sickeningly sweet

sickeningly sweet, originally uploaded by julienpaul.

So, every year there is the visit to the St Louis Abbey. And every year, the daffodils spread just a bit further, their yellow claws grabbing the surrounding hills. Four years ago there was one hill and one valley which made you go "wow, that's a lot of flowers". Now there are three, or four, or... actually, no one knows where it ends anymore. Soon, daffodils will appear on highways, in swamps, in the cat's water bowl, in your shoes laid out at night as you sleep. At first it will seem cute, but then you realise they are everywhere, that their invasion is complete and you never saw it happening. That is when you will cry.

room with a view

This is a bit of an unusual post, but then this is quite an unusual building. I have been subscribed to archidose for as long as I remember and sometimes their weekly building is something truly unexpected, like this hotel in a village close to Naples. The photos of the project include an animated gif that shows the bed in action... great stuff.

bye bye book

Item lost: A book.
Where: Eurostar, London to Paris.

Paris lost property: Phone the hotline. Auto response asking to send a written letter to such and such address and that it can take 3 weeks. Go to the station. The lost property office gives me a (secret) number to call. Number called: they don't have it. Maybe London does?

London lost property: Sent an email, got a reply within 10 minutes.

(sadly they don't have it, but that is besides the point).

Paris: great croissants, but horribly insane.

food, coffee and other things

dourdan04, originally uploaded by julienpaul.

Sorry Zen, but I am going to have to bring you in for this one. Yesterday, Zen told me about a café in London that made the best coffee "in Europe" (and hence, perhaps the world?) and I realised my tastes were way too fickle to be able to say where I had had my best coffee.

When I was working in Paris I could often have three espressos in a day, all from the same cafe downstairs. On arrival at work, at around 11am, and after lunch. The 11am coffee was the best tasting, without any competition. It was the coffee that I didn't NEED, the coffee that was nearly always in the sun, the coffee that was a real pause.

I find coffee is fragile.. tell someone that a café is the best in the world and it becomes harder to like the coffee. Expectations become too high, and you start over analysing: is this coffee really all that great?

In a recent trip to Rome and Naples all of the small cafes we found suprised us with a consistently good, rich, short coffee. So we go to the cafe next to the pantheon that is meant to have the best coffee in Rome, fight a million tourists to get bench space and well... I couldn't work out what was so special about it.

Two days ago I stumbled upon a small café near the British museum that was horribly cute and served quite good coffee. The day after, I meet Kate in the same area. After an initial bad coffee in a cafe directly next to the museum (if excellent coffee is sometimes hard to distinguish, horrible coffee is universal), I suggest we have a second coffee at the same cute place. Now, on my second visit, realising I had suggested this place to someone else, I found myself more critical of the coffee and well, it no longer cut it.

The real transcendal coffees are great coffees that are unexpected. My best coffee memories: Arrival in paris after 3 weeks in the usa, arrival in barcelona after two weeks in germany, a midnight coffee in a town near florence, that place in naples that we thought was touristy and crap but ended up having such a rich blend....

The same goes for food, to some extent.

Where have I eaten the most amazing meals? My aunts place in Dourdan and my cousins place in Normandy. Not only are they good cooks who seek out excellent ingredients, there is a certain ritual involved. Away from the stress of Paris, you wake up and the food is already slowly cooking. The morning is full of smells and anticipation. A ray of sunlight comes out and everyone quickly moves the table outside. An aperitif, and now you can no longer stand it. It smells so good and you are so hungry! And the food tastes twice as good for it.

My favourite restaurants in Paris when I arrived no longer excite me. I have taken their quality of food as a norm and now only taste it when they have stuffed up a dish. Tastes change, expected quality changes. I do not eat the same things in Paris as Sydney, I will no doubt eat different things in London. Since I have been in London I have already eaten twice in china town and fuck I am loving it.

As I am currently reading "the story of art" which manages to summarise centuries of thought across an entire continent in around 5 pages, I can not help but compare movements in art to food and drink: Food and drink, where even a few hundred kilometres means an entire new cuisine, where the best cheese comes form a certain slope in a certain town at a certain time of year. Where these complexities are overlaid by your own tastes, your own state of mind. Food, the most subtle and complex of arts.

Now, you will have to excuse me. I think I have worked up an appetite.

(PS. As I have already had three Londoners talk to me about this one café since I have been here, lets see if people can guess which one Zen was talking about....)

and then it was the 1Os

they said it would snow (but it didnt), originally uploaded by julienpaul.

If you move often enough, and far enough, you start mistaking time for space. Sydney was this period of my life, Paris was this, London will be this. Then you start comparing the places, and if you compare for too long, you never live anywhere, nor experience anything. Paris is not X times Sydney minus Y times London. Sydney is not Paris, is not London. Should any be put into continual reference of the other, they both become cheap, and you become utterly boring.

a rainy day in paris

the tuileries, with eiffle tower, originally uploaded by julienpaul.

The sun barely rose. Another set of antique markets, selling overpriced Pastis glasses and cracked power ranger figurines, is going on downstairs.

Suddenly, my heart starts racing: I need to find Christmas presents! Insane crowds, a biting wind, rain. I go into a toy store and there are children crying everywhere, while parents ponder the age suitability of everything around them. Do I want my gift wrapped? Do I want batteries (for batteries are not included)? I escape outside...

Then, to the English bookstores to see if they have a certain something I am thinking of getting someone. They don't. What they do have is Marmite in large quantities, tourists and even more crying children.

christmas decorations, originally uploaded by julienpaul.

Outside, the city has gone festive. Huge puddles on the street reflect christmas lights and jogging yuppies. A huge group of tourists are climbing over each other to get into a patisserie store. The weather finally gets to me and I make my way home, having bought only two presents.

Thank god for amazon.co.uk (and .fr).

mushrooms in november

finding two at once!, originally uploaded by julienpaul.

So, it is your first weekend in 9 weeks - what do you do with it? a) party like hell and drink till dawn or b) decide to take a train an hour south of Paris to your family's town to go walking in the woods and listen to great-aunts complain about their failing health.

Why, b of course! Below: Josh taking in all the autumness..

autumn again, originally uploaded by julienpaul.

It turns out that the mixture of rain and warmish weather we have been having means there are mushrooms everywhere! Behold, two mushroom villages:

sun on mushiness, originally uploaded by julienpaul.

the mushroom village, originally uploaded by julienpaul.

After half an hour of looking we finally stumble upon our first edible mushroom.. woo!

our first edible find (after half an hour), originally uploaded by julienpaul.

And then a whole lot more... it made for a great lunch!

our lunch, originally uploaded by julienpaul.

Then we found a whole lot of mushrooms we thought were edible (see our full bags) but when we got home and looked them up online we were less sure...

walking back with bags full.., originally uploaded by julienpaul.

These, obviously, were not edible..

red and scary, originally uploaded by julienpaul.

Though something tried on this one..

something ate it, originally uploaded by julienpaul.

Join me next week, when I try to find a topic even MORE exciting than mushrooms!