High Contrast Grey.

So, I haven't written much lately.. but from the doldrums of the end of semester I then entered a time period of a flânerie across France. A last hurrah. Jessye came to visit again and the tiny room was packed up all into a few suitcases, the largest being named Bertha, and Rennes was left behind, although not before having a picnic in Thabor for the last Saturday market... We got the essentials. Madeleines (where as I reached the front of the line the vendor greeted me with a question of, '6 madelines?') with a few more of that vendor's delicious delights, like those bite size rolls with jams and caramel and chocolate.. Then of course the impossible cow cheese that acted like goat cheese and was rolled in Provencal  herbs. And of course a baguette from the amazing bakery covered in tiles. A trip to Thabor with Jessye was never complete without a stop at the aviary. And some people watching. A mohawked punk rocker walks a little girl hand in hand through th...

 The weather was too beautiful to stay indoors in front of a computer screen. Lightly overcast. Raining, but not in that sense that anyone from a rainy region would call it raining. And a wind that was neither cold, nor warm. Only something to direct the refreshing water onto one's face. Since I had heard that everything was going to be closed due to the Monday after Easter being a bank holiday I decided to wander the streets of Rennes in what I assumed would be empty. I wanted to find something new. I was looking for a section where the old and beautiful architecture had stretched out an arm like an amoeba and wasn't restricted to the small sections I had already wandered. In taking the train to Nantes I had remembered seeing sections of the city from the speeding train that looked interesting so I went to Gares to begin my wanderings. I headed West along the tracks. Soon I came across one of those many areas that I have been finding while wandering about Rennes. The edg...

 As I wandered the Saturday market I thought up the idea of getting different things in which I could make a picnic for one. I got my usual large madelines with the little bump on the bottom. Some cheese covered in herbs. It acts like a spreadable chèvre, but the lady reassured the ladies in line in front of me that it was actually cheese from cows milk. Then some avocados. Baked crisps with sea salt and seaweed. The quintessential bagette. And a small bottle of white wine. Everything for a perfect little picnic.  Except it was a picnic in which everything went wrong. One of the avocados had started to turn and had exploded. And the wine cork had been soaking for too long and just deteriorated every time I tried to get it out. The wrapping for the top of the bottle sliced the side of my middle finger. A cut that looked like a bloody version of the 'crack on Amy's wall.' In the end I was forced to push the cork down into the bottle and drink the wine through ...

 I received an SMS about my cell phone being fixed so I decided to take a break from studying to go and pick it up. Wander Rennes and see what the commencement of spring has done. The leaves has started to return. Flowers are budding. I roll the sleeves up on my shirt and don't take a jacket. The tie has felt too formal lately. I see a french man on the metro and think differently. His hair is long and shaggy and a mess. His tie is not too wide and not too thin. Dark blue with dots. As I wandered the neighbor hood near by I realized I was near the old building that I saw months ago when Fulya and I rode bikes looking for Emmaus. I sadly didn't have my camera with me and I wanted to come back and take a picture, but I just hadn't gotten around to wandering this part of town since. I was thinking I wouldn't again before I left since Emmaus had moved away. If I were to choose a neighborhood in Rennes in which to live I think I would choose not too far from here,...

This weekend I decided to once again go by another town in Bretagne. I wasn't sure where to go so after getting a breakfast of a caramel crêpe from the market I went to the train station and looked on the ticket machine for the next departures and were I was leaning towards going by Saint-Malo again I thought that I should once again try someplace new, so I saw that the train for Vannes was leaving in the next 10 minutes and I knew nothing of the town. A few moments later of pressing on a glass screen I had a ticket and was sitting on the train shuffling my tarot deck. Upon arriving at the town I couldn't quite figure out where I was or where to go. The train station appeared to the on the outskirts of the town so I followed some people who got off the train with me to see if they would lead me to centre-ville. Although I lost them when I started taking photos I still soon made it to centre-ville. In knowing nothing and just seeing the town to me it felt like perhaps it ha...

The weather here in Rennes lately has been gorgeous. Warm misty fog.

 For a few weeks now I have been trying to plan going by Saint-Brieuc to see an art museum that has a free exhibition on the art of Henri Rivière going on right now. I arrived at just about lunch time so I set out to find myself some lunch before going by the museum. From the financial shopping area I found myself making circle until I found myself in a more medieval section that had some restaurants. Although because of all the circling around I was a bit lost. Sadly not truly lost. Three cheese baked potato with two salads and a glass of red wine. At one point in my wandering I saw a sign that said to turn to go to a valley and as I was wandering and not wanting to take the same road to get back to where I came from I thought, 'why not?' The sidewalk turned to dirt path and I found myself deep in a valley with tall modern residence buildings peeking up from the trees on the top of the hill. More paths up the valley to make it back to the city. I come ...

Since the castle was closed on Monday and Fougères was such a neat little town a return spur of the moment trip was planned. It still had that eerie feeling with no one about except a few old ladies who gave us odd looks as we walked through their neighborhood taking quick snapshots of their quaint little cottages. The doors had a je ne sais quoi beauty about them that I couldn't help but photograph. The weather was beautiful this time. Overcast. Tiny droplets hovering in the air to be caught by the lenses on my glasses. The castle was shrouded in a thin layer of fog. Old. Covered in moss. We were given a little electronic thing we held up to our ears to hear the history of the castle. Voices with unknown accents. Each voice served a role; dull history, military history, high pitched feminine. We would laugh unsyncronized at word choice. About halfway through the different things to listen to we gave up. The knowledge of the thickness of each of the towers was not exact...

 We left Rennes in the morning with the plan of hopping a few buses to go to Saint Malo, but as we rode the bus through Dinan we decided that we should just hop out and check out this town. Medieval. Steep hills with narrow cobbled winding streets. An antique store or artist gallery on almost every street (or so it felt). This was definitely an interesting little town. Sadly because of it being a vacation for most of the country a lot of the interesting little shops were closed. Peering into darkened store fronts. When we arrived it was right at lunch time so I thought it would be nice to find a little 'hole in the wall' restaurant to get some food. We wandered all over, tracing back over our steps until we came to Crêperie des Artisans just past the opening of the city wall constructed in the 14th century. When we walked in we were greeted with a collection of antiques and everything in a shade of brown, plus the unmistakable aroma of burning wood. They had a pot...

The other day I was told about how to use the bus system here in France. I kept thinking that it was something like the train system where one needed to find a ticket somehow beforehand, but I found that it is much simpler than that. A person goes to the station pays about €3 and then waits fof the bus, or else it is possible to pay for the bus on the bus. Anyways, I went by the station early Monday morning to figure out times and prices and found that for only €3,40 I could get a ticket for Fougères. So I get the ticket and wait at the bus stop for the next few minutes for the bus to arrive. A dull drive through the country side that has started showing the brown of winter. I kind of wish I had brought my mp3 player to have a sound track to the drive, but I hadn't planned on leaving town and sitting in a bus. The bus comes in to the town from the side that has all the medieval buildings. I wander off the bus at some random stop before the bus station to look at all the m...

A tradition I developed back in Seattle was that I would go for a long walk and admire the beauty of the city. October 2007 I go for a walk on Capitol Hill. Its raining hard. I put Hang Me Out to Dry by the Cold Wars Kids on repeat. Or rather I just pushed the back button each time it came to an end. A faulty download that ended a few seconds short. Mid breath. Last word lost. Thankfully the nights have started warming up again and allowing me to walk and see them once again. Cloud cover trapping the heat. The stars become lost and replaced by the street lights above. I have loved wandering Rennes at night. The inspiration it provides. The way the light dances off the buildings. The way the cobbled streets shine irregulary when wet from the latest rain. The mixture of colors of lights. The complex beauty that is a city at night. Where people are either illuminated by the lights around them or shrouded in darkness. The idea that one can become lost. One thing I have n...

Bringing a bit of Paris with me, in the sense of simple breakfast food. I made myself a bagette with butter and jam for breakfast. A bagette that has lasted me days in making the same meal multiple times. The crust has become hard and crumbly, but the center has remained soft. Last night I started to make myself some ravioli I bought cheap from the carrefour, but as I poured the noodles into the water beginning to boil I noticed that mold had started to form on them. (The downside of buying things on their day of expiration.) Let down and left a little hungry I decided to treat myself to a nice sunday brunch the next day at L'épicerie. One of the few places open on sunday. It has a cozy interior. /I noticed them selling antiques at one of the local antique markets once/. Paying attention to when being seated I ask to be sat in the back room with Inga. Filled with antiques and coated in wallpaper. The menu is rather limited to just tartines (the specials of the day always ...