30 April 2012

Mercato



Several of the main streets throughout Venice have vendors selling mostly souvenirs.  I always buy a couple of postcards and a magnet for the fridge. 


We happened to stop at a place that also sold postage stamps and there was even a postbox right outside the store.  This doesn't happen very often.  Well, actually never.

Only a few streets are crowded like the ones above.  Most are more like . . .


this and some are even deserted.


There were lots and lots of places selling Venetian masks.  Some were quite elaborate and beautiful.  The mask is a tradition in Venice typically worn during Carnevale.  As with Mardi Gras, the mask hides the wearer's identity and permits them to act more freely than they might normally.


Every morning except Sunday, Venice has an open air market (mercato) selling fruits and vegetables


and seafood.


I'm always fascinated with seafood despite not eating very much of it myself.


Most of this just doesn't look like it would be tasty even when cooked.


Until now, I'd only seen a few of these empty on the shore.

 Buon appetito!


28 April 2012

The Gospel

. . . according to Mark.


The Piazza San Marco, better known as St. Mark's Square may be the most famous landmark in Venice.  


At the far end is the Basilica of San Marco.  

St. Mark was born in the 1st century.  Although the author of the Gospel of Mark is not known, it is attributed to this Mark.  He is also founder of the Church of Alexandria in Egypt and although his remains were once in Alexandria, it is believed they were stolen, taken to Venice and are now in this basilica dedicated to him.  


Basilica Cattedrale Patriarcale di San Marco, or St. Mark's Basilica was consecrated in the year 1071. We've seen the inside of a lot of basilicas, but we decided to forego this one.


I found this photo of the interior online and it is certainly beautiful.


Connected to the basilica is the Doge's Palace.  I admit I didn't know what a doge is.  Doges of Venice were the chief magistrates of Venice for over a thousand years.  The were elected for life by the aristocracy of the city.  


This is one side of the basilica.  It connects to the Doge's Palace.


San Marco Square also includes the Procuratie Vecchie (Old Law Courts) and the Procuratie Nuove (New Law Courts).


This is the Campanile (bell tower) San Marco.  It was built between 874 and 1150 and reconstructed after it collapsed in 1902.  We've climbed a lot of campaniles, but we decided to forego this one.


San Marco Square
Venice, Italy

26 April 2012

Get Lost



This is the first thing we saw as we crossed the bridge into Venice.  Asians.  Five of the six are using their camera and the sixth is posing.  Later in the day we were on a famous bridge and some Asians actually asked me to move so they could take a picture without me in it!  Apparently they had already cleared everyone else away and here I came to screw it up :)

We googled "What to see in Venice" and first on the list was "Get lost in Venice".  



Of course, this didn't mean literally although that is all too easy to do.  A map is essential and looking at it often is also essential.  The directions from where the airport shuttle drops everyone to our hotel had 52 turns!  


Just walking around and seeing everyday life is nice.  The tourist season didn't seem to have begun so it wasn't super crowded and although we heard plenty of English, we heard plenty of "prego's" too.


This is a typical neighborhood with boats parked along the "street".


When we entered this open space, there were children playing.  By the time we took this photo, they had gone inside.  You can see their scooters and balls on the ground and it occurred to us that this is their yard/play area.  There are no cars in Venice and there is also no grass.


The ambulance.


The police station.


The fire brigade.


This is a boatyard we just happened to walk past.  Turns out it is the oldest boatyard in Venice - Squero di San Trovaso and was established in the 17th century.


There are about 350 gondolas on the water in Venice on any given day.  Since the 16th century and in accordance with the law, all gondolas must be painted black.  Only an iron symbol of the city may adorn them.

There is no motor to propel the boat - only this guy and one oar.


There are plenty of museums and churches and shops, but probably the best part of going to Venice is  "getting lost".

20 April 2012

Venezia


We've been told that a weekend in Venice is all you need to see it so that's what we did!


Here's Venice.

The name Venice (Veneziain Italian) comes from the Veneti people who occupied Venice by the 10th century B.C.


Venice lies on the Adriatic Sea and is made up of 118 small islands only 2-3 feet above sea level. I did not know this before now. That main waterway running through it is called the Grand Canal.


In addition to the Grand Canal, there are over 100 other canals crossed by over 350 bridges and none of them can be driven on by cars. There are no cars in Venice.

I wondered what those countries to the east of Venice are and thought you might too.

I learned that Venice is the birthplace of Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741). His composition, Four Seasons, is really wonderful. I hope you've heard it before.




We have the CD and when our children were young and still at home we played it a lot. They may not remember any other classical music from childhood, but they surely know this one.

Even if you don't know Four Seasons, you definitely know this Vivaldi piece . . .




Yep, it's from the movie, Kramer vs. Kramer.

"Antonio Vivaldi Greatest Hits". That made me laugh.

For obvious reasons there is no metro in Venice and we stayed off the water taxi, called a vaporetetto. I was trapped by no doors and we both came home with our wallet!


Sadly, my computer has crapped out . . . AGAIN!  Luckily I had not loaded my Venice photos prior to the crash, but I am trying to maneuver on Jim's laptop (not an Apple) and I am a bit handicapped at the moment.  


I hope you will stop back by when I get this computer thing figured out and to share our Venezia weekend!

19 April 2012

Dumb Luck

I definitely don't claim to be an expert on the French, but I do know this . . . they are a very proud people. Unlike Belgians who even describe themselves as non-patriotic, the French wouldn't consider being anything but French.

And that goes for their beloved language.

The Belgians know and accept that the rest of the world doesn't and never will speak Dutch, but the French know less than 4% of the rest of world can speak French and they don't care.

In addition to Dutch, all Belgians in "the anomaly that is the northern half of Belgium" (where we live) are fluent in English, French and German.

But the southern half of Belgium (40% of its population) is French-speaking. Not only do they not speak Dutch, they don't speak English and not unlike the French, they're fine with that.

French is the most-studied foreign language after English. So it was no surprise when I read the article below translated from the French newspaper, Les Echos.

If you've got a few minutes, it's a good read.

And by the way . . . Oh Mon Dieu! is French for Oh My God!

___________________________________

OH MON DIEU! ENGLISH INVADES FRENCH WORKPLACE

Getting ahead these days in the land of Baudelaire and Balzac means mastering the language of Shakespeare – or at least, Zuckerberg. No longer just a plus, strong English is often required for both entry level and top manager slots. But it's brought both stress and lawsuits.


(photo by Guillaume Cattiaux/mcaretaker)

By Laurance N’Kaoua
LES ECHOS/Worldcrunch

PARIS - Employment agency Manpower is advertising for an Accounts Manager: “English – fluent.” Logica, a business and management consultancy, needs a support technician: “English – fluent.” Health and Security services organization International SOS is recruiting a client support specialist: “English – bilingual.” These advertisements, published by the Management Recruitment Agency (Apec), prove what everyone already knows: in business, speaking English is “un must!”

And with good reason: whether the company is trying to establish a foothold in local markets, collaborating with international researchers, selling its products outside of France or employing a foreign manager, English is the need-to-know language.

This is hardly brand new, of course, but the centrality of English in the work world is reaching a whole new level. At SGS, a multinational organization based in 140 countries, all communication from its Swiss headquarters is in English. At Alcatel-Lucent, “We work only in English. The meetings are all in English and when it comes to emails, I hesitate to write in French because they will undoubtedly have to be read by people outside the country as well. And yet, we’re based in Paris!,” says one of the managers at this multinational company where 100 different nationalities come together.

Even during the all-important annual review, the minutes of the meeting, as well as each employee’s objectives, are immortalized in the language of Shakespeare.

Inconsistency

Small and medium-sized businesses are no exception. “Our consultants frequently do business abroad with India, China or other foreign countries. Every other project is carried out in English,” says Pierre de Rauglaudre, associate director at Acial, a computing company of 120 people specializing in quality-testing software. The same applies to the 500 collaborators at insurance broker Verlingue, which has bought a brokering house across the channel in Britain.

“For this Anglo-Saxon project, the majority of our 440 associates have had to improve their English in order to be able to follow meetings, attend videoconferences and exchange emails,” says Stéphanie Guilbaud, human resource director at Verlingue. “If technical competence is equal, it is English that makes the difference at every level.”

And this English-mania is affecting more and more people. In the wake of the Fukushima disaster, technicians from French energy company Areva had to quickly liaise with the Japanese. “It is not enough for a manager to be able to speak English with a client,” says Marc Verger, CEO of the prodigious training provider Berlitz France. “The demand [for English] must be met at every level of the company, right down to the switchboard operator.”

And whilst progress is being made, the overall level of English in France varies significantly from one employer to another. At the end of 2010, a mystery shopping survey carried out by GoFluent on the 120 companies registered on the French stock exchange highlighted the problems: grammatical errors, limited vocabulary, strong accents… so many failings that service providers are striving to resolve. In 2012, according to consulting company Place de la Formation, English remains the most popular training option paid for by employers with 12.8% of demand.

A source of stress

However, it remains to be said that results are not always forthcoming. Trade unions are sounding the alarm. In March, the CFE-CGC union organized a conference on All Things English in Business. “Some employees feel this imposition of English excludes them,” says the union's boss Bernard Salengroof.

In 2009, almost 50% of managers admitted they were uncomfortable when faced with a foreign language at work. Stress, loss of confidence, lack of time for training, reduction in performance, concentration difficulties – these problems are widespread. “Working in a language that is not your mother tongue causes increased fatigue,” adds Jean-Pierre Lamonnier, a representative at CFE-CGC. And then there is the fear of ridicule...

Not-for-profit health organization ASA Assistances, which helps people back to work after illness, has been looking into the problem. “We have discovered suffering and unsuspected consequences, like the fact that some internal candidates don’t dare to apply for certain posts when faced with managers who overestimated their linguistic abilities,” said Catherine Henaff, former Director of HR at ASA Assistances. Since then, she has put in place an internal commission of language observation, while her anti-stress measures also take into account language issues.

Respecting the law

Despite some positive action, problems prevail. “When cost-cutting starts to affect the training budget, some employees end up in no-man’s land,” says Jean-François Laborde, a CFE-CGC union officer at PSA Peugeot Citroën in Vélizy, on the outskirts of Paris. And yet he believes that the methods used to measure employees’ abilities and evaluate the requirements for the position do not seem to be appropriate. “People on the ground don’t need academic English; they understand each other thanks to the technology. But we need to be careful that academic English doesn’t become the deciding factor for promotions, to the detriment of technical and managerial abilities.”

But don’t forget French! The Toubon law, introduced in 1994, was designed to regulate the use of French in France – and it is strict. Every official internal document (job contract, company rules and regulations, etc…) must be written in French, as well as all the documentation necessary for employees to carry out the task they have been assigned. The logic behind this requirement is that all employees should be able to fully understand the safety information and instructions in order to be able to properly weigh their rights and responsibilities.

A computing company discovered this the hard way last summer: furious at being fired for not having achieved the objectives he was given, a former top manager claimed that he couldn’t be expected to achieve those objectives because they were presented to him in English. The Cour de Cassation, the highest court of appeal in France, upheld his claim. Zut alors!

All rights reserved ©Worldcrunch - in partnership with Les Echos
April 16th, 2012 - 16:04
___________________________________

It may be dumb luck that we Americans have that unearned advantage of our mother tongue. However, in a foreign country, English may be the preferred language, but it isn't the official one.

Zut alors! = Shucks!


18 April 2012

It's freezing here!

Literally.


Temperatures were to get below zero (nul) last night. Yes! It is still cold here!

The fruit farmers were doing all they could to protect their blooms. One farmer interviewed on the news explained that he has turbines that can blow hot air into the ground raising the soil temperature by 4 degrees C. I guess that's a lot. I still have trouble with the C to F thing. Assuming the baseline is zeroC, then + 4C = 39F.


The hot air turbine is called a Frostbuster and you can get one of these for around $30,000 (tractor not included).

Fruit farming is big business in Belgium. With all the rain and the temperate climate, it is a prime location for growing apples, pears, cherries, hops :).


We're not fruit farmers, but our little apple tree appears to have fared okay. I hope Mother Nature wasn't any harsher on the rest of the trees around here.

17 April 2012

Het is een meisje!


C'est une fille!

Want to see her for yourself?

Click here . . . Lentil

:)

15 April 2012

Playing House


Do you ever realize how out of touch you are when you see what's "trending" on the internet?

I was glad to see last week that the trending "Kim" wasn't a Kardashian, but a N. Korean. I'm still in the dark on the whole Kardashian thing and plan to remain that way.

I grew up in an age when the only music you heard was whatever your older brothers played on the turntable. Beatles, Rolling Stones, Doors. And whatever was played on the radio. FM102. I was fine with that. I was more than fine with that.

If you wanted to own music you bought the album. The vinyl album. We have a few kilos of vinyl currently warping in our attic in Jefferson. I could never bring myself to throw out Rumours, Abbey Road, or Hotel California.

Then we graduated to the 8-track tape. Our cars were equipped or retro-fitted with the 8-track player. I hope we don't have any of these in our attic. I had no problem throwing these things out.

Finally the cassette tape came along and took up way less space. No doubt we still have some of these laying around for old times sake.

But it wasn't until way after our high school graduation and after we were married that the CD was introduced - 1982.

I still like to listen to the music for which I own the album or that I listened to on FM102. I rarely know the title or the artist (Jim knows them all), but I usually know every single word.

So, in our Flemish class, in an effort to get to know the other students better, we went through a series of questions like . . . have you ever been to France? do you play a sport? what kind of music do you like?

My "partner" on that day was a 40 year old guy from Algeria . . .

I digress for a moment.

FYI - Algeria is a huge country, 3.5 times the size of Texas, in North Africa (the continent).

So anyway, my Algerian "partner" said his favorite music was "house". I asked him how that was spelled.

Guess that was a dead giveaway that I was over 40 and had no idea what he was talking about.

I mentioned this to Jim and he said he remembered someone he worked with in Emerson who liked this music. That was in the 90's!

Okay, I decided it was time I "youtubed" this phenomenon that I had obviously missed out on my whole life and that FM102 had kept from me.

So I go to YouTube and immediately find a video that has 53.5 million views. Really? I know that's less than 8% of the world's population, but only ~30% of the world uses the internet!

After listening for about 10 seconds, I know why "clubbing", just like eel has never appealed to me despite never having tried it.  I was pretty sure either my head would explode or I'd gouge my eyes out.  

According to Bill board magazine, Chubby Checker's The Twist is the #1 song of all time and Santana's Smooth is the #2 song of all time.  


Now that's more like it.



13 April 2012

Simultaneously


On Easter Sunday we had lunch with our neighbors. The two boys of the family are ages 18 and 21 and they've always lived in Belgium.

I don't remember the context of the conversation, but I do remember one of them saying "it happened simultaneously".

Simultaneously.

Me, a professed fluent English speaker, would most likely have said "it happened at the same time", but this kid who clearly has a bigger English vocabulary than me said "simultaneously".

I found that amazing. And I'd be willing to bet he knows the same term and how to use it correctly in French and German.

Frequently in Belgium, the sun shines and it rains . . . simultaneously.


Jim and I took a drive to Gent recently. I think Gent is one of the most picturesque European cities.


And it was raining and the sun was shining . . .


simultaneously.


But that always means there's a rainbow somewhere. They are sometimes hard to capture in a photo. It's faint, but hopefully you can see this double rainbow between the two churches.

Two rainbows . . . simultaneously.

12 April 2012

Sprucin' Up


This is our house. The red brick with the bay window. It's 3 stories high like all the other houses and we live directly over a pharmacy (aka Apotheek).

We recently did a little sprucin' up around the house - got a new bedspread, planted some flowers in the yard, etc.

One of the things that's annoyed us since moving into our house is this unsightly rotting going on around the balcony on the top floor.


Yes, that green cross representing the pharmacy was annoying at first, but it goes off at night :)


Here's a close-up of the rot.

Naturally, we asked about this when we signed our lease and the owners even had someone come and have a look at it - supposedly to fix it. Well, 2+ years later, it is still there.

So we decided to do something.


As you can see from this photo, it would be fairly dangerous and completely insane to hang over the edge in an attempt to repair it.

It's on the 3rd floor of a busy city sidewalk so putting a 12 ft. ladder up there, replacing and painting the board wasn't going to happen. And I don't even want to think of the red tape and permits we'd have to obtain.

So we decided to just mask it.


Not bad, huh?

I think I'll add some additional ivy on the ends of each pot as I didn't think of that before and it will help even more in our "masking" effort.

These aren't spruce trees. I think they are probably some type of cedar, but you've never heard of "cedarin' up" and here's why . . .

The original English name, borrowed from Old French, for the country of Prussia was Pruce.

There's no such place as Prussia now, but at one time is was huge - Germany, Poland, Russia, Lithuania, Denmark, Belgium and the Czech Republic were once part of Prussia.

So, anyway, in the 14th century, for whatever reason, Pruce became known as Spruce by English-speakers. Perhaps because the spruce tree was thought to have originated in Prussia/Pruce/Spruce.

The English imported goods from "Spruce" and apparently spruce leather was of especially high quality and spruce leather jackets became very fashionable. Therefore, spruce became a synonym for "neat and trim and fashionable". A couple of centuries later, spruce became a verb and for the past few centuries we've been "sprucin' up". Whew! There you have it. Bob's your uncle.

Home sweet home.

10 April 2012

It's not Kansas City


I actually didn't know Kansas City is the most well known city for barbecue. I always thought it was Memphis or maybe somewhere in Texas. Turns out it's Kansas City.

BBQ sauce is not to be found in Belgium. Unlike in the U.S. where there's half an aisle in the grocery stores dedicated to it, here that space is dedicated to all the various kinds of mayonnaise. Actually I've never seen a BBQ item on any menu either. Ribs are usually available at Mexican restaurants, for whatever reason, but they aren't slathered in BBQ sauce.

I was thinking the other day how good a BBQ sandwich would be. Despite not having BBQ sauce in a jar from the store, we could find all the ingredients and made our own. In desperation, we've done this with cherry pie filling too. Because sometimes cherry pie filling is necessary.

We added cole slaw to the sandwich and it was really good! It dawned on me that perhaps the reason we call it "cole slaw" is because the Dutch word for cabbage is kool (pronounced kole) and the Dutch word for salad is sla.

Which brings me to hot dogs. What a segue. On our recent trip home for Christmas, I bought a can of Hormel chili to bring back with us because there's also no chili in Belgium.

Although they come in a jar with water, weiners are available - strange, but they're not too bad. Especially if put on the grill and left to reach that carcinogenic stage - which is exactly how I like them.

The one problem with hot dogs is there are no hot dog buns here. Unlike BBQ sauce and cherry pie filling, in my opinion, there is no way to produce a hot dog bun at home. I think this a pretty essential ingredient to hot dogs. Believe me, I've looked for them, but I think I may have a solution . . .

Combo: 2 hot-dogs + 1 frisdrank
2 hot-dogs + 1 frisdrank aan 1,50
Ikea offers this combo on their bistro menu. Yes, they actually call it a combo. Sadly, Ikea does not sell buns in the Swedish market - only at the bistro and only in a combo. I'm thinking we could make a trip to Ikea (hour and a half round trip), slap those weiners on the grill at home, open my can of chili and . . . voila - American hot dogs.

I was also thinking ahead and purchased French's mustard while home at Christmas because although Belgians have 20 different kinds of mayonnaise to choose from, they do not eat yellow mustard.

We're cookin' now!

Trivia - if you've never seen the word segue in print, you know it: seg-way (a smooth transition) and if you've never seen voila in print, you know it too: vwa-la (expression of satisfaction).

I say this because I was thrilled the first time I realized the word I've heard all my life as "boocoo" as in we saw boocoos of mayonnaise at the supermarket is actually the French word "beaucoup" (bo-coo) as in merci beaucoup. Thank you very much :)

06 April 2012

Faience


fa-ience [fahy-ahns; Fr. fa-yahns]
noun: glazed earthenware or pottery, especially a fine variety with highly colored design
origin: 1705-15; French, orig. pottery of Faenza, city in northern Italy

Did you learn a new word?

I did.


You've probably heard of Villeroy & Boch. It's sold in nearly every country - U.S., Canada, all over Europe, Australia . . .


On first arriving in Belgium, I noticed this logo on the bottom of some dishes at a local store and decided I'd like to have a few pieces as a souvenir of Belgium.

I did a little research and if you're interested . . .

_________________________


I learned that in 1748, a man named Francois Boch decided to stop his work as an iron caster and make ceramics in the city of Audun-le-Tiche (a city now on the French-Belgian border). He and his sons, Jean-Francois, Dominique, and Pierre-Joseph made cheap and simple pieces that most people could afford.

Audun-le-Tiche became French territory in 1765 and fearing competition from French faience factories, Francois moved his business to Luxembourg (also borders Belgium) soon employing about 100 people.

The French Revolution (1787-1799) turns the factory into ruins, but Jean-Francois is an innovator and starts a new factory in Mettlach, Germany (about 40 miles from Belgium) and installs huge kilns. A few miles away, Nicolas Villeroy has begun an earthenware factory. They produce side by side for nearly 50 years.

The Belgian Revolution in 1830 and the Belgian-Holland Treaty made it difficult for Jean-Francois Boch to supply the Belgian market with his ceramics. In 1836, Nicolas Villeroy and Jean-Francois Boch merged and became Villeroy & Boch. In 1841, land was purchased in Tournai, Belgium and a factory was started there. In 1893, this factory employed 250 and by 1900, nearly a thousand. The company continued to grow until the 1970's, but sadly, went bankrupt in 1988.

It is taken over and becomes Royal Boch in 1989, but again fails. In 2009, the Belgian factory is hopeful for a rebirth when a new owner purchases the factory. In April 2011, a court decides the new owner acted in bad faith borrowing nearly 1 million euros from the local government, but with intentions only of producing the pottery in Asia (Made in China?). He loses ownership and that's the end of the Belgian story.

Villeroy & Boch is still an active company producing ceramics in Mettlach, Germany, however, the company is no longer run by a family member.

_________________________

So, anyway, on one of our visits to the local kringwinkel (thriftshop), we found a set of these dishes. They really have no value other than being made in Belgium. We've replaced our old Ikea dishes and are enjoying our new purchase every time we have dinner.


Plus our set of 6 dinner plates, salad plates, bowls, and a couple of cups/saucers was a bargain at €25.


Trivia - Argenteuil is a city in northern France about 10 miles from Paris and did you know argent is French for money?