Insights from the holidays

1. Welsh crash course:

Lift = lifft
Fresh Coffee = goffi ffres
Good morning = Bore Dah

2."If you do not want your carrots looking like mutants, you must put very little muck (compost) in the ground."

3. "You can grasp nettle in your bare hand, and you will not get stung; the secret is, you must touch the leaves on their bottom side."


4. Jardin de Luxumeburg has an area reserved for reading. Excited talk by passers-by (even on academic matters such as early 20th century ethnography in Palestine) will solicit stren looks from the readers seated on metal chairs.

5. Paris in September is perhaps less beautiful than in November, but much easier, especially when walking down memory lane. The best companion for such solitary walks is, of course, Walter Benjamin's Passagen.

6. The smells of the Tube and the Metro are distinct and different; the first always reminding me of foggy rain, the second of chestnuts and pain-au-chocolat. No, I'm sure it's not my clicheed imagination.

7. The presence of millions of tons of water above one's head, while going through a dark tunnel at a bottom of a sea, is best kept at bay, by writing melancholic emails (outward journey) or sleeping (return).