france

Ahoy, Saccos. Ian here. As a counterpoint to the surprising display of unity that I saw outside of Notre Dame on Friday, I thought I’d post some pictures of something I saw a while ago that was downright riotous.

I showed up in the area adjacent to the Pompidou center at around 2 in the afternoon, and there was a huge crowd of people gathered, waiting to start a parade or a protest or something. This is not an unusual thing to see on the weekend in Paris, so I initially didn’t pay much attention. As I wandered through the crowd, though, I realized that something was slightly different about this crowd. They were grumpier looking that the usual crowds, and most of them had on bandannas or some sort of mask to cover their faces. Then I noticed the black flags, and I realized they were anarchists!!!

Okay, so what? A bunch of Parisian anarchists assembled for a protest: big whoop. They’ll probably just march around chanting like every other group of protesters I’ve seen. Indeed, this is what I thought… Until they started shooting off roman candles, lighting magnesium torches, and blowing air horns!!!

This video gives a better sense of how bright the torches were. They glitched out my camera.

I had no idea what the goal of the protest was, but I love fireworks, so I figured I would follow them around for a while and see what they were up to. Unfortunately (or probably, fortunately) they were slow to get going and a whole bunch of smoke accumulated in the plaza, so I wandered off to get some fresh air and wait for them to get properly moving. This is when I noticed the cops.

They were actually all over the place (there was a music festival slated to begin in a couple hours), but they seemed to be preparing for something specifically aimed at dealing with the anarchists. As much as I love fireworks, I am not a huge fan of being clubbed by riot cops, so I decided to hang back and not follow the anarchists directly. This was a good move.

About five minutes later, there were terrible, cacophonous noises coming from the direction of the parade. Helicopters showed up and started hovering over the route, and soon after the ambulances started coming. Groups of cops were running all over the place and putting themselves up in strategic barriers to contain the flow of people.

After things had calmed down, I walked over to the parade route to see what was up. There were lots of broken windows.

This slogan was all over the place. It says “77 rather than 68.” There were riots and revolution in Paris in ’68, but I don’t know what happened in ’77. I asked around a bit, and the people I asked had no idea what that meant, so probably whatever happened in ’77 was only significant in anarchist circles.

A couple stores had their doors smashed.

There were broken eggs and thrown-produce all over the place, which I think means that this is actually stained with tomatoes rather than blood. Maybe not, though.

Planters were broken and garbage cans overturned. Anarchy means that you litter.

That’s about it for destruction. I watched a bunch of the anarchists in handcuffs getting loaded into police buses by plain-clothes cops who had been in the parade but were now wearing orange police arm bands. I guess this is how the cops combat the masks? Just have an undercover grab the offender and make the arrest. This strikes me as something that probably would have been much harder for the cops pre-internet. Back then they would have actually had to have undercovers in the groups in order to know the time and location of the marches, but now they can just read online and show up.

This has nothing to do with the anarchists, but it was in the same set of pictures on my camera, so I present it now. Enjoy.

Ahoy, Annie. Are you okay? It’s Ian.

So, the king is dead. I have a sort of funny story about that. After going through my google reader list and looking over the NYT front page last night (French time) I turned off the computer and went to bed, but before going to sleep I was surfing through the channels and I came across French news. They were flat-out declaring MJ dead, and I got very confused since I had just been looking at the latest internet happenings. I turned my laptop back on and started looking around. CNN had a conservative article saying MJ was hospitalized, NYT had nothing, google news turned up nothing, and the best I could find was TMZ reporting death. After poking around online for a half hour, I found nothing more substantial, so I figured it was a half-truth, i.e. that MJ was in a coma or something, and went to bed.

Turns out the thrill(er) was gone.

Tonight the French mourned at Notre Dame en masse. I went to see what was up. As it turned out it was a totally un-ironic, wake-like, party. It was really great, and everyone was out.

People were singing and waving signs and being genuinely upset about the death of MJ.

At some point an impersonator, or at least someone who was all decked out in the garb, showed up and started leading the crowd in chants / songs. People had flowers to mourn the dead.

At some point he led the crowd in a mass peace-sign salute that was so touching that I won’t make the obvious “sieg heil” joke…

even though I really want to…

Anyway, it was interesting to be in a mass of people who seemed so genuinely sad to see MJ go. I expected some sort of molestation undercurrent, but there was nothing but celebration and praise. SO many people were crying. Also, somehow while taking pictures, I accidentally shot a pic of some girl’s hoots. Here they are. Enjoy.

Ahoy dummkopfs, Ian here. I just got back from a few days in Bonn, Germany, where I was visiting University of Bonn, giving a talk, working, trying to get a collaboration going, etc, etc. Bonn isn’t much for tourism, and I definitely didn’t have very much time for a-wandering, but I managed to get a couple interesting pics.

I took the train, which was very pleasant. The countryside had a decent supply of pretty valleys full of old houses and castles and stuff, so between scenery and a book, the trip went quickly. I had an hour-long layover in the Cologne train station, which afforded me the opportunity to visit Meister Bock:

The mustard was great, but the meat schlong was only marginally better than a hotdog. Bonn was a cute mixture between modern and old. The modern:

Just around the corner in the “old town,” you instead got:

and a lot of

I went out to dinner after my talk with the guy who invited me and his wife. They took me to a local brewery that served “traditional” (I put this in quotes because they sort of said that the place really served cold-war-era German food, so I’m not really sure how traditional that is) Germany food. I got some decent but unremarkable sauerbraten, but his wife got something truly amazing: mett. This is a mixture of raw (!!!) pork, salt, and some spices, served with bread, onions, and radishes. She let me try some, and I must say, it was fucking great. The rawness of it sort of gave it a very pronounced, sharp pork flavor that I guess goes away when cooked. I asked about trichinosis worries, and they said that it had effectively been wiped out in commercial pork and that there were laws dictating that mett can only be sold the day its ground. I’m not sure I trust the stuff I can get at the supermarket enough to try making it myself, but I would like to try it again sometime.

After dinner, they showed me the house where Beethoven was born. WOOOO, EXCITEMENT: BONN FTW!!!!!

The Bonn-ers have a real hard-on for the guy. Here he is rocking out in front of the post office. Strangely enough, the top floor of the post office is occupied by a math institute.

The next couple days were work, work, work. Then it was time to go, but I had some free time to wander around a couple hours before my train left, so I got to see a bit more of the city. The buildings spanned the spectrum from severe

…to queer.

Incidentally, am I the only one who feels a little uncomfortable around that gothic (is that even what it’s called) typeface? I mean, I know it’s just a font, but there’s something about it that just screams “NAZI” to me and makes me kinda squeamish. Anybody? No? Fine…

There was also this epic beast, which was once the headquarters for the cardinal who oversaw the area, but is now the main building of the university.

Finally, just outside the train station was this statue, commemorating the ancient German tradition of harassing geese.

Auf wiedersehen, suckers.

Ahoy jardiniers, Ian here. The weather today was absolutely perfect, so I spent the day wandering through parks and riding bikes. A good time was had by all (the bike seats love the proximity to my junk)!

One must start a day of high adventure with a nice lunch, so I scarfed a crepe with roasted potatoes, ham, brie, lettuce, and tomato, along with a cherry coke. While I ate a decent number of crepe sandwiches the last time I was here, this was my first crepe of this trip, and I started off with a bang. The roasted potatoes sound a little odd as sandwich filler, but damn if they weren’t amazing with the melted brie. I see no reason this couldn’t be done on regular bread for a very nice sandwich. I will experiment with this when I get home!

After lunch I wandered around Rue Mouffetard, where there are a bunch of restaurants, cheese mongers, specialty butchers, fruit mongers, wine shops, etc, etc. It’s sort of a foodie red light district, a Pigalle to pig out in. Most of the fruit places had Rainier cherries for sale for what I thought were crazy prices. In New York a pound of Rainiers runs $8 minimum, and upwards of $14 if you buy in the wrong place. These guys were selling them for 5 euros a kilo, which, given the current exchange rate, comes to $3.18 a pound. I was a little leery of buying some given this crazy price and the fact that they don’t even show up in stores in New York until mid-July (I think peak season is late summer), but I went ahead and picked up a snack-sized bag for a euro. They were definitely Rainiers: right texture and smell, but there was something slightly off on the taste. They were slightly too tart and lacking the complex sweetness of a decent Rainier. I’m not sure if this was because they’re grown in Europe, so they JUST TASTE DIFFERENT, of if it’s because mid-June is a bit early for peak taste. Any ideas?

I’m a big fan of botanical gardens in general, so I make an effort of going to see one whenever I’m traveling (the one in Montreal is AWESOME, fyi). The jardin des plants purports to be a botanical garden, but if one classifies it as such, it’s pretty lame. I don’t think the weather in Paris is right for growing anything that exotic, and they don’t seem to have any enclosed buildings for growing desert plants, etc. The Brooklyn garden – hell, even the jankedy Bronx garden – is way better. If instead you think of it as just a park with a large variety of plants, then it’s pretty great. As a park it’s just gorgeous, with huge walking paths lined with canopy-sculpted trees.

I’m a real sucker for this look. How long do you think it takes for them to grow high enough to make this happen? The selection of exotic plans was a bit lacking, but there were definitely plenty of pretty flowers.

There were a couple neat looking plants, at least.

This statue was outside the museum of comparative anatomy, this amazing building full of skeletons and creepy Victorian specimen jars. You can see some of them in the windows.

After the jardin des plants, I headed over to jardin du Luxembourg. I must say, Luxembourg was easily the most beautiful thing I saw on my last trip. Since it was winter, all of the trees were shades of orange and purple and almost black, and the whole park had this sort of Tim Burton-y creepy beauty to it. It was great. This time around everything was green and alive and not-so-creepy. It was pretty, for sure, but nowhere near as great as last time. Turns out I’m a goth. Woe is me.

There were some nice statues that I didn’t notice last time.

Notice how this guy’s wang is conveniently censored with that cloth? He shall never cry bird poo.

Not this bashful little guy, though.

Post-Luxembourg I rode bikes around the city for an hour or two and forgot to take any pictures except when I stopped for a while by the Eiffel tower.

I didn’t go up because I can’t deal with the line to get in. It’s like an hour and a half wait to get up, and I don’t have time for that. I have baguettes to eat and wine to drink. I’m a busy man. Speaking of, I think it’s time to open another bottle. Later.

Ahoy, schpangbots. Ian here, rocking these crazy-long Parisian days. Seriously, the goddamned sun comes up at 5 AM and doesn’t go down until 10:30 PM. I know it’s that time of year when the days are long and all, but 17 and a half hours? For realsies? In Providence the sun sets by 8:30 this time of year. What’s up with that? Is Paris far west in its timezone, or is this somehow solely due to Paris being farther north?

So, let’s see… where did we leave off? My last night in Rome I was tired and not in the mood for touristing, so I planted my ass at a “German” restaurant and guzzled beer (German!) and noshed on some pizza (not so German!) for a few hours. I forgot to bring anything to read with me, so I sat outside and people-watched. At some point a large party showed up and wanted to combine the empty tables around me with the one I was at, and I offered to move out of politeness. This was a good move on my part for two reasons. First, I moved to the last table in the row, where this little guy was scrounging for crumbs.

Tossing him crumbs was way better than people-watching. Second, the waitress was grateful that I’d volunteered to move, so she rewarded me with a free shot of limoncello at the end of the night. Her english was pretty good, so it was pretty amusing when she faltered in offering the limoncello:
Waitress: Would you like some limoncello? It’s a combination between liquor and… how do you call it in english..?
Me: …lemon?
W: Lemon!

The limoncello was a bit sweet, but still pretty good, especially since it was infused with the delicious taste of free. I don’t think it’s the sort of thing I’d order on my own, though. It seems very old ladyish to me.

The next day my trip to Paris was uneventful. I had instruction on how to get to my apartment and how to meet the woman who had my keys. As was to be expected (I had similar annoyances my last trip), the intercom was broken on the building I had to get into, so I had to drag my suitcases down the block to the nearest tabac to buy a phone card so that I could call up to the office and have someone come let me in. The check in process was pretty painless, but my apartment is an amusing continuation on the theme of the broken buzzer.

The apartment is in a building of the Jussieu campus complex near the Seine in the Fifth, which houses the campus of Paris 6. The thing is, though, that they began asbestos abatement on the whole campus about a decade ago, with the plan of being done in a couple years. The state-run labor estimates were off, and the time-frame was pushed back again and again. Estimates NOW still say they’ll be done in a couple years, but no one believes it. Moreover, apparently they’ve had to go back and repair brand new stuff over and over again, so it seems the campus will remain in a perpetual state of construction. The whole thing is very akin to the Big Dig fiasco in Boston. Anyway, this meant that my apartment, while brand new, is kinda fucked up. The parquay tiling in the front hall, while nice and pretty, sticks up in little humps that I trip over every time I walk by. The window, while huge and epic, can only be opened (and even then, not all the way) after an intricate system of drapes are pushed aside in the right order, an order which I fucked up, leading to the drapes falling off of the tracks that hold them to the wall. To fix this (of course I brought a screwdriver with me!) I had to reach the top of the vaulted (12 ft, maybe) ceilings, which required me to first disassemble a desk on the other side of the room so that I could drag it over to stand on. &c, &c, &c…

The worst thing, though, is the bathroom. For some reason the shower is just free floating in the room, with no barrier to collect water.

I vaguely understand the aesthetic impulse to do this; it creates a sort of cool minimalist feeling in the room. The problem with this design, though, is that it requires the floor to be somewhat slanted toward the drain, lest you end up with a huge puddle of spreading water every time you shower. Guess what is in fact slanted AWAY from the drain. That’s right. So, this means that every time I shower, I have to place this little squeegee thing on the floor to try to contain the flow, and then when I’m done I get to spend about five minutes squeegeeing up all the spread water. Lame.

I’m being too critical, though. The place is ultimately nice, if a bit odd, and definitely in a great neighborhood. After getting the place, I headed straight to work and did nothing but for three days. Thursday night, though, I went out drinking with a guy from the dept. who I met the previous week in Gaeta. Several more French math guys showed up, and we hung out, drank beers, and ate cheeseburgers at a brasserie near our office. The highlights of this were:
1) The French (or at least three of the four guys there) apparently eat burgers with a knife and fork. This is somewhat disturbing to watch.
2) Teaching others your native profanities is a universal delight! Zi-zi (sp? pronounced “zee-zee”) is a childish way of saying dong. Bordel de merde (whorehouse of shit, literally) is a sort of goddamnit/fuck proxy that is quite severe, I guess.

I got back to my apartment complex a little after midnight and was faced with a new delight. The gate I use to get into the complex was closed, and I had no means to open it. No one had told me about, nor had I seen, any other entrances to the complex, so I felt a bit screwed. I was a bit drunk, though, so I decided the scale the fucker. It wasn’t so bad, but I almost fell off of my first attempt up, and when I did make it over I somehow managed to scratch my arm.

The next day I learned that there is a “night entrance” all the way on the other side of the complex. Fuck that; I’m glad I scaled it.

Let’s see, what else? I’ve gone out to eat a few times, but I have also been pigging out on my favorite things from French grocery stores / shops: cheap Belgian beer, delicious cheese, daily baguettes, great wine, funny-smelling milk, etc, etc. Perhaps the best, though, is this.

This is, without a doubt, the best fucking cereal I’ve ever had in my entire life. It’s fucking amazing. I discovered it about half-way through my last visit and ate three bowls a day afterward. It’s essentially granola with a shit-ton of dried fruit in it: WAAAAAAY more than you ever get in American granola. It has raisins, apples, bananas, coconut, almonds, and hazelnuts. This shit is so good, I will be bringing boxes (plural!) back with me for dissection and replication. I will not go on without my own recipe for croustillant!!!

I did so much tourist stuff in Italy that I wasn’t up for much so far here. I wandered around a bit on Saturday, but on Sunday I did my laundry, went running, and then sat around, read, and did nothing. As such, I don’t have many pictures of pretty things yet. I do have this great head from Sacre Coeur.

Also, I took a video of the amazing Place de Igor Stravinsky, just south of the Pompidou center. Jessica posted about this in her France entries, but I can’t resist posting about it again. It’s so great! It makes me feel like I’m standing in Tim Burton’s brain. Enjoy!

What Did Ian Have for Dinner Tonight??

Baguette et fromage!!

He’s a braggart jerk!

And sometimes on Skype he looks kind of like Eugene Levy.

And What Did Jessica Have for Dinner Tonight?? Time Traveler’s Soup!

Recipe for Time Traveler’s Soup:

1. Have Ian make you some soup.
2. Freeze it.
3. Wait like eight months.
4. Thaw it.
5. Enjoy with Time Traveler’s Bread (recipe listed separately).

Ahoy, spazzbots. Ian here. It turns out that I forgot to download the pdf of the map of where I have to go in Paris to get my apartment tomorrow, so I have sold 1/4 of my last kidney to get some internet access in order to download said map. Knowledge is power is money, no? Goddamned transitive property!

I thought that while I was online I might as well post the second half of my Rome pictures, if for no other reason than to drive my sister into a homicidal frenzy.

In wandering about I came across a rounded-lady statue with a name plate on it, so the mystery is solved: Jimenez Deredia.

I went to the national gallery of modern art, but unfortunately something like 1/3 of the post-1930 modern art areas were closed for exhibit installation. I was a bit disappointed, but there were some really great statues that more than made up for it.

This nuda is cheesing out because her gato (what a weirdly shaped one, no?) is rubbing up on her.

This lady could use a sandwich.

The futurism’s so bright…

I gotta wear shades.

WWE circa 32BC

I also really enjoyed this mirror-painting combo. I must admit that when I walked into the room it was in, I was completely confused about why some dude was standing around jauntily wearing clothes from the 70s.

This painting is due to Boccioni, the futurist. It reminds me of one of my favorite rooms in MoMa, which makes me sad.

This trio reminded me of my all-time favorite exhibition, Glitter and Doom, an exhibition of Weimarr Republic art, held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art a couple years ago.

This didn’t, but it so great that I’m sure it justified fascism.

Post-museum I went on walk-about and came across a pair of very nice fountains in the Piazza Navona.

Off to Paris now. Later.

Ahoy jerks, Ian here. I’m in Rome at the moment, but my hotel, which claimed online to have internet access, really only has crazy-expensive pay-as-you-go access. As such, I’m a bit pressed for time and won’t be doing much more than a pic dump.

I spent the last two days doing hyper-efficient sight-seeing, polishing off most of the entries in the “what to see” section of my little map/guidebook. Since I don’t really want to go through this list item by item, I’m only going to post the pictures that turned out most interesting. Let’s begin, shall we?

This was one of the first views I came across in my post-arrival wanderings (I usually spend some time walking around aimlessly after I just arrive in order to acclimate myself with the surrounding area), which took me up the Spanish steps to the border of the Villa Borghese (big-ass park on the northern side).

This guy was crying bird poop in the park because everyone can see his wang.

These rounded-lady statues are all over the city, but I’m not sure who they’re done by. The wikiwork is left as an exercise for the reader.

This guy was fucking amazing. Enough said.

The Fontana di Trevi, which was crowded with schmucks taking pictures of themselves in front of the fountain. It reminded me a lot of the scene in front of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre a couple years back.

Ruins in the Fori Imperiali. I think there were more tourists taking pictures of some guys in Statue-of-Liberty / Egyptian-pharaoh outfits than of the ruins.

Poor little guy took a blade to the face doing 7-10 in Rikers.

Inside the Coliseum.

Holding pen / boxes there.

Arches, arches, arches…

The sub-level below the main floor had all sorts of chambers so that gladiators and lions could get BJs in private before the matches. Brett Michaels has these built at his shows as a condition of his rider.

View from the Coliseum…

Ditto, but newer stuff.

The walls there has many holes, which I can only assume were used for GLORIfication of the emperor, if you catch my drift.

An early Poptarts ad?

Whew… that was a lot. I won’t be selling my second kidney for internet access tomorrow, so you will have to wait until I get to Paris for the rest of my Rome pics. Deal with it. Rock and roll.

Ahoy schmoes, Ian here. As you know, I’m a player in the math game. To be sure, this comes with a number of serious obligations: I have to put up with over-privileged undergrads who are only interested in their grades, I must publish or perish, and I occasionally have to drop some rigor on a punk-ass physicist. The game takes it out of you, but it’s not all bad. Now and again your old advisor invites you to spend a month in Paris with a week on the coast in Italy as an aperitif.

You know I came representing. I had to school some fucking loud-mouth molecular biologists in the airport. But I did stop to take some pictures now and again…

This is my attempt at foodblogging. I didn’t take any pictures of the actual food I ate this this week, but I feel the need to compete with Jessica’s amazing dinner pics, so I present: airport lunch!

I tend to not be able to sleep on planes, but I lucked out and got an hour and a half on this flight. When I fell asleep the view looked like this.

When I awoke, it was this.

That coastline, while not where I am, is a fairly decent approximation of the area I’m in: lots of cliffy-shores with old-ass little cities nestled here and there. If you look close enough in that picture, you can make out the Italian Strategic Biscotti Reserve.

After spending thirteen hours on two planes (no direct flights to Rome from Providence, shockingly enough [it's okay, Prov has a great local art scene, right guys? guys?]) I was treated to an hour-long train ride to Rome’s Termini station and then an hour and quarter ride from Termini to Formia, where I got to try to figure out how to use the local bus!!! Hooray for sitting.

Anywho, this picture is from Termini station, which had weird little deserted parts in the mid-morning. Very creepy.

Finally, after something like sixteen years of traveling, I arrived at the hotel, which is literally on the beach in Gaeta. For some reason (perhaps because I arrived on Monday rather than Sunday, which seems to have been the popular arrival date) I was given the nicest and biggest room in the whole goddamned hotel. Check this shit out.

So, this is just the leftmost tip of the hotel, but see that huge, sprawling 180-degree-balconied second floor room there? Mine. All mine. WTF? Most of
the other rooms had tiny 5×5 balconies or none at all. But I got this view! Nuts!

After the afternoon session of the conference I went on wander-about in “the old city” of Gaeta, which is full of Roman and medieval stuff on a huge hill. It was quite pretty and very colorful in the evening sun.

When I got back from my walk, I succumbed to jetlag and PTFO. Day two was usual math conference stuff that I won’t go into. The one thing I’ll mention, since it’s the reason these pictures weren’t online the night I took them, is that the hotel, though beautiful, was a technological joke. It claimed to have internet access, but there was no in-room wifi or even ethernet. There was supposedly wifi in the lobby, but it didn’t work at all, for any of the 150+ mathematicians in attendance. There were two public access computers in the lobby, too, but they were understandably in high demand. Moreover, one had a broken fan, which caused it to overheat and shutdown for half an hour at least once every couple hours, and the second one had a sticky keyboard and enough malware that it could compute at about the same rate as a retarded goat with abacus.

On day three, in spite of my better judgment, I decided to take advantage of the “touristic afternoon” and join the guided-tour bus group that was heading to a museum, then some archaeological site, and then back into the old city.

The museum unfortunately contained mostly reproductions, but the statues were pretty cool. Then we went to the site of Villa Tiberius, the, uh, villa of Tiberius. You know, some emperor. It was kinda neat in a boring sort of way.

The surrounding area was rocky and dotted with ruins of less imperial villas.

The imperial villa had a cool orgy-grotto and a pool with huge fish in it.

The second half of the guided tour was to the old town area and sucked so hard that I cut out and went back to the hotel. So, yeah, that’s about it. Then I did a bunch more math stuff, gave a talk, blah blah blah.

Tomorrow I head to Rome to spend a few days before heading into for Paris. Hopefully I’ll have better internet access there (it finally started working here this afternoon), so I won’t have to do a massive pic-heavy post like this again.