I walk until

We ate Paris. There is no way around it. We turned the city of love into the city of a love for food.

It already started on the train ride to Hamburg: all I had were some delicious cherries and a chocolate flavoured milk, still bought the evening before in Denmark. The cold had not left Germany yet, so I was dressed warmly in jeans, sweater and leather jacket. Upon my arrival in Paris, the layers had to come off. Finally, it was hot.

The first night was spent reuniting with an old friend and her fiancé, in the city by coincidence. We bought a baguette and cheese (and wine), headed to the Ile de la Cité and sat down amongst Parisian youngsters also enjoying the heat, the river and some impromptu jamming on a guitar. B and JH and I just fell easily into old conversation, caught up on gossip and contemplated our futures. After having spent six weeks in Nantes shooting a TV series, both of them were ready to go home, and as she said it, be around 'our people'. By my mense. Another friend, also from SA but now in Toronto, posted something about how all we are is the communities we surround ourselves with. I don't know what it is, but we all seem to have a strong sense that were we are is not home. We long for long dinners that end in the kitchen at 4AM, for cheap wine, for boerewors and braais, for speaking Afrikaans, for fresh fruit that doesn't cost an arm and a leg, we long for our people.

But how do you reconcile wanting to be there with also wanting more than that? I don't miss the crime, I don't miss having to have a car, I don't miss enormous shopping malls and traffic and fear and poverty and politics and problems. Yesterday I went to a free film screening at the university and at 1AM cycled home all by my lonesome. The impossibility of this at home! This nomadic lifestyle is walking the line between missing home but knowing there are other choices one could make.

Choices like what to eat next, haha. The rest of the week was spent hanging out with my friend L. Even buying groceries together was a tiny adventure: we went to Lidl, but getting there involved walking through a couple of streets where it seems all the hair and nail studios of Paris have lined up. They cater for African hair, so we weren't really eligible for getting our hair done. But even more fascinating were the guys hanging out in front of the salons: fit young men with gold chains would approach women on the street to get their nails and hair done. What would the job description be? Hustler? Nail-pimp?In Lidl itself we were treated to the spectacle of an older couple (75ish) being accused by a younger lady of being inhuman, and then shouting at one another whilst the rest of the store looked on. Not a bad start to the week, I think.

Lidl lunch. 

Our culinary tour took us to L'As du Fallafel, which was a lot of garlicky sauce with a couple of fallafels tossed in a pita bread, and which L really liked and I really did not. After having stalked Jamie Oliver's head pastry chef on Instagram, I insisted on going to L'Éclaire de Génie, which has fabulous looking éclairs and barquettes with wonderful flavour combinations. L wanted some froyo instead, but as we found none in the Marais she settled for a McFlurry. I should have maybe saved my 7€ and gone for a McFlurry, too, since the berry barquette was somewhat disappointing.

There was a queue of 30 people at l'As du Fallafel, and at the place right across the street just one lady.

Éclaire de génie. 

We explored the Marché des Enfants Rouges (oldest market in Paris), which hosts an arrangement of food stalls, but as we were there rather early we didn't sample anything. Instead, we headed back to our quartier to get some ice cream at Baci Bisou, a place near the Quai St Martin. I got fleur de lait and noisette topped with Nutella and white chocolate (all in mofos), soooo good.

We tried some really terrible spring rolls (none of the Chinese eateries we saw make them fresh, they are pre-deep fried and then heated up in the microwave), some decent baguettes, some great pains au chocolat, a great Mars cheesecake at Berko and probably some things I can't remember right now.

Berko cupcakes

Food choice for other Fête de la Musique attendants quite obvious...

On Sunday night we were exhausted from the Fête de la Musique, and the place we had intended to go to was already closed. Instead we ambled into a Pakistani/Indian place called Sheezan which turned out to be the best thing we ate all week: the prices were incredibly affordable, the food authentic and well-spiced and it was a very comfortable atmosphere to eat in, almost like being in your mother's kitchen. Also, they had mango lassi, so I was pretty much sold from the get-go.

Sheezan

Mango Lassi

Lamb Korma

Our last supper was at a Mexican joint whose name I can't recall. They have a set meal where you can choose three different tacos or tortillas with a drink, or a burrito. The tortillas are either with maize-meal or normal flour, and were well proportioned. Sadly they got my order wrong, so instead of the tortilla with nopales and cheese I got mushrooms and cheese, but they were tasty nonetheless. I remember eating nopales (cactus leaves) only once before, when our gardener in Mexico showed us how to prepare them and made a delicious meal. I mean, it must be quite a feat to get an 8-year-old to like cactus leaves.

Viva Mexico cabrones.

It was good to be back in Paris, blanketed in anonymity, free to disappear among the crowd.

Then I'll go/ I'll go home/ Amsterdam

Come to think of it, I am uncomfortable in my mother tongues. Afrikaans makes me wonder if I am saying things correctly, if the idioms I use actually exist, whether something is spelled with a 'v' or with an 'f' and whether the vowel needs to be doubled or not. German poses similar problems. There is a vast vocabulary and cultural background in both that I have not grown up with because the languages represented my mother or my father, not countries and colloquialisms.

I feel at home in English because I don't need to think about which words fit. I learnt being 'as dead as a door nail' in Grade 4 when my mother sat outside on the patio with me and taught me the words. English took root consciously whereas the others remain at times uncertain to my tongue.

The past weekend however I did feel somewhat of a homecoming upon hearing Dutch in Amsterdam. Reading the billboards and the descriptions of products in the supermarket was easy. Hell, the supermarkets itself felt like going into Woolies and not into Lidl. The fresh produce looked fresh, the home brand's packaging was simplistic but modern, and everything invited you to purchase it.

But the trip to Amsterdam was not about language or consumerism (ok, a little bit of consumerism). All I wanted were fields of flowers. Tulip upon tulip merging into a blanket of colour. Because it was a mild winter the bulbs bloomed earlier and we came upon the last of the flowers. But more on that in a later post.

The trip there already took us 6 trains and 8 hours, so when the first 5 Amsterdammers were really unfriendly I was slightly pessimistic about the next few days. The city was also overrun with tourists who wanted to stand in queues for hours and tick off the Rijksmuseum and Anne Frank house from their lists. The girls I was travelling with also went to the museums, so instead I strolled along alone and simply took in the city.

Charging in the city. 

 

Trying to save on money, I mostly went to places I found when googling "free things to do in Amsterdam". The first was the Begijnhof, a secluded courtyard in the heart of Amsterdam where the Beguines still live. You have to find a wooden door to enter the courtyard, so it felt a bit Alice-in-Wonderland-ish. Right in front of the door is a square called Spui where coincidentally a second-hand book market took place, so basically I walked into heaven right there.

Begijnhof

This guy knows what it's about.

Building at the end of the world. 

Another wonderful thing about Amsterdam was its markets. Here there is a Wochenmarkt that happens on Wednesdays and Saturdays and where you can buy mainly fresh produce, some plants and needlework supplies. At home going to the market meant driving through to Joburg and exploring the delicious delicacies of the Neighbourgoods Market whilst pushing past throngs of hipsters. It entailed chilling with friends, enjoying a cocktail and exploring Braamfontein. In Amsterdam there is the Albert Cuyp market, which takes over an entire street and where vendors sell almost anything. There is fresh produce, bicycles and accessories, waffles, electronics, cheeses, poffertjies, and and and. It was very crowded but the rush of all the smells in the air was worth it. On our last day in the city we further headed to the Sunday Market, which seemed similar. We were there a bit too early, so the vendors were still setting up. But my mouth began to water when simply reading what was on offer: pulled pork sandwiches, tortillas with various fillings, wonderful breads and beautiful little tarts. If it had been a little later in the day I would have gotten a pitcher of Mojitos and had myself a feast.

On our way back to the train station we walked down the Haarlemmerdijk and found the.most.awesome.patisserie.ever. Petit Gâteau prepare all their little pastries in the store and you can also learn how to bake in their atelier. There is this row of 30 little cups with different fillings, ranging from every chocolate kind possible to orange and pistachio, clafoutis filling and the one I chose in the end: a panna cotta filling. Best thing I ate in Amsterdam.

Albert Cuyp Market

Vondelpark

Sunday Market in Westergasfabriek

The most delicious panna cotta pastry.

The asparagus has arrived. Such excitement for a shoot. 

After the last market we took 4 trains and again 8 hours to get back to Flensburg. Nothing like sleepless restlessness to make you appreciate having been elsewhere and having returned to your own bed.