Brunch in Belleville

Each neighborhood in Paris is distinctly unique. Each has a different array of characteristics that make up a certain personality, a feeling you absorb when you are in them. Belleville is one of my favorite neighborhoods in Paris, not least because of how distinctly different it feels. Hard to get to, tucked up in the northeast corner of Paris, Belleville is one of those neighborhoods that manages to escape the Parisian cliché. It has a vibrant, bustling culture of its own that stands out against the Parisian standard without being in opposition to it. It is filled with wandering hilly streets, clean white buildings, Tunisian coffee shops, oriental patisseries, graffiti and modern architecture. It’s almost refreshing, being faced with such different smells and sights and streets and buildings. The typical crowds of Paris are nowhere to be found, and even on cloudy days it feels filled with a blanched sunniness that comes along with the calm of sitting a bit to the side of the heart of Paris.

    The jewel of Belleville is the Parc de Belleville, which looks down over the entire city in a sweeping vista similar to that of Sacre Coeur, but with fewer tourists and a better view of the Eiffel Tower. There is a little boulangerie with decent breads and pastries, and a sidewalk café that serves a decent Sunday brunch.  Paris has changed my definition of “brunch” fundamentally. On the west coast, “brunch” sort of just means breakfast is served all day, with alcohol. On the east coast, “brunch” is a more expensive breakfast served all day, with alcohol. In Paris, brunch is a fixed price (usually around 20 euros) for a big plate filled with a variety of small dishes - usually different breads or pastries with spreads and confitures, meats and patés, cheeses, vegetables, fruits, juices, and coffee. It’s really like your own personal buffet platter, and it’s glorious

This past weekend was one of those last few with weather beautiful enough to send Parisians scurrying outside to soak up the last of the sunshine. The Parc de Belleville was filled with picnicking Parisians looking down on the city splayed below, swaying awkwardly to some kind of alternative DJ playing in the square above the park. I met a friend for a beautiful long brunch outside on the terrasse of Moncoeur Bistrot, the café at the top of the hill by the park. The “Moncoeur brunch” was a big plate filled with soft scrambled eggs, ham, fromage blanc with honey and walnuts, Comté cheese (my absolute favorite), a carrot and spinach salad, mixed fruit cup, a slice of carrot cake and a little chunk of dark chocolate fudge cake. We ate and talked and enjoyed the warm sun and cool breeze on a terrasse filled with happy Parisians saying goodbye to summer, settling into fall.

Holidays in Berlin

Berlin is a city of ghosts. In the winter, it is grey and cold and dark, its landscape alternating between past and present. Berlin is a city riddled with scars: crumbling concrete structures, monuments pockmarked with bullet holes, remnants of the past - the wars, the persecution, the political strife. But for Berlin, these are not just constant reminders of its difficult history. They are signs of triumph, of the ability for a city to emerge anew from its ashes. Berlin embraces its dark history, transforms it into art and life and expression. All around there are signs of energy, movement, vitality in a city that seems destined to be forever haunted. It's gritty and rough and sometimes just outright dirty, but throughout Berlin there is a piercing beauty and a quality of authenticity. Other European cities are known for churches, art, architecture, nature. But what makes Berlin beautiful and unique is the fact that its people have so thoroughly laid claim to it. They have reshaped the landscape, through street art and concept stores and craft beer and rap music. They have physically molded the city in a way no other place has been, and underneath the patterns of the modern world are the ruins of the past. Berlin is a place I will always think of, and hope to return to.

Finding Good Coffee in Paris

The elusive latte.

The clichéd Parisian café. Accordion music play in the background as you idle away an hour or two, people-watching or reading some sort of literature (probably Hemingway), nursing a tiny espresso or equally tiny glass of wine, basking in the glory that is Paris and the luxury of wasting time in it. While this is all wonderful, finals week during grad school has eliminated such luxury for me, and sent me roaming the city in search of a more laptop-friendly café. And to be honest, Paris has a bit of a problem with those tiny espressos: they are usually really not very good (here's a blog post that explains why). So I took to the Internet, and found the following two beautiful little cafés that serve a variety of high-quality imported coffee, lattes (which the French have decided just don't exist), salads, soups, and baked goods (including chocolate cake!), and feature free WiFi and outlets for laptops.

KB Cafeshop

53 Avenue Trudaine, 9éme

Latte & apricot scone with jam and butter (and a side of eBook studying)

Situated on the corner of a cute little square overlooking the Rue des Martyrs, KB Cafeshop serves amazing coffee (including the gorgeous latte art creation at the top of this post) along with scones, cookies, sandwiches, salads, soups, and even smoothies and juice. That's right, juice has hit Paris.

The thing I love about KB though is the bar along the window that overlooks the square (which happens to be quite festive at the moment). Power strips galore, the bar is the perfect place to park your laptop and get some work done while sipping a gorgeously large latte or artisan drip coffee and munching on an apricot scone or 6€ carrot soup. I spent six hours here today (a Saturday) and the place never got too crowded or loud to work, although in the moments when I looked up from my work to take a people-watching break several different languages (including English) washed over me.

Overlooking the square at Rue des Martyrs

Carrot & basil soup

Cafe Lomi

3 ter Rue Marcadet, 18éme

Butternut squash soup + couscous veggie salad (and again, a side of eBook)

Café Lomi is tucked on the other side of Montmartre, in a hidden part of the eighteenth arrondissement that's slowly becoming one of my favorite Parisian spots. It might be a bit out of the way, but it's worth it for the view of a very different Paris than the clichéd romantic Eiffel Tower version. True to the broken cliché, Café Lomi doesn't fall into the traditional Parisian Café category. It's got sort of a warehouse feel, with a big, beautiful open interior, industrial chic lighting, and even a communal table. Definitely a spot for coffee nerds, the coffee menu offers several different types of beans and brew methods to choose from. And on a misguided search for the bathroom, I accidentally stumbled into the storeroom (much to the horror of the guy working there) and was faced with bags upon bags of beautiful, rich imported coffee...so I know for a fact they're not lying when they say it comes from Kenya. Or Colombia. Or Ethiopia.

They also have an incredible 8.50€ soup/salad combo, a delicious chocolate cake, free (fast!) WiFi, and a view of this really cool graffiti mural on the barbed-wire topped wall across the street...which may or may not house a previous nuclear site, war camp, or factory (the most likely but also the least imaginative).

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So until I am freed from the grad school finals burden burying me in 20 pages of unwritten papers, you can find me at either one of these study-spots sipping a beautifully-foamed latte and slurping on winter soup.

Paris, la rentrée

Living in Paris is a little like falling in love with someone you know will eventually break your heart. Once you know it, you can never know another city in the same way, with the same depth and propensity of feeling. It’s a magic that sinks you’re your being, an inexplicable truth that fills you with light and longing at the same time, even while you’re in the heart of it.

Exactly a year ago I posted about my second stay in Paris, one that would span several months. I talked about signs and symmetry and equilibrium, the fortuitous nature of my return to the only international city I had ever known. A few short months later I posted about leaving Paris, about the inertia and heartbreak and longing for a city I loved so quickly and so deeply. I vowed to return, visa in hand, French in progress. Well, exactly a year later, I’m a legal French resident, nestled into a new cozy apartment in the same sleepy suburb of Asniéres, buried in graduate school papers and research. For the next year, maybe even two, Paris is home. A lot of people talk about the difficulties of French bureaucracy and joke about how difficult life is here. That’s true. I’ve never encountered so many obstacles to day-to-day life as I have in Paris. But there is something about the city that makes you understand, that makes it all okay. It’s just another test of this great city’s love, a not-so gentle push – how much do you want it? How hard does it have to be for you to give up and go home? And that’s just another reason that makes Paris so worth it, because of all you put into it. It’s a relationship with a city like none other, a visceral give and take, textured and living and constantly challenging. For me there will always be that vein of serendipity, the touch of symmetry that settles my mind when things are difficult. I won't give up and go home; I am home.

big sur

Anyone who has been to Big Sur understands the devastating quality of its beauty. This place grips you, pulls you in completely and unwaveringly, and in doing so absolutely terrifies you. It is a place that makes you feel small and insignificant, a creature clawing your way through great forests with towering trees and decades of growth beneath them, dancing with terrifyingly powerful waves, climbing crumbling rocks that have seen centuries pass. You realize, in some poignant transcendentalist moment, that you are but an accident of nature, a pure result of the scientific workings of the world, and that this alive part is all real. You feel less and less connected to society, to the world from which you came, and this makes you question your sanity a little bit. It forces you to look at yourself, at your true animal self, which is never a thing anyone enjoys doing. So while you gasp at Big Sur’s beauty, so magnificent it hurts, you are also gasping and marveling at your own place in that beauty and that is a difficult thing to understand.

I spent a week traversing the coast up and down Highway 1 and reading Jack Kerouac’s “Big Sur,” which (although breathtaking in its own right) did not help my already fading grasp on reality, and found he put this sentiment I've been grasping at so much more clearly than I ever could: “The empty blue sky of space says 'All this comes back to me, then goes again, and comes back again, then goes again, and I don't care, it still belongs to me.” Like all great writers, and following the show-don't-tell mantra, he finds a way to bring words and understanding and feeling from within you without really saying it outright.

I fall in love with cities because of their stories. But the stories told in Big Sur are of a different nature. They are more elemental, more basic, more chemical. They speak of the natural world, the world of which we are all formed and born and made, the world that gave birth to our cities. Big Sur tells stories of ocean carving shapes in rocks, of moss dripping down crevices in cliff faces, of trees that were born before Jesus, of madness and instinct and survival. It is an escape and a refuge from so-called reality, but Big Sur is a challenge. It’s what I imagine heaven, if such a thing existed, would be like. 

camping essentials

- a good book

- cheap beer

- cast iron skillet

- fishtail braid

- Dr. Bronner's magic soap & hair care

- Shiseido UV protective stick foundation with SFP

- s'mores :)

On the Range Meaty Baked Beans

My favorite camping recipe that finds a way to utilize canned food and leftovers - one of the most important things to do when you find yourself lacking proper refrigeration. When I camp, I usually have a quality meat the first night or two, while it will keep in the cooler, and then find myself getting more and more creative. This recipe usually comes in for me at a time when I absolutely have to cook the rest of my bacon for breakfast that morning, and when I have had some beer brats or a nice steak with caramelized onions the night before.

Ingredients:

- 1 can Bush's original baked beans

- kernels from 2 ears of corn, grilled (cook directly on grill, shucked - this is often a leftover ingredient for me)

- leftover bacon, chopped

- leftover steak or bratwurst from last night's dinner (or both, from the past 2 nights), chopped

- caramelized onions from last night's dinner

- 1 jalapeño, diced (the more seeds you leave in, the spicier your dish will be)

- 1/2 bell pepper, diced

- bread, for dipping

- salt & pepper, to taste

Simple as mixing all your ingredients together in a pot and letting simmer as long as you can wait. I like to throw a splash of beer in there, to let reduce off for extra flavor.

So go to Big Sur. I promise, it will change your life.