The other Bergmans (from September 30)

We just spent the weekend in Paris. Sunday was a party to celebrate Axel's great uncle Rolf's birthday (80) and his and his wife Claire's 50ieth anniversary. It was wonderful to finally meet this branch of the family tree since I realized that I have inexplicably been absent at all of their gatherings. In fact, a relative from Victoria (actually she is the sister in-law of Claire...I think her name was Liz?) who was there reminded us that 13 years ago, I skipped out on a dinner with the family in Vancouver (sushi dinner...she has a great memory!) because we had just started dating and we both figured it would be weird to have me there. Liz said that her daughter brought her brand-new boyfriend at the dinner and now they are still together. It was pretty funny thinking about the early days.

Rolf was Axel's grandfather's youngest brother. This family was originally from Sweden (in fact, Axel's grandfather never gave up his swedish citizenship) and ended up in France, but all of the kids ended up everywhere. Axel's great aunt, Alix, spent a year in New York and actually speaks english with a NYC accent. So Rolf went to Canada to work, and he met Claire, who was from Belgium but was sent by her dad along with the rest of her family to Montreal during the war. They eventually made their way back to France. Claire's family also moved around a lot. I had a great conversation with Frances, another in-law of Claire's, who just moved to Victoria from Kingston, about French paperwork. Oh yes, it plagues everyone! That will be for a future blog, when we can look back and laugh...no laughing yet.

What was really cool were that the mannerisms and physical characteristics I would normally only vaguely associate with Axel's dad were displayed all over the room. His 3rd cousin, Nicolas, has the exact same hair as Axel (in fact, Nicolas' mother thought for about a second that Axel was Nicolas). The same hairline and crazy wings that offshoot from the ears. The nose and mouth is definitely Bergman. Stephane and Axel have similar movements when they are thinking (which I didn't realize until now). But my favourite discovery was the "arms crossed and lean to one side" look that most of the Bergmans have. It was so weird to see them all standing at a doorway talking to each other in the pose. It really made me smile and realize how genetics really do play a role passed our eye colour.

We stayed at Stephane's again. And this time, the endless stairs didn't seem so bad. I think I just got used to all of the stairs from our place. Totally surprised myself. Stephane showed us the newest look for Decleor, the brand that he is revamping as the newest International marketing director. I started using their products last xmas when he gave me some to try and they have changed my skin. I didn't really start seriously until April when I bought a couple more products after going for one of their facials. Even Axel has noticed a difference. Anyway, Stephane has the job of re-inventing the brand. It was cool to see the concept and how he came up with it. I'll keep you all in the loop of when the new look comes out. I had no idea how complicated it is to come up with a new idea. What is invigorating is feeling Steph's excitement when he talked about it. He has finally found a place where he can just go nuts with his vision. I love it!

The day before, I spent the day with Melissa and Tony, who were in Paris for a few days after a wedding in Ireland. We went to a great vegetarian restaurant in the Marais district. This area is the gay area and has the best stores for men. So Tony had his own shopping day! The difference between girls shopping and boys shopping is actually pretty significant. I couldn't pinpoint it until that day when Tony was looking for a jacket. It reminded me of Axel's long search for a suit for our wedding. Boys don't do this much so they don't know the inventory, what is really out there, how much is too much, when it's a good deal, etc. Hence shopping with boys is always a frenzied and stressful task. And usually it ends up either fruitless or the only thing bought is the first thing they saw and mostly liked. When girls go shopping, it's calm and peaceful, yet we always end up with something. What I realized when I was there was that I really haven't hung out in Paris enough. We have always gone to see family and maybe check out a museum. So because Axel was learning about satelite imaging all day Saturday, I had a great afternoon all to myself in the city. I took a book and walked along the Champs d'Elysees, read a little in the Tuileries, hung out outside the louvre checking out the eiffel tower from afar, and finishing it off with a walk down Rivoli street which is good for shopping. Nope, bought nothing.

I left Axel in Paris while so he could check out rockets. He can elaborate because, well, the only thing I really know about rockets is that I can spell rockets. I really have to go to one of his lectures just to understand a little space lingo.

I'm going to try and catch up on the rest of our activities soon!! Hard when we have a varying and intermittent connection so don't give up on us!

A plus.

from moi

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to send a message from me too. We're ok. Thanks so much for your concerns. It was a long, hard week but it's over and we're just moving on. I think what has made it easier is that we don't know too many people in this city and essentially just had each other for company, so is became much less dramatic.

What I realized quickly is that my french is far better than I gave myself credit for, especially in times of stress! I managed to answer all of the questions from the doctor, listen to her admin's extremely vague directions on how to get to the clinic behind the hospital in a different city (Schlitingheim or something like that...different city but in reality it would be like going from arbutus to granville street) to visit a doctor on the 3rd floor (which is really the 4th), go to the other doctor who turned out couldn't understand why the first doctor kept sending patients to her since she was an addiction specialist (when I gave her my letter from the first doctor, her first question was "You don't take heroin do you?" and my first question to her was "Is heroin the same word in english?"...she told me that she has had so many patients from the first doctor who she had to send elsewhere...and yes, she has called the doctor to explain the mix-up many times but the admin seems to not understand), find the other part of the clinic where I could find another doctor who could help me, explain the mix-up to the clerk and let her know that I am Canadian so would need to pay up-front, tell everyone who wanted to know why the hell we were in Strasbourg in the first place just to appease their curiosity of having a foreigner in their clinic, re-explain everything to the third doctor, understand the explanation of how to take the crazy labour-inducing pill the next day and when to come back, find the lab to get my blood drawn in the hospital in front of the clinic, and figure out how to get back home. Yes, I know it was one long sentence, but I wanted you to feel how I did during this long crazy day! Actually, it was only 3 hours but it felt like forever. Thank goodness Axel came with me when I had to go back because after the excrutiating pain, the last thing I wanted to do was translate expletives from english to french at how badly it hurt!

One thing that was extremely frustrating was how no one could believe that I was married but don't have Bergman as my last name. For a country like France which is so progressive in so many areas that everywhere else is still stuck in the 50s, you would think that this kind of thing would be more common! You wouldn't believe how many times I was asked what my maiden name was and when I said it was Cruz they assumed I didn't understand so I would explain that Bergman is my partner's name but I still use Cruz. They would roll their eyes or do the familiar "oh god, she really doesn't understand what I'm asking her" lip purse, and then re-ask the question. And then I would say that I kept my last name because it was easier. And EVERY person would tell me that in France, it is automatic to use your husband's name. So I would then say what if they wanted to use the wife's name to which they stopped harrassing. I don't want you to think that I don't like the name Bergman. It's a great name. But having Cruz my whole life and then just switching now just makes it confusing for me. The bank has refused to let me keep my name though. And my resident card also has Bergman as my last name, despite having no documents with Bergman attached to my name. It's kind of a game for me right now. How many times can I say my last name is Cruz and then have Bergman put on the file.

OK...now Strasbourg needs to be explored and because Axel is spaced out, I must do the duty. Since this medical pause, we have already checked out the european parliament, cronenberg breweries, jupiter and 3 of its moons, as well as settled in. More to come so stay tuned!

:)

Sad News...

It seems my inexperience and excitement got the better of me from my last posting.  Sadly Rani had to endure a miscarriage last week when she found out that the foetus was no longer growing and had to be removed.  The doctors informed us that this is fairly common at the early stages of pregnancy.  What made it a little more difficult for us is that in France they give you a special pill called Méthergin (Novartis product) which causes a rush of hormones simulating labour.  Normally, the effects are felt a little over 48 hours later where you go into the clinic where they give you a second pill to help with the final phase.  In Rani’s case, she went into contractions early and had the miscarriage on her own not needing the second pill.  Apparently this is a more healthier thing to happen, the logic being the less pills the better, but Rani had to perform her miscarriage at home with me not really knowing how to help her.  When we eventually did make it to the clinic though, the doctors thoroughly checked Rani out and gave her a clean bill of health, but indicated that she would have to endure contractions for a week or so.  Rani is now doing much better physically, and life is slowly coming back to as normal as it can be in Strasbourg.  The positive outcome is that Rani sorted it out earlier rather than later, and that we subsequently found out that this is a relatively common occurrence for many women who later go on to conceive.  We’re not sure what the causes might have been, but there are a number of factors like strange foods, moving to a foreign country, or Rani’s body wasn’t ready. For my part, I’m sure to be more cautious in the future about these things, and not get too excited too soon. 

Things I will miss most from Canada

I actually wrote this at the end of September but I figure I will edit this and post since I have spent a month in not-sunny Vancouver and have regained perspective.

1. Cheaper and better gluten-free products

This has got to be one of the major drawbacks of being in Strasbourg. It's crazy expensive. For example, I just spent 3.20 euros on 5 slices of bread. And not even big slices.

edit: Prices are actually pretty similar but you just get more bread for your money.

2. Cheaper anything

Example One: Cloth bags for grocery shopping. In Canada, maybe the most you would spend is $5 for something super nice. Here, the cheapest I have found is 5.60 EUROS and it was crap. And they sell crappy thicker plastic bags (like the Ikea bags which are uber awkward) for up to 15 euros!

edit: OK, I spent $8.95 for some pretty swank shopping bags when I went back to Vancouver. But you can also spend 99 cents for something similar.

Example Two: A Brita water filter. In Canada you might pay $15 for one. And it may or may not include filters. Here it's about 30 euros and each filter is about 6 euros!

edit: I looked for the specific filter in Vancouver and we don't have it. dang.

Example Three: Cheap chinatown bowls. This was my source for anything breakable I needed in the kitchen in Vancouver, Hamilton, Montreal, Toronto. At most I would pay $1 for a bowl, but usually it would run me about 50 cents. Well, for the exact same 50 cent and 1 dollar bowls, Strasbourg is selling them at rockbottom prices of 5 and 10 euros!!!! I almost had a heart attack.

I could go on but I'm trying to let these things go. Damn zoom for going bankrupt. I could've started a consumer products run going back and forth and selling to expats.

edit: now that I have been back, I realize there are a lot of things that are cheaper in France. And the food in France is way better quality so maybe this is what we pay for.

3. Dog-poo free sidewalks. I won't elaborate. Just know I think I have mastered the "look 30 feet ahead, scan, and walk safely according to memorized poomine map" walk.

4. Free service numbers. This still shocks us. If you need any service of any kind (eg. Electicity company, France Telecom, internet, GOVERNMENT lines), you have to PAY per minute!!! It's crazy! They charge from 0.15 to 0.50 euros per minute. I still can't get over this. Coincidentally, our internet service provider provides a free service phone number but you can NEVER reach a person. Ever. Actually, I should expand this to all services. Nothing is ever straightforward.

edit: I won't elaborate...see rant from earlier posts

5. Asian restaurants. I still can't believe there are no real asian chefs in this country. I refuse to believe that! NEVER take a good pad thai for granted! We still haven't found one japanese restaurant here. Actually, I saw one but it was boarded up. I'm guessing it's because they charged 40 euros for one piece of sushi and people caught on.

edit: I stand by this 150%. Nothing beats Vancouver asian cuisine.

6. Websites that work. What I mean by this, is websites for things like the train, or the plane or the bus that actually tell you what you want to know, allow you to make reservations, and assume that you want the most direct and cheapest route possible. The best example is SNCF, the national French rail system. When we booked our tickets via the web from Marseille to Strasbourg, what they DIDN'T do is 1) make sure we don't have to switch train stations in Paris and 2) tell us there is a direct train from Marseille to Strasbourg!?! Live and learn.

edit: these websites are even more annoying when you are in Vancouver.

7. Web-savvy people. And I will include people like our parents in this. Because people still don't get the email concept here, they will use their child's email address rather than getting their own. Or they will give you the wrong email address many times until you realize that the "." is in the wrong spot. Or they just never check it even though you tell them you are going to email them.

8. Customer service.....

I can only come up with 7 so far. I am in the midst of writing a similar list for Strasbourg but I figure I will do that when I re-discover them (like pain au chocolats which I re-met an hour ago...yum).

A slaughterhouse, a palace, a tower and an irish pub

Yesterday was the first Sunday of the month, which means, in all of France, free museum and gallery day!  For those who are in the midst of planning a holiday to France, take advantage of this.  You'll save a ton of money and if you get bored, you can leave without feeling ripped off!

We met up with some ISU students at the Musee Historique.  This was formally a slaughterhouse.  It really looks like a big barn but I'm pretty sure they spent a bit of time cleaning it.  They gave us free headsets which magically turned on whenev

er you walked by certain hotspots.  Except they weren't quite matched up to the exhibit you were at.  It was pretty funny watching all of us get a little surprise in the headset and then run around the area trying to find the corresponding archive.  We learned a TON there.  First of all, Johann Gutenberg, the father of moveable type and the printing press, lived here for 10 years and developed his inventions right in the city.  His hometown in Germany, Mainz, and Strasbourg celebrate his life every year on...actually I can't remember the date...I think it was in June.  So here are some interesting facts that came out of his inventions.  Strasbourg became the book capital of the world and all of the printers studied here and moved on.  In fact the first printer in Paris was Alsatian.  Being a book worm, I really got all warm and fuzzy when I realized I was living in the first book capital of the world!!!  Also, the first EVER newspaper was from here!  And with that, the publisher created the first author copyright law to prevent people from stealing his news!  We also learned how Strasbourg was a "free city" which meant they could mint their own coins and had no real ties to anyone royal to rule them.  And then Louis the 14th decided he wanted to be ruler of Strasbourg so he proclaimed it and that was that.  It seemed that there was actually very little resistance to the French takeover.  

We took a museum break and headed to Flam!,  a tarte flambe place.  It's all you can eat if you so choose, but I really don't understand how anyone can eat more than one of those!  I got the legere, or light one which was the only one without bacon.  And light it was not!  I think it was because they used a light cheese?  I mention this stop because I figure when people come to visit, this will be one of the places we eat.  Cheap too.

After lunch we went to Palais du Rohan, a former palais, with shiny rooms like Versailles, but in Strasbourg.  It now houses the Archeology museum of Strasbourg (which is essentially the death through the ages museum) in the basement, a vast collection of renaissance paintings which include Rafael and Botticelli on the top floor, and left its opulence intact on the main floor.  Oh and a huge ceramics collection of Paul Hannog.  For the ceramic buffs (i.e. Aly), this is probably an important name.  For the rest of us, an interesting story.  It turns out the Hannog family made the most well-reputed ceramics all over France.  But a family friend of Louis the king allowed another family in the town of Sevres, to win the rights to be the ONLY ceramics maker in France!  Talk about monopoly!!  It's interesting how this has become somewhat of a norm, with Dijon being the only place allowed to call their mustard Dijon, Champagne, same thing, Roquefort, etc etc.  So the consequence was that the Hannog family was left penniless from losing their livelihood.  Oh yeah, there was also a HUGE astronomical clock just hanging out there.  When I get a chance, I'll add the pics to this posting.  

We then realized that it was 3h30 and the Cathedral tower was still open AND free!!!  So we scurried over there and climbed 332 steps to get to 142 m to the top.  Man was that hard.  But worth it.  Interesting tidbit.  In 1521, just a few years after it was finished, the cathedral became protestant under the Reformation.  And then when Louis asked for Strasbourg in 1681, it became Catholic.  It was originally built as a Roman temple, and then destroyed by fire.  Then rebuilt in 1284 (with the tower finished in 1439).  

We ended up at the Irish Times, a pub close to our house which was playing the Hurling final.  This was the craziest sport I have ever seen!  You should check it out.  It's crazy.  They have paddles that look like beaver tails and they have to balance the ball (like the egg-spoon race in elementary school) while running to the goal and score.  It's like a mixture of soccer, rugby, lacrosse and crazy people.  Amon, one of the ISU students, is a hurling player (I'm guessing a really good one because he arrived late due to having to play in a hurling game back in Ireland) so this is why we ended up doing this.  

On a completely different topic, we are now the official space nerd halfway house.  There are a few students who did the ISU summer program and are desperately looking for a place to live.  And because we have a couch, we are now helping them out with saving a bit of hostel money while they look for a home for October.  We have Zauher until Wednesday, and Mickael is coming Tuesday until Saturday.  Who knows who else we might end up with!!  

Why Alsace is one of the best parts of France to live in

I was looking up doctors who speak english in Alsace and came across a great little website for people who are moving to this area.  It actually covers all of France but has a section for Alsace-Lorraine.  

I accidentally pressed "public holidays" instead of "social security" and discovered that Alsace and Moselle (another nearby region) has not one, but TWO extra holidays more than the rest of France!  Good Friday and 2nd Christmas Day (i.e. Boxing Day) are the bonus days!  I wonder why these regions are the only ones?  I'm sure I can wiki this.  

Another tidbit.  The European parliament must translate every document in 26 different languages!  Are there really that many languages in Europe?  I will look this up too.  

Oh, just realized Axel posted something.  Keep reading!

ISU-Week 1

Phew I finally some down time so I can post something. It's been an incredibly busy week, but we have yet to even talk about space! Monday started off with the graduating ceremony of the 2008 students where they made us all spontaneously say something intelligent about ourselves in front of this crowd. I mentioned that I was from Vancouver and I got a bunch of cheers...yes we're everywhere. Some interesting items about or class, we're currently about 33 ish students, all guys except for three lonely girls who currently enjoy a lot of attention. Our class will be complete at the end of October when a bunch of SSPers join us for module 2 so our total is really about 50ish. There are currently 20 different nationalities, and most of us are engineers or physicists. I think there's one doctor, one economist and me..not sure where I fit in. In terms of age, this class is a couple of years older than in the past at an average of 27, but there's a bit of dicotomy between the young bucks with a bunch of degrees at under 25, and the 30+ croud. So I'm right in there with the old boys..but I can still run faste than any of them..except maybe the soccer player from trinidad and tobago, but he's too laid back to really care :-)
Day 2 and three were a series of introductory lectures on economics (I now know what "marginal returns" are) and basic concepts of law. We also had a lecture on why we would want to go to space by Dr. Torienko who as one of the soviet union's senior engineers was sending space crafts to the moon during the sixties, built the Mir station and has been involved in pretty much every large international space project from the eighties and 90...so we all chuckled when he suggested that he had a little experience. So here's in interesting tid bit: did you know that the link between CO2 emissions and global warning was made by a canadian woman who analysed data from a venus space craft launched in the 70s. Turns out the planet was 100degrees hotter than what was predicted and she figured out it was due to the high concentration of CO2 in Venuse's atmosphere. Our series of lectures ended with the head of tourism Strasbourg giving us a lecture about Alsace..super cool! wanna go to Colmar and Mulhouse now..but I'm not totally sold on the heap of sausages required for "une choucroutte alsacienne."
The last two days were spent team building. The highlight was the boat cruise around the main island of Strasbourg and a treasure hunt centered around Place de la Cathedrale. Here's a cool concept, a few years ago the city decided to create a time capsule made of a stainless steel box not to be openned until the year 3790!! I was hoping to pry it open so I can slip in a note for my grand gran...grand children. We then had a reception at the Strasbourg city hall where we were hosted by the deputy mair of Strasbourg, who also happens to be the deputy mair of Illkirch and the Scientific director of CERN..how random, but this guy must be busy. They served us whine cheese and macaroons in the ball room. Apparently we're the only school who gets this kind of treatment..not even he ENA dudes down the street get an audience at the maire's house (probaby because they want his job). So now we're all ready to go and team trained so we all want to hug each other. I'm thinking that the pace is going to pick up starting Monday, so we're R&Ring this weekend maybe check out some museums on Sunday.
Just to finish the internet/phone line saga, turns out that our provider is still setting up our data line and won't be ready for an other week!...geesh, I think we'll have a house warming internet party when we finally do get this thing going...