parismarisamadonna

The Name of The Game – ABBA 1977

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a woman in possession of a good fortune (and not of a husband) must be in want of somewhere to spend the Christmas Season. It is a truth slightly less universally acknowledged that she should seek out a foreign place that chooses to celebrate the festive season with at least twelfty million varieties of alcohol, one to accompany each of the traditional festive dishes. Perhaps one that tastes like liquid Christmas Pudding, another that tastes like a mixture of Guinness and curry powder and only if you are very fortunate, one that tastes like a mixture of petrol, toilet cleaner and Zippo lighter fluid. But onto the story… more about the alcohol later.

  Gothenburg

Those of you who did not read this would not know that I was destined to spend a celebratory week in a sort of far off city, invited by a sort of family of mine, a family blessed with stunning good looks and bright blue eyes, a family who live in a place of elegant and harmonious design, a family that live in Sweden. Let’s call them the Nobels; Nobels in part because the name is synonymous with Sweden but more specifically a name synonymous with the pursuit and achievement of excellence in all fields, science, the arts, philosophy and peace. 

  Stockholm

Despite my being in possession of what I would call more than reasonable intelligence, let’s face it, I alternate between 2-3 languages a day, and I’ve managed to figure out the French income tax website, I’ve never felt so dumb in my whole life as I have for the last week.

A week with the Nobels in Stockholm and I’ve learned more about romantic English poets that I did in 8 years of advanced secondary English …in an English speaking high school. A week with the Nobels and I learned more about Roman gods and mythology than I did after 25 years living with the Art-sist-ologer. Yes, a qualified astrologer taught me less about Venus and Mars than the Nobels did. A week with the Nobels and I lost a week’s wages betting on questions about popular movies. They’ve got all the bases covered from pop to polar physics, from Lisbeth Salander to Elizabeth Bennet, there is a reference book to answer every potential question, there is an expert on every subject, the room is unseasonably hot with the competitive sprint for the correct response.

Being correct is not something I’ve ever been overly concerned with. I am much more in the line of sounding 150% convinced of everything I say …even if I am wrong… I always appear to be right. After a rather devastating week for my finances, I’ll never stake my own money on appearing to be right ever again.

So now down to the facts.

 

Every single window in every single abode in every single city in Sweden has the same seven-light Christmas decoration. Despite the wealth of knowledge to be found at chez Nobel, no one could tell me why everyone has the same lights. The 10 million inhabitants of Sverige have no idea from whence the seven-step-light tradition originates, but every one from Alexander Skarsgåd to Lisbeth Salandar to Stellan Skarsgåd (Google them if you don’t know) has one in their window. Given they are tiny lights, they are nigh on impossible to photograph so here is an example. Who knew Scandinavian Volvo/IKEA socialism could be so conformist?

 

I’ve written before about how well-organised everything is in Sweden, they have a customised solution or even better, an IKEA produced item of flat-pack furniture to solve all of life’s problems. They’ve also figured out the chaos of Christmas.

  Pickled Herring and Mustard Herring

Smorgasbord. Or during yuletide, even more specifically Julbord.

My Julbord...note the Cheese..

The Swedes invented the art of organising a variety of small plates on one table allowing the diner to choose exactly his or her perfect mix of shrimp, herring, sausage and egg to create a personalised Christmas lunch plate. Allowing the diner to choose? How very unlike the anglicised tradition of forcing every poor soul from infancy to infirmary to eat their body-weight in dry turkey and saccharine sweet cranberry sauce? The Swedes have also matched a different beverage to every element of the traditional Julbord. Spiced wine Glögg for aperitif, spiced beer Mumma when you are eating and spiced Schnapps with dessert. Don’t make the mistake I did of relying on the middle Nobel to serve your Schnapps or you may need to run to the bathroom and revisit your lunch. Rather surprising given my iron lady like liver that has withstood triennia of abuse.

  Glögg ..and a sun-damaged Australian finger

Mumma and Schnapps - big Headache meets little headache - in Finnish Ittala glassware

Beyond Christmas, Sweden has also solved the problem of alcohol in general. 

In a country famous for the creation and proliferation of pornography, there is a certain irony in the government-controlled distribution of alcohol. If you wish to buy any kind of alcohol, you must visit a System Bolaget. The green and gold# sign can be seen on many a main street, crying out to the would be alcoholic, “come hither to my fluorescent aisles and get thee a box of wine, a box of Glögg or a keg of Absolut Kurant”.

  Stockholm, photo taken at 4pm

Nobel is most famous for awarding their peace prize from under the three golden crowns representing the three ancient kingdoms of Scandinavia, Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Even if the Swedes gave away Denmark to an Australian (okay Tasmanian) and forgot about Norway’s penchant for harpooning whales, they keep the three crowns as their national symbol. Famous winners of the Nobel Peace Prize include Desond Tutu, Jose Ramos-Horta, Al Gore and the man with the stars and stripes tattoo, Barack Obama.

  Need to hang your coat in a busy restaurant, problem solved

While I cannot pretend to be a diplomat of such international reputation, I can pretend to be an English-Australian who lives in Paris and spent the yuletide with a Swedish family and lost 100 EUR betting on an American movie.

I am the white (Ok, reddish) dove of Peace with a Dragon Tattoo.

 

# I too find it ironic that the alcohol board has the same colours as Australia.

 

Swedish Ryvita and a Carpicorn Birthday Present...

 

Lyin’ Eyes – The Eagles 1975

I am slightly ashamed to admit that after living for a grand total of 5 years and a little bit in La Republique of Le Coq I had never been to her second city Lyon (or Lyons for the language purists). Not really that shocking when you consider that I live in the first city (Paris) and prefer to go only to weekend in places where I know someone with a top floor terrace apartment like The Body in Firenze or Louis XIV in Evian.

Not unlike Miss Havisham* I am a woman of means doted with a passion for the melodramatic visualisation and characterisation of daily, unordinary, mundane events. Not unlike Miss Havisham I am also given to abusing the hospitality of my friends who live in places far more interesting than mine. However quite unlike Miss Havisham, I do still leave my house and as such, embarked upon the great southern city of Lyon, perched between the Le Rhône et La Saône, and rather significantly the home of the Godfather of French Cuisine Paul Bocusse and rather serendipitously, the ancestral seat of the family of Louis XIV.

A big white church on a hill not in Paris

La Franglaise and I were fortunate enough to have a very good reason to visit and as such I can now say that I have visited, tasted and drunk the health to the home of salty, dry Saucisson, fluorescent red Tarte Praline and fresh Beaujolais Nouveau.

Tarte Praline - take a bag of lollies, a bucket of sour cream, a tart case and a defibrilator....

Dionysius and his younger Roman counterpart Bacchus are indeed the someone’s who watch over me as I roam the great wide yonder upon this earth. How surprised was I really to discover that the one day I happened to be in the capital of the Rhone wine region coincided with the festival celebrating the release of the Beaujolais Nouveau for 2011. Stalls lined up along the streets of Lyon proffering sliced saucisson to accompany a thimble-sized glass of the recently released acidly green tasting red wine.

The festival for the Beaujolais Nouveau

 

Be sure to review the comments section at the bottom of this page because if I get any of this wrong, Louis will most certainly correct me.

In ancient times, Lyon was the capital of France. The Twin Rivers allow for easy access to the ports in the South and the invading hordes. As such, the rather more land-locked Paris eventually got the job of bossing around the realm of France. The city of Lyon, not quite as inhabited as Paris has managed to perfect that tenuous balance between having everything, and not being so inundated with humanity as to be impossible to live in. The architecture is reminiscent of Paris with it’s Haussmannian symmetry, the streets are laced with restaurants and bars if only the people were a little bit less up their own bums I could seriously imagine myself living there.

Besides being a really very beautiful city, the best thing about Lyon is the food.

Saucisson de Lyon ad infinitum

Australians will know that during her seminal series, French Food Safari, Maeve visited Lyon several times. While not busy fawning over the gallant gallois Guillaume, she found some time to sample the wares at Les Halles de Lyon, an enormous food market bursting forth with charcuterie, a plethora of cheese and the most delicious patisserie. Only in France could the most significant tourist attraction of a significant city be its food market.

Fromage Lego

I was not able to spend more than 36 hours in Lyon and so not much more to talk about than the exceptional food. I will be certain to remedy this as soon as the exigencies of Festivus are done with in mid January.

But as always, Louis to the rescue with his chariot of gold (OK, a SEAT Ibiza), 2 hours in the car and hop, we were in Evian. Louis, trained to five star level in the arts of aristocratic entertaining is always the best host and did his utmost to make us feel at home. Some cheese, some wine and then some cheese and then some more wine before we were off to the baths.

Yep, that's the logo of the Evian Bottle up on that hill

 

Switzerland is the calmest of countries to be pinned to the terrain of this earth. A Saturday night, at 7pm, it is the only place you could find all the youths of the surrounding area, semi-naked in once place. Not a smoky nightclub, not an underground drug-den, but thermal baths. The place to be for the residents of La Suisse Romande on a Saturday night in winter is gathered together within the safe refuge of a giant swimming pool filled with the warm waters springing forth from the mountains upon high.

What better way to sweat out the lactose and the alcohol than banded together in a giant bowl of hot water?

More to come after the remainder of Festivus to be spent in Sweden, the home of pure clear alcohol and small rooms filled with steam. A recipe for disaster or delight?

  Geneva proves that size does matter

 

 

*For those of you who don’t know who Miss Havisham is, Google Great Expectations, or even better, get thee to ITV so you can watch the new version with Gillian Anderson (yes Agent Scully) playing the formidable femme fatale

Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town – Bruce Springsteen 1973

Bah Humbug!

Starting this missive with the words of Dickens’ most infamous personage certainly sets the scene for just how wildly un-Christmassy I am feeling this year. A bad case of the flu, persistent memories of last year and the incessant teeming rain are all serving to remind me on an almost minutely basis that this year, Christmas is not much more than an mucous stained, rushed, overly commercialised reason to empty my wallet.

My very little eco-friendly fake Christmas tree

Unlike Ebenezer, I’d be more than happy to be visited by the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future. At the very least spectral beings would be a welcome break from the hoi polloi that I am obliged to mix with in the freezing damp streets. 

I despise traditional Christmas food. Everything is laced with cinnamon, dried orange peel and raisins. 

Normally, I am no more prejudiced against cinnamon and raisins than porridge, stew and all other items I lump into the general category of nanna food. Food that was eaten during the war, invented as a result of government enforced rationing prior to the dawn of globalisation and the advent of fusion cuisine is nanna food. Why make a solid brown cake that could easily be mortared between two bricks when you can eat a creamy fresh Panna Cotta. Is there one good reason to eat a pudding that is strung up in a muslin bag over boiling water like a dirty medieval criminal and cooked for four days? Is it wise to eat something that can be stored for a month and eaten at Valentines Day? I won’t even comment on the Bûche de Noel, a butter-cream covered woodlike monstrosity that the French swallow whole at Christmas.

I will avow that a 30 years spent eating fresh seafood, chicken salad and ice cream on Christmas Day has potentially created a bias towards the traditional perfumed stodge so loved in the Northern hemisphere. 

But then there is the shopping.

Shopping at Christmas time is an arduous task of Herculean proportions. The French, so proud to be the last bastion of everything-closed-on-a-Sunday (in a secular country) open all of their shops on the three Sundays prior to Christmas in the hope of injecting some much needed cash into their increasingly downgraded economy. From somewhere far away, the entire population of Paris descends on the Grand Magasins to invest their not-so hard earned Euros on all manner of crap and clutter. In London, they go one step further and close Oxford St to traffic. The sea of humanity halted only by the twelfty million police officers attempting, in vain, to control the flow of chavs onto the unclosed cross streets.

  All of London gather and pray to the God of Christmas - Selfridgus

So how about some free gift-wrapping Madame? Sure, are you going to pay me a year’s salary while I queue and wait for that unfortunate Eastern European intern to stretch some tin foil around a box? The meditating exercise of wrapping Christmas presents is surprisingly one of the few pleasures this obsessive-compulsive Ebenezette actually looks forward to. Just give me the paper and I’ll do it when I finally manage to squeeze myself past the swelling hoards of and get home.

Mouth agape in shock, I learned from an affable black cab driver that spending time with Santa, an invention of Coca Cola early last century, at one of the larger stores in London is reserved at least month in advance and depending on where you go, costs a yuletide fortune. In Hamleys, a one-hour tour with the polyester-bearded red man will set you back a cool 45 pounds. I suppose he uses it to pay for additional flu meds to ward off the myriad bacteria he is subjected to as they are sprayed forth from the orifices of London’s snotty children.

11 months of the year I quite like children. I don’t own any myself but I am quite fond of those belonging to my brother and other friends in Paris. Kids are cute, they say daft things and they are allowed to wear leggings as pants outside the house. Three qualities I am rather envious of. But in December children turn into demon-possessed monsters. They holler in a high-pitched banshee-like fashion at the sight of anything remotely Santa-ish while waving their mitten covered hands in all directions with no regard for anyone or anything nearby. They also seem to be constantly dripping with syrupy moisture from the eye, the nose and the mouth for a whole four weeks before returning chameleon style to the dry, well-mannered little humans we love them to be in January.

Actual Santa, while barely tolerable, is nothing compared to the horror that is the modern corporate invention, Secret Santa. Devised most likely by a well-meaning HR Manager in the mid eighties who was trying to eliminate the high-flying competition of Christmas present purchasing in a Wall St investment bank (Here is your Audi Smythe and thanks for the diamonds Cornelia), Secret Santa has since become the sole reason pound shops have not gone the way of the dodo. 

Watching the dweeb from accounting giggle behind his toupee while you unwrap a penholder that farts every time you remove your pen is a delight reserved for that most festive of moments.

  A Lego Christmas Tree in St Pancras - I can admit it, I liked it.

It must be said that spending time with people you don’t really like is truly the shining star on the just-cut-from-virgin-rainforest Christmas Tree. Running between a candy cane swirl of drinks, dinners, parties and cocktails is not a bad thing, especially if there is free alcohol. Being asked over and again, why I am not flying to Australia (too expensive) whether I will be alone (I won’t) and will I be fake-sad-eye-look “OK” (I will) requires more than the one free glass of cheap wine that I am injecting into my eyeball to avoid having to listen to another mundane conversation about just how great/tough/quick 2011 has been and what about those floods in Queensland blah blah jingle blah.

I am not going to get all ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ on you here but not unlike the Christians perched upon requisite soap boxes screaming to the earphone-deaf hoards about the ‘true meaning of Christmas’ I would like to take a moment and remind you to reflect on what Christmas should be. A time to spend with family, a time to remind each other about the delights of giving rather than getting, and most importantly a time to eat a bucket of fresh prawns.

 

Bring on the starry newness of 2012, I am more than a little bit over 2011.

 

Dog Days Are Over – Florence + the Machine 2008

There is a place so magical and bright that even the distant memory of my first visit to the place brings a nostalgic tear to my increasing short-sighted eye.

I was 22 years old that first time, a virgin whose senses were opened to a place of raw beauty and carnal lust. I had already visited a large chunk of continental Europe, but a well-heeled peninsula had remained thus far elusive. Finally, accompanied by my well-equipped and internet-advised travel companions, Motherbear and AG, we made the treacherous journey over the Alps and down into onto the Elysian Fields below. The fertile green albeit mosquito-ridden fields that entice the uninitiated innocents with their siren call of opera, the syrupy peppery elixir of the olive and the most delicious bloody tomatoes on earth. The place where men, proper good-looking ones not construction labourers, call out to girls like me as my long hair trails in the wind…Bella! A nation where men are men*, they have facial hair and muscly exposed arms, and are masculine enough to wear pink polo shirts and white loafers or the most immaculately tailored suits designed by their countrymen Giorgio and Ermenegildo and still not appear gay.

  Five minutes in town and I've discovered the food

That testosterone charged place is Italy. The Mediterranean Boot kicking France and the rest of Europe far away from its azure watered coast, owning the sunshine, the sea and the sensuous south.

  Pig in all it's forms, be sure to sew up the mouth...

Frequent visitors to the ongoing saga of M will know that my last visit to Italy was cut tragically short by the separation with the F-Word. His opening argument was, “I do not want to go to Florence on Saturday”. Italy being such a hedonistic dreamland fantasy for me, I was more devastated not see Florence than his leaving me. I was devastated that my love of this warm, sensual country would forever be tainted by the memory of his cold dismissal. 

The Farmacia Santa Maria Novella... love potion?

It took me a little over 6 months, but I made it back. I went to Florence; I had a room with a view, a view almost of the Arno and completely of the Ponte Vecchio and I spent three sun-drenched glorious days eating and drinking and sleeping and walking and relaxing and wishing.

Italian Humour

The Body, a most excellent friend blessed with brains, beauty and a job that pays her to live temporarily in the Tuscan capital, has been living the highlife in the ochre-hued town I first discovered on screen in the Merchant Ivory adaptation of E.M. Forster’s, A Room with a View.  The film that would make a star of Helena Bonham Carter as well as of her long mane of tumbling brown curls. I loved the cream marbled scenery, I fell girlishly in love with Rupert Graves who plays the younger brother, and any movie blessed with the twin RSC trained acting talent of Judi Dench and Maggie Smith is sure to leave it’s mark on a teenage girl obsessed with BBC bonnet dramas. It did, and in 2007 I first made my pilgrimage to the Arno and the ancient city straddling its banks. It was only two days, but in 48 hours I managed to take in the greatest hits of Italian art, Botticelli, Michelangelo, Titian and Caravaggio before leaving all too soon and desperate to return.

  Neptune surveys his domain

This time, recovered from the distress of my last operatic Italian adventure, I was determined to indulge, to enjoy, not to plan, and just take it all in…

On the first day, a three-course lunch in a restaurant that most definitely had a view preceded a three-course dinner with The Body that was preceded by a bottle of Champagne and followed by drinks in a Terrazzo. If you’ve been reading this for longer than a month you are well acquainted with the Herculean strength of my much-abused liver and my passion for too much very good cheese. Truffles, mozzarella, a piece of beef grilled and served only with salt, rosemary dusted potatoes and the creamiest Tiramisu; I mean really, how is it that just one narrow nation can lay claim to so much deliciousness, and that is only the food! The verdant freshness of Pinot Grigio, the spicy warmth of Brunello and the honey-like syrup Vin Santo accompanied by biscotti that you steep in the glass in lieu of a heavier dessert all serve to remind you that it was in fact the Italians who taught the French how to make wine.

The view...over the Arno

The city itself is so beautiful, I can’t pretend to have the words to describe it, and besides, many of you I am sure have seen it before. That so many spectacular Palazzos and marble statue dotted Piazzi could be crammed into a space that requires only a couple of hours to discover on foot is truly incredible. That it has remained largely intact after all those wars, Mussolini and even Berlusconi, is astounding. Every street corner opens up onto another ancient church or some other medieval treasure. David’s steely gaze watches over the crowded hoards in at least three different open spaces in the city. Lovers meander along the lanes, couture-clad women walk about to buy bread and the omnipresent river of American tourists queue to buy pizza and diet-coke only to complain that the pizzas don’t taste like ‘real pizza’.

  David surveys Florence from high above at the Piazzale Michelangelo

And then there are the Italians.

If the Italians created the Catholic Church and there is a God to be prayed to in their myriad ornate marble churches then that God must be seated upon a white moulded plastic chair. Some time after the Italians discovered plastic instead of marble, they decided that all chairs should be moulded from one pristine piece of white plastic and that those chairs should be sent forth into the world beyond heralding the Italian Diaspora, most especially in their restaurants that serve anything at all with a giant Black Pepper Grinder.

  Pure white, pure plastic, pure Italian 

Italians have managed to perfect the art of good living. In France, good living is the logical outcome of their revolutionary individualism. Taking time for a lingering lunch is as much a right as it is a desire to sit and spend two hours eating. In Italy, shaky economy and shakier political scene, they’ve got so much less to lose. A laid-back lifestyle is an antidote to the insanity of their daily evermore-corrupt reality as it is a traditional way of life. And the way the men look at you…I’d risk the safety of my pseudo-socialist Gallic ghetto for a lifetime of “bella!” as I wander the corsos, the vias and the piazzas.

  Perfetto!

The Italians are so unaware of how lucky they are to be native in a country rich from its freezing alpine north to the corrupt sunburnt south with baroque beauty and culinary delights that they’ve become totally oblivious. During that first lunch, I sat in a restaurant that looked over the river straight at the Uffizi. The Uffizi is the veritable home of Italian art. Nowhere in Italy is there a larger and more diverse collection, spearheaded by the big-as-your-living-room Venus di Botticelli, she of the long blond hair and wobbly thighs sprouting from within a clamshell.

  Even the intercoms are bellissimo

As I stared out across the water wondering what Firenze might have looked or smelled like at the time of Sandro and his probable working girl Venus, I noticed a group of ten men playing five-a-side football, sweating and running, bouncing and kicking, cheering and jeering, all against the wall of the Uffizi. That a young misty-eyed girl from Sydney would have travelled across the globe just to visit this one place lost on a group of men who use the foreground of the art world’s Mecca to square up for a bit of Friday afternoon fun. That paintings preserved for 500 years are holed up in the darkened corridors of the Uffizi does not register for the average Florentine. Everything is old, everything is beautiful, the food is always this good, and besides, given the state of the Euro, they’ve got bigger problems to ponder.

Footballers in front of the Uffizi

With my Italian first name, my brown curls and my rounded Botticelli belly, I’ve often been mistaken for an Italian; it should be noted that a good portion of Sydney’s residents have an Italian ancestor or six. While I am the daughter of a post-war immigrant, he came from the conservative United Kingdom and not the sultry Roman Empire. I do love tomatoes, I do love two women, one named Madonna and another named Florence and if I was cursed to only ever eat one thing for the rest of my days I might just choose the aniseed crunch of fennel. With my just-too-loud voice, my hands as punctuation when I talk and my penchant for melodrama, I might just be re-born of some ancient woman of Toscana.

 

Whatever your take, mine is that after three days in the sun, the dog days are most definitely over

 

 The View from The Body's Room.

 

 

* So much so that their former president is better know for his libido than his legislation. Bunga Bunga!