04.16.09
Posted in Etzling, Hollidays, Family at 9:59 pm by tesstess
We made a long weekend of the already long easter-weekend, went upp to Anthonys parents in Lorraine (close to Forbach). Thursday morning we started with bying me a new car. My first new car, completely red, a Twingo, serie Rip Curl (means red details inside and some other small things). I cannot show you it on picture because it’ll be finished in july… I’m longing to have it. Specially since my old car decided to stop working the day before. It could have been just a strike, but since it’s not a french car we think it’s more serious. Happened when I was in antibes at lunch, when I wanted to go back to work it just didn’t start. Luckily I was parked on a free parking because the same evening we were going to the airport, so no chance to move it. We got it yesterday lunch with anthonys car and a rope, interesting trip from Antibes to Valbonne through roundabouts and all.
Then the rest of the vacation we ate, drank good wine, talked with the family and most of all, spent the time on the fields with fruit trees. The trees were abandoned for many years, some already dead. We started this work last time we were up, and this time we cut down four, planted six new and cleaned many others. I spent several hours on the lawn mower tractor cutting the grass, funny!
Choupie running with spring energy!
We managed to forget almost all the pictures on a usb stick in his parents house, I’ll try to add them later. Among the other pictures I have one showing how Choupie was spending most of the time while we were working with the trees.
04.15.07
Posted in Etzling, Hollidays at 9:06 am by tesstess
Last week we spent a wonderful easter holliday with Anthony’s parents. I made a
link to google maps so you can se where Etzling is.
The weather was fantastic with sun all the time, I got more color (hm, read red)
than I did down here in the south.
The first day we stayed in the flat near Mulhouse where Johnny, Anthony’s dad, works and the next morning we went out on tourist expedition in Alsace.
First we went to the Ecomuseum, a constructed village with old, traditional houses from Alsace.
Anthony, me and Johnny.
There were lots of storkar on the roofs and we came just in the time of this funny dance they’re doing when they clap their beeks and throw their heads back to impress on the partner. Very funny to see.
As you can see, we aslso found other more or less sweet animals 
After the Ecomuseum we drove through lots of small villages/towns in Alsace. It is a rich region, known for its wine. We stopped at a couple of towns to look around and feel the atmosphere.
Almost all windows had easter decoration
Here we were. And on the left is a speciallity, a super-thin pizza with cheese. I thought I would get hungry after half an hour eating only this, but I stayed full for many hours, very surprising.
And everywhere those for the region caracteristic houses.
I borrowed the digital system camera from Fabienne, so funny to take pictures with a real camera, and Anthony was the obvious motif for most of my pictures.
Our next to last stop was to taste and buy wine from a famous producer.
In the evening Johnny invited us to a one star resturang. This is an extremely luxury resturant, to get a picture I can tell that we counted the three star resturants in France and they are between 20 or 30 of them!
This is my starter, it is shells in the middle (one muscle of one shell devided into two or three slices), on the left is tomatoes and on the left a string of curry-mayonaise with dill.
In between each meal there was a tiny thing to eat, and everything was so nicely laid out on the plates. My main dish was liver (not of cow, don’t remember now from which animal) and it was very very good.
Here is my me and my desert, a creme brulé, do I need to say it was the best one I ever ate? And below is the starter and dessert of Anthony.
Then we came home to Etzling, and from that day I only wanted to stay in this beautiful garden! Take a look at some of the flowers!
This is the most beautiful garden I have ever seen and it was a luxury to have the opportunity to spend almost one week in it. I got lots of inspiration to go home and do gardening in our own garden.
This is a Magnolia.
One of the days we went mushroom hunting. But this is a secret, so don’t tell anyone!
The forest was full, not of mushrooms, but of blue flowers. And later we also found Anemone (vitsippor), wich made me so happy because a spring is not a spring for me without them. In total we found five small, but apparently very good, mushrooms. Anthony was the one who found all of them, they are very hard to spot. He tried to teach me how to find them so when he found one he told me in which square meter it was and asked me to search, and it took me several minutes to find it!
The guys were very happy to be able to drive Johnny’s fancy sports car for the mushroom picking
Most of the time we rested and read magazines. I found out that Fabienne has tons of decoration and home magazines so I was very buzy reading them. I got so much inspiration and began to long for a work so I will get money to buy things, for example to decorate a table beautifully for a dinner.
It was so warm, we had lunch on the terasse almost all days! The lunch on the pictures is a sallad with small bits of fried meet. I think it is some kind of stomach, but I tried not to think of that while eating, it was a delicious meal. And of corse wine was served to the lunch, and to the dinner. All days. We’re having a week without alcohol now when we’re back home.
We had time to visit both sets of grandparents, for a dinner at each place.
Here is at the place of meme and pepe (mormor och morfar).
I told them about snapsvisor and they proved they had this in France too, and everyone sang. One of them had a refrain “glup glup glup glup…” and this is the one I’m doing on the picture. Everyone sings to one person at at time who has to stand up, and put the glas where the song tells you: on the front, on the nose on the stomach etc, and then comes the glup glup and you have to empty your glas. I sang “Helan går” for them and they tried the best they could to sing with me.
The last evening we went to mami and papi (farmor och farfar), and to our surprise the brother of Johnny and his wife were there too.
We got an easter-rabbit
01.15.07
Posted in Etzling, Hollidays at 3:28 pm by tesstess
On the 29th of December I went with Ryanair from Gothenburg to Frankfurt where Anthony picked me up. From Frankfurt it was approximately a two hours drive to the small village where his parents live and where he also spent all his childhood just a few kilometers from the border to Germany.
This is the street where they live.
Here is the house, fully decorated for Christmas, and it was so beautiful at night with all small lights. I tried to get them on picture but my pictures of this looked more as a black heaven with stars than a house.
The garden was beautiful now in winter so I can imagine how it must look in summer filled with flowers.
We celebrated new years eave with Anthonys parents in their house.
This is the new year dinner. I don’t remember now exactly what all the food was I ate this weekend, and which was at which evening. The reason is that we ate a lot, big wonderful dinners both at lunch and late evening all the days, often with both a glas of champagne before and allways wine to the food.
At twelve o’clock it was time to shoot the fireworks. But, it was raining a lot…
But we stayed happy anyways. The men went out in the rain to fire the things, and just when it was time me and his mom went out to look up at the sky to see the fireworks.
Anthony hurt his thumb on the thing they used to light the fireworks.
We had time to visit both sets of grand parents and some cousins. On this picture we are at the house of the grand parents on his fathers side. Here I remember very well what I ate because it was frog legs! Not so bad as I had feared, but when you start thinking about what it is and looking at them closely the stomach don’t want to have more of them. I would say they tasted like a mix of chicken and fish. And the sauce was very good, people say the sauce is the reason to why they eat them in the first place.
I was so proud here because I managed to speak some sentences in french and I understood when she told me things, and I could ask questions back! I felt it was much easier here to try to speak french when I knew she didn’t know a word of english.
Here are the grandparents on the mother side. These are the ones I met once before when they went down on hollidays to the south of France and came to eat with us in Valbonne one day.
Two of the days me and Anthony went out for long walks.
First we went out in the nature just beside the village where they lived.
We climbed an “älgtorn”, but here they are not for mooses as in Sweden but for rabits and hm. rådjur (bigger brown animals with white on the bottom).
The other time we took the car and visited “Le petit Pierre”, one hours drive from Name.
At some places in the woods there are funny mountains. Here they used the mountain to not have to build all the walls of their houses.
From this village we took a two or three hours walk in the nature.
Another of this kind of rocks.
Here the tree had to struggle to get up to the sky.
And this was how it looked where the tree went around the rock. When the wind move the tree, the tree made a whole in the rock.
Anthony enjoying the veiw and the stillness of the forest. Both of us liked this place very much and could imagine a life close or in such a forest.
View from where we stopped and ate our sandwiches.
Can you believe that we saw blueberries at this time of year! We didn’t try to taste them though.
When we came up to La Petit Pierre again we saw this castle, but only from the outside since it was closed on new years eave.
I just had to take a picture on this sculpture.
So, finally I want to show you the wonderful room where I and Anthony slept. It was newly renovated by his parents.
On the second of January we took Anthonys’ car back to the south. Eric, his girfriend and their cat travelled with us in the car. It takes approximately ten hours to drive down.