Singing in Lorraine

Welcome to a special edition SDAD blog post! I decided to let (force is perhaps more accurate) my esteemed guest Mr. Erik Nyberg recount the various goings-on of the past several weeks and share his perspective of St. Die/Lorraine. So, with no further ado…

Erik says:

Thanks to our shared love of good food, the events of the previous three weeks have revolved in large part around what to have for dinner. Admittedly, I’m not the best judge of Vosgian culinary expertise, as we haven’t done a lot of dining out since I arrived. We stopped at the best kebab store in town (out of at least 20) tonight, but otherwise there’s been just so much to make, between Julia’s new cookbook and daily cravings for food St. Die lacks. There is a very nice sandwich shop just around the corner, and an Alsatian restaurant that serves kangaroo, but otherwise… A brief list of our cooking adventures: a Valentine’s day pear kugel, gnocchi inspired by watching Top Chef and Big Night at McDonalds, zucchini bread, hot dish, Greek burgers, and so on. Two foods provided by St. Die that have been a staple of my visit: baguettes and beer. Not only are they relatively cheap, they’re unbelievably delicious compared with anything I’m used to in Minneapolis; going home will be a rude shock. One watering hole, Le Cabane au Darou, with a selection of beers from across Europe, in the setting of a country cabin, is particularly special.

Up until the past week, my time was basically split between exploring St. Die (watching a rugby match, checking out the farmers’ market, trekking to the various grocery stores), watching movies/TV (including Singing in the Rain dubbed into French) via the Internet, and killing time while Julia was at class. I bought 30 Days to Great French before I left, but by this point I’m about 20 days behind…

This week has more than made up for the previous two in terms of adventure. On Saturday (the 12^th) we, along with Alex and a pair of teachers, went hiking in the Vosges. It was a beautiful day, with great views of Alsace and Lorraine, followed by a crepe dinner and a benefit concert provided by St. Die’s student bands. Très bizarre.

On Wednesday we took an afternoon trip to Nancy, a pretty, bustling city about an hour away. We spent the day strolling around the city in the sunshine, and found a Toronto-style café serving bagels and cream cheese. Yesterday we completed the week by taking a spur of the moment trip to Strasbourg, the self-proclaimed Capital of Europe. We did see the European Parliament and human rights building (which does legitimize the claim at least a bit) as well as the old town, and appropriately, a bookfair in Gutenberg plaza. All in all, a lot of walking, including the 66 meter climb to the top of the cathedral.

Nancy

Strasbourg

Staying these past weeks with Julia has been nice beyond words, and her roommates are open, accommodating, and very entertaining. Alex is especially welcoming, and I hope I haven’t been too much of an imposition.

Thanks again to Julia for the chance to steal a blog post.

A Bun in the Oven: a new addition to the internat family

Recap of the last couple of weeks:

Alex and I went to Emily (another assistant)’s apartment in Raon l’Etape a town about 15 minutes away by train. And a town that makes St. Dié seem like a bustling metropolis in comparison. The streets were all deserted. All of the bakeries were shut down at lunch time when we arrived so we just went to the supermarket and bought stuff to make sandwiches. She gave us the grand tour which took about ten minutes and we saw Roan’s claim to fame—the “museumotel”. We’ve as yet to discover what the museum part is, but it’s basically just a hotel with each room being a little mushroomoid pod thing. While from what I can tell, the goal is for it to seem really trendy and modern, it kind of just reminded me of the smurfs. And it didn’t help that instead of being pristine and white like in the brochures (pictured below), all of the little pods were grimy and run-down.

The next night, Nicolas came over for a long overdue game night (Alex had taken great lengths to avoid us it seems, as we learned that he was in Paris-NOT fixing our internet). We played a game that was essentially balderdash—a game where you make up random facts that others will believe. It’s a game I love and it was way harder playing in French but still really fun. And I almost won—almost.

Most exciting: Erik has arrived! After a little snafu in the meet-up plan (I didn’t realize that the gare du nord is the busiest train station in all of Europe and, that being the case, that there were in fact two “Paul”s, the bakery we had agreed to meet in front of). We did eventually find each other though and had a lovely (though weighted down with luggage) afternoon in Paris. Since his arrival, we’ve been keeping busy eating bread and cheese and watching movies. I’m trying to convince him to do a guest blog, but he is reluctant. We’ll see..

The oven saga: I can’t even remember if I ever wrote about the ordeal of acquiring an oven. The basic idea is: despite the three of us dishing out 20 euro each, we didn’t acquire an oven. After MONTHS of trying to contact the shady website we had bought it from, Pascale finally got a hold of them and threatened them with “action” and so we were FINALLY reimbursed. (Moral of the story readers: when in France, avoid Monsieur Discount at all costs!) Pascale took Alex out oven shopping at the beginning of last week and so now…we have… AN OVEN! It’s a beaut—a sight for sore eyes. Tommy jumped straight into action buying frozen pizza’s galore. Erik and I were a little more patient (Erik is still in the midst of reveling in the glory of real French baguettes) and waited until yesterday to make some zucchini bread. Despite all of the measurement conversions we had to do from the American recipe I’d found online, it still came out delicious. And even Alex, who notoriously dislikes everything except spaghetti and meatballs (with sauce that isn’t too crunchy) admitted that it was tasty. Success!