part 1: Trip to Mougins

today dawned clear and sunny - and #@@!!# fohn. 'Fohn' is a wind off the Alps, gives us clear sunny days. And me, the feeling like someone's tightened my braces. Or my brain is too big to fit in my head. I had heard about various reactions to this weather condition, but didn't feel any until the past couple months.

It has clouded over, and I’m inspired to write a bit about the trip to France. The Ladies International Association (LIA) was the genesis of this trip. The purpose was to attend some cooking lessons at a school in Mougins. France. Mougins is about 10 K inland from Cannes. Judi was the organizer, had planned for each day, including touring the local towns, dinners out, and a couple of cooking classes during our stay.

We departed Munich on the evening of Thursday, Oct 12th.



Arrived in Nice with no problem. Had to slog our bags onto a bus to get to the rental cars, though. And once we got to the lot it took us quite a while to arrange the 13 of us and our luggage into the 3 cars: 1 Ford Focus, 2 Renault Meganes. The cars were packed! Plus, the Meganes have a new style dashboard, and a card key and pushbutton to start. But your foot has to be on the brake before it will start. Took us quite a while to work that one out! Finally, off we zoomed into the dark, warm night. Got in the vicinity of Mougins, about 10 K up the highway, turned off where we were supposed to and it all went wrong.

“Girls, I think we’re lost” said Caroline, as we coursed through the 5th roundabout the third time, from a different direction. The lead car pulled over to ask directions of someone by the side of the road, but as we slowed we saw how much he was swaying – “totally potted!” as Jackie, the Brit in the car, said. On we went, came to a restaurant where there was a guy outside smoking. We pulled over & Lysianne (our native Parisian) asked for directions to the hotel. He didn’t know, so she & Judi followed him into the place to call the hotel. Out they came, said he was the owner of the restaurant, and would close up and drive us to the hotel. He came out & hopped into his Ferrari … and off we went.



Finally, we got to the hotel about 1am. Sue, Judi’s friend from Australia, was already there, had champagne & cheese waiting. We checked in, sat & drank & ate, and started planning for the next day. And all of the plans flew apart, as people had changed their minds about what they wanted to do. Oops!

The next day dawned bright and clear. And warm! We had a beautiful run of weather – 75 degrees and sunny every day. After breakfast of way too strong coffee (for my taste) and the amazing only-in-France croissants, off we went: 1 car to Grasse, the other 2 to Cannes for some touristing. I was in the Cannes group. We started off at the Palace, where there was a techie/trade show.




Jackie reprised a pose from her youth, her family vacationed here for many years.



We had time for a refreshing citron presse at this lovely spot.



Then we all split up and walked through town. Jean & I headed up, to find this church and overlook point. We hooked up with Marcia on the way.



Then lunch! Jackie wanted langoustine and this place provided. Ah, the warm day, great food, wine with lunch – I radiated appreciation to the Universe for this opportunity - and stored up the memories against the coming winter!



Our first cooking lesson was that afternoon. The place is beautiful, Alan Llorca’s school in Mougins. The demonstration room was very interestingly furnished with roses & old-fashioned looking light bulbs covering the ceiling.




Chef Eric Houard was great. It was good for me to see how he did everything, how he used his knives, etc. We got the recipes to take with us, and tasted everything he cooked.




That’s all the time I have to write today. Gotta pack for the next trip (told you I was being a travel pig!) Will continue when I get back to Munich, after Sunday the 5th.

Finishing Lago di Garda pictures

The weather here in Munich has been astounding for the past couple weeks - 75 and sunny. Wonderful. So, I have not sat down inside to blog, nor found a wireless spot to do it outside. And I'm getting behind. Today (Sunday the 29th) it's raining, so I'll finish up the pictures from the trip to Lago di Garda, these are from the last 2 days of that weekend trip almost a month ago.

This was a mountain bike trail. It was a bit rainy, this is very steep and slippery. Logan thinks it was an old Roman road.


The harbor at Malcesine


Another view of the Castle


I walked the lakeside trail on Monday , it was a beautiful cloudy day. This is a few kilometers south of Malcesine.


Malcesine from the south direction



One evening we drove around the top of the lake to Limone, a town on the other side.





Jane and me at the Limone harbor


We stopped at a couple of places on the way out. One stop was at Cascata Varone, a natural waterfall in the cliff it has carved in the limestone. It’s unusual to see a falls in this way; mostly they spill over a cliff into the lake below, or you see the dry canyons like in Utah. Here, you walk up a trail into the hill, and there are a couple places carved in where you’re in the canyon, getting wet. it was a very worthwhile side trip, go if you're in the area. The pics aren’t so good, it is hard to get enough in to really be able to understand what you’re looking at, if you haven’t been there.

So, I’ll just put up some pictures of Arco, and the fortress there. This town is at the north of the lake, a few kilometers inland.

Walking up to the fort, through a bit of the town.







Looking up at the main tower



Inside the ruins of the fort.








And it's a beautiful sunny day again, Monday so my recent trip to the south of France will have to wait. gods, it was gorgeous. And the food! I wanna live there!

Back in Germany

Well, you know you’re back in Germany when:
- you go for dinner with ladies from the ladies’ club, and 3 of them light up at the table. (It was shocking after 10 weeks back in the states!)
- you see lots of extremely tall people
- you see very handsome, hetero men wearing pink shirts
- you see men shopping for clothing with their women – willingly, even happily. They do that here. How nice.

I have been back since Sept 18th. Spent a week in a jet-lag and emotionally wretched haze. I didn’t want to leave Andrea, Greg & Gavin after spending the summer with them. And the parents are not doing well at all. So, while I was there, I decided that I need to move back to Rochester for a while. So I’m buying a house, doing that remotely. I will look for work there, again remotely (love this Internet thing!) closer to when I move. I’m planning on moving back mid-January, I should be able to occupy the house by then, the current owners are having a house built. Their builder has guaranteed it will be done by Jan 18th. … Having had my own experience with builders, I am skeptical. But they believe he’ll get it done by then, so more power to ‘em.

The house is cute! And, to all my sorely missed friends in CA – if you need a change of scene, I’ve got spare bedrooms.

That’s kind of hard, moving back to my hometown. (I will NOT think of the Pink Floyd lyrics, I will not …) But I’m intending the best for my stay. I’ll give myself 2 years to regroup, reconnect with family, and friends (Maggie will be close! Yay! And Mary and Beth!), get divorced, and do all the traveling in that part of the world that I never did while I lived there. I had been to NYC once when I still lived there, with a friend from high school. But then all my trips there came after I was working in California, and I went for business. I’ve never been to Maine. Or Vermont. Or wine tasting in the Finger Lakes. (I am really really hoping that the industry there has progressed as much as the travel articles claim. I have BAD memories of local wines. I may be getting that mixed up with Lambrusco and Boone’s Farm in my memory. I’ll report back on this in a few months.) So, I plan to travel and work on the little house and live and grow and hopefully occur an income.

I got connected with someone who works at Robert Half while I was back this summer (big placement agency, started out focusing on accountants, then branched out.) I talked with the manager of their technology practice. Blew his doors off. He mostly places coders and other IT types. He didn’t even know who he’d talk with, about me. That made me proud. And then chagrined. I’ll have to build up the network when I get there. There have been some interesting looking jobs online, I’ll start working those closer to the time I will move.

Meanwhile, it’s been beautiful here in Munich and environs. I am trying to see as much as I can in the time remaining, this time in Europe. (I fully intend to be back. Am envisioning a global job that has me traveling mostly to Northern Europe.)

And, being the travel pig that I am, I am off to the south of France tonight with some of the amazing/wonderful/fun ladies from the Ladies International Association. We’ve had this trip planned for months. So I’ve gotta run, in the meanwhile here are some of the places I’ve been recently:

Wendelstein, one of the nearby alps. This was a Sunday day trip. Took the cable car up & walked the Panaroma Weg, around the top.

View of the mountain from the parking lot


Coo beasties, below the cable car.


Church on a crag, near the beer garden.





Me, perched on a saddle at the top – very steep down in all directions from here.



There was a long weekend in Germany, Reunification Day was Oct 3rd. A group went from here to Lago di Garda, on the Italian side of the alps. It was just beautiful. Very German – they get a lot of Germans and Austrians, it was only a 5 hour drive from Munich. So the food wasn’t as good as it was in southern Italy, but the scenery was great. It’s a mountain bike and wind surfing mecca, lots of steady wind on the lake, usually. We saw sailboats too. I am still in kayak mode, but there wasn’t any place to rent one of those. Darn!

Castle along the way, shot from the car


We stayed in Malcesine, the castle is a museum now. They know it pre-dates 590, as it was recorded as having been partially destroyed then. Inside the museum is one very cool room that documents an even from 1439, when the Venitian navy moved their fleet into Lago di Garda, to protect themselves from the ravaging Milanese neighbors. This involved a mere portage over some of the alps (!!!) took 3 months. But they were successful, and able to hold the lake until 1509. Then they sunk the fleet rather than have it fall into enemy hands. In the 1950s divers pulled up some of the boat fragments, which are on display.


View from the top of the tower, into the town below


Me on top of the tower


Lots more pictures to post, but I'll have to do it next week after I get back from France. Love you all.