Stefan's first words this morning: Is the bakery open yet?

 
The bread in France, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Peter's sister Ludmilla was just here visiting Nina in Angers. What you need to know is that Ludmilla is a super taster. As a kid all she ate was noodles with ketchup because most everything else offended her, and she still doen't like the taste of wine. "Too sour," she says. But she can taste a soup or a sauce and tell you the ingredients. She has taken apart and put back together some of our favorite foods–from a mango challah we use to get in San Francisco to a better-recipe-than-the-original blueberry-cardamom bread from Elephant Bakery in Portland to a coconut-almond scone she just made up for no good reason. 

She says the bread from La Cocagne, the bakery right across the street from Nina's apartment in Angers, is better than any she's ever had, including the days they were stuck in Paris, forced to do emergency bread research.

From the chocolate vienoise to the sugar-encrusted cream puffs without the cream (I don't know what they are really called) to the croissants to the best sour dough baguette ever, I am pretty sure that La Cocange means 'cheap legal drugs'' in French.

Speaking of which, the wine in France, right?

 
Last night Stefan's piano teacher Karill performed at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory. We went with our friend Aleen, who is the worst back seat driver ever, and makes everything more fun. Karill and a violinist played Beethoven's Sonata #7. The conservatory has two halls, a malinki (small) and a bolshoi (large), and has performances nearly every evening. 

A Tuesday evening and our performance was packed. The regulars know the strengths of each performer, have their favorites, and are familiar with the pieces they will play–sort of the way we are with American Idol. Karill played beautifully and afterwords Stefan and Peter took flowers to him during his bow. Hopefully that wasn't a huge faux pas because no one else gave any of the men flowers. Or hopefully Karill can explain that we are stupid foreigners. Or maybe now the three of them are engaged, who knows? There were two more performers after the intermission, but we had to leave right after Karill played because Stefan was overcome by a severe case of full-body fidgets. On the way out the sound of many people playing different piano pieces drifted out of the open practice-room windows.

Peter's co-worker is on vacation in Denmark. After a couple extra days of paying $300 a night for a hotel room he and his family–they are referring to themselves as "volcano refugees"– are taking the train to Stockholm, then the ferry to Helsinki, where he can work and be back on Uncle Sam's dime. They are the only people I've ever heard of who are going to Helsinki to save money. 

Peter's sister Nina was suppose to come visit us this week, but has now canceled, since her trip would only be a couple of days by the time she got here, if she could get here.

Peter's two other sisters, visiting France for the first time, are still "stuck" in Paris. I wonder what they are doing that they didn't think they had time to do? I'm sure they'll enjoy living in France.

Peter's flight to Berlin tomorrow has been canceled. A doc here from Kazakhstan en route to the conference is taking the train to Berlin–a thirty-hour ride. We were suppose to meet Peter in France next week-end. 

People think the airports will open on Sunday afternoon. Like a volcano going off is on people time. This thing thinks in earth years. In 1851 it erupted off and on for two years. I'm not sure if we'll make it to France next week-end, or if we'll be taking a ship home this summer.

Every time I see the easter-cake kulich I buy one, yesterday we bought this medium size from the bakers at the church…but the real problem has been the cheesecake-like paska, because to me, how to you serve kulich without paska?  I talked to two people in two different grocery stores who had no idea what I was talking about. "Are you sure you're Russian?" I asked them. The one bakery that I knew was going to carry paska had run out by yesterday afternoon. Then today, there it was at the grocery store! Now we are set. Happy Easter!