Despite the nickname, Wexford was not particularly sunny when we visited recently. Like most part of Europe, it seemed to be mired in the unescapable winter chill, accompanied by frequent showers. The transition between sunny and rainy happened often and rapidly, making it singularly difficult to predict if we could go for a walk yet not be roasting under our winter coats and/or be drenched without a brolly.
Nonetheless, maybe I present, by photos, the County of Wexford that we saw, however briefly it may have been.
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I called it “mets”, with an emphasis on the T, but Frédéric duly corrected me – it’s “mess”. Whaaaaat? But why?
*Gallic shrug*
“That’s just how it is.”
So I did a little digging. The name had its (Celtic) origin in Mediomatrici, which was then shortened into Mettis, before finally settled on Metz. The T was certainly part of the pronounciation in the past. This changed during the period of German occupation of Metz between 1871 and 1918. Annexed to the German Empire, the occupiers’ guttural speech seemed to make the T more pronounced than ever. The unhappy people rebelled in their own little way by dropping the sound of the T and voilà – you’ve got “mess”! Obviously, the pronounciation persists to this day.
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A whirlwind week away can only be matched to a whirlwind week at home, right? Well, it may not look it but it certainly felt like it. As I set my to-do list for the next few days, and reviewed my calendar for the coming weeks, I realised things are liable to be crazier than ever. On the plus side, I manage to sneak in some reading time, which makes me pretty content at the same time.
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20 May: I know, a photo taken at Marks & Spencer is hardly exciting but have a read at the labels of these bottles. Juices with red pepper or asparagus in them? We tested out the one with asparagus in it and it actually was quite nice. Granted, there wasn’t too much asparagus in it to start with, but enough to give a hint of the taste. Honestly though, I miss the food hall of M&S. There are a couple of them in Paris; the food section in the branch on Champs-Élysées is very limited and the other branch is a bit far in Levallois-Perret (actually outside of Paris), thus why I’ve not yet been there, but it does boast a much bigger food hall so maybe I should at least check it out once!
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River Saar flows from Mont Donon to Trier, its length splits to sit nearly half-half between France and Germany. In the region of Saarland, Saarbrücken is at about the half-way point of the river. A little further south, it even acts as the natural border for the two countries, where the towns of Grosbliederstroff and Kleinblittersdorf are linked by a short bridge.
Our third train since leaving Nancy in the morning took us to Saarbrücken, followed by a tram ride to Kleinblittersdorf to check-in to our hotel, before crossing the bridge to Grosbliederstroff to attend C&V’s wedding. Since we don’t have time to explore any of these towns, the best I could do is to share the few photos that I took while we were there.
Grosbliederstroff
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When an opportunity presented itself for travel, I’m hardly one to refuse the chance to do so. I guess some of my go-go-go-travel attitude must have rubbed off Frédéric as he ambitiously planned for our trip to his cousin’s wedding to be flanked with day-trips to Nancy and Metz. I have friends who agreed that both cities are small enough to be visited as day-trips, and after visiting them, I am more of the opinion that they make good spots for weekend trips.
A TGV ride between Paris and Nancy takes approximately 1.5 hours and our early start means we arrived in Nancy just shy of 10am, affording us a day of exploration given we were also staying overnight in the city before heading off to Grosbliederstroff the next morning. We were lucky to have arrived on a sunny morning for what was to be a forecasted-to-be-cloudy-and-wet weekend. The day did progressively get glummier, but not before we saw the splendour of Place Stanislas in the full sunshine.
I am no historian so I won’t go into the birth and the development of the city, even if we did see the free exhibition of La Ville Révélée at the Palais du Gouvernement (daily except Monday, until 31 August) which looks at these aspects in details. The exhibition is part of the programme of Renaissance Nancy 2013, which has an interesting agenda that makes me want to stay longer so I can check them out.
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There’s a change in the pace of my personal life this week, and instead of slowing it down a notch to catch a breather, it got cranked up to include reasonable amount of travelling for a couple of weeks. We just came back from the region of Lorraine where we attended a wedding over the long weekend, just to unpack and repack today for a week in Ireland. All these travelling is going to test my resolution when it comes to this blog’s schedule – I have opted not to travel with a laptop and I’m not normally someone who plans post(s) in advance either. Guess I will have to learn the how-to now, stat!
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6 May: It is May but the sunshine pretty much comes and goes, its level measurable by the amount of people sitting at the cafe terraces for a drink or two. On a good day, it could be a real challenge scoring a table from an already tightly packed terrace, never mind the best effort afterwards not to wince when presented with the bill that appears to have packed in also a cost for the beaming sunlight onto your table. Often (just often, not all the time), it’s worth it though.
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What a day today has been. The emotional rollercoaster evoked by the general election in Malaysia, which undermined the true spirit of fair and clean election, was followed by the disenchantment that the popular vote didn’t translate into electoral win (because, you know, when the margin is small and one does 5 recounts to include “forgotten” ballot papers, one suddenly wins and that’s the end of recount!). Malaysians deserve more than polarising rhetorics from the ruling party, race-based politics, vigilantism against phantom voters, and bald faced lies propagated through the government-controlled media… :(
On the positive side, voters are more aware of their rights and more politically involved than ever – in the past, many didn’t even care because they felt change was a hopeless quest. They know better now. Their voices will be heard louder in the coming years. For now, time to look onward and upward.
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29 Apr: There are many sculptures tucked within the Jardin des Tuileries and it seems I’m still discovering new ones each time I popped over for a stroll. Today’s find is one simply entitled Column, by Antony Cragg. Tucked just behind the Jeu de Paume, had I not been at the WHSmith to look for books and then decided to take a small walk, I may still not be aware of its existence!
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Edna and I met up on Thursday for a Vietnamese lunch not too far away from Nation. As the sky cleared up for the afternoon while we searched for something sweet – we ended up in Grom for some gelati – an afternoon flânerie was definitely in order.
We explored parts of the 5th and 6th arrondissements, the two neighbourhoods often featured in this blog. Afterall, these are my regular stomping grounds, where I work and live. I am always excited to show them off to everyone and here I am, showing them off to you too! ;)
(Note: the first three photos were taken in Nation, and the rest in the 5th and 6th arrondissements; hover over images for captions)
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It is quite a mouthful to say – Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris – and CIUP would be yet another confusing acronym among the gazillions that every French(wo)man seems to know but elusive to most expats. It is easier and simpler to call it Cité U (“see-tay yu”).
The place I called home for my first nine months in Paris is a 34-hektar park with 40 residential houses and over 5,700 housing units which hosts not only students but also researchers and visiting academics. I have mentioned it a number of times in the past, but never really show it off properly. This is my chance to rectify that. Last weekend, after our wonderful picnic at Parc Montsouris, I went over for a photowalk as well as showing F around since he was not familiar with the campus.
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This has been a week full of sunshine and bright sky, and the occasional downpour hasn’t dampened the mood at all. I find myself taking a lot more pictures than I normally would; as Sarah pointed out a few days ago, everything looks better with the sun. Without further ado, the photos from week no 16 of the year.
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15 May: Not a lot of people have love for the Tour Montparnasse. It is deemed ugly, and Parisians normally joke that the best view in Paris is the one from the top of the tower, as this is the only place one doesn’t see the tower itself. Yes, it is out of place given the architectural style of the buildings in the surrounding, but I don’t think it should be so villified. Besides, for me, this is great for giving people direction on where my neighbourhood is. “See that tall tower over there? I live just around the corner from it.”
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