Vannes, EU Politics, and American Weeds

(Here's a nature shot taken on the network of forested trails that surround Herbignac)
As I mentioned in today's entry to our pipe blog, we've been extremely busy for the past week - too busy to keep the blogs updated, unfortunately! But, maybe I can make up for that today with a little bit of video. I put this slide show together a couple of years ago to fill out some CDs of pictures and videos that we made for our parents and friends in the states, but I've never posted it on the site until now. The photos are all from our first summer in Brittany, when our friends Beate & Micheal took us to the "old city" area of Vannes for a vacation day. Nice pics, nice music, and mostly nice people! The file is in WMV format, which I'm sure will provoke lots of complaining, but I made it back when Windows Moviemaker was all I had to work with (and I am entirely too lazy to try to go back and change it now). NOTE - This video was taken down to save server space and bandwidth, sorry.

We have to give a delayed welcome to Germany's new (and first female) chancellor Angela Merkel. She's been in all the news here, with everyone wondering which way she will go (not that she seems to have that many options considering the fractious coalition government she is leading). She's vowing to keep French-German relations close, but also to improve Germany's wobbly relations with the US. It's funny - I lived my whole life barely knowing the names of any foreign leaders, but now I follow closely the Unholy Trinity of French/UK/German politicking. It makes entertaining reading, especially as the UK slowly moves into a greater driving role in the EU after France shot its own feet off with that constitution vote. I do not mean to imply that I think the EU would be better off with the UK in the lead - I have no vested interest either way. It simply makes good drama to this outsider's eyes to watch the struggles between the very vested interests. I am particularly looking forward to the next presidential elections in France! Watching someone else's political system at work is a lot more fun than it sounds.

"There is a long, not so noble expatriate tradition of sitting around citing the faults of one's hosts, that is, the people who populate the country where you live."
So opens this book review of 'French and Americans, The Other Shore', which sounds interesting, more so if it is on the level with Raymonde Carroll's "Cultural Misunderstandings". That was probably the most serious, sociological consideration of US & French cultural differences that I've encountered, though it may be a bit outdated today. One of the more amusing insights I've read regarding the difference in national psyches was that the modern French person is like a delicate greenhouse plant - carefully, fanatically cultivated by his/her parents in a very controlled environment, with rigid standards of behavior, constant clipping & trimming, until they grow into a very specialized flower with exotic blooms which is totally dependant on its enclosed environment for existence and identity. By contrast, Americans were said to be like wildflowering weeds - pretty much left to make their own decisions from childhood, in order to develop toughness and durability and the adaptability needed to take root anywhere, at the expense of exotica. A fairly accurate assessment, from my experience! But, to get back to the quoted passage that started the paragraph, one thing that I try (accent on try) not to do with this blog is turn it into a long litany of whining about what's wrong with France or the French.

This brings me to a question - What would readers like to see in this blog? Email me or reply via comment please. I would be curious to hear what people want to read more of, be it food, culture, movies, travels, or whatever. Speaking of movies, we watched "Fantastic Four" the other night and it was quite fun (and nowhere near as bad as I was braced for). I grew up reading FF in the Silver Age years and they were my favorite comic for a big chunk of my childhood. I thought the movie did a good job of capturing the sense of fun in those old comics, before the 90's came along and all comicbook heroes became grim and borderline psychotic. While some of the actors were questionable (Alba as the matron mother figure of the Marvel universe?), I would recommend the movie to anyone who remembers the FF in the days of Willie the mailman and the Baxter Building, before the Invisible Girl became the Invisible Woman and shed her blue bodysuit for a spiked chrome bikini.