Au revoir and dovidenja

Meeting new friends is probably the best part of going to a new place. We were lucky enough here in France to meet, through David’s work, a wonderful family that showed us all sorts of corners of Auvergne that it never would have occurred to us to visit.

They hiked with us to this volcanic crater lake, Tour de Gazenat (it’s sixty meters deep in the center!), and then fed us an incredible meal—food and company-wise both—in their country farmhouse.

They spent Fourth of July hiking with us to this crater where we had a picnic with their homemade quiche (and spelled out the initials of our respective academic institutions with lava boulders!).

They also took us to the charming medieval town of Puy-en-Velay where we visited churches built on the top of volcanic chimneys.

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All the outings were great, and France is beautiful, but the thing we will remember most fondly are the dear, kind people we got to know.

We are sad to leave new friends but happy to be heading back home to the USA after this wonderful year abroad. It has helped me be more reflective and observant to keep this blog, but now we are heading back to the familiar hurly-burly of our lives at home, and I won’t be posting.

Until we go abroad again, anyway…

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The Bosnians say Dovidenja, and the French say Au revoir. Both mean, “Until I see you again.”

Making knives

(The cords to transfer photos to my computer are buried somewhere inside one of our carefully packed and weighed 20 kg. suitcases, so none of our own photos today.)

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Thiers is a charming medieval town known throughout the world for its fine knives. This spring the city started a new program where tourists can make their own knives. Isaac and Eleanor each made their own tartineur, or spreading knife (i.e. not sharp) with their names etched in the blades. It was a straightforward half hour of assembly under the gentle guidance of one of the workers.

Emma Lucy made a sharp folding knife. The process for her was much more detailed and involved—she used a lot more machines than Isaac and Eleanor did and went through a lot more steps. It took a little over two hours.

They are obviously not used to English speakers; no one in the workshop spoke any English. This was not a problem with Isaac and Eleanor. I could figure out what their guide wanted them to do with a combination of my very rudimentary French and her expressive gestures. It would have been a problem if Emma Lucy spoke no French but it was actually very gratifying to her to realize that she understood pretty much everything.  

A little pricey, but a fantastic and memorable experience for everyone. One we’d do again in a heartbeat.

bicycling

The city we're in has set up a public sector initiative to encourage biking: you can rent a bicycle for an hour, a day, a week, or--for an even cheaper price--for a month at a time. (And this is not unusual; Lyon, for example, has public bikes available around the city.) We've rented bikes for the whole time we've been here. It makes a huge difference in feeling willing to explore the city, to say nothing of getting to church every week, to have bikes. They rent only adult-sized bikes, but you can get bikes with baby seats, and Isaac has gotten really good at riding on a bike rack.

Back home we're used to flat ground, and Clermont is built on a volcano, so we've had to get used to climbing hills, but we'd rent bikes again in a heartbeat.

Grasping the, er, Green Tassel

One of Eleanor's great desires before we leave France was to ride the carousel in the park. She finally got her wish. We usually don't indulge all our kids' carousel wishes, but we've learned that riding a carousel in another country often has unexpected surprises--there was the merry-go-round with real horses in Germany and the one that never stopped moving, even when kids were getting on and off in Holland.

This one was no exception.

For half of the ride, the carousel operator dangled a large green tassel over the young riders. All of them snatched at it, but Eleanor was the one who successfully grabbed it.

She was happy enough with the game, but then it turned out that catching the tassel meant she got a second ride. Free!

Bliss.

So I suppose the carousel at Jardin Lecoq in Clermont-Ferrand can now be added to Wikipedia's select list of fewer than twenty carousels that still have brass rings for snatching. Well, if they'll expand the definition of "brass ring" to include large green yarn tassels.

Ruth heard about our carousel adventures and sent us this great link to the best-ever carousel horse race.

Ratatouille, un-Disneyfied

The most famous chef in Lyon is Paul Bocuse.

He has three stars from Michelin and a very famous restaurant in Lyon and there is even a prize for the world's best chefs named after him.

He also has, in Lyon, two fast food restaurants.

His famous restaurant is beyond our family's budget, but we ate at Ouest Express, his fast food eatery--quand la cuisine se fait rapide. It was a sleek, chic space on a terrace. The food was more expensive than American fast food, but only slightly more than French fast food, and it was really good.

We loved the presentation--the crusty roll that came with the salad, and the tiny bottle--a real bottle!--of dressing.

I'm not sure whether this is Bocuse selling out, but our family enjoyed our tiny brush with fine dining.

Puppet heaven

Musee Gadagne is a dual-purpose museum in the heart of Lyon. Half of it is a history museum, which we did not visit. The other half is a puppet museum.  A great place for kids!

Remarkably affordable (6 Euros, but children up to the age of 26 !!! are free and receive a free audioguide), the museum works hard to make itself accessible to the English-speaking world. They have even translated all of their children's guide materials into English. Eleanor and Isaac had a lot of fun with the museum-provided clipboard (the perfect sketching accessory) and the challenge questions in the children's guide, and Emma Lucy found the audio tour interesting.

The puppet museum made us appreciate stumbling across a puppet show in the park--one of those happy bits of serendipity!

Roman ruins

Lyon has two gorgeous Roman amphitheaters so well preserved (and restored) that they use them for shows today. But you can also wander around them on your own during the daytime.

Those feats of Roman engineering will never come close, however, to the joy of finding bugs. We spent ten minutes on the theater and over an hour on the bugs. Happily, there are still lots of loose stones around the edge of the amphitheaters (some of them still with the marks left by the ancient tools that formed them!) for those bugs to hide in.

Libraries on the itinerary

Every European city has its tourist attractions--ancient ruins, Renaissance churches, medieval castles. They're cool to visit. But families shouldn't discount the charm of visiting the public library, either.

In my experience, European children's librarians are warm and welcoming to any patron who comes through the door. They love having kids paw through the books on their shelves. And a children's library is a great glimpse into the culture of a place--the Bosnian children's library is tiny with lots of black and white books by local publishers and usually full of kids playing; the Dutch children's library is large and sleek and clean with large holding in languages other than Dutch.

We spent part of last week in Lyon, France and spent two afternoons, exhausted from our other adventures, in the children's section of the library. There is a robust publishing French language publishing industry, it appears. The library had a large collection of gorgeous full color picture books and even a special room with toddler books (about where our French language skills are). There was also free and easily-accessible Wi-fi for me and Emma Lucy.

One of the kids found the book "Le journal secret de la Sorciere Camomille." Iin it, the witches all get together for a big party. In addition to eating and drinking, they play petanque.

Which I guess pretty much proves it is the national pastime!

Reading labels

We buy mostly the store brand at the supermarket where we shop. We've been very impressed with the quality, and the cost is significantly less than other options.

Buying the bargain brand, we expected bare-bones packaging, but Eleanor--no surprise it's the youngest of us all!--noticed that most of the packages we buy have Braille labels. 

Now it's a game to find the Braille on each label.

I'm impressed that the brand has such a commitment to accessibility for all its customers. My customer loyalty has just increased.

Behind the Scenes

One of the great things about spending some time nearly every day in the park, is that we get glimpses of the magic that goes into making it so gorgeous.

So beautiful!

Swimming pool

Clermont-Ferrand has a great municipal swimming pool just two blocks from where we live. There's an Olympic-sized pool for laps, a recreational pool, a baby pool, and even a serpentine water slide. It's taken some work to actually swim there, though. The first day we tried, the pool was closed for a strike.

The next time we went, David and Edward were stopped from getting into the pool at water's edge because they were wearing men's style swimsuits--the only kind I've ever seen men or boys wear in the US. In France, men and boys have to wear maillot style suits--skimpy little Speedo-style suits.

David decided he just won't be swimming in France, but we bought a French style suit for Isaac. Emma Lucy has made him promise to never wear it in the US.

Next time maybe we'll get through an entire visit to the pool without being informed we're breaking a rule!

European Circuses

Years ago, when we lived in Holland, we planned a leisurely trip to Italy. We rented an apartment in a quiet little town and planned to spend the week taking long leisurely rambles through the Tuscan countryside. Unfortunately, every day we were there it rained. Or snowed.

Desperate for something to do, we went to The Great American Circus with Alberto Togni. Despite the name, there was exactly one American performer, a desperately-homesick clown from Philadelphia on his first circus tour after graduating from Clown College. He attached himself to our family, chatting with us while distractedly making balloon animals for the clamoring Italian children around him.

We loved The Great American Circus and its two rings: stunning acrobats, camels who wouldn't do what their trainer said, fun conversation with the clown.

Shortly after we arrived here in Clermont-Ferrand, posters went up for Cirque Pinder. We had to go.

This circus was even smaller than The Great American Circus--just one ring and, by my count, thirty performers. The acrobats were still breathtaking (at least for those of us who are suckers for that kind of thing) and the camels were better-trained (though I'm not sure camel acts are ever going to be the highlight of a circus).

No Americans, but we heard lots of some Slavic tongue. And David earned a huge smile from an usher when he accidentally mixed his French with Bosnian.

We got to wander among the temporary streets created by the circus performers' trailers. This homey little spot made us wonder what it must be like to make your home on the road.

They may lack the polish and gleam of Ringling Brothers or the sophsticated wit of Cirque Soleil, but there is something charmingly homespun, and perfectly suited to a five year old and seven year old, in traditional European circuses.

Exactly the kind of circus you might imagine running away to join.

Trees, Dinosaurs, and Us

In Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv argues persuasively that children need the natural world (some of my favorite blogs make the same argument from a mom's point of view--here and here, for example).

But we are currently living in the center of a town of 144,000 people. We spent the last year living in the center of a city of 400,000. In the US we live in the center of a city of 800,000 people. And I love living in downtown areas! But where do I take my children when we need dirt?

Luckily for us, we are very close here to the beautiful Jardin Lecoq, a lovely city park. It is carefully manicured, as you might expect of a French park, but Isaac and Eleanor and I decided to each choose a tree that we can visit throughout the summer.

If you're making a friend, even with a tree, it's only polite to learn its name. So we've been trying to figure out who our trees are.

I picked this beauty. We used this user-friendly tree identification guide (even though it's based on Ohio trees) and decided that mine is a beech tree, probably a copper beech.

Trying to confirm that mine was indeed a copper beech, we stumbled on a blog about trees (which now, sadly, I can't find) and before we found the beech photo we were looking for, we found a photo of Isaac's tree!

This oddball tree is called Monkey's Puzzle (or in French, désespoir des singes--monkey's despair) because it would puzzle a monkey to know how to climb it. The tree is spikes all over. 

Monkey's Puzzle trees have been around since Jurassic times. The theory is that the tree developed the spikes to discourage dinosaurs from grazing on it! It grows in Chile and Argentina where indigenous tribes still eat its nuts (kind of like pine nuts) and use its wood.

Isaac has written a little song about it:

Monkey's puzzle is a spiky tree, spiky tree, spiky tree.

Monkey's puzzle is a spiky tree, and monkeys cannot climb it.

Eleanor chose an impressive tree, the tallest one in the park, we think.  We had a really hard time figuring out what it is, but I think we've finally cracked the case.

A Giant Sequoia! Native to California, it was first planted in Europe in 1853 and since has spread across Europe. One estimate is that there are 10,000 giant sequoias in Europe. Eleanor's tree has an even older history than Isaac. Sequoia fossils have been found with the earliest dinosaurs in the Triassic period. 


How perfect is it that my kids happened to both choose dinosaur trees?


(The photos on this website were what finally convinced me on the Giant Sequoia ID. This site and this one  tell about the history of the Giant Sequoia in Europe, and this site has photos of them all over the world.)

Our kitchen(ette)

When feeding a family, it is prohibitively expensive to eat out for every meal. (Actually, in Western Europe and can be prohibitively expensive to eat out for ANY meal!)

Happily, our dormitory room includes a kitchenette: a small refrigerator, a sink, and two burners. The staff here at the dormitory thoughtfully rounded up enough plates and cups and silverware for us and even found us a big pot--which I use every single day!

I have been happily surprised at how easy it is to cook three meals a day in this space. Only having two burners has been the most limiting factor--if I need two burners for the main dish (pasta and sauce, for example), we have to have a salad instead of a cooked vegetable as there's nowhere to cook it!

We do most of the food preparation on the table since we have no counter space, but that generally works fine. Washing the dishes is really a one-person job, given the space limitations, so I'm afraid the littlest ones are not getting the soul-improving experience of dishwater hands.

I like to think of it as the sonnet approach to food preparation: in sonnets, you're strictly limited by the rhyme and the rhythm scheme, but you can still make beautiful poetry. Similarly, we're strictly limited as to what food we can make and how we prepare it, but within those limits, beautiful meals can still happen.

Our summer home.

We are living in university dormitories.

When we planned this, I had visions of cinder block walls. But dormitory life here is nothing like what I remember from college.

 The lobby of our building. Miro and Kadinsky and Klee prints hang on the walls in the common areas and the rooms.

A glass elevator to get us to our room. (And we have worked out a system for pushing the buttons so nobody gets more than their fair share of pushes.)

Beautiful wood paneling in our room. The wall opposite the bed, in fact, is made up of sliding wood panels so we can see the view or block the light, as we prefer.

We eat on our room's balcony.

Tres chic, non?

The basics

Where we are: 

We're in the center of Auvergne in South-Central France, in the city of Clermont-Ferrand.
Clermont-Ferrand has 144,000 people, 35,000 of them students.
Clermont-Ferrand is also the corporate home of Michelin (Tires and Guidebooks).

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How long we'll be here:
We'll be here about seven weeks, until mid-July.

What we're up to:
Dad's teaching. Emma Lucy's finishing (online) high school. The rest of us are exploring Clermont-Ferrand.

Sarajevo to Dubrovnik

Before leaving Bosnia, we retraced the steps of a trip we made nine years ago and one most tourists to the former Yugoslavia make: we drove from Sarajevo to Dubrovnik, the ancient city of Ragusa on the coast of Croatia. We were startled at how much it had changed in those nine years.

Halfway between Sarajevo and Dubrovnik is Mostar, whose already-famous bridge was spitefully demolished during the war. When we were here before, a massive bridge reconstruction project was going on. Today the bridge is fully rebuilt and the center of Mostar is full of tourists. It's a beautiful bridge (and the rocks below to it are perfect for climbing).

Near Mostar is Blagaj, one of the many springs that emerge from the limestone hills here. There is a very old mosque at the site of the spring and, nine years ago, that's all there was. Now we could barely get to the spring because of all the restaurants that have been built on the shores of the river and on platforms straddling the river. It's still an impressive sight and there is one spot, if you can find your way to it through the restaurant tables and along the path behind the kitchens, where you can get to the springs.

Also near Mostar is a beautiful old village, Pocitelj, which clings to a hillside and has ancient stone fortresses that look out over the entire valley that makes up Herzegovina. When we were here before, I thought the village had been abandoned for centuries until, crawling through ruins, we discovered the remains of a modern bathroom. Pocitelj was a majority Muslim community in the midst of a majority Catholic region and was nearly leveled during the war.

We were surprised to have a hard time finding parking on this visit to Pocitelj. There were tour buses there and lots of cars. At the entrance to the village we were greeted by vendors selling white paper cones full of gorgeous fruit--apricots, cherries. Nearly all of the houses have been rebuilt, it looks like, and people live here again.

Most wonderfully of all, the mosque has been beautifully reconstructed.

When we were there nine years ago, Dubrovnik was already rebounding as a tourist destination. Or so we thought. We couldn't believe the difference now: crowds and crowds of people--buskers in costume, Spanish and French and Italian and Japanese conversations, lines to get up on the walls of the city and no-nonsense signs insisting you go around the walls one directions only to improve pedestrian traffic flow. Everything in the city is also much more expensive than it was nine years ago, too.

Still, Dubrovnik is a beautiful and special place. Florence and Paris are crowded with tourists, too, and still worth visiting. Dubrovnik is the same.

Our favorite places, though, on this trip, were the little coastal towns near Dubrovnik. We stayed in a nearby town in a modest hotel with views to die for.

And we loved the little fishing town of Catvat. The town center was charming, the boats in the town harbor (yachts and fishing boats) were fun to look at, and the beaches were lots of fun.

While there were tourists everywhere we went, it was only in Dubrovnik and Mostar that the tourists appeared to be internationals. In Blagaj and Pocitelj, as in most of Bosnia, we heard only Bosnian being spoken. Tourism is returning, but slowly.

Istanbul with Kids: Street Finds

Our favorite part of Istanbul was the stuff we just stumbled on in the streets.

Riot police prepared for action

We accidentally stumbled upon a political protest march (especially interesting to us since part of David's conference was cancelled over fear of protests). This was a young, cheery crowd carrying signs complaining of Internet censorship by the government. At one point, protesters started swing dancing with a sidewalk jazz band.

Restaurant with three goats' heads. How could we not eat here? It was actually very good.

City Walls. 

 The precipitousness of the "steps" should have warned us--sheer, terrifying drops everywhere off these remnants of the city walls. But the views were staggering.

Fat mannequins. Our hotel was in the garment district. I have never before seen so many clothing shops in such a small space. And some of them used fat mannequins! We even discovered a mannequin store where they sell them!

Tiled houses. In the neighborhoods outside of the city center, many of the houses are covered outside with tiles like you would find in a kitchen or bathroom.

Street Food. Turkish ice cream. Sesame breadsticks (my favorite). Freshly-squeezed juice. And lollipops. As you watched, the lollipop would create a richly fruit-flavored lollipop just for you.

A creepy chess set--Western political leaders versus Al Qaeda.