Solid Sound is back!  Two years ago we enjoyed a whole day of arts and music in the expansive Mass MOCA complex.  There was endless art, from artists making art during the fest, to a comedy show with John Hodgman and other Daily Show cast members, and it all capped off with a concert by WILCO.  Here is what I wrote about the 2011 Solid Sound Festival.

I like the fact that WILCO took a year’s break so now the 2013 version of this big festival comes back stronger and more energized than ever.  I love that it takes place in the cavernous Mass MOCA complex, with so many different venues and places for events to take place.  The way the vendors were positioned last time made it like a street full of food, beer and snacks. The variety was amazing, menus you just never see at a festival. So long hotdogs and fried dough, hello cool food trucks from Seattle!

This year, by now, you can only buy a weekend ticket, which at $149 gives you three days of musical entertainment, arts immersion and WILCO.  The line-up for Saturday morning includes the comedy cabaret with John Hodgman, Reggie Watts, Al Madrigal and Jen Kirkman at 12 noon and again at 4 pm.  The music plays all day, among the highlights are Yo la Tengo playing from 4-5 pm and Neko Case from 7:15-8:30 pm.  WILCO plays again Saturday from 9-11:30 pm.

Case and WILCO’s  shows take place at Joe’s Field, a big outdoor stage that is set up starting with a hill and looking down. You can park your blanket and chairs up on the hill, and get a fantastic view of the musicians.  In 2011, a big dramatic rain storm pelted everyone for about 3o minutes before the concert began. Nobody minded, everyone managed to stay dry, and when the rain stopped and the sun came out, it was worth the wait. Just like this year, after a one-year hiatus, Solid Sound Festival 2013 will be worth the wait.

                          

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Last night everyone who was out and about was in a good mood because it wasn’t raining over the Taste of Amherst.  Mary recalled how in its earliest days, Amherst’s food festival took place outside each restaurant’s store front….people stopped by for small tastes of each place, with tables set up on sidewalks.  Fast forward twenty years and we have restaurants like Nancy Jane’s, which went out of business years ago, doing a brisk business with a booth at the Taste. Lhasa Cafe, a Northampton restaurant, is here too.

Events like these bring many of the same people out year after year. This is a large part of the appeal to me. We stopped by the wine and beer tent and bought two tickets for Malbec and Chardonnay.  It’s one of those times where you just sit anywhere that’s open. Right next to strangers, young and old.  We ended up next to a retired UMass professor of landscape architecture and his wife, who was a teacher for many years.  They were from Hungary and Switzerland, and come to the Taste every year together.

We quickly began talking about their lives in Amherst and ours…and we all agreed that this event was a fine tradition that brings people together.We talked about the high caliber of retirees who call Applewood home….smart people in retirement.

Young and old were gathered at the tables, many student aged people as well as locals. One man called his daugher on his cellphone, as she stood talking to some boys about 50 yards away. “I’ve got to keep them away from her” he explained.

Up on the stage, the sounds from the band Bunk could be heard. We left the wine tent to find more food to enjoy. People waited for openings at the tables under the tent, and again, sat with whomever was there. Egalitarian and fair, everyone got along.   The popular band Trailer Park had people dancing and swaying their hula hoops to the beat. Tommy Mahnken of  joked from the stage, “Does anyone know any good restaurants around here?”

                          

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Taiwan became one of the first countries in the world to offer free wifi on a mass scale to its citizens, and now it is extending that to any foreign tourist, also for free, in a move that will gain it a lot of goodwill.  As someone who is constantly searching for a wifi signal in foreign countries I think this is fantastic news.

The Taiwan government-backed free “iTaiwan” wireless network launched in 2011, and
now has about 4,400 hotspots in major tourist spots, transportation hubs, cultural establishments and government offices all over the island country. Citizens needed just their local phone number to register and then use the semi-fast 1 MBPS service.

Now, for foreign vistors, who generally have trouble getting a local SIM in the country (two forms of identity, etc), the process of tapping these wi-fi networks has been made a lot easier starting this month: visitors can open an iTaiwan account at a Taiwan Tourism Bureau counter/center, show their passport as ID and that’s it: they can login using their account, on their digital devices.

In addition, iTaiwan has established roaming agreements with four local governments so that tourists also have access in Taipei City, New Taipei, Taichung, and Tainan.

                          

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Here are some of the things I have noticed in France: Random observations from my ten-day trip in Burgundy, Champagne and Nord-Pas-de-Calais in June 2013.

I only saw one old man in a beret.  Benoit, the 34-year-old guide from Pas-de-Calais, laughed when he said, ‘There, a Frenchman in a beret!” as we passed the old codger.  There are very, very few Americans who ever come to this northern part of France. And very few Germans, they prefer to go to the south of France, I was told.  There are huge cemeteries here for Canadian and British WW1 soldiers. Many, many Canadians come to Pas-de-Calais to see these memorials, but not many Americans do.

In restaurants, people queue up at the cashier to pay their bills. Everyone tells the guy behind the counter what they ordered and pay separately. In most of the restaurants nobody brings you the bill. In some city street cafes, the guy comes with a portable credit card machine. My host in La Touquet Paris-Plage said she would only leave a one euro tip in a very fancy restaurant. Maybe some spare change. But basically she never tips.

People don’t eat at the bar  here as I often do on trips in other places. There are no seats at most of the bars in brasseries or restaurants. Even food  places that look like bars don’t really have seats, and if you did sit at the bar there wouldn’t be room for any plates there. So dining alone in France isn’t as much fun as it is in the states, where you can chat up the bartender. Thankfully, both times I dined alone on this trip, the place had wifi, and remarkably, there was no password required.

There is an internet company in France called Free Wifi. So when you pull up the available networks, you always get that one that says free wifi and think it’s free. But it’s not free, it’s Free. So ironically, you have to pay.

There used to be an elaborate system here called Minitel, which was a little box that connected to the phone. It was France’s own internet before the 1980s. People could order things and the photos were as big as the top of your finger. Some of the people I met remembered using them, you could use it as a phone book and even order stuff. But today the Minitels are long gone.

There are cameras on the motorways so it’s easy to get a ticket. But there are signs telling you when the cameras are coming up, so everyone slows down. Besides that, we drove at very fast speeds and it didn’t seem like my friend driving was very worried about speed traps. I never saw any cops on the interstates, and very few in the towns. In South America and Mexico there are so many different kinds of cops every where it’s a striking difference.

                          

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No visit to Champagne would be complete without spending some time in a cave, and there are hundreds to choose from in Reims, the region’s largest city. After touring the spectacular Palace next to the Cathedral, where we saw the original life-size statues created in the 1500s of kings, popes and dukes, we headed to Champagne Taittinger to take the subterranean tour.

It was a  rare broiling day here in June and retreating to the cool of the caves was a great relief. Jean-Pierre Redont told us the storied history of this house, which at about 14 million bottles year, is in the top ten but still dwarfed by Moet and Dom Perignon, who pump out 40 million bottles yearly.

These caves were once inhabited by monks, we were told, and the caves were also used as a hospital during the first word war. Redont pointed out graffiti scratched in the limestone by soldiers as we passed room after room of dusty bottles. Every bottle sitting upside down in this cave is turned by a riddler. These skilled workers can turn 6000 bottles an hour, and they give millions a quarter turn for the four-week period it takes to get the yeast into the neck so it can be removed.

Redont told us some Champagne facts while we sat the bar awaiting our taste of Taittinger’s products. The most expensive bottles are Krug Clos d’ambonnay, which goes for about 2000 euros a bottle. And Bollinger’s Vielles Vianes Francaise can be purchased for a mere 800 euros. I had been tasting the bubbly all week, and was not that good at telling the difference. “It’s in the bubbles,” Redont explained. “The smaller the better.”

We tried his Nocturne and Prestige Roses, which have about 9 grams of sugar and cost 43 euros. The bottle is brightly colored, he called it the ‘disco bottle.’ WOW! that was great. Then he poured the Comptes de Champagne, which jumps up to $100 a bottle. In Champagne, you can definitely say you get what you pay for!

Redont told us that if we wanted to have a better glass of Champagne, we should scratch the bottoms of our wine glasses with a diamond cutter. “This gives the bubbles something to hold on to.”  He also said that a little earwax would keep the glass from spilling over, but none of us liked that idea.

Despite a worldwide economic slow down, business at Taittinger and the other houses has been brisk. After all, you only live once and we might as well celebrate with the ultimate sign of success–Champagne from Champagne.

                          

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The first thing we saw when we arrived in Lens, France were two huge mountains that look like pyramids with grass growing on them. They were coal heaps, giant piles of tailings left over from some of the many coal mines in this part of northern France that all closed up in the late ’80s.  We drove up a hill to view one of them up close, along with a series of former mine buildings that now house a theater and other arts-related endeavors.

In the town of Lens, there are rows of streets with identical buildings that used to house miners. Today these are subsidized housing for low income families. In December 2012 a tremendous thing happened here. A new Louvre opened on the abandoned site of one of these coal mines. It’s the Louvre Lens and it’s a 500,000 square feet magnet for art lovers from all over Europe. So far 500,000 people have visited, and the expectation for one year was pegged at only 700,000.

In the courtyard outside of the squat glass and steel building, we met with Bruno Cappelle, who handles media relations for the museum, and he told us that 60% of the visitors to the Louvre Lens (LL) were locals. This is exciting and a great development, but did not come about without a lot of advance work.  Cappelle said that a team of six was deployed to visit all of their neighbors, knock on their doors, and tell them about the new museum, and ask for their opinions.

Cappelle said that some of the locals asked why they weren’t building a $150 million car factory, or some other large employer. But even though there are only about 100 or so jobs at this sprawling temple of ancient and classical art, there are reverberations that will echo throughout this region far longer than any car factory could.  And since it’s a state-0wned operation, it will never close up and move to China

The LL is located about a twenty minute walk from the TGV high speed train station and there is a well made walking path and free shuttles if you don’t want to walk. It offers free admission for the first year.  There is a Gallery of Time that shows the progress of art from the earliest days of civilization until the 1840s.  Cappelle explained to us that the Louvre Paris has 36,000 works on display, but the LL has only 205 works in its Gallery of Civilization time line room. “That way, you get a balance between the famous and the forgotten. and you’re not overwhelmed with trying to see too much”

Famous works include Lady Liberty, by Delacroix, and some of the lesser known works from Egyptian tombs are striking and well explained using the devices they hand out to listen to while you view the art.  The diversity of the people who have come to the LL, so many locals, has inspired Cappelle. That and the fact that in this town of 36,000, more than 10,000 membership cards have been sold, bringing people back again and again.

But the LL isn’t just about art, it’s about improving and bringing a spotlight to a very poor and depressed part of France.

“Changing the image of this area, so it’s not just about football and unemployment, that’s a big part of what this museum is all about,” Cappelle said.

                          

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I could feel my heart swell with joy as the train got underway, slowly gaining speed out of Reims bound for Amiens. I had tried to reserve on the TGV, France’s famous 265 mph train, but on a Friday, alas, it was sold out. It must be people like the man we met yesterday, who works up here in Champagne but lives in Paris, connected to his city life via the TGV.

But I was happy to have a seat on the Ter, the regular service, slower train that stopped at many small villages along the route north to Amiens. My final destination was Arras, near France’s newest and shiniest high profile museum, the Louvre Lens. Many of the treasures stored for years in Paris have been brought to this sprawling 500,000 square foot building created at the site of a former coal mine in this small depressed northern town in Pas-de-Calais.

But my heart did swell with joy as a song I loved came on the iPhone, and I got caught up listening, thinking about where I was, and anticipating the journey. I could feel nothing but joy, and nothing but that exact moment. I strive so often in my life to just be, to savor, and taste and experience everything around me….and at that moment my heart was full. I was in my favorite country, anticipating a new destination, and taking great pleasure in what was happening right here right now.

I wanted to email my friend Jim Neil who turned me on the music that was so great, by the band Poolside. I wanted to email my travel writer buddy, Janis Turk, who shares my love of travel and wrote an essay about how she used to look longingly at pins on a globe, wanting to visit each and every one. I wanted to reach out to my partner, Mary, and tell her about how much I want to sign up for Home Exchange and try to find a way to come here next year, and stay for a month. Find someone to live in our house while we live here in this fabulous country.

What a joy to be in the moment to feel the absolute power of travel, to be enlightened and engaged and best of all to be able to share the feelings with the world. I am a simple man with simple desires–and my heart was full that moment.

                          

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I met an ambitious, smart and bold young woman tonight who took me to dinner in Reims. She owns her own house in a small village, she’s the assistant to the director of the city’s important tourism board, and she’s traveled by herself to far flung places like Bulgaria, Egypt, Iceland and Sweden. Oh, and she’s all of 24.

She’s Camille Roberrini, and she’s got her eyes on rising up higher and higher in this key part of the Reims economy. She got the job in 2012, after spending time in the trenches…volunteering in the city’s visitor welcome center. Then she went to work in administration for a small village, but wanted to get into tourism since she had majored in this in college. She bided her time and when one of the staff took off for a big trip abroad, she called and got her job.

She doesn’t understand some of her peers who ‘only want to have a good enough job to pay the rent and buy beer and hang out. Why don’t they want more, a career, why are so many young people content with a boring job and not advancing?’  I had brought up the question of succession, and she told me about her father’s construction business. So far her two brothers aren’t interested in taking it over. She loves her job and spends many many hours at it. She’s a young person with a goal to get ahead in tourism.

Camille’s English is perfect. None of the famous French “ziss and zat,” but more like a Swedish person would talk. She recounted her trip up to Stockholm, where she went alone with a tent and rented a car, heading up along the coast at nine at night with no where to stay. “I never make reservations,” she explained, “I just let things work out.” She’s been an avid couch surfer and travels for three or four weeks at a time. She can’t imagine taking a vacation to the same place every year. “Some friends of mine go to the same hotel in Egypt every year, and never leave the hotel! They are missing so much!”

Some of the things she’s worked on at the Reims Tourism board are a map and website guide to World War One sites, knitting together the 25 towns in France’s northeast with battle sites and commemorative locations. She’s also pretty keen on the QR signs that have been put up so tourists can pull up information about Reim’s historic and tourism sites on mobile phones. “But I want them to be able to just shoot a photo and get the info, not have to download an app to do it.” Smart.

Talking to Camille, I was inspired about how motivated and excited she is about her job and about the tourism business. It makes me proud to be in the industry, and happy to have spent a lovely dinner talking to such an inspiring young woman.

                          

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In front of a crackling fireplace sat an 87-year-old Champagne maker and his son. We were at Champagne Drappier, in the country village of

Urville, where this family has been making fine champagne and other wines since 1808, seven generations of family business.  They’re one of the biggest family-owned producers in the region, but their size is dwarfed by the Moets and the other corporate producers who make many thousands more bottles. They are still small enough to count family members as owners, no one has taken them over and they’re content making fine Champagne, which they produce with more than 150 hectares of grapes in production

I asked Michele, the son, about his father’s legacy and the continuation of the family line in the years ahead. He said he was pleased to have three children who have all become interested in the family’s bubbly business.  Charline, the oldest, studies at a business school in Paris and is poised to jump into the marketing and business side of Drappier when she finishes her studies in a few years.  Son Hugo, 21, is interested in winemaking and is working as an engineer in Switzerland. And the youngest son, Antoine, 16, has taken to raising horses, and has helped out at the vineyard with draft horses, giant Percherons used to till between the rows.

It looks good for Michele, handsome and well-dressed and clearly the right man to sell his high class Champagne to clients like Malaysia and TAM airlines, and to hundreds of importers around the world. I asked Michele how the business was faring, and he said the brightest spots are Korea, Japan, and the US was picking up. “In France people would borrow money to buy Champagne,” he said with a smile.

His father, Andre sat with us and smiled, not venturing to speak to us in English, sipping some of his favorite beverage. He drinks Champagne every day, and at his age 87, he still comes into the office daily to check the mail and then read the newspapers. He developed a special Champagne named after the most famous local resident, French President Charles De Gaulle, who is buried over in Colombey-des-Deux-Eglise, marked by a gigantic double cross that you can see from miles around. “The family never bought a bottle of that Champagne,” Michele explained. “They didn’t  want to drink it and have the stern face of their grandfather staring out at them.”

The Drappier company is famous too for their gigantic bottles of Champagne, called Melchisedechs, which are about four feet tall and hold a whopping 40 bottles of bubbly. And it’s aged in the giant specially made bottles, not poured in from other bottles like some producers. They’re bringing some of these big babies down to the Bordeaux Wine Show later this month, along with a machine that pours the big bottles mechanically called a Vicanter.

We sampled all of their fine Champagnes from the famous yellow label standby to the Quattuor, an unusual mix made with four different grapes.  It was nice sitting by the fire and as the samples kept on coming we didn’t want to leave. But then a group of Japanese customers were coming in, and they were going to grill andouliettes, local sausages, on the fire for lunch. It was a good time to say goodbye to father and son and make our way on this sunny morning to the old city of Troyes.

                          

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Mustard is a big deal here in Dijon.  I met a women today who makes mustard every day, showing tourists and locals how to combine the seeds, some salt, and verjus, the juice of green grapes to make the perfect blend.   At La Cuisine de Madeleine, Valerie Grandet showed us how to do it using wooden mortar and pestles.  While we furiously ground the seeds, turning them brown to yellow, she told us all about this fabulous condiment and about the most legendary name in local mustard. And no, it’s not Meaux.

It’s Edward Fallott, the company that has been making mustard a la Dijon in the nearby town of Beaune since 1840.  Like gun powder and many other great things, mustard got its start in China.  In the 1600s, it migrated to France and The Dukes of Burgundy used to down a spoonful to ward off indigestion. It was in the towns in which monks made wine that mustard got its start. They combined the wine with the seeds, and at one time it was a huge crop. Then it began to slowly disappear. Only about four years ago, Valerie told us, did the growing of local mustard seeds, which are brown, not yellow like the ones grown elsewhere, begin to reappear in farmer’s fields..

The big kahuna of mustard is Canada…where about 80 percent of the world’s mustard seeds come from. It takes quite a bit of grinding to get that nice yellow color, and at Fallott, they use stone grinders, which keep the temperature nice and even.  This is a town of mustard lovers. We visited the famous Dijon shop called Moutarde Maile and I picked up some old style super-seedy variety. But the velvety smoothness of the kind made by Fallott is another great choice.

After we finished grinding, Valerie brought forth some wine, and some charcuterie and bread for us to slather our home-made mustard on. I opted for Fallott’s which was much better than mine. I was the only one drinking the white, which I have noticed happens often in France. Just like at my house!  You can make mustard too, find Valerie at www.lacuisinedemadeleine.fr, she’s at 18 rue Chauddonenerie in Dijon.

                          

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