Fontainebleau

The forest of Fontainebleau was the setting of our grandest adventure. It is thirty minutes from Paris by train and we spent the day there on Saturday to go bouldering (a style of climbing that involves short, technically difficult climbs called boulder problems). The forest is full of large boulders for which people have designated circuits of boulder problems of different levels, marked by different colors. It is like a giant playground in the trees. 

Nancy and Gil conquering the rocks!

Fontainebleau is one of the most famous climbing areas in the world so I am incredibly pleased that I had the opportunity to go there.

Gracefully making my way up the chimney.

D’Orsay

On Friday, Nancy and I visited the Musee d’Orsay after a lunch of delicious sandwiches on the Seine with our friends.

There was a large section of impressionist paintings, a well as art nouveau furniture and a room full of pointilism; the pointilism made Nancy particularly happy.

Particularly impressive was that the large windows of the impressionist hall look directly out at Montmartre – where they did a lot of their work.

In the evening, our Parisian friends joined us at the French independent winemaker festival in town. We tried a large range of wine, champagne, etc. Then our lovely hosts cooked us a delicious French meal. An ideal first day in Paris.

-Hendrik

Snails and Sparkles

On Tuesday after work I took the Thalys, a high-speed train, to Paris after work to attend a research meeting where I was invited to give a talk. Wednesday and Thursday I enjoyed feeling like an academic again, listening to other researchers’ talks and conversing with professors and grad students about science! My talk was well received and who knows, it could even lead to some collaborations. 

I also befriended several young Wallonian (French-speaking Belgian) women who were master’s students. I tried to be a good role model for them as a woman in science. In return, they helped me to navigate the French menus and got me to try fois gras (goose liver), bouillabaisse (fish stew), escargot (snails), and gésier (gizzard). The snails were served in the shells with garlic butter. To eat them, we picked them up with spring-loaded tongs and used special skinny forks to pull them out. They were délicieux! I got an extra taste when a Frenchman used the tongs clumsily, crushed the snail shell and launched the whole snail directly at me. Spattered in hot garlic butter and snail, all I could do was laugh. I have never seen a Frenchman look so embarrassed or apologize so profusely, but there was nothing to be done except dab with napkins and keep eating. C’est la vie. 

In my opinion, the highlight of the conference was the social dinner, which was served aboard a boat on the Seine River. We were lucky enough to pass by the Eiffel Tower just on the hour so it started to sparkle as we went by. It felt magical! 

The Eiffel Tower from the Seine.

First day of Spring

Yesterday was the first day of spring and the sun even managed to come out for about an hour almost exactly during the equinox before retreating behind the clouds, which should maybe just be called the Dutch sky. I decided that meant I should ride my bike home from work. It ended up being an exhausting idea though because I had to pedal for 23 km directly into a headwind of 4 on the Beaufort scale. Good thing I had Tex Mex leftovers and Hendrik waiting for me at home.

A long-expected party

To thank a friend for some imported cooking ingredients, we did a rare thing and hosted a dinner party for 4 friends and a dog:

We made a mountain of TexMex food: pork shoulder tacos, spicy rice, habanero salsa, guacamole, etc. We had a fantastic time!

-Hendrik

Spring Recycling

 Saturday was drenched in sunshine so we decided it was time to step forth from our winter hibernation and excuses and finally take out the recycling that has been accumulating all winter. I loaded up Vroomeer, my trusty steed, with glass bottles on the front and rear luggage racks and hung lighter-weight bags with cans and plastic bottles off the handlebars​. Thanks to the brick and cobblestone streets, I sounded like a drunken percussion band clanking along as I slowly navigated to the recycling area by the train station. The whole scene was magnified in hilarity because Maastricht was holding the TEFAF art fair (where you go if you want to buy an original Picasso or some such status symbol, or if you are really rich, where you send your personal art collector) so the streets were swarming with rich people in outrageously fancy clothes and cars. I think one woman even shielded her toddler’s eyes so it wouldn’t witness my vulgarity as I passed by.

Home Repairs: Hard Mode

Trying to do basic home repairs is just a few steps harder in a foreign country with a different language and different stores. 

Last week when we were brushing our teeth, a filter fell out of the faucet and the water flow started spraying in an uncontrolled way. Fortunately I was able to take the necessary piece from the demon-sink in the toilet room (a tiny sink for hand washing that is only big enough for one hand at a time and only provides ice water) and swap it. 

After that, my options were: (1) call the landlord who only speaks Dutch, request a repair, wait forever, and stay home from work for a day while the repair person comes or (2) do it myself. Given that this was a hopefully simple repair that would not involve electricity, the mysterious heaters, or anything gross I opted for the latter.

Typically the hardest part would have been figuring out what the parts for repair are called in English so I could order them. (Google “faucet diagram parts”and determine that it is a faucet aerator.) Now in addition, I had to translate that into Dutch (kraan beluchter), hope the literal translation was the correct name for the part I needed (in this case it seemed to be), find a Dutch store that sold it (no Home Depot here), and try to actually order the right size (useless metric system).

After finding the right type of stores and desperately searching their websites for a kraan beluchter, it became apparent that either Dutch people don’t repair their faucets, or my translation was as faulty as my sink. Additional googling of faucet diagrams on Google.nl (Dutch Google) finally got me to the word “perlator,” which as it turns out Google translate does not know, so I have no idea what it means. However it appears to be the correct term and I managed to guess the correct dimensions for the faucet.

I ordered it before the trip to Switzerland so of course it arrived while we were away. That added an extra trip to the post office because receiving packages at home here is next to impossible unless you have a housewife. 

On the bright side, I succeeded and now I feel like a klussen (home maintenance and repair, one of the national pastimes) champion. 

Hendrik’s 30th Birthday

Hendrik’s 30th birthday was last week! We celebrated with a scrumptious Thai food dinner with some friends at our go-to Thai restaurant. (You may have noticed that we tend to go out for Thai food for birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, etc).  In Hendrik’s honor, the restaurant made the food so spicy that he got hiccups. This weekend I planned a virtual surprise party for him so he could play video games online with friends from high school and college.

Birthday boy with his birthday Scotch!

Snowboarding in Switzerland

After the disappointing first day, ski conditions improved. We got a full day of snowboarding in on Sunday and most of a day in on Monday, until they closed the lifts for high winds again. Hendrik had a good weekend relaxing in the sauna, reading, and terrorizing the citizens of Grindelwald. He also discovered the best new beverage “heisse schoggi mit rum,” which is delicious swiss hot chocolate with rum. Swiss food did not disappoint either; we stuffed ourselves with röschti (kind of like Swiss hashbrowns), fondue, venison with lingonberry sauce, and sauerbraten.

Overlooking the Lauterbrunnen Valley.

Almost down to Grindelwald.

Monday night, it snowed another 30 inches so we decided to snowboard a half day before driving home. All I can say is that speeding through powder in the shadow of the Eiger was glorious!

Not Snowboarding in Switzerland

Last weekend we went to Switzerland with some of the other Americans and a British guy to snowboard in Grindelwald. Well, I went to snowboard and Hendrik went to enjoy the Swiss mountain ambience. We woke up early Saturday morning and were ready to hit the slopes when we learned that all of the lifts were closed due to high winds, which were supposed to reach up to 160 km/h at the top of the ski slopes. We tried to make the best of it so we “hiked” around the lovely town of Grindelwald, enjoyed the scenery, and then it started raining so we had a beer and moped. 

Ready to snowboard (before I heard the bad news).