Oh, hey -- I'm away for a bit

[noahgibbs]

The family and I are now in Europe, and will be for about a month if all goes as scheduled. Entry's a bit rough with two jet-lagged young'uns, but so far we've continued as planned - England, briefly, and arrived in France yesterday. We're now able to settle in slightly better since we're in a place we can stay longer than one day :-)

I will likely be less-available in all online forms for awhile. But you knew that.

I'd post the same to Facebook, except I mostly don't respond there anyway.

Comments

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

Good! Enjoy your break. Let us know what you get up to. :)

[angelbob.livejournal.com]

Will do :-)

It's odd. Europe-wise, I've only been to England briefly with my family-of-origin when I was much younger. So I tend to think of England as mostly gray (grey, as they'd spell it) and wet and sooty.

And I have an academic's prejudice about Europe seeming quiet and sedate, because most things seem quiet and sedate when you're mostly just reading about them.

Paris, and to a lesser degree London, is *loud*. Train stations, restaurants, streets... It's all at least America-level loud, and often much louder. People are pushy, people are shouting, car/train/random noise is reflecting around. A lot of the spaces seem designed with a lot of tile and hard surfaces, making it even louder. Or the music is turned up high. Rarely, both.

So, reasonably enough, Paris is suddenly seeming much more crossroads-of-the-world to me, yet also paradoxically I'm getting some of the French agrarian thing that always seemed incongruous to me. You see things like fields of cows, and overall the atmosphere is surprisingly Texan. I'm working on how to spell out exactly how so.

Odd.

[rbus.livejournal.com]

I see London.
I see France.
I see *someone's* under pants.

Are they blue?
Are they Pink?
Oo-la-la - do they stink!