Odds and end?

Could it be the final blog d'Angers? Technically, I guess the previous post was since now I'm writing de Paris where we're checking out the big cité before we fly out on the 10th. And since we're in Paris, I'm sure my writing will magically improve through some cosmic literary force.

How do you say goodbye to students
in French? Order twelve pizzas of
course. 

Our final days in Angers were punctuated with nice farewell dinners, returning borrowed things, and continued performances of my favorite French-speaking skills. I made extra sure not to spoil my reputation at "our" boulangerie. When I'd asked for my loaf and was moving towards the cash register to pay and move on, the woman asked, "c'est tout? (is that all?). And because I always assume I'm being asked to buy more,  I said, "Uh, no." (of course adding the "uh..." at the front as if I'd understood and was giving the question some polite consideration before my nonsensical reply). We had a two-second stare-down before we resolved that I was loafed-out. And even on our final day, I managed to again say "merci" when I stepped into a guy at the supermarche. But then, the pleasure is all mine.

K & B on the windy Maine

Bonnie visited from Geneva on our final weekend. This gave us a great excuse to re-visit some of our favorite in-town sites before we left. We always notice something new at the Chateau d'Angers (new old things if you will).

In the chateau chapel, a large space alternately used through history for worship and prisoners of warships, chateau management had allowed the installation of a large student project -- a team effort of local students of fine-arts, design, and communications to "...confronté á la question du minigolf." I have no idea of minigolf's profile across the globe but the exhibition was given an English title, "Let's Golf." And, though you might have been skeptical, minigolf proved to be a fertile compost of mixed media. Subjects sprouting from the steamy heap of scrap metal, cardboard, video, kinetics, astroturf, etc. included, from what I could tell: fashion, product design, behavioral architecture, and social psychology. And since the point of departure was minigolf, you couldn't say any of it was ironic. It was just minigolf being more interesting than usual.

Minigolf of the apocalypse: Artist/
designer/communicator Julie Galland
explains (I'm guessing) that in mini-
golf, as in life, if a ball doesn't fit,
it can be broken down and pushed
into the hole.

Over in the Apocalypse Tapestry exhibit, I noticed, this time through, that the rendering includes a rainbow. Who knew hellfire came in seven colors?

In the corner of a corner of one of the 84
panels of the Apocalypse Tapestry is a
rainbow which seems to skewer a dust-
ruffled roast turkey.

But rainbows aren’t just for unicorns and apocalypses. The up-to-the-last-minute fashion tip we’re bringing home with us is that bright primary colors have jumped off the Angers Tramway and into the eyelets of expensive, black, men’s dress shoes. No more Monsieur Grumpy at the bank, its time for stuff-shirts everywhere to feel the rainbow (yes, like the viral Newt Gingrich video).

What this town could use is some more rainbow.

On our last Saturday in Angers we went out to dinner at Chez Toi, a cafe up the street we'd been meaning to get to.  It was this night, during the peak of the German E-Coli outbreak (that France had still avoided), that I “decided” to unwittingly order carpaccio. I think Kristin and Bonnie knew what was coming to me but politely assumed (as I am politely assuming now) that I knew, too. Even after I'd eaten a few bites, I didn't realize it was raw (beef). It was sliced soo thinly and well flavored with olive oil, spices, and lemon that it tasted simple more than it tasted fleshy. I was trying to put this new experience into a known category, thinking carpaccio was maybe like cold pizza with no dough or like a plate with skin. Then it dawned on me. The last time my meat had been warmer, it went, "moi." To complicate the issue a little, because the stylized serving is small, carpaccio eaters get an automatic second plate once they've finished the first. This is where you go all in or settle for a C- on the cultural flexibility test. More plate skin please.

Sandwich retooled

Speaking of conspicuously absent dough, another fresh experience on the way out of town was Alexandra et Denis CANTON’s new, mag-lev sandwich-making system. You may have seen a typical boulangerie sandwich display—a refrigerated glass case filled with neatly stacked, pre-made jambon & beurre, poulet, thon, and plain jambon sandwiches. And they’re all made on a 30 cm baguette. And that baguette is sittin’ in there, in the case, gettin’ a bit stale, maybe soggy, or both. Well, our buddy Denis, having felt the wrath of an unhappy sandwich customer (as we’ve talked about before), has invested in a whole new program. His refrigerated case is now filled with pre-made sandwich fillings – assembled in sandwich-form on narrow steel tongues (I’ll call them tongues. I’m sure the industry has a great name for them). Only after you make your selection is the corresponding baguette unseamed. Then the magic begins. Your chosen, pre-loaded steel tongue is placed on the magnetic, hinged, flat steel insertion plate. A sandwich is born. Totally pro.

LeDrogo lays in the razor cuts on the
next round of baguettes. It's got to be
the shoes.

As you know, we’ll miss our dough. On my second to last trip into Cocagne, I saw Patrick Le Drogo (that’s the name on the paper they wrap their baguettes in so I assume it was the dude) loading the oven with rested loaves ready for fire. From a distance, I’d always assumed Le Drogo’s shoes were whitened by the constant steady dusting of flour. I saw recently that what he was wearing were some totally funky white shoes. And then, as often happens with things like this, I started seeing the same shoes on other bakers. I googled it and it’s true. French bakers have French-baker shoes.

While I’m managing to leave without having picked up a pair of baker shoes (as cool as they’d be at the skate park or dialysis clinic), I never really bought anything besides groceries in France. As Euro coins (including 1€, 2€, .02€, .50€ etc.) started to accumulate in a coin-quantity I wasn’t used to managing, I strongly considered buying a coin purse (or would you call that a man-pouch?). But, it would have been a bad investment. I still don’t see any evidence that the Sacajawea dollar coin is going to go mainstream outside of the D.C. subway system. But as soon as it does, I’ll buy a small leather Sac’-sack.

Sunset District SF finally
gets noticed by France.
Could Bellingham's
Sunnyland Neighborhood
be far behind?

Back to near purchases, I was also looking for a good t-shirt – something that captured the French appetite for slightly wrecked English t-shirt phrases but was still wearable. If you pay attention to this genre, you soon notice that UCLA is the most popular school in Angers followed by anything “… & Marshall” The word “marshall” (and sometimes “marshal”) is soo hot right now.
[Note: As you may have noticed above, I’m starting to spell the word “soo” (as in “soo heavy.”) with two Os. “So,” as in, “I told you so,” will keep getting just one one O. I think this is a good idea, it’s much like the difference between “to” and “too,” and somebody’s gotta start. Since this is the last blog, my timing isn’t the best but I’ll see what I can do. I think I know a guy at Google’s spell-check division and he’s soo nice. Or I could just start telling people that “that’s the way they spell it now. The change happened soo fast, a lot of people still haven’t heard about it.”] But I was talking about t-shirts. Jack and I were on a last-ditch, 25 minute t-shirt shopping spree (a very long time for me to be in non-food stores) when I was shocked to find my home town ‘hood, San Francisco's Sunset District, had been memorialized by the French t-shirt industry (or a least by people who flip the switch on the big Chinese t-shirt machine that fills orders for France). The shirt read, Long Beach – Sunset District S.F. The text was overlaid on an image of a cabana and tropical flowers. So, it wasn’t quite purchase worthy. Long Beach is So. Cal. And, neither place has cabanas or passion fruit (except at Trader Joes and Whole Foods respectively).

Pack it in. Pack it out. The bag-roll home begins.

Late Monday morning, with our too many bags packed up, Sue met us to confiscate the keys of “our” apartment and help us shuffle off to the train station. She offered to call two cabs but we were committed to walking. If we couldn’t roll and carry our many cubic meters of stuff the 10 minute walk to the station, how could we be expected to move it back and forth twice in Paris?

Cheap rolling luggage fail.

It was a tad hard. Hard for me because I failed to notice that after about three blocks one of my bag’s wheels melted and oozed out of commission. I’d felt the increased drag but, as I’m inclined to assume more and more lately, I just figured I was wearing out. Yes, the good times roll. The other times, the not good times, they don’t roll.

We left Angers walking towards our train beneath the metropole’s largest rendering of its new promotional slogan: “Le vie en grand.” We think this is like “The good life” or maybe, “Living large.” Either way, I think our last four and half months backs it up. It’s been a large good time.

In a reversal of our original Paris to Angers TGV experience, not only were we headed in the opposite direction, we also got an unexpected upgrade to first class. SNCF had changed train equipment which threw the normal assigned-seating arrangement into a hit-and-miss free-for-all. Not seeing any way to get five seats near each other, we were sitting on the steps near our bag-mountain when Mr. friendly conductor came walking by and asked if we were a family. “Oui are family…” Well in that case, there were five seats together in the posh box. This was a preferable enough alternative that we hiked the 7 or so cars away leaving our bags in the good hands of the second-class riff raff (I still ran all the way back to make sure none of the bags walked off when we made the one intermediate stop in Le Mans). In first class, there was no WiFi or strawberry ice cream but I think, if I’m ever offered a new office chair, I’m going to request a TGV first class train seat. It was soo comfortable (and great for typing).

Appendix 1: d’Paris
So we didn’t go straight the airport. We spent a couple of days in Paris. Kristin found a cool apartment that’s like a big hotel room, booked on-line, but accessed using e-mailed codes and lock-boxes for the door key. Pretty cool. Although, I think I needed that first class train seat because I was afflicted with a bit of dread that this apartment would be on the sixth floor of a building with no elevator. I was half right. But there was an elevator. We had a great second dose of Paris to cap off our otherwise small city adventure.  Paris pictures here.

Time to Baguette.