almost physically there also.  We are in glorious Switzerland (Grindelwald) and took a set of trains up there...to the top of that mountain you see.  It's called The Eiger and it is massive!  And not only IT is massive but there are tons of other mountains around it that are massive.  In the foreground is our hotel.  The photo is borrowed from someone else since my photos are in my camera till I go home. 

Anyway...

We started out in France...a few days in the area of Dijon.  There were gorgeous medieval French villages to see (Beaune, Autun, Ancy-le-Franc, and of course Dijon) and lots of historic sites to visit.  There was glorious food, esp. pastries. 

There seems to be a patisserie (Pastry shop) on every block...who is eating all these desserts and how are they staying so thin?  There were TONS of lingerie shops, and maybe that is how they are staying so thin.  We ate wonderful crepes, too.

We had dinner on John's birthday, April 3rd, with Bonnie's host parents and her Colgate French professor.  We had such a wonderful time...lots of laughing and talking and drinking.  Fun, fun, fun.

We headed out to Switzerland on Thursday afternoon.  At the Swiss border, we got our 30 swiss-franc auto tax sticker from a charming border guard.  He had been frowning when I drove up in our French license-plated car, saying 'Bonsoir' to me.  When I said, "Hi!", his frown turned upside down and he grinned from ear to ear.  So, maybe not EVERYONE hates the Americans.  We drove through Basel and went on to Zurich, where we were spending the night.  (These Swiss have so many long, long tunnels going through mountains to move across the country...these people are geniuses!

We checked into our hotel and then headed downtown on a tram to get dinner.  We ate at a little Swiss restaurant with great food and great beer.  Then, in the morning, we got up early and headed downtown again, and did a couple of hours of walking and seeing the sites.  John had lived in Zurich decades ago...a college summer...and he was our tour guide.

Adam was hot on the idea of going to Lichtenstein, so that he could say he had been there, so we drove the hour east and crossed into this teeny, tiny country for lunch.  I mean, how many people have been to Vaduz (the capital of Lichtenstein)?  The kids wrote some post cards and sent them off to relatives and friends and then we headed out again.

Down to Lucerne, where apparently half of Switzerland was spending the Easter weekend, where we had Gelati's and walked along the river. 

Thank God for our Tomtom (our GPS mapping system that guided us around).  It certainly helped us everywhere we went.

The trip from Lucerne to Grindelwald was gorgeous and terrifying.  These little itty-bitty roads that went up and down these gigantic mountains, and through tons of tunnels, were so scary.  We arrived in great shape, though.  The weather here has been in the 60's in France and now the 70's in Grindelwald...absolutely incredibly great...always sunny, it seems.  How lucky we are!

So today we went up the Eiger and it was awesome.  We met this very nice American man, who just happened to work for NASA...he's an engineer who designs the rockets...how cool is that?  He wandered around the mountain with us. 

Tonight is fondue night here at the hotel...can't wait for that!  Tomorrow, we're off to Annecy (just over the French border, on a gorgeous alpine lake)...

Internet has been expensive till we got here, where it was free...go figure...so I haven't accessed it till now.  My 1000 junk mails were much appreciated, of course.

Off to fondue...