Sightseeing. The year began with an Arctic snap, which meant the Balaton was almost completely frozen over, and thus just in the perfect state for my tastes- its summery outing as a sea instead of a sea will stay forever alien to someone who grew up with an actual sea- it’s dark yes, and filled…
Tag: France
People Sitting on Terraces in Paris
The other day, as I was walking through the blunt early evening fog of late autumn in Budapest I had a grand revelation. Before diving straight into it, let me just specify that these days we are having four types of weather around here: milky morning fog, opaque noon fog, blunt early evening fog and…
Lost in Montparnasse
As already mentioned in this, let me fancifully call it ’Paris series’, for Paris is in many ways such a fanciful place itself, I am not your number one expert when it comes to navigating the city. And the epitome of my being confused about Paris has always been Montparnasse. Irrespective of which metro station…
Wonderwalls of Montmartre
A long long time ago, when the Internet was still not widely available- and a bit before I received my first beloved PC, with a box of a monitor and one of those tantalizingly slow modem connections- I was surfing the web on my father’s work computer looking for Interesting Things. Since, as already mentioned,…
Je N’Aime Pas Les Champs-Élysées
So this one is the confessional piece- as the title says it, because even bad things have a certain je ne sais quoi in French: I don’t like the Champs-Élysées. Or, even worse, I am totally immune to its charms. As far as I am concerned, it might as well not be there- something must surely…
Barlove Special Edition: In Search of Lost Coffee- Cuillier Abbesses
The odyssey began on Sunday, and I, the characteristically clueless heroine of this story, had no idea what lay in wait. Then again, I have a slight suspicion that no odyssey ever went according to plan, or it would be called a Japanese train schedule. It was on Sunday morning therefore that I said no…
Morning in Montmartre
One of those things which is just as hard in the morning as you’d envisaged it would be in the evening is waking up at 7 AM after you’ve consumed copious amounts of French rosé. Also, let me here mention the fact that I belong to the Jeremy Clarkson school of thought which considers rosé…
Evenings on the Seine
It took me ages to start this piece, as I was harbouring a vain hope that there is still something that has not been said about the banks of the Seine in Paris, something that has not yet been laid down in a novel, a poem, an essay, a travel blog, a column of fashion…
The Art of French Gardening
I’ll spare you the suspense: this entry will contain absolutely nothing about real French gardening, which has always seemed to me a rather typically French and also ultimately futile attempt at rationalizing the environment. The ordered geometry of nicely trimmed hedges and strategically placed decorative fountains is alright, but somehow fails to lift the soul…
Pocket Diary Budapest 