Grand Marnier

Today we went to the Grand Marnier factory. (They don't normally let small groups take the tour but they put the four of us with a bigger group of oldies. So it was enough, and it was free.)

First we heard about their products and the basics of the production process before taking a tour of the factory. We saw the bitter orange rinds they use for the flavour, the machines for processing them and the vats for maceration. They showed us the stills for extracting the orange flavour (and cherry, for their other liqueur) and had us smell the different fractions of the distillation. Apparently the good fraction is 90-92˙C (cooler than that is the orange oil they sell off as cleaning product).

We got to see all the huge oak barrels for first ageing the cognac, then ageing the mixed liqueur. That cellar smelt really good!

And finally they gave us free taste tests! We got to try their Cherry Marnier and vanilla Navarn liqueurs; they were ok but not worth the price. Then they gave us some of the Louis-Alexandre Grand Marnier; it tasted not much different from the standard Cordon Rouge, so not worth the extra money (30€64 /700mL vs 19€21 for Cordon Rouge). But lastly they even let us try the super-expensive Centenaire Grand Marnier (41€41); I could taste the difference with that one but I'm not prepared to pay twice as much for it, I think I'd rather have twice as much of the Cordon Rouge!

The only one we didn't get to try was the hyper-expensive Cent-Cinquantenaire (84€06). Cindy wants to go back next time we're here so maybe they'll offer us one then.

Belgium

We arrived in Brussels Tuesday night where we stayed with Cindy’s aunt.

The next day her cousin took us on a tour of the city. We went first to see the Mannekin Piss, a fountain of a little boy urinating. I had heard about it before but didn’t realise that he’s usually dressed for some occasion. When we saw him he was wearing the uniform of the Barcelona soccer team because of an upcoming match. They must have just dressed him because there was a crowd standing in front, holding a banner, singing something. After lunch Cindy’s other cousin took us to see the lesser-known counterpart to the Mannekin Piss, the Jeannkin Piss -- a more recent fountain of a little girl squatting. Freud would have a field day with Brussels!

We went to the building of the European Parliament but you can’t go into the chamber. There was an info office providing literature on the EU in all its languages so Cindy took a copy of the EU charter of rights in each language.

Cindy insisted on having lunch at Quick, a European version of Maccas, mainly because it’s so famous in France for being Belgian. It was slightly less greasy than Maccas and the burgers came on whole grain buns but it was still fast food. That evening Cindy’s cousin’s boyfriend asked me (in French that sounded like Dutch) if I had tried real Belgian pommes frites yet. He was horrified when I said, “Not really, unless you count Quick,” and proceeded to tell me about his friends who own a friterie and do it all by hand. I asked him about the mayonnaise thing and he replied that you can have ketchup or any number of other sauces and rattled off a list of creamy sauces, “Tartare, andalouse...”

He seemed to know what he was talking about so when he suggested we have dinner in Leuven we let him lead us there. Leuven is a very beautiful city, reminiscent of Florence with its restaurant-filled piazzas connected by cobbled streets.

Polyglot Families

After leaving Germany we went to stay with Cindy’s cousins in Holland, on the Meuse, near Nijmegen. In fact their house is on a flood plain surrounded by dykes. They have a big gate in the middle of the front dyke so they can drive up to the house so, when they hear that a big flood is coming, they install in that gap huge bars of aluminium with rubber in between, which apparently keeps the water out.

Cindy’s cousin is French but married a Dutchman so the whole family is bilingual. And because both of them work jobs that require some English and the kids also learn English at school, so they’re almost trilingual. Then the eldest daughter (20ish) explained -- in perfect English -- that she’d picked up German by having a German room-mate and spending time with her friends. Then I really started to feel that my language skills pale in comparison to people who grow up in northern Europe.

I found it a bit strange to be in this environment with so many choices of language. It was perfectly normal to hear the kids switching between French and English to talk to me (as this is what happens at French table all the time) but I also had an experience that I had heard bilingual people talk about. At one point Cindy’s cousin came up to me and asked, “Did you succeed in getting your computer onto the network?” I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was wrong with this question. It was obvious what she meant because it was not long before we had been talking about it but then I realised that she’d asked me the question in English whereas I had only ever heard her speak French up to that point!

Aix-la-Chapelle

After leaving Luxembourg we crossed (through a little bit of Belgium) into Germany where we stayed in the town that the Krauts call Aachen and the Frogs call Aix-la-Chapelle. I don't know what to call it but it was a nice town.

I thought we were going to see Charlemagne's grave but it turned out to be his relics. They had a stone sarcophagus where he was originally buried but it was empty. Apparently he was canonised a couple of hundred years after he died (news to me) and so they opened up his tomb and pulled his body to bits. That's reverence for you! His arm and his leg were in special boxes with crystal sides so you could see them. Apparently his skull was inside the big gold bust. And it wasn’t just bits of Charlemagne and his personal effects, they had quite a collection of reliquaries. They had a piece of Jesus’ sweat-rag, Mary’s belt and rib bones from famous saints (Peter, Paul, Stephen). I found the whole thing a bit macabre but that's mediaeval Catholicism.

I was a bit worried about travelling in a country where I didn’t speak a word of the language (except what I’ve learnt from Hogan’s Heroes). Cindy took German in high school for a couple of years (but has forgotten almost all of it) so I had her teach me the numbers at least. She was able to read the days of the week on a few signs but apart from that we were without any knowledge of the language. We found that, even though we were very close to the French border, the Germans of Aachen were not very good at French, most of them preferred to speak English.

After an abortive attempt to get an authentic German meal at a pub with a frazzled barmaid, we found a restaurant that had lots of flags in the window. There we were even able to ask questions about the dishes as the waiter knew the words for most things in English if he didn’t know the French word. I had the Nuremburg sausages with saurkraut and it was pretty good (there were caraway seeds in the saurkraut). I’ve realised that cabbage can be edible if it’s cooked in beer or wine or something nice.

Luxembourg

On the 15th we left Paris and drove to Metz (pronounced "mess") in Lorraine, on the Moselle. We had a walk through the park there and saw their canals.

We then moved on to Luxembourg, where we spent the night. There we saw the grand-ducal palace and some old caves where people would hide in war time. I started off thinking that it would be some tiny micro-state because I had only ever heard of it in conjunction with the BeNeLux confederacy and had heard something about there still being a Grand Duke. (It’s anachronistic enough to still have a king or queen but dukes-regnant are far more exotic!) Yet I found that it’s a bit bigger than it sounds: there are actually a few separate cities there with some space in between and it takes a few hours to drive across the whole country (that’s normal; it is Europe, after all!).

We ate a couple of meals at a fête that seemed semi-permanent; it seems they eat quite a lot of sausages and the Luxembourg speciality is potato pancakes with apple sauce, just like those Ashkenazi ones that I forget the name of.

Summer Travel

Cindy and I are in France visiting her parents again this summer. We arrived yesterday morning and will be here until the 29th.

Our trip here went quite smoothly. A friend drove us up to Indianapolis and we stopped at IHOP for a late lunch. This month's special is strawberries, as you can see from the crêpe.

Our short connection time at Cincinnati was no problem. We had an Air France flight number but it was actually a Delta flight. Cindy complained about the French announcements over the PA but I thought they were lucky to get any announcements in French on a Delta flight. Like most US airlines they don't serve alcohol for free any more, even on international flights. Except, I assume because they were carrying Air France passengers, that you could request wine with dinner for free.

We didn't see anyone wearing surgical masks but there was mention of swine flu. When we got on the plane they explained that the French government wouldn't let anyone disembark until everyone on the flight had filled in a certain form. The strange thing was that the form didn't ask where we'd been, just where we were going, so that they could get in touch with us if someone else came down with swine flu. (And at the airport I noticed that the gendarmes were carrying automatic rifles, presumably to shoot anyone they see cough.)

After a siesta we went shopping and picked up all the things on Cindy's list, including huge quantities of dairy products and some cider to try before we commit to buying a case of anything.

This morning we went to the market at Houilles, the neighbouring suburb. Cindy and her mum left before me because I got up late and was still eating breakfast (French style). I wandered over there, not really remembering the best route but seeing familiar landmarks. I promptly stumbled upon the market and started wandering through. Before long I saw Cindy and her mum walking towards me. They seemed slightly relieved because they didn't know where I'd been, telling me that I should have taken a mobile phone. I had told Cindy's dad where I was going and he had called them to tell them to keep a look out. I wasn't worried because I'd left my trail of bread crumbs but they weren't so confident.

Career Change

So for almost a year now I've been enrolled in a master's program through the Philosophy dept at the same time as the PhD though HPS. I had the opportunity to apply for a teaching position with philosophy this semester but I was already booked to teach my own undergrad class in HPS, so I didn't. But then yesterday I got an unsolicited offer to lead the discussion sections for an ethics class in the fall semester (September – December) this year. Again this time I'm already scheduled to teach my HPS class (for the third time) but for some reason the specific offer got me thinking that I should consider it.

I had a meeting with my committee yesterday afternoon and so I asked them, just at the end, what they thought of the idea. They both immediately yelled, "Take it!" I continued speaking, saying how I had already made a commitment to teach in this dept and they said again, "Take it!" Apparently HPS is very happy whenever anyone gets work somewhere else because it means they'll be able to offer my position to someone else who needs it. The only hurdle was that my class has been advertised because it's about Darwin and the university has been running a "Themester" for his bicentennary/sesquicentennary. But I derived no benefit from it being advertised like that and the Director of Graduate Studies was certain that they'd find a replacement.

In one way this other job might seem like a demotion - leading discussion instead of lecturing. But in every other way it'll be better. It will be a good career move to get a little experience teaching something different in another dept, particularly philosophy (I like to teach both philosophical and historical classes but had I done the Darwin class again it would just be more history, when it's philosophy experience I need more of). It will be about the same number of hours work but it'll be less stressful. And it pays about 25% more! In fact, I might even be earning a little more than Cindy next semester!

The Entrepreneurial Spirit

A few months ago Cindy and I were at a used book sale (the annual Monroe County Red Cross book fair) on flat rate per bag day. I noticed a number of textbooks that I recognised from taking French for reading knowledge classes. As it was a flat rate for as many books as I could fit in the bag, I picked up some of these books, thinking it would be worth trying to sell them on to the campus bookstore. They didn't want to buy them a few weeks ago but told me to come back during exam week. When I did they still didn't want one title and another had actually dropped in value. Still, I've managed to sell three to people in my dept. I charged them less than I would other students but I've still made back almost what I paid for all of them. I still have 3 left but I've contacted the instructor for the first half of the summer French class, asking her to tell the students that I'm selling books cheap.

Hopefully the next project will work out even better. Cindy and I were talking about how she loves French cider but not American cider very much. We managed to find some French cider at the international grocers but it was the one she likes less (brut, she prefers doux; I'll drink either) and it was selling for around $12. Cindy's parents found this surprising as there it retails for €1.25 for the cheap brand or €1.40 for the good stuff. So I said something like, "If it's so much cheaper in France, we should bring some back duty free. It's just a shame that we can only bring 2L into the USA between us, which is only two 750mL bottles." But then I started wondering, "What happens if we exceed our duty-free limit? How much would the duty cost?" It's a little complicated because you have to pay a percentage of the value as duty but also federal and state excise taxes on alcohol. But to bring a case of cider back to Indiana should cost less than $5 in duty and taxes. So our plan is to buy a case, check it like a suitcase (with "Fragile" stickers) and pay the duty. If all goes according to plan, we'll get a dozen 750mL bottles of Cindy's favourite cider for about $25. Fingers crossed.