Disclaimer

Attention audience ! Paris Clém will switch to french during the next two weeks, because I'll be reporting from Japan!

Ureshi desu!

Sayonara, Pari Kuleman

Week-end in Lyon

Week-end in Lyon.

Last week-end we went to Lyon!
We've been hosted by Neige ( aka Nieves ), Carole's friend who comes from Taragona (Catalunia). She's been living there for about a year and gave us a very nice tour of the city. We visited the famous Basilique on top of the Fourviere hill, we had a dinner in a "bouchon" which are local bistros where they serve Lyon's specialties. We also had a few drinks and we visited the muppet museum, Lyon has a long history of muppets, the most famous being Guignol.
That was a real nice time, if you guys decide to go to the Alps don't forget to spend some time in Lyon.

New York, DC and Virginia Pictures

New york & Virginia

ENJOY!

Finland Blog

The finnish trip should be available for you to see on picasa!

click on the picture above to get there :)

More coming soon!

Helsingin tuomiokirkko

Updates

What's up? well, I guess I've been talking only about music for a while. Next week-end I'll hop in a train to visit my family in the south of France, my cousin Rémi is getting married! That's good news, isn't it? It will be a time of family reunion, which doesn't happen often and to see some long-time-no-see friends. My cousin and I used to share the same friends as we are the same age, we grew up living almost in the same house (we own some kind of double house), we've been in the same classes at school, middle school, even high school for a bit. So of course we used to share the same friends circle. Then I've left for Paris, Finland, the USA and back to Paris, so it's been years without talking really.

Talking about Finland, I'll hop in a plane with Carole just after the wedding. Destination: Helsinki of course! It was Carole's x-mas gift that was canceled last minute in February because the flight carrier couldn't fly us in. That sucked but the company did reimburse the tickets + a comfy we're-sorry-here-is-800-euros package. So this time I was able to book better tickets, a longer stay and hopefully a better weather.

Alright enough blabbering about my life, I have some song tabbing to do while I still have some free time.

Cheers!

Paris Clem: yes he's got a life too.

Dunkerque's carnival - no comment

Eeeeks I'd be such an easy gal' !!

Back in Montana ... oh wait...

A map of France's départements, La Lozère is in red.
Paris is the tiny one in the center of the northern half.

Last month I went with a bunch of friends in Lozère, the least populated area of France. We stayed at Julien's farm house. His parents bought a few abandoned farm houses about 30 years ago and spent most of their holidays in Lozère to rebuild the houses.

La Lozère is a rural and mountainous area which reminded me of my Montana days (big up for my Montana friends!). The mountains in the center of France called "massif central" are really old, they used to be volcanoes. Now these volcanoes are just some nicely curved (but tall) hills due to eons of erosion.

Julien's farm house is located at about 1 kilometer high. So even though it was the end of September, which is warm in the south of France, it was quite cool.

Julien's farm house and Ruben's poncho (find it!)

We took Julien's family wagon and drove straight to the south from Paris. It took about 6 hours to get to his place. Good to know that there are places saved from the chaos of modernity this close :)

The guys started to freak out when they realized they couldn't get any 3G Internet connection with their iPhones down there. Edge only! Sounds like technological Jurassic Park. That pleased me, I work all days long on the Internet, I sure as hell wanted a break from IT stuff.

When we arrived I was a bit sick because of the mountainous roads (left , right, left , right, left , right and oh left, right... x 2346346) So I grabbed a guitar (Julien's awesome Ovation acoustic godess) and played in the garden, breathed the fresh air... But Lydie started screaming at me because I wasn't helping. The others where bringing the food from the van to the kitchen.

Sancho Panza and Rick Hunter
keepers of the farm's law

Being far from any piece of civilization, I enjoyed some good old plain natural activities like drinking beer (belgium, thanks nico!), shooting cans (while sober of course) and barbecue (the sausages down there, oh my god, the sausages, oh my god!!).

We also did some sports, we went kayaking on the Tarn river (the gorges are gorgeous) twice totaling about 24Km, I went running in the morning before breakfast (ok it was only once!) and the others did a couple of hikes while I enjoyed sleeping because of a major sun burn on me face.

Paris Clem!




How sexy a Kayak can be?

Evil Cattle, don't you try you horns on meeeeee!!!

Week-end!

This afternoon I'm leaving for a long week-end in Barcelona! (spain) I'm hoping to get in touch with my old spanish friends from Helsinki (finland). Unfortunately Luis my ex-flatmate won't be in town... Another time pal!

Dunkerque

Hello fellas! I promissed earlier some pictures of my week-end in the north (of france) so here they are!

Carole being a movie star on the beach with her brother being a surfer
The very wide shores of the north. This is where the Britts flew away from the battlefield when france was invaded in 1940
A Nazi bunker and its conqueror
Sign information FAIL, notice the "thanks for your understanding" at the bottom
Enjoying a weird smile next to a canal in Belgium
Me next to the satute of the local hero Jean Bart, the guy who got Dunkerque rid of pirates!
Yes I own this shop


Sorry for the bad quality of this post, Blogger really sucks at composing.

Paris Clem: La ouiche la ouiiiiche !!!

Irish week-end

Tomorrow morning I'll leave for a 3 days week-end in Dublin! Traveling between European capitals has become incredibly cheap these days, hence the price for my plane ticket: €0.25. Of course you have to add ecological and airport taxes, so in the end the round trip Paris-Dublin is €60. Not so bad!
My friends and I constituted a large party (12 friends!) and we are ready to have some Guinness pleasures in real Irish pubs! The accomodation is quite cheap too, I made a reservation for an hostel, €17/nights.

I'm quite sure this week end will be a blast!! I hope that we'll take nice pictures so I can upload them in a future blog post. By the way I just spent two awesome week-ends, one in Dunkerque (north of france) and the other one in Brittany (not Britain !). I hope to find some time to sort the pictures and post them too :)

Have a good week-end!!

Clément.

Nihon 2

March 1st, 2009:

That was a tiring journey/arrival. We got up at 4pm, just like big bums. Hungry we went out for a snack at a curry joint at about 7pm. I've chosen a fried chicken scallop, cut in slices served with a Curry Level 3 sauce. The others had a level 2 but on the menu it was written that level 3 is the spiciness "like a curry should be". Humm there are 10 levels of spiciness available so level 3 sounds fair... It's burnin' Hell in my mouth!!!. I'm usually quite resistant to spicy foods, but oulalala, this stuff is violent! Thinking that a level 10 exists sounds impossible. That stuff gave me horrible hiccups, but it was good... yeaaaah.
Then we went for a piece of cake in a small café. We noticed: there are no man in Japan. Well at least not in cafés (I'm not speaking about the beverage). Walking down the streets of Shibuya we bumped into Cyril's friends, they were celebrating a birthday! So we went for some karaoke with this crazy crowd. In Japan karaoke is a big deal, they are everywhere and they fill entire buildings.

Each group of karaoke singers get their own private room where they have a TV set, some sort of encyclopedia where all the music in the world is indexed (almost but we did find this one : Moskow. Check this goodness if you don't know it) and some pads to select your music from. Many folks need a little push to sing in a karaoke so business oriented Japanese thought it was a good idea to provide beer, as much as you want, for about 8$. Because drinking without eating isn't a smart move, you also get all the greasy bar food you love... Your dear writer sang a Barry white track, My everything. Stunning ;)
After ruining the place with a classic smell like teen spirit and the pogo-stick dancin' that goes with it, we left for a small pub located at the 5th floor of a building. The place probably used to be an apartment! One table, a bar and that's it. There wasn't even windows. There I met the second Finnish guy in two days! They must be taking over japan slowly or something. Of course I had to practice a bit my Finnish (I love showing up my language skills, isn't it what I'm doing right now after all??). A couple of Mitä Kuuluu, ei paskiempa and Kitti vittusti bought me a drink ;)

French version (If you read it you either suck or you are great, depending on your mother tongue, remember: this version is just the raw note as I wrote it during the trip):

On s'est levés a 16h comme des grosses larves. On est sorti manger un curry vers 19h, j'ai pris un poulet pané frit en tranches avec une sauce au curry niveau 3 "niveau de curry comme un curry devrait être", oulala c'était violent! Ensuite on est allé prendre un dessert dans un petit resto, truc amusant les hommes n'existent pas au japon. En marchant dans la rue on croise par hasard les amis de Cyril ;) c'était l'anniversaire de l'un d'entre eux. On est allé a un karaoke finalement et on a chante et bu jusque 2h du matin! Je leur ai fait l'interprétation de Barry White ultime qui a calme tout le monde :) on est allé dans un petit bar (un bar qui se trouvait dans un immeuble au 5em étage) la je croise le deuxième finlandais en deux jours (je crois qu'ils envahissent secrètement le japon) on boit quelques bières et finalement on vas se coucher.