catching up

wow, it has been almost a week without internet. Some of you can imagine how difficult that is for me. We are currently in St. Jean-de-Luz, France, which is in the Basque country. Since Tuesday, we have: dined and hung out with Shawn Conley and Megan Levin in Paris; joined almost 80,000 French in watching France qualify for the World Cup with a 4-0 win over Cyprus; taken the train to Caen, France; discovered that I am a financial conservative; seen the truly amazing D-Day museum and taken a D-Day beach tour that included Omaha Beach, the American cemetery there, and the U.S. Ranger memorial at Pointe d'Hoc; seen a Ligue 2 (2nd division) game between Caen and Grenoble; taken the train to Paris and then to Bordeaux; seen a Ligue 1 game between Bordeaux and Sochaux; taken the train to St. Jean-de-Luz and enjoyed the beach and local cuisine.

That's the Reader's Digest version. I'm sorry for not posting more often; you know I'd like to. But here are a few details about the above.

Megan and Shawn: we met up with Megan and Shawn in their apartment on the 5th floor of a building in Montmartre. They play the harp and the bass, respectively, so you can imagine how they avoid taking their instruments on the stairs. We walked around for a while, then enjoyed a great, endless-course Italian meal and exchanged many a story of Europe and whatnot. Then we went to "Cave à Jazz" for some live music, but the place was packed, so we walked around a bit and then split up.

France s'est qualifiée: After revisiting "Fez is a Dork" on the dome of Sacre Coeur and seeing the Picasso Museum on Wednesday, we headed to the Stade de France for the France-Cyprus match. We even got free scarves on our way in--you know that pleased me. So going in, France needed to win by five goals in case Switzerland beat Ireland. They were up 3-0 at half-time but struggled in the second half and got the fourth goal with four minutes left. They never got the fifth, but the stadium absolutely exploded and we knew Ireland-Switzerland must have finished 0-0. So the place went nuts and there was a fireworks display on the field to the tune of -- get this -- Vertigo, Highway to Hell, and Born in the USA (!). Bizarre, but cool.

Caen: We took the train to Caen on Thursday. Caen (pronounced with a nasal 'Khawn' sound--Meg, any better way to describe it?) rocks my world. It feels like a really young, college-town type of place. We wandered around and saw an old Norman castle before taking the bus up to the D-Day Museum. Wow. We were absolutely blown away by the whole thing. It's definitely the best WWII museum either of us has been to, we highly recommend it. We got maybe halfway through the museum Thursday, seeing the chronology of the war and one of the two films. That night we walked around town and had dinner, then watched the new movie "Goal!" in French. Which was disappointing because it was made in English.

D-Day: On Friday, we took a taxi to the museum in the morning. Remarkably I was able to carry on a conversation with the taxi driver about soccer and sports in general (the driver in Brussels didn't say much). So I was feeling all French when we got there. We saw the memorial gardens and the other movie before delving into the Cold War exhibit, which was ridiculously ambitious but important to include. The beach tour started after lunch, us with a bilingual guide and a French couple. We did pretty well with her first spiel in French but it got really hard after that. That's about as fed up with French as I've been on the trip. But seeing the American cemetery and Omaha Beach and German pillboxes and everything was really important and moving. I thought I could fathom the losses, but you really can't, it's incredible. The cemetery is everything it's cracked up to be, not so much because of how well it's put together, but because of the gravity of the scene and sacrifice.

Caen 1:1 Grenoble: We went to the Caen-Grenoble game that night and really enjoyed the small (21,000-seat) stadium, although the lime-green seats with no backs were not so good.

Bordeaux 1:1 Sochaux: We spent most of Saturday on the trains to Bordeaux, arriving around 1700 for a 2000 kickoff. I really liked the atmosphere of the stadium, with meat stuffed in a pita roll sold outside and really low roofs on the stands. It rained, forcing us to stand at the back of the overhang with a bunch of locals. We struck up a conversation at halftime of a 1-1 draw. Much to Joe's satisfaction, the game brought a close to the densest soccer part of our trip, 4 games in 8 days.

Le pays Basque: We took the much shorter train ride to St. Jean-de-Luz on Sunday. The Basque nation is located in southwest France/Northern Spain, right against the Atlantic Ocean. They share a common language (Euskera) and flag across the boundaries, although they have little-to-no political autonomy. The beach here was amazing in beautiful weather when we arrived yesterday, and I spent an hour on the beach walking and writing. I had poulet Basquaise (Basque chicken) for dinner and an awesome Basque gateau for dessert.

the other Bayonne: we headed to Bayonne today to see how it compared to New Jersey. Not surprisingly, New Jersey wins. Signs led us all over the place until we finally found the Museum o f Basque Culture, which is closed Mondays. Of course. We walked around some more but had little desire to stay. We then took the train all the way down to Hendaye, just 'cause we could. We walked across a little bridge into Spain, just to say we had. Later, while waiting for the return train, we had our passports checked for the first time by local police.

So yeah, if you made it this far, I owe you a postcard or something. If you really do want a postcard, email me your address. Hopefully there will be more (and much shorter) posts in the near future.

Next game: Wednesday, Olympique Lyon v. Olympiacos Piraeus, UEFA Chamions' League
Next stop: Tuesday, Lyon, France
Next country: Saturday, Italy