Normally when I come home, I like to make myself a hot meal. Sometimes they can be quite elaborate to the extent that Fabi sometimes comments that he doesn't understand how I can spend the entire day at work and then be bothered cooking myself something from scratch. Him, he doesn't do that so much. People who visit me and eat (hearty) Bavarian food often comment on how they don't understand how the local population isn't even larger. The short answer is that (from experience), they usually eat at least one cold meal a day - brotzeit. Brotzeit (literally, bread time) usually consists of, you guessed it, bread with different types of cold cuts of meat, sausage, cheese, pickled vegetables, and spreads. Germany makes a huge variety of really delicious full-grain breads - as Riz said when she visited and observed the breads we had at brunch, "No bowel problems in this country!" I actually quite enjoy the individual things you can have at brotzeit but getting them and eating them within a few days is quite annoying. Also, not speaking the language particularly well made going to the deli somewhat scary. But now that I'm a bit more confident in my language skills, work is kicking my ass, and I felt like upping my vegetable intake for winter, I've started to have brotzeit more! So here's an example of what I've been eating!
Top plate (clockwise) - carrots, olives stuffed with almonds, celery, pickled herring in dill sauce, goats cheese.
Bottom plate - blutwurst (yes, blood sausage), a pumpkin seed roll, and a deli meat that has pistachios in it (the name escapes me right now).
Following the excesses of Saturday and the general state that most things are shut on Sunday, we decided to take it easy and, as the skies had finally cleared, enjoy some more strolling around. Despite the chilliness of the day, we headed by Notre Dame on the way to the Ile St. Louis to score ourselves some Bertillon ice cream :D
Enjoying my peach sorbet in Square Jean XXIII
The less commonly seen rear of the cathedral.
Le sigh
There was surprisingly little traffic around the Arc de Triomph for a Sunday afternoon!
Since it was really quite cold, we adjourned to le McDo for some (cheap) hot beverages and (cheap) canneles.
Not bad, but not Fauchon-level. Basically you get what you pay for.
After an obligatory visit to Chinatown to eat an asian meal, I got a phone call from Gnoudesavanes and Michelle to meet them on the Champs Elysees because they were going to have Lebanese food for dinner. Somewhat shockingly (because apparently it was quite popular), the restaurant we were initially going to go to had closed and we ended up at Al-Ajani instead. This was actually quite a fortuitous discovery because it was excellent - the food was flavoursome and the service was extremely friendly even though we no doubt looked like a bunch of bum students.
Dinner mates
Seriously, excellent food and we'd ordered too much.
But the most amusingly was what was happening in our environs. While we were having dinner, a sports car (Porsche or Ferrari, I can't remember) pulled up outside and a driver got out and...let out a passenger? Even more confusingly, as we were leaving, we noted that the licence plates were in Arabic script?! Did they DRIVE that car all the way across EUROPE?! And then we saw an incredibly hideous coat in the window of Hermes. What was even more hideous was the price - €35,000. This is not a joke. We thought we'd read it wrong until, no...it really did cost as much as a car.
Anyway, all good things had to come to an end, and how better to end than with this, the Christmas lights on the Champs Elysees. And I look forward to coming back again next year!
After the shock of realising Amandine and Gary wouldn't be there to ooh and ahh over everything with us, Jul and I decided that after getting some breakfast, we were going to go shopping.
Breakfast, Paris-style
The Xmas tree in Galeries Lafayette. So purdy.
I don't think words can describe how much I wanted this dress. The only things that held me back from trying it on was the price tag of €810. And the fact it probably would get covered in blood and god knows what in the lab.
I highly recommended to Jul that we go to the rooftop to enjoy the free view. It was very enjoyable and I was pleasantly surprised to find that the rooftop has a smoking ban which was enforced by a security guard while we were there!
As a side, this year's Xmas windows for Printemps was Dior-themed. I didn't take any photos because the crowds were crazy but it featured puppets dressed in classic designs to more recent ones. In short, I wish I was dressed like one of those dolls.
Maybe it was the crowds, maybe it was the location, maybe it was the $1.50 I paid in Printemps to go to the toilet, but after a few fruitless hours walking around we realised that neither of us really felt in the mood for shopping. From this, we decided to simply enjoy being tourists.
*sigh* I will always love this view from Trocadero.
And this view of the Palais de Chaillot
And this one from the Champ de Mars!
After heading back to the apartment, I suddenly went *NON! JE DOIS ACHETER UN SAC A MAIN!!!* and ran out to Longchamp to get myself a Planetes. It was totally worth it.
I also listened to this random string orchestra near the Palais Royale.
For Saturday dinner, we had been planned to catch up with Gnoudesavanes at Le Buisson Ardent on close to Le Monde Arabe, and so we took a leisurely stroll to the location.
*sigh*
Then I altered my programmed settings so the light would seem warmer
*SIGH!!!*
For some reason, I chose to use my phone to take photos of the meal. This was clearly a dereliction of duty because the photos don't represent the sheer awesomeness of the meal.
Entree - Prawn ravioli with fennel, mango, and saffron stock.
Main - Veal liver with red onion jam and potatoes
Dessert - poached pear stuffed with gingerbread ice cream and butterscotch sauce
Pistachio millefeuille
White chocolate dome filled with passionfruit ice cream and confit fruits.
I would highly recommend Le Buisson Ardent. Compared to last year's epic dinner a lAOC, this was a lot less traditional French, a little bit more expensive (€35 for the 3-course menu compared to €29), but I walked out feeling a lot less heavy. Maybe it's because I didn't eat 200g of raw beef this time around though...
And then the way at least one night in Paris ends up, we headed to Bastille for cocktails. Gnoudesavanes ordered absinthe and they gave him his own water dripper. Now that's dedication.
Following our merveilleux trip last time at approximately the same time of year, Jul, Amandine, and I decided to plan another trip to Paris. Christine and Philipp were not able to make it this year but Gary decided to come along and fill the void! Hurrah! Having had my life revolutionised by the discovery of short-term rentals, I managed to score an apartment on an incredible location on rue St. Honoré, pretty much the centre of the city :D.
The living room/kitchen combination
Our place is the one on the 3rd floor!
Happy faces!
And you know what else made us happy? The realisation that we were living on top of this bakery! Please note the macarons that look like burgers!
But we resisted the lure of the bakery to have a €13 3-course lunch menu option at a restaurant on our block. This was my *main*, I was too hungry to photograph the entree (soup) and dessert (fruit salad).
Another delicious looking bakery in our street.
They make everything avec amour!
Since we had a few hours to kill before Amandine and Gary were to arrive, Jul and I decided to take advantage of our killer location and take a walk around our neighbourhood, where we scoped out local places like...
le Louvre,
le jardin de Tuileries,
and Place de la Concorde.
Fromage!
Despite the incredibly merdique weather, we decided to keep on strolling because Paris is most beautiful in the rain. (Actually, I'm not sure I agree with that but I feel as though I have to quote the movie :P)
We kept heading down the Champs Elysées and crossed the river at Pont Alexandre III
Why hello!
Jul was looking very French with her matching accessories.
Being my usual clownish self.
Notre Dame de Paris still looking majestic at 850 years old (just forget about that major mid-19th-century restoration, okay?)
We decided it was okay to be tourists again and went inside where Jul was horrified that prices for votive candles started at €2 (Paris prices!)
Mmmm, atmospheric
Seriously, I should just photoshop a ghost or 10 into this picture.
Still stuffed from our massive lunch, we decided to purchase some quiches from our downstairs bakery for a light lunch and wait for the Londoners to arrive. Then the weirdness happened. Through a comedy of errors and misunderstanding, they were arriving the next weekend! :O And that's why they will not feature so much in my stories of this weekend :/
Since moving here, in addition to reading the news from back home and new home, I've been reading some international news sites, mostly the BBC and guardian. And I've noticed that whenever my countries get mentioned in the various presses, it is due to some sort of interesting political event that could have implications for the rest of the world (e.g. Julia Gillard going off at Tony Abbott, plain cigarette packagaing, investigations into child abuse) or a completely bizarre goings on. Okay, the bizarre Australian things aren't that weird (to me) because it usually pertains to people being injured or killed by some sort of *normal* Aussie thing (dingos, spiders, snakes, the desert...). This doesn't strike me as particularly strange because I accept that Australia is a great object of fascination for people who live in environments that are devoid of killer drop bears and a fairly uniform climate.
The same is of course true for Germany. When Germany makes the news, it's generally related to the major role it has in the Eurozone...but the strange things that make the international news are, in my opinion REALLY strange. Okay, the Catholic Church threatening to ban parishoners from services if they didn't pay their Church tax wasn't that unusual (for me) but it did elicit some questions from Aussie friends about whether I was paying a church tax (hahahaha, NO!). The general bizarre nature of the German language is, of course, always good for a chuckle. But perhaps one of the best things I've read about Germany in the foreign press was this piece about a guy who was found driving with a mobile office built into his car. Say what you like about the German work ethic, they don't seem to bother about proving the world wrong. *EDIT* I'm sorry, but the car story has been superseded by the sudden knowledge that not only is BESTIALITY legal in Germany, but because the Bundestag is looking to ban it, that there is a group of people who are defending their right to have animals as partners. Well done Germany, I'd like to see how you top that for weirdness.
