Arc de Triomphe

I have a problem. I have all these awesome pictures, and stories to go with them, and I want to share them with all of you. But I think I have a solution. Take, for example, the Arc de Triomphe. Alyson and I went here on our second day in Paris, our first full day of touring around. This was the day we went to the Louvre, walked through the Jardin des Tuileries, saw the Musee d'Orangerie, walked up the Champs Elysees, got really hungry in the most expensive part of Paris and found a pizza place that sold us cheese and pepperoni pizza for under $20 (each), and climbed the Arc de Triomphe. We also went to the Eiffel Tower, but you've already seen some of those pictures.

The point is, here are some of the pictures Alyson and I took:
http://picasaweb.google.com/max.f.brugger/ArcDeTriomphe?feat=directlink

The museum pass we bought got us to the top for free. There were some incredible views of the Eiffel Tower, the business sector of the city, the Tour Montparnasse, the Sacre Coeur in Montmartre, and the Champs-Elysees. The Champs-Elysees was the expensive street we walked up -- beautiful and clean, but lined with the priciest of the pricy Dolce & Gabbana & Gucci etc. We really kind of freaked out when we realized we'd be eating there. I never thought I'd be so happy to pay about $14 for a pizza!

Travel Day!

Alyson is already on her flight home, and I'm about to get kicked off of the 1 hour Internet pass I got from our hotel. I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who's been following our blog; it's been great to share our adventures and pictures with you.

After this point, whenever Aly or I post pictures or stories it will be of course from our homes in Portland or Corvallis. However, there is a lot more to show, so I hope you'll keep reading. Some of the future highlights -- the Louvre, the Musee d'Orsay, Notre Dame, the Promenade Plantee, Paris from the streets and Paris from above, Food, the Gardens of Versailles, and the Jardin du Luxembourg.

Also, by midnight of the 31st, we will have uploaded many of our pictures to the Picasa Web Album that corresponds with this blog, so be sure to look at those pictures. I'll put a reminder here at that time, too.

Again, it's been a great trip and thank you for following us along!

Musee de l'Orangerie

After we saw the Louvre, we were a little art-exhausted. We walked across the Jardin des Tuileries (the royal gardens) and sat for a while and decided we had just enough art-stamina in us for the Musee de l'Orangerie. We didn't regret it.



The top floor of the museum is made up of two white, oval rooms, with benches along the middle, and, in each, four of Monet's waterlily paintings stretching all around you. They progress through the seasons, showing the same scene in different lights; delicate hues of purple, orange, and greens playing across the water and the reeds.

On the lower level, there is some great impressionistic art, and even a modern exhibit. I think we will come back to that when we talk about the Musee d' Orsay. Instead, I'd like to include one of my favorite parts of the Spring waterlilies painting, with the tree.

Montmartre, Sacre Coeur, and DALI

Montmartre reminded me heavily of Saint-Flour. The winding streets and sedate avenues where two could walk (mostly) away from the other tourists.

I could have curled up there for days.

But the reason we got up early that day was to see Sacre Coeur:

one of the most recently built basilicas in Paris. It was built as a sort of penance for the events of the Franco-Prussian war, and a group of monks and nuns serves here, perpetually observing the Blessed Sacrament. No pictures are allowed inside, and visitors are to remain completely silent. It was a much different experience than Notre Dame, which we'll post about soon, where the focus is firmly off of religion and onto the staggering history of the place.

Also in Montmartre: the DALI museum. We had to go, because it's, you know, Dali. Everybody's favorite mustachioed post-modernist! And quite the collection:

Le Tour Eiffel

We finally made it.

After one night of riding the Metro in circles, and another of fumbling our way around the stops that seemed nearest, we finally wound our way along the Seine and, there she was.

The view up the Eiffel Tower is incredible. The view from the Eiffel Tower is even more incredible.



The top isn't as romantic as everyone maybe thinks it should be because it's so crowded, even at night. But it certainly was beautiful. And lots of people are willing to take your picture!

It seemed more romantic on the first level, where there aren't so many people and you're free to look out at the Champs de Mars (the long lawns leading up to the Eiffel Tower) but we wanted to rush out for the twinkly light show at 11pm. Alyson took a nice picture of the white lights that sparkle the edifice; I just played with my camera. Enjoy!

Paris Traffic & Bordeaux

At last we arrived in Paris, the world's most romantic city. It rained on us. In my mind the best part of this trip has been the rain and the lightning and thunder.

After checking into our hotel we went to a restaurant named after our hotel. It was six PM. Silly Americans -- dinner doesn't start until 8 PM and you cannot enter until 8 PM. It was a wonderful authentic French dinner. We had a Bordeaux with dinner. I was thinking a lot about Bordeaux at dinner and decided it is the perfect wine to go with everything, sort of. Bordeaux is so smooth, it can take the spice out of Thai food, but if you pair it with something too bland it will overwhelm it. Bordeaux is definitely strong, but at the end of the day I don't think you can be disappointed.

Before dinner, to waste time, we wandered around and stopped at a traffic circle and I took far too many pictures of the monument in the center, but the traffic really amused me. If people drove the way they do in Paris in the US, they would be called aggressive drivers, but everyone here drives that way. Drivers in Paris drive with an incredible amount of faith -- faith in everyone around them, the motorcycles and mopeds that slide around cars, the bicyclists that have a separate lane until they cross intersections, and the other drivers who are likely to ignore lights and push through. There's order and beauty to this chaos.


There are no lanes and, after watching drivers for a while, I figured out the movement pattern. There's one line they stop at for some traffic, and then they pull forward while waiting for the next, and then even if the light is red, but no traffic, they go.

Faith... an interesting way to drive.

Surrender Museum in France

There's a joke there, somewhere. But really, on the tourist maps, it boldly proclaims "Surrender Museum." Now, of course, this actually denotes Eisenhower's headquarters in France and the historic room where the Nazi generals signed papers declaring the surrender of their armies, after mounting defeats from both the Russians and the West. Whew!


And Alyson has collected definitive proof that there are, in fact, French military heroes, or 31 pictures of honorable French men in uniform, or pictures of nicely-dressed mannequins that may have born some semblance to the dashing figures cut by those tiny little guys on the horizon, already running away. Anyway, the 31 photos of proof mysteriously disappeared. Only one remained, for the sakes of the vanity of the author:

Champagne Tasting

As a capstone to our visit to Reims, we spent our last evening at a champagne house by the name of Pommery. It was later explained to us that Pommery was hosting exhibits from a new art museum opening, and that the founding mother and daughter were art-lovers -- but as we were walking up the sweeping driveway and passed a massive bird's nest made of shopping carts, we kind of wondered if we'd found the right manor.

The tour is worthwhile for three reasons: (1) you get to see the champagne cellars, which they appropriately call caves. (2) You get to taste some of the best champagne they make afterwards for a (relatively) nominal fee. (3) You learn about different cultures -- mostly that Italians become rude when no one will give them a tour in their own language.

This is what the descent to the caves looked like:

And there was more art than just the shopping carts, too. Birds on guitars! So when they fly off the strings, they strum, which is cool.

The champagne tunnels stretch for about 18km beneath the surface, forming a network out of 120 chalk pits that the Romans had excavated for building materials millenia before. Our tasting was excellent too. So excellent that we bought a bottle of our favorite - the 'Fall time' -- an extra dry 100% chardonnay champagne. Delicious!

Churches in Reims

I know we suck. It may have been a while since our last post... I think that must mean we are having a fantastic time.

While back in Reims, we had a wonderful French breakfast every morning that did not disappoint. On our first (full) day we went to Norte Dame de Reims, which was big and a welcome escape from the heat. Max is estimating I will take roughly 2,000 pictures on this trip, especially after I took 225 of Norte Dame de Reims. It simply was breathtaking and not crowded. It was so peaceful.


This might be the most unfair way to show the church to you. It's the backside and not the first part I saw but the architectural brilliance of these guys from way back is just astounding. These structures survive so much. There had to be some repairs after WWII but generally this structure has stood the test of time.

I have some advice for you: when touring old Catholic churches, bring along someone with a Catholic background. Not only can they explain things like the 14 stations of the cross, but they won't laugh at you when it hits you that these churches are shaped like the cross. The stained glass gets me every time. Notre Dame de Reims was the church in which the Kings of France were crowned, which is strange to think about; that in the place we walked, the former kings have walked before me.

Interestingly, champagne was so important to the region that wine making was even captured in the ancient stained glass:


The stained glass was beautiful and I kind of obsessed over it at St. Remi, (where we went later that day) and where we heard Bach performed. The body of St. Remi was entombed there, which seems common with these old churches and makes me want to leave Europe if zombies ever take over. They would be really really old zombies. The St. Remi basilica was also beautiful and we turned out to spend a lot of time there between the visit, the concert, and a rain escape.

Let me show you more stained glass:


It's beautiful isn't it?

les flanerie musicales de Reims

From the middle of June to the end of July, Reims puts on a daily music festival in the parks and cathedrals and historical places around town. It's probably just for the tourists, but I was excited to find out from our B&B host that the Jazz concert that night was free. And in a park. Here, in fact:



Alyson and I got hungry about halfway through because everyone else had thought to bring a delicious picnic that just anyone could stare at while you at. So we went to an un-American-influenced Asian place with the best little Croque Vietnamiesse things that were a combination of pork and shrimp, wrapped in something like a pork dumpling would be... anyway, amazing. Ten times better.

The concert we just got back from, which ended in a run from the cathedral into a thunderstorm -- without an umbrella! -- was in the Basilique de Saint-Remi. I hope I captured the lighting; my camera was dying something fierce and it really was beautiful.

The symphony performed three pieces made up of arias, bombastic crescendos, latin choruses (translated in the program into French, of all things) and all the trappings of classical music. Delightful! And I even got the student discount...

Champagne Everywhere!!!!

If you can't read the sign it says "Champagne," as does every place in Reims: the coronation city of France. Yes, the kings of France were all crowned in this beautiful tiny city. But, this city is beautiful in a very different way than I am used to.

As the bus took us toward our bed and breakfast I think we were both a little concerned about the state of the outside (ignoring the tiny mess-up with the address). It's so paved! There was no green anywhere! I was slightly concerned there were no trees in this city! Then we found our B&B and its lovely interior garden, and I remembered that gardens and lawns are often on the inside of these houses and they certainly are beautiful.

Our bed and breakfast is grand and, after we settled, we decided to explore the town as we headed to a jazz concert (Max will tell you). We came to many beautiful hidden treasures; they were found nowhere on our tourist map.


This man sits in front of the last remains of the ancient wall that surrounded Reims. Despite my attempts to converse, he just sat there silently and let me get my picture taken with him. We look good together, don't we? My French must have been terrible. Then we came to this charming fellow:


Mr. Marechal... who despite my best attempts to get his attention refused to look down at me. This city certainly is full of interesting treasures!


Like shopping carts in front of Champagne houses...

The Best Comes Last

Yes, it's true. I have arrived, and despite being severely jet lagged (which I really believe is another word for bitchy and tired) I am quite content.

So Washington-Dulles was the first of two ugly airports today. Dulles was ugly but the languages I heard while walking around were beautiful. When I made it to Charles de Gaulle airport, Max and I decided to avoid each other. There is nothing more stressful than having no way to connect and a language barrier between you and everyone else. Once we connected, we were both so relieved to see each other.

Flying into Paris was amazing; I could see the Eiffel Tower through the window as we descended. Like I said, amazing. However, the airport is the opposite. It's filthy. There's cigarette smoke hanging in the air and when you're in the bathroom there's a sign on the trash can in the stall not to throw your needles into it. The ground is awful -- you can feel the filth through your shoes. I shudder to think what shade of gray the floor would be if someone were to take a scrub brush to it, white perhaps?

So Max and I sit, waiting for our train to Reims. I sort of want to sleep but Max seems to think I should adjust to the time. We will be on a train soon to Reims!

Shakespeare and Company

I don't have any pictures for this because a couple things all happened at once. First, I realized that Alyson was coming into town about six hours earlier than I had convinced myself, so I'm not running up and down the four flights of my hostel just to grab some pictures. I'll do that tomorrow while Aly sleeps off the jetlag.

I went to a reading at Shakespeare and Company, in the Latin Quarter, right across the Seine from the looming Notre Dame. Shakespeare and Company is this infamous bookstore that Hemingway mentions in his memoir "A Moveable Feast" and he used to almost live there. It's where he met Gertrude Stein. It was founded by Sylvia Beach. It's kind of a big deal. But it's still very low-key and a quiet place to read away from the throngs of tourists just across the river. I don't know how they did it.

So the reading was by Ruth Waterman, a symphony conductor who responded to a request to come conduct the Sarajevo symphony after, you know, Sarajevo. She talked about her conversations with the instrumentalists -- the hesitance to call back those memories, and then the flood of recollections -- the small moments, the joyous moments, the fear and constant nightly hail of gunfire. For three months no one slept, then, one by one, they learned to cope. One day, after the war, she and the symphony were given samba lessons and drums. After they got a couple basic rhythms down, they processed through the streets and drew out curious shopkeepers and dancing children.

When the talk was almost over, the organizer came in and told us that afterward there would be a signing, some wine, and a treat. She said this with a glimmer in her eye, and it was clear the author was in on the secret. After the last question was answered, Ms. Waterman played a Mostar folk song on her violin, and taught us an accompanying clap rhythm. Then she got up, and walked out.

She told us to follow. We clapped our way down a set of creaky old back stairs to the promenade in front of Shakespeare and Co. and clapped along with the rest of her performance out front, to the bemusement of passing tourists and street riffraff. Then wine was passed out. Then I bought her book and got it stamped with the official Shakespeare and Co. logo. Then she signed the book.

I asked her if any of the musicians in the symphony suffered from hearing loss after the war, and if that was a challenge in training her group. She said she hadn't ever even thought about it, much less noticed it, or been challenged by it. I thought that was weird!

And then, since S&C closes at 11pm, I read a 50s edition of Hammett's "Goodbye my Lovely" for a while on a theater chair plunked underneath the stairs. Just an incredible, incredible place.

Belleville Spicy!

Mine is not the usual Paris experience. So far I have avoided the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, and the Champs-Elysees. Most people try to, you know, seek them out, but I'll see them eventually. Instead I've hunted through the guidebook for terms like "unknown gem" or "worth the trip" as if a strong argument needs to be made for their attention. I have to say, the least impressive thing so far has been the one closest to the beaten path: the Cafe des Phares.

I suppose if I'd gone during one of the actual philosophy sessions it could have been better, but I just stepped in this afternoon, expecting to see students studying, or maybe a Kenny and a Jason arguing in a corner. Instead I saw tourists who had just stepped in expecting to see students studying, or unconventionally-haired young people arguing in a corner. It was, unfortunately, more like a four-dollar coffee nestled in a plasticine tourist trap.

What's awesome though? Weird little ethnic neighborhoods like Belleville. Riding the metro out to a new place is a thrill, and I suppose a little dangerous. The main streets of Paris suck -- they're crammed with cheap foodstalls, depressing little markets, and probably pickpockets, though I haven't had a single problem. Once you get off the main streets though, (R de Belleville/ R de Faubourg de Temple), you find art like this, and I found (with the help of my guide) a great Thai place (Le Krung Thep).



I stepped in not realizing that I might have needed a reservation as you apparently do for every restaurant in Paris for dinner. Fortunately, two middle-aged women had also ducked the reservation process, so I was given a table with them. We were told that we had to leave promptly at 21:30 because some nice people had made a reservation, so I ordered quickly. In my haste I ordered a green curry but forgot the rice. I mean, who knows what "Riz" could be? I had been told that in the exact moment a Parisian identifies you as a tourist, they will offer you something unnecessary. This is how I and several St Flour students ended up with five croissants at a cafe near Gare du Nord. Thus, the Riz must have been some ungainly thai cracker, so I said no as firmly as I could. Imagine her look of surprise when I stood up to her trickery like that! I was proud.

The women at the table got brave about halfway through the meal and started talking to me. We communicated back and forth with an amalgam of French, English, Spanish (by far the most effective!), charades, and Pictionary on my little notepad. They had a world map, so I showed them where Portland and Corvallis were. I explained to them that I was a graduate student in Mathematics, or at least some sort of information-based studier, and that my girlfriend worked as a Legislative Assistant to Speaker of the House, Dave Hunt, or at least that she was personal assistant to lowly-member-of-American-parliament Mavin Thunt. Did I mention how spicy the curry-soup was? I got hot tea too, though I don't remember ordering it. I could hardly pronounce anything!

What else is awesome about Paris? Wandering. I almost wandered right out of town before my spidey-sense started tingling at the sight of freeways and soulless residential complexes. But I also wandered to the Parc des Buttes Chaumont:



That's right, I found a beautiful park on something like 25 hectares (a hectare is 3 and a half cubits if you want to do the conversion) with a giant rocky spire, a temple on top of the spire, a moat around the spire, secret waterfalls, and narrow paths twisting through grottos of leafy green trees and shrubs. I bet it's one of the most dangerous places in the world after dark. Beautiful!

Lastly, here is a picture of my hostel. It's the building that looks like it's wrapped in electric tape, behind the drawbridge:



I don't know why they didn't advertise the drawbridge on the website. I might have paid more! The electric tape glows different colors at night, though. I think I know why they didn't advertise that.

Fin de Saint-Flour Probability Summer School

Attendants of Saint-Flour, based loosely on country of origin:

There were five from Purdue Univ. in the US,
three from Germany,
one from England (by birth at least; MANY worked at Oxford),
at least two from Eastern European countries,
a handful from Italy,
two from India,
a couple from Asia,
and let's say two dozen from France.

Alison Etheridge, the professor who gave an incredible series of lectures on the development and basics of probability models in population genetics, brought a number of French and German students who had been studying with her at Oxford. My interest in the subject brought me into closest contact with her students. The following facts also helped: (1) Alison was very interested in touring around the region, (2) liked company, and (3) we (she and her students and I) discovered we had complementary (though certainly not "complimentary") styles of humor. That is to say, she had wit that left a mark. Most times I could volley her insults back at her, or deflect them with bad puns. Most times.

For instance, she and Janosch (the implacable German) were saying at one point that they could only put up with so much of me at a time. I gently suggested that they had thus been trying to minimize their exposure to me. They agreed in earnest. I asked if this might be called the min-max principle.

I don't remember if anyone else laughed, because I didn't hear anything over my own giggling. Oh, and for the non-mathematical among us, the min-max principle is a mathematical statement about the set of eigenvalues of certain types of matrices. It's pretty unrelated to the joke.

I'm not going to say that I grew so close to these people that there were any tearful good-byes. Two weeks is just enough time to form friendships but not cliques. It was only on the last days that I heard any disparaging remarks made against anybody else. It was a small mark against an otherwise endlessly friendly (albeit a little shy) bunch. I would be excited to see any of these people at a conference/workshop/summer school in the future.

Habib, a French student of Alison's at Oxford, and I might even work on some research together! One afternoon at the cafe, during a violent storm of wind and rain that had driven us into a cafe, I mentioned a paper that I had read in American Naturalist and some ideas I had for a model that described the phenomena with a diffusion and a stochastic genetic process. He knows a lot more about stochastic processes and diffusion, and he refined my ideas into something more specific and tractable. Then, I grappled with these new ideas and extended them a bit, and soon we had an interesting (and tractable!) problem in front of us. So yeah; kinda cool.

Oh, and the ping-pong tournament came down to India vs. France. I think I remember the Indian guy winning. I was out in the first round. But I got so much better! I would definitely beat any of you.

A Quick Post

I have arrived here in Paris and I'm safely checked in at St. Christopher's Inn on the Rue de Crimee. Just thought I'd make this update quick since the Internet went out earlier today and I wasn't able to post.

Bastille Day!

It's a strange, surreal thing to hear accordion music in France, outside of the Paris Metro. The whole point of tourism, I think, is to understand how similar a place is to your home, and how maybe it really isn't as beautiful as the pictures in the calendar, and that maybe the people there really are just as snooty as you thought (actually, the French aren't that bad, but this one German guy is simply implacable). In the midst of my Bastille-induced pondering upon our shared humanity -- the celebrations so similar to 4th of July fireworks, parties, and the chaotic scamperings of sugar-mad children -- that maybe you can understand why, when the band, this band in fact:
started up a 17-minute instrumental accordion piece, I was disturbed. It was the "In a Gadda da Vida" of cigarette-smoking obnoxious-mime-comedy French travesty. I turned to the French mathematicians from the conference and before I could even ask, one of them read my quizzical look and said, "No. I think they do this for the tourists and the old people."

The band later redeemed themselves by playing some swing and jive, and then later damned themselves by handing the mic to the drummer. The cathedral was beautifully lit though, (it's adjacent to the performance square in the previous picture)
Oh, and did you know that cameras can take pictures of fireworks?

It just kills your battery and 9 times out of 10 it doesn't turn out. But, totally worth it, right?

Photos Uploaded!

My collection of photos has grown to a towering height so unwieldy that even I, picture-happy as I am in this blog, was unsatisfied with the rate of exposure (ha! a photo pun!) they were getting. Ergo, here is a link to an album of the good ones:

http://picasaweb.google.com/max.f.brugger/WineCheeseAndMathematics?feat=directlink

Enjoy!

Mountain excursion panoramas

I've added two more panoramas! One that I stitched together out of photos I took from the first ridge we clambered up to (about 40 min. from the peak of Peyre Arse, behind me)
and another of the expansive northern valley in which we began our excursion. Actually, if you look closely at the center of the third square, we started at the little white spot on the opposite ridge and hiked all the way around to the left.

Weekend Mountain Excursion

This weekend was tiring. On Friday, Professor Adler lectured for three hours, first recalling the schematic proof of the Kac-Rice "Meta-theorem" of incredible power and then moved on to Crofton's Formula. It isn't defined with the same kind of gravitas, but it does allow us to conjure up a random intersection of rotated manifolds and take its temperature. It's a weird course.

Then, on Saturday, Professor Etheridge lectured for three hours on... well, let's see, Diffusion Processes, Speed and Scaling in Diffusions, Hitting Times for Diffusions, Stationary Measures and Reversibility, Regular Diffusions, Summary Statistics, Genetic Models of 3 or more genes, the Poisson-Dirichlet Distribution, the Frequency Spectrum for k alleles, and the GEM distribution.

And on Sunday to "top" it off, we went for a six hour hike in the mountains.

The views were breathtaking. Cows roamed the fields, horses galloped wild along the trails, and wildflowers glinted in the sunlight.










I worked on a math problem from class on a mountaintop in the French countryside, you know, to ensure the jealousy of my indoors colleagues. Previously, I had been happy with a window looking out on the Kidder loading dock. I can never go back.

This was the view from the mountain called Le Puy de Peyre Arse. On the right side you can see another mountain called Le Puy Mary, second in height only to Peyre Arse. We climbed it today; the road ascends almost to the rim and the trail climbs right up the mountain. Peyre Arse was actually easier, just longer.

This was the view of the valley south of Le Puy de Peyre Arse. Walking up those ridges, you don't really expect the topography to dive back down again so suddenly, but then, there it is.

We hiked down the other side of the mountain and along the ridge pictured. I hadn't realized it at first, but in this region all the ridgelines are strung with trails that connect peak to peak. I can't think of anything like it in the Pacific Northwest.












And towards the end of the hike, we sat in this meadow overlooking the long run of the valley.



Be sure to click on the images for the full resolution, if you haven't been.

Ping Pong Sweeps School

On Wednesday, a tournament was announced.
On Thursday, the initial bracket drafted.
On Friday, play began, and so began the prestigious, 39th Annual St Flour Probability Summer School Table Tennis "Ping Pong" Invitational Tournament.



As you can see from these dramatic action shots, practice has begun in earnest.

All honest work has, unfortunately, ceased.