Sacre vache!

I spied these moos right across the pont-canal from Diggy.

My hood here in Francey is known for many things: splendid wine, beautiful paysage, succulent snails... but there's a reason I call it Cow Country. On a drive in most any direction from this fair metropolis, you can't not notice the great white beasts strolling along their hedged enclosures and mooing to their hearts' content. 

I love them so, and I tell anyone who asks me what I will miss most about France that "mes amies, les vaches" are high up there. My conversation partner Solange invited me to St. Christophe-en-Brionnais this Wednesday for the weekly marché so we could get a closer look at my favorite fauna, and sweetened the deal by saying we'd be accompanied by a woman is is the daughter, wife, and mother of cow farmers.

Dairy air. (Get it? Like derrière?)

The St. Christophe market started more than 500 years ago, and though it isn't as large as it once was it still attracts 1,000-1,500 head of cattle each week. Until a few decades ago all transactions were done in cash, and buyers would come to the market with their pockets bulging with franc notes. Solange's friend Michelle said her husband used to put all his money in the pockets of one pair of pants, and then wear a second pair on top of them for security.

O hai.

A tourist's typical day at the market includes a behind-the-scenes tour of the cows' holding pen and a quick stop in the auction room. Afterwards, most will dine at the nearby Le Mur D'Argent restaurant, which offers up a hot steaming plate of boeuf charollaise-- said to be one of the best in the whole wide world. It's just another example of how close the French are with their food: the thought of eating their favorite cow's brother or sister doesn't phase them one bit.

For just 1.500 Euros, one of these pretty ladies can be yours!

Perfect Berlin Day

A perfect day starts out with a balanced breakfast. We went to the café across the street from the palace we've been staying (thanks Jonathan!) and played the "I Have No Idea What This Means But I Hope It's Delicious" game when ordering from the menu. I got a plate with a hard-boiled egg, cheeses, meats, butter and amazing house-made marmalade, accompanied by a basket of baguettes and slices of hearty German bread. The Dude had the XL version, with smoked salmon, fruit slices and horseradish spread. This kept us full all the livelong day.

Next stop was Tacheles, recommended by my friend Jessica. Originally built in 1907 as a department store in Berlin's Jewish quarter, it has since housed a Nazi prison, the Free German Trade Union Federation, and a movie theater. Shortly after the wall fell (and right before the building was scheduled to be demolished), an artists' initiative took over the building. It has since been used as an art center and night club.

According to their website:

In the course of changes since the wall came down, Tacheles has been confronted with the difficult challenge of remaining true to its roots and ideals without becoming too sentimental about the old squatter times.

The building was partially bombed during WWII and it's completely covered inside with graffiti. Each room features work from different artists-- collages, paintings, photography-- and there's a sculpture garden out back. I thought of many of my Portland buddies who would drool at such a gnarly artist collective.

Next was the Neue Synagogue down the street, which was way overpriced for the amount of information. We went to the German Historic Museum on Monday and paid 4E for three hours' worth of moseying through their gigantic exhibit, and we paid 3E50 for two small rooms of info at the synagogue. Lame.

We were totally parched by this point, so we stopped at a local watering hole for my new favorite refreshment: apfel schorle. It's like fizzy apple juice. So delish. As we were sitting outside the sky opened and started thunderbooming, so we were forced to move inside and do shots of jägermeister. Those are the rules.

When the rain let up an hour or so later, on the recommendation of my buddy Kathryn we headed down to Bernauer Strasse, which has a couple of museums dedicated to my favorite subject: The Berlin Wall. The first had videos of the history of the wall (which left a German woman in the row in front of us in tears) and an explanation of the death strip, the 100-meter zone between walls on the East and West sides filled with sensor-triggered barb wire, patrol dogs, beds of nails, trip wire, and of course lots of lots of soldiers ready to shoot at anything that moves.

There was a park adjacent to the museum that had some old pieces of the wall on display, as well as informational panels about what had happened. It also had photos of the 136 people killed as they tried to cross the wall.

We arrived at the second museum 15 minutes before closing, so we only had time to climb up to the observation deck to see a preserved section of what the death strip actually looked like.

Minutes after we left we got caught in another thunderboom, so we hopped the streetcar to the grocery store to buy the fixings for a big dinner for Jonathan and his roommates.

Today is our last day in Berlin, and I have the sads. I can definitely see why so many people love it here so much.

Walking what's left of The Wall

I know I haven't been writing nearly as much about Berlin as I did Amsterdam, and that's because it's kind of hard for me to figure this city out. In French cities, you find layers upon layers of tangible history all bunched up on top of each other. A church from 1100 might be standing next to a house from 1650, which is next to a supermarché from 2003. In many cities it doesn't take much of a leap of imagination to picture yourself bustling through the narrow streets with your petticoat a-rustling and the curls of your elaborately coiffed and powdered hair coming loose as you make your way to the ball (which is how I prefer to picture myself, always).

But Berlin was pretty much razed during the WWII bombings. And then, post-war, the GDR erected several concrete, prison-like structures and, you know, a huge WALL, much of which came tumbling down post-1989 as people tried to move on.

Everything feels so new here. The sidewalks are shockingly wide-- so unlike the two-foot pathways back in Diggy that usually have a parked car on them anyway. There's construction everywhere. And there are some neighborhoods we've been in that feel more like California than Europe.

As the Dude and I wander around the city, we often wonder if we are in what was East Berlin or West Berlin, since there are no real indicators either way. Which is why I was so pumped to visit the Eastside Gallery, a 1.3 km section of the wall that people from around the world made into a work of art in 1990. (In 2009 much of the work had to be restored due to erosion and grafitti.)

Finally, as we traversed the wall and I felt so small and powerless against its height, I was able to get a small inkling of what life must have been like in its shadow.

Life in the GDR appears to have been somewhat awesome

We got into Berlin on Wednesday afternoon, and approximately four curry- and bratwursts later, one of our first stops was an English-language bookstore. I have been STARVED for a good book in English since I got over here, once I discovered that my Nook doesn't want to cooperate in France. I picked two books, one called A Woman in Berlin, about Berlin-post-war, and one called Stasiland, about Berlin-post-wall.

Stasiland is full of harrowing tales of what life was like in East Germany under the German Democratic Republic (Deutsche Demokratische Republik): never trusting anyone (they may inform on you to the secret police), no privacy, and no room for free thought. So I was prepared for a somber experience inside the DDR Museum.

What we got instead was a gee-whiz, hands-on collection of DDR memorabilia, with placards touting the ingenuity of the East Germans and making things like group bathroom breaks (a first lesson in Communist brotherhood-- no one can get up from the row of potties until the last one has finished) look positively adorable. 

These fun little guys taught the young comrades to eat more fruit, conserve electricity and use resources responsibly.

Here I am practicing the Lipsi dance, specifically created by the DDR in 1959 to be void of any and all sexuality and to counter rock 'n roll. Watch the video below to see what it looked like.

This diorama was dedicated to the East German penchant for promenading au naturel at the beach.

My favorite exhibit let you create a "new socialist human" bit by bit. You were given points for how well your choices conformed to the socialist ideal. I did well with my shoe choice ("Sturdy footwear is important for creating initiative in productive labor. Both feet firmly on socialist ground!"), but not so much with what I put in my left hand ("You have an exemplary husband! But why are you bringing flowers to work? Has your admirer just brought them here? Has he no job?").

Circle of life

Cluny used to be the center of Christendom. The papacy was headquartered here, and the church was the biggest church in all the land until St. Peter's in Rome was constructed. Then the French Revolution came along and people were all, "Boo, Church! Boo!" and they dissembled it stone by stone, leaving only a bell tower and change.

Now Cluny is a quaint little village clinging to its not-so-quaint Medieval past of grandeur and glory for the benefit of all the abbey-hopping tourists. They have some sort of institution of higher learning there that apparently encourages its students to decorate and wear their own quidditch uniforms.

We also saw a cat eat a lizard.

Fin.