Lorenza and I have been a bit house bound of late, so this morning we decided to get and do something other than stick around home. We made a quick list of the ingredients for a Vietnamese dish we wanted to try cooking called "Bun Bo Xao" ... wok fried beef salad with vermicelli noodles, plus Nuoc Cham sauce (fish sauce, chilli, garlic and lemon juice). With our shopping list in hand we took the one hour drive to Vietnam (well the nearest thing to it - the Sydney suburb of Cabramatta). Our first stop was Pho 54 for some lunch. We enjoyed a Saigon style beef pho and watched the sky outside turning very black. Once our meal was done the sky opened up and dumped a torrent of rain down. It was such a ... read more

Lorenza and I had a lot of laughs over the weekend, thanks to Rob’s distant cousin Jean-Frédéric who came to visit. He shared his stories of his tour in Australia and New Zealand, plus a few jokes … like “Did you know there are two types of Kiwi fruit in New Zealand? One is yellow and the other is green. Do you have any idea why the French do not like the green one? It’s because there are green pieces inside”. Yes it is corny, but it got a laugh from us! I gave J-F a tour of our house and garden and he inspected my micro-mini-vineyard. He gave me some very specific advice regarding how I should have pruned my vines. He seemed confident that I could correct the problems before I get into any ... read more

On the day my “petite cousine” Juliette departed Australia to return to France the saying on the calendar in our kitchen was a Gypsy proverb … “We are birds of passage, tomorrow we will be far away” or “Nous sommes des oiseaux de passage, demain nous serons loin”. It seemed it seemed so fitting for the day! Alternate Realities Lorenza and I were so excited that Juliette was visiting. We did comment that it seemed “odd” because we associate her with our “alternate reality” rather than our “normal reality”. By that I mean that we would normally see Juliette when we are travelling, not here in our home. We also mentioned this to Juliette when she arrived and said she had a similar feeling. Tenuous Connections When Juliette and I describe ourselves as distant cousins the ... read more

Our trip is drawing to a very sudden close - we will fly back into Sydney on July 10, so over the next few days (6th to 7th) we have to say too many goodbyes and also apologise to those who we ran out of time to visit. We dropped Florence off at Strasbourg airport and only just made it time wise and also fuel (the fuel gauge in the little 205 was flashing "help, help, help" for a few km's before we got to the airport. All going well we will see "Super Flo" again in 2011. Next it was farewell to Christiane, Bernadette and Etienne who we had had so much fun with while in Nieder... Plus, having to farewell Jean and Beatrice is never easy because they have such a big place in ... read more

Saint Wendelin Wikipedia tells me that Saint Wendelin is the patron saint of country people and herdsmen and is venerated in Germany, Austria, Switzerland (and obviously Alsace). In artworks he is depicted as a youth, or as a bearded man, with a shepherd's bag and a book in one hand and a shepherd's crook in the other; about him feed lambs, cattle, and swine, while a crown and a shield are placed at his feet. I read in a book about Catholic Saints, that because of his pious lifestyle he worked the odd miracle relating to good harvests and healthy cattle or other grazing animals. He was also know to be able to transmigrate (as in pick himself and his flock of sheep up and travel inexplicable distances in very short amounts of time. A very ... read more