Back in Ddorf again...

July 17, 2011

This time it's 3 weeks auditing headquarters, it's a whole different ballgame. Staying at the guesthouse that everyone hates so much. It works fine for me.

My flight got in Sunday night. I had enough time to hang up some clothes then ran to meet my friend mike for dinner in old town. We decided to go for steamed mussels so were disappointed when they weren't serving anymore that night and we had to go for the baked mussels which were covered in cheese. This dish and the schnitzel were a bit heavy for a late dinner. Afterwards we walked across the bridge to the other side of the river to check out the fair. Mike made the mistake of calling it carnival and was immediately corrected to say keramis. Carnival in this town is a serious event - basically a 3 day event of adults dressing up and drinking and partying nonstop.

This fair is a 2 week affair and stretched from one bridge to another. It's huge and full of rides, food booths, restaurants, beer garden (hey, it's germany after all), etc. I discovered that the germans are serious about their carnival rides. They are all of the barf inducing kind. It get dizzy just watching them. Most involving spinning you around and turning you over and over at top speed. Funny to hear loud american music blaring at each ride. It's nice that the whole scene is set right on the rhine river.

Our audit starts right on monday morning so no time to recover from jet lag. Oh well, I wanted to stretch out as much time home as possible.

Coming up for air.....

July 1

Hooray, it over! This was a tough audit and I had an inexperienced team. This meant do my part and also help them with their part and play the role of lead auditor. On top of it all this was a highly anticipated one with people outside of france knowing we were here and were curious with what's going on. In other words people will actually read our 45 page report :-) It was so much work, for most days we were in the office past 9pm. The day is long so I get fooled with the sunlight. Never fails that I would look at my watch and it's frickin 9! I had anticipated a difficult final discussion so I pushed the team to really know what they are talking about and made them practice with the difficult topics. They might have thought I was strange with my role playing. Bea had some controversial topics and I kept challenging her to make sure she can hold up in the meeting. The french fights really hard and you have to be tough for it.

In the end we had a good audit and got a few "well done" from the bosses in germany which made it all worthwhile. We had some interesting findings this time and I learned a lot. I will miss their french accents the most! After the last meeting Victorio told me that he appreciated me speaking slowly. Funny but I make a conscious effort to speak slowly and annunciate whenever I am in a foreign country and whenever I forget to do that, it never fails that they would ask me to repeat. We joked the other day that when I get back to AZ after my assignment I will have to relearn american english again.

2 weeks with my hubby and it's back to duesseldorf!

Guess what I ate to today...escargots!

June 28, 2001

I had a goal to order escargots at every nice restaurants we visited. They always have it on the appetizer menus. It's like chicken wings in an american restaurants, common and popular! lol! love it.

A day in Fontainebleau

I did NOT want to leave this audit without a chance to see the Fontainebleau castle about 15 miles north of the plant. Our french colleagues highly reccomended the town which is a very popular holiday destination for parisians. It's set in a huge forest area and in the old days all the french kings would come to Fontainebleau to hang and also to hunt in the forest. Hence the castle is one of the few in france that has a unique history of housing many kings throughout history.

The day was hot as hell. It was actually pleasant the 2 weeks prior but now it's about 98 with 90% humidity! I miss the dry air of phx! I was trying to explain to Bea that it can be 112 in phx and still feel nicer than 95 here! People who have not been to AZ find it hard to believe that 100 in phx is actually very nice.

Anyway, we took a break from writing the report and spent a few hours here. Definitely much more lively than the village of Nemours! Took an audio tour of the castle, the place is huge. Reminds me of versailles, very opulent. It was cool to see the bedroom of marie antoinette and the office of napoleon. They say napoleon was a workaholic and spent about 20 hours of the day working. The gardens around the castle was extensive but we did not have time to see it. There's even a small lake where you can rent rowboats.

We had a nice dinner in town. I made fun of Michael who was eating his hamburger and fries with a knife and fork - so german! Again, they didn't want anything to do with my snails.

Cafeteria food - it's gourmet food here in france!

June 25, 2011

It's not typical food in the cantine at the cafe! For lunch there's a whole spread of food that's as good as any fancy restaurant in the states. Fresh french bread, big selection of fresh local cheeses (we are in the regional of brie cheese, yum!), all kinds of cold appetizers in little cute plates, sinful looking desserts, fresh yogurts, tarts. After all this you then get to the entrees (yikes) and they usually have a 3 selections of meat and fish with different sauces. The cook is named Martine and she makes everything herself. The food is so great and I loved her sauces. Lunch is not a 15 minute rush here. I didn't see any sandwich selections in case you wanted a quick lunch. You eat your big meal and once everyone at your table is done eating someone will say "coffee?", then they bring a tray of little cups filled with some strong coffee. Michael loves the dessert here so he had a personal goal to try every dessert selection in the fridge before we leave.

One day we all had some fresh cherries (they look like the bing cherries, light in color) because they were picked from the chef's garden!

Great views from top Arc de Triomph

We all met Saturday afternoon at the Trocadero which is a fantastic spot to view the eiffel tower. Had a freak thunderstorm that although lasted only 15 minutes had people screaming and scrambling for cover. I had an umbrella which wasnt quite enough to cover my pants and shoes from the rain that was blowing sideways! The pictures after the storm was nice though!

As we walked by the arc de triomph we noticed that you can actually go to the top. So, for 10 euros we got to climb the 250 step of spiral staircase (whew!) to the top for some fantastic views of the city including the famous champs des elysees street.

After that we took the metro to Montemarte which another place I have never been to. It's famous for the art, this is where artist come to paint or sell their paintings. It's such a quaint area and SO paris! I got a crepe from the sidewalk and it was so good! The area sits on top of a hill that's north of the city center and crowned by the famous Sacre Ceour church. Poeple come here to sit on the steps below the church to watch the fantastic view of the city. As souvenier I bought a small black & white oil painting of the eifel tower with the seine river as foreground. So touristy but I don't care, it's my favorite scene of paris.

Night photo tour - a whole different perspective

I think the highlight of this trip was a night photo tour that my niece had recommended to me. She did it last year and loved it! I will always remember this because it was the moment where I stopped using the auto settings on my camera and went to manual settings. OMG! what a difference that made to my pictures! I practiced the next day and somehow my pics are much sharper. I am convinced that I will take more classes when i get home.

Anyway back to the tour, it was supposed to be a group tour but I think due to the sporadic weather that weekend people must have shied away. So, as a bonus I was the only one and got a private lesson! My guide was David who seemed to have drunk 10 cups of expressos before he got there. But it was great because all of that energy was put into photography and in teaching me how to be a better photographer. He was so passionate about it all that it became contagious. We met at 9:30pm and finished up a little past midnight. Our focused on areas around the louvre. Now I'm hooked on night photos. It's a time when the city is quieter and you can actually have opportunities to take pictures without hordes of people. Will have to do this with my nieces when I'm home. One new thing during this tour was an outdoor exhibit by a famous architect. It's an active exhibit where you can touch and feel the work. The story of it was not posted anywhere so it was nice to have David tell me the meaning of it. It was the center spot of the city and honored the prisoners of auschwitz death camp. The marble columns are all the same height but displayed at different height from the ground level. Some go through the ground below so from where you are walking you see differents heights. This represented the different stages of life of the people. Some die very young (you only see 6 inches of the column), and some are 6+ feet tall (the person grew up to be someone great), there where some where the columns were flushed to the ground to mean that they died at birth. In the area there were some lights on the grounds were you see it as green if walking in one direction and red if walking from another. This is the artist's message on the right way to see the sculptures. Anyway, this exhibit made a really big impression on me.

I had so much fun taking pictures with david. He gets so excited whenever we take a great shot. In the beginning he was showing me how he was setting up my camera and had me push the button to take the picture. Then little by little he had me do some of it so that by the end of the night I was in full control of my camera. Sneaky but it really worked! My world just opened up and now I feel I have so much more to learn!