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