London

Monday 12^th December.  All day on the trains.  .

8.00am joined the children walking down the street in pitch darkness to school, but went on to the station.  Train into Strasbourg.  Train to Paris.  Admired a sleeping man in striped socks.  Walked from Gare l’Est to Gare du Nord – about 10 minutes.  Through the Eurostar terminal – passports etc.  I handed over my Australian passport, having decided to be Australian going into Britain.  The passport man got worried because there was no evidence in the passport of my having ever entered Europe.  Had I teleported in? So I had to produce the Irish passport.  That was fine.  Apparently people getting confused about which passport they are using is not unusual. 

They really push that Eurostar train along.  It is little more than two hours from Paris to London.  By car, 5.5 hours, including an expensive channel crossing, even using the tunnel.  The tunnel is hardly even noticed in the train.   I shared a four seat set-up – two facing two – with another woman my age and a couple .  The man was enormous.  He took up half of his wife’s seat, so that she was wedged up again the side wall. And his legs left little room for the woman opposite him, so she needed to come my way a bit.  He read from his kindle for a while, which he balanced on his stomach the way pregnant women can hold a plate there;  then he fell asleep.  The mouth fell open and the tongue lolled out and the chins all shuddered as he snored.  Wife took no notice, her gazed fixed on her kindle.  So one man’s comfort cost three women any enjoyment of their trips.

 

I was not aware of this when I booked the hotel for Flyspring and me, but it is less than a mile from St Pancras Station, where the Eurostar comes in.   I welcomed the walk in the fresh, if cold, air to Euston Square, wondering if every evening is as frenetic both on the road and on the pavements, or if that is the regular routine.  I will know by the end of the week.  It seemed that half the vehicles on the road were London cabs, but they are not all black any more.  Many are almost totally covered with advertising.  Another icon subverted.  Half of the remaining vehicles were buses, and then some cars and (exceptionally foolhardy) cyclists.  A generous sprinkling of ambulance, fire engines and police cars, all with lights flashing and sirens (different) wailing.  I thought something momentous must have happened, but no-one took any notice.  Must be a regular occurrence.

The hotel is just off Euston Square, and is adequately comfortable.  I hit the restaurant straight away, being hungry after a long fast, and was delighted to find bangers and mash on the menu, with onion gravy .  Perfect.   My enjoyment of this English favourite was somewhat tempered when I realised that a group in a nook nearby, who had workbooks and pens etc, and whom I had assumed were poor beggars on a management training exercise, turned out to be a French class.  And here was I looking forward to the dulcet tones of my native language.  I am also a bit challenged in understanding the English of the all-Indian staff of the hotel.  

I can understand the TV however.  The weather man on BBC1 has advised that this is going to be a week of big storms and winds – just my luck!  But I am now watching a Christmas cooking program, don’t know who the chap is, but he has just done his Christmas dinner dessert – nut tart and celeriac ice-cream.  Not what you would expect, even he admitted. 

And of course London is in the grip of the Olympic run-up.  First thing to be seen when you get off the train at St Pancras is an enormous set of Olympic rings suspended from the high arch of the ceiling.  And already I have seen a bit of a programme with people worrying about the readiness of the Olympic facilities and what is going to become of them after the games.  Sounds familiar.  But they have nothing to compete with Clark and Dawe and Gina Riley and “The Games” I would be sure of that.

Tuesday

Very cold.   Icy winds.  Clear blue skies. 

Walked down (up?) Gower Street to Oxford Street and did the length of it.  It was a bit ho-hum really, although there are thirty-four shoe shops, there is only one bar.   There are lights suspended across the street for Christmas, but very few businesses have made any effort at all.  Selfridges did have a series of quite bizarre window tableaux, but when I saw strikingly similar presentations in the windows of Harrods later in the day, I decided they must both be the work of the current designer-of-the –month.  By the time I got to Hyde Park, I had had enough of walking in the winds, so bought a ticket for one of the hop-on-hop-off tours, and spent the afternoon seeing London from the top of a bus, with a very good commentary as well.  A bonus, the ticket is good for 48 hours, so I can do it again tomorrow and the next day, or just use the buses – they go every 10 minutes from numerous points, to get where I want to go – they do all the main places.  

MIG friends will be so disappointed to know that I could not get you each a Will and Kate wedding tea-towel.  The place where I saw one and thought how you would like it did not have enough in stock.  So sorry for your disappointment.  But I still have three more days, so you never know:  I will do my best to find them.

 

Quiet time

The last couple of weeks have been quiet.  The weather has been changeable.  Quite severe at times - cold, raining, blowing a gale, so that fly and all the rest of this world stay indoors.  Then there comes a day of lovely sunshine, blue skies and fluffy white clouds, but still cold. I love those days – so exhilarating.  We have had the first snow in the hills too; the pine trees are dressed in white. I drove up to the Champs du Feu ski fields one day to have a look – the white blanket makes magic of the landscape.  I am eager to see the village under snow, though it makes life more difficult – walking and driving in particular. 

Crafty friends will be interested to know that the cross-stitch is finished – it is of sheep, I bought the kit in Ireland.  Encouraged by this success I am now doing some Christmas ones. It feels very authentic to be sitting in the warmth with the wind wailing outside, doing one’s needlework! 

Christmas decorations continue to proliferate.  There are plastic inflated Santa Clauses climbing down chimneys, through windows, landing in sleighs on front yards.  All windows are framed in flashing lights as well as wreathed in greenery laden with berries and bells and bows.  Some of the presentations are tasteful, some less so! The plastic Santas must be well anchored to withstand the winds.

The house opposite the gite, with its Christmas finery.

 Same house with its Summer dress, allyssum. 

A shopping story: when you go to do messages, you have to be prepared to walk, as everything is not co-located as we are used to in our shopping centres.  You have to wander about from pharmacy to post office to boulangerie etc and by the time you have done it all and got back to the car you have covered quite some distance.  I have been trying to get into one shop in Barr for quite a while, it is always closed, even though the opening hours listed say it should be open. There is something in the window that I really want to buy.  I was there on Tuesday, and as I was looking in the window, a woman came, pushing a pram.  She said she was the proprietress, but she could not open today, as "I have this child to look after".  Another day I called by again, and again it was closed, with a note this time to say she had to make a 'petite' visit to the hospital.  This sort of thing is completely acceptable here.  People do what they have to do, other people wait for them.  That is the way life goes.  I find it very reassuring.  I wish we were so tolerant.  I do not know if it is a characteristic in the larger cities of France however. Anyway, I will keep going back until I find her there and get what I want.  That's life in Alsace.

Old people also enjoy respect and attention here.  They take their time to do whatever they are doing and that is recognised as their due.  They walk slowly down the middle of the cobbled streets of villages, and cars simply line up behind them and drive at a walking pace.  (Though when I saw a Mercedes stopped in the middle of such a street, while a passenger got out and went into a shop, waiting drivers in the lineup behind showed no patience!)  In shops, they often have quite a chat with the person serving them, and nobody on the queue gets impatient. 

 Peggy (gite owner) brought me an Advent wreath. I should have lit two candles by now, but I keep forgetting to buy matches. 

Below - decorations on the tree - cross-stitch, ski-ers and berries, and a (benign) witche watching over it all.

And, evidence of fly's support for the Alsatian wine industry. 

Christmas is coming

Flyspring No 2 arrived at Zurich airport last Tuesday.  Fortunately, she managed to synchronise quite well with mother fly, and we met up in the pick-up lane outside the Arrivals Hall.  Unfortunately, it was a day of thick fog, so nothing much was seen of Switzerland or Alsace as we drove back home.  The same heavy fogs continued through the week, and while driving around some picturesque villages and tripping in to Strasbourg were still possible, it was all within the ambiance of autumn fogs.  

An interesting experience on the drive to the airport:  Fly stopped at a servo on a Swiss autobahn to fill in some time. (Can’t be too early in the pickup lane at the airport, only allowed 15minutes.  And once you progress out of it and are back on the unavoidable network of autobahns, goodness knows how long it would take to get back in again).  Bought a sandwich and coffee, asked if I could pay in euros.  Of course, yes, but we only take notes, and we give the change in Swiss francs. For some reason this reminded me of the taxi drivers in Vietnam, who were very keen to be paid in US dollars, but gave change in Vietnam dong (14,000 dong=US$1)

She is off again now, train to London and there met up with her tour bus.  A phone call last night indicated that already she has come across French officiousness.  I remember 30+ years ago being he subject of this because I trespassed on some grass near the Eiffel Tower.  Flyspring was shouted at for standing in the wrong place outside the Louvre while taking pictures.  “Why you no can read?” shouted the official.  A sign, in French, was some distance away.  It is true, unfortunately:  French officials do not ask, they order, usually very peremptorily. (But the French people – not officials – are usually very nice). 

Now that Flyspring 2 has gone, the fogs have lifted of course, and Alsace is sunning itself under beautiful blue skies.  Still very cold – temperature range has been around -2 up to 8 degrees.  Very exhilarating.  On Sunday fly visited the very lovely village of Ribeauville, as did very many other people.  Managed to get a park outside the town walls, and wandered up and down the cobbled streets admiring the Christmas dress that now adorns the buildings.  It is everywhere, on businesses and private dwellings – taking the place of the wonderful floral arrays that were the feature a couple of months ago.  Civic buildings are not excluded – the “decorations” line in the local council budgets must be very generous.

It is interesting to see that variety and nature of the decorations.  There is the usual of course – wreaths and trees and tinsel and bells etc.  But there are also a lot of places decorated with stuffed toys – teddy bears in particular.  And also polar bears, penguins, and Eskimos are features.  The village of Andlau just near here has a whole tableau set up in the square of an Eskimo village, complete with igloo, and people fishing in the ice and polar bears eyeing it all off. I find this an interesting departure from the usual insistence on their own culture and style. 

Today in Barr, the town square was being set up with little wooden chalets for their Christmas markets.  The same is happening in all the squares in Strasbourg.  Barr has also spread grit over all its cobbled streets already, getting ready for the snow season.  

 Ribeauville - On the round-about outside the town walls

Grand Rue with the Chateau ruins up on the hill above the vineyards

This Teddy was blowing bubbles.  Must have had a vacuum hose in his mouth, and his hand kept moving down to the bowl to pick up the suds and up to his mouth.  Children of all ages were entranced. 

Christmas at the bottle shop

Santa's train at the entrance to one restaurant

Several carriages!

More teddy bears.

The houses are like licorice all-sorts.

Andlau March de Noel

Andlau is one of the villages just a stone’s throw from here.  It is about 2 ks in that direction.  Barr is about 3ks in another direction, Mittelbergheim, .5ks (yes!) in yet another direction, and Itterswiller 2.5 the other way.    Easy distance to walk between them, and I have, but there is not really provision for walkers.  The roads are edged with ditches before the vineyards start.  So if traffic appears and one has to get off the road, one is in a ditch.  

This weekend, Andlau had its Christmas Market. It is a bigger village than Eichhoffen, rating such facilites as a post office and a tabac (tobacconist/newsagent), though not quite of sufficient size to have any sort of bank or ATM.  There were crowds, cars parked every which way, (orderly parking never a strength here), and rugged up people with rugged up babies traipsing into the village centre.   There are very few tourists around now, so most would have been from all the neighbouring villages.  They must each go to the others’ markets.  I don’t know how the sales go, as this one and one other I went to here were offering much the same type of goods – hand embroidered table ware, pottery, soaps, ceramic Christmas-tree decorations etc.   The food outlets were doing brisk trade, but that is always the case. I bought a couple of decorations for the Christmas table; but other things I would have liked to bring home were too large or heavy.  There was a heavy emphasis on wreaths – for doors and tables – greenery embellished with red berries and nuts and spices and  quartered oranges etc.  The Advent Wreath is big here too – table wreath with four large candles, which are lit progressively as the four Sundays of Advent pass.  Some were quite spectacular.  And they were really selling. 

   

I made my first acquaintance with St Nicholas.  He was wandering about, dressed up like an Archbishop, handing out sweets to the children.  One little girl solemnly refused a sweet, saying he had already given her one - obviously out to make the right impression for Christmas.

St Nicholas was accompanied by a small person in sackcloth and ashes who trailed behind and looked miserable (as you would of course). This was a mystery to me, but well solved by Wikipedia.  He is the sinner, to show what happens if you are not good, I suppose.  Must keep things in perspective. 

Musical diversion was provided by four trumpeters – of the type usually seen out on the hunt.  They set themselves up on opposite sides of the square, and played antiphonally, though, it has to be said, not very tunefully.  Flamboyant costumes did compensate somewhat. 

I love seeing how babies are rugged up here for the winter.  There are all sorts of garment arrangements to keep them warm.  Dogs also do well.  They have graduated from baby breast slings in the summer to leather shoulder satchels lined with fur.  Just a little head peeking out the top. 

 Oh, And HATS!!!

And just for interest – last night our very own City Homicide popped up on the TV, dubbed in French.  Such comedy!