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les sons du jardin
There is something sweet about taking refreshments in a nice garden setting. The people watching. The birds and insects in the flowers.
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Oh, is that what it means
I’ve been gaining confidence in the whole morning greeting thing. Bonjour, easy enough. When you are working from a script, it all goes well until people start hitting you with the variations. So this morning as I’m greeting people, I meet the secretary, “bonjour” I say, “something something something” she say in return. I assume…
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Strasbourg
Off to Strasbourg. Longer trip, 1.5 hours, more interesting countryside and canals. The cathedral here has is undergoing a big clean (there has been a major program all of France it seems). The stone here is not the very pale sand colour of elsewhere, more of a red. The spire is very finely carved and…
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Nancy
The former regional captial. Bigger than Metz, a lot more guilding, older archetecture feel and so on. Went to the school of the arts museum and the art gallery. Both interesting but quirky. (what regional museum isn’t). Spent a bit of time in the main park. Children’s zoo, peacocks roaming wild, stealing food and all…
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Paris
I went back to Paris last weekend to pick May up from the airport. Since I had a few hours to kill before she would arrive it was an excellent chance to go for a long walk around some of the parts I knew from my last visit in 2006: Opera, Montmartre & Scaré Coeur.…
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How to book TGV tickets
When I booked tickets from Australia we had a hard time using the TGV/SNCF website. Since I was going to pickup tickets in France, we selected France as the country to pick them up in. If you do that, you get no language choice after that, French for you. It was quite a trial, including…
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Luxembourg
On spec I took the TER to Luxembourg. Travelling anywhere by train here seems to be fun. The shear scale of investment in trackwork. Why we thought it was a good idea to unload cars in Port Kembla then truck them up Mt Ousley back to Sydney I don’t know. Of course you see endless…
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Fun at the supermarché
This is the start of the long weekend here. Note: that means nothing much is open, so I needed to go shopping, and buy some essentials. Naturally things are really crowded as everyone tries to buy stuff on the way home from work. This would always be a test of my minimal French vocab. Problem…
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Local customs
I’m getting used to some of the French work customs slowly. I had not realised that when you arrive for work you should visit the office of everyone already there, shake hands and greet them. I’ve shaken more hands in the last couple of days than in the last year in Australia. I guess the…
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It’s the little things
It should be obvious, but it isn’t. If future exchange happens, think about how you will handle non-qwerty keyboards. I nearly touch type. I can’t tell you how much pain I’m in right now. At least I’ve managed to get the default locale to not be in French (try working out what compiler error messages…