News Junkie

I LOVE being informed.

As a student of International Politics, that should come as no surprise. What might, though, is that despite that love I have a very on-and-off approach to actually staying informed. I guess this comes as the unlucky consequence of two facts: there is an unlimited amount of information available - and too little time in my day to process it. 

My first experiences with the news started in Switzerland, where when reading the local newspaper you could be lucky to find a page and a half covering global occurrences. The rest was dedicated to the really important things in life - which village had a fundraiser when, the most recent local scandal and an interview with a moderately famous cheese maker from the vicinity. Thus, I found myself already proud of my achievements if I listened to the radio or occasionally scanned the headlines of the big newspapers at the kiosk. 

A rude awakening awaited me when starting as a fresh-faced U0-student at McGill. I vividly remember sitting in my first lecture of "Intro to International Relations" when the prof said "So, I assume you have all followed the war this summer in depth..." I was dumbfounded. I had no idea what he was speaking about. Granted, I had just moved continents, but the fact that I had missed an interstate war because I was unpacking boxes (it was the stint between Russia and Georgia, by the way) was unacceptable for me. I swiftly proceeding to signing up for a daily Globe and Mail delivery to my doorstep - and spent the rest of the year struggling to get through at least half of the thick wad of paper clogging up our entrance every morning. 

This valiant, but always somewhat quixotic effort to keep up with what was happening everywhere at all times continued throughout my university career. The thing about studying international relations is that there is barely any information that is not relevant or interesting to you and so suddenly you get sucked into reading a 5 - part expose about the weapons Russia is allegedly delivering to Syria and found yourself late for work yet again, but yet have only read one out of the gazillion articles on your to-do list.

I am not sure that I have found the answer to this challenge quite yet, but technology does make it easier to stay on top of things. Two tips for those overwhelmed by information too - 

• Google Reader lets you subscribe to the RSS feeds of all major news websites. It is a little arbitrary which articles are featured, but in essence, you open one page and the latest articles from as many news sources as you feel like are at your fingertips! Plus you can set Google news alerts to key words (I have done that with "food security" and "right to food", for example). I love it for an overview of news from various viewpoints and regional concentrations - Right now I am subscribed to the New York Times World news (plus their Fitness and Nutrition section), Le Monde Diplomatique, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Al Jazeera English, the Economist, and Foreign Policy (from time to time I add or delete some; for example, I found myself always skipping the regular Le Monde articles and thus did away with them.)
• Podcasts are the best thing ever invented. Ever since John introduced me to This American Life and Stuff You Should Know, I have loved listening to these and other podcasts - on my commute, on a walk, when cleaning, the possibilities are endless! For news, the BBC World Service Global News podcast updates twice a day and gives a great overview of worldwide current topics. I also just found that the German ARD Tagesschau has both audio and video podcasts available.

Do I still find myself fighting a losing battle in the quest for absolute knowledge? Absolutely. But at least now that I make a dent in my reading and listening to news every day, I won't simply overlook another war - let's hope so at least. 

By the Seashore in ... Montreal?

Sometimes, when dreaming of tiny Italian fishing villages or aquamarine waters and hidden coves on Croatian islands, it is easy to forget the beauty of your everyday surroundings. This summer, I made it my mission to finally explore all the places in and around Montreal that I had wanted to see for four years and yet never managed to get to. When my friend Steph invited me to help her paint her room (at her home in a suburb of Montreal), instead of taking the metro and driving, I thought ... why not bike? 

After taking various bike paths down South from the Plateau, you reach the Old Port (which in itself is lovely to explore). Follow the path that edges around the promenade close to the water steady West, and eventually you will hit the Lachine canal, a paradise for joggers, bikers, inline skaters and picknick-ers alike. 

Close to the canal, you can also find various rental services - for bikes, kayaks, canoes and pedalo boats - for the times that you want to get even closer to the water. I went canoeing there with some friends two weeks ago, and I had such a blast! The canal also holds dear memories to me because this is where I did almost all my long runs leading up to my marathon in 2009 - and let me tell you, if you are going to run 32 km, you will want your path to be pretty at least! 

Its name purportedly comes from the unsuccessful explorer Cavalier de Lasalle, who was convinced he could find a passage to China. Once he came back and had to admit his failure, the locals called the land he owned (and on which the canal was later built) La Chine (China) in order to mock him. 

The path leads out of Montreal proper, into the Lasalle borough and all the way up to Lake Saint-Louis, which adjoins the island of Montreal at the confluence of the Saint Lawrence and Ottawa Rivers. 

doesn't it look like the sea?

 Then, I turned right to follow the Lakeshore route, which took me along the Northern edge of the lake. People here really seemed to lead a lifestyle similar to those living close to the ocean - there were yacht clubs, tons of parks, sitting areas and viewpoints along the water, and many pretty boats waiting for the next excursion. 

so much water!

I followed the path all around the lake until I hit Boulevard St. Jean - one of those horrible three-laned driveways clearly built for a car-dependent society - and was suddenly reminded that I was not, in fact, somewhere in Southern France, but in a North American suburb. Yet, I bravely defied the tons of cars and made my way safely to my friend's house for a successful day of painting. I left in the afternoon at 6.30 and followed the same route back home, which gave me the opportunity to enjoy the sights in the late afternoon sun. So pretty!!

this is the Lachine canal again.

Today my legs ache a tiny bit (I mapped it out and from door to door it was a 80km out-and-back trip!), but it was so worthwhile! I would suggest everybody snatch up their bikes and go explore - who knows what you will find! 

Book Club - One Hundred Years of Solitude

While my blog has laid dormant for quite some time, it might be time to resuscitate it. Not only am I part of a online book club with John and Hillary now, new adventures are looming on the horizon after I finished my BA in Montreal - a last summer in Montreal and Canada, travels around Italy and Croatia, and a two-year Masters program that lets me rediscover my roots and explore new places - what a lot to write about! Let's start with the book club... 

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez most definitely isn't your breezy Sunday-afternoon read. But a little patience - and attention due to the consistent name repetitions - goes a long way in discovering the unique beauty in this family saga imbibed with magical realism. John's post describes the special feeling reading magical realism gives you much more eloquently than I ever could, so be sure to check it out! The premise of One Hundred Years is simple - we follow the Buendia family literally through a hundred years of the family members' lives, which all seem to be dominated by two insurmountable emotions: one, a tremendous feeling of solitude no matter how many people they surround themselves with, and two, an unfettered obsession with either knowledge or achievement, which more often than not goes awry and ironically leads them to lives spent in even greater isolation.

The sole one to keep charge and aid the Buendias through their struggles is resilient Ursula, the matriarch of biblical age who herself discovered the odd repetition of history which leads all the José Arcadios and Aurelianos of the family to have similar fates and all the women to strive for love and passion without being able to consent to marriage. In her old age however, she starts to confuse past and present - surely readers will empathize, having struggled through many of the same confusions - and to surround herself with the family members she already outlived in an effort to normalize the circularity of history she so keenly spotted. This self-awareness, combined with the unbeatable but yet unsuccessful urge to solve the family issues and lead the Buendias to the peaceful and tranquil lifestyle they sought in moving to Macondo makes Ursula my favorite character, though the main theme of solitude is better portrayed through the many Aurelianos, including General Aureliano with whom the story opens. After Hillary so astutely reminded me of her, I do consider Meme and her yellow butterflies a close second in my affection for the literary characters of this novel - and her fate all the more heartbreaking.


Having finished the book, I found myself going back to the underlying themes again and again and becoming oddly self-aware in the process. As an individual, can one ever fully escape the feeling of aloneness? How do we know how others feel and whether they understand how we feel if we have never lived as another person than ourselves? Thinking about this reminds me of the eternal question of what the colour red really looks like. Clearly, we have defined objects that reflect light on a certain spectrum as being "red" and we are readily taught the name and meaning of colours growing up, but do two people really see the same thing when they see a red ball? Similarly, do two people ever have such a similar perspective of the world that they can truly efface the aloneness of being? 

Next on our list will be "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" by Philip K. Dick, the dystopian classic that set the premise for the movie Blade Runner. I'm already excited to start reading!  

Hello Switzerland… Nice to be back.

It’s just as cute and cosy as I remember. What a déjà-vu to go back to living in a quaint village just outside of town. Except that this town seems to be populated by black suits and high heels, distinguished delegates from god-knows-where that have to ask “Do you speak English” when you speak French to them (what a nice change!) and that Swiss people seem to totally accept all the international-ness. Say whaaat? There are also things that I don’t really remember though in all their vividness, though memories come floating back as I come along. Cue stream of consciousness: ohmygodswitzerlandissooooexpensive oh no i am about to enter the supermarket wait that is the special offer? that is supposed supposed to be cheap? omg i’m not going to afford that geneva is going to suck out every rappen i own oh no i’m in now hm strawberries? cantaloupe? oh i can afford apples well they are expensive but oh well hm cheese shall i get cheese hm yes no yes no well ok i can’t live without cheese. Etc.

Also – Swiss people from Geneva are so nice. Seriously. I have had people show me the way, give me their name to add on facebook (non-creepily) and just – smile. Learn, Paris. Learn, St. Petersburg. Learn.

The view – from everywhere. The café in the Palais des Nations has a huge window front that goes out directly in the garden and onto the lake. Sigh… Want to talk about world peace, now?

And finally – OMG no more number-calculating!!! Soixante, septante, huitante, nonante, cent. GO HOME quatre-vingt dix-neuf! Four-times-twenty plus ten plus nine? France,  you lose. bad.

Things Paris taught me

So of course, whatever happens to all my diaries also happened to my blog – it got lost in the (metaphorical) drawer of semi-important, but not often used things, until in a couple of years somebody digs it out and in a fit of nostalgia decides to keep it. Nearly. Because I purposefully did not set it up as a diary – to write about the restaurant outings I enjoyed, the picknicks I attended and the long runs I achieved in marathon training was not the purpose of this blog and still feels a little self-centred and navel-gazing-ish. However, I did set it up to tell you about major experiences, funny stories happening and impressions of all my travels (by the way, a Morocco recap is still due and will be worked on in the future) and so it merits a couple of posts to reflect on the end of my séjour in Paris and the road to follow. So this is where I will pick up – and just imagine the time between my last post and this one to be filled by blissful, sun-filled days full of attempts to catch and bottle the feeling of Paris in springtime, of outings to Chantilly and Chateau Fontainebleau, of picknicks in any major picknick-worthy spot in the Paris region and attempts to forget about exposés and paper due dates. Friends visiting (hello John!) brought the opportunity to re-visit long-time favorites and to reconsider the common opinion on some gems of Parisian architecture like the Tour Montparnasse (favorite building? really?), while last days of metro-abandonment brought about new perspectives on well-known routes because I just walked them. So there – that is all the diary-ish content you’ll get. Because now I am sitting in Geneva. And that abrupt ending, those unexpected fast goodbyes and see you soon (..?)’s beg the question – what do I take away from living a year in Paris?

Firstly, as very few people will probably argue with, that it is an absolutely gorgeous city. In sunshine as in snow or even in rainy and foggy weather, even after living there for months, it still hit me from time to time – what incredible, unmerited fortune to live a year in this town! Hemingway was absolutely right when he said “In Paris in springtime, the only problem you have is where to be happiest.” I would definitely definitely consider moving back here at some point, maybe not for life – it can be a little full and stressful – but sunsets at the Seine and early morning jogs at Buttes Chaumont are so. worth. any overfilled metro.

Then, the Parisians in their appreciation of good, wholesome, fresh food definitely influenced me in my decision to go into food politics later on. Reading Michael Pollan, about buying local and organic, and having the option of just stumbling out of the door and into a farmer’s market, or to go down to Monoprix and get everything from pasta to toilet paper bio or sustainable made me realize that it is possible to live more in tune with our earth, our community and our food – and that the battle is worth it for me personally.

Paris also taught me about work-life-balance. Yes, you do not want to step on the foot of some overworked lady in the metro in the mornings or you are solely responsible for the snappy response you will get, and Parisians do tend to walk, talk, act and complain fast, but on the other hand, come late afternoon or evening and the cafes, pubs, the banks of the canal and the parks fill up with people sharing a bottle of wine or two, chatting, socializing, taking walks and just enjoying. life. I think that is what lies behind the 35-hour-week and the constant battles of unions (as well as the unspeakable metro strikes) – the French will fight tooth and nail for their right to work and play, not only in university but all their life, and to have the time to appreciate life in its every moment, and not just the couple of weeks of expensive holidays you saved up for. That is a skill I endeavour to emulate, because it seems so important for your health, your sanity, and your happiness. Carpe diem.

Then, there are also some less deep, but not less important (well, maybe less important, haha) experiences. Amongst which -

• you don’t have to pick up dog poo as long as nobody is watching. But if they are watching, you will instantly become a persona non grata if you don’t.
• the Russian non-smiling, serious, “don’t f…. with me” face works wonders not only at busy intersections, but also with extremely pushy beggars, rose-sellers in restaurants, and nice old ladies who will cut you in line just because they can. Oh no they can’t.
• If you don’t break off the tip of your baguette on the way home, you gave yourself away as a tourist. Just go hang out in St.-Michel now.
• and last, but not least – don’t set your hopes of your ever-lasting love and return to Paris on one of those love-lucks at the Pont des Arts. The Ville de Paris totally cuts them off when they become too crowded. And would you really leave your romantic future in the hand of Parisian bureaucrats? Just buy a plane ticket and come back. Seriously. Because it is so worth it.