24 March

Well well well.

Today I have made a decision which has been pending for quite a while: it is time to stop this blog.

I started it 3 years ago when I first came to Iceland. Now that I am here again, the circle is closed.

Today also marks the first anniversary of Flo's murder, and to be honest, ever since then I have found it very difficult to write, or at least write light-heartedly on this blog: it's pretty hard to bullshit after an event like that, huh... :o)

Anyway. It was nice to write, and I'll probably find a way to keep you posted elsewhere (I do have an idea or two) if anyone is actually interested.

Take care, all of you, and thanks for reading for so long, especially you, Officer Pirate!
Emma

Fresh it's so fresh!

Since one can't and certainly musn't spend a whole lifetime pining and dwelling on the same things, here is a selection a few pics I took this year and like, to refresh the atmosphere.
You may click to enlarge...One of the good sides of Zürich I discovered just before leaving. Will explore it more when I go back! :o)
I love that sign. For those who don't understand German, it reads:
"Wildlife must remain untouched here. Please do not enter."
HaHa! So the Swiss DO possess a sense of humour!!

INTERMISSION

About an hour later:
I am currently learning to use the program IRFANVIEW.
For those who know me and my computer skills, you may rofl at the idea of me fuming and not getting very far, despite spending precious (very many) minutes trying to be proactive.FYI, (Einar, for example) the only reason why I am not utterly brilliant at computering ... is just that I never learned.. (as Lady Catherine de Burgh said wink wink mum!)
*sigh*, and consequently, the path to computer science seems as clear to me as this signpost.Also, talking about fuming, about a week ago, I decided it was about time for me to stop drinking coffee (I usually drink a minimum of two pots a day, culminating at around 5 litres (just kidding))
But still.
So for the first time in over 10 years probably, I have spent more than two days without my daily dose.

"But why?" I hear you ask... "Does it make you feel any better?"
The answer, as of now, is a plain NO. Sorry, but not really.

However I feel free as a Breton flying deer Yeah right.

However I am taking the opportunity to test the measure of (my) psychological dependance to coffee, versus actual physical dependance to coffeine.

Conclusion so far: since I haven't bitten anyone's head off so far, but am slowly starting to act as a monomaniac, mentionning the C word a minimum of 20 times a day, I guess I am proving to be slightly psychodependant.

Oh well, could be worse.
I'll just have to switch to air coffee.

This week, on January the 6th, a press conference was held in Perpignan by my father and stepmother with the purpose of alerting the media about (our case and) the inertia of the Guatemalan police regarding the investigation into the death Flo, and trying to mobilize both the public and the French government to provoke side effects in Guatemala (a.i to try and get the investigation to go a little further than where it's at now=nowhere)

One might have thought it obvious, but I am now forced to observe - and believe me it makes me mad- that the murder by asphyxiation of a young woman nine months ago is already much too outdated and not glamorous enough to mobilize frenzied mobs.

I'm afraid of being taxed with cynicism, but it appears (understandably) that the two French who were murdered by firearms in Niger 5 days ago have stolen the headlines.

I am disgusted for all of us.
For my sister, who certainly did not ask to return to France in a box her two feet in front,
For these two French whose lives were stopped in their track at age 25 in conditions as filthy as possible. Peace to them and their families.
For the French state who advised my family not to alert the public nine months ago and seems to drop us now that something more interesting has turned up,
For all of us, the public, who love to feast on flesh.
I feel sick.

To paraphrase Lucy, I hope 2011 will bring Justice for Flo

A few articles in French about the case
L'Express 07.01 2011
Le Figaro.fr 07.01 2011
L'Indépendant 07.01 2011
France soir 14.02 2011


VF
Cette semaine, le 6 janvier, une conférence de presse a été organisée à Perpignan par mon père et ma belle-mère, pour alerter les média sur (notre cas et) l'immobilisme de la police guatémaltèque relativement à l'enquête concernant la mort de Flo, et essayer de mobiliser à la fois l'opinion et le gouvernement français pour qu'il y ait des retombées côté guatémaltèque.

On aurait pu s'en douter, mais force m'est de constater - et croyez-moi ça m'ENRAGE- que l'assassinat par asphyxie d'une jeune femme il y a neuf mois est trop obsolète et pas assez glamour pour mobiliser les foules en délire.

J'ai peur de passer pour cynique, mais les deux Français qui se sont fait assassiner par armes à feu au Niger il y a 5 jours lui ont volé la une.

Je suis dégoûtée pour tout le monde.
Pour ma soeur, qui n'avait certainement pas demandé de rentrer en France dans une boîte les deux pieds devant,
Pour ces deux Français dont la vie a été stoppée net à 25 ans dans des conditions aussi immondes que possible. Paix à eux et à leur famille.
Pour l'état Français qui a conseillé à ma famille de ne pas alerter l'opinion il y a 9 mois et qui a l'air de nous laisser tomber maintenant qu'il y a plus croustillant.
Pour nous tous, le public, qui aimons tellement nous repaître de chair fraîche.
J'ai envie de vomir.

J'espère, pour reprendre les mots de Lucie, que l'année 2011 apportera Justice pour Flo.

Quelques articles parus dans la presse internet cette semaine.
L'Express
Le Figaro.fr
L'Indépendant
France soir 14.02 2011

Christmas time has come again...

So Christmas time has come again...So many things have happened in one year, it's pretty overwhelming.

A lot of places visited, old and new, a lot of people met, old and young :P, a lot of thinking, same old same old...

A lot of this due to or related with the loss of my beloved sister.Of course not a day goes by without a thought towards her, but I do want to give her an EVEN MORE special thought today (and share it with you all), as it's Christmas Eve.Also a special thought full of TLC for all the faraway friends who are always close to my heart, despite being geographically far.A very Merry Xmas to you all!!

As customary...

Yes yes, as usual for me before any form of departure, I am heavily procrastinating.

Usually this is the moment I start a stamp collection, gathering all of the envelopes lying around my room (quite a few in general) and steaming them off etc etc.

Now whilst I was in Switzerland I only got one letter, so I can hardly use this as an excuse, however, it very conveniently snowed last night, allowing me to build a snowman instead.
Flying off to Sweden in a few hours to see some friends, yay! :o)

Ah yes, and just for the fun of it, this is the pic of (most of) the wool I bought here.3 cheers for compulsive buying :o)

Switzerland..

For the no doubt many of you who don't follow all of my mouvements, I have been in Zürich, Switzerland for the last couple of weeks, and leaving again Friday.

I have come here a few times before, since one of my oldest friends lives in this country. However, it's the first time I've spent such a long time here in one go.

There are quite a few things to be said about Switzerland, yet I will not expand on it here, since I quite like to keep my opinions to myself unless under 4 eyes or not too many more, and so I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves..

Zürich town sometimes and somewhat reminds me of Helsinki...Central Zürich

Handcarved skateboards from Nepal. Yeah.
Gassen in der Altstadt

Because the beginning of November is almost Christmas time... (I have to say the decorations are really nice...I especially like the idea of recycling old plastic bottles and turning them into street art)
This is not a decoration it's actually for sale and costs the eyes out of your head. Now I come to think of it, maybe this is one of the last customers who went and got something from the shop.


Yep, there's money in town, and always two sides to a medal. "Money stinks...." This actually stinks too. There are some really good sides to CH, but one of the bad ones is the hardly latent racism. This is an extremely shocking campaign (from a right wing party of course) for a referendum where people are going to have to vote for what is called the Ausschaffungsinitiative, a.i. "explusion initiative" which consists in expulsing all the so-called foreign criminals out of Switzerland and back to their respective unrespectable countries.
Now of course everything is debatable, and again there are always two sides blablabla. However I think the slogan in this one is really shocking, and not only meant to campaign for the initiative, but just downright racist and xenophobia enhancing. It reads "Ivan S., rapist, soon to be Swiss?"
I'll leave you to think on that one, but I think it's just disgusting.

They also have another poster which shows a nice clean little white sheep kicking a black sheep over the border and out of Switzerland. Cute.
Politics...
Apparently (though I haven't researched it thoroughly so again it is simplistic), in Switzerland the power is really with the people, since it is they who determine such issues through referendums and direct voting. Which has advantages and inconvenients.
Démocratie, quand tu nous tiens...

Anyway... the weather has been very clement at times, and even allowed for one grand day out cycling along the Zürich See through the countrysideand on to Rapperswil.

And the rest of the time when the weather is bad and I'm not keeping my friend's two kids (which is in effecto what I came here for) I knit, as usual.

It is lovely and a terrible thing to have turned into a knitter.
For the one it's great and entertaining, for the second, I can't help but feeling that to others I look or appear totally neurotic, throwing myself on balls of yarn as soon as I've got spare time and compulsively buying wool every time I see a shop. Added to that, considering the value of the CHF, it's kind of dangerous for the porte-monnaie, being a compulsive knitter in Switzerland...
Hlakka til ad fara aftur til Islands!!! :o)

However, these are the latest:
A tweed hat for Claudia (my friend's other half) and a first lopapeysu with sleeves for me...

HA!

Ok, so again it's been a little while..
Well, ok, make that a hell of a while.
Ok, almost 3 months.
But it's all to make it worth the while!!! (1st joke, yay)

What happened is that the last couple of months, me and my accompagnateur have been traveliving in the car. However great the aforementionned, it is nevertheless not yet equipped with the latest contributions of technology such as wireless or even a computer.
We've got so far as a gas stove we can warm up cans of cassoulet on though, so no need to despair, first step towards efficiency is taken, woopee!!

Hmmm, 3 months hey, so what...
Ok. Step 1 - came back from Iceland and back to Brittany via CamembertSo far everyone remembers (yeah, right)

Step 2 - Brittany, Douarnenez boat festival where The above Accompagnateur, my brother and I went to lend a hand.
We met loads of nice people, saw loads of nice boats including the Belem, the Earl of Pembroke and many others like VERACITY which our now friend Marcus (in the blue) built himself. We were kindly invited to join him for a sail aboard. I then tried embroidery on shrimp net (Ndlr: true fact), it was great fun!!

Step 2 - A few days later, met up with the MacLeods, including my namesake Eimer/Emma for the first time (at last!!!!)
Step 3 - Left for the South to go and see MORE family (on the French side this time) and try and get some work.
Did we get any?
Ooooh lala.

Our first shot, we tried working in a fruit conditionning factory for a week.

Apart from being badly paid and boring, the coworkers were appalling enough to make anyone want to resume studies for another 5 years, lest one should end like them. Heaven forfend. I'm sorry to sound like such a bourgeois, but it was terrible. (details available upon request)
5 minutes in there would turn the hardest of liberals into a badass anarcho-syndicalist. Not that we needed to be convinced or anything, but it's sometimes good to have your nose rubbed into reality.
At least, it made us think, and once again realise how great our condition and how lucky we are to even be able to make choices.

I knat. :P

Second shot was picking grapes, which was ok. Details also available, I'm just summing up. A double-headed grape.

Picking grapes is an activity better known in France as the "vendanges". Depending on the region, it goes from mid-August to October.
It is organized very differently depending on the region where one is.

We started in the Roussillon at the foot of the Pyrenese mountains, where the weather is great and the surroundings beautiful. The air smells of thyme and lavender and the delicate scent of fig trees floats; agaves, almonds and these grow all over, the Tramontane blows warm from the South and the sun shines so bright it makes your eyes cry.
The region is great and working there totally sucks.

The day starts, you arrive at 7, wait for half an hour (unpaid), 14 of you climb into the back of a 1970s citroen van, the doors don't shut but that's ok 'cause 10 of you are smoking their morning cigarette with their first beer, so that way between the dust you can get some air.
You get to the vines, someone throws a bucket and pruning sheers at you and tells you to get on with it until the end of the half-morning morning or day. Climb back into van, hope the driver isn't too drunk by then, get home.
Well, that's our experience anyway.

After that, Step 4 - we (really surprisingly!!) decided to leave for Burgundy , Beaune and Aloxe-Corton to be precise to go and do the same thing.
I'd never been to Burgundy and always heard good stuff about it.
Well let me tell you, nothing too good could ever be said about it.
The landscape is utterly beautiful and well preserved, forests border with vines and fieldsThe architecture is really nice as well, loads of well preserved old houses, and the people are extremely nice and welcoming. (knowing we were living in a car, a few people offered to take us in for showers and stuff, including Karen and Alan who warmed us up, dried our clothes and offered hospitality on a cold soggy day, cheers to you!!!!)

Ah yes and also, in Burgundy, the wine is nicer.

Forgot to say, the average price of a Roussillon wine is a couple of euros. In Burgundy, it's more like a couple of hundred... (well actually it ranges from about 10 to 1000 a bottle)
But yeah, I guess I won't surprise anyone if I add that even here, pickers are still paid minimum wage...Picker's hands...

But considering the price and the value of the wine, the picking is more monitered, and therefore better organized, which is actually surprisingly nice! And people actually communicate like they're human beings. Big surprise also...

But anyway, looking forward to this, almost!!!Totally glad to have been to Burgundy and looking forward to going there again, working or not. Our employer was really nice and allowed us to leave some of our stuff at her place (merci Lauriane) so we could go and pay a visit to a friend in Zürich, Switzerland for a few days after the vendanges.Great weather for the time of year.Only in Switzerland... :o)But after a little over 2 months on the road, we were starting to look forward to getting back "home" to see friends & family and enjoy Autumn and forest fruit...

So we stepped back into the car and set off for 2 days' funky driving on the slowest roads of Europe. I swear we got half of the red lights of Switzerland and went past most of the roadworks between there and Orléans!!!

Back home, it was real fun unpacking and finding out just how much not so obviously useful stuff we had with us... a bit like moving house really.

A random list of the first things springing to mind?

About 20kg of pebbles from different origins
About 150 kg of modeling clay
Flippers, snorkels and climbing gear
Wool (tons, needless to say + about 150 different kinds of needles)
2 lampshades And the rest... :o)

Our parents are really glad to have us back, because they totally missed having their houses cluttered up with insanely useful things like that :P