It's a horse race!

In a month where an enormous enabler of international terrorism was reported to be "too big to jail", and in a week where North Korea showed the world it loves nukes, comes news of a different sort worthy of our close attention.

But first, let's check in with the World Gangsters, shall we?


When I was young and oh so naive I used to believe that governments were created to protect the citizens of their country while enabling the doing of Good Things.  Waking up to reality is one of the reasons we left the US.  The dream had been burst and reality was just too much to take.

Where else in the world would HSBC, a rather large international bank, be allowed to avoid jail, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that it broke nearly every banking and terrorists money laundering law on the books?  This "walk" has been granted by that guardian of US law, the Department of Justice, thank you very much.

What about money laundering for an enemy of the US (do you remember al Qaeda and M.bin Laden)?  What about channeling money for the Russian Mob?  What about being the bankers to the Drug Lords of Mexico (the guys who contribute to Mexico's homicide rate being twice the US rate, and, oh, about ten times higher than Europe)?  Apparently these are not infractions of supposedly well written law worth jailing anyone for.  The only thing HSBC received was a slap on the wrist fine of about 5 weeks of profit.  That's it.  So, where's the justice?


News of the North Korean nuke test came and went with the speed of a speeding dove of peace.  In free-fall.  After being shot out of the sky by a rouge nation.  What?  ICBMs capable of hitting places around the world isn't news enough to push the latest gossip scandal off the headlines page?  Tipped with nukes a rouge nation is actively testing?  Nah.  That's so 1950's, isn't it?

What has become of the US?

Meanwhile, in Europe, things are a bit different.

Watching Telematin on France2 TV revealed something very interesting.  The smiling laughing reporters and TV program hosts had me at the first giggle and snort.  There's something very infectious about a good laugh.  Add to this that the story involves men in dresses, lots of smelly incense, colorful robes, and tall pointy hats and I just had to sit up and take notice.


It turns out that enterprising Canadians, standing in the middle of Saint Pete's Square in the Vatican, are making book on who will be the next Pappa.  People there were excited about having a true Race for Glory and a declaration of Possible Sainthood.  I didn't see any money change hands.  That had to be taking place off-camera somewhere.  Conveniently, an authority on Vatican politics wandered by and offered his opinion of the Canadian odds.  It seems the Kanucks have it just about right.  Sweet.  This is serious business.

Now this is simple cause and effect news I can appreciate and understand.

It was certainly better than listening to how Gangster International Bankers, Gangster Russian Mobs, Gangster Mexican Drug Lords, and the top 1 percent Gangsters of the US get a pass on facing any even a menial form of justice for their continued arrogant and highly profitable misdeeds.

Cost of Living...

Something caught my eye this morning while browsing CNN Money today.  It a banner article about the most expensive cities in the world.  CNN believes Paris, France is the 8th most expensive city to live in.


I looked at their prices and wondered where they shopped.  For instance, CNN says bread here costs $8.95.  Even assuming a healthy conversion from the Euro into USD, there's no way I would ever pay nearly $9 for a loaf of bread.  I doubt I could find such a thing, unless, that is, we shopped at le Bon Marche, on a particularly costly day.  Come to think of it, I don't know of one place in Paris where you can spend that much money.  I wonder where CNN came up with such a thing?  Perhaps they ordered bread at a bar in a very pricey hotel?

The next item on CNN's list is something I don't know anything about.  Milk.  It's listed at $2.55 a litre.  To my way of thinking, would you rather have a litre of milk or wine?  Full organic biodymanically grown vin can be found for less than 6Euro for 75cl.  We're grown ups, ferkripesake!  So let's just get down to talking about the real stuff.  The good stuff.


Which is where CNN trots out an expensive three course meal for four priced at over $2100.  Gee, isn't that a lot more than the typical one months rent here?  If you're that much of a sucker for pricey food, I'm sure you can find a chef in any city in the world who would be happy to take your money.

Before we moved here, we checked to see that on many lists Paris was ranked number 19 in the world for expenses and was expected to drop further.  That was back in 2011.  In the summer of 2012 (just last year), Mercer published a survey of the most expensive cities around the world.  I was not particularly surprised to read that Paris has indeed dropped it's placing to being number 37 on the list.  This is well behind Tel Aviv at number 31 and just ahead of Milan which is taking up the number 38 position.

Make no mistake, it's expensive living here.  The officially reported (and by official, I mean French state published studies) price per square meter for living space remains over 8,000Euros.  The next five largest cities in France cost just above 2,000Euros per square meter.



So what gives?

Well, I suppose CNN needed a splashy headline.  Or it could be that different criteria were used to judge the relative expenses between cities. Or the CNN "news" could be the product of wishful thinking.  Whichever excuse CNN might give, I find it interesting to read how US media reports on the world outside it's borders.  I wonder if the American mindset is, yet again, being controlled through propaganda and lies.

What if the real "message" is that you have it good there and that the rest of the world is too too expensive to live in, so don't you dare think about moving away, because we, the Corporate States of America, know we deserve the money you are so privileged to give us.

Yes, this is a rather dim, narrow, anti-capitalist view, but what other way is there to understand such statements like CNN publishes?

Beer. Yes. Beer.

Moving to Paris from the USA has been very traumatic in one clear narrow sense ~ I feared for the lack of decent beer in a wine loving country.

If there is one thing that France exports and the world demands, it's wine.  Fine wine.  Expensive wine.  With pretty labels.  Wines with Names.  Wine with Names on Labels that nearly everyone has been trained to know and love (as they reach for their wallets to shell out, how much was the bottle of Chateau Float Your Boat FrewFrew again?).

I'm a simple man.  I like wine.  I also like beer.  Maybe that makes me an egalitarian instead of simple?

The city we moved from is famously known for it's microbrew.  In fact, it's so well known that a friend who moved from Scotland to our former city did so just for the beer.  It's friends like this that led me to believe finer beer could not be found.  Afterall, the Scotsman lived in Good 'Ol Yerp, ferkripesake, and should've known better, right?

With the move to Paris, I decided I'd become a Wine Guy, again.  Indeed, Jude and I have found some pretty stunning wines for Cheap Plonk Prices.  Yet, from time to time I would be found sitting on the couch whimpering and whining and pining after a wee dram of decent brew.

I confessed to my brother, Peter (a beer fan), with "Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.  It has been nearly a year and a half since my last Sampling of Suds..."  A few liberally applied Hail Mary's and Our Fathers and I should've been Good to Go.  But I'm talk'n beer in a wine country, OK?

Using the Force, I googled beer in Paris.  Two places came up repeatedly.  Could Salvation be at hand?

Off to the first place, I heard that Pacific Northwest hops were junk!  Junk!! I was told.  After a stunned look I realized he was just teasing.  Great opening line, though.

I learned there are many interesting small batch brewers all around Paris and one or two inside the city limits.  I liked stouts and porters.  That's what I told the man, and that's what I got.  Good.  Solid.  Tasty. Stuff.  On par, if not slightly better than the supposedly Good Microbrew I used to drink.

On my last successful trip down there, the proprietor recommended the Finest Beer Known to Man.  God's Own Brew.

It was after I sampled this recommendation that the Heavens Parted and Goddess of Brewers Yeast and Malts appeared to anoint me and to offer Le Don de Dieu.  Oh, Lordy Lordy, 12 percent ETOH of fabulously balanced jaw dropping goodness.

After a series of mishaps, I decided to try a second Beer Source.  Besides, the second shop is closer to where we live and, well, the prices are more attractive.  They just happen to sell God's Own Brew too.

It turns out, the owner of the second shop makes weekly trips to Belgium/Netherlands/Holland to procure the best beers he can find.  How he can charge so little is beyond me.  My liver deeply thanks him.  Deeply.  Oh, and thanks must be given for the chalice he gave me as well.  It takes a Proper Chalice to drink a Proper Beer.  Come to think of it, the chalice looks a whole lot like the one our parish priest used to celebrate mass with. 

The French make some incredible beer.  There is something of an inside joke/war going on around these parts.  It's related to the amount of hops put into beer.  The Purists have Declared War.  A True Beer cannot have that many hops and still be termed beer.  The Small Batch Brewers have called up the Revolutionary Forces and the (very humorous) War of Words has been engaged.  I've not followed the fracas, but I wish everyone well in the fight.  It's good to see that people enjoy making and drinking beer here in the Heart of the Wine Universe.

For me, I've discovered that the winter-strength ales brewed by old Trappist and Benedictine monasteries (manned by the Monks Themselves) fit my pallet perfectly.  Until now, the closest I'd come to having something this nice was a bourbon barrel aged barley wine.  It was listed at 10 percent ETOH.

The winter ales from France, Belgium and the Netherlands start at 9 percent ETOH and head north to around 12.5 percent ETOH.  These are normal drinking beers.  Nothing special.  Just something to go with dinner before Evening Vespers, apparently.  Yikes! but these are phenomenal!!  The barley wines here approach 15+percent ETOH (try Bommen et Granaten).  They are something quite special, too.

Yes, you can see I retain my sense of American Over Exuberance.  I have yet to develop a Parisian oh that's just sufficient attitude toward anything good and nice.  Certainly not in the face of these new found loves.  Ranked in no particular order, because they are all Simply Incredible to me and my Aging Taste Buds don't really know any better -

• Trappistes Rochefort #10 - 11.3%ETOH
• Urthel Samaranth - 11.5%ETOH
• Straffe Hendrik - 11%ETOH (my latest discovery and oh dear oh dear it's good stuff)

If you find yourselve in a Monoprix on a Desperate Friday night and just HAVE to have a  decent beer, I've found one brew that I like -

• La Trappe Quadrupel - 10%ETOH 

There are plenty of great beers to choose from.  If you visit either beer shop here in Paris, the staff will happily recommend things that might surprise you.  Try la cave a bulles down in the 4th (Simon is a brilliant man) and take a close look at the ancient buildings as you make your way up to Heaven's Gate.  The alchemist Nicholas Flamel frequented the area.  If you live south of the river, try the Bootlegger at 82 Rue De L'Ouest.  The Gates of Paradise are painted red and the lights announce you are about to enter Everlasting Paradise once and for all time.

It's trying hard to snow outside.  The wind whips bitter cold from the Seine up to Montmartre.  It's winter.  Still, I can't bring myself to wish for spring.  Not yet.  There will be plenty of time for whichever spring/summer/fall beers that come along.  For now, it's Deep Winter and these high ETOH monk's beers are keeping me warm and toasty.

More of my photos of beers found here in Paris.

How to fete in Deepest Winter?

There are any number of wonderful ways of celebrating winter around the world.


You can celebrate Samhain, Guy Fawkes Night (oh, now this is a Good One), Diwalii, a good 'ol fashined Nativity Fast, Bodhi Day, Winter Solstice (what's not to like about building a bonfire and dancing the night away while completely nakkid?), Mondraniht, Saturnalia (with a tip to Old Rome), Hogmanay (I'm sorry I sold my kilts, really I am, but the world is a safer place for it), Pancha Ganapati, Imbolc, and, of course, Christmas in America (where you are encouraged to spend, spend, spend as a spiritual exercise of keeping the Top One Percent firmly in their place - at the top).

Here in France, there are the traditional Lighting of the Lights each night down the Champs Elysee, and the very important Sacrifice of the Sapin (Christmas Tree to normal folk) in Your Livingroom.  Yet, the whole season somehow seemed less festive than I imagined it would be.  Even New Years Eve was a surprise.  The French are a reserved lot after all, right?

Wrong!

I simply did not understand how Winter was to be properly celebrated.


Up before dawn with breakfast in the belly and my big cameras slung around my neck, I was out the door and into the metro before, um, what's this?  Clouds?  Drizzle?  Rain?  Ugh.  Well, there was nothing for it but to soldier on.

Popping up out of the metro at Concorde I made my way over to Place Vendome.  This is where began my education into how the French really celebrate Winter.  Avec du vin, du fromage, et un petit morceau de pain.  Zut!  Il n'est pas deja 09H30!!  On doit de la nourriture, n'est pas?


Oooooo... wot's this then?  A two seater Bugatti?  And over there, a Jaguar XK120 OTS?  And, OMG!, a full blown Ferrari F40?  Jesus Christo! and here they all come!!  Automobiles.  Vintage automobiles.  Of all manner of marque and stripe and condition of the "silencers" on their exhaust systems.  Heavy American Iron.  Old British High Carbon Content Steeled Beasts.  Bright Eye Searing Red Italian Slippered Gorgeous Supple Leathered Hand Hammered Aluminum Bodied Race Cars.  Piles and Stacks and Generous Helpings of French Goodness on Four Freak'n Wheeled Art Works.

Voici la traversée de Paris deux mille treize.


Now this, my friends, is a party.  A party worthy of Fun.  A party worth celebrating avec la Bruit et la Vitesse.  In other words, a party to welcome the Full Onslaught of Winter.

After several hours in Place Vendome, I made my way over to Pont Sully.  There are two bridges there that feed automobiles off la rue Saint Germaine de Pres, across le Seine, and sends them past the old Sully Armory and into the former prison at la Bastille.


Kilometer after kilometer de voitures anciennes.

A l'isle Saint Louis Local stopped me and asked pourquoi est-ce que vous prenez les photos de voiture?  Knowing Parisians HATE to have their photo taken, I had to perform a rather quick mental calculation.  What I came up with was a mixture of Franglais and the Complete Unknowable.  Still, I was able to convey il y a 600 voiture qui passe pres d'ici.  Aujourd'hui est la traversée de Paris.

The questioner gave me a quizzical look and asked six cents de voiture anciennes pres d'ici?  C'est formidable, ca!


A more complete accounting of my photographic adventures from la traversee de Paris are found here (simply scroll down through 100+ images).

Winter Holidays...

Spending our first year away from our first country (the US) has been interesting.

Over the winter holidays, it's easy to miss friends and family.  It's been just the two of us, Jude and I.  We go everywhere together, but we also enjoy the occasional diversion of company.

Our first landlords were in town for the start of the season.  Their family had been here to spend a week in their Passy apartment.  It was filled with grandchildren and soccer rivalries (between father and son in law). 

We met our landlords over a very fine lunch at our favorite restaurant.  Three hours passed in the blink of an eye.  We laughed.  We talked.  We looked at photos of their grandchildren (adorable, we must say).  We plotted and planned.  Our friends want to go to the US to ride a motorcycle down Route66.  We want to rent an old car and drive down the National Sept.  We parted with bises and well-wishes.

Out for a New Years Eve Adventure...

 

We missed being around them the moment they walked away.  We had to find something to do.  We needed to figure out how to enjoy the season without being too sad or too isolated.

Walks and visits to an art show and an artist (who is quickly becoming a pretty good friend), as well as a stroll down the Champs Elysee and promenade through the Tuilleries were very nice ways to pass the time.  Our holiday season was turning out to be fun, even as we wished we could share the experience with people we care about.

For New Years Eve, Jude cooked up a couple wonderful steaks.  I opened a delicious bottle of champagne.  Over dinner, the subject of free Metro rides all night came up.  Plan A was quickly put into action.  It would be interesting to see la tour Eiffel on New Years Eve.

It was raining and cold.  A Little Weather wouldn't stop us, no would it?

Others appeared to have figured out the free rides gig.  The people.  Oh, the people.  Packed in like a Tokyo train at Tokyo rush hour.  Onto every Metro train that pulled into the station they poured.  Drunk Arabs.  Drunk Germans.  Drunk preschoolers (or so it seemed). A few adventurous French.  Packed like a tin of Pickled Sardines.  A good number of these Pickled Sardines carried their own open, soon to be emptied bottles of their favorite hooch.  A Little Weather wouldn't stop a Planned Event like New Years Eve in Paris. 

We must've been the oldest people on the train.

 ... everyone was at la tour Eiffel or on the Champs Elysee...

 
Several arretes du Metro were closed, including the one we intended to debark at.  We made it as far as the Trocadero.  Taking one look at the rather large throng headed to la tour Eiffel, we decided to retreat.  Somehow we found our way to our ligne du Metro to safely effect our military style repli.

Plan B was pressed into action.  We made our way to an open and very empty arrete du Metro and walked home along  beautifully festively lit and surprisingly deserted streets.  As we walked, we could see into brightly lit apartments where parties were joyously playing out.  It was good we had borrowed a large umbrella from an Italian hotel when we were in Milan the prior month.  The rain come down.

Once back to Home and Hearth and after illuminating the TV, we saw that les immisions does not show parties around town or from around the world.  There are no brightly lit disco balls dropping into the New Year.  There are no views of Drunken Preschooler Sardines wandering the streets of, well, any city, really. 

Jude stumbled on a New Year Eve spectacle.  We watched as people were entertained by various circus performers doing incredible feats of all manner of circus-y things.  We listened to the host talk amoungst Famous French People while the acts changed on stage.  We saw that things here are celebrated with a simplicity and style that many Americans might find naive.  Yet, we could see that simplicity might be a nice counter-weight to the violence that has become America.

Happy New Year!

It is fun to see how things are done here in Paris.  We got to see Paris lit up at night.  We got to lacher les vitrines as we wandered around town.  We got to bises and serrer la main of people all over the city.  We got to wish folks a bonne annee.  We got to participate in the Holiday Season in ways we could never have anticipated. 

We got to experience New Years in Paris.

It's _that_ time of the year...

We can't believe that the winter holidays are upon us.  It seems like just yesterday that we were scooped up and moved half way around the world.


It's been a WILD ride.

In April, Judith and I moved from the USA to Paris, France.

Late in 2011 I had been laid off from a technology job (software engineering manager).  Jude and I counted our pennies and made the decision to leave while the leaving was good.  Besides, I was angry at the bastards who would downsize a $1BILLION a year company to make themselves richer.  The CEO had already made $200MILLION over five years and was looking for more to pad his bank account.  The sad truth is, the company I worked for was being stripped of assets and is now a zombie.  Where it took 4000+ people to generate $1billion, the new zombie employs less than 1000 people now and generates around $750million.  To their sharp pointy penciled boys, that's a GREAT thing.  They've stripped tens of billions of dollars and are laughing all the way to the bank.

Not being rich (by any means) meant we had to carefully plot our exit.  To have an outside chance at being able to afford to live abroad, we had to sell our house and get our financial affairs arranged in a way that we wouldn't have to worry about excessive market fluctuations while planning to live on a shoestring budget.

We needed to have a couple things done to the house (new ceiling in one room and a new sink in the kitchen) which delayed putting the house on the market until early in 2012.  It sold in a week (literally).

A Paris apartment needed to be found, health insurance (ex-pat) needed to be purchased, the automobiles sold, airline tickets paid for, and a storage unit filled with Plan B things we might want if Plan A failed.  We flew to San Fransisco to apply for visitors visas that would allow us to live in Paris for a year.  Our visas arrived in a week (literally).


Our first apartment was incredible (this was our view from the front windows).  We lived there for a quick three months.

Our second apartment is a longer term situation.  It is quiet and looks out into a space that's filled with birds.  The drunks are not too loud.  The children upstairs are in bed by 10pm each night.  The open air market is held three days a week on the major street that is a block from us.  We have three natural food stores and a large supermarket that are all very very close to us.  There are two metro stations within staggering distance.  All of Paris is at our beck and call within 20mins.

We're getting ready to re-apply for our visas.  This is a little trying on the nerves.  But I'll take these kinds of challenges over trying to feed an insatiable corporate monster any day of any life I'd ever chose to live.  French state willing and all that, we'll hopefully be able to live out our days here.


For one of these images, la tour sparkled.  I left the shutter open long enough to capture a few of the flashes of light that twinkle on and off.  It's quite a display.  When we lived in our first Paris apartment, they would shut the twinkle system off at 11pm each night and the main lights inside la tour's girders would extinguish at midnight.  A classmate of ours said that it was twinkling at 5am one early morning recently.

Paris is filled with majick.  Plan A is working (and we're keeping fingers crossed).

Yes. We're open.

I was carefully considering the menu chalked on a board outside a rather empty restaurant.   Jami and Jude were looking around wondering why things weren't any busier than they were.

What's this?  Oh.  The owner of Paperorosso is motioning us inside.  Well.  Ok then.

She's quick as a bunny in the door and already talking with the man who motioned us inside.  Jude has a few rather inconvenient (to her) food allergies.  It's a Sin Against Nature that she'd been dealt this card.  She doesn't deserve to be treated this way by Life.  You see, Jude loves to eat, and she needs to ask if there were things on the menu she could eat. 

... this light here... oh, the light...

We're in Italy.  Which is a long way from our home in Paris.  Which is even a longer way from where we were born and raised in the US.  Language can be a little tricky with an American accent struggling with French trying to utter a couple words of Italian, but Jude dives right in to give it her best shot.

I don't even have the door closed yet and I hear (in the very very best Father Guido Sarducci voice) "Sorry.  We won't serve you here.  Not possible."

Alarmed that we've been found out as being Unworthy, or that something worse requiring Diplomatic Intervention has just taken place, I look up... and into the broadest Italian smile I've seen in, oh, maybe 10 minutes or so since we encountered the last happy Italian.  Dario was simply joking around with my wife.

Everything Is Fine.

Letting my heart rate settle a bit, I was reminded that Italy is a broad expansive open armed kind of country.  What might take the French a few visits to get around warming up to things, the Italians seem to have cast cultural caution and many forms of dignity and decorum aside.

Would you like a quick snort before your meal?  No problem.  Out comes the Campari.  You don't even have to ask.

 Flowers?  Cherib delivered.

Would you like a bit of olive oil with that wonderful bread you were just handed?  No problem.  Out comes the TWO FREAK'N DAY OLD olive oil!  The stuff is so fresh, you can't stand it.  It's un freak'n believable.  So good.  So tasty.  So heavenly that you'd feel the Pope Himself has blessed this incredible liquid.

How about an affordable wine?  No problem.  No, they don't feel anything that comes out of a box "real".  How about a nice deep full bodies Super Tuscan RED?  Now 'er talk'n.  The Italians make GREAT wines to drink, not to sit around talking about which vintage is best and what maker went to which school so that you know you could be guaranteed quality that you will never in Your Lifetime ever be able to taste.  In Italy, your tastebuds are, indeed, WORTHY.  [slurp]

Would you like a little wild boar for lunch?  No problem.  Wild boar is a problem in Europe.  Besides, it's tasty.  As in fresh olive oil tasty.  It's served in a plate the size of the state of Umbria.  Tender?  You bet.  Just the right amount of wild flavor?  Oh baby!  Swimming in a sauce that only Angels of God could Themselves make?  Words escape me.

 Heavenly architecture...

Would you like a little Vin Santo to go along with your gelato?  No problem.  You get a choice.  The tasty stuff?  Or the FABULOUS stuff from Sicily?  You know.  The stuff that God cellar-ed, oh, a few years back, and brings out for only special occasions.  Like right now.  Like you really honestly swearing on a stack of His Own Veda, Upanishad, and Philokalia deserve this.

I should've known that Jude had broken an important cultural barrier and that we would all benefit by being served a meal FAR better than anything you've ever seen in ANY thousand year old fresco of the Last Dinner.  Or was that a fresco of hungry Romans?  I can't remember.  Anyway, it was all over the top wonderful.  The Slow Food Movement started, afterall, right there in Italy.  Organic "artisanal" (gods! I hate that word) everything.  And the restaurant is situated just across the street from our hotel.  How on earth could we go wrong?

 A saint on a stick!

Dario spent a fair bit of time with us, chatting about this and that, and generally having a laugh filled wonderful experience.  Cultural barriers were, how shall we say?, gone.

By the time we left (a couple hours later), the place was filled with happy hungry folks.  We?  It was a Our Last Dinner in Florence.  For now, at least.

We'll be back.  In this you can trust.