Snow, theater, African food & Quai Branly museum

Snow and hails

The autumn is behind in Paris and the locals would say it's winter now. During the last three days the temperature hasn't really reached more than +5 and we've even seen some white in the air! Today was raining the whole day but in Gentilly the rain turned into snow when I was leaving for work. It surely cheered up my mood to walk on the streets when having a little cold. Maybe it's colder outside but inside me it's warmer if I see snow. Too bad that the temperature is still above zero so that all the snow melted right away after hitting something. And when I got off the metro in Paris, it all was coming down as water. On Tuesday I saw even more white when there were lots of hails hitting the ground a couple of times in the early afternoon. They were so many that even the streets were covered in white when I left the house to go to work. In Finnish terms I would say I walked to the train in "loska".

African food

Last Monday was a bank holiday in France. The remembrance day of the end of the first world war is a national free day here so also I could spend it at home with H. We went out in the evening because one of H's band members was playing live music in a theater and we wanted to go and see what it's like. Before the show we had dinner in a small African restaurant nearby Gare du Nord. We went there already at 7 pm and were the only customers in addition to a one lady. The man working in the restaurant was very nice and also asked if we had ever had African food. When we said no, he offered to give small samples of all of the four main dishes so that we could choose which one we would like to order. I don't remember having this kind of a chance ever before anywhere. I chose beef in a sauce that was made of nuts and H went with spiced rice and fish. Also our starters were good: some fried triangles filled with meat and vegetables and fried banana (yes, this was a starter, not a dessert). The funny thing is that both of the starters came with ketchup. Banana and ketchup..?

Our starters

Spiced rice or white rice with nut sauce/onion sauce/bean sauce?

Our main dishes

Drama comedy theater show

The theater was a nice experience, too. The musicians came to play live music for the audience already when we were in the lobby waiting for the doors to open. And the show itself was very likable. Of course it was in French which means I couldn't understand everything they said but the plot was quite easy to follow also without. Two lovers had not seen each other for many many years and then they suddenly meet in another country. The show was built very uniquely when the couple was seen both in their 20's and in the future when they met again. Often both versions of the couple was on the stage at the same time and the older people observed the younger ones as their memories of the past and even had little contact with them too. And the live music was of course a nice addition to the experience.

Musee du Quai Branly

The first Sunday of November we wanted to make use of the free entrance to museums in Paris and headed to Quai Branly museum right next to the Eiffel Tower. Its collections are one of my favorites among what I have seen in Paris. Not having many paintings on the walls or lots of old half broken objects (- I'm not saying these wouldn't be interesting too but there are so many museums for that stuff -) but instead giving a possibility to see also more recent art from around the world: masks, clothes, weapons, ceremonial pillars... An absolute recommendation to see in Paris. I didn't know about this before but it's good that we found it on a list of the free museums.

A mask from Papua New Guinea
from the beginning of the 20th century

An Asian young man made by Paul Jacoulet in 1935 and
a portrait of a man in Angola by Jose Redinha in 1938.

A Brazilian cap from 1960's and
a Bolivian arch from the middle of the 20th century.

Clothing from Egypt, Iraq, Oman and Morocco from the beginning
until the middle of the 20th century

"Queens costume" from New Orleans, 2017.

Masks of Diablo, Bolivia, 1961-1995

"Men's ceremonial house pole" from the beginning of 20th century
and "Men's house ladder" from the mid 20th century.

Funerary poles from Indonesia, 20th century

"Earth spirit masks", Thailand, 2013

Interesting cups from China, late 19th century

The description of these is below..

Dolls from South America, 19th-20th century

This Aztec art is a little bit older, from 14th-16th century.

My normal life in France now

My life is not bad. I have a lot of different kind of experiences, a great husband and a nice job. Time will show how much longer we will still stay here but I have learned to like and appreciate what I have here now. I have to enjoy the special things of Paris/France while I'm still here. Last weekend I got to meet with two of my ex-colleagues from the preschool I work at for 1,5 years. They came to Paris to see me and I showed them around my previous neighborhood in the Asian district. It was very nice to see them again since they are what I miss the most from my old job. Okay, some of my old students too... I plan to go for a visit and surprise all the kids there one day.

It's great to make some Vietnamese food at home, too.

This is a playground I visit a few times a week with the 3-year-old.
Notice the little signs telling from which age to which the structure is meant to.
All the playgrounds have such signs for each equipment. 

I got interested in felting again now that I have more free time.

Climbing in the trees & Saint-Germain-en-Laye

I am having my first vacation from my new job since the French schools have two weeks off. Even though I changed my job, I still get to benefit from "les vacances". Last week my employers needed me to be with the 3-year-old for Monday and Tuesday (while the little sister was in the nursery as always) after which they had other plans for him. Also this week is free for me, except that I promised to go and pick the 1-year-old on one evening and put her to bed so that the father could go out.

Since H is still working as normal, I am spending days mostly by myself, having more time to bake, practice Vietnamese and so. But for the weekend we had common plans. H had asked to get Friday free from work so that we could travel to Southern France for a few days to see Marseilles, Bordeaux or some other nice city. We got this idea because H had bought vacation vouchers which we could use to buy train tickets (that we wouldn't otherwise buy now since there will be some other travelling within the next months and those tickets have already taken quite some money). But for some reason we couldn't book train tickets online with the vouchers and in the office the price was double. So... We changed the plans and decided to stay in Ile-de-France and go see and try things here. I don't know where exactly H got the idea to go to a tree-climbing park where there are robs and such from tree to tree and one has to follow the courses several meters above the ground. I was in right away! I have wanted to try that for some years already but never went for it before now.

So instead of taking long-distance trains on Friday morning, we just took rerB and rerA trains plus a bus to head to AccroCamp South-West from Paris. After a short guidance video and a test course, we were allowed to go through the 7 courses and a Quick jump as we liked. Every time we entered a course, we just needed to attach our "safety robe puller" into a cable that guided us through each course which all ended with a zip line sliding back to the ground. And after the easier and more difficult / scarier courses, we also did the Quick Jump. It's kind of like a bungee jump but you can hold onto the robe that slows you down after hardly any free fall. I'm proud of H who also did that on top of everything else. After all, I'm the one of us who seeks for this kind of excitement in life more.

View from the ground

View from the air

Even though Friday was quite some exercise, we still had energy to head out on Saturday, as well. Since the Southern France was left for the future, we wanted to visit a town closer to Paris. There is a town called Saint-Germain-en-Laye that is located next to the river Seine about 10km to the West from Paris. In the morning before going there we went to the outdoor market nearby our home to buy cheap fruits and delicious meet, this time meaning ribs. After having some Vietnamese noodles, we took trains to the destination of the day. We walked around the long park of its castle, visited the archaeological museum inside the castle and had some ice-cream because it was warm, +20 degrees. (Otherwise the temperature has recently been between 10-15 degrees during the afternoons, while nights and mornings are below +10.)

The landscape towards Paris. The big buildings are located
a bit outside Paris. You can see Eiffel Tower far on the right.

The entrance to the archaeological museum.

This is thousands of years old. I cannot imagine what
a pressure those horns give for the rather small head.

Sunday was otherwise a relaxed day except that I was very excited to go to a dance workshop my friend had invited me to. Excluding the three Lindy-hop lessons I have gone to with H, it has been years since I was taking dance classes. The genre for this workshop was street jazz / hip hop, so I expected to have fun, some challenge and sweat. And that's what I got, even more than I thought beforehand! The two-hour workshop made so good both for my body and for my mind that I would have liked to join that teachers weekly lessons but unfortunately their timing is impossible because of my work. But I'm looking forward to the next Sunday workshop in November.

Now I can concentrate more on baking. Let's see what else
I will come up with after these breads...

What I will miss from France

Last May I wrote about what I miss from Finland when I am living in France. There are certain things that I really miss here but I have to admit that I will surely miss many things from France after I move out some day, as well. I don't yet know exactly when the day for packing all of my stuff and finding a place in another country will come, but sooner or later that is waiting for me. It depends on where the next destination is, but here are listed some of my favorite sides of living in Paris that I most probably will miss in my future habitation:

1) Food

I miss some food from Finland but I might miss the food from Paris even more when I move back to Finland. The variety of ingredients, dishes and different ethnic restaurants are amazing! I can find so many good restaurants serving French food, different kinds of Asian food, different kinds of African food and a lot of other choices. And I really like the fact that eating out is cheaper than in Finland. In Finland one usually needs to pay at least closer to 20€ to get something else than pizza, kebab or salads, whereas here I find delicious dishes or even full meals with 10€ only. In addition to the restaurants, also markets offer more choices here. The Asian district of Paris where I used to live before has so many Asian stores selling Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Indian etc. stuff. Both I and H enjoy the opportunity to go shopping there once in a while. And I am sure that on the other areas of Paris one could find a lot more ethnic stores from all around the world because the population here has many cultural and ethnic backgrounds and Paris is also one of the top places for tourism in the world.

We celebrated my birthday by going to a Mexican restaurant El Gringo.
The food was absolutely amazing, they had big portions and when we booked it
via an application to eat at 7pm, we got 50% off from the price. So cheap!

Some delicious duck.

If I miss Japan, I can always go to sushi chain bars here, as well.

My new finding from Paris today: taiyaki! This was my second
time ever after I ate it once during my year in Japan.

I have published a photo of Bo Bun also before but since it's my favorite
portion in our favorite restaurant, I have to add it here, as well.

With this photo I want to point out how big Bo Bun really is. This
is about half of the portion when I heated up my left-overs at home.
I really can eat two times from that if I am not super hungry.

Mochi ice-creams. I have never seen these before anywhere.

In the Asian markets one finds exotic fruits, vegetables, noodles,
drinks, spices etc. that cannot be found in "normal" markets. 

Okay... Sometimes I do find things that I prefer
not to even see really.

2) Liveliness

Considering that Paris has two million inhabitants (plus plenty of tourists around the whole year), it's no wonder that I feel there is always something going on. Whenever one feels like going out, there are always dance parties, concerts and lots of different events. Also, one easily comes across street music or small gatherings by chance and you can just stay there enjoying the atmosphere and socializing. French people do like socializing more than Finns so if you are in a need of chatting, one can always find people willing to do that. (Though, sometimes it is much easier if you speak good French.) As a Finn, I don't always find it easy or pleasant that I kind of have a little pressure to talk with people whom I have no previous connection with. But stopping on the street to listen to musicians or following other performed art while walking around the city or taking a metro, is very nice and makes me smile.

When walking a bit outside Paris, I and H happened to
coincidentally see this small gathering with live music
that was open for anyone to join.

3) Art

And talking about street art, art in general is one of my favorite things in Paris and it can be found in so many forms. To continue the list after the music, visual forms of art are highly valued in France. You can obviously find museums of all sorts but what I like is how the city itself is like a piece of art. Many big cities put effort to have a nice-looking area with wonderful architecture but Paris and its surroundings are full of beautiful buildings. Even though one gets easily blind to one's own surroundings, the different curls and decorations on the walls of houses and on their balconies still keep stopping me when going around. And as I have mentioned some time before, the French really care about how their parks look like. The perfectly straight lines in planting and cutting amazes me always and I wonder how they cut even the top of the trees like with a ruler.

The first Sunday of October (when many museums are free) we went to the
museum of immigration. The building is also a piece of art itself.

Inside the museum. Posters from different years in the past.

Also in the museum: Planete Paris - an interesting painting by Herve Di Rosa.

Mairie de Vincennes

An unexpected finding that looks like
half of l'Arc de Triomphe.

Art in front of Gare du Nord station.

Paris has several "passages" that are like indoor shopping streets.

4) Going through adventures

This one is not only applicable to France but whenever I have been living (or travelling) abroad. When you are in a different surrounding and a different culture where they speak a different language, you surely face some adventures, both pleasantly exciting and some harder ones. I really like travelling and seeing new places so there are lots for me to see and experience here in France. When I find my way around, understand French enough to go through situations, show to myself I can do it, I can feel proud of myself and I feel like I'm growing up and learning. And when there are some harder times, I have proven that I can get over those and I learn again. The more I face these situations, the more I feel that there are less limitations of where I can go and what I can do. I bet every traveler feels the same.

5) Travelling in Europe

Living in Finland most of my life, I am used to almost always fly if I want to visit another country. Now living in France gives many more options. Since travelling inside Europe doesn't require visas or often even border inspections, it is very handy to go and see how life is in the neighbor states when there are no seas in between them. I have already taken buses and trains to travel from Paris and if we had a car, we could just drive to Germany, Belgium and other places. It's still quite amazing for me.

6) People

My social circles are not big here yet, but when the time of moving out comes, I will miss some of the people I have got to know here. I miss my family and friends back in Finland, but I visit my country a few times per year so I have a chance to spend even some time with them. After leaving France, I am not sure when I would see anyone from here. This was my problem also when leaving the Netherlands and Japan.

Seeing a friend. My blueberry pie reminded me of Finland
and my friend ordered Croque Madam. We never knew that version
existed in addition to Croque Monsieur.

7) Weather

Yes, in a way I prefer the climate of Finland over France because I want to have snow during the winter and less than 30 degrees in the summer. But at times I am happy that I can enjoy the weather of Paris, especially when Finland gets fast colder in the autumn, when the wet dirty snow is everywhere in Finland during the spring (while France already has flowers and leaves in the trees) and when a cold wind hits either in the middle of the summer or during the coldest time of the winter. Even though I fancy to get beautiful white snow for some months in the winter, I still prefer warm weather outside that time.

8) The atmosphere of Paris

It is hard to explain but there is something special about Paris all in all. Maybe it is the combination of all above plus some magic. But when you visit Paris, eat nicely in the restaurants, see all the marvelous buildings and art and walk along the river Seine when it gets dark - maybe seeing a street musician playing accordion on the bridge - there is just something in it. If you haven't tried, I recommend you to visit Paris and experience it for yourself. Paris is an amazing place for a vacation!