one more time

game over
so here we are, sitting pretty at 38,000 feet of altitude, on our way back to NY. This is the end. Well, not exactly the end but close enough to the end for it to be scary and blues inducing. Camille is asleep next to me in a car seat strapped to a plane seat strapped to a plane strapped to nothing. Caitlin also sleeps on the opposite side of the car seat. I am awake and typing this. I am strapped to my seat, strapped to my two lovely women, strapped to a lot of good memories.
I started this journey reading ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and it is not entirely surprising that this tale of a long journey, far away from home, should come to mind when the time has come to set the walking stick down in the corner of a closet. We are facing a similar situation. A similar dilemma: How does one pick up the pieces of an old life? Can one truly come home after such an adventure? Obviously the world is a different place now than it was 10 months ago so we’re not exactly going back to the same place or the same life. In fact we don’t really know what we are going back to and that is a scary as it is exciting. Ok, more scary than exciting. But we’ll give it a try.

the road , again.
to consecrate our year on the road we tried extra hard to pack a lot of wandering action into our last 6 weeks. May saw us trekking Europe from Geneva to Vienna to Budapest to the south of France. We’re punch drunk, travelled-out, tapped-out. Now we really want to settle down somewhere for a while and not have to worry about what fits in our suitcases for heaven’s sakes! The amazing thing is we had a blast everywhere we went. Budapest was our first weekend together since Camille’s birth! We dumped baby at my parents and took off without looking back. Seriously, you hear all these things about parents freaking out about leaving their kids for a few days for the first time. uh…really? We didn’t. I need to acknowledge the fact that we left Camille with VERY well trained grand-parents who had five ruffians under their roof for close to a decade. After surviving that one should be given a medal AND a honorary degree in pediatrics. But I am losing my focus here: Camille is 21 months now, that’s 600 bad nights for Caitlin (and for me to some extent – and depending who you ask that extent varies greatly), about 4000 diapers, 1700 bottles, who knows how many washing machine loads and so on…After all that, one should be begging for a break. One should be entitled to make threats to get a break. You get the idea. Budapest was amazing. Strolls in the parks and the old town, soaking in the notorious Gellert baths, eating plenty of Goulash. Note to future visitors: the Danube, it ain’t blue no more. But you can still take a lovely boat ride on it and admire its banks for hours………
Then it was Vienna for a few days, avec Baby this time. We had the best weather, the best hosts, the best time. It was a privilege to see that my friend Denis has become quite a chef. Long will we remember the delicious meal he prepared for us. I had been in Vienna before but to be perfectly honest, my memories were a bit blurred by the vast amount of alcohol I ingested. The occasion of that first visit was Denis and Petra’s wedding and I can proudly say I was the last man standing that night. I collapsed in a hotel lobby chair with a bottle of champagne at 9am only to be waken up by the flash of a camera an hour later and shoved into a cab to the airport by Denis. Bye bye Vienna. I sobered up on the first leg of my flight Vienna London) and cured my hangover above the atlantic. So this time I made sure that Caitlin, Camille and I got to see plenty of the town. When we left we knew that we had visited one of these precious places where we could make a home if life decided to take us there. And that is always a good feeling.

Packing is the pits (last episode?)
To celebrate our frugal lives as globe trotters one last time we put everything we brought to Europe into suitcases and checked all that stuff into an airplane back to the US, and let me tell you it isn’t pretty. Did I say frugal? Well, that might have been the intention but, boy, we are taking home 7 suitcases and 4 carry-ons filled with about 400 lbs (200 kg for the metrically inclined) of cargo. Winter stuff, summer stuff, in-between season stuff, dad’s electronic gadgets and oversized shoes that fill up one suitcase, Camille’s clothes and toys. All of them! Even the ones she grew out of or doesn’t play with anymore. Have you dad’s out there ever tried to separate your wives from the stuff that their babies grew out of, puked on, destroyed, chewed-out to the point of non-recognition (think: Honey ! is this her toothbrush or my shoe horn?)?? I have. and it is just not possible. I know that in 25 years it will probably make someone happy but when I think of the amount of precious and expensive real estate square footage it will take to store all this stuff until then, I think I may have to take a special loan just for it. And then there’s mom’s stuff. Less than I thought but more than I had hoped. Lots of stuff, in spite of all our best intentions. We roll around gathring moss regardless of how hard we try not to.

Numbers.
10 (months away from New York)
12,000 (km driven across Europe)
7 (countries visited)
14 (maximum number of consecutive hours spent asleep by Camille after a long trip)
8 (days to get over the jetlag from Canada to Europe)
10 (books read during my sabbatical)
4 (days spent snowboarding this winter)
83 (height of Camille as of mid-May, in cm)
3 (exhibitions of Caitlin’s work during the last 10 months)
0 (lost stuffed animals – freakin’ miracle if you ask me)
16 (flights taken by Caitlin during the last 10 months)
13 (flights taken by Laurent during his sabbatical)
0 (kilos lost by Laurent during his sabbatical)
37 (minutes spent on average running 6.5km – still working on this one)
13 (beds slept in by Caitlin and Laurent together)
2 (trips to the hospital in the middle of the night with feverish child)
2768 (photographs shot during sabbatical)
287 (visits from Camille to our bed after she wakes up – I call these visits Sunrises)

the storm
I had a dream. A while ago. It was so crisp and felt so real that it has stayed with me for weeks now. I remember very few of my dreams and when I do, mostly I am disappointed by their apparent lack of meaning. Not this one: Caitlin, Camille and I are in a car driving on a sunny day. Random urban highway. There are cars around us, traffic is normal, we’re moving at 60 miles/hr or so. Everything is fine. We are smiling. And the cars around us, well they start being blown away by some kind of invisible storm. Cars flying by ours, left, right, and above (we have a sunroof). The road is swept clean by this powerful wind, but not us. We’re still on the asphalt, driving through this cloud of spinning metal and glass as if nothing were happening. The laws of physics are no longer applicable but we’re okay. We stay the course. The world no longer is what it was around us but somehow we are untouched. We are fine. We will be fine together. I like this dream.

St-Jean-sur-Richelieu

Having been on the road for almost 6 months now, we look back at our wanderings and can’t help but notice how incredibly lucky we have been so far. The towns and cities in which we have sojourned were beautiful, exciting, fun and so were the people we met along the way. What was meant to be an exercise in simplicity and ‘depouillement’ became more comfortable than the life we left behind in New York. Great flats and houses, friends all around us, time on our hands to be curious and spontaneous…what more could one ask for? I even got 4 days of snowboarding in! So when all this is suddenly taken away and replaced with isolation in a cultural no-man’s-land…it hurts.

Day one: The horror
We arrived this week in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu in Quebec, Canada (30 min. south of Montreal), full of optimism and looking forward to a few weeks in this fantastic region. Having spent a fair amount of time on Montreal in recent years, we both thought we new what we were getting into when we signed up for this slice of the trip. Montreal is one among a handful of cities in the western world where I could imagine raising our daughter. But there is Montreal, and then there is ’south of’ Montreal…
We arrived by night, severely jet-lagged, with a baby in need of comfort and a good night sleep. Our first impression of our new temporary residence was favorable (it was very dark outside), mainly because the apartment is once again fantastic. Huge studio for Caitlin, two floors of living quarters above it, all brand new, well done. We lucked out again. And so it is with the satisfaction of the traveler who found a bit of home-away-from-home that we went to sleep that first night.
Nothing could have prepared us for the surprise of our first stroll into town the next morning. Our apartment is located right in the middle of the main shopping street of historic St-Jean. For about 1 block to the north and south of our front door, the illusion is maintained. All seems well in the kingdom of St-Jean. Then you make a left, or a right, or you keep going down in the same direction and the world as you know it collapse around you. What was kind-of-an-okay-town turns inside out, reveals its guts, its true colors. Sidewalks and pavement look freshly bombed, houses are in severe need of repair, patches of yellow grass and brown mud try (not hard enough) to look like yards. No one walks around. People drive here. The streets are empty. This spectacle conjures images of post-Katrina New Orleans. On second thoughts, it is worse that that, because no natural disaster is to blame for the horror being unfolded in front of our eyes. Men, greedy, ignorant, arrogant, made this urban landscape a nightmare.
The town is built on the banks of the Richelieu river, a wide body of blue water which, in another age, granted St-Jean its long-gone military strategic significance. The industrial revolution took care of providing this darling-of-a-town with a grid of streets, the Fifties, gave it cheap wood-frame houses, the Eighties saw the mass migration of local stores to the nearest mall 3 kilometers away. A few businesses are coming back downtown. But the damage is done. This small town (the grid is probably 10×10 streets) has suffered the kind of ills usually observed in large metropolitan areas. Its downtown feels empty, save for a few coffee shops and hair salons, people have migrated to the ’suburbs’ of Richelieu. Beyond the grid, highways and strip malls are a sorry distraction from the otherwise flat and monotonous landscape. Our first walk around brought back memories of what I had seen of Flint, MI in Michael Moore’s movie. Empty storefronts, empty streets, empty yards, empty parks. Hello St-Jean-sur-Depression…
We had decided to do without a car during our Canadian stay, having been told that everything was at walking distance from our apartment. One trip to the local supermarket was enough to make us reconsider this notion and dash off to the nearest car-rental agency in sight. Bombed out sidewalks and strollers aren’t a good match. Jet-lagged babies and 15 minute walks in the cold neither. So we lasted about 20 hours without a car, half of which were spent sleeping. To be honest, we got the car to get the hell out of here at the first opportunity…Getting out seems like it could become a question of survival any time now.

Day two: Rock bottom
Our second day was worse. The reality of our situation having sunken in, we felt trapped, fooled, cheated. Jet-lag was hitting us pretty hard, we were all short tempered, especially me. The prospect of spending my days for 6 weeks walking Camille around this pathetic excuse for a town pretending that all is swell was too much. I wanted out. I’m such a wimp. Such a whiner. It is my french side, no doubt. The weather had taken a turn for the grey-er, a cold wind was blowing from the river. Camille was now officially sick, with a runny nose, yellow goop oozing out of her eyes, coughing at night…the works. So my day was spent trying to get her in front of a doctor which turned out to be an adventure into the twilight zone. I was mentioning Michael Moore earlier. Let’s get back to him for a second or two. Some of you must have enjoyed his bit about the health care system in Canada in his film ‘Sicko’. I think Michael needs to get sick in St-Jean and make another movie about that. Camille and I were turned away from the first clinic because this private institution wasn’t taking new patients thank-you-very-much. The second clinic was booked for the day but we could come queue at 7am the next day for an appointment if we wanted to, the third one didn’t accept patients without Canadian health insurance…Our contact at the Art foundation explained that the situation was particularly bad in this area. So few doctors are left here that those who are still practicing do so in terrible conditions. The fourth clinic was the right one, but we had to call at precisely 7:30am to make an appointment for that day. Of course everyone is told to do just that so at 7:30am sharp every morning the phone lines of every medical clinic in the area are assaulted by hordes of sick humans desperate to get the help they need…It brought back fond memories of LA rush-hour traffic. And communist Russia, which I never visited but I imagine must have been almost as irrational and surrealistic at its best – or worst, depending on your political views and health status.

The rest of the week: Better(?)
After stocking the apartment with what we needed, getting the car and having Camille see a doctor, the atmosphere improved a bit. We started noticing for instance that only half the houses look like crap. The other half are in fact rather lovely old brick structures with porches and lawns and must be very livable from June to August…We now know that a guy from Marseilles has a coffee shop with good croissants and coffee downstairs from our apartment. He has lost his accent but the glint in his eye still speaks of sardines wiggling in the blue waters of the Port de Marseilles. Across the street from the cafe marseillais, is a pastry and bakery shop where one can buy good bread and almost perfect croissants. But that isn’t all: They have Fougasse!!! I have only ever found proper Fougasse in the old, run-down bakeries of small Provence towns…This place is only getting stranger… There is also that weird kid whom we met at the ice cream parlor. He wanted to know everything about us. Being from Brooklyn gave us instant status: good people. Now that that was out of the way he wanted to know how Obama was doing and if celebrities lived in our neighborhood. He insisted that we give him some kind of an answer. We did our best not to offend him and quietly strolled Camille in the opposite direction. Then there is the local mall which is unlike any I have seen in North America. Picture this: There are two anchor stores, Zeller’s and Sears. Between these two poles, and where one would expect to find the Gap, Radioshack and everything in between, stand mom & pop shops with names such as Marie Claire (Fashion), Cordonnerie O-pas (french private joke), Geneve Jewellers, etc. All the stores which at some point lined the streets of downtown were litterally transplanted. Big name brands are absent for the most part, but the stores which probably made this little town livable are all here, lined up in rows, stashed away under the glass skylight of this indoors mall, having answered ‘present!’ to the call of extreme consumerism and ready to serve you anytime.
Surreal.
Two nights a week, on Friday and Saturday, our street (Rue Richelieu) isn’t empty. We found out at the cost of two consecutive nights that the three or four bars in the two blocks around us draw a crowd of loud drunks who make their exits from their favorite pour house chanting, burping, revving their truck engines at three am with absolute disregard for the inhabitants of the neighborhood (us and two other couples in the nearest 8 square blocks). It’s good to know people do come downtown once in a while. We’re not sure whether they come to celebrate (celebrate what?…) or forget this place. I am thinking of chartering a bus to downtown Montreal on these two nights so we can sleep. Open bar on board, till we reach our destination should be enticing enough for the locals I think.
When the sun shines on this place, you can actually imagine what it must feel like during the short summer months. Tons of tourists come for quick day-trips from around, eating pizza and ice-cream on the banks of the river, taking boat trips, shopping for antiques, sun-bathing. Camille could run around with other kids, chatting away with a quebecois accent…With leaves on the trees and green grass instead of yellow, this place IS livable. And to think that I was ready to give up on the dump! Give me another 5 weeks and I will probably call this home.
Until then!

Berlin tune

I realize how little I have written in Berlin. I was busy with other things i guess. I write about things as I do them, not so much after they are done and having had lots of time to edit and polish the edges of reality… I can’t write about Berlin now that I am in Canada. I need to write about Canada! When I think of Berlin, music comes to my mind. Things I heard there, things i thought i would enjoy hearing there, things i should have listened to there…These pictures taken during our stay in Berlin are a tune if you will, but it is too late for me to write the lyrics. So look at the melody and make up whatever lyrics you want. Berlin was sweet and cozy. It was perfect. We will be back.

wandering wonder

So I’m late once again in delivering my monthly piece of blabla. But I have excuses. I am trying hard to finish designing a few pieces of furniture while building my own website and taking care of Camille most of the time. How many more balls can I juggle? Let me tell you that as far as web design is concerned my lack of competence is absolute, my ambitions disproportionate, my patience challenged, the results…well you can see for yourselves… www.charletdesign.com …ain’t that something folks! If I charged by the hour for the time I spent doing this I would be looking into Dubai real-estate right now (or maybe not, but you get the idea). So after much hard work, it’s time for recess!!

Let’s take a break from all the random wandering and focus our attention on the real marvel right under our noses. Camille is now 17 months, has at least 8 teeth (but there could be more), tickles my feet when i’m in bed, takes obvious pleasure in eating all sorts of things when she’s in the mood, is working on her artistic skills in large format, likes to dance while drawing (don’t we all!?), loves her monkey, luuuves her mom and is just too cute for words. There is nothing in this world that can rival the joy of spending most of my time with her. And she knows it!

I look back at the few months spent on the road and wonder sometimes in what ways nomadism might have influenced the development of her personality. The only obvious one is her ferocious attachment to her mother and father. When one’s environment keeps changing, one holds on to the things that don’t. Camille travels with her bed, her toys and her parents. That’s it! We are the center of her universe (us and her stuffed monkey), which of course isn’t without consequences, good and bad. Caitlin and I are keenly aware of the early symptoms of the only-child syndrome observed in Camille, and in an effort to keep us all into check we signed her up for three days a week at what is commonly referred to here as a Tages Mutter, a day-mom, a proxy, a new face, a new set of rules. And so it is that three days a week, Camille find herself immersed into the heart of a Germany. We expected a fight but she simply ignored us after 30 seconds in her new surroundings. She walked right into a room filled with boys and toys and didn’t look back. It is a relief to know that after months on the road Camille hasn’t lost her disarming ability to make herself at home anywhere she lands.

Of her three days a week in Deutschland, Camille has retained a few noticeable lessons: she says Nein! like a local, she expects to be fed delicious crepes and other goodies after her nap, and she knows that since mom and dad are available in limited amounts only, she might as well make her demands clear during the 4 days a week she’s alone with them. Life wiht her has entered the oh-so-much-more complex phase of constant negotiation. When she doesn’t decide to simply ignore us and do as she pleases, Camille often lets us know that our ideas on the topic at hand are noted but she has a better one, so stand back and watch. What I find enlightening is that she doesn’t scream to make her points or to get what she wants, but instead simply keeps doing exactly what she was before we warned her against potential harm or whatever else we think is a good enough reason to put an end to said activity. I always prepared myself for confrontation in such moments, but there is none.

What I certainly wasn’t ready for is our first trip to the hospital, by night, no less, with a screaming feverish toddler. Retrospectively of course whatever she had was no big deal and we basically freaked out for nothing,  BUT, in the heat of the moment, being first-time parents and all, it got pretty exciting let me tell ya…Being the irresponsible parents that you all know us to be, we had overlooked the tedious task of preparing for such an occasion and therefore had to turn on our computers at 3am to look for a hospital and get directions to it. Since that wasn’t really working (our German still sucks big time!) we ended up calling a good friend who, having recently given birth, doesn’t sleep at night anyway! Following her directions we went to the clinic where she gave birth which, of course was on the other side of town. Please keep in mind that during this entire search for a hospital, the little one is screaming and protesting her sorry condition with everything she’s got. Fun. Why would we chose a birth clinic to consult with a doctor in the middle of the night you might ask?…Well, for starters, they know how to deal with very sick little children, unlike said children’s parents who in all likelihood are hyperventilating and insulting each other profusely by the time they get to the clinic, and have never seen their baby sick and therefore misread every sign of sickness… After a few wrong turns (I am filing a class action lawsuit against Garmin) we made it there and by the time a nurse escorted us into a consultation room, Camille was all smiles and giggles of course and her temperature was close to normal. I must point out (in a pathetic attempts at restoring our parental dignity), that the nurse said this happens all the time. Their patient contingent seems vastly dominated by smiley, giggling babies. God probably hates to see Caitlin and I sleep, that’s all.

Last paragraph (Caitlin orders):
Sleep aside, Berlin has treated us well and I can’t believe we only have three more weeks to go. The prospect of packing up once more is as exciting as a work Saturday, not that I clearly remember what that feels like… Well, I’m not looking forward to it anyway. We’re off to Montreal on March 16th for 5 short weeks, just long enough for Camille to give us hell with her jet-lag when we come back to Europe in late April…I wish we could hang out here for another 6 months. I have done so little, been to so few of the places I wanted to see…We’ll have to come back I guess! Next stop, the land of maple syrup, large moose, weird french lingo, and, guess what!? Cold winters…from bad to worse! Berlin to Montreal…that’s like adding 6 weeks to your winter. Who planned this trip!?

Peace.

done

done

done

done

done

done

in no particular order

The Pen

Without this pen, there would be no blog, there would be no notes from the road, there would be no phone numbers thrown down on random pieces of paper at the end of chance encounters. Without this pen, my jeans’ front left pocket would feel empty. Without this pen, many conversations would never have started – it is a good conversation piece. Without this pen, there would be no sketches. This is by far the best pen I have ever owned. I have an old friend to thank for it. He knows who he is. This shiny polished chrome pen is a guide, it makes the trip, it points us in precise directions and records our meanderings. All praises due to the pen.

My long-lost Godmother

On the morning of December 12th, Camille, Caitlin and I got in the car to pay a visit to my Godmother, Marlys, and her husband Jorg in Romanshorn on lake Constance. We have visited lots of friends and family over the last three months and traveled far to do so, but what makes this visit so special to me is the fact that neither Marlys nor myself can clearly recall our last visit with each other. I think it took place at my grandparents (on my mother’s side) in Vevey (on the lac Leman – another lake) when I was ten or eleven years old. I hardly knew Marlys at the time, and I have only very vague memories of the visit. We lived at opposite ends of Switzerland, and she also sojourned in Germany part of the year so it wasn’t always easy to get together I suppose. Nevertheless, Marlys always remembered to send me a Christmas gift – usually something totally awesome, like a cool car racing set or chemistry set. I, being the ungrateful brat that I was, hardly ever wrote to thank her. Little by little, we must have drifted in different directions and next thing you know, we have not spoken, written or visited each other in over two decades! On December 12th we were finally happily reunited in their home on the lake for a long lunch. Camille made herself at home in her usual manner, playing with all the toys that Marlys and Jorg had set for her in the living room, and of course making a mess in the kitchen where the dog’s water bowl became her puddle for a short while. Marlys is an artist (print maker and painter mainly) and let us see her work in her Atelier after lunch. She and Jorg gave us such a warm welcome that it felt as if we’d always stayed in touch, or as if this was one of many visits over the years. It takes a true and kind heart to make one feel this way and we are privileged to count Marlys and Jorg among our friends.

The Beard

No man should die without knowing what he looks like with a full, untrimmed and unapologetically bushy beard.  I stashed my razor in a drawer on November 24th. Sometimes when I talk or eat, a thin hair gets caught between my lips. This started just a couple of days ago. Soon I will have to keep a pack of kleenex in my poket to avoid the embarrassment of left over food in my mustache and beard. This is what I mean by unapologetic.

Travel

December was a month spent on the road for us. From Basel to Paris, St. Gallen to Cully, Geneva to Schaffhausen,  we visited friends and family, made pilgrimages to many museums and had a few enlightening confrontations with modern architecture. One day we decided to visit Basel, leaving Stein Am Rhein early in the morning, we visisted the Tinguely Museum, attempted to see the Schaulager gallery by Herzog & De Meuron (it was closed but I saw enough to realize that ALL architects, no matter how great, make serious mistakes throughout their carreers), went on to Weil Am Rhein to the Vitra museum (the worst museum I have ever visited – Gehry deserves to do Jail time for this one), and the Beyeler foundation by Renzo Piano (perfect). We drove back to Stein am Rhein that evening. Camille somehow didn’t desert us after this insane day-trip and I think she actually enjoyed Beyeler as much as we did.  Our visit to Paris was also memorable, our friends Sophie and Alain were splendid hosts and their home is simply unbelievable: a villa in the middle of Paris. We saw our great friends Justine and David and their son Julien and all went to the Fondation Cartier to see what turned out to be the best exhibition I have seen in a very long time (“Terre Natale” – a must see).  When all is said and done, Paris is probably the most beautiful city in the world. The quantity of first class architecture and urban spaces there is simply breath-taking.  As David and I strolled around the fifth arrondissement and stopped to look around we realized that any of the buildings we could see from virtually any spot along our promenade would be exceptional if it stood in New York for instance. In Paris, there are probably tens of thousands such exceptional buildings. They are the rule, not exceptions.

Word!

It has arrived! The Camille 2.0 upgrade is finally installed. The software still has a few glitches but the rough code is in place: Camille, now with SPEACH command! Our little marvel is starting to repeat words she hears, in both French and English (and German – although limited to one word – see the list of words below). She has been blessing us with her ridiculously cute animal sounds for a while, but listening to her asking for a ‘tartine’ this morning sent a far more delectable frisson down my spine. Let’s see..there’s Ear, Hi, Eye, I, Shoe, Cheese ,Tartine, Peepee (of course), Bebe, Apple, Zebra, Please, and the occasional Achtung! thrown in for good measure. French is still vastly underrepresented at this time, but I have high hopes that this will be resolved with the installation of the 2.1 upgrade in a few weeks…We need to upload a video of this spectacular development.

Farewell

It is time. Already. Too soon. Berlin awaits in the north, cold and grey, and we must turn our backs to Stein Am Rhein, our home for the last three months and hit the road once again. Packing still sucks. The car is still small but brave enough to take us where we have to go. What can we say, on the eve of departure, to a community that welcomed us with open arms and made us feel at home when we were so far from home? We are grateful for the warmth and genuine kindness of those we met in Stein Am Rhein. Thank you for your help in making sense of the little things that can be such a challenge in a foreign place. Thank you for your friendship, thank you for the amazing fresh Berliners, the raclette and the Rosti! Thank you for looking after Camille when we needed a break from parenthood, thank you for opening your homes to us and sharing yourselves with us. Thank you for guiding our steps in a region unkown to us. Thank god for the Windler Foundation without whose generous contribution none of this would have been possible! Thank you for the beautiful home, thank you for the beautiful times. Farewell, and may we see you all again, soon.

Hot Rod

Since our landing in Europe in late september of ‘08, we have been driving my late grandfather’s Opel Corsa circa ‘96. It has now 162,000 ks on the meter and still starts at the turn of a key. If the pen is our guide, then this car is our noble steed. Rain or shine she gets the job done, and that is as much as one can ask of such an old lady. We expect her to surrender her sorry soul to the gods of mechanics at any time, but until that day, I will do my best to keep her running smoothly, making sure her tires are properly pressurized, her tank full and the lubricants flowing. I must admit that it wasn’t love at first sight but the old hag grew on me. To give you a just idea of what we’re talking about, pictures are not enough. A quick test drive is the only way to feel what this poor thing has been going through. Suffice it to say that she was brought to this world without power steering, cigarette lighter (GPS & phone chargers, anyone!?), central door locking system or electric windows. She was alotted a grand 1.2 Liter engine and 4 cylinders, which means we get to enjoy the scenery in great detail. I’d be lying if I said we ever made it above 130 km/hr on the freeway with the wind in our back.  She is naked in this age of advanced technology but she braves the road and the weather with a stubborness that reminds me of her first owner (my grandfather). In many ways she is the mirror image of the man’s character. She is economical, he was stingy, she can’t seem to die, neither could he. Her seats are perpetually stained, so were his ties… I think of him often when I drive around and remember what a funny man he was.  She’s my Proutian madeleine. She’s family.

As promised

Fondue Moitie-Moitie ( courtesy of my mom)…Per person: 100g Gruyeres; 100g Vacherin a fondue; 3/4 glass white wine; 1 tsp maizena; 1 tsp kirsch…Rub the fondue pot with a peeled garlic clove for flavor. Pour the wine in. Add the grated cheeses and spread the maizena on top. Cook on low heat sitrring constantly with a wooden spoon until bubling. Add the Kirsch and some pepper and nutmeg to taste. Transfer to the table alcohol heater (previously lit) and make sure you cut the bread before you serve. Fondue does not wait!

Feeling lazy?

Just buy the goddamn ready made fondue at the Migros or Coop and heat it up. It’s ready in 5 minutes and is almost idiot-proof (i screwed it up only once – you decide what that means about my intellectual capabilities)

Love

We haven’t mentioned Tobias until today but he deserves a few lines in our journal. He is the son of the best baker in Stein am Rhein (ok, maybe even the best baker, period), 7 years old, cute and blond, and happens to be the object of Camille’s undivided attention whenever he pops up. It works like this: 1) Tobias enters the room, 2) Camille starts smiling and giggling and running around him and demanding that he play with her and drop whatever he might be doing, all the while making the most ridiculously cute faces to get his attention…trouble already. Those two had a good time at Caitlin’s open studio night. I’m relieved to notice that Camille seems to have the dominating role in this ‘game’ of theirs.

of spiders, pumpkins and minimalism

After bragging about the local spider population in my last post I got on the hunt for the perfect arachnid specimen, camera in hand, pushing poor bestrollered Camille through thick bushes and nasty back alleys around Stein Am Rhein. Little did I know that for the most part, spiders do not like cold weather and that in the week or so after my last post, they either went into hibernation or left for a long and well-deserved vacation in the tropics. One thing is certain, they’re nowhere to be seen in our neighborhood anymore. All that is left of them is a multitude of webbs, which are starting to look more like abstract collages of fallen leaves and dead bugs than anything else. Needless to say I felt like a fool.

Action was needed so I turned to architecture. Buildings, I figured, wouldn’t take a leave of absence at the end of the warm season in the Bodensee region. I got busy on google, found a list of buildings of interest in the region and chose the Kunsthaus in Bregenz (Austria) as the subject of our first excursion. Some of you know this building from the numerous articles written about it at the time of its completion, if not in person. It was designed by Peter Zumthor, who in my opinion is to the swiss architectural community what spiders are to the animal kingdom: a species of his own, an icon and pretty much at the top of the food chain. I had never visited any of his buildings until last week but having read avidly whatever I could find about his work, I felt I knew a bit about him and his oeuvre. Little did I know… I think it is fair to say that modern minimalist architecture always suffers at some point or other in the process of construction. Somehow the design intent is never fully translated in the finished building. I suppose that in the abstract realm of the drawing board (or the computer), everything is possible, but the same isn’t true in the real world, the world of pressure, time, sweat, budgets and manual skill and most designers fail to acknowledge these facts. After a short while, most minimalist buildings start falling apart, cracks appear that ruin the abstract unity of a wall, leaks cause water damage spoiling ceilings and floors, doors sag on their hinges and streak ugly arcs the floor.

These rules seemingly do not apply in Bregenz my friends! After several years of use, Mr. Zumthor’s building is still the incarnation of swiss perfection. Smooth as my daughter’s butt it is! An immaculate glass facade, crack-free monolithic floors and concrete walls, perfectly aligned glass celing tiles. Door frames and doors that work miraculously well.

Nirvana. Heaven. At last.

I do not know whether the reason for this success lies in a generous maintenance budget (there definitely is money in Bregenz) or in the sheer genius of its design & construction team, but it is enough for me to have been given the opportunity to visit at least one minimalist building that delivered the goods. I found the Kunsthaus to be true to the exquisite drawings of Peter Zumthor, more minimal perhaps than the renderings that helped sell its concept. The japanese better watch their back. Camille enjoyed the visit as much as I did, making herself at home in her usual manner, threatening to damage very expensive artwork made of dead bugs (no arachnids there) and other stuffed animals.

We drove back to Stein Am Rhein, Camille and I. I parked the car and pushed Camille’s stroller towards our home when suddenly, suspended between an evergreen hedge and a road sign, there lied the mother of all spider webs, and in its center hung a fat, nasty golden nugget of a spider. Point. Shoot. Happy. This one must have had a good summer judging from the size of her belly. Good things come to those who wait..several weeks.

As mentioned in our previous episode, we have become acquainted with a few locals. Nida, Alex and their daughter Amber are among them. They invited us to join them on a night expedition to the small village of Rudolfingen which once a year becomes home to a spectacular pumkin carving festival. Thousands of pumpkins are displayed in the darkened streets of the village, local farmers turn their basements into improvised restaurants, the pungeant smell of fondue escaping from every home. A delight for the senses. We drank mulled wine, ate Bratwurst and Camille brought home a nice combination of runny nose, smoker’s cough and fever: the perfect storm. Still we had a good time…

Next: Basel, my long estranged godmother, the ultimate recipe for authentic Fondue and the spa in Vals!

Peace/out.

ps: yes we are aware of the election of Barak Hussein Obama to the presidency of the United States of America, in fact, the locals never miss an opportunity to remind us of that fact. We get stopped randomly (here’s that word again) on the street by strangers who, hearing us speak our (more or less) native talk, hug us and congratulate us and offer us their life savings and…well, you get the idea. Some of the strangers even have american flags hanging at their window – I mean here! In Stein Am Rhein!!! We are living in a metropolis camouflaged as a modest mediaval village.

the moving image

it was a matter of time until we started force-feeding you videos of our little darling…well…here it is! we took the step and added video capability to our blog. you tell us if we were right to do so…(more to come of course)done

[wpvideo bdEwoCdo]

our humble abode

Here we are again, still in Stein am Rhein, now settled into what looks like a routine of work and play. We have met a few local parents and kids and are finally starting to have play dates with other kids for Camille who misses her Brooklyn friends as much as we do. Caitlin is making great progress with her series of drawings, bravely stepping forward into darkness, making sense of things, defining as usual the rules of the universe as she wants it to be. Fun to watch from a safe distance but I don’t envy her position at the center of this artistic big bang…

The leaves are turning red and gold and clouds are slowly drifting above the castle up on the hill, autumn is here at last but the temperature is still comfortable enough to take long walks with just a sweater on to my delight and that of Camille’s who both spend lots of time in the town’s awesome playground (you’ll have to come see for yourselves or take my word for it – that’s an invite, btw), climbing up the wood log fortress and rolling about in the fallen leaves.

Some of you asked for pictures of our digs here in Stein Am Rhein so I took a few shots and posted them here. For your edification, our house is built against the remains of one of the city’s fortified towers. the tower was probably built around the year 1000 but the house itself is more likely to be from the year 1600 or so. I will dig deeper into this and get firm dates. Speaking of dates, Caitlin, Camille and I have an exciting one this friday at lunchtime with the town’s mayor! and I have nothing to wear…T-shirt and sneakers will have to do I’m afraid. I figure the esteemed leader of this community should be able to confirm our house’s history for us. More on this in a future posting.

Two more things:

1) There are more spiders in our house than in NYC and there are more spiders in our garden than in our house. Stein Am Rhein of the spiders it is! They are quite beautiful though and work diligently on their webs, which I diligently destroy every day with my mighty broom. The cycle of life condensed into a 24 hour period if you will. Creation and destruction. I’d like to draw a parallel with Caitlin’s work but I’m not smart enough so you send me your ideas and I’ll post the best one next time.

2) We have been welcomed by the inhabitants of S. am R. in a manner that I can only describe as regal. I admit with shame that I was prejudiced against the swiss-german population before I came here but they have proven me wrong on everything I thought I knew about them. They have invited us in their homes with genuine kindness, they are well traveled and open to the world, accepting of who we are and always show interest in the stuff that our lives are made of. Community at its best: a people proud of their heritage but eager to let the foreigner in.

More about spiders and medieval Stein Am Rhein very soon…

Much love to all of you out there from Us3 over here.

gruezi!

Ah….Switzerland.

After a week in Geneva with the parents we felt just about ready for a change of scenery. And we got just that. We embarked on our first journey in the tiny Opel Corsa so generously volunteered by my genitors. Now that was a challenge! First we had to fit all the stuff (see previous posting) we brought with us, while carving a tiny niche for Camille on the back seat and preserving a vague sense of safety for our child who could be swallowed by an avalanche of said stuff at any moment. Then we had to make it to Stein Am Rhein, the location of Caitlin’s first residency deep in the swiss-german back country. In what retrospectively seems like some sort of a miracle, Camille played her part and slept most of the way, while Caitlin and I took in the scenery. Every bit of it. Car fully loaded=  s l o w ,  l o n g  drive. But the scenery didn’t let us down and after ten years in the hustle and bustle of NYC I must say that we felt uplifted by the pure tranquility of the landscapes we journeyed through.

Anyways, we made it and were welcomed by the most charming couple who led us to our new home which as it turns out is built on the site of the medieval fortifications of the old town of Stein Am Rhein. We struck gold ladies and gents. We have a whole house to ourselves! Four floors and a garden, on a pedestrian street in a fairy tale town. Although my german is admittedly poor and my swiss-german non-existant, we get by just fine. tourism is the main source of revenue here, so english, it be spoken plenty around here.

End of the fairy tale and back to the salt mines for the two of us. Caitlin tackled her numerous projects right away and seems happy but in shock at the amount of time she has every day to focus on her work. I, for my part, am full-time daddy and let me tell you: Architecture is not as tough as it seems from where i sit these days…our little darling is a tyrant, a monster to be fed with good food, plenty of exercise and play dates all day long. I had been warned and had my own doubts but WOW! this is WORK!!! And yet I feel as close to Camille as I have ever been and the rewards are plenty. seeing her toddle on the cobble-stone street, meandering from flower pot to stray dog to fire hydrant (now that I write it down, her urban itineraries are not entirely dissimilar to those of a dog on the lose. I ‘ll start worrying when she pees at every stop). I am an exhausted but happy and proud father and husband. We’ll get back to this in a month or two and check my tune at that point.

Our first excursion (camille and I only, mom has to work) took us to the local castle or ‘Burg’ as they call it which sits on top of a steep hill just behind the town and offers a charming view of our larger surroundings. took some pics there, which may or may not be of interest but i will post them on Flickr for y’all to see.

To summarize, we are living a dream. A very clean, organized, manicured, luxurious dream with lots of geraniums in the background and we love it. Switzerland once again lives up to its reputation. You know you’re in a special place when the locals put so much effot in designing their fire-hydrants (they look like airplane parts or something). And it doesn’t hurt that we find centuries-old graffity on beams and stone walls here and there…”Go goths!”, “Gunthar was here” and so forth.

Catch y’all later. Peace/out.

 

btw, Gruezi! means Hi! in schweitzer-Deutsch….

packing is the pits

I don’t care how glamorous our destination, how exciting our trip, how highly anticipated the departure might be: Packing sucks. And I should know because we’ve been at it for about a month now. Baby stuff, mommy stuff, daddy stuff. Caitlin and I haven’t had a conversation that didn’t revolve around such stimulating themes as: did you pack this, did you remember to do that, how long do we have before it’s too late to do this?…yuck…But we’re almost there and we may even be able to catch a break while Camille is taking her nap today and take one ourselves! The only good thing about packing is the opportunity to trash all sorts of useless junk you forgot about and stashed away for years. make a few neighbors happy: put all that junk on the sidewalk and in our hood i guarantee you that in a couple of hours ANYthing will go. I mean anything. Old magazines, old shoes, food you haven’t touched, drinks you haven’t touched (we threw one BIG party in our backyard yesterday as a farewell to friends and family here so there’s tons of food and drink we won’t possibly go through in the next two days before our departure), old clothes, toiletries, electronics, anything.

Time to hit the road!