Northern Italy

After spending ten days in Bavaria and Austria, Italy is quite a shock. It is difficult to believe that Austria and Italy can be neighbors and yet be so different. Although the topography changes slowly, the architecture and the general ambiance change almost immediately when you cross the border. Can you imagine a welcome to Austria sign with miscellaneous stickers and graffiti on it, surrounded by weeds and rusted relics of an earlier era? Inconceivable! (It seems to be no accident that graffiti is an Italian word.) Driving habits also seem to change at the border. Although the signs in Italy looks the same as the signs in Austria, none of the signs (or markings on the pavement) seem to have any meaning to the Italian drivers. 

Nonetheless, northern Italy grows on you quickly, particularly the small towns. We stayed at the Ca'Orologio Agriturismo in Baone, Italy (southwest of Venice) for three nights and in a small inn in Vigevano, Italy (near Milan) for two nights. Although we visited some of the larger cities, it is the small towns that we will remember most fondly. A bell was almost always ringing in the distance, seemingly at random times, and wonderful smells wafted through the air. At first, the ringing of bells at odd times surprised us because in Austria all the bells seemed to ring at exactly the same time according to a master schedule (clock?), but in Italy every church bell seemed to be on a slightly different schedule.

The best part about the villages was that everybody seemed interested in helping and nobody seemed to be in a hurry. If we asked one person a question, usually others joined in the attempt to help us. Although I find it easier to speak German, I must confess that I love to listen to Italian. Even watching Italians speak can be entertaining. A helpful owner at a small cafe could not speak to us without gesticulating energetically, which resulted in the wine glass he was holding being launched into the air. While this might have embarrassed an Austrian, the cafe owner and his wife just laughed about it.

We particularly enjoyed a bicycle ride to a couple of nearby towns.  (Well, that might not have been exactly true for Joanie during the bike ride, but I hope that Joanie will remember the bicycle ride through the countryside fondly at some point in the future.)  This is not to say that everything went smoothly, or that there were no tense moments.

Yes, we got lost a couple of times. Yes, it was hot. Yes, the wifi was sporadic and slow. Yes, there were bugs biting us when we ate outside and when we tried to sleep with the windows open, Yes, the power was off when we woke up on the first morning, but somehow that was all part of the charm. Did I mention that the food was great and that everybody did the best to help us understand the menu?

What about the big cities? I must admit that my initial reaction to Venice was not entirely positive. We took the train into Venice and upon exiting the train station we were greeted by crowds of tourists and hordes of vendors hawking cheap souvenirs. (The vendors will not be satisfied until every tourist carries a selfie stick and has a bag of trinkets made in China.) Due to the strong dollar and strong pound, it seemed that English was more common in Venice than Italian. When Bronwyn (who loves Venice) asked me what I though of Venice as we battled our way through the t-shirt stands, pizza shops and selfie-stick vendors, I told her that my initial reaction was that Italians must view Venice as the Atlantic City of Italy. I don't think that is the response she was hoping for. However, my tune changed as the day progressed.

Despite the decaying buildings sinking into the mud, the crowds of tourists and the stench of filthy water, who can deny that Venice has a unique beauty and charm. I was impressed that the churches we visited seemed to combine the best of Byzantine and western European churches. The churches were creative in their design and magnificent in their decoration. After a 45 days in Europe, I have had my fill of Gothic churches with their predictable Roman layouts. The churches of Venice (and many other towns in northern Italy) were almost always a surprise. I found myself wanting to take a peak into every church door.

 

And then there is the water. I love water so how could I not like a city with streets of water. After we tired of walking around the narrow streets of Venice, we rode the Vaperettos (busses on water) from island to island, and then finally around the islands. The longer we rode through the bustling waterways, the more impressed I was with the city.

Our next big city was Verona.  I had no knowledge about Verona other than that Shakespeare wrote a play that mentioned Verona so Verona was a wonderful surprise. We found the cathedral in Verona to be particularly interesting both because of its beauty and its history. It has tile mosaics and artwork dating back to 380 A.D. The current cathedral, which was started in 1117 A.D., but renovated numerous times, is a unique combination of Romanesque and Gothic architecture. When standing in a chapel from the 4th century adjacent to the cathedral, you can look through the glass floor and view the tile floor and pillars of a church from an earlier era.

Our final couple of nights in Italy were spent in Vigevano, a small town southwest of Milano. Our initial impression of the town, and appearance from the street of the small inn where we had a reservation, was not positive. The town appeared to have once been a prosperous industrial town that had fallen onto hard times. The inn was on the noisy main thoroughfare. We considered finding another place (in a different town) to spend the night. In fact, we purposely drove past the inn a couple of times while we surveyed the situation and decided what to do. Eventually, we rang at the gate and were greeted warmly by the owners. They ushered us into the courtyard where we skeptically surveyed our room (actually two rooms, one with air conditioning and one without). The owner explained that the front part of the structure was his parents' home, and the back part of the structure had once been apartments for many families.  Our two rooms would have housed two families. 

Panoramic photo of Piazza Ducale (curvature due to panorama shot)

The longer we stayed in Vigevano the more we liked it. Vigevano had been an important fortress in the medieval eras and in the 20th century Vigevano was a center of shoe design and manufacturing. Vigevano has made the shoes for the Pope for centuries and Vigevano is the home of the stiletto heel. Needless to say, the town has a shoe museum (where we spent a rainy afternoon). Even today, Vigevano is the home of high end shoe designers and a place to get expensive hand made shoes. The other guest in the inn had traveled to Vigevano to try to find a shoe designer he liked and to try to get the designer to make him a pair of shoes. The designer worked out of a small, unimposing shop, in a dilapidated medieval arcade.

The first surprise of Vigevano was the town square - the Piazza Ducale (pictured above) and the medieval fortress and palace that guard the square. The piazza is exquisite. As the pictures will testify, we spent most of our time in Vigevano enjoying the restaurants, stores, and people around the Piazza. Joan particularly enjoyed the hot chocolate that was almost as thick as melted chocolate bars.

The second surprise of Vigevano is that we made it out of town without a pair of designer shoes hidden in Bronwyn's luggage. ... At least, I haven't discovered the shoes yet. Now, we are headed back to France via the Mount Blanc tunnel and the Alps.  We will miss Italy but look forward to being in a country where we can speak a little bit more of the language.

These Are A Few of My Favorite Things

It has been ten days since we left Paris, and we have covered a lot of kilometers in that time.

Here is a map of where we have been...and the stars indicate some of the highlights.

https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=zVBBuEQAclwg.kGYDyE1VvBMw&usp=sharing

We have enjoyed all of the places we have visited, but I think that it would be safe to say that Rick and I have a newfound love....Austria. (As for Joanie, as long as a place has chocolate ice cream, it gets a thumbs up).

Rick booked a room in a ski resort town about 30 minutes outside of Salzburg called Werfenwang.  From our guesthouse, we could watch parasailers floating down from the mountains in front of us.  While it was tempting to join them, we kept our feet on the ground!

The weather could not have been better....warm days and cool nights.
We dined al fresco on fresh caught mountain trout and refreshing Austrian beer.

Our first morning in Austria we spent at the Hohenwerfen Castle, a medieval fortress in the nearby town of Werfen.  It amazed us to think that such a building could be erected back in the 11th century on a 500 foot rock!  We enjoyed an impressive falcon show, in addition to touring the impressive fortress.

The next day, we headed to Salzburg to take a Sound of Music tour.  Yes, I know it sounds a bit hokey, but we love that movie (I think that Joanie has seen it about 8 times!)  There was a family from California on the tour with us, and Joanie and two of the daughters became fast friends.  Weirdly enough, Joanie and the eldest daughter share the same birthday.....so they thought that was pretty cool.  The tour was actually very interesting and took us to many identifiable spots in the movie.  We also got to the beautiful Salzkammergut region on the tour, which I would return to in a heartbeat.  Beautiful lakes, splendid mountains, apple strudel with beer....delightful!

Our last morning in the area, we went to a fantastic ice cave called Eisriesenwelt.  It is a natural limestone cave located in Werfen.  It is quite a trek to get to the cave....but well worth it.  

What is crazy is that it was 85 degrees outside, but the cave is below freezing.  As soon as they open the doors to the cave, we were hit with a wall of freezing air that we had to plow through.  The tour took us on a one kilometer journey of the cave (the actual cave goes back 42 kilometers).  No photos were allowed inside the cave, but I have added some photos that I found on the internet, so you can see how unusual it is.  Needless to say, we were glad to have our rain jackets and long pants on...even if we thought we were hot on the way up!

From Werfen, we headed on to our next destination....Wagrain.  When I made the reservations, I did not realize that it was only 30 minutes down the road....whoops!  Oh well, it was a nice hotel in another ski resort town.  We got in a good hike and took in some great scenery.

The reason we went to Wagrain was to get closer to the Glossglockner High Alpine Road.  This is a fabulous 48 kilometer road that goes through the Hohe Tauern National Park.  The Grossglockner peak is the highest in Austria and has a wonderful glacier to which we hiked.  All I can say is, I am glad that Rick drove!

When we arrived at the Kaiser-Franz-Josefs-Höhe Visitor's Center, we hiked to the Pasterze glacier, the longest glacier in the eastern Alps.  If you have the chance to do this drive, you will not regret it!

Driving and Parking in Germany (and Austria)

Before we came to Europe, I had been worried about driving in France because Joan's French tutor made it sound really complicated and then loaned me the manual from a French driving class which left me completely confused and intimidated. From what I could decipher from the driving manual, the French have a complicated system of rules that apply when they don't feel like putting up a sign, which is most of the time.  For example, rather than using yield signs, you just have to know that in general the person entering the intersection from the right has the right of way, except of course when the road that you are on has a special blaze indicating that it has the right of way. Traffic circles, of course, have different rules as do various other types of intersections.  (The French also have a lot of rules about wearing safety vests and erecting safety triangles when your French car breaks down, which judging by the amount of time devoted to safety vests and safety triangles is roughly 33% of the time.)

I felt confident that the Germans would have cars that didn't break down 33% of the time so we decided to pick up a vehicle in Stuttgart (see picture).

We asked for a big hood ornament, but it wouldn't fit.

Hopefully, this would make the whole section of the French driving manual relating to safety vests and placement of safety triangles unnecessary. I also assumed that driving in Germany would be a little bit more orderly than France.

It turns out that driving in Germany is not as easy as it looks. Driving in Germany requires the reflexes and skill of a Formula One driver. On the Autobahn, some cars are moving at speeds in excess of 260 km/h (160 mph) and others (usually a Ford Festiva towing a trailer) are going 80 km/h. Staying out of the way of the fast cars and avoiding rear-ending the slow cars can be challenging. Motorcycles like to hide in your blind spot until they zip between the cars at a high rate of speed.  There is little room for error because most of the time there are guardrails rather than breakdown lanes inches from the side of your car. In the ancient towns and villages, the roads get narrower and things get more interesting. Street signs are often difficult to find and Germans seem to like to change the name of streets multiple times.  The numbering system in German villages seems to be haphazard. It is easy to make a wrong turn. When that happens, you may find yourself having to back up in the dark along a very narrow street with stones sticking out of the walls in odd places.  (To add to the challenge we've blocked the view out of the back window with suitcases.)

It would require pages to explain what this combination of signs means.

Although driving is challenging, it is easier than parking in Germany.  To park, you have to first be an expert in hieroglyphics (to figure out the symbols on the signs) and you must also be a code breaker to figure out the meaning of the various sign combinations. Parking signs almost always come in groups of five or more (see picture). For the most part, we've decided that it is safest to park in parking garages because we simply can't figure out the parking signs before traffic forces us to move on. On the rare occasion when there is a legal parking place, you must have a Ph.D. in advanced physics and geometry to be able to fit your car into an impossibly small space with the wheels touching the curb so that passing traffic does not knock off your drivers side rear view mirror.

Although parking signs can be confusing, deciphering German highway signs while moving at a high rate of speed is often impossible.  It turns out that the Germans are a little bit obsessive compulsive about signs.  I have never seen such a bewildering array of road signs.  They seem to enjoy changing the speed limit every 500 meters, and burying critical information in a forest of signs. I am sure that the motto of the German highway department is to never use one sign when there are 50 unused signs in storage.  To make things more challenging, on the highways, German road signs are usually partially obstructed by a long line of semi-trailer trucks in the right lane. As a result, we are often puzzled about the speed limit and why some cars are speeding past us while other cars seem to be observing a 100 km/h speed limit.

Many of you are probably reading this and smugly thinking that you fully understand international signs.  For all of you smug sign experts, I am presenting the following test.  All you have to do is to correctly explain the meaning of all of the signs below and I will gladly bow to you.  To make the test more realistic, I've tried to make the graphics as small as possible and include a whole bunch of signs together.  For maximum realism, print out the signs, put all of the printed signs on the same telephone pole and drive by the pole at 150 km/h with a black Porsche overtaking you at 250 kph and a line of semi-trailer trucks in the right lane partially blocking the signs.

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Answers:

1 - I refer to this as the "no-no" sign, but it actually means "end of parking restrictions indicated by previous signs" but default no-parking rules on highways still apply.

2 - End of no parking zone. This basically means the same thing as the previous sign.

3 - This sign actually makes sense.  It means "dead end road, except for pedestrians and bicycles."  Because the meaning of the sign is obvious, they like to hide this sign behind bushes or trees.

4 - This is an "end of priority road sign."  Does that clarify things for you?  It means that although you probably didn't know it, you had been driving on a road that had priority over intersecting roads so you didn't have to yield to people entering from the right.  Now you do have to yield to cars entering from the right ... most of the time.

5 - You have the priority right of way at the next intersection only.  (Pray that the people coming into the intersection from the other direction know that they are supposed to yield.)  Often, the people on the crossroad don't seem to realize that you have the priority, particularly people entering from the right.

6 - The next intersection is uncontrolled (no signals or signs).  Call your insurance agent and raise your policy limits.

7 - This sign is common on mountain roads and in small towns with narrow streets.  We encountered this sign when going through the one-lane gate of a medieval city. It tells you to expect two-way traffic even though the road doesn't look wide enough for one car.  You should yield to oncoming traffic.  When seeing this sign, it is often best to sound your horn before proceeding because traffic coming from the opposite direction is usually proceeding at a high rate of speed (knowing that they have the right of way) and they will not be visible until the last moment.

8 - End of 60 km/h speed limit.  Usually, they don't bother posting a sign with the new speed limit so default speed limits apply. Unfortunately, we are often uncertain about which default speed limit applies.  It is our understanding that the default speed limit on sections of the Autobahn that have speed limits is 130 km/h, but that the default limit on highways in urban areas may be 100 km/h.  The default speed limit on rural two-lane roads seems to be 80 km/h and the default speed limit in towns is generally 50 km/h.  At least this is what a tour guide told us.

9 - Recommended speed of 100 km/h assuming good weather, and no traffic. Recommended speed signs seem to be used on sections of the Autobahn that have no speed limit.  In our experience this means that 50% of the vehicles will now attempt to reach their terminal velocity and that other vehicles will cower in the right hand lane driving the recommended speed.  Exceeding the recommended speed means that you may be liable for any accident even if it is not your fault.  If you try to drive at a speed between 100 km/h and 260 km/h you will find yourself accelerating hard to get into the left lane and then braking hard when you return to the right lane in order to get out of the way of high speed Porsches and BMWs.

10 - End of minimum speed of 80 km/h.  Although it would be very helpful to have a minimum speed to reduce the disparity in speeds, the concept of minimum speeds seems to be ignored by tiny cars pulling huge caravans (travel trailers) that struggle to make it to the top of every hill.

11 - End of all restrictions, except that all of the default restrictions apply (default speed limits, etc.). If you don't know the default speed limits for different types of roads, too bad, you will just have to guess because this is the one time that the Germans won't post a sign. I expect that traffic tickets are already beginning to pile up in our mailbox from the automatic speed cameras that seem to be everywhere.

12 - This sign seems to indicate that cars are allowed on this road, but it has the opposite meaning.  It means that motor vehicles are prohibited, except for motorcycles and mopeds.  Why is there not a slash through the drawing of a car?  That would seem more logical.  I can't explain it except that the sign with a car with a slash through it was already used (see #16).

13 - Traffic restriction zone for air pollution.  Depending on the location, you have to have either a green, red or yellow sticker to enter the area.  We have a green sticker which I think allows us to go anywhere.  I hope that is true because we had no idea what the sign meant when we passed it.

14 - End of zone where traffic calming rules apply.  What are the traffic calming rules?  I don't know.

15 - Vehicle turnout ahead. This looks like it might be a good place to stop and figure out where you are on a map.  However, unlike the U.S., you can only stop in the event of an emergency or a breakdown.  Of course, if your vehicle breaks down, you probably won't be able to make it to a pull out because they are very rare.  On the rest of the highway, a breakdown lane is usually non-existent.

16 - When we first saw this sign we though it meant that cars were not allowed on the road, and we looked for a place to get off the road. However, it actually means "end of expressway."

17 - What do you do when you approach an intersection with a green light and a stop sign next to each other, and a traffic camera watching to see if you know what to do?  The guys monitoring the traffic cameras probably had big laugh when they saw me enter the intersection.  I tried to satisfy both signs by stopping quickly and then continuing. I now know that when the light is operating, the light takes priority over the sign, but when the traffic light is turned off, the sign controls.

Ist alles klar?

If you understand German road signs you are now ready for Austria.  Same deal except that the hills are much bigger and the roads have more curves.  Next week, we take on the challenge of driving in Italy. Stay tuned.

Postscript Austria:  I found the sign trailer below beside the road. It confirms my suspicions that teams prowl the roads at night looking for a places to erect new signs and to install new speed bumps.

Postscript Italy:  Same signs but as far as we can determine the signs have no meaning whatsoever to Italian drivers.  In addition, the lane markers seem to be merely advisory.  In fact, it seems to be a sign of a skilled driver to insert your car between two other cars that happen to be driving down the middle of the indicated lanes of traffic. It also appears that somebody must be giving out awards to encourage people to park creatively. Cars parked by foreigners stand out because on a one-way street they are generally the only cars parked facing in the direction of traffic.

Dachau and Rhodt

On Friday, July 31, we left Paris to explore southwestern Germany.  It was a relatively short train ride from Paris to Munich, but the difference in cultures, food and architecture was stunning.  Of course part of the contrast was due to the fact that we had somehow booked a hotel in the middle of a street of strip clubs (I am just glad that I wasn’t the person who reserved the hotel for two nights).

On Saturday, we toured Munich and Joan had her first tastes of German food.  She approves of the pretzels, the soups, and the schnitzel.  She is not so sure about sauerkraut.  Joan particularly enjoyed the driving simulator at the BMW museum.

On Sunday, we toured the Dachau concentration camp.  It is hard to know what to say about Dachau.  Visiting Dachau is a powerful experience that leaves you speechless.  If you have never been to a concentration camp, you probably ought to add it to your list of things to do.  I am still digesting the experience. The images that stand out for me are:

Original fence beside busy road

• The extensive ash disposal areas near the crematoriums (the ground over a large area is still visibly filled with ashes);
• The relatively small size of the facility for the incredible number of people who were brought to the camp; and
• The proximity to and visibility of the concentration camp from the main roads into town (bicyclists and farmers on wagons traveling on the road could easily see what was going on inside the fence).

Somehow I had imagined that very few people knew about the concentration camps and that there were a few concentration camps hidden away in remote locations where a small number of sadistic and/or misguided people committed horrible acts in secret over a short period of time, but apparently I was mistaken.  Dachau was used from the early 1930s until the end of World War II, and most of the camp was in plain sight from the street.

Not only was Dachau not a secret, but pictures of Dachau were on the cover of magazines as a pro-Nazi propaganda tool. While the details of the crematorium and the gas chamber might have been known to a relative few number of people, many people must have seen the trainloads of people marching from the train station through the town to the camp and the emaciated human beings standing inside of the camp walls or working in the area as slave labor. Furthermore, we learned that there were over one thousand satellite camps of Dachau, not to mention the other well-known concentration camps, which also had satellite camps. You can’t help wondering what you would have done if you were an ordinary citizen of the town of Dachau in the 1930s and 1940s. Would any of us have tried to stop the madness? Or would we have looked the other way as we passed by the camp.

The final thing that struck me about Dachau was that the Nazis were so good at pitting one group of people against another that the divisions they exploited continue until this day among the survivors of Dachu. The survivors of Dachau erected a memorial in the center of the camp that contains the symbols on the badges that were used to identify the different categories of prisoners (Star of David for Jews, red symbol for communists, etc.). The survivors decided that they would exclude the badges of three classes of prisoners that had been imprisoned at the camp: homosexuals, Roma (people we might call gypsies), and criminal anti-socials.  As long as charismatic leaders can pit one group against another, it seems that there will always be a risk of another Dachau.

The next day we traveled to Rhodt, the home of one of my ancestors who immigrated to Pennsylvania in 1737.  Rhodt is a beautiful ancient village surrounded by vineyards on the western slope of the Rhine River valley.  Last night, as we walked through the vineyards and village streets, it seemed that very little has changed since my ancestors left 350 years ago. As I write this, I can her the tolling of the same church bells that my ancestors heard as they toiled in the fields. Despite its beauty and apparent peacefulness, Rhodt has more in common with Dachau than you might expect.

Rhodt, which is near the border between France and Germany, has been the scene of hundreds of years of persecution and wars.  My ancestors left everything behind when a Catholic king captured this area, which until that time contained a mixture of Catholics and Protestants under the rule of a relatively liberal Duke. If the history of the period is correct, my ancestors had a choice of converting to Catholicism, fleeing with whatever they could carry on their backs, or being killed. Even today, the region is predominantly Catholic as a result of this “religious cleansing” in the name of God.  Apparently, the seeds of Dachau were planted centuries earlier.

Why Learning French is like Loving a Beautiful Woman

One of my teachers says that learning the French language is like loving a beautiful woman: it is difficult but worth the effort.  According to him, beautiful things are never easy. At least that is what I think that he said, but who knows … he was speaking French.

Joan and I have been taking French submersion immersion classes while we are in Paris.  It is humbling.  Joan is doing much better than I. After 4 weeks of classes, I hoped that I would magically become fluent.  More realistically, I hoped that I would be able to engage in basic communication with the French in their native tongue.  That hasn’t happened.  Mostly, I now have a better understanding about how little I understand about the French language.

I last tried to learn French in 1970.  For two years I sat in the back row of French class with Madame ________ [name withheld to protect the innocent]. I recall very little of French class because it seems to be true that bad memories are repressed. I do recall that on my last day in French class. Madame ______ promised to give me a passing grade if I promised not to sign up for French the next year. She also made me promise to never disgrace the French language again by trying to speak French, and in the event that I ever tried to speak French again, to never tell anybody that she was my teacher.  After 45 years, I decided that notwithstanding my promises I would try to learn French again.  (I guess this means that since I breached our agreement Madame ____ can now retroactively change my grade to the failing grade I deserved.)

I know that I have learned a lot in my four weeks of immersion French classes (and I have certainly enjoyed getting to know the others in the classes), but I am not sure that all of the effort (and expense) has substantially improved my ability to converse with people on the street.  My accent is so bad that most of the time the French cannot understand what I am trying to say even when my grammar and vocabulary are correct (which is rare). I seem to do best when I try to speak like Inspector Clouseau in one of the Pink Panther movies, With enough forethought and by imitating Inspector Clouseau, I can sometimes communicate basic information, but things quickly go off the tracks when the French respond.  

My ability to comprehend the normal spoken word is so bad that on the rare occasion when I make myself understood, I can rarely understand the response in French.  It is worse when the French initiate the conversation because I usually have no clue about the subject of the words hitting me.  It is like being hit by a tidal wave. It washes over me and then carries me out to sea drowning in sea of French words.

I think that my French immersion teachers find my butchery of the French language to be just as painful as it was for my French teacher 45 years ago. Thus, they keep moving me from teacher to teacher. After going through all four different teachers at the "complete beginner" level during the first week, I can only assume that no teacher in the complete beginner level would take me again, so they moved me up a level.  After one day, I was sent back to the complete beginner class.

Sometimes I have trouble with my homework

Although it might sound like I am not really trying, I am trying hard. Really. I am even doing my homework (except for last night when I had no clue what I was supposed to be doing).  I am also trying to use my French outside of class (e.g., by arguing with museum clerks in French). 

I had hoped that the damage to the left side of my brain (in my 2004 car wreck) and the resulting use of the right side of my brain for more things might make it easier to learn French today than it was 45 years ago, but that has not been the case so far. My theory was that my previous attempt at French had been doomed because I was a left brain type of person and I wanted French to be logical.  

As best as I can tell, French is not logical.  For example, there seems to be no rhyme or reason about what nouns are feminine or masculine.  Don’t even get me started on the variety of words used to refer to time, which vary depending on the gender of the object, whether you are talking about past, present of future, and (naturally) whether the word starts with a vowel or an “h”.   Of course, the most common verbs are irregular, and let me assure you that the irregular verbs live up to their name.  Even regular verbs seem to become irregular when you change tenses.

Counting in French proceeds in a typically French fashion.  Things are OK until you get to seventy. Rather than following the pattern for 30, 40, 50 and 60, 70 has a unique system.  70 is“soixante-dix,” which translates to 60 plus 10, Seventy-one, of course, is soixante-deuze (60+11) and definitely not soixante-dix-et-un (60+10+1).  At eighty, you might expect either soixante-vingt (60+20) or perhaps huitante (since 40 is quarante and 50 is cinqante), but you would be wrong.  You must know multiplication to get to 80, which is quatre-vingts (four twenties).  At 90, you must know both multiplication and addition because 90 is quatre-vingts-dix (four twenties plus ten).

Immersion French Class

French must be a beautiful language.  It is certainly difficult and it is rarely logical.

It turns out that French is still difficult even when you rely on the right side of your brain.  My latest pseudo-scientific theory to explain my ineptitude is that whatever neural pathways that are used for learning language were pruned out of my brain long ago.  Believe it or not, there is some scientific basis for this theory.

The good news is that unlike when I was trying to learn French as an adolescent, and I was embarrassed to try to say anything for fear of being laughed at, as adult, I really don’t care if I embarrass myself.  Therefore, I am not hesitant to try to speak French and I join the French in laughing at what I am saying.  It should also help that I will be submerged immersed in French for the next year. Thus, I will keep plugging away at the language until the people of France force me to stop butchering their beautiful language.

In the meantime, we continue to enjoy the sites, sounds and food of Paris. I also continue to try to convince Bronwyn to let me buy or rent a canal boat so that we see Europe by water.

Street Performers on Montemarte

A very nice refurbished canal boat

Why I was asked to leave le Musée de l'Armée (roughly translated "Museum of the Funny Hats")

[WARNING - I was upset with my treatment by French museum authorities when I wrote this blog so you will have to excuse my sarcasm.  We apologize to our French friends.]

Perhaps it was inevitable that I would get in trouble in Paris, but I really didn't expect to get kicked out of the first museum that I visited on my own (without Bronwyn). Generally, I have tried to be extremely sensitive to French customs and I have tried hard to disprove the French stereotypes about loud and rude Americans. In fact, just last night Bronwyn was telling me that I was going overboard in my effort to be respectful and deferential to the French.

Today I failed.  This morning I visited the Musée de l'Armée ... until I got asked to leave.

The Musée de l'Armée (the Army Historical Museum) is gigantic museum in a beautiful 18th century military hospital.  It presents a very French spin on world military history. It is also a shrine to Napoleon. The museum is filled with lots of display cases with brightly colored uniforms and funny hats. Because of my fascination with funny hats (see blog on the parade of funny hats, the museum was a "must see" for me.

Napoleon with a new hat

A large portion of the museum is devoted to Napoleon, his various uniforms and hats, as well as his colossal tomb. There is also a section of the museum that covers World War I through the end of World War II.  If there is a portion of the museum that covers French military victories after World War II, I didn't find it, ... But of course, my visit was cut short when I was asked to leave.

Not surprisingly, the focus of the museum is French military victories, and very little time is spent on other aspects of French military history. For example, the last part of Napoleon's campaigns and the first parts of WWI and WWII are dismissed by saying "there were some setbacks."

In truth, the museum is excellent and I don't begrudge the French for focusing on French military victories, or even the role of the French in winning WWII.  However, the French spin on world history is an interesting contrast to what I learned in school.  It makes you realize that what we are taught is not necessarily true and that sometimes nations have very different recollections of history.

Rochambeau (center with sash) and Washington (tall guy on right)

This is not the first place in France where I have encountered a very different spin on history. Yesterday we visited Versailles where the audio guide describes the role of France in the American Revolution and emphasized that General Rochambeau was the overall commander that defeated the British. Certainly, the intervention of France played a key role in the American Revolution, but I was surprised to learn and that Rochambeau was the architect of the victory at Yorktown and that Washington merely assisted him.  This is very different spin than the version of history taught in America. Even the French paintings of the victory at Yorktown show Rochambeau in the center with Washington and Lafayette in subservient positions.  I am not exactly sure which version of history is correct, but it is interesting.

Unfortunately, my visit to the Musée de l'Armée was cut short when I was asked to leave. I was asked to leave because  I wanted a refund when the audio player that I had rented for six Euros repeatedly failed to work.  Unfortunately, the audio player rented to me displayed a message that it had less than 10% of its battery life remaining shortly after I began my way through the museum.   I tried to return to the desk where I rented the audio player, but the nice guard told me (in French) that I could not exit through the entrance and that I would need to go through the museum and out the exit (a zig zag path that required me to go through three floors of exhibits).  He described the up and down path that I needed to take with elaborate gestures so I am pretty sure that I understood him correctly.

I decided that I might as well see how long the remaining 10% of the battery would last before trying to return the audio player.  Eventually the audio player died, and I quickly passed through the rest of the exhibits without the benefit of an audio guide in English.  When I got back to the desk where I rented the audio player I was told that I could not have a new audio player because the intervening 30 minutes that it took me to make my way back to the audio desk had apparently allowed the battery to revive enough so that the player could be restarted.  I protested that the player was likely to die again but my advocacy and language skills were inadequate to convince the clerk to give me a new audio player.  Thus, I returned to another section of the museum where the player lasted for about two minutes before completely dying.

When I returned to the audio player rental desk again there was a different clerk and I tried to explain the problems that I had experienced with the audio player. She seemed sure that it was an error on my part, and (using the condescending tone that the French reserve for stupid Americans) she gave me a lengthy lecture on how to operate the device. I asked her to demonstrate.  When she was unable to restart the player, she became much nicer.

Eventually, I was informed that the player had died because I had stayed at the museum too long (less than two hours since I entered the massive museum). I am not clear if she meant that the battery failed because it was not intended to last for a full tour through the museum or whether I had simply overstayed my welcome by complaining about the audio player.

Since the scornful tone no longer seemed appropriate or effective the clerk switched to a tone of innocent powerlessness.  She sweetly explained that now that she understood the problem she would love to help me but that she was powerless to help me.  I asked whether there was a supervisor who might be able to help.  

"Non."  

I asked if there was anybody in the massive museum on their busiest day of the week that might have more authority.  

"Non."   

At this point, the clerk switched defenses again.  Her ability to speak English evaporated and she hit me with a barrage of French.  I had no clue what she was saying. I tried to respond in French, or at least my version of French (Frenglish), but she expressed innocent puzzlement.

After retiring to a corner and consulting my online French dictionary I made a third attempt to explain why I deserved a refund and or at least an audience with a supervisor.  This quickly degenerated into sentences of three words or less that might or might not have been French.  (At this point I was playing to the large crowd that had accumulated around me.)

"Ces audioguide est mort.  Le batterie est mort. C'est défective. C'est merde (crap)."

[Polite laughter from the crowd.]

"C'est incrédule. C'es vol."  [I intended to say this is robbery, but I might have said something else.  In any event, the crowd thought my French monologue was very funy.]

"Je voudrais mon 6 Euros, si vous plait."  (I would like my 6 Euros back, please.)

I am not sure if the crowd was laughing at me or with me, but they were definitely laughing. The laughter was giving me time to dredge up another French word from my brain and fire off a new salvo.

The guards started conferring and they seemed to be calling on their radios for instructions or perhaps reinforcements. The chatter on the guards' radios was beginning to distract the audience, but I still got a few laughs from the crowd and a lot of polite smiles from the clerk.  Eventually, I used up my my entire arsenal of French words. I think that the clerk felt sorry for me so she gave me a business card of the person that I think she said might have been her supervisor. She told me to call the name on the card on Monday.

I decided to retreat to a corner to look up a few more words to restock my arsenal for my next attack. However, suddenly it was no longer a war of words.  I don't know if it was a coincidence, but guys with machine guns now entered the lobby and I was flanked by guards.  My audience dispersed.  One of the guards suggested politely that it might be time for me to leave.  Initially, I protested that it was raining outside and I did not have a raincoat or umbrella, but since the museum guards had backup with guns, I decided to do as they suggested. Score another victory for the French.  Much like the Germans after WWI, I plotted my revenge as I walked home in the rain.

Oh yea.  I also watched the finish of the Tour de France this afternoon.  It was pretty much a parade, but still fun to watch.  You've got to love Paris.

The Tour de France

Rejoining the 21st Century

Today I rejoined the 21^st century.  This morning AT&T finally sent me the unlock code for my phone (which they had promised by July 3).  It seems that American bureaucracy is really slower than any French bureaucracy that we have yet to encounter.  This afternoon we inserted a French SIM card in my phone today.  I have been effectively without a cell phone since we left the United States on June 21.

Actually, life without a working cell phone has been great most of the time.  It has prompted me to leave my cell phone at home and enjoy Paris.  When I was in the apartment, I was able use the wifi to get my email and I was able use Viber or Facetime to communicate with people in the United States.  Unfortunately, the internet access from our building seems to grind to a halt in the evenings, but if I got up early I can download messages and if I stay up late I can use the wifi to call family. 

The biggest problem has been when Bronwyn and I are in different places trying to communicate with each other (usually trying to figure out why the other person is not where I thought we were supposed to meet).  I had forgotten how nice it is to be able to call the other person anytime from anywhere.  It will also be nice to access Google Maps when want to find a location in Paris.  The tiny little SIM card in the bottom right part of the picture makes all the difference.  Now I will be able to stumble around the streets of Paris staring at my cell phone rather than looking at the sites or watching the fascinating people like the other zombies.

My next challenge is to figure out all of the instructions and agreements that came with the SIM card. I must confess that I did not exactly understand all of the terms of the cell-phone plan when the representative explained it to me (in French).  It seemed like we were told that it is free for us to text out to the United States but that we get a charge when we receive a text (or call) from the United States.  I am also not clear what the charges are when we try to use the phone in Germany or Belgium.  I guess I should not be surprised that 2.5 weeks of French language class has not equipped me to understand a French cell phone contract.  I can't even understand a cell phone contract when it is in English.

After getting the SIM card, we had a wonderful lunch at a cafe, and wandered around the city, eventually ending up at the Opera.  What a SPECTACULAR building!  It would be great to see a performance in this beautiful building.  They even have a box reserved for the Phantom of the Opera.