If there's a place in France where the naked ladies dance, we didn't go there.

"Ah, France!" That's what I say now after I burp in stead of atsiprašau. You see, I didn't meet any Frenchmen on my travels who dispelled the notion I have of them as rude bastards; therefore, the notion has been corroborated by lack of negation.

Shall I begin at the beginning? No that's boring. And I'll also skip my review of Ryanair because that'll be a-whole-nother blog entry.

Wednesday

We showed up at the subway station and met Moacir in the evening as planned. Our journey to Paris was almost over. We drank a beer on the walk from the subway to his place--it's not Vilnius, he explained, nobody cares if you drink in the street. Fine by me.

We got to his place and unloaded our stuff. If I had condensed this to one my my "Dos and Don'ts of a Trip" write-ups, the first do would be Do stay with Moacir. The convenience of getting extensive daily practical guidance and having a local as a companion most of the time was invaluable. When we arrived he had some leek and potato soup prepared for us, some stinky cheeses, and a very interesting tasty cake. It's a King Cake, which is illegal in America because there's a surprise inside: a plastic toy. Whoever get the toy in his piece of cake is then made king by a cardboard crown that comes with the cake.

Conclusion: Grocery store food in France is great!

Thursday

We took the subway to the Harlem of Paris, Barbès Street. You walk out of the subway and dozens of Africans try to sell you contraband Marlboro Reds. Your wife says, wow, everybody's so black in Paris! You go to eat and there's no pork. So it was a neat place to see, and in fact the restaurant we went to, Le Nioumré, was excellent. I got the lamb and my special lady got the chicken. They were served in metal bowls with lots of sauce and a huge platter of rice on the side for the two of us, we served ourselves onto blank plates. My sauce was a regular red sauce, hers was a very spicy lemon sauce. Delicious as it was, we couldn't finish it. We ate all the meat, but there was rice and sauce left, which is a winning combination in my book, but I simply couldn't eat anymore. That never happens!

We then strolled through a gorgeous park up the hill to the The Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus of Paris (Sacré-Cœur Basilica). It had fascinating stairs, especially the railings: they were concrete replicas of wood, but they were so well done that in the spot on a log where moss might grown between the timber and a piece of bark, moss grew here, too. Neato.

After a bunch of walking around and looking at stuff came the most unpleasant part of the trip. My special lady went up to the first landing of the long stairway up to the Basilica, and I stayed down at the bottom to photograph her. But she never showed up on the first landing. Fearing she'd been accosted, I ran to follow, luckily, because it turned out I was right: a bunch of Africans had blocked her path up and forced her to try on a bracelet, and then tried to force her to pay for it. I got there just in time. They tried to do the same to me, but I had none of it, and got her the fuck out of there, but not without taunts and insults from them. We left with a dilemma rather than the picture we wanted: if I didn't have my wife with me to protect I wouldn't have held my tongue (which surely would have gotten me into a fight); but, if I didn't have my wife with me, I wouldn't have had anything to do with them in the first place.

Next we meandered to an art show for an Antanas Sutkus exhibition. The wine was poor but it was free. The art was good but expensive, and anyway we weren't about to start buying books to fly home with. This was about the time we came across our first pee pod: free public toilets that wash themselves after every use. They are very useful, but I think after every use is overkill: besides the waste, you have to wait a minute between each person's use, and add to that the time it takes for the door to automatically open, close, and then again open, and close. If Moacir, my special lady, and I all go to pee, it takes five whole minutes. She and I usually went in together to save time, but that's technically against the rules.

We went home, ate some baguettes and delicious stinky cheese, and began watching Community, a very good show that we ended up watching a few episodes of most evenings.

Friday

Moacir doesn't work Fridays, so we took off together in the morning. We walked from his place to the Eiffel Tower, seeing many things on the way--not a short distance, about four miles. But also did an obscene amount of shopping on the way; we estimated an additional four miles walking around shopping centers. We were very tired by the time we got to the tower (I would have gladly given up and picnicked on a bus stop bench), but the picnic lunch was fantastic: baguettes, some other whole-wheaty sort of bread, hummus, some other spicy sauce, two types of olives, smoked sausage, various stincky cheeses, swiss cheese, Arugula, three bottles of wine, and two cans of Dr. Pepper.

We had to sit down on the most secluded bench in the park overlooked by the Eiffel Tower because, although drinking in public is not against the rules in Paris, it is against the rules in this park. You might guess that to keep tourists from getting to rowdy, but I suspect it's to keep tourists from seeing all the Parisian winos. We began with the refreshing soda, which my special lady and I hadn't tasted for years since we were in Minneapolis last. Long time for Moacir too, so that was a tasty treat. We moved on to the wine and olives, the hummus and bread, then the cheese and sausage and baguettes and lettuce, which we used for sandwiches. Moacir had brought wine glasses, so we were styling.

One cop rode by about forty feet from us, so luckily we moved our glasses into extra discreet position, because seconds later two other cops rode up on horseback just ten feet away behind Moacir's back. He heard them coming, and so didn't look. One stopped, then the other stopped and backed up, and I, having been caught mid-sentence, was then obliged to keep talking, to feign nonchalance, and with my voice slightly raised, to make sure they could hear that we speak a language they don't know. Of course, we probably might English too, but what horse-riding frog-eating surrender-monkey cop wants the trouble having to explain that you can't drink wine here in English to people who might not even understand English, or at least his English? Not these two, because they turned around and went the other way. Success.

We went home, played a little buck euchre, my special lady took her reprieve, one of Moacir's friends, Linas, show up, and we played Tūkstantis till the cows came home (cows come home at 3a.m.).

Saturday

Waking up at 8 a.m. after those stupid cows came home last night--not the funnest moment of the trip. But we had an early engagement, so we had to get going. By ten o'clockish we were at the French National Assembly, which is apparently a big deal. Some Frenchman on the street was surprised we were getting a tour. Anybody who passes a background check can tour our Parliament in Vilnius. Isn't the same true for Congress the States?

The Assembly was interesting. Well, the only part that was really neat for me was the two faced painting of the king. Some legend went with it, and it was neat.

After that we went with some of the other young folks for lunch. The food was not expensive and the wine was okay. But there was something off about the food. At first it was a meat sandwich, good, and something I couldn't quite put my finger on... potatoes! Potatoes au gratin in the sandwich! Potato chips may well make for a tasty sandwich addition. Potatoes au gratin do not.

Sunday

We went to a world famous falafel place—some rock star loves the food there. We walked aournd town again and went to see the Notre Dame cathedral. We ended up at a bar called WOS where the owner, Pierre, loves Lithuanians. We went there to watch the Seattle Seahawks play the Chicago Bears, I think it was an important game leading up o the Super Bowl. Moacir kept singing the fight song over and over again:

Bear down, Chicago Bears, make every play clear the way to victory;
Bear down, Chicago Bears, put up a fight with a might so fearlessly.
We'll never forget the way you thrilled the nation with your T-formation.
Bear down, Chicago Bears, and let them know why you're wearing the crown.
You're the pride and joy of Illinois, Chicago Bears, bear down.

Monday

We tried to go to the catacombs, but they were closed. We finally made it out to the toy store. I always try to bring back locally-made tradition gifts: a dress for the wife, a doll for the #1 daughter, and a souvenir shot glass for myself. I give the dolls local names. The glasses are the hardest to find locally-made, but the others can be too. Often the best I can find is not-made-in-China. But I always try. We got a few addresses for toy stores, and the first one was good enough: we got #1 a kitchen set with plastic dishes and utensils made in France, and we got the #2 a squeaking chicken made in the Philippines (I still think it’s actually a dog toy, but she likes it).

On the way back we stopped for pizza. I always like to try the pizza whereever I go. The best I’ve had in Europe was in Denmark, but it was made by an English born Arab. The best I’ve ever had in the States was delivered in Buffalo, I’m trying to remember the name of the place. The French pizza was pretty good, but what I really like was that each pizza came with a condiment: hot pepper oil.

Tuesday

We succeeded in getting into the catacombs. The story is at some point in the 18th century there wasn’t any more room in Paris to bury people (Paris is actually smaller than Vilnius), so they decided to turn former mines into catacombs. All the human bones buried in Paris were transferred there because they had piled up so much there were starting to cause disease—the catacombs contain the remains of about 6,000,000 people! The bones are stacked to fit in most places. It's pretty unbelievable. On the way out the guard stopped us to check our bags. When we asked if people steal bones he showed us a few. I asked him if those were from this morning, as a joke, but he said yes. There was a skull and seven other bones.

In this evening we went back to the Eiffel Tower: seeing it in the twighlight was my special lady's dream come true. It was a good thing we went back because evening is when all the bootleggers are out selling souvenirs. We bought two large mini Eiffel Tower and five small mini Eiffel Tower for 3€. They would have cost at least triple that in shops.

Wednesday we went home.

Wanna Business Trip Report Fast?

I present here a generic business trip report practically nobody couldn't hand in. Fill in a few blanks and maybe you'll need to change a few words. But far fewer than I had to change after finding this sample.

In ________I attended meetings in ________which were held at _________. The meeting leader was _________, a lecturer and administrator at _________.

We talked about strategic alignment – how important it is that our office enables our office strategy, which supports our institution’s strategy. We looked at the challenges presented today. We must use multiple media and build relationships– not just service short term needs.

We learned the “why, what, how, who, when” of a broad array of technologies, from basic functions to advanced tools. We started with a discussion about infrastructure.

We talked about capabilities, at both basic and advanced levels. We also looked at advanced management tools such as workforce management systems, simulation tools, and quality and logging systems. We talked about self service and the powerful case it can have with the right application opportunities. We discussed things like conditional and skills based systems. The advanced technologies will help delivering better service to our students.

We looked at the specific capabilities of each technology, as well as the challenges it addresses. For each one, we discussed the major issues. Updates to this will be available to us on an ongoing basis.

The instructor explained how the various technologies work together, and how different configurations could address similar issues. We also talked about the benefits to the institution, manager, the office, and of course, the student.

We had group exercises to apply what we were learning, and a lot of good discussion among the group members. In addition to the materials already mentioned, the course packet included a number of other useful takeaways, including a glossary, and a brochure.

I think this course was worth attending. I would recommend that others from our organization attend. I learned a lot about the many technologies and have new ideas about why they make sense in our work and what we should do next.

Vegetarianism One Month at a Time

Thanksgiving: sixteen pounds of turkey, five pounds of pork (in the sausage stuffing), and a pound or so of bacon bits in the potato salad. Although we had a few guests, we had all the leftovers to ourselves. Now that's what I call a meat orgy.

Now what do people do the morning after an orgy? Bang, again? No, they just leave to go home without looking too many people in the eye. So I figured it should be after a meat orgy: let's try living without meat for a month.

Rules: no new meat from November 27th until Christmas Eve. I would have said Christmas but the Christmas Eve fish counts. I decided to go all out (Moacir) instead of pesco-vegetarian (Ed). However, the exception (and it's a big exception) is that I could still eat old meat, such as the leftovers from Thanksgiving. But this is reasonable: I figure, okay, so you become a vegetarian--that doesn't mean you toss all the meat you already own, right? I abhor food waste. But besides this one exception I was determined to make no others, particularly regarding eating out, so that I would get a real glimpse of what a few of my friends live like.

Those leftovers kept me meated up for a good week...you wouldn't believe how much stuffing you just keep finding in the bird, it's like it's multiplying! This was very lucky, because I could bring turkey sandwiches to work each day. The cafeteria where I work is not the most vegetarian friendly place around ("Excuse me, is there any meat in this vegetable soup?" "Of course there is, how can you have soup with no meat?!").

My first incident came on Friday: I was invited to lunch with a group of education experts visiting us from around Europe. Usually I'm happy to get a free lunch, and usually I enjoy sticking out, but this is a serious crowd. I ate my salad being careful to scrape all the crab meat to the side of my plate. That was no biggie, but I knew they'd be serving meat as the entrée (How can you have lunch with no meat?). They did. But one of the experts who is Lithuanian pointed out that our French guest doesn't eat meat, and I was able to slip in with "Neither do I!" Phew. So, naturally, everybody began eating his meat while they went back to the kitchen to make us crepes; otherwise, their food would get cold. They were about done eating when I said to my French colleague, "These are gonna be some great crepes!" We all laughed, but is this really the life of a vegetarian? Sometimes, when a lunch is poorly organized, you have to wait while everybody else is eating? That sucks.

My next incident came that very evening. I wrote it up here. I wonder if real vegetarians are ever caught so off guard.

The next week I went to a seminar that was better organized: the coordinator asked everybody ahead of time about dietary restrictions. She thought I was joking when I said no meat. How about fish, she asked. No, fish is meat I said, it's just poor man's meat. One of the seminar participants knew me from my old job in Klaipeda. When she went into the lunch room and and saw the styrophome box seperate from all the normal other food, she said, "Somebody's a vegetarian? It's probably Aras." She said it in a positive way, so I was happy to get this unexpected compliment.

Incidentally, I later asked her why she jumped to that conclusion. Turns out she remembers once at college when I tried this diet where I order kefir and vegetables including tomatoes, beets, and cabbage for lunch, put them in a blender I brought from home, and gag the cocktail down. I remember it as gross, but she remembers it as innovative and unusual (like vegetarianism).

My next incident came when I got the reminder about the upcoming Gentlemen's Dinner that takes place every 6 weeks. Here's my email reply to Alex, who organizes them:

During the meat orgy we call Thanksgiving, I decided to try eating less meat over the following month--as a challenge. A sort of vegetarian light--no new meat purchases: I still ate the leftover from the holiday, those lasted almost a week, and I can eat meat from the freezer. The purpose isn't weight loss, but my pants do feel a little looser after two weeks.

It's going quite well sociologically also. I've had several interesting/uncomfortable experiences of having to say "Oh, sorry, I won't be able to eat that," and I've made good friends with my Vegetables cook book and the vegetable chapters in several volumes.

And then I got your reminder. First I thought, "Oh nice!" and then I thought "Oh crap! Well actually, this will be another interesting vegetarian experience...eating around the meat with a bunch of people all enjoying the same thing except for me...but shit, 100 lits is alot of money even with the meat, can I afford to drop that just for a little anomie? Wait a second...I RSVPed to this before Thanksgiving, so maybe this counts as food from the freezer...yes, sure it does, food from the freezer. I'm going!"

The last incident was my office's Christmas party. We went to Bravaria, which I organized. I chose it based on the beer, not the food, which turned out to be a mistake. When I asked her to show me the vegetarian entrées, the waitress told me, "Uhm, not really, we don't make those. Take a look at the salads." And voilá! There was indeed one salad without meat in it. Is this the life of a vegetarian?

Now, at this point, if you're vegetarian, you may be thinking, just go to vegetarian restaurants. Well guess what, vegetarian restaurants are few and of dubious quality, at least in Vilnius. I remember how anxious Ed was about the fate of the Lebanese place on Traku; it's one of the good ones.

The incidents would have been far more if I hadn't avoided eating out. It seemed like too much hassle, and as I said to Alex, I'm not going to pay restaurant prices for something with no meat! Furthermore, Gedas once undertook a study that proved that vegetarian dishes are significantly more expensive than meat dishes at Lithuanian restaurants.

Besides these incidents, there was one fun aspect of the meat-free month, as I mentioned in my email to Alex: I spent much more time than usual with my Vegetables and other cook books. One recipe that is definitely here to stay is Ratatouille. Man, how can it be so good with no meat? Fried eggplant sandwiches, too, so I guess eggplant is the big winner here. Also Old Maids, which are pretty similar to English muffins.

The other upside of this month was that it gave me an excuse I always welcome: an excuse to make myself a BBQ Bacon Explosion for Christmas!