I am sitting on a high speed train on the way to Strasbourg, where we are going to spend the actual holiday. We must be going 120 miles an hour. Trains are so wonderful, it is a little depressing that they barely exist in the US, though we are lucky to have one in Cville. Having grown up in New York I used to ride the train all the time, but our fifteen year old cousin who is with us is taking the first train ride of his life. It is perfect for just this kind of trip, too long to drive conveniently, too short to fly. If you are going from the medium sized place you live in to some other medium sized place, at home you just have to drive, no matter how big a hassle. There is that funny quote that Paul Krugman teases George Will about, where Will expressed horror at Obama's plan for high speed rail because he thinks that taking the train is some kind of an expresswion of collectivism. That's really it, what finally spearates me from American conservatives: I love my country and all, but in many ways I like Europe better.
OK so back to food. When CAM's sister and family got in yesterday afternoon, we headed to the Brasserie Suffren for lunch. Brasseries are one of the basic types of Paris restaurant. The word means brewery, aand people do drink beer in them, but what defines them is their menu and schedule. At regular restaurants you are expected to have lunch off the lunch menu at lunchtime, dinner at dinner time. A Brasserie is a little more wide open, with a big menu, usually with a lot of seafood, that you can get any time. They stay open late, I think some of them are 24/7. Anyway most of us ate moules and frites, mussels cooked in white wine with fries. Manning got one of those AAAAA andouillette suasages I mentioned here a long time ago. They are great, barely held together pieces of pork with a consistency almost like pulled pork barbecue, and a lightly liver-y smell from all those God knows what pig parts they put in there. Nice big salads for CAM and her sister, one of those things that they just don't serve in regular restaurants. In fact I have been noticing that the French don't eat a whole lot of straight ahead vegetables, at least not on restaurant menus. A course might come with a couple of leaves of salad or something pureed, but what vegetables there are are cooked pretty thoroughly and mixed with a lot of fat. Always delicious, but sometimes I could stand to have something bright green and fatless on my plate.
After that we went to the Stein Collection show at the Grand Palais. It was mobbed, but very cool, to think of someone acquiring all those Matisses and Picassos as they were being produced, supporting the guys while the turned out the work. I am not, it must be said, the biggest visual art fan in the world. I always compare my tepid feelings about painting to my attraction to music, which is visceral. I could go on for hours about the kinds of music I like and why, but my taste in painting is routine and uninspired. Picasso, Van Gogh, just like everyone else. I do love to think about painting from that era, on the cusp between realism and absolute abstraction. Once someone had that idea-- that painting didn't have to be about depicting things realistically-- the genie could never be put back in the bottle, and finally the whole idea of what ity meant to be "realistic" was undermined. There are a lot of parallels between expressionism and psychology, I think, and that is the sort of thing I space out about as I wander slowly past the paintings thinking about nothing in particular. It is like listening to slightly boring classical music or sitting through a religious service-- boring if you let it be boring, but meditative if you just let it come to you.
After that we walked around another Christmas Market on the Champs Elysee, I have a feeling there are going to be a lot of those on this trip. It took up the rest of the afternoon, the kids and I finally squeezed on to an 80 bus and got home, with an hour till dinner.
ooo
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