Salon des Vins et de la Gastronomie

Wine and chocolate!
Originally uploaded by supermarioguy

This Saturday I was at the Food and Wine convention, and there was emphasis on the wine. The majority of the booths were wine, with a good amount of foie gras vendors, followed by chocolate, and then other products. It was pretty cool to see and to sample some of the local fare. But this one place caught our eye. Here's a guy who takes wine, and mixes it with chocolate. What you get is an incredible drink. They do one with white chocolate, one with dark, and then they make a cognac as well. I went for the dark chocolate one after tasting it, and if I can, this might be a product to take back. It's really different, and from what I tasted from a tiny sample, it's good! Another funny story, I didn't have enough Euro on me at the moment, so the guy took my American money since he has spent time in the US before, pretty funny. He still gave me a good amount of change back in euros, I think I got a pretty good deal on that small bottle, I'll take it!

November coming to an end

Here we are in the last few days of November, the days are really going by now. I bought my train ticket to get back to Paris. I'll be leaving here 3 weeks from now to go to the train station that is right by the airport. Once I'm there, I'll spend a night at hotel that I need to book a room at soon around the airport, then I'll get up the next day and head back to the US. So we have 3 more weeks in this country and that seems pretty crazy, but it's going to be good. Today, I'm off to a food and wine convention, I can't wait to see how that works. Hopefully I'll get pictures but no promises. Next week the Christmas Market starts up downtown, I'll be checking that out and I'm sure I'll post about it in the next week or so.We have a few normal weeks of classes then exams coming up, the work is starting to pick up a little bit, but I think I'll do fine. Keith and I also got our tickets to see another popular French artist, Renan Luce, in concert on Dec 18. Luckily enough, this one is only a few kilometers south of our city, so it'll be easy. That will be my last night in Angers, and it should be a good way to go out.

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and Black Friday if you participated!

La Police!

So here's an interesting story, the most scary and funny thing that has happened to me in this country:

I was walking home from the university after the Normandy excursion, and a black car pulls up to me, a guy rolls down the window and says "Hey, stop it's the police!" And I thought to myself, "oh cmon, like it's actually them." But sure enough, 3 other cars that actually looked like policecars pulled up and before I knew it I was surrounded by 6 people! Of course I had my camera with me, so one officer took that and went it to his car as he sorted through my photos. Another lady asked for my ID and she looked at that in her car. Then I proceeded to get grilled with questions by the remaining people. I did pretty well, but obviously with my Michigan driver's license and my not quite 100% oral comprehension level, they knew I was American. So after the questioning I got my stuff back and they said I could leave. I was pretty curious about why they did this, but as I thought, they just told me that they were doing random checks on the streets because as one officer said, "il y a des fous" (There are crazy people).

As I walked away relieved that I wasn't in trouble with the French government and laughing from the experience, I thought about how crazy it would be if this happened back in the US. Obviously if someone has reason to just randomly stop you because of some kind of suspicious behavior then that's different, but this was rather unexpected. If nothing else, it makes for an interesting story down the road...."Well that one time I was stopped by the French police..."

Normandy

Keith and I with Prof Stephane Morin
Originally uploaded by supermarioguy

Yesterday was the final excursion of the semester, and we've certainly saved the best for last: La Normandie. It was an incredible experience. We are shown in this picture at Omaha beach. It was really incredible to see the memorial museum, Omaha beach, and the American cemetery. The other excursions featured the history of France, but this is truly world history. This is the history of the US as well. That is what made it more emotional than the others. I mean, I wasn't walking around crying or anything, but you can't help but stop and just feel for families and also feel grateful for what our soldiers did that day. Standing in the cemetery, you see thousands of white crosses, and it just becomes unreal, it's really incredible, and it's something I can't really do justice in a blog post. The same is true for the beach, sure we are smiling in the picture, but you can't really sum up what it means to be standing on the land where history was made, it was amazing.

Prof Morin, like always, had a lot of great things to tell us and we also learned more about the Normandy region and France in general. For example, many of names of the hundreds of cheeses in France get their name from the region or city they come from, I was shocked that I hadn't learned that before. There is an actual Camembert, France if you want to buy a house and say you live in the city where Camembert orginated, very interesting!

BENABAR EN CONCERT!

Originally uploaded by supermarioguy

Another week and another concert, I feel very lucky. This time Keith and I headed to Nantes (once again) and we saw Benabar, a very famous French artist at the Zenith, which is a great venue. I've been listening to him for quite some time but I didn't know every song. Let me tell you, I don't even know how to describe this concert yet. There was great music of course, comedy, skits, a lot of interaction, and Benabar was all over the stage...plus 2 encores! He has a great crew and certainly a great band, all 10 of them! Violin, clarinet, trumpet, saxophone, trombone, piano/organ, drums, all kinds of things going on. This venue is obviousy way bigger than the one I was in last week, so it was a whole different feel. People were really into it and the production was really high quality. This was really a great cultural experience and I am really happy that I've seen 2 of my favorite French artists in the past week.

La Chanson du Dimanche

Now there are several ways to keep up with the news over here. Obiviously the most simple is to pick up a paper that our university provides to us for free and read. That works quite well and it is interesting learning about what is happening in Angers and all around France. But a more fun way is to simply see what 2 guys are singing about every Sunday. Yes, it's La Chanson du Dimanche. A guitar and a piano player write an entertaining and humorous song about the news and release it online every Sunday with a video. They have been doing this for a while now, and it has become very popular. They have a CD out and are also currently on a good tour of France. So if nothing else, I know that on Sundays I can keep up with the main story by listening to La Chanson du Dimanche crew, it's pretty good. I hope they keep doing this because I could really see this as a great way to keep up with things in the future and possibly something that could help when I get to teach French as well. Check out the site if you get the chance, even if you can't understand it. The lyrics are listed below each song.

www.lachansondudimanche.com

Lyon

Enjoying the view
Originally uploaded by supermarioguy

When I wasn't waiting in line to see De Palmas, I actually got to discover a good part of Lyon, which I believe is the most populated city in France besides Paris of course. It's a very interesting city. You have the Saone and Rhone rivers dividing it, and there's the city center, the old part of the city, and all kinds of great monuments in between. I only had a day to see it all and take some photos, but it was fun. I almost got caught up in the huge mall they have there, but I knew that I had to do more in this city than shop. A big highlight was eating at a traditionnal Lyonnais restaurant, called a bouchon. The food was really good there. I have the pictures of the courses: an onion soup, sausage with wine sauce, and an apple crumble dessert. It was a great meal. Although I can't lie, I stopped into an Irish pub for lunch and had a great shepard's pie, that was really good too! Noone said I had to eat French at every meal right? I couldn't resist when I saw "Johnny's Kitchen" and I was really hungry since I didn't get to eat the night before while waiting at the concert. Here's a guy who runs the place with one cook and barely no waitstaff, it was great. I spoke French to order the food and while talking, but at the end I said "hey this is a great place you have here" and he was a little shocked to here me speak English, that was pretty funny. All in all, Lyon is a city that requires more than a day's time, but it was very fun.