Indian Summer!

Printemps en Automne

All that is required for a fantastic lunch at Printemps (the large French department store) in Autumn: a designer bag, heels, bright red lipstick, and a dose of hot sunshine.

The designer bag has actually been a solid purchase. Their retail price is from USD 5000 upwards, but all I'll say is that I went shopping recently in Thailand. Nevertheless, it's a right sturdy thing. Weighs a ton even when it's empty and is a great size for transporting my laptop.

I thought I looked pretty good, flying down the hill on my bicycle with my outfit adapted to the 30 degree heat, my bag and red lips and sunglasses and flowing hair. Quite a different story sweating and panting my way at a snail's pace back up again after lunch mind.

Current Location

Paris.

But it ain't all half stressful. Not the Paris bit, but the research. Gone are the days of a team to help me organise interviews. Instead I need to contact them myself, which generally means contacting them by email, phone and using all my contacts. Then I have to get to the interview (time and money), do the interview (horribly stressful, even in English although my first French one is coming up), then write up the interview and stick it in the document. And that's before I've even done a stroke of analysis. The big stuff will wait for the PhD but even the project requires some preliminary thoughts and I don't get many moments to even write things in coherent sentences (just lots of notes) let alone thoughtfully.

The plus side is the Paris bit - good food, wine and friends eases things somewhat.

Brux Home

It was lovely to feel like I had a home in Brussels for a few nights and to visit some old haunts and catch up with friends (and meet their children). It's one of the places that El Puma and I could probably both find work too, but that's all in the future. But for now I had the luxuries of this amazing flat:

And the pleasure of seeing our friendship publicised:

112

Did you know that you can contact emergency services in any EU language from anywhere in the EU by dialling 112 - the European wide emergency number? It is a free number from both landlines and mobiles.

International Again

Over dinner last night I met a Kiwi girl and her Indian husband who have just moved to Brussels. They oo-ed and ah-ed at the fact that today I just 'popped over to the Netherlands' for an interview. Granted my year in New Zealand was absolutely fantastic, but there is something very special about Europe, crossing borders, cultures and languages in just a 2 hour train journey (well, 4 hours if the train gets cancelled...some things are the same in any EU country).

Travelling to Holland is only just a change in language however. They all seem to speak impeccable English and don't even show surprise when I reply in English to their question in Dutch. They seem to truly be bilingual. The only problem is that it takes 15 minutes to get through all the announcements on the train in the required languages (English, French, Dutch and German). 

How do you choose your fish?

The EU tells you how!

International

Breakfast in Hamburg.
Flight.
Lunch with an importer in Paris.
Train.
Dinner with my ex-boss in Brussels.
Zzzz.

Each individual event was great. But stick 'em all together and yeah, not so much.

Fishmarkt

The Fishmarkt (Fish Market) is one of those tourist attractions that a lot of people know about (as it's on every tourist map) but few people who live in Hamburg have actually been to, mainly because it involves getting up at 5am on a Sunday morning. I had also been warned by my fisheries colleagues at the research institute that it's very much a tourist event in Hamburg as the true auction markets that remain are all on the coast. Nevertheless, I wanted to go and see it for myself, and even cut short Saturday night festivities to make sure I would get out of bed when the alarm sounded.

It was totally worth it. And not because of the fish. Actually, the fish was all smoked (and therefore an indicator that it might not be that fresh) and there was no auction at all, but the fish market does attract those who party all night in the local Reeperbahn area and then come down to the port for breakfast. In the actual fish hall, an incredible yet slightly ageing rock group was blasting out rock classics while stands around the edge were serving beer. This party atmosphere was all happening at 7 in the morning and it was absolutely fantastic. I stayed away from the beer but although plenty of other people had not, there was none of that British drunken loutish behaviour that we might expect from inebriated youths in the UK. Yes there were a couple of people clearly the worse for wear, but no vomiting at all. Instead, they had demonstrated some brilliantly funky dance moves (arms flapping like a bird, press ups, leapfrog) that had all the onlookers crying their eyes out with laughter. But the dancers kept themselves to themselves and simply enjoyed the music (and let it reverberate through the use of Irish-jig feet moves for example). Honestly, it was brilliant, but I suspect if it had been the UK there may even have been a touch of violence or other group laddish behaviour. Instead, it made seeing grey skies at that time of the morning all worth it.

Multiple Languages

In general, I quite like the predictive text function on my mobile phone. It's also really on the iphone to use foreign letters such as é, so 'teaching' my phone French didn't take too long. Add a third language though, especially one with ü and ß and my phone has proposed some hilarious alternatives to what I want to say.

This weekend, however, I fully empathised with it.

El Puma joined me from Paris, the Deutsches took the train from the South, while the 'Peruvians' (actually German but their Spanish-speaking abilities are important) also came out to play. We all met in Hamburg and all four languages (English, French, German, Spanish) found their useful moments. My Spanish is not really good enough to feature in the mix, but I did chop and change between English, French and German almost constantly, and came out with some real intra-sentence corkers. You know, starting in French, throwing in a German word and finishing up in English. And not by choice or to be funny - it just seemed to be what popped into my head. It was tiring, but funny, but perhaps shouldn't have been that difficult. In my circle of friends there a lot of people who speak three languages fluently, many of whom work or socialise in an international setting in their second and third languages (think of Germans at the OECD).

Being able to live and work in three of four languages would be incredibly useful. I recently came across a European Commission website where the presentations were in each of the presenters' chosen language - competent English, French, German and Spanish would give me all I need to know from that particular seminar.

Anyway, we walked/marché/gelaufen/caminamos our way around Hamburg the whole weekend. When we weren't on a boat then we were pretty much watching one or rushing to get to one or generally spending a lot of time thinking/talking about them.

Sunshine & Rain

Despite my various wanderings, I have still spent the majority of my life in Scotland and am therefore accustomed to the four-seasons-in-one-day feeling (overheating/underheating/soaked/blown away) but Hamburg is really something else. The wind here is so strong that any weather label is valid only for around 10 minutes before a new one blows in. Streaming sun, pouring rain, gale-force winds will all occur in the 45 minute-slot during which we step out of the office for lunch. At least the port is harnessing all these winds through the use of wind turbines, driving it towards becoming one of the more sustainble European ports. Ships considered to be particularly environmentally-friendy will also receive a rebate on their harbour dues.

The message I've been getting so far from my interviews is that this doesn't quite yet translate into environmentally-friendly fishing. Well, it does and it doesn't. Retailers are under as much pressure here as elsewhere to prove their sustainability credentials, but in terms of what consumers want, there's a lot of 'hot air and no fire' as one informant put it. It seems that even in the German market - generally considered pretty 'green' - sustainability is still a lot about marketing when it comes to seafood. Next week it's on to Belgium and then France to see what they have to say for themselves...

Totally RAD!

Great new find - the StadtRad can lock to itself. That means that if you arrive at a station and there's no space left, you can still leave the bike there instead of having to find another station with spare spaces, as in Paris. It's ingenious. Still means you have to walk to find a bike if there are none left...

Beluga

The Airbus A300-600ST (Super Transporter) is a wide-bodied aircraft modified to carry aircraft parts or over-sized and awkward cargo.

Airbus is a consortium formed by the major French, British, German and Spanish aerospace companies. As with many things pan-European it has a political aspect, and the geographic location of manufacturing comes down to economic cost, convenience and  national interest. Each of the Airbus partners makes an entire aircraft section (wings and landing gear in the UK; tails and doors in Spain; fuselage in Germany; nose and centre section in France), which is transported to a central location for final assembly (either Toulouse, Hamburg or Seville)....the Beluga being what they fly in.

With lots of pointing and exclamations, we see at least one of these aircraft every day as it flies over the city on its way to to the Airbus airport just north of Hamburg.

Remembering, with love

I can hardly believe it was 10 years ago that my sister called my office in the European Parliament from her office in Scotland and said 'turn on Sky'! and we watched the second plane hit the towers together. It wasn't long before I was ushered out of our own glass towers in Brussels as at the time no-one quite knew what was happening or what the next target might be.

A decade on, and as both the remembrance and analysis continues, Canon Jim Rosenthal said the following on BBC Radio 4 this morning: Remembrance is not static - it's a constantly growing and evolving action which gives us opportunity to take hold of the past and transform it and to reach out with grace, understanding and healing. Many important things in life - love, healing, forgiveness, growth, remembrance - it seems, require a continuous undertaking, the purpose of which is to change us for the better.

I have been particularly struck by the testimony of so many who risked so much to help others - many felt they 'had' to go back into a burning building or 'simply couldn't' hear shouts for help without doing something. 'Love-in-action' is perhaps, in the end, a synonym for 'sacrifice'. Courage, also, a continuous undertaking.

Maybe the Queen simply said it best in a letter she wrote to New York 8 days after the attack: Grief is the price we pay for love.

I don't think I would ever have guessed back then that in September 2011 I would be living in Hamburg. I suppose ten years is a long time in some ways. So I took a moment to remember - what I do and don't have, who I do and don't have, and the incredible blessing of life and love.

The day ended with a concert, which I was invited to by a friend of Anja's. It was informal, cosy and a lot of fun. The members sang to the audience as if they were telling a story, moving freely about as befitted the music. They sang in French, German and a magnificent 'what shall we do with the drunken sailor?' in English. They were incredibly merry, and thanks to the wine on sale at the back of the hall, so was the audience.

Prätoriusweg

I am staying with a German girl of a similar age to me in her art deco-decorated home. I found her advert for a flatmate on a flatshare website and am very grateful for the opportunity to live 'as a German'. She speaks only German and has been a great help orienting me, pointing out some of the positive attributes of this old, cobbled area, and generally helping me settle in. She is incredibly creative and has chosen to decorate her rooms in her particular style. So I thought I would give you a little insight into where I am living (fifth home in 12 months. I love variety but even I am looking forward to the end of fieldwork!):