Woke up to a beautiful morning to drive into Lausanne for Michael's kindergarten interview. Turned out to be a "readiness" test, not language, and is primarily aimed at assessing refugee children who have known trauma. We will find out shortly which school will be assigned to Michael - generally the closest one - and there will be a separate language component. Applied for Swiss health insurance, got details about my office space, and generally felt like things were finally falling into place.
While Carolyn met with the evaluator, Jack and I wandered around the old section of the city, where I used to explore.
This store sells musical scores and instruments, but I knew it as a record store where I could have a private room (above the Cartier sign) and listen to lps to my heart's desire with headphones.
A humbler arcade modeled after those in Paris. In the late 19th c, flaneurs (dandys) would saunter and look at the new merchandise produced by newly formed industries, as they, apparently, took their pet turtles for a stroll! (People who know about turtles say they can, contrary to popular belief, hustle; for more reading, see Marshall Berman's All That's Solid Melts Into Air or Walter Benjamin's Paris, Capital of the 19th Century). New mysticism was generated from commodities, not religious icons, and the fragility of meaning was experienced as a fluctuation of price.
The local charm of these streets remained, although chain stores have made their way, too, as they have to most American cities, including Manhattan; they virtually define the entire valley of SoCal where we're from. This chocolate store is still there though, and was displaying a circular, chocolate shaver.
I happened to be near this hiply dressed Japanese family, sizing up the fashions on this exclusive street with a distant affect not typical of even very wealthy Japanese. The goods and shops are beautiful (and you can't beat the setting), but hard to compete with the highly visible international haute culture of Tokyo.
This used to be the main tearoom in the St Francois square where a multi-tiered dessert cart with Black Forest cake would be wheeled to your table and coffee was served in china cups on a matching porcelain tray. The old days.
Woke up to a beautiful morning to drive into Lausanne for Michael's kindergarten interview. Turned out to be a "readiness" test, not language, and is primarily aimed at assessing refugee children who have known trauma. We will find out shortly which school will be assigned to Michael - generally the closest one - and there will be a separate language component. Applied for Swiss health insurance, got details about my office space, and generally felt like things were finally falling into place.
While Carolyn met with the evaluator, Jack and I wandered around the old section of the city, where I used to explore.
This store sells musical scores and instruments, but I knew it as a record store where I could have a private room (above the Cartier sign) and listen to lps to my heart's desire with headphones.
A humbler arcade modeled after those in Paris. In the late 19th c, flaneurs (dandys) would saunter and look at the new merchandise produced by newly formed industries, as they, apparently, took their pet turtles for a stroll! (People who know about turtles say they can, contrary to popular belief, hustle; for more reading, see Marshall Berman's All That's Solid Melts Into Air or Walter Benjamin's Paris, Capital of the 19th Century). New mysticism was generated from commodities, not religious icons, and the fragility of meaning was experienced as a fluctuation of price.
The local charm of these streets remained, although chain stores have made their way, too, as they have to most American cities, including Manhattan; they virtually define the entire valley of SoCal where we're from. This chocolate store is still there though, and was displaying a circular, chocolate shaver.
I happened to be near this hiply dressed Japanese family, sizing up the fashions on this exclusive street with a distant affect not typical of even very wealthy Japanese. The goods and shops are beautiful (and you can't beat the setting), but hard to compete with the highly visible international haute culture of Tokyo.
This used to be the main tearoom in the St Francois square where a multi-tiered dessert cart with Black Forest cake would be wheeled to your table and coffee was served in china cups on a matching porcelain tray. The old days.
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