Sunday, August 30, 2015

Settling in

If you've been following our blog, you'll know that we've been to Scotland and Belgium and even Canada and Iceland briefly, but we haven't really mentioned Paris yet. We've been here for nearly two weeks now, if you can believe it, so I should probably share with you some of our progress in settling in and making Paris our home.
La fontaine Médicis, in the Jardin du Luxembourg.
One aspect of settling in somewhere is having access to the things that you are used to having (or, alternatively, being used to having the things that you have access to). This can often be difficult when moving to another country, where things are done differently, and a degree of flexibility is usually required. One such item we were particularly concerned about was the availability of gluten-free flours. Talia is gluten intolerant, and loves to bake, and gluten-free baking requires a diversity of flours, starches, and gums of various origins. In Columbus, these often sold for fairly high prices at "natural" stores.

Imagine our surprise, then, when the first store we walk into - an African corner shop no bigger than a newsagents - has a huge variety of flours, both glutenful and gluten-free, for prices far lower than we could get in the US! These flours were marketed not as "natural" alternatives to support a healthy lifestyle, but simply traditional west African fare. We have since discovered even more stores with great variety of ingredients.

On the other hand, however, we have had great difficulty in finding baked beans, of either the American or British variety. (For those who don't know the difference - baked beans in America tend to be a bit more sugary, and come with pieces of bacon(!) in them, while British baked beans are in a more modest tomato sauce.) Apparently the French just don't eat beans in this way, and we had no luck in sourcing them in the "international" section of a local supermarket. There are some "English food shops", which import food specially from Britain (everything from pickled chutney to spotted dick), although we haven't checked them out. It will be hard, but I am sure that I can resign myself to a life without baked beans.

In addition to getting to grips with the food situation, I'm finding that I keep having to remind myself that, no, we're not on holiday, we really do live here. I suppose this is a common feeling when moving to a new place, but it's especially acute in a major tourist destination like Paris. Settling in will take a while, I think.

Monday, August 24, 2015

Belgium!


More catching up to do. Here are some pictures from our recent trip to Ghent, Belgium. Cindy, a friend from Columbus, lives there, and four others were also visiting, so it was like a big reunion. Our visit overlapped with the filming of a new Adrien Brody movie, so there were several extras wandering around in medieval garb. It really added to the ambiance!

An extra wearing plate armor! Rory is at the left of the picture, completely unarmored.
A load of extras waiting around for direction.
You can't see it here, but this guy was actually checking his mobile phone. Somewhat incongruous.

The movie set was inside Gravensteen, Ghent's 12th-century castle. There were several people shepherding the tourists around the movie set and into the other parts of the castle.

A view of Ghent from the top of the castle.

A reconstructed guillotine. (The blade is original!) This was in the Museum of Judicial Instruments, which is inside the castle.

The side of the castle, where you can see some of the older, unreconstructed portions.

A view of the castle's highest parapets. We had great weather!

Rory and I at the top of the castle.

There is more to Ghent than the castle, though! It's a lovely town with a collection of churches and gentle canals. It feels a little like a less touristy, more normal version of Bruges (which we visited last December).

One of the larger canals.

Alyssa, Dave, Rory, Rachel, and James.

The back of the church of Saint Michael.

The altar inside the church of Saint Nicholas.

At dinner! Rachel, Rory, me, James, Dave, and Alyssa. Not pictured: Cindy.
Rory and I outside of Gravensteen.
We had only spent three days in Paris before we hopped on the train to Ghent. For a small town, introverted person like me, Ghent felt like the perfect antidote to the hustle and bustle of Paris. I wish we could take a trip to another country every weekend, but sadly academia doesn't pay that well. I'll just have to explore the green spaces in Paris and find my own little nooks to relax in.

Saturday, August 22, 2015

Photos of Scotland

We're a little bit behind with posting photos, so here are some highlights from our two weeks in Scotland!

Rory and Jeff at Doune Castle, where Monty Python and the Holy Grail was filmed

Doune Castle

The Scottish Highlands at Glencoe

Glencoe

Rory posing at Glencoe

Incredible sunset at Morar, a remote village on the west coast

Our hotel at Morar. Its address: Morar Hotel, Morar, Scotland. There was only one road in the town.

We took a ferry to the Isle of Mull, where we stayed at the Tobermory Hotel

Tobermory

We drove from Mull on the west coast all the way to St Andrews on the east coast in about 5 hours. Rory's grandparents live in St Andrews and we celebrated his grandma's 88th birthday there. This is from the top of the cathedral tower overlooking St Andrews.

The Castle at St Andrews

Highland cow hat (obviously)

We spent a week in Glasgow while Rory attended a linguistics conference. I took a bus tour one day and stopped at the Botanic Gardens and a number of other places. It was fun!
My first time on a double decker open-top bus


Glasgow Cathedral

Glasgow Cathedral

The Glasgow Necropolis is a cemetery that sits atop a hill behind the Cathedral. It's impressive to walk around. And I randomly met a woman there who not only was attending the same linguistics conference, but had also lived in Columbus and was also traveling to Paris by train on the same day as us. 
This video is from the linguistics conference ceilidh (Scottish dance). 90% of the participants had no idea how to do these dances and they still had fun!

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Cello Reunited

Our lost luggage saga wasn't wrapped up as neatly as we had hoped. As we mentioned in a previous post, the flights to Scotland were lovely and everything was perfect until we arrived in Glasgow and found that none of our luggage had arrived, including my cello. After much calling and wrangling with the airport courier service, we got back three of our suitcases two days after we arrived--just in time for the wedding we were attending. Phew!

Except...conspicuously absent from the luggage delivery was the one thing I couldn't live without: my cello. They didn't even know that they were supposed to look for a cello in addition to the three suitcases despite us saying very clearly to the contrary. I mean, how do you lose a cello!? It pretty obviously stands out.

I was fretting and grumpy for the next two days, worrying about where my baby could possibly be. Eventually, they managed to find it and they sent it down to Rory's parents' house, but I was on my journey in the Highlands and then to Glasgow at the time, so I didn't get to see my cello for another week.

At last, I was reunited with my cello--something that is only slightly less valuable to me than my marriage. As I opened the case, I was praying that all the extra handling and shipping hadn't damaged it. TSA agents are seemingly unable to open a cello case, inspect it, and close it without leaving something unlatched. This was no exception. My bow had not been fastened and was hitting the instrument for the whole journey. But luckily, it was still in perfect shape and I was able to tune it and play it happily for the next hour.

I was feeling emotional about having my instrument back and about coming to the end of our stay in Scotland, so I composed a short quasi-Scottish sounding tune and took a video of it. Rory's dad called it the "Icelandair Lament". Here it is!




Saturday, August 15, 2015

A soujourn in Scotland

Our brief stay in Scotland is nearly at an end!

Some travel highlights, in chronological order:
  • Dumfries
  • Angus
  • Stirling
  • Glencoe
  • Western Lochaber
  • Ardnamurchan
  • Tobermory
  • Calgary
  • Iona
  • St Andrews
  • Glasgow
And now we're back in Dumfries again, with my parents. We'll be back up to Glasgow soon to catch our train to Paris on Monday morning.

Some event highlights:
  • Susan and Stephen's wedding! Susan is an old friend of mine from uni, who now lives in Dubai, where she met some bloke called Stephen. Their wedding was really lovely, in a beautiful country estate. It was also great to see old friends at the reception.
  • Travelling with Jeff! Jeff is a good friend of ours, a former OSU graduate student (who has since graduated and moved on to other things), and he was in Scotland to attend a phonetics conference (see next bullet). We decided we'd all take a trip to the highlands and the Isle of Mull, to show Jeff some of the "real" Scotland (and lots of sheep).
  • Phonetics conference! I've been networking and sciencing at a week-long conference in Glasgow while Talia entertains herself and has tea with friends.
  • Seeing family and friends! This is definitely the best part, and the most bittersweet, since there were several people who we weren't able to see on this trip. Still, it's been very good to get to hang out and catch up with various people who mean a lot to us both.
Me and Talia in the dramatic landscape of Glencoe.
Me and Talia in the dramatic landscape of Glencoe
Sorry for the telegraphic nature of this post - I really ought to be (re)packing my bags in preparation for our departure! Scotland, I will miss you, but we'll be back soon, don't despair.
The sun setting over the Atlantic at our hotel in Morar

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

The journey begins...

In the last few days, weeks, and even months of our time in Columbus, Talia and I have been overwhelmed by the love and support that has been shown to us. So many friends have offered assistance, cars, housing, food, sometimes even their children. We're truly grateful to have such excellent people in our lives, and you've made the process of leaving much easier in a logistical sense, but much harder on an emotional level. Feels, I have so many feels!

Seeing as Columbus has given us so much, we wanted our last steps on US soil to be in the 614. We therefore took pretty much the only international flight you can take from Port Columbus International Airport - the commuter flight to Toronto.* So long, America, thanks for all the freedom!


Talia heading toward our Bombardier Dash 8-100 for the first leg of our journey.
Talia heading toward a Bombardier Dash 8-100 for the first leg of our journey.

Our second flight was with Icelandair to Reykjavik (the capital of Iceland). We went to the area designated as the check-in desk for Icelandair, only to find Cubana de Aviacíon instead! While Cuba is a warmer destination than Iceland, it's not in the right direction... It turns out that several of the smaller airlines share check-in desks at Toronto, and we just needed to wait a while for Icelandair.

The Icelandair flight was pleasant. Upon boarding the plane (a 757), we were given a little bottle of Icelandic glacier water! We also got an exit row, so yay, extra legroom! Since it was an overnight flight, the lights were dimmed, and the ambient lighting on the cabin ceiling above the overhead compartments looked like the aurora borealis. We were rocked to sleep by gentle Icelandic lullabies sung over the loudspeaker by the co-pilot.**

Upon arrival in Reykjavik at 6am local time (2am Ohio time), we had just enough time to breathe the cool Nordic sea air and look at some Icelandic sweaters before boarding our flight to Glasgow. We were again seated in an exit row! The Norse gods were smiling upon us. The 2-hour flight to Glasgow was uneventful (another 757).

We had fun in the immigration area of Glasgow - we were asked if we lived in the USA or in the UK - "neither, well, we don't really live anywhere". The joys of temporary vagrancy!

We had less fun in the baggage claim area. The carousel went around and around and around... But no bags. All of our earthly possessions - including Talia's cello(!) - were nowhere to be seen.

This was not the auspicious beginning to our journey that we had hoped for. Not at all. We filed a lost luggage report, we were told they would call us once they had any updates, and we went on our way with my parents to their house in the south of Scotland.

30 hours later, we get a call saying the bags are in Glasgow and on their way to my parents' house. We will be reunited tomorrow, just in time for Susan's wedding! Hooray!

* Well, we actually took it because it was the cheapest... But the symbolism is nice, right?

** At this point I had taken a few sleeping pills so I am not entirely sure that this actually happened.