Kosmopolita + Meander

Those of you who are sick of my tedious negative declaimations should skip paragraph 1 and go straight to the news about AT right after. If you don't care about him or our family and just want to read about the rich and famous, skip down to the section on mega yachts. But first I have to vent.

I've been thinking about what to write about France, or specifically the Cote d'Azur, since our arrival here about a month ago. Something hasn't sat well with us here and it's been hard to pin down because we're lulled into a false complacency by the sheer fact that we're living on the bloody French Riviera! By saying some of the things I'm about to say, I'm definitely opening the gates for a backlash of bitterness about me being a cultural elitist or worse, and perhaps the more truthful label - a jaded underachieving housewife. But what the heck - the great thing about being 38 1/2 is that you stop really caring what anyone thinks of you anymore. And blogs aren't for making friends, they are for pretending that you have something important to say and a unique way of saying it! Well, if anyone is still bothering to read my meaningless rants, this is what I (and Alex though he's probably loathe to go public with it - and since he's on a boat bound for Antarctica, he can't defend himself anyway!) have concluded during my month in Nice ...

• FRANCE IS OLD!

And I don't just mean in the ancient sense. France is tiresome. There - I am a born-again cultural imperialist. Halleluja! So now that I've gotten that off my chest, I can move on to the minutae of life in France.

• But first a word about Alex...

As I said earlier, he is indeed en route to Antarctica. He left a week ago, passing through NYC to Buenos Aires where he barely hit the ground before he changed airports and hit another plane to Ushuaia*. Ushuaia is at the end of the world where Argentina curls around at Cape Horn. There he met up with the people who organize a race for lunatics who think it's invigorating to run 250 kilometers in desert conditions. (Yes, Antarctica is considered a desert for some unknown reason and if that is common knowledge I'm really ignorant!). They run approximately 40 kms a day for 4 days then 100 kms on day 5. There is a blind man running it too - in Crocs or something. Listen folks, overpopulation is no joke - if you need to find a way to distinguish yourself from the masses, try being a blind, gay Korean antarctic marathon runner. Ok, I made up the gay part, but the rest of it's true. And maybe he's not wearing Crocs, but someone there is I swear. As an aside, if you are over 3 it is not cute to wear Crocs. They are hideous.

But I digress... at the port in Ushuaia it was discovered that the ship - a Russian ice breaker - had a leak in the hull. I guess it's comforting to know that they found this out before they began to cross the Drake Passage (anyone wanting to know more about this fabled crossing can find gnarly footage of it all over You Tube). So as A put it via satellite phone the other night, some boozy Argentine diver was down in the murky depths with a piece of chewing gum trying to fix it so they could proceed. The fact that I have had no further contact with him since being disconnected shouldn't alarm me - should it? Happy Thanksgiving Al, I hope you didn't toss your turkey in the Drake!

• NICE, not nice...

So we moved from Berlin to Nice after we chickened out on our original plan of spending 2 months in Istanbul. For whatever reason it just seemed like it would be easier on me with the girls if I could understand the local culture and language if A had to travel. And the weather in Nice is well...nice! To be honest (and this is where I start sounding like a brat again)there is something generally disagreeable about Nice - or maybe the Riviera generally we're not sure. We live in the Vieille Ville with it's tiny narrow streets and at night it's extremely loud. Given that we live in NYC, you would think we could handle noise. This noise is different - it's aggressive! There are drunken revelers throwing bottles and hollering all night long next to the cathedral in the square by our apartment. Disgruntled lovers brawl and wail like feral cats in heat. The tiny maze of cobblestone streets seem to amplify the vexed voices. Living within a 3 block radius of the bus station in any country is presumably considered a bad idea. We live a block from the bus station. There are 3 clubs and 5 bars below our place and they have huge TVs showing the European football matches. Well, you can see where this is going. After a few sleepless nights we were fed up and tried to get out of our lease but the landlady couldn't find a replacement for us, so we're stuck. Now we have a machine that makes "white noise" to cover up the real noise. It's wierd. The moral of the story is don't live in Vieille Nice. Or don't live in Nice. Oh, Hedge, be nice! Putain de merde!

• DEJA VU

What is the English equivalent of "deja vu", by the way? I don't think we have a phrase like that which is why we borrowed it from the French. I am sort of beginning to understand why the French came up with this "been there - done that" expression as it were. You see down here, everywhere you go there is one after another identical-looking gorgeously perched medieval cobblestone villages all with picture perfect church, shuttered windows, tree lined square and a the ubiquitous boulangerie. Of course, when you get here you are told you have to see Eze, Beaulieu, Mougins, St. Paul, Villefranche, blah blah blah... So every day we set out and go to all these old old villages along the coast because you'd be a fool not to and Nice is actually not that fun. Plus the one and only benefit of living by the bus station is that there are buses to anywhere anytime! And no matter how far you go, it's only 1 euro. (The only bargain in France besides a baguette by the way) Farther north in Provence it's the same. Village after village of such exquisite beauty and oldness that after a few days your eyes get tired of seeing so much charm and breathing the smell of old. It's true, you actually begin to get a bit bored as you nod in appreciation to your lovely hosts and say "Oui c'est magnifique!" or "Comme c'est charmant ce petit village!" A and I recently confessed that we're starting to grow weary of all the charm! God I know we sound like such brats. But that brings be back to the deja-vu thing.

I imagine that back in the old days when you were a pilgrim or something you would go through all these villages and not having a map maybe you'd think you'd already been there and get confused. Because they really mostly look the same let's be honest. But oh so charming too... Anyway. I started to think of LA because there's a huge French population in LA. When I lived in LA I used to wonder why all those French people moved there when they could be in France where there is such history and beauty. Now I kind of understand. France can be monotonous. Everything is so damn old and the same! Not that LA is pretty, but actually in terms of geography it is much like Nice and the Riviera. You get the bouganvilla-draped spanish tiled villas and the lush palms and foothills with snow capped mountains in the distance. If you squint in Nice you might just think you were in LA - minus the billboards of women with fake boobs selling Escalades) If I had lived my entire life in a really quaint old smelling place I might crave the newness and trashiness and flash of a place like LA. It's like a smack in the face, but it could wake you up. I can see why they might not want to come back to France.

Sorry I know I'm banging on. Feel free to tune out if you haven't already. There's nothing more annoying than listening to a rich person whine about being broke or a traveling dilettante moan about life on the road! As I was saying... it's not just the prettiness of France that might get stale after awhile, but also the French way of thinking. The attitude is still very hegemonic. I think maybe they are afraid that if they think outside the box and mix things up a tiny bit, then the whole house of charming old cards will come toppling down.

• Le sandwich...

Let me give you a petite example. Being one of the culinary epicenters of the world, wouldn't you think they might offer more than just 4 choices of sandwich (ok Paris aside, I'm sure there are like 6 options in Paris), Non! You can find a poulet sandwich (chicken with butter --if you beg for mayo you might get it begrudgingly), ham & cheese, just cheese (only brie or camembert - but bear in mind that there are over 350 kinds of cheese made in France!) and sometimes tuna. For some reason this makes me insane. Helloooooo French people, ever heard of an avocado - they have them in every market! - or moutarde, aren't you famous for mustard? What about egg, olive oil, arugula, foie gras for lords sake!!! blah blah blah... They make the best bread in the world and all they offer is plain chicken, ham, cheese and tuna. It's not myopia, it's deeper than that. I think they have a deep rooted disdain for fast food and take-out because it represents American cultural domination and sandwiches are just that. It is why, even now in late 2008, all businesses (aside from restaurants) close from 12 - 2:30 for lunch. It is considered declasse to order a sandwich to go so their rebuttal is to give you a paltry unappetizing selection. I mean there are a million other completely irritating things about the French but I won't bang on about it - you get the point!

• Mega yachts

I have to talk about mega yachts for a minute because they are so vulgar and yet so fascinating! There is a playground at the top of the old fortress here in Nice where we go with the kids sometimes. It has a magnificent view of the port and the coastline. A week ago I noticed a massive yacht, the likes of which I have never seen in the port. Al swore it was a commercial vessel because of it's size but I maintained that it was a private yacht. It was easily as big as a couple of the apartment buildings in the vicinity. The Sarafsa. The name sounds at both flashy and exclusive - so I googled it and a whole new world unfolded. It seems that even in a time of extreme economic uncertainty, orders for mega-yachts are at an all time high. Technically a mega yacht is a private vessel over 100 ft, but the worlds biggest mega yachts are upwards of 400 ft now. A football field is 360 ft, and the Sarafsa is 370 ft. Roman Abramovich has 3, each with a staff of 100. These yachts are like floating mini economies. They have helipads on board and smaller cruising boats attached that in themselves dwarf other boats in the marina. The last time some Arab sultan pulled into the harbor in Villefranche, his chef cleaned the entire village out of fish for a party he was having on board. All the restaurants in the area were unprepared and had to take fish off their menus that evening.

It is worth noting that not one single name on the top 100 list of the mega mega yacht owners is French. I don't think that having a 35 hour work week and 2 1/2 hr lunches lead to the kind of riches that allow you to shell out $350 million for a boat! That's before you commission Jeff Koons to paint the exterior then purchase the matching painting to go in the master suite inside. Umhmm, all true... For privacy reasons many owners prefer to conceal their idenitities - but how is privacy even an issue when you are chugging around on a shiny white phallic symbol the size of a football pitch! It's like feigning modesty as you ski naked down a mountain with a neon flag on your weenie. So yes, the mega yacht... Sarafsa's owner is too private to be named - but rumored to be American. I heard that with the recession in full swing, it's now uncouth to tout your mega yacht so many owners have leased theirs out for the time being. Probably to the Russians. Nothing is uncouth to a Russian tycoon.

Tallulah wanted to know if we could go on a yacht and could I ask one of the people we saw on board if we could come for a ride. I told her they were the workers, not the actual owners who were on the yachts and wouldn't let us. She became insistent and it escalated into a mini-meltdown. I found myself trying to console a hysterical 4 yr old screaming "I want to ride on a mega yacht now!"

So we'll be here in Nice until Dec 20 when we fly back to NYC via Paris. Our friends there just had twins - yawhat!!! Welcome Alice and Estelle! I hope we are still welcome in their house after all the trash-talking about the French.

I'll end by just saying that in spite of my general impressions of France (which have changed dramatically since I lived in Paris many years ago), our day to day existence is fun filled and joyous. The girls are having a ball and being inundated with new sounds, smells, tastes and ideas. A and I are brushing up our rusty French and when all is said and done, the Cote d'Azur is bloody gorgeous! But that wouldn't be any fun to blog about.

(*If, like me, you had never heard of Ushuaia before now, you might appreciate the fact that the house we'll be renting in Guatemala next year is coincidentally named "Ushuaia". What are the chances?!)

We boarded an overnight train from Berlin to Basel, Switzerland on Friday night. It was originally intended to be a leisurely scenic ride down to the South of France via a family friend in Geneva, but in typical Tehrani fashion, it turned hectic at the last minute. A booked a job in Rome that turned the whole plan upside down. Being too expensive to fly to Nice at the last minute from Berlin, we decided to keep the overnight train plan then fly from Basel to Nice. It sounds pretty simple til you add in 2 small children and 12 - yes 12 pieces of luggage. That meant we all had to fit in taxis, couchette compartments, airport bus links, on cheapo airlines with weight restrictions and last but definitely not least, dragged down several pedestrian-only medieval cobblestone streets on a Saturday night in Nice. We had several mini-meltdowns along the way, but given that we're living the dream right now - it's hard to complain vociferously about the struggle of getting to the French Riviera for heaven's sake!

On the train I slept on a couchette on the bottom with T. A took top bunch with the baby. In the middle of the night, I woke up in a haze and there was a shadowy figure standing over me. For a second I thought it was A and I reached up and touched his leg and mumbled something. Then I smelled the booze and smoke and realized that a complete stranger had entered our compartment. He stammered something incoherent and ran out. I was scared out of my mind but since no one else was awake just lay there frozen with fear til dawn (after I checked to make sure our children and wallets were still there).

No sooner had we arrived in Nice then A had to turn right around and fly out to do an assignment in Rome. As we were rushing around trying to get him fed and of to the airport, he casually mentioned the possibility of us joining him in Rome. I am never one to miss out on that kind of opportunity especially if we can expense most of it! Seizing the challenge, all 4 of us were packed and out the door with a tiny carry-on in under 20 minutes.

So Rome... 48 hours, 4 countries and 3 languages later (4 if you count Swiss German)!!! Who said traveling with kids couldn't be easy!

Did I mention that this marks T's 3rd trip to Italy in as many years? Impressive for anyone, let alone a 4 yr old. This kid was so ready to be done with German and now all she can say to the Italians is danke! Poor piccolo - she's a bit confused with all the languages getting thrown into the mix. I think she'll get over it when we introduce her to the orgasm otherwise known as the Italian gelato.

I can't throw up enough love for Rome. Man, this is one gorgeous city. Here are the facts and someone can chime in if you don't think it adds up to one nearly perfect city. There are palm trees and stunning fountains and architecture and beautifully dressed people literally everywhere. It's in the mediterranean. They speak Italian. The food is well... Italian. The beach is nearby. There is a river and hills and citadels and chiesas and piazzas and palm trees! ( I am a sucker for palm trees. I'm always tempted to forgive LA for it's many short-comings on account of the palm trees.)

Ok, here's the real reason Hedgie loves Rome. I haven't had so many wandering eyeballs upon me since college. The men here don't care if you have two kids hangin' off you or even a husband in tow, they still undress you with their dark swarthy eyes! What's not to love? Alex said it's a cultural obligation among men here, like they see it as rude not to express their approval of a woman. I think they like anything remotely young and attractive because their big fat mamas are all they ever get to see at home. I read that most Italian men live at home until their mid-30's.

Italians and fashion - a national obsession. The complete opposite of the very pragmatic, non-consumer Germans. The only sign you see when you land at Rome's Fiumicino airport is for Emporio Armani. It's a huge neon sign above the airport terminal so if you weren't sure where you had landed you'd just have to put it together. You can love it or hate it - but the Italians work their fashion. Old, young and everything in between - workin' it. Some of the stuff is so incredible and a lot of it is really super tacky. They are crazy for anything shiny, gold, fringed and studded, all at the same time. In any other context it would make one want to vomit, but in Rome it's hot! Don't even try to show up to your job here in an ill-fitting suit. If your suit isn't tailored to within an inch of your life, just stay home with mama.

It's a big city, and smelly at times. And they drive like complete maniacs. Girls everywhere on mopeds wearing stilettos and draped in Gucci. It's just plain sexy. German just stuck in my throat every time I would try to conjugate the simplest request but in Italy I felt like a Fellini goddess asking for a price or the bill or saying arrivaderci! I miss it already.

Rome will always have a special place in our hearts because it's where we learned that Barack Obama will be our next president. I awoke in the wee hours to the glow of a computer in our hotel room and A hunched over it in tears. My first thought was that we'd lost, then he just grabbed me sobbing and told me Obama won! We were and still are totally elated and after the girls woke up we all did the Obama dance before breakfast. Every Italian we encountered that day congratulated us and for the first time we felt proud to present our American passports.