Category: An American in Paris

I bought this wine based on its name alone. Again, I could whittle away hours in supermarkets here, laughing at the names…

Sometimes I think I could amuse myself for hours just by walking around supermarkets here and looking at the names of the products…

A bar on rue Oberkampf. I have to wonder if they grasped all the implications…

“Pinball Machine” in English is << flipper >> in French.

Visiting a friend at Columbia University. Why are there French laundries in the US, but not, for example, German or Belgian? At least they’re ‘bon’.

Probably my upbringing, but this Norwalk storefront seems like a much more natural setting for a church than the big, spooky edifices in Paris.

This seems like a poor choice of names for a condo block in Norwalk, CT. For a number of reasons…

I was wandering through a sporting goods store while home for the holidays and came across this.

Instant Creme Brulee.

This just seems crazy to me. What’s wrong with nuts and raisins for your hike?

Am I becoming too French? Or too anti-consumer?

One of the things I like about Europe is being able to travel by train. And given the train situation in California, I’m always surprised by how good they are here.

I took the picture on the right a couple of weeks ago on the return leg of a visit to CERN, just outside of Geneva. 296 kilometers per hour is about 184 mph.

The fast trains here are called TGVs. One of my big disappointments here, however, was when I finally found out what TGV stood for. Technologically Great Vision? Totally Groovy Vehicle? Nope. “Train a Grande Vitesse” — basically, “High Speed Train”. Yawn.