Bread Rolls and Trains

9 April 2008

With Will and Philly's wedding coming up, we tend to see things that might otherwise not take our attention to the same degree. Today, on the way to the bus to go to Gare du Nord, we passed an Artisan Boulangerie and in the window was the latest (I'm not quite sure what one would call it) fashion accessory; bread rolls with the name of the guest baked into it. These are used for place-settings and can, of course, be eaten by the appropriately named guest. I suppose they could be eaten by any guest, but that would hardly be cricket!

As I wrote on Sunday, one of the places near Paris that we want to visit is Aubers sur Oise where Van Gogh spent the last months of his life and where there is currently an exhibition of Impressionists. Last time we went down to find out about all of this, it was too busy, but today we were able to buy our tickets and this weekend we will be heading off on a special direct train. After a couple of weeks here Virginia has gotten her ear in and is happily having conversations with people in shops and at bus stops. She queued up at the ticket counter at Gare du Nord and jabbering away in French soon had not only the tickets but a detailed explanation as to which line and the platform from which it departed. Having now mastered the Metro, the RER and the bus line, we are moving on to bigger and better things; the trains! Well, admittedly this is only about an hour out of Paris, but it is on the train.

I, on the other hand, struggle to make myself understood. Yesterday I went into the chemist to buy some enteric coated 100mg aspirin. In the end, it played out like a comedy of errors and I discovered that the only thing here in 100mg aspirin is powders; definitely not what I was after. I'm not quite sure where I go from here, but probably will find some way of managing. As I said to Virginia, "I do not do powders!" Virginia claims that I have a very good, albeit limited, ability in French. I have never had, according to her, any trouble getting exactly the cake that I want at the Boulangerie.

It was probably one of the coldest days we have had here. It was gray and overcast and at mid-day the temperature was only 2C. Compare this with the temperature last year (this blog covers the last two years as well as this one).

Monsieur continues to frequent Chez Yang, the Chinese restaurant across from us and even as I write (it is exactly 7.30pm) he arrives as he does at this time every night. Despite our many theories, he remains an enigma. Is he a former priest? Is he a part owner of the restaurant? One thing is certain, he is a man of habit. As to anything else, we leave it to your imagination.