Finally

My new blog is up. It's called City on a Hill, which is what Montpellier is, literally. As for figuratively, well, we'll see.

It's going to get tweaked a lot when I get back from Texas at the beginning of April, but in response to the many inquiries I've gotten, it's a start.

Thanks for your cards and letters. See you in France.

Going Like 60

Sometime over the past few hours, I turned 60. Actually, although I know my time of birth, I'm not sure exactly when the moment came: the U.S. was doing Daylight Savings Time, so where did that moment go?

The number is shocking enough; even more shocking was the realization the other day that I've spent 25% of my life (my life so far, I hasten to add) in this city. And now I'm leaving.

Actually, I was anticipating the kind of denial I'm feeling at the age thing, the realization that the likelihood of finding a partner is receding, and that the likelihood of fathering children has disappeared still haven't settled in. Perhaps that means that the former, anyway, is still possible, although I now know for a fact that Berlin wasn't a good place to look, which is one of the regrets of getting older, because it can't be undone.

What I didn't anticipate was the moving denial. With ten days until I'm planning to leave this apartment, I have yet to engage a moving company, and although much of my stuff is still packed from when I moved into this place -- I never once considered anything other than a temporary stop -- there's still lots to pack. So I sit here blogging, of course.

For those of you who may be anticipating moving, incidentally, I found a great resource: MyHammer is an auction site for a number of labor services, including movers, where you put up a description of the job that needs to be done and professionals bid on it. You've got ten days to accumulate bids, and then you pick a winner. Thanks, Josh.

So the plan at the moment is to get the movers in on the 12th, rent a car and fill it with the stuff I don't trust the movers with, like my computer, spend the night somewhere in Berlin, and drive to Montpellier the next morning, with a stopover for the night, perhaps in Beaune. I'm actively seeking someone to come along for this, not so much to share the driving, but to make sure I don't fall asleep at the wheel. I did that once, in Czechoslovakia in 1990, utterly destroying the car I was driving, but not myself or the two other people in the car, who had fallen asleep. Alpha waves are contagious, and I still remember the horror of that moment, and the vast relief that we were all alive and unharmed. (Bizarre coda to that: Sixt in Austria said they were sending up a guy with another car for us, which would arrive in Brno the next morning. Two days later, we still hadn't heard from him, so we called again. Turned out he'd arrived on time, and was waiting for us at the International Hotel, while we'd been looking for him at the Hotel International.)

At any rate, it'd be an adventure, and the co-adventurer could return the car, or I could turn it in at the Montpellier train station and they could get back on the train. Or, if they have patience, fly, which involves going to Stanstead and changing airlines.

I've got to write my landlord and tell him I'm leaving, I've got to send out change of address notices, I've got to go through boxes I moved with and throw stuff out, I've got to clean the place up a little, I've still got friends here I'd like to say good-bye to, and -- oh, yes -- I've got work that has to be done every day on this ghostwriting project I've taken on.

So...I'd better get moving.

But since I love to leave opportunities for procrastination open, there's one more blog-post of crumbs shaping up. I'll probably be banging that out when the movers get here.

Oh, and if anyone does want to take over the lease on this place, let me know immediately!

Long-Awaited Announcement

This morning at 11:30 I signed a lease agreement with a landlord for a 55-square-meter apartment in Montpellier.

The agreement goes into effect on November 1, although since my 60th birthday is Nov. 2 and I've celebrated 40 and 50 in Berlin, and want to say au revoir to my friends, I won't move in on that date.

What this will mean is that over the next few weeks, this blog will be winding down, and a new one will rise. Just think of it: a whole new country to complain about from scratch! Why, I've already ploughed through the catalog of offers Orange (France Telecom) has ready for me and am utterly and totally confused. Isn't there some way for me to get a landline, a mobile, and Internet service without cable TV? I don't watch television at all, and never have!

For the last five years, I've felt like I was treading water in Berlin. Virtually nothing I do can't be done elsewhere (except complain about Germany and Berlin), so why not do it from a much nicer place?

That's what I'm about to do.

I'll miss the real-life friends I've made in Berlin a lot, but I also have a sneaking feeling I'll be getting a lot of e-mails with the word "couch" in them. And yes, it looks like the nice couch will be going with me.

As for the cyber-friends, I'll try to get the new blog up quickly, and put a pointer here so y'all can join in the fun.

Anybody want to take over my lease? Anybody know what it'll cost to move? I sure don't...

More news as it happens.

PostKomm '08

Sorry about the protracted absence; things have been just a bit nuts around here. Some of it, which involved getting a ghost-writing deal for a book finalized, isn't of much interest. And, when I finally got that settled, along came Popkomm again.

Since I am no longer much of a consumer of contemporary pop music, and have never been a consumer of European pop music to any large extent, Popkomm doesn't have much to do with me other than the fact that the executives of SXSW in Austin, for whom I do occasional work, come to town. Since these guys are old friends of mine, it's an excuse to hang out with them, hear their stories, and have a couple of very good meals.

The actual work I do at the conference here is simple: I'm the nut-catcher. While the Texans -- and our Irish-based UK rep and our Tübingen-based European rep -- run around having meetings with people who will be attending SXSW, in particular export associations of European countries who are interested in setting up showcases and trade-show stands, I keep track of where they are ("He said he was headed to Finland" -- meaning the Finnish stand, not, like, the actual country) and talk to people who drop by, most of whom are blissfully unaware of what we do or who we are. It's my job to interrupt their carefully-rehearsed sales-job for their band, event, service, or whatever and steer them into discussing whether SXSW has any value for them. It's also my job to make sure they leave a business card -- most of them have business cards, although I continue to be amazed by people who'd go to an event like this armed only with a stack of self-produced CDs -- because it's not my job to decide whether what they're pushing is of any value to SXSW or not.

I've been doing this for years, since Popkomm was in Cologne. Cologne in early September was usually a really nice place to be: drinking Kölsch by the side of the Rhine on a warm late-summer evening is an experience everyone should have. Now it's in Berlin, at the ICC convention center, having been bought by the city from the consortium who started it, just in time for the collapse of the record industry. Berlin: always such great timing. Still, this has meant that the music part of the conference, in clubs during the evenings, has expanded, which is good PR for the event, even though, from what I could see, the daytime part, the trade show and conference, is smaller than ever. (Rumor has it that the event won't be held at the ICC next year, and I'm wondering where it would be held, if not: Kongreshalle am Alexanderplatz? Maybe...)

My perspective, from the booth we were given (we do a trade deal with Popkomm, which represents at the SXSW trade fair), may have been skewed. We were almost in the corner of the hall, not terribly visible, between a royalty-collection service and an only-in-Germany merchandise provider called Deaf and Dumb, who were giving away t-shirts featuring a huge, well, it was hard to tell what it was, which wasn't a great advertisement for their printer. It appeared to be a star with wings, and I guess that's what it was. Once their freebie t-shirts ran out, so did their visitors. I wonder if they are even minimally aware of how bad the name of their company is: not only is it offensive to handicapped people (having had a father with tympanic sclerosis, I'm maybe a bit sensitive to all issues around hearing-loss), but giving a company a name which implies it can't hear you and is stupid to boot can't bring in many English-language-savvy customers. We were directly across from Music Catalonia!, whose impressive booth featured a mirrored wall with the group's logo on it, and it was a gas watching people coming into the hall stop to check that their image was right before walking on.

As always, the export agencies did well, mostly networking with each other, from what I could tell. Only two major record labels that I could see had stands: a modest one for Warner Records Group, and a much more ornate one at the other end of the hall from us for Universal Music Group, which had, to me, the coolest feature: a sign made out of water. Operating somewhat on the principle of a dot-matrix printer, this thing had a long tube high above the floor with many tiny holes in it which were lined up with the floor, on which there was a drain. Water pumped up the side was released in controlled bursts which turned the falling water into letters. It even had different fonts. Cool as it was, I'm just as happy we weren't situated next to the constant splash! splash! splash! the thing made.

The rest of the trade show was the usual mixture of junk-retailers (there's always some company which provides those out-of-copyright box-sets you see at discount stores), digital music services, merch retailers, we'll-get-you-on-radio services, trade publications, and miscellaneous doo-dads like the USB-stick concert-recording services, of which there were two, housed side-by-side in furious competition.

I stood (or sat) at our booth and watched the parade, such as it was, go by. (I'll wait for the final figures, but my guess is that this wasn't exactly the most-attended year of Popkomm by a long shot). Just down the way from us was the Icelandic national stand, and they were trapped in Berlin for three days while their country imploded. (They had set out some tortilla chips and dip, and, bizarrely enough, the tortilla chips were good. But were they Icelandic?) There are people who have been attending these things for years, the Conference Dogs, and I'm one of them. We all know each other and greet each other, even though, in my case, there's no way they're going to do any business with me or I have any business I can do with them. But they hustle around, renewing old deals, modifying current deals, getting new deals -- whatever kind of deals those might be.

The room was overheated -- or perhaps the ICC folks were caught short by the unexpected good weather. For the first time, there were no food stands around the halls, which didn't exactly make us happy. I went on a trek to see what I could find and came up with some curling bagel sandwiches in the entryway, something called China Express way way back at the end of the exhibition area selling "Asia food," which is an insult to both Asia and food, a tiny stand selling coffee and cake, and, out in front of the building, a cart selling cold hotdogs in cold buns. Eventually, someone mentioned that there was another place in a room no one had looked in, and sure enough, there were two bars, one of which was promoting Swiss coffee, the other of which was selling cocktails. Although there wasn't a single sign announcing it, the coffee folks were selling ciabatta sandwiches (not bad at all) and pizzas (grim-looking) and the cocktail people had trays of the usual chemically-treated prefrozen sushi for sale. There was also a smoking area outside this room, at which some really ganky-looking Bratwurst were being fried. Note to Popkomm: it can't hurt to inform delegates who are forced to be inside the ICC all day that these facilities exist. Note to facilities: doubling the serving staff might cut down on the number of non-Germans yelling at you because they're missing their meetings because of having to stand in line for 20 minutes to get a cup of coffee or a sandwich. (And no, I don't mean me; I live here and am well acquainted with the German sport of standing in line).

I didn't see any music, didn't acquire a single CD (although a band dropped off a press-kit on a 2-gig memory stick which has been cleared and is awaiting use on my desk), I didn't acquire any cool swag (nobody can afford it) although the cigarette lighter-flashlight that came in the registration bags was nice, and, unlike last year, I didn't get offered any apartment tips in Montpellier. I did, however, run into a couple of old friends and hear some good stories.

Here's one: a group from out of town was staying in a 4-star hotel, a small one out of the center, with a small lobby-bar. Returning late one night after an evening of clubbing, they decided on a nightcap before turning in, and the night-clerk brought them some drinks. "So we're sitting around this little table," one of them said, "and we have our drinks and we suddenly realized we were out of cigarettes. Just then, someone noticed a pack of cigarette tobacco and some papers on a table, so we picked it up. Imagine our surprise when, opening it up, we saw not only the tobacco, but a nice bag of weed. So we thought, cool, this is a nice nightcap and began rolling a joint. Just then the night-clerk walked back from his office and saw what was going on and ran over and started yelling 'Give me back my weed, dammit! That's mine!' We were just flabbergasted. One of our people speaks excellent German and really laid into the guy. Wonder if he'll have his job when this thing is over..."

Then there was one which happened to me. I was coming home on the Ringbahn, and stopped off one station early to do some banking at the Sparkasse office in the Gesundbrunnen Center. After I'd done my business, I walked back home over the bridge which spans the giant cluster of tracks by what used to be the Wall. As I got to the bridge, there was a guy shouting at me, very excited. I got closer and he asked me if I had a cell-phone. As it happened, I did, but one of the things I'd done at Gesundbrunnen was to buy some more credit because I was down to four cents. I hadn't loaded it on yet. But this guy was yelling "Look down there! Quick, we have to call!" Sure enough, on a side-line there was an S-Bahn train, kept ready for an emergency replacement at Gesundbrunnen, and as I stared at it, I realized that it was being covered with graffiti, very quickly and very efficiently, by three tiny black-clad figures working with incredible precision and teamwork. The tags weren't much to look at but the way they were working was. "You have to report this to BVG!" the guy was yelling. "They'll give you €60!" But it was too late. Their work done, the crew signed it and, with a speed which announced how well they knew the territory, they were leaping tracks and third rails like a bunch of steeplechase horses, heading towards the housing projects of west Berlin. From what I could see of them, they appeared to each be around eight years old.

* * *

As for the moving project, I've been telling people it's an astrological problem. Three planets need to be in conjunction: Enough Money, Available Apartment, and that most difficult one, Trusting Landlord. It's almost impossible to convince French people that an American my age who's self-employed is a good risk, although currently things are going very well indeed for me. Only the Enough Money planet is currently in place (and of course the third one depends on finding the second one), but I'm still getting e-mail alerts (and, in fact, got one while I was writing all of this) and if the frequency picks up as I suspect it will in the next few days, I could be back in Montpellier waving cash in front of a landlord as soon as next week.

The Crumbs Of Late Summer

It's always a bit astonishing for someone who moves to Berlin from more salubrious climates to notice that it's getting distinctly chilly by the third week of August -- the week in which I usually took my vacation when I worked at the newspaper in Texas because I knew that the psychological moment when I just couldn't take any more occurred in that week. But it's been a good summer, warm enough that I'm kicking myself for not planting jalapenos, and...like a few other things, it's coming to an end. Herewith some miscellaneous observations.

* * *

The invasion of Eastern European street musicians ending is one thing I always look forward to when summer ends, something which occurred to me the other day, when, trapped under the U-Bahn tracks at Schönhauser Allee waiting for the light to change, I endured a group of two saxophones, two accordions, and a three-year-old dancing boy while a guy in a shiny green suit rattled a coffee-cup with some change in it under my nose demanding payment. These people have annoyed me so much over the years that I found myself incapable of sharing the general world-music endorsement of the various Orkesters and wedding bands churning out records a couple of years ago. I still can't listen to that stuff.

But...there is one mysterious virtuoso among us. His name is Stefan Daskalos, and he plays the gadulka, a metal-stringed bowed instrument from his native Bulgaria. I first caught him in that same under-the-tracks site, fat, bearded, and playing like a dervish. Part of the instrument's charm is its haunting sound: you'd never think something that small would make that much noise, but the secret is in the sympathetic strings, which ring in such a way that the instrument sounds like it's being played in an echo chamber.

I caught up with him this weekend as he sat next to the Kettwurstbudde on a nice day, sawing away. This time, I thought, I'd give him a euro or two -- I never give money to street musicians -- in return for standing and watching his technique for a few minutes. As I stood there, another guy, shabbily dressed, red-faced and missing most of his teeth, came and stood next to me. Then, unfortunately, he started talking to me in an almost-impenetrable accent. What I could make out was that he was from "Ost-Preussen," and that someone he'd known there played a "Geige" like this. I made it out because he said it several times. Then Daskalos stopped playing and Mr. Ost-Preussen started giving his spiel to him. Daskalos' gadulka wasn't very pretty -- there was no ornamentation at all and the wood wasn't at all polished -- but it was clear that it was a good instrument. To shut up Ost-Preussen, Daskalos started another tune, and I looked closer. He wasn't fretting the strings, he was stopping them with the two middle fingernails of his left hand, which had been reinforced with some sort of varnish that had turned a greenish-black.

After the tune, I made a hasty decision and handed Daskalos €10 for the double CD of tunes he was selling, figuring that would buy me an interview, too. He told me that the instrument was made -- by himself -- out of a single piece of wood (although I can't really believe this, given how thin the upper face has to be to resonate). It was clearly a homemade instrument, though, right down to the nut holding the strings. He and the gadulka were both from Bulgaria, and it was at that point that I started hearing "Ost-Preussen!" being shouted and things got a bit confused. There was something about a son and a financial catastrophe, and as our neighbor got louder, he picked up the bow and started another hora. I thanked him and went to the bank, and as I was walking there it occurred to me that I should take a picture for the blog.

Nope: he'd made twenty euros at one location (Ost-Preussen had also bought one), so it was time to move on. I saw him the other day under the U-Bahn -- it does have good acoustic properties -- but I didn't have time to stop. Sill, recommending a street musician is a new one on me, so if you see him, take a minute or two to listen to him and watch his astonishing technique. And if you're tempted to buy a gadulka, this guy has them for between $350 and $600, plus case and shipping.

* * *

In other live world-music notes, someone in my building has started playing the sitar. Since whoever it is doesn't seem to understand how to play an alap, fumbles the jod, and spends the gat showing off flashy, if fumble-fingered, technique, I gotta assume he/she is German. Still, I (unlike some of my neighbors) enjoy someone else's musical tradition being butchered instead of my own. The sound is still charming, even if the execution isn't. And we also have an oboist somewhere here who practices with the windows shut. He/she's very good.

* * *

Congratulations to Ben and Yuhang on their wedding! It, and the events around it, made me think a little about what it means to live in a foreign culture. Ben wanted a bachelor party, but quickly discovered there was no strip bar available for him to celebrate in. We started at The Bird, and I parted company with the merry crew as they headed to Oranienburger Str. for the "American" strip bar -- which I heard was a major disappointment. But at least he didn't dress up in a stupid costume and wander around a public place with his friends in matching t-shirts acting dumb, which is apparently a German tradition. I noticed it recently on a return trip from France, when I had two hours to contemplate the Cologne railway station and a woman, dressed as a scarecrow or tramp, was going around giving away little items which were tied to her costume as her friends handed out leaflets of some sort. There's probably a name for this ritual self-humiliation, and there's probably a deep cultural message in it, but I haven't bothered to think much about it.

Ben and Yuhang did, however, participate in another weird German tradition, the Polterabend. "Poltern," my dictionary says, means "to crash about," which perfectly describes the Poltergeist phenomenon, questionable though it may be. On Polterabend, your friends show up with crockery, which they then smash. According to Wikipedia, this is supposed to bring luck. But it got me thinking: would I want to do this if I were to marry a non-German here? (For the utterly clueless out there: Yuhang is not a traditional German name. Or an untraditional one, either. And Ben is American.)

The answer I came up with is no. Not just because years of poverty has made me wary of waste, which this custom certainly indulges in, but because it's like putting on a costume. Unlike Germans, who desperately don't want to be German, I've never felt that I've needed to assimilate in other than the absolutely necessary ways, like learning the language to the best of my ability, saying "hello" when I enter a shop (a kind of pan-European custom, actually), registering with the police when I move into a new place, and generally respecting others' rights to their traditions. It's not out of fear of losing my identity, but more taking pride in the bits of my identity that don't harm anyone's right to be who they are. On the one hand, I've certainly participated in Thanksgiving and Fourth of July meals -- which I've shared with Germans -- and I've also participated in German traditions like St. Martin's Day and the German version of Christmas. I even did the melted-lead fortune-telling thing one New Year's.

But I've also inadvertantly participated in a German tradition which may have colored my answer. On my 50th birthday, I invited a lot of people for a meal or a drink at my favorite restaurant, Honigmond. I made it clear that I was not following the German tradition of paying for it all: to "invite" someone in German means you're going to pay for it. I was simply asking people to show up, and they would have to pay for their own stuff. I made it explicit in the e-mail I sent around, in fact. It was a good party, I got some wonderful presents, and at the end, I gathered them up and went to pay for my meal and the beers I'd had and was confronted with an extra DM350 on the bill. One of the people I'd invited (and yes, Christian Maith, I know it was you, you coward) had invited a number of his friends, people I didn't even know, and they'd eaten and drunk on my tab and then left.

Ben and Yuhang's party was, but for the odd flying shard of pottery coming a little too close for comfort, a far happier affair, and I wish them much happiness. And I may yet think more about this, because last night I started another of William Dalrymple's magnificent books on India, White Mughals, which has started with a detailed overview of how the earliest colonizers and merchants in India were seduced by Islam (and, in rare cases, Hinduism, although Hindus don't convert, as Muslims do, believing one has to be born into the religion) and "went native."

* * *

Finally, earlier this summer, I had a visitor with whom I was walking up Brunnenstr., when we came upon, of all things, a new painting by Nike! It was even dated '08, so I know she's still working. Unfortunately, the picture this woman took never made it into my in-box for some reason, and I didn't get it until the other day. So here she is, Nike's new nude. Who, I should add, was missing a week ago when I went past the place I'd seen her. Nike: as collectable as Banksy? Hmm.



* * *

Oh, one more thing. This blog may come to an end in a few weeks, to be replaced by another with another name. I don't want to jinx anything, but I had a very encouraging talk with a landlady on Monday. Stay tuned.

Food Again (And Drink)

Before I utterly forget everything about last week, I should stick some of my food notes here.

One big difference between this trip and the previous ones was that after my first night, I moved into a thing called MySuiteInn, way out on a traffic circle about 30 minutes' walk or a 10 minute bus-ride (when the buses weren't on strike, and between 6:30 am and 8pm) from the center of town. Across the circle was a big Champion supermarket, hardly upscale, but nonetheless superior to anything in Berlin. As I said before, not paying ten or 12 euros for breakfast was a good deal (although I spent the same amount getting back there at night with a taxi). The French have little ready-made toasts called petits pains which can be spread with cream cheese or jam, and their yoghurt is immeasurably better than German yoghurt -- even the commercial stuff.

I had several lunches at the Vert Anglais in the Place Castellane, where Nick the owner is trying to punch up his lunch business. I ate there not just to support him, but because, as I said last time I was down, it's really good. Their salades composées are superb, although the Caesar needs work (and I've already e-mailed him my Caesar dressing recipe, so if he uses it, it'll be the first public place you can taste it, since the other place is on Bob Dylan's tours). There's also a Vert Anglais burger I'm anxious to try, and a cold pile of shrimp which looks like it'd hit the spot.

The best dinner was private, cooked by Miss Expatria one evening. Not only is she a good cook, but she's good company, as is Bart. She improvised a pasta sauce from some tiny tomatoes, a French concoction called farce which is a ready-made meat mixture you can use to stuff tomatoes or peppers, some fresh basil, and some red chiles.

My regular fave, Bistrot d'Alco, was closed for vacation, but I hit La Chêneraie (excellent, although I thought I'd taken notes as to what I had and didn't) and L'Escalier (my last meal in town, it was a perfectly-cooked onglet de boeuf with a stupendous wine-and-shallot reduction preceded by a soupe de poisson that wasn't anywhere near that at La Tomate from last visit). It's still astonishing to me that you can get out of one of these places for around €20 for two courses and wine and I found myself wondering what some of the slightly higher-priced places would be like. I'm sure I'll have a chance to find out some day.

There were also a couple of new places. At one point I developed a swelling of my gums on one side of my jaw which vanished as quickly as it came, but sure was a drag while it hung around, so I went looking for stuff that was soft. One idea someone floated past me was to get mussels, so I headed to the place he recommended, Chez Elia, which looks like a Brazilian restaurant and, in fact, is, since Elia herself is Brazilian and half the menu is things like feijoiada. I had moules Provençal, which was mussels cooked in Pernod with minced fennel strewn in it. Excellent, and only 11 euros. I'm told that Elia and her French husband are moving back to Brazil in December, so catch this place when you can.

The other sore-gums place was someplace nobody I'd talked to had ever been, La Ferme, which drew me in by offering tartiflette, a dish of baked sliced potatoes cooked in cream with bits of ham in it and hunks of cheese melted over it. Not hardly a summer dish, but I was hurting, and it was soft. It was served with a separate plate of ham and dry sausage and salad, and hit the spot, although before recommending this place to the less dentally-challenged, I'd want to try something else, too.

But the place I'm most anxious to try again was the one everyone referred to as the New Bar because it had just opened. If I've got my bearings on the map right, it's on the rue St-Côme, near another standby bar of the expat community, Mi Barrio. It's got a name -- something to do with Léon, probably Chez Léon -- but people are probably going to wind up calling it something else. It's run by an affable Spaniard, Manu, and his family, and is notable by its long awning with the words "Restaurant Agricole" on it, as well as the boxes of fresh produce -- potatoes, onions -- sitting right on the curb. Just about everything is organic, there are plants on the tables -- ours had fresh oregano and a chili plant -- and besides huge salads and cold soups, it has a prominent rotisserie which, on the night I was there, was turning out lamb, chicken, and rabbit. I started off with a salad that combined tiny strawberries, cubes of watermelon, and a slice of pineapple (probably not locally grown, ahem) with a dressing of crème fraiche and fresh spearmint. I don't even like watermelon and I ate it all. After that, on everyone's urging (we were a party of about nine), I got the lamb, mostly because I usually don't like it, and everyone was raving about it. It came accompanied by a bowl of roasted vegetables which had been strewn on the floor of the rotisserie, absorbing the fats from the roasting meats. There were also jars of mustards, including a grape mustard which married well with the meat and the superb house red, which was fruity and light, a perfect summer red. Once again, the price was amazingly low. I wish these folks luck, because I'm selfish: I want to revisit this place often.

I may never straighten out all the Languedoc wines in my head, although I'm going to make a concerted effort, since so many of them are phenomenal and way underpriced. My favorite for some years has been Mas de la Seranne, from the village of Aniane, not far away. There was a British importer, Pic Wines, which was bringing it to England, but they went out of business earlier this year, so the only way to get it now is to get it in France. They make several cuvées, from the cheapo €5.60 Ombre des Figuiers ("Shadow of the Fig-trees") to the mezzo €12.60 Clos des Immortelles to a few more above that. The idea that I could live in a place where I could just pick up a bottle of that stuff for less than six euros is almost enough to make the move worthwhile right there. Admittedly, my tastes are very New World, and this is a big, fruity, start with a dazzling number of complexities (the more you pay, the bigger the after-show on your tongue is) afterwards that I still haven't gotten a fix on.

On this trip, I also discovered an even more local wine, Terre Megere, but I've yet to find it in a shop, so I'm not at all sure what it costs or what varieties it comes in. This is an actual Montpellier wine from Cournonsec, less than ten miles to the southwest. Google gets me all kinds of people selling it in Britain and elsewhere, but the exact bottle I tried doesn't seem to be among the reds and whites they have listed. The distinguishing feature of the label was that it looked like it had had dirt splashed on it, carefully printed on.

But my best discovery came on not this trip, but the last one. I'm not the kind of hearty drinker many of my friends at the Vert Anglais are, especially before a meal, but I did want to be sociable. I was about to order a Campari and soda, but thought, wait a minute, I'm in France. Surely there's something local that's comprarable. Jody the barman brought out a couple of shot glasses of possibilities, a vermouth (too sweet) and a ghastly-looking substance which he said was called Suze. Nicely bitter, with a hint of sweetness, and a really complex taste (it's made from gentian root, of all things, and is a bizarre psychedelic yellow color) which unpacked after he'd poured some Perrier onto it and tossed in a couple of thin slices of lemon, it's low-alcohol enough that it doesn't destroy your head or your tongue before dinner. I also had the distinct advantage of the fact that nobody else at the bar liked it, but I wound up drinking enough of it over the space of these two visits that the bottle was drained. I assume it had been tapped before, but I'm not sure if Nick will order another (he really detests it) until I actually get an apartment down there. Still, sitting in the shade, coming off of a 90-degree day, hanging out with good folks and watching the street-life of Montpellier at the end of a workday, it's a good drink to sip.

Can't find it in Berlin. Time to move.

Montpellier Thanks America

Down near the train station in Montpellier is a small park. In it is this monument.



The place is marked on the map as Square Planchon, and this inscription (sorry, it's only partial) is another clue about what it's for.



As it turns out, Jules Émile Planchon was a French botanist who was the head of the botany department at Montpellier University when the phylloxera plague started killing off all the French grapevines. In collaboration with Pierre-Marie-Alexis Millardet and the American Charles Valentine Riley, he discovered that importing American grape rootstock and grafting French vines onto it made the vines resistant to the organism that was spreading the plague.

So what we've got here is a thankful farmer offering thanks to Planchon and an inscription noting that it was the Americans who saved the French wine industry. See? The French don't hate us completely!

The Emigrant's Dilemma, Chapter 11: Next Steps

In the end, it came down to this: with a thousand euros snarled in PayPal, with another needed check not arriving, and with the conservatism of French landlords requiring that I not use an agency, it was up to the Landlord of Last Resort. This is a guy who moves around the expat bars of Montpellier offering places on a month-to-month basis. No lease, no protection from his whims, no security whatever, but...a place to live. I'd heard various unpleasant things about him, but I talked with several of the folks at the Vert Anglais and they convinced me it was worth a shot. The complex politics of a small town's expat community, though, made it impossible to get his number directly from the one person everyone knew would have it (the explanation is rather tedious, but essentially the guys who'd once worked for the guy with the number had had enough and had bought the VA, thereby angering him, and if it became known I was with them, he might make things difficult), but a few text messages and, on Saturday morning, I gave him a call.

Nervous as I was about talking French -- and understanding his locally-accented variety of it -- we did manage to communicate and it turned out that he didn't, in fact, have anything but a very small studio at the moment. Thus evaporated my last chance at getting something on this trip.

So where does this leave me now? I'm savvier about using online sources. For the most part, the e-mail alerts and web-pages I've looked at -- classifieds, et. al. -- are useless. Besides the bait-and-switch places, people who post apartments on them don't often understand what they're writing, so you have to plow through dozens of ads every day that aren't for what they say they are. Also, it's useless to book a hotel online, because, as my first night proved, they lie about how close to town they are. A little knowledge of the area helps filter that, but my second hotel wasn't much better than the first, in the end, and had an out-of-control air-conditioner blowing straight onto the bed, which made sleep difficult.

But there were other, intangible aspects to the trip which were very heartening. For one thing, the group which gathers for "l' heure apéro" at the Vert Anglais are fine, friendly folk. Just sitting talking with them made me happy I'd chosen Montpellier: sharing stories, opinions, and so on with them was enjoyable and reinforced the lazy rhythm at which things happen there. Several of them have now said -- and I believe them -- that they'll keep their ears open and let me know as soon as possible when something opens up. I've committed myself to being there 48 hours after getting at least one positive report. And, since this group of expats inhabits a different time-frame than the students, to whom I'd been hitching my own hopes, a vacancy might not come before the students get back in September.

Somewhere, I realized, there'd be someone who was growing unhappy with their place. Maybe a new child was on the way, a better job with a transfer to another city, a couple splitting apart, or just a chance to get a bigger or smaller place that was more suitable. I had dinner with friends in an apartment which, for square footage and price, would be ideal, and there are other apartments in their building -- all, at the moment, occupied, but they're there.

So I'm hoping I don't fade from memory and that these folks will remember to get in touch via the miracle of e-mail, but I have to get some stuff together on my end, too.

This latest fishing trip cost me more than I'd have liked and dipped into my war chest to an unacceptable degree. My first priority now is to raise some more money. Not a lot, but more. I have to have a minimum of €1800 ready to give a landlord. I also have to have enough to get back down there when the moment comes; Montpellier isn't exactly around the corner. At the moment, I don't have this (not that I'm ready for another 14-hour train-ride tomorrow morning, of course). So I have to get some work on this end to re-stock the war chest.

Sadly, the group I was supposed to see and write about were in Montpellier for three days, but, although I'd tried to set things up with their management a month in advance, there was no communication until the day I left and although I tried, I was unable to contact them. This is a drag, since the fee from that article was very much a part of my plans. In over 40 years of writing about musicians, I have to say, I've almost never had anything like this happen. I'm very disappointed.

So I'm back in Berlin for the forseeable future, looking hard for work, trying to think of what I can do to raise money. (If I could also simultaneously raise the dollar-to-euro rate, boy, I'd do that too: one night, one of the folks I was dining with told me that in fact there was no informal cap on that rate, as I reported here earlier. I'm not sure he's a reliable source, although he does seem to work in the financial arena in some way, but that was chilling to hear).

I now realize more strongly than ever that I'm not going to be in Berlin forever. I've bumped into a couple of stories down there I want to report, and I'm sure there are more: I was so focussed on finding a place that I wasn't looking too hard. And although I came up empty on this trip, I'm more convinced than ever that a change of scene is essential for my making a professional breakthrough, and that this is the place where it'll happen. The dying dollar and the implosion of the writing trade are working against me, but I'm more determined than ever to make this happen.

Next up, posts on art and food. And fussy types will note that I've gotten the chapter numbers changed so they actually make sense. Back soon with more.

The Emigrant's Dilemma, Chapter 10: The Week of (Almost) Giving Up

I don't believe in omens, do you? Or, phrased differently, should I?

Sunday, everything was looking good for getting the move together. I printed out my latest U.S. bank statement, and had gathered together my German ones, all ready for my copy machine. These, along with some letters from people who use my work, would comprise the dossier that French landlords require. I had several leads saved in my accounts at various online apartment-search engines in France. I laid the first two sheets of the bank statements on the machine, pressed the button and...scan failure. It spat out an incomprehensible piece of paper with specks of grey on it. I rebooted the machine. It happened again. I took a deep breath, and told myself there'd be copy-shops in Montpellier.

Monday, as all days with 14-hour train rides tend to be, was uneventful. I called my friends from the Montpellier station and they were on their way to see the fireworks for Bastille Day. I told them I'd check in at my hotel and join them. I then went to the tram-stop and got on the tram.

Thirty minutes later, the tram stopped at its last stop. My hotel was further down the road. I grabbed my luggage and walked down a desolate highway. Finally the lights of the hotel heaved into view. There would, it developed, be no more trams back into town. I was Out There. So I called my friends, expressed regrets, and read til it was time for bed.

The next morning, I realized that this hotel was too far out of town to be practical. It wasn't just in a suburb (Castelnau-le-Lez, if you're keeping score) but in a suburb of a suburb. I booked a room at a suite hotel, cheap, that seemed to be in town, packed my bags, and checked out. The guy at the desk sighed as I told him I liked the place fine (sort of a lie) but I had business in the centre ville and couldn't conduct it from this far out.

Not knowing exactly where my new place was, I took the tram back to the train station and grabbed a taxi. Ten euros later, I was at my new place, which was also not exactly central. There was, however, a bus stop right in front of the place, and another across the street which would get me back into town. But the first thing to do would be to get my in-room internet going and cruise the classifieds. This didn't prove to be easy. There was no cable in the room, as there usually is. The front desk explained that they sold the cables -- the employees themselves -- to raise a little extra money. How French!

But once I'd bought one, it still didn't work. I jacked around with the computer for several hours, then took it down to the lounge where there was free wi-fi. Not exactly to my surprise, there were no new listings the day after a national holiday. It was getting on towards six, so I decided to chuck it all and head into town to meet the crew at the Vert Anglais. One of them, Andy, is an IT specialist, and might have a clue what was wrong with my hookup.

There was an additional complication. As usual, I wanted access to a large amount of cash in order to be able to just nail a place if I found one. I had around 1200 euros' worth of dollars in my bank account, and was expecting more. But since I couldn't be certain it'd get there on time, I asked a friend who'd offered financial assistance if I were in need to loan me another thousand euros' worth of dollars, less than I was expecting, but enough to cover any eventuality. He agreed, and then did something that turned out to be disastrous: he used PayPal.

One of the last e-mails I saw before heading into town was that my PayPal account had been suspended pending investigation of my circumstances to allay suspicions that I was money laundering. One of the pieces of evidence they needed was a faxed document showing my address -- a recent utility bill would do. Well, I have recent utility bills, although no fax machine, but they were all back in Berlin.

In town, the crew was gathered around the usual table at the Bar Vert Anglais. I went in to say hi to the bartender, and told him in passing that I'd discovered that the bus that served my hotel stopped running at 8. "Welcome to France," he said, "where nothing works." I took my drink (Suze and tonic -- I'll write about my discovery of this magic fluid later) and sat down at the table. I mentioned my computer troubles to Andy, who basically said "it could be anything," which turned out to be true, as we'll see. As for PayPal Bart told me he does all his billing through PayPal and that he's never had trouble with multiple thousands, so I should just call their number in the States and I'd be surprised how helpful they were.

This left the big problem: no apartments. Unlike a couple of weeks ago, nobody knew of anything. This was not heartening. Of course, the places people did know about last time didn't pan out at all, so it was about even. I decided to treat myself to a nice welcome-to-Montpellier dinner at one of the cheap restaurants I liked (the Bistrot d'Alco, to be exact), only to discover that it was closed for vacation. Oh, yeah. Welcome to France, where they take the summer off.

I rationalized the ten-euro taxi ride back to the hotel by reminding myself that I'd gone across the huge traffic-circle on which my hotel sits to an equally huge supermarket, Champion, and bought breakfast supplies for another ten euros. This would be enough to last me my entire stay, and since breakfast here is twelve euros, and had been ten at the last place, I was just spending the breakfast money on the taxi.

Yesterday, I woke up to the news that the dollar had crashed. Badly. It had exceeded the $1.60/euro cap the European Central Bank had agreed to maintain. I called PayPal to learn that it opened at 6am, Central time, 1pm my time. So I passed the time trying to get my computer to work. And, mirabilie dictu, I did! How, I don't know (Andy's comment, later: "Sometimes the guys who scream at you to get it back up don't realize that things just happen"). But now I have internet in my room.

I got through to PayPal, and as Bart had said, they were extremely helpful. Well, up to a point: I still had to fax that bill to them. And that bill was still on my desk in Berlin. There was more bad news, too: "If I could just push a button and clear this up," the guy said -- noting that he of course couldn't -- "that money won't clear until Friday, and then if you went to transfer it to your bank in the States, that wouldn't clear until Tuesday." And I leave here on Monday.

And there were still no leads to apartments.

(I should amend this by saying there were a few leads through agencies, but I'm trying to avoid them, not only because of their fees, but because they want extra assurance of financial stability which I can't give them, like a year's rent in escrow).

So, feeling discouraged, I took the bus into town, figuring I'd go have lunch at the Vert Anglais. I managed to get there ten minutes after the kitchen closed. I grabbed something around the corner and called Bart to see if he was able to go see the photography exhibit at the Pavillion Populaire, which is showing 240 Weegee photos -- right up his alley -- but a client was hanging him up. Oh, well, I'd go alone. (I've got a lot to say about this show, which is as revelatory about French attitudes to America as it is about Weegee, but I'll save that for later).

Finally, I showed up at the Vert Anglais again. Here it was, Wednesday, and I hadn't accompished a thing. Nor, unless something changed, would I. I'd already spent 400 euros on a train ticket and another 400 on the hotel (which made me pay in advance). Maybe I should give up and...wait another year? No. I can't do that.

But...what should I do? I've got four more days here, one of which, Sunday, is useless. The band I was going to write about hasn't been in touch, and I have no idea how to contact them. That'll cost me $500 for the article, which I was rather counting on. (So much for trying to arrange something a month in advance).

I also realized something else: I'm terrified of making phone calls in French. (I'm terrified of making them in German, for that matter). If I reveal myself as a stuttering, barely-intelligible foreigner, moreover one without the financial resources of a regular job, who'll rent to me? Maybe I should give up.

But I'm not going to. I have a very tenuous lead which I'm going to pursue today after writing out a script which I hope will make sense to the landlord I have to call about an unfinished apartment that is likely to become available soon. Bart and his girlfriend Chris and I have also floated the idea of a two-month apartment exchange, since I feel okay about them living in my place in Berlin, but that might not come off, either. And I haven't checked the listings today.

Probably I should give up, but I'm not going to. Yet.

The Emigrant's Dilemma, Chapter 9: Once More Into The Breach

Monday is July 14, and, as you all no doubt know, is Bastille Day, the French version of the 4th of July. I once spent an extraordinary Bastille Day with an old friend from Alaska in Paris, where we sipped champagne on the balcony of my friend Gérard's top-floor flat on a high-rise on Télégraphe. There were fireworks, and the Alaskan, an elementary school teacher, learned the words for numerous colors from a 4-year-old girl as the bombs went off.

You couldn't see Montpellier from there, but nearly, and I expect to spend this Bastille Day watching fireworks in Montpellier along with some folks I know. I'm leaving Berlin in the morning and doing that long train-ride again, although whether I'll walk once again from the Gare d'Est to the Gare de Lyon with M. Patois, a friend from Oakland I hadn't seen in 30-some years is in question: apparently he has an invitation from some female soldiers to ride in a tank with them, an invitation he's extended to me, but...next year.

This year I'm still on a mission. Short of winning the lottery, this is the last trip I can afford to make down there, and a solution must be found. This time, I'm going armed with bank statements and letters from important media outlets, my best clothing ironed sharply, and a very positive attitude.

I'll be there a week, although if it makes economic sense to abort the mission and buy another train ticket back earlier if I find something in time, I will. Money has gotten short, and although there's some coming in, I need to conserve as much as possible in the face of a rapidly declining dollar, which fell three cents against the Euro yesterday. That, and the rising price of gas, are going to have an impact on the last section of this drama, the transcontinental moving-van.

The last trip was, in the end, an expensive learning process. This one, I hope, will just be expensive. Oh, and productive.

Wish me luck. Play the lottery and send me a fraction of your winnings. Go to the Vatican website and find out who the patron saint of Montpellier landlords is and offer him or her a burnt offering. Hey, this time it's war. And I intend to win.

Status Report

In a few hours, I'll head down to Kopfbahnhof, that remarkable rail-only travel agency in Schöneberg, and pick up another Berlin-Montpellier-Berlin train ticket. I'll spend Bastille Day going from here to there, arriving in time to join some friends atop a parking garage to watch the fireworks. The next day, I'll get back to the work of finding a place to live.

This time I'll be better prepared: I'll have copies of my bank statements from both the U.S. and Berlin. I'll have sheafs of letters from people who've employed me over the last year, although, given the vagaries of freelancing, they'll probably be a bit ambiguous as to precise income figures.

What I don't have just at the moment is an ironclad plan, and that worries me. Some of it is just plain due to lack of information. There's been some talk of a place going empty at an unspecified time which would be absolutely ideal in terms of space, location, and price. But it's just that at the moment: talk. There's been at least one offer from one of the e-mail robot lists that sounds good, but whether it'll still be open when I get there -- not to mention whether my attempt to contact the landlord about my interest landed safely -- is far from certain. There may well be more of these, although the same uncertainties apply.

Another worry is money. I'm still okay on that, but I owe another month's rent here, and there's the ticket and the hotel, which, this time, is out in the 'burbs, albeit not very far from the center of town, where I need to be. I've got more coming in, and a story to do down there once I get there. But still...

Should I concentrate my energies on finding a furnished place to move into, and have to turn around and go back once I return from this trip? That will involve paying two rents, which eats away at the nest-egg I'm going to have to have to secure a permanent place with enough to worry me. Should I instead concentrate on finding that permanent place? That's the most economical solution, but the riskiest: what if, again, I don't find one? What if the landlord rejects me because I'm self-employed? One thing I tapped into on that last trip was a deep instiutional French insecurity about independence, something I hadn't counted on. I guess my model for finding a place in this university town was Austin, another university town. And, weather notwithstanding, it's not Austin. Nor is it Berlin, with lots of cheap places standing vacant most of the time.

And the thing is, there don't seem to be any hard and fast answers to this. I'm going to have to wing it, absent a miraculous shower of income-producing work in the next couple of weeks to assuage my worries. I'm still utterly certain I'm going to succeed somehow, but if I seem a bit tense these days, it's because so much is unknown. It's the nature of the "somehow" that's got me biting my nails.

Suggestions welcome.

The Emigrant At Table

So before I forget utterly what I ate in Montpellier, and so that you can grab some good grub next time you're down there, the obligatory post on food.

I got in real late, which was a shame, because restaurants close at about 10 down there, but I was lucky because the hotel offers light meals (with a surcharge if they're ordered after 10, of course), and the desk-clerk whipped me up a sautée of calamari and slices of Spanish chorizo deglazed with red wine. Not bad for ten euros -- plus 1.50 lateness charge.

The next day was spent running hither and yon, and I grabbed a sandwich from a place on lower St. Guilhelm called, believe it or not, Oh La La!!! (the three exclamation points were part of the name). I'd had great luck with chicken sandwiches -- had a great one from Crobag, of all places, in the Frankfurt train station -- and there was one that looked real good here. But only one, which the guy ahead of me claimed. The only remaining sandwich was tuna, which didn't excite me. But I'd forgotten I was in France: it wasn't the dry canned tuna, lettuce, and cucumber you'd get in Germany, stuffed into a gummy baguette. This was enlivened by real (ie, non-sweetened) mayonnaise, ripe juicy tomatoes and crisp lettuce. And this from a seedy sandwich stand with a silly name.

Dinner that night was at La Tomate, which I'd wanted to try last time. Andy recommended the fish soup, and it was sublime. This dish pulverizes the fish so small you really don't know what's in it, but I could tell a darkly smoky roux from my years of making gumbo, and as for the rest of it...who knows? An amazing balance of flavors, crisp croutons, and a peppery rouille made this the best version of this dish I've ever had. Too bad the rest of the meal sucked; the place is certainly affordable enough. But the steak was tough, the fries were frozen, and the green beans were cooked in beef broth -- a good idea -- for too long -- not such a good idea.

Wednesday's lunch was a salad on the Esplanade Charles de Gaulle. One great thing about summertime dining in France is the concept of the salade composée, which is a salad with, um, a whole lot of stuff in it. Perfect hot-weather food -- and it was hot. But you know, it's about ingredients. The thing sounded good when I ordered it, but...who knew saucisse chaud meant, not "warm sausage," but "hot dog"? And who wants bits of cold hot dogs in their salad? Or tiny cubes of tasteless cheese? Or that bane of German salads, canned corn? There are several places with big outdoor eating areas on the Esplanade, but because I set about forgetting this one as soon as I paid my bill, I can't warn you away from it. Sorry.

Dinner that night was at my old favorite, Bistrot d'Alco, behind the Préfecture, which is usually my first dinner stop. You can get a starter, a main course, and a half-bottle of well-chosen local wine (just look for the day's special) for €20, and although the hulk of the backside of the Préfecture isn't the most scenic thing to look at during dinner, you won't notice. This time I had a half Camembert with slices of apple laid on it, warmed up, on a bed of salad as a starter, and their great seiches avec persillade as a main course, along with a spicy, crackling Languedoc rosé. I love seiches, little cuttlefish with nearly spherical bodies, and cannot wait to start cooking with them.

Thursday lunch was business, and the food was undistinguished. Forget the name of the place, too, although I could take you right there. That night's dinner was another Andy recommendation, Le Vieux Four, over on the funky side of the hill. On the plus side, it's great to find a place that grills over a wood fire, and the meat is top-notch. On the down side, there really is an "old oven" in there and when it's still close to 90 outdoors, you don't want to eat indoors. I had no choice and it was hot. Also the hearts-and-flowers decor (not to mention the relentless hyping of mojitos -- dudes, that's been over around here for years) is a little too much.

Friday I was determined to get nothing but good stuff for my last day. I definitely wanted a salad for lunch again, so I went...to the Vert Anglais. Yup, the same bar where I hung out with the expats during the early evening. I remembered my trip a few summers ago, and getting a very good pasta salad there, and I figured that a) they could use the custom and b) it couldn't be any worse than on the Esplanade. Wrong on a) because of b): it was vastly superior to the other place. I got a good-sized glass of gazpacho set in the center of a gargantuan salad of mixed greens, dark, smoky strips of ham, and parmesan shavings -- all for a Euro less than the other place!

The roll continued at dinner. I'd heard about l'Escalier from Bart, Andy, and Bart's girlfriend Chris, who wasn't in town all week, and was determined to try it. Good call: a great salad to start, and a magnificent magret de canard with a sauce combining cassis and honey, accompanied by more green beans cooked in beef broth -- but done right -- and some undistinguished carrots, plus a real good red, all for €23. A great end to the trip.

La Tomate, 6, rue Four des Flammes, tel 04 67 60 49 38
Bistrot d'Alco, 4, rue Bonnier d'Alco, tel 04 67 63 12 89
Bar Vert Anglais, 3, place Castellane, tel 04 67 66 03 03
Restaurant L'Escalier 6, rue Jules Latreilhe, tel 04 67 60 51 86

The Emigrant At Rest

So on my last day in Montpellier, to quell the unpleasant feeling that I hadn't really accomplished anything when, in fact, I knew I'd accomplished a great deal even though I still didn't have an apartment in hand, I went for a walk over where I'd been the day before -- only this time I took my camera.

I am the world's worst photographer, not only in the quality of my output -- with the rise of ubiquitous digital photography, I'm even willing to cede the crown of worst creator of photographs to someone else -- but because I just never remember to pack a camera when I go to potentially picturesque places. Partially this is because I have a large, clunky, but superb Nikon which isn't as sleek and inconspicuous as one of those thin, silvery little things. But that's not really the excuse; I've done this for years, packed a camera and never, or almost never, used it.

But since Thursday I'd spent some time wandering around the hilly parts near the University and the Cathedral, I decided to go back and actually shoot something.



This shows the Cathedral (St. Pierre, for those of you keeping score) sort of framed by some other buildings, as seen from a small park where people were sitting in the very warm noonday sun.



This is one of those side-streets between the Cathedral, the law school, and the rue de l'Université, just naturally picturesque enough that it's a point-and-shoot situation.



Another one, or part of the same one, I can't remember.



One of the doors leading to one of the old houses in that neighborhood.



And the shutter-style air-conditioning they've used for centuries.

I should say, though, that romanticizing these pictures isn't wise. The neighborhood is mostly quite poor, and, I'm told, dangerous at night. It was hot enough that windows and doors were open as I passed, and I saw large families inhabiting very small spaces, heard kids being spanked, and lots of loud televisions going. I'm sure that a micro-knowledge of the area would show that there are, indeed, students and artists living in some blocks, but there is definitely a funk going on there that might not make it an ideal location.

But I'm doing no planning for a day or two anyway. I have a big deadline at the end of this week, and I've got to put the pedal to the metal for it. This learning experience was costly, and although I haven't touched my lease-getting-and-moving nut, the bank account did take a hit. Next time I have to be far more efficient, strike and score, then come back and gather whatever houeshold necessities I can fit into a couple of suitcases, come back to the efficiency I've rented, and make it happen.

And happen it will. I know that now. And that is such a good feeling.

My thanks, incidentally, to Bart, Andy, Sam, Nick, Claude (in absentia), Etienne, Lou, Hannah, Peter, Dom, and the fine folks at ther Hotel des Arceaux, who did so much to help out.

And yes, a food post is next.

The Emigrant's Dilemma, Chapter 5: Stepping Into Thin Air

Dang, I should have updated that last post way earlier. Here's how things stand now.

The money I was expecting came, of course, that Friday, so naturally I missed Morocco -- and also a couple of meals. But it did come, and that's good, because the one thing I can't change is my hotel reservation in Montpellier: I was lucky to be able to get it, this being the beginning of high season, and as it is, I have to change from one of the cheap rooms to one of the expensive ones half-way through.

Once the dough was in hand, I headed down to Kopfbahnhof, Berlin's only travel agency specializing in rail travel, and booked a Berlin-Montpellier ticket. I already had the Montpellier-Berlin ticket from my previous itinerary. They're such hotshots that they discovered it was cheaper to do the Paris-Montpellier link first class on the TGV, so that'll be nice.

I've spent the rest of the week dealing with a sudden influx of work (sure, it always happens when you just barely have time to do it, right?) and scanning dozens of real estate agency websites. I'm still hoping to get a place directly through a landlord, thereby cutting off a month's rent worth of agency fee, but with only four days, effectively -- Tuesday thru Friday -- to nail down a place, I'm taking any offers I get.

One interesting observation from the real-estate ads is the notation "cuisine équipée," which means "equipped kitchen." If this notation doesn't exist, you have to assume you'll be getting your own appliances. I already have a great refrigerator and an almost-new washing machine, but the most expensive part of this is the stove, and I may have to buy a stove and have it installed, an expense I hadn't reckoned with. On the other hand, there's this work that's suddenly appeared, so unless the moving van turns out to be vastly more expensive than I'd reckoned, I can likely handle it.

I did have one guy come through to give me a moving estimate. I'd been warned he was eccentric -- he's British, and specializes in hauling stuff back and forth from Berlin to the U.K. -- and he certainly delivered. He cast a casual eye over things, commented that books are heavy and a lot of my stuff was trash (that's right; butter up the customer!) and basically gave off a vibe of not wanting to do it. He told me he'd moved some people with less stuff than I have to Avignon recently, and said he'd come up with an estimate. A few days later, he did: €3800. Something tells me I could beat that; I know people who've moved everything they had back to the U.S. for less.

So Monday I'm off. I've got enough to score a place, pay for the hotel, and eat. I'm back very late Saturday night, with, I hope, a lease in my hands. If anyone in Montpellier is reading this, I hope to be at the Bar Vert Anglais Monday night about 10:30 to meet up with a couple of people, so drop by and say hi -- and tell me if you know of any places for rent! Here's what I'm looking for: Ecusson, T2 or T3, 50-60m2, €500-600. The students are clearing out, I can move in between the 1st and 15th of July (or later if need be), and I'm a wonderful tenant because I'm looking to rent 12 months at a time. All of that and two euros gets me a ride on the tram, I know, but it's now or never.

Oh, and let me know if you have a deal on a gas stove. I might need one fast.

Nachmieter Gesucht And Other Crumbs

It appears that the money is now in place for me to get an apartment in Montpellier when I get there the week of June 16. I've been ransacking the Montpellier equivalents of the website that got me the place I'm in now, and have actually found two apartments that look good, although one of them, I believe, was vacant when I was there in March, which is a bit ominous. But nobody's putting up the students' apartments yet, so I'm sure I'm just seeing the tip of what'll be a huge iceberg once I get there.

And, although nothing's signed yet, I should probably be looking for someone to take over the lease here. It's listed as a 2 1/2 room place, around 60 m2, but if someone wants to work on the loft-bed frame in the smallest room, which isn't as sturdy as it ought to be, and is also incomplete, you could actually fit three single people in here. Gas heat, although none in the room I use as a living room and office because the guy who turned on the heat in the kitchen and bedroom couldn't get it to work and then never showed up again. But the landlord's said he wants to hook this place up to the central heating anyway. At the moment, of course, it doesn't matter. Neighborhood couldn't be nicer; there are yuppies moving in, but there are also a lot of young American, German, and French hipster-types living around the 'hood, and a ferment of cultural activity, including a literary magazine being published by a couple of Americans out of this very building. The downside is that the apartment doesn't get a lot of light, and that gets a bit oppressive in the winter. Gas stove, which is pretty unusual -- and a real boon for those who like to cook -- and the refrigerator and washing machine are going with me, because, well, they're mine. Rent is €430, and you'll have to take over my €500 deposit. Available July, exact date uncertain. Tell your friends, send an e-mail if you're interested and set up a time to look at it.

I'm not sure what the exact legal requirements are -- I once heard something about my having to present three candidates -- but I'm pretty sure that if you want it and I want you to have it, you'll get it.

* * *

And with the prospect of leaving the city I've lived in for almost 15 years, naturally comes a bit of trepidation. I know this place, I'm somewhat identified with it (dang, I'm going to have to get new e-mail addresses!), and I've got a nice network of friends at the moment (although I'm sure that a sizeable proportion of them will, like the others I've had, move on after a while in frustration). I expressed this ambivalence to a friend, who wrote back that he understood perfectly; this often happens to men in prison, who find the life inside easier to cope with than life outside. Okay, that worked. I'll start packing.

There was a very good article by Michael Kimmelman in the New York Times this week which ostensibly dealt with the fate of Tempelhof Airport, but also had some excellent insight into Berlin that, for once, didn't sound like the paper was trying to offload some Prenzlauer Berg real estate. As the story moves from the hard news of the "referendum" on Tempelhof, it makes telling comments on the inability of the city to get anything done about, seemingly, anything, and its almost knee-jerk negative reaction to any kind of change. The reference to the destruction of the Palast der Republik despite its ongoing viability is telling, and the reference to the new Schloss -- if it ever manages to get built, which is looking unlikely at the moment -- as "a forthcoming Potemkin village and a sad excuse for a showpiece in a city that prides itself on its cultural sophistication," is dead-on. Berlin desperately wants that cultural sophistication, but it expects others to actually produce it, offering no help in the form of subsidies or venues. It starves the avant-garde which made it famous in the immediate post-unification days in favor of maintaining three major (and at least one minor) opera house and has shut down every major avant-garde musical venue in the city. And Kimmelman's right on the mark in zinging Berlin for "provincial megalomania," and comparing the situation at Tempelhof with the destruction of New York's Penn Station. Read it, particularly between the lines.

I'm happy to be flying one last time out of Tempelhof on June 5, because I agree with Kimmelman about how nice it is. And no, where I'm moving has nothing like Berlin's cultural scene. But then, increasingly, neither does Berlin.

* * *

There's a car I've been seeing parked around my neighborhood with a great sign in its back window. There's a heart, a peace sign, and what looks like a stick figure hoisting a barbell with one arm. In English, under each glyph, it says "Make Love," "No War," and "Wear Glasses." It's an ad for an optician, and every time I've seen it, I've said "Man, if I ever need glasses, that's where I'm going." Then, last Sunday after a day at the horse races at Hoppegarten (with very possibly the worst selection of nags I've ever seen there, which is really saying something), a screw fell out of the post of my very nice Ray Bans. Hardly a major operation, but, I thought, the perfect excuse to hand over a couple of euros to Mr. Love/War/Glasses.

Haven't seen the car since, of course.

The Emigrant's Dilemma, Chapter 3: Running the Numbers

Yesterday, my Yahoo horoscope said it was a good day to face a task you didn't want to do, because it would prove easier than you thought. That was enough of a goad for me to sit down and start putting together a budget for this move. I divided it into three categories: Berlin, Trip, and Montpellier. The first is for expenses I'll incur here, the second for the forthcoming Berlin-Fes-Montpellier trip, and the third for money I'm going to have to have once I get there.

Weirdly enough, the figure I came up with is very, very encouraging. I don't have all the money yet, but I'm working on that. And it's a worst-case figure, in any event: I spent an hour the other day paging through websites dedicated to renting, very much like the one I used to find this place, and discovered that even if I have to use a real-estate agent, which, given everything, I may not have to, my total move-in would be around €2100. That's rent, security, "charges," and agent fee. I'm going to have to not only raise this by June 16, when I start looking, but I'm going to have to figure out a way to get it after I hit town. I do not want to go running around the Fes Medina with a couple thousand euros in my pocket.

Another encouraging thing was running into someone whose friends had just moved from Berlin to Brittany, and who remembered how much the moving van cost. It was far less than I'd thought: around €1500. But that brings up a question I haven't figured out yet: how much the last day costs.

Let's say I get the movers in, they empty the apartment, and now what I want is to be at the new place when they get there. How on earth am I going to do this? It's at least a 14-hour drive, and I don't want to do it alone. In fact, I can't do it alone: if I rent a car, the drop-off fee would be equivalent to actually buying one! Plus, of course, when I did drive, I took two days. That's too long a haul for me.

So what are my options? Can I ask the movers to hold off a day? Flying is prohibitively expensive, but taking the train isn't: I can start in Berlin at 8:32 and get in at 9:48 in the evening, but where do I go? To a hotel overnight? The apartment will be utterly empty, as only a European apartment, devoid of lights and everything else, can be. But I'm equally sure the movers won't move me in at ten at night.

This is where I'm stuck. As soon as I can calculate costs for the last day -- and for the movers more accurately, since I haven't actually called any yet -- I can come up with a solid figure.

I guess I should also start looking for a Nachmieter, someone to move in here, but I don't want to do that until I secure the next place, although interested parties should get in touch. With any luck, by the third week of June, this should all be worked out.

Then comes the next stage. Scary. But I think I'm up to it.

The Emigrant's Dilemma, Chapter 2: One Wing Down

Okay, I'm happy to report that as of this morning, I've got one part of this upcoming journey, which is only the prelude to moving, fixed: I've booked myself to Marseille.

For those who are interested in the ins and outs of travel within Europe, I'll set down how I did this. I started by going to this site, which has all the cheapo airlines: Ryanair, eaSyjeT, Berlin Wings, and so on. It proved a little less than satisfactory: the search results came up with the starting-point and destination reversed, and then there were links for each airline. But those budget outfits sometimes have only one flight a day, and, serving peripheral airports a lot of the time, you can't always coordinate them. Thus, I could fly to London Gatwick on one budget flight, but then I'd have to connect an hour and a half earlier to one out of Luton. Which, not quite yet being the master of space and time I aspire to be, I just couldn't do.

So I ran the changes at Mobissimo, a pioneering early search engine, which has the disadvantage of not including the Ryanairs of the world in its search. BA came up cheapest, but running a close second was Brussels Air, which is part of what became of Sabena when it fell apart. And I discovered I could get a flight out of Berlin at a convenient hour, make a quick transfer in Brussels, and then be in Marseilles in time for lunch, all for less than €200. Of course, I realized too late, I'd also be in time to make a leisurely transfer for my flight to Morocco, had I booked it on the right day. So now I've added the price of a hotel and a couple of meals to the trip. Stupid.

But one thing I can do is use Mobissimo to check out hotels in Aix and Marseille, or maybe even Priceline. That's going to have to wait, though, until my bank account fills up again. I'd forgotten how expensive euros are for those of us who earn in dollars.

I also checked flying back from Montpellier and discovered that not only could I fly Ryanair for free (plus 29 euros tax or something and a few more in charges, so no, not free), but I could even switch to Germanair or something for another 39-euro flight. I'm considering it, but I hear too many horror stories about Ryanair, and I might well need the relaxing train ride to contemplate whatever decision I wind up making in Montpellier.

Next up: train from Marseille to Montpellier, hotel in Montpellier, scrounge local parks for beer bottles to turn in for deposit so I can raise the dough to get the apartment.

But at least the first half of the prelude is written.

The Emigrant's Dilemma, Chapter 1: Get Outta Town

In which we begin a long series on moving to France.

And we start with the visit to find an apartment. This, I thought, would be ultra-convenient: I'd been invited to the World Festival of Sacred Music in Fes, Morocco, an event I almost went to last year, but was forced to cancel because I couldn't interest any magazines in the story. This year, though, I've found one, and it even pays okay. Now, you can get to Fes on Royal Moroccan Air, which will be picking up the flight, via a number of different cities. In Germany, you can fly from Frankfurt or Düsseldorf; in France from Paris...or Marseille. The flight from Marseille is non-stop, leaving at 11:25 in the morning and arriving at 6:30 at night, plenty of time to get to the hotel and make the opening concert. I'd return the day after the final concert, overnight in Marseille, take a train to Montpellier, and look at apartments.

So far so good.

But...I'd have to get to Marseille. I've managed relatively inexpensive travel to France in the past, and didn't see why this should be any different. Checking this and that, I discovered that the Marseille airport is actually the Marseille-Provence airport, and not far from Aix-en-Provence, easy enough to get to via Deutsche Bahn and the French TGV. So I'd take the train to Aix, overnight there, and catch a bus to the airport the next morning.

Then, upon my return, I could take a train from Montpellier to Paris and thence to Berlin. Easy, right?

Well, no. For a start, as I knew, you can research like crazy on the Deutsche Bahn website, but as soon as it involves crossing (most) borders, you won't get a price. So I found a convenient train to Aix and noted it down, then did the same for the Montpellier-Berlin leg.

Uh, but now what? Go down to Hauptbahnhof, stand in line for thirty minutes to get a quote, and then walk away? Talking to the Dancer on the phone the other night, she hit on the obvious: "Go to a travel agency. They don't mind answering questions. And then you can go in there to buy your ticket instead of standing in line."

So that's what I decided to do with this afternoon. Mondays are slow: America doesn't really get working until what's the end of the afternoon here, so I had lots of time to work with. There was a travel agency nearby; I'd go there. But when I got there, there was no DB insignia in the window. The guy inside confirmed that they didn't handle train tickets. "In the Center," he said, gesturing to the mall known as the Schönhauser Arkaden. So I walked over there, went into the travel agency I see when I head to the store there, and waited for the guy to get off the phone. There was also a woman waiting, and she was there first. When he finally hung up with whoever he was talking with, she said "I have to make a trip, but it's got about 10,000 connections." I looked around the shop to see if the other two desks would be occupied anytime soon, but nobody else was there. But the guy was nice enough to ask what my question was, and immediately confirmed that they didn't sell train tickets, either. There was, however, another travel agency on the top floor, so I headed up there.

At this agency, there was a nice woman who had trouble with the French names, but was otherwise very competent. Unfortnately, she couldn't get any data up on her screen. "We have a lot of trouble with the French railroads..." she said. And no wonder. I mean, if you're in the Gare d'Est in Paris sometime with a few minutes to kill, read the memorial plaques there. German trains arriving in France usually meant bad, bad news, and I'd had no idea that hundreds of thousands of young Frenchmen had been worked to death by the Nazis. I'd be reluctant to give up information, too.

At long last, the woman gave up. "Go to Gesundbrunnen," she suggested. "They have a pavillion there." And she was right: I'd forgotten there was a "DB Store" at the other nearby gigantic shopping mall.

It was a nice day; I decided to walk. As I walked, I remembered the horoscope Yahoo put up on the page I start the day with, urging me to make a budget for a big dream project: it might cost less than I thought! Of course, that was sometime last week. I've been trying to avoid running the numbers on this for fear the final sum would be unattainable. But then, over the weekend, a friend told me she knew a couple who'd moved to Brittany from Berlin, and it had cost either 1200 or 1500 Euros, she couldn't remember. That gave me hope: I'd estimated twice to three times that. The distance is slightly longer, but that suddenly made this look more affordable.

I finally got to the DB Store, and a harrassed young woman asked me what I wanted. I had the times of the trains I wanted, and asked if she could give me a price. The names of the French towns gave her conniptions. I had to repeat "Aix en Provence" six times. She refused to even say it, calling it "your destination" or "this town here." She was actually sweating trying to get the price out of the machine. Finally, we had part one: a 5-stop train leaving here at 7:37, changing in Mannheim, Offenburg, Strasbourg, Marne la Valée-Chessy, and, finally, Aix en Provence TGV station and a bus into the city.

Total price: €283.60. Which, I reflected, was ridiculous.

She then set to work on the Montpellier-Berlin leg. This was a quickie: Montpellier-Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport-Brussels-Cologne-Berlin.

A mere €258.50.

She printed it up and glared me farewell. Stunned, I walked back to the house. On the way, I did some more thinking. How much, I wondered, would it cost to fly these legs?

Back at the house I puttered with the SNCF website to see if I could do better. Not only could I not do better, it was impossible to find the trains I'd found on the DB site. I kept getting offered sleeper trains, something I will never, ever do again. Okay, then, plan B.

I can fly from here to Marseille for €139. I hate flying, but boy, I hate spending money worse. Plus, I bet I could get a cheap airport hotel, take a bus into Aix or Marseille for dinner and/or some sightseeing, and have a good time. (I also noted that some of the flights were on Air Brussels out of Tempelhof, the airport they're shutting down. I wonder if those flights are still going...)

A flight to Berlin from Montpellier, on the other hand, costs upwards of €375. So it's the train on that one.

Thus, so far, we have €397.50 to get in and out of France, overnight at a hotel on the way out and on the way back in, an as-yet-unresearched ticket from Marseille to Montpellier, five nights at the hotel there at €58 a night if I can get a reservation (and I'd better get on that), about €30/day expenses in Morocco, and two or maybe three months' rent to secure an apartment lease that starts on July 1. I'm not sure what this adds up to (not forgetting meals in Montpellier, either, as well as the June rent here), but I can guesstimate just enough of it to know that if everyone pays up on time I'll have most of it just from what I'm owed so far, and that's not counting work I haven't done yet -- and will be starting this week.

Of course, that's if everyone pays up. Let us pray.

Meanwhile, what are the chances of my being able to find what I want when I get to Montpellier? Well, I've already had one firm offer, and I'm waiting on another, and you'll never believe where they came from: Facebook. There are two Montpellier groups there (well, actually three, but the third one is debates on what are the best restaurants in town), and I posted in both of them in March. Never heard anything while I was there, but when I got back here, I heard from a guy with two places, and then last week from another guy who said his father has some places for rent. All are pretty much just where I want to be, too. The one guy who made me a firm offer has given me the address of the place, and I used this neat gizmo that the French Yellow Pages has to type in the address of the place and "walk" around it and look at the neighborhood. I guess Google Maps can offer much the same thing, but this'll do for the moment.

There's more -- I still do need to get estimates from the movers, and no, I have no idea where that money will come from -- and I'll need to find someone to take over my lease here, and I also need to go through some of the stuff I moved to see just what the hell it is and whether I really need it. I don't want this move to be as chaotic as the last one, especially since I can't hop into a taxi and go back to the old place in ten minutes because I forgot something.

But, even though I'm no further ahead than I was this morning, at least I feel like I made some progress.

It Must Be Spring

More in the nature of a collection of crumbs, but...

First, there's the matter of the arboreal genocide on my street. The aftermath has been interesting: on the stub (it's not tall enough to call it a stump) where one of the trees was someone has taken a Christmas tree outline, made of stout bronze wire, and screwed it to the former living tree. On the end of each of its "branches," this decoration has a candle-holder, and various residents have stuck candles in there and lit them. There's nothing in them as of a few minutes ago, but this may change. In the meanwhile, it's been festooned with strings of tinsel and ribbon.

A few more trees on other streets have gone, too, and apparently there are plans for even more. One, I noticed, only got severely trimmed, perhaps in deference to a very large bird's nest near its top. Species-ism, if you ask me.

The comments on that item were interesting, too, as were backchannel e-mails like the one from Gary detailing a homicidal Californian tree. I suppose that kind of thing can happen anywhere, but maybe a tree living in a place where people retain a vestigal communion with tree-spirits makes it happen far less frequently. Makes me wonder if it happens at all in Latvia. I was also sent a tree-hugging joke by Friedperson, but if you know her, you know it's not the kind of thing one can post on a family-oriented blog like this one (stop laughing). Mature adults can apply via e-mail. The easily offended need not bother.

Across the street from the former trees, a local child is attempting a social experiment: hanging from one of the building's balconies by a stout rope is a small felt basket. If you look in it, you'll discover candies and a note asking you to take one and leave another behind. This has been going on for several days now, and I'm amazed to see that there's been a steady change in the basket's contents. Yesterday, someone left a banana instead of candy, thereby teaching the kid that there are health-food nuts everywhere. My guess is that the basket gets hauled up every now and again and the really good stuff is impounded.

It's not just the sap oozing from the tree-stubs that reminds me it's spring, though. The windows can be open most of the day now, and there is actually sunshine outdoors. Plus, of course, last night was Walpurgisnacht, which then segues neatly into May Day rioting, that old Berliner tradition. The park near my house was, for some reason, closed off and police stationed to check people coming and going, and there were helicopters late into the night. Now, I know there was also a Howard Carpendale concert last night, but somehow I don't think the security was about him. Today, broken empty bottles of horrific sorts of alcohol I didn't even know existed are all over the street, and, for the first time since I've been in this neighborhood, there've been police sirens at regular intervals.

All of which makes me nostalgic, because it now looks very much like I'll be leaving here come July. Details -- many, many details, you can be sure -- will follow as things fall into place, and no, I don't have the money yet, and yet it's more likely than ever that I will when the proverbial push comes to shove. The first item on the agenda is an apartment search, which will follow closely after a week in Morocco. After that, it'll be back here to pack.

And, of course, this scares me to death. I don't know many people in Montpellier, and two of the folks I do know are leaving for the summer; I don't have a job there (other than the writing I do which can be done from anywhere), and I'll be moving somewhere that's a bit more expensive than Berlin and where I'll be paying more rent than I am here. Plus the usual unknowns on this end. If experience is anything to go by, I'll both fall in love with someone who can't move and be offered a totally fantastic job here about three days before I roll out of town.

I also won't be living in a town with loads of brilliant artists who do events involving head-lice.

Not that, at this point, I'm going to let that stop me.

Last Crumbs From The Trip

The highlight of my SXSW this year was getting to interview Joe Boyd, the legendary record producer, on-stage as part of the panels program. I do wish he'd read less from his book (hey, it was on sale right there in the Convention Center; whet the audience's appetite so they'll buy!) and given me more time to ask him about stuff that wasn't in the book (and about his next one, which'll cover his years as a world music pioneer), but it was an enjoyable time, and he mentioned that he'd be in San Francisco at the same time I was in Marin, so we agreed to hook up at Village Music, the great and soon-to-be-defunct record store.

Which we did, on Tuesday morning. Showing remarkable self-control, Joe only bought a small stack of records and arranged to have them shipped to his house in London. Then, in one of those remarkable coincidences that happen all the time at Village Music, in walked an old friend of his, the woman who'd given him the biggest hit of his career, Maria Muldaur! She scampered back to her house to get him an advance copy of her new record, and Joe and I went for some coffee at a nearby shop. She met us there, and I got to snap a pic:



After we went our separate ways, I sped over to Berkeley to meet my friend Jaan for lunch at the remarkable Vik's Chaat Corner, a place I'd heard about but never gone to. It's basically a South Indian snack bar, and I was numbed into indecision by the choice. I finally settled on Bel Puri for myself, a dish I'd read about in countless Indian novels.



Described in the takeaway menu I picked up as "Crisp puffed rice mixed with onions, cilantro and potatoes with tamarind, mint, and garlic chutnies," it wasn't as exciting as it sounds, as perhaps the photo hints. Jaan, though, went for the Dahi Batata Puri, which rocked:



The description on the menu is "crisp puffed puris stuffed with potatoes and garbanzos covered with spices, yoghurt, and tamarind chutney," and it was one of those great South Indian things that balances a whole lot of different disparate elements perfectly. Afterwards, we hit the grocery store next door, and I marvelled at how much fresher the spices in there were than the ones at the Indian markets here. I also picked up a couple of those tiny Indian regional cookbooks (I'm a sucker for them, always have been) and once I decode them (ingredients often have Hindi names, but I'm getting better at them) I see some great meals in my future.

* * *

Probably the best discovery at SXSW was that Bobby Patterson, a legendary Dallas soul singer, is alive and performing. He was on the Ponderosa Stomp showcase, but went on at 1:30, which is too late for me, but the Stomp also had a day party on 6th St., so I made it over for that. The man is in top form, he had a great little band, and his between-song comments, delivered in rapid-fire surrealistic jive, made me want to hear his radio show. I managed to get a few performance shots, one of which even came out!



My old pal John T. Davis took two pix of me and Bobby afterwards, but I forgot to show him where the zoom button was, so I'll spare you those. It doesn't look, from the current Ponderosa listing, as if Patterson's playing this year's show, which is a shame, but I have to say, the lineup is, with the exception of the previously-unknown-to-me Jay Chevalier (a man with no discernable talent except for irritating the audience), absolutely incredible. If I were going to be in New Orleans on May 2 (and I'm not), I'd be there!

Another great singer and songwriter who won't be Stomping closed out SXSW for me: a rare performance by the enigmatic Swamp Dogg, who, I'm glad to say, is still in rare form. He's got a new album out, Resurrection, which I haven't listened to yet, but at least one of the songs, "They Crowned An Idiot King," is as angry as the Swamp Dogg of old. "It's 1970 and he's mad again," enthused Art Fein, who's been pushing the Swamp Dogg cause for years. I'll be doing a Fresh Air piece on him shortly. Swamp, I mean, not Art.

* * *

There were other highlights, musical, culinary, and social, and as always SXSW was overwhelming enough that I was glad for the week after so I could come down and do something else, even if that something else was an almost equally frantic trip to California. Everywhere I went, people asked me the same questions, so I felt like passing out a FAQ card:

* I thought you were moving to France. So did I; I'd anticipated selling my book proposal, but the woman who helped me develop it misrepresented herself as an agent. She wasn't, so I fired her. I'm now on my fifth agent, and he told me just before I left that he doesn't get it, either.

* So what's keeping you from moving? At the moment, €12,441.57, which, at today's Euro-Dollar exchange rate, is $16,569.65. That figure includes paying back debts, paying all my back rent, getting a new apartment in France, moving, and buying a new washing machine and couch.

* That doesn't seem like a whole lot. I hear you on Fresh Air. Don't you have any other work? Actually, no. Most editors no longer even answer queries. There's almost no work out there that I can see. That's why I'm trying to sell the book.

* Yeah, I know what you mean. I lost a lot of work this year, too. Thank heavens my wife has a job. Thank heavens you have a wife. With a job. Wouldn't mind having one of those myself.

Okay, it's Monday, New York's almost awake. Time to start moving that book forward again. One thing the past few days of being back here brought to my attention is that I don't want to be here any more. Thus, better start dealing with the cure.