four countries, six days.

Where do we begin…  at the beginning right? But when is that?

It’s been too long since I wrote. And we’ve been around the block a few times. Or rather, around the Christmas market. 

Christmas markets are all the rage in Europe it seems. They are places where people sell their gingerbread, their tchochkes, their paintings, their ‘made in china’ stuff, and their wine. We’ve been going to a few.

Our first was in Coustouges, which is an even smaller town than St. Laurent de Cerdans. Coustouges is a town on the Spanish border, about 4 km from our place. At the market were lots of crafts, mostly seemingly done by British expats who had settled there. There was a fellow who had a printer that could print out xmas decorations, and lego pieces, a lass making metalwork, someone who made fabric wallets, local wine, and from our friends Alex and marina, Femo elves and drawings of angry elves.  There were also cookies. After sundown, everyone lit candles and put them into paper lanterns and marched behind Pere Noel to the Xmas tree where children were given boxes with candy in them, and then into church we filed, to listen to the local Catalan choir. The church was pretty beautiful, with lots of wrought iron work, and a statue of Joan of Arc. We were hosting Kelso and Sheryl, a couple from Edmonton who are living in Barcelona. They thought the whole thing was hilarious and gorgeous. 

The following weekend, we went to an art show in Ceret's library, there were hundreds of tiny prints, including some by our friend Ann-Marie. We then went out to lunch with about 40 printmakers. "I had to keep explaining that no, while I didn’t make prints, I did appreciate them!” That evening we had our goodbye party – that ended with people singing songs in the kitchen, dancing to “Je suis un snob”, chasing through the streets with the kids looking for magical, invisible bears, light saber battles and being silly. All in all a good soiree. Then after a few days of packing and giving away and throwing out.. we left our wee little village, with promises to return.

We headed north to Luxembourg – where we visited with my childhood friend Connie and her family. She is doing a post-doc position at the university there (Lux’s first uni which was launched in 2003). She and her family seem to have set things up so nicely – and so eco-friendly! They don’t have a car, like ourselves, but surpass us by not using a fridge in winter (they put stuff outside), and they recycle and compost like heroes. They showed us a great time – we explored Luxembourg – and hell, I learned a huge amount. Did you know that there is a whole Luxemboureois language.. good day sounds like ‘moyen’ which is really not much like either French or German. Only half the residents in the country are citizens and its apparently a bit high on the whole corruption scale. Four of their soldiers apparently served in Iraq. We ate good chocolate, went for walks and went to a post-doc holiday party where everyone made and exchanged homemade gifts (I felt inadequate, but snuck in with Connies' cookies) 

Then we went to the Xmas market and Xmas parade. I appreciated the fact that they handed out glasses of champagne to the crowd, and sold latkas and mulled wine. Apparently Luxembourg also has that racist hangover of the whole St Nick story, whereas St. Nick has a companion, who is a black man wearing chains who punishes the bad kids. Fortunately that part of the tradition was absent from the parade.

Then we headed east for 8 hours by commuter train to Duisburg, Germany – where there is a Lego Discovery Land. Sidney was bouncing up and down he was so excited. We stayed in a completely empty hostel and headed there the following morning. It was pretty quiet – given that it’s a school day. But we did it as it should be done and then walked through.. you guessed it.. Xmas markets. These ones featured a lot of sausages, mulled wine, candy and cute Christmas ornaments. After a few glasses of mulled wine, we returned to our hostel. We had learned the previous night – to our dismay that the quality of food in cheap restaurants is much lower in Germany than it is in France.  Early to bed… early to rise and thusly, we headed (carrying all our worldly possessions mind you) to the bus station where we barely caught our 9 hour EuroLines bus that took us across Holland, Belgium and to Paris France where we are now. 

Given that I seem to lack some basic preparedness (which I make up for with joie de vivre and a trust in fate), we had a hard time finding out new, micro-mini studio apartment in the 10^th arrondisement in Paris. But we did. And now I’m writing this in the bathroom (albeit with a glass of wine), as mac puts Sidney to sleep after a day of Eiffel Tower (we climbed to the second level, and and there was a skating rink on the first level! WTF!), and the gorgeousness of Musee D'Orsay. All is well. Xoxox

Turning around

So we've been having a more mellow time lately. I've been indexing the book, Mac and Sidney have been homeschooling but we've also been spending weekends with local folks. These include Veronique an FLS (ESL) teacher in Perpignan who is an activist that spends the weekend at a farmhouse near the village - with her partner, their son, 7 horses, 2 dogs and 14 cats. Superbon fun. Last weekend we went to an Occupy meeting in Perpignan, then to a dinner at a squatted school where 4 families are living, and then the next day to a protest around Palestinian human rights. Then we drove up to the village and hung out for the next couple of days at the farmhouse, with Vero and her crew, a young Palestinian visitor and Alex and Marina. Alex is Veronique's nephew - an artist and he is here with his love, a Spanish woman Marina - also an artist who has two kids in the village. It was Marina who cut Mac's hair really short.

We had an amazing visit with Meredith and Jamie, old friends from NYC. We took full advantage of their car, went to Elne and played on the beach, drove to Spain for dinner and hiked to the top of nearby mountains. They also helped host a party for neighbours, where Meredith brought out her cool,  plastic trombone - much to the delight of all! 
Anyhoo.. here are some photos.

Sid riding le cheval de Frank et Veronique

Meredith with cheese nose

Nearby Canigou is covered in snow. glorious in the mornings!

Robin Hood practice

Veros kitchen

The boys (with Jamie from NYC) in Elne

Sid the kid and the homeschool experiment.

Oh my god, I'm in Perpignan and am using an application that gives me a picture of a kitten for every 100 words I type. But now I have to type 100 words in order to get that picture! Sidney will be pysched. Which reminds me... many of you have wondered how Sidney has taken to being away from his friends and school this year. Some of you have asked - can you just do that... take your kid out of school for a year?  It appears that the answer is yes. The school board was really fine about it as long as we presented a plan for his education.

There's no doubt that he misses his friends at times, but he really doesn't miss school. I worry that he doesn't like school, which indeed he doesn't as yet. But he does like learning now more than he did when he stopped going to school. His love of science and math in particular is intense. He wants to go to a school that's 'all science class.' He's enjoying multiplication and reading. He likes history okay but likes geography more (though that could be due to cookie bribes and quizzes on maps). We can have fun with french. That said he still has trouble focussing sometimes on doing any particular project with Mac, except for science which tends to be hands on. They collect bugs, read about the French Revolution, learn division and read comic books together. Its pretty cool.

Other changes? His imagination has blossomed. I worry a bit that he's totally in his own world without other kids to challenge him and we tend to indulge him. But its okay. He imagines living on cat world, says he's half cat and builds lego for hours. There's a tad too much weaponry and war stuff in his imaginings, but he gets that partly from his dad. He's also shown a newfound interest in 'stuffies' and imaginary pets without other kids around. In addition, he's become really articulate as well and can try to 'make deals' to get toys better than the best Wall Street broker. But he's happy. He's also less gender-binary-driven, in that he can make friends with girls as easily as boys now, and has less gender oriented color preferences that he had when in school.

So... are we keeping him in a bubble that will damage him in some way? I think not. As soon as he returns to school I'm sure he'll get more than enough information about 'appropriate' play.

All in all, he's doing great.  He takes gymnastics and now an art class in the village (albeit in the hippy bus outside the village) And I got four kitten pictures out of this blog posting! (see writtenkitten.net)

Road Trip to the G20 protests and People's Summit

As most of you know, Mac and I spent a lot of time helping to organize the G20 protests of 2010. It was a wonderful and horrendous experience - that I won't go into here. As things were winding down then, we had begun to plan our trip to France. And then we learned that the G20 was meeting this fall in France. Honestly it wasn't intentional. But because of our recent experiences, we felt it was appropriate to attend the days of action etc etc.


As one can imagine,over the last ten years, there have been long discussions in the global justice movement and associated movements about the utility of protesting at summits. Its obvious that they are highly policed, ritualized encounters that often end up with exhausted and imprisoned activists, and little direct impact on the decision-making itself. And yet it seems wrong to ignore the fact that some of the most powerful actors, who are making decisions about the global economy are all in one place, along with a good helping of international media. Anyway, I wont' go on about this. Its a trap, but a trap we entered into. Many of the grassroots organizations in France had opted out of this one - choosing instead to focus on 'local actions' - which seemed to primarily be local manifestations of the Occupy/Indignado/99% movement. So we knew it wouldn't be a big mobilization. We also knew that Cannes, where the summit was happening was a war zone. There was going to be no way to get there. So we headed for the People's Summit in Nice.

We got there a day late, because of our commitment to Halloween - but when we arrived, we headed for Les Abbatoirs - the old ... erm.. abbatoirs of the city which had been loaned to the organizers of the People's Summit and anti-G20 mobilization. There were workshops going on, a row of port-a-potties, organic beer on tap, and lots of leaflets, flyers etc. We got programmes and stowed our bags and settled in. That first afternoon I attended an amazing meeting that was supposed to be a meeting of movements around the Mediterranean but was expanded to include other movements erupting around the world. There were folks from movements in: Portugal, Tunisia, Israel, Greece, Egypt, France, Wall Street, Belgium, Spain, London, Italy, Canada, Venezuela, Amsterdam, Berlin. Amazing to hear what's going on in their different arenas and figure out how to communicate better. Sage words from the Egyptian fellow
who said "we can get rid of what exists, the question is, we have to be ready to replace it with something better."


That night we met up with our hiphop friends from Toronto, Test Their Logic - who performed to a pretty empty hall - we didn't realize people were outside meeting, and then we went to a local gym to sleep. Sidney is really good with all this. He was quite fascinated to sleep in such a big place, and although there were snores, it was pretty quiet. 


The next day we went to Monaco for a protest against tax havens organized by Attac, a large French organization which has been campaigning around these issues, and for the banking tax for years. It was pretty theatrical, with clowns tying up fake bankers, balloons and confetti. Sidney had a great time. However it disappointed some of the young punks, who wanted something that felt a little more 'direct'. Understandable - it was a media spectacle, but one that was relatively well done. 


The next afternoon mac went to a bunch of workshops that he found interesting on climate justice movements etc. But both of us were disappointed that outside of the 99%/Arab 'spring' discussion participants I'd met, most of the people were either pretty staid NGO folks or young drunk punks. 


A couple of points on the culture of the meetings that differed from what we're used to
1. no other little kids. Seriously. none. weird. 
2. serving beer and wine all day in meetings will influence some people more than others. Those people will want attention. 
3. simultaneous translation of everything into french, spanish, english and arabic is amazing. 
4. people still smoke in meetings here. I can just imagine a discussion of 'fragrance free!'
5. the police are really serious here. On the turn of a dime, they whip out giant pepper cannisters, launchers of tear gas, and they pull on masks. They were ready to rumble and its a bit of a miracle that confrontations didn't ensue. 



The final day we went to two small demos - one on Tibet and an ATTAC die-in at a bank. Small, symbolic but spirited is really the best way to describe them.


And off we went in the rain to Marseille, and then back to Perpignan. It was raining cats and dogs throughout the whole week and we spent a good night in a cheap hotel drying out and cleaning up. aahhh. 


 

Halloween pics

Joyeux Halloween!

I just have to write tonight after a lovely and bizarre evening. As most of you know, I love Halloween, Sidney loves Halloween and Mac loves Halloween too. It was the main thing that Sidney was upset about when we were leaving Canada - that he would miss Halloween and that they don't do Halloween in France. Not so, apparently. About ten years ago the powers that be, and by that I mean the various holiday promoting industries, started pushing Halloween here. And it worked. The kids wanted to dress up and run around collecting sweets. No kidding. its one of the best holidays going!
So apparently in this village three years ago, they started a new tradition. But its a bit different than 'back home!'
And it requires a bit of planning. The village had had posters everywhere for the past few weeks announcing the event. But the event ran as such:

29th of October - Halloween market - where you buy the candy to give out.
31st of October - 4:30 pm Children in disguises meet at Salle De L'avenir
31st of October - 5:00 pm Children go through the streets knocking on doors and collecting bonbons
31st of October 6:30 pm Children return to Salle De L'avenir to share their candies.

To ensure that everyone got the message - get the candy, be ready to give it out. They announced it from the loudspeaker this morning from the clock tower. "Be ready, its Halloween! the children are coming to collect candies"

We were totally ready. Overprepared one might say. We had decorated the tower with tissue paper pumpkins and had carved a pumpkin and disguised it as a dragon. Sidney was dressed as Darth Maul from Star Wars, minus the face paint which he baulked at at the last minute. We even found out where 'salle de l'avenir' was! (from the bartender)

The children were ready - frankly Sidneys costume was definitely in the running for the best costume and he was psyched. He had a black cape, a red electronic light saber and a hat/head that was covered with horns. For a while until he took that off.  A neighbour asked me to chaperone his samurai son around as he had to give out candy and so we had a companion. Then each child was assigned a group, with a specified route through the city - intended to hit all houses - despite the fact that many houses are shut up for winter. We were in the group rose.

And so we headed out, ourselves and about 8 kids. Because there is no tradition of 'shellout shellout the witches are out!" or even 'trick or treat!' the kids tended to converge on doors and hammer on them like a mob out for justice... then they would wait a couple of seconds and run onwards to the next door. The slower moving habitants would have to call the children back to give them candy. But because this is all new, and perhaps because they knew of the sharing ritual afterwards, they would often simply put a whole bag of candy in one kids basket, leaving the rest with naught. And given that the village shop only sells one kind of sweets, there was an oversupply of those candies with the soft fruit centres.. you know the ones. I kind of like them, but Sidney doesn't. A fact that became very apparent as time progressed and he started to refuse to go to doors. The other local child I was escorting also stuck close, trying to find sweets in his bag that Sid would like. Also picking me flowers. Ah, le francais!

Anyway, eventually we returned to the salle d'avenir. The candy was all put onto the table and the teachers (I think) divided it up. Then the zombies arrived. There were three zombie adults and two kids. Their makeup was amazing and they scared some of the smaller children, inadvertantly. I kind of suspected they were the people we've been trying to make friends with in the village, but honestly I couldn't recognize them.
After getting our share of the loot, we headed home and a few minutes later, the zombies came by and invited us out for a cup of coffee.  Indeed, they were the people we wanted to befriend - being the local anarchists and artists. Sidney was timid and didn't want to go and I lucked out - Mac stayed home with Sid. I went to their house and the very first thing, we decorated the place for Halloween, drank wine, chatted in english and french and got to know some of the local characters and their kids. So lovely! They even had a pumpkin! a la prochaine.

Settling in, and the visit from the Scotts.

We’re virtually village locals now, right? We’ve been here for a month. Although we’ve done a lot of short trips. I think the best sign that we’re gradually becoming a part of the scenery was that our neighbor offered us a piece of wild boar that had just been shot. Very sweet. I hope we didn’t offend when we turned it down. I suspect we became even more ‘les anglais’’ when we did. But honestly we have nowhere we could put such a large piece of meat! And I don’t eat the stuff anyway.

We don’t really know anyone though, not really- despite our promising set of introductions from the anarchist syndicalist group – CNT. Hopefully this will change in the next week after Halloween and a dinner invitation we’ve proffered. We’ll see! 

This past week Mac’s dad and our niece are visiting from Toronto-Oakville. It has been so wonderful having them here – not least for Sidney who is delighted to play with another kid, especially one he loves so much. They have been reading, doing lego and going on our various adventures which included:

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• Les Gorges au Fou – the gorge over the river fou, not the crazy gorge as I originally thought. Incredible walk along a very deep chasm wearing hardhats. We also went into some caves, but the kids were disappointed that there weren't more.. thus the visit to the caves. 
• 
• 
• Caves with stalactites and stalagmites. I stayed home but it was apparently amazing
•  Collioure – the seashore at the Mediterranean. Famous site of various painters like Matisse, Picasso and also a site where Spanish civil war refugees were interned and those fleeing the Nazis gathered to find their way across to Spain. Gorgeous place. A bit touristy, but it’s the off season so not so bad. And most of us went in the water, and drank a fair Mediterranean of sangria. Here we also ate well. I ate wild mushrooms, tuna and tarte au citron. And a bunch of sangria
•  Last night in Spain. After being too early to have dinner in France, and leading to a temper tantrum from Sidney, we drove to spain for dinner – its across the border and we went to Macanet de Cabreyns. We ate well. I had wild mushroom soup and pears in coffee with cinnamon ice cream, Sidney had chicken, Mac steak, Gracie cannelloni and Scotty a heroic combination of escargots and prawns. I teased him that they’re wrestling in his stomach. On our way home we saw two small wild boars. Hopefully they were unrelated to the one mentioned previously. 
•   Horseback riding – we found a place where Grace and I could ride a horse, and Sidney a pony – his first time. . Amazing fun – although I do need to find out how those horses know I have no idea what I’m doing.
• The Castenyada – or chestnut festival. According to Wikipedia “The Castanyada (Catalan pronunciation: [kəstəˈɲaðə]) is a popular Catalan festival, celebrated on All Saints' Day. Like Halloween, its origins are in an ancient ritual festival of the dead. It consists of a meal of chestnuts, panellets, sweet potato and preserved fruits, typically with moscatell to drink.” That said, we didn’t know anything about the ancestors – only that the chestnuts were ready to eat, as well as the primera, or new wines to drink. There was a local choir – fierce singing of Catalan songs, and wearing of Catalan colours. There was also an odd pair of British type hunting horn players, and a trio of bagpiper and flute players. Not a ton of people were there – which according to our local informant is because the new mayor isn’t that popular.. something like that. The last one was a communist and more community oriented. We’ll find out more in time no doubt. 
• 
• -          Picking chestnuts, roasting them in the fireplace and eating ‘em. Pretty good and ridiculously picturesque
• Chez Charly's - we found out when the local restaurant is open. omg. so good. especially their sauces and creme catalane (like creme caramel as far as I can figure)
• Carcassonne, medieval fort and walled city. supercool.
• And now we’re prepping for Halloween… and cleaning up for our first lunch. We’ve invited Ann Marie, the friendly Swiss lady who tells us what’s what. She is apparently also bringing an unknown number of others. Will report back. 
• 

Occupy Barcelona..

I had a plan on how to describe the Barcelona O15 day of action, but Hilary Wainwright did a better job than I could here:

http://www.redpepper.org.uk/resistance-takes-root-in-barcelona/

From my North American perspective, what I saw was a massive, spirited march that left promptly at 5 pm, the scheduled meeting time. During the day, one saw many bank machines spray painted and stickered promoting the demonstration. There were posters throughout the downtown core – but no central website coordinating the actions. The crowd was so massive it was difficult to get a sense of the whole thing – but like other ‘Occupy’ or indignados actions it had a large proportion of young people, and mainly handmade signs.  Many of the signs called to end the cuts by Parliament – or talked about solidarity with those arrested during the occupation of Catalunya Square last June. There were plenty of anarchist signs and flags, evidence of communist formations, immigrant rights groups, and student organizations. Many signs used the term ‘indignados’ and referenced October 15^th, the day of action that had emerged from Spain, but there was no reference to Occupy Wall Street.

There were people who had taken it upon themselves to bring festive aspects to the demo - including the fellow with the long clown balloons that people then waved in the air or tried to twist into flowers and the like. There was a mobile sound system, various drummers and marching bands, and a band who set up their instruments (including the drum kit) in the middle of the street so that the crowd flowed around it. In one area were a crew of people with a shopping cart, loaded with spray paint. As we would pass banks, a group of people wearing masks would rush to the bank, and spraypaint and sticker its windows. On a regular basis, loud explosions would be heard – apparently firecrackers. But many of the banks ended up with paint explosions across their windows – so there were paint bombs of some sort. No one seemed in the slightest bit unnerved by the pyrotechnics – except a friend of mine who had recently returned from Palestine.

When we ended the massive march at the Arc de Triomphe, the crowd divided  into three sections – one group headed off to occupy a hospital, one to occupy a set of apartments for housing and one to occupy the university. Hilary Wainwright reports that each site would host an assembly to discuss next steps. However, my Spanish being weak, and the remaining crowd so big – they disappeared before we noticed. The Spanish papers reported on the protest, saying that over 300,000 participated. However, the size of Barcelona was overshadowed by Madrid’s 500,000. 

What struck me, as it did Wainwright is that in Spain this is a movement that has found its legs. It’s been going for five months and while it is global, it started nationally, and remains focused on the local, regional and national economy and politics, but within an analysis of global capitalism.  When the occupiers left Placa Catalunya this summer, they continue to meet in regular popular assemblies across the city. These assemblies are the future of the movement as they organize both mutual aid and they build solidarity, even as they are developing concrete demands that will influence November’s Spanish election. I don’t expect that the movement will become deeply distracted by electoral politics however, given that the current President is from the Spanish Socialist Workers Party. The demands are broader and deeper are for a different kind of economy and a different kind of politics, ones that any party would find difficult to enact.

Barcelona

My parents had come visiting to the tower and were I think, delighted with the town, the wine in the town, the hikes near the town and the magic of our tower - except for its oh-so-chilly nature. Given that its hundreds of years old, I guess we should give it a break, but its power to retain coldness, despite warm weather outside is truly amazing. There are small space heaters, but they don't do much. It made Dad grumpy. But hell, it makes me grumpy too. We had a great few, quiet days in the area - eating amazing food Mac put together. Then we skedaddled to Barcelona. I was interested in Barcelona for so many reasons. I was there for about a nanosecond in the mid 1990s, but keep hearing about the crazy Gaudi buildings, the amazing anarchist scene that has dozens of social centres, and being in a big vibrant European city was a draw.

From our place it costs about 20 bucks, and 5 hours or 50 bucks and three hours to get to Barcelona. Not too bad. We took the TGV on the way there, and the slow train the way home. The hotel Mum had booked was right beside the crazy tourist Ramblas area - but also close to cool areas like Rabal, and Gracia. On our first night, we were sitting at a touristy restaurant when we saw the famed indignados march past. They were marching to protest the charges given to some of the Occupy Catalunya Square people this past summer. Given that Occupy Wall Street was heating up, it wasn't surprising to see a few signs in solidarity. There were probably 1000 people, mostly young, white and with only a few signs. The following day Mac, Sid and I went and met up with a Canadian activist living there who showed us a community information centre and gave us a bit of a sense of the movements in town. Then Mum and Dad took Sidney and Mac and I got to celebrate the 10th anniversary of our wedding - a month or so late. Despite the fact that I had a touch of food poisoning that had made food incredibly uninteresting to me for two days, I did sample a few tapas as we walked around the Rabal area, drinking wine in different places and talking. So lovely and so appreciated.
The next day, we all got onto one of those double decker bus thingies and toured the city. But before you snort, seriously, we were a gaggle of 5, one 83 year old, one six year old, and three in between. It gave us a sense of the city's layout anyway. Then Mum, Dad and I went to the Picasso Museum, while Sid and Mac saw sharks at the Aquarium. We met up and saw a fantastic flamenco show at Carmen y Tablo. Heart stoppingly dramatic. You seriously don't want to mess with an angry flamenco dancer. Wow.