The Chronicles of Narineh

I should take a picture and include it with this post. For now, I'll just tell you about it. Those of you who know me know that I LOVE bread. I have found my favorite in Luxembourg. There's a local bakery chain here called Fischer . Their motto is "Fischer... äre bäcker." Which I think translates from Luxembourgish to English as "Fischer... our baker." Anyway, they have this one bread called Körnli. It is a multigrain bread with sunflower seeds, oats, rye and other tasty treats. It is SOOOO good. Yum. I don't think I'll ever buy sliced sandwich bread ever again.

We had taco night this Saturday! It was very exciting, because as some of you may know, we miss the Mexican food. There are no Mexican food restaurants here. We've found a good South American place, but no beans, no burritos, no tacos. As we enjoyed our meal Saturday night, we wondered why it took us so long to do a taco night. We realized it was because we were hung up on the beans. It had been incredibly hard to find pinto beans here. Or black beans for that matter. The most common bean here is white, although kindey beans have been easy to find too. And we had it in our head that we needed beans if we were to have a proper taco night. A few weeks ago Sibyl and I found dried pinto beans and black beans at a natural foods store we visited. But they sat around in the pantry for weeks because we weren't sure what to do with the dried beans. We are used to the canned stuff that just needs to be heated up. Well, this weekend, with taco seasoning packets from my mom as impetus, we ...

there are new photos up on flickr , please to enjoy :) I try to organize my photos in sets, and I try to accompany each set with an entry, but sometimes, it just doesn't work out. This time you get 4 new photosets, one entry. but first... I thought some more about what I said in What's it like? a couple of days ago, and I was reminded of another huge difference I've experienced here. In Luxembourg, you bag your own groceries. It is the best! Not only do you bag your own stuff, but you buy the plastic bags you're going to bag them in! 3 cents each for the plastic bags. Or, instead you can buy an éco-sac for 80 cents and use it all the time, at any store. The éco-sac is a large, sturdy reusable bag. It is about as tall as a paper bag you get in the US grocery stores, but it is about 1 1/2 times as wide. It takes a while to get used to remembering to take the bags with you when you go to the store, but otherwise, it is super-handy, and a very easy way for everyone to redu...

I get most of my news online nowadays, from various sources. I also occasionally watch BBC World, CNN International and France 24 on tv here. So, while I'm not in the States, I am still able to more or less keep up with the news there. It seems the headlines are all about Paris Hilton going back to jail today. There is interesting and even newsworthy stuff going on there, namely how Sheriff Baca tried to circumvent justice and get Paris out of jail. It doesn't seem like the media is focusing on that aspect of the case however. I wish the American media would instead draw your attention to this . The Bush Administration's arrogant, reckless, holier-than-thou, cavalier attitude towards everything is particularly appalling when it comes to the issue of torture. If you read nothing else in this link , read the first and the last paragraphs. Ignore who wrote it, because I know some of you out there don't like Andrew Sullivan. Ignore that he is the one writing it, because it...

A 17 year old girl in New York died of methyl salicylate poisoning. Methyl salicylate is an anti-inflammatory agent found in sports creams like Bengay. She used too damn much sports cream and died. This CNN article quotes her mother as having said "I am scrupulous about my children's health. I did not think an over-the-counter product could be unsafe." Now, I'm sure she is in shock and all, but hello? Too much cough syrup will kill you. Too much Tylenol will damage your liver. That's why they have dosage instructions on the bottles. "Over-the-counter" doesn't mean "safe no matter what." It's like when people say they prefer to use echinacea and other herbs instead of cold medicine because echinacea is natural. You know what else is natural? Arsenic . Natural doesn't mean safe, either. That is not obvious to more people bums me out.

Luxembourg is awesome, really. In a lot of ways. I love it here. The most startling differences for a Los Angelino (not counting the obvious things like the age of the city, the fortress ruins, etc): 1- size The city center (aka Centre-Ville) is smaller than the UCLA campus. I don't have numbers to prove this, but having walked the city, and having walked all over UCLA, I am quite certain. Luxembourg City is probably the size of Westwood. I realize those are really specific analogies, so here are some hard numbers on the country from the CIA World Factbook : Area: 2568 square kilometers (slightly smaller than Rhode Island) Population: 480,222 (estimated, July 2007) Luxembourg City, the capital of the country, has a population of about 80,000. In comparison, the city of Los Angeles (via Wikipedia ) has half the area, but a little over 8 times the population: Area: 1290.6 square kilometers Population: 4,018,080 Luxembourg City is a bustling town though, especially since the weather h...

If you've been checking out my photos, you'll see I've been taking pictures of this tree from day 1 ... ok, day 2 . It looks different every day. I love it. It's one of the many ways I track the passage of my time here. I'll tag them all "the tree" or something on Flickr, so they'll be easy to find across the sets. Here's what it looked like on May 3. I have more recent photos of the tree, I'll post them soon.

One of things I love about this place is all the sculptures every where. Not that we don't see sculptures in LA. In fact, there are many all over the place. Especially in Downtown, and on the Miracle Mile. Somehow, the ones here stand out. Maybe because I'm not so used to them that they blend into the landscape and get ignored. Anyway, this sculpture, by Fernand Léger is my favorite so far. The name of the work translates to "the big walking flower" or, literally, "the big flower that walks."

whoosh! Originally uploaded by The Chronicles of Narineh Luxembourg celebrated the arrival of spring with art and fire. The Festival of Spring was on April 28, 2007. It began during the day with tours of urban art installations and exhibits all over town. And in the evening, the festivites continued with art exhibits, live music, beer stands, and fire installations in the Grund. It was an awesome site. I took many pictures , which I hope can convey how cool the whole thing was. I found a few YouTube clips that'll help give you an idea of what it was like too. This clip focuses on one of the musical acts, but you can see some of the hanging fire installations too. In addition to some more music, this and this include footage of the fire installations you'll also see in my photos. The musical acts were in different places in the Grund, and as you can see, they varied in mood and energy. It was amazing. I am glad I was here to see it. I don't know if it is an annu...