Happy New Year from Lyon!

Sorry for the big gap in the blog for the month of December, but perhaps you can imagine how busy it was for me after spending a cruel November without breaks (classes everyday and work on the weekends for a whole month, with no let up), then going off to Germany for a weekend and then jumping right back into six exams and four papers in two weeks and trying to get ready to visit Japan for a week. Busy, busy, busy!

I spent a wonderful week in Japan and it reminded me just how much I enjoy the place and hope to get back there to work or live for some time.

Tonight I spent New Year's Eve at home, cooking for the first time some red Thai curry with a seasoning packet, fish sauce, and coconut milk. I had originally planned to use chicken for the meat in the curry, but (believe it or not) at both of the discount supermarkets I visited (Ed and Lidl), chicken was sold out. Apparently, a lot of people had the same idea and bought out all the stocks. So instead I used what was available: boneless turkey breasts. Not exactly the same, but pretty close and a good substitute.

Then at midnight: toshi-koshi soba, Lyon-style. That is to say, using dried soba noodles like those sold at the supermarket or at Marukai. The taste was certainly not the same as the soba noodles the Japanese eat on New Year's Eve, which, with their high yama-imo contents break easily (supposedly the way the noodles crumble when you eat them is supposed to represent the "breaking" of all the bad "en" or bad luck from the last year), but it was still nice, symbolically, to be able to eat something which I associate so very much with New Year's.

Lacking Japanese sake nearby (as I've told some of you, even basic Japanese sake costs three times as much as it does in Japan), I went local and bought sparkling apple cider, like the stuff made in Normandy. Champagne would have been nice but spending 30 EUR on one bottle and not finishing it would've been a waste (had there been others here, that would've been different ...), and since Carrefour had advertised this low-alcoholic, low-cost (1,20 EUR for a bottle) alternative I decided to take them up on it. So soba and cidre, a combination only a Japanese living in France could come up with ...

Just a few minutes ago, I stepped out to see how people were celebrating outdoors, but with all the honking cars and gangs of young men tooting whistles and noisemakers, I decided to turn back after a few minutes and head back for my apartment, where it's decidedly more quiet and tranquil and a nice way to spend the rest of the Reveillon, or New Year's.

It always feels good to start the year off like this. I only wish that the rest of the year could be filled with such energy and positive feelings.

Christmas Market in Germany / Day 2 / Frankfurt

I left Wiesbaden early hoping to get to Frankfurt by 10 AM, when I presumed that stores would be opening and I could get some shopping done before they closed early in the evening ... at least that was my assumption from the way things were in France, where even during this holiday season, shops open only from 10 AM to 7 PM.

Not so in Germany.

The main shopping street in Frankfurt, the Zeil, was open for business as early as 9:30 and the larger department stores, Kaufhof and Karstadt, were open as late as 22:00 or 10 PM. I walked the length of the Zeil several times and made some side trips to the Dom/Romer square where the Christmas Market is based (do you remember the area with reconstructed old-style buildings, and wall-to-wall people in the market?) to drink wine and collect some new mugs (collective sighs from the parents). But this year I found something new: a ceramic cup that could be used for green tea, smartly decorated with Frankfurter Weihnachtsmarkt logo.

(Incidentally the market is not only in that square, it actually stretches all the way down through several alleys and there are also similar booths located along the Zeil shopping street itself. So no shortage of sausage booths and hot wine.)

In the end I bought few things at the large shops (except for one pair of boots for the rainy and snowy winter for 40 EUR ($55)) and instead ended up with foodstuffs from a supermarket located near my hotel.

(The hotel was the same one as during the World Cup, the Alexander am Zoo located not far from the zoo in a quiet neighborhood, rate: 52 EUR for a large single, breakfast included.)

Things I bought: goulash mix, Jaegersnitzel mix, and because I wasn't going to have time to pick up bread for the new week ahead, germany dark brot bread which I've been eating over the last few days. Things are much, much cheaper in Germany, perhaps because of looser regulation and more imports of food?

There was a real interesting drink that I bought to try in my room: a combination of beer and wine. On the label it read "Perlwein" though I'm not sure what that means.

One week back from Germany ... / Wiesbaden (first day)

and back into the grind. It was good, but not easy, heading off to Germany for the weekend.

I left Lyon on Friday afternoon after finishing classes in the morning at the school. From there I skipped over to the airport by bus, checked in early using the self-service check-in terminals, headed through the gates and into the boarding areas (Lyon has a very small duty-free shop with only one employee, poor thing).

Arrived in Frankfurt Terminal 1 (main terminal into and out of which Lufthansa flies) and headed to the basement to catch the local trains (S-bahn) to Wiebsbaden. I chose to stay in Wiesbaden for one night because the rates in Frankfurt were extremely high because of a Messe or trade fair. 120 EUR in Frankfurt for a small hotel room or 49 EUR for a room at the Best Western Hotel Hansa in Wiesbaden.

I actually enjoyed Wiesbaden because it was a walkable city, compact, yet had its own boulevard full of shops and markets. It was there that I had a great kebab sandwich (I know you guys are cringing, but really, it was delicious and cheaper than Lyon at 3,30 EUR each), with sliced meat, tomato, pickled cabbage, onions and tzaziki yogurt sauce and chili peppers. A meal in itself. It was either eat there, pay too much for sausages at the Christmas market, or buy noodles from a take-out Thai restaurant with no customers there. The kebab won out. (Next time you come to Germany, do try one with an open mind.)

In Wiesbaden, there was only one square, the marketplace, where the Christmas market was on, but there were ornaments and hot wine and even guest choirs singing old standards and pop songs, perhaps from the US military base nearby.

The mug cups were great and I even found some marzipan stollen in a discount store called Schlecker, which I took back and hope to share with some of my colleagues.

By 9:30 pm I was bushed and back in my room. After two mugs of hot wine I was also drowsy and fell asleep on the comfortable bed with the TV on.