Una serata Italiana

This year, I've been continuing my Italian evening courses I started one year earlier – and at the end of it, I passed my exam for the B2 level – or rather just scraped by, would perhaps be more appropriate... I had a somewhat unimpressive score of 55% - but oh well, the main thing is I had more then 50%, anyways... Also, I unfortunately had to skip my oral exam due to my trip to Ulm last week, so unfortunately my B2 is somewhat incomplete (until I get a chance to do the oral part of the exam).

Anyways, to celebrate the end of the “school year”, we decided to meet up for dinner in an Italian restaurant, as custom would have it. This time we went for a place called Via Veneto on the Cagnes-sur-Mer seaside. I don't know whether there is much Italian about the place, apart from the name and the fact that they serve pizza, but oh well, turns out the food was pretty decent, which is the most important thing...

Pretty much everybody showed up, and we all had a great time. We also solemnly agreed to continue Italian next year – so C1 it is, I guess (well, first I need to get the oral out of the way, of course...)? I have to admit I am not quite sure I will sit the exam (apparently it's REALLY hard...); but I am definitely motivated to continue taking the courses...

Isabelle's Big Day!

-->

After my flight touched down in Nice, I barely had time to drop off my bag at home, before it was time to head off to the airport again. We were off to Nantes, in the west of France this time, to celebrate Isabelle's 40^th birthday.

We were met at the airport by our good friends Aude and Magaye, who were kind enough to let us stay at their place for the Friday night. Before heading back to their flat though, we made our way to Trentemoult, a nice little former fishing village (the fishers left quite a few years ago, to be replaced by artists and their like) near Nantes, for dinner. We were lucky enough to get a table outside, by the river, at the Guinguette, a really nice little eatery. The views from the terrace towards Nantes are fantastic as well... Our stomachs were filled up, we continued catching up over a few drinks at a sort of Irish pub in Nantes... Very nice to catch up with Aude and Magaye – even though it was sadly short, as we made our way to Isabelle's party quite early the next morning.

Isa was organising the party at her parents old farmhouse, rather beautifully located in the Loire-Atlantique countryside (almost in Brittany, right Isa? ;) ). Rather a large number of people were attending – including quite a lot of Isabelle's friends from her years in the UK, quite a few of whom I know, and haven't seen for donkey's years. Nelle, Ollie, Raphaelle, Katja, Kartsa (and his lovely girlfriend Reija), Sophie, Manue; and many, many others...

For dinner, the Sannier family didn't go for half-measures – they actually had a lamb spit-roasted for us! It's quite a sight, and the meat was absolutely succulent as well. The party itself was fantastic fun; with Sophie especially being in a rather entertaining mood (when isn't she – I'd forgotten how mad that woman is!), and especially Katja also showing that Finnish people can have fun! Apart from the usual drinking and eating, there were naturally birthday cakes, singing, dancing of various kinds and just general madness.

In short, it was fantastically good fun. Things wrapped up with some eau-de-vie in the house (naturally!), and then it was sadly time to go to sleep (me and Mathilde were lodging in a tent). All in all, it felt like a very happy reunion party – so a big thanks to Isabelle and her family for putting us all up and organising such a fantastic party! It felt rather sad to leave...

A few days in Ulm

It's been a while since my last trip to visit my team in Ulm, so time to prepare myself for a few days of Scwhabian food, culture and perhaps the odd Hefeweisse.

I arrived in Munich late Monday evening, and much to my surprise, ran into Tony (who works in my team) at the airport! Nice surprise, so I didn't need to drive down to Ulm on my own...

My Ulm visit started properly with a night out at Zur Zill, a rather nice little bar/restaurant by the canal. This time, thankfully, the weather was also suitably warm (the sun rarely seems to come out during my visits to Ulm for some odd reason). Most of the usual suspects were there – Olli, Jose, William, Sakari? David; and my good mate Sami from my days in Southwood. Things proceeded as they usually do in Ulm; a couple of hefeweisse, some Schwabian food (which normally means pig and potato), followed by Eisbock (an evil and strong potion masquerading as beer) at Zunfthaus der Schiffleute (one of my favourite eating/drinking establishments in Ulm). The predictable headache materialised the next day, yes thank you very much... ;)

On Wednesday, we had a rather nice team lunch at a Chinese restaurant near the office. Pretty good value food, and tasty too! In the evening, I had a rather calm evening, dining at Restaurant zur Lochmuhle, a very nice little eaterie by the canal. A sort of slightly higher class version of Zur Zill, where we'd gone the night before. Excellent food, for a rather reasonable price!

Thursday was the last night in Ulm, so we decided to have another “team meal” out – this time we had Mexican at a restaurant rather charmingly located on the Danube river, with rather nice views. Unfortunately, the famous Ulm rain assailed us rather quickly, so we ended up inside. Anyways, the food was pretty decent – I had a go at the famous Mole sauce (a chocolate sauce spiced with some chili – of course!) – not a bad choice. After the meal, we naturally ended up going to that famous Ulm institution, Barfusser. No visit to Ulm is complete with a hefeweisse or two at Barfusser. So an appropriate way to end a rather busy week in Ulm, then!

More Glamour in Cannes and Monaco

The upcoming weekend is truly “glamour galore” on the Cote d'Azur, as the festival of Cannes ends, and the normally sleepy Monaco welcomes the Formula 1 Circus.

Before the glamour, a bit of nature – since our good friend JayJay was visiting, I figured it was the perfect opportunity to try my hand at some sea Kayaking, seeing as Jay Jay is a bit of a pro at that. We didn't realise our “planned” Marseille-Nice trip yet, rather we decided on a decidedly less ambitious session around Cap d'Ail (which appears to be the only place apart from Antibes on the Riviera where they rent sea kayaks). Turns out the rental place is a very nice coastal walk from the Cap d'Ail train station, nearly in Monaco!

So I had the sudden inspirational idea for the Grand Prix weekend – rent a sea kayak, and watch the race from the port from the kayak! Hmm, not possible, unfortunately, the guy at the rental agency said – no sea kayaks allowed in the port (only big yachts, I suppose...). Well, anyways, we had a very nice sea kayaking session, with a rather scenic view of the coastline, followed by a nice lunch by the beach. We took the train back towards Nice from Monaco, so got a bit of a taster of the Formula 1 biz (or rather, an earful!), since the practice session was on...

We still had some tickets for the Director's Fortnight festival in Cannes, so we decided to use them up on Saturday. Since our dear friend Naim is heading off to Belgium for work, we invited him along, so we could catch up with him before he's off. Due to train hassle, we arrived at Cannes just before the screening was supposed to start – we had very low hopes for getting in. But much to our surprise, we did get in! We saw an Algerian movie called the “Le Repenti”, a rather interesting film about a former Muhajeddin, trying to adjust to civilian life, and finding it rather hard...

After the movie, we had a lunch/dinner at a very nice Lebanese restaurant...

Following the meal, me and Naim made our way over to Monaco, where we were planning to meet up with some friends, including Kartsa, a Finnish mate of mine from my UK years, who works for McLaren. We were about an hour late, thanks to our dear friends at SNCF again, but finally did meet at the classic Monaco GP meetup bar – La Rascasse (yes, it is located in that famous corner, by the race track). Great to meet Kartsa again, it's been a couple of years since we last met! We were also joined by none other than Paddy Lowe; the technical director at McLaren, who actually used to be Naim's boss! He was a very nice guy indeed.

The journey back to Cagnes was rather challenging, as it often is during the Monaco GP weekend. Naturally, SNCF were on partial strike, so the last two trains were cancelled, and the night bus took about 2 hours to get to Nice airport. Since I didn't fancy waiting for an hour for the bus going to Cagnes, I decided to cycle home on the velo bleu... Total journey time – about 4 hours. Oh well, it was great fun anyway ;)

Festival glamour @ Cannes

Time for some glamour on the Cote d’Azur again! Yes, Cannes film festival time! I, as some of you perhaps know, am a bit of a film fanatic, so naturally a couple of nights in Cannes are a must. I have to say though, that Cannes is not my favourite festival as far as seeing movies is concerned. For me, Cannes is mostly about rich people being seen and photographed, and us mere mortals trying to get a glimpse of glamour. Sure, there are plenty of films to see, but one could argue that all the queuing is maybe not worth the effort. Well, I reckon it’s still just about worth it, in the end ;-)





So off we went then, on a public holiday, to try and use some of our Director’s Fortnight tickets (one of the Cannes festivals mere mortals can actually get tickets for). Things were a bit complicated by the fact that the last train was something like 21:10 in the evening (cheers, SNCF), and our film was starting at 19:00 (or something like that). Well, we needn’t have worried – the queue for the film (Michel Gondry’s latest) was just ridiculously long, and we didn’t get in… Oh well, such is life… So we ended up going celebrity-spotting instead (I managed to snap some shots of a guy signing autographs at the Canal+ studio on the Croisette – no idea who it was, though!). After an aperitif at a bar in the port, it was time to catch our train…

On Friday, our dear friend JayJay was arriving in Nice, all the way from Mexico, to spend a few weeks with his darling Marie, before heading over to Iceland for a couple of months of work (he’s a marine biologist – Iceland ought to be a pretty good place to study marine mammals at least, in spite of the decidedly un-Mexican climate!). Since Marie doesn’t have a car, we decided to pick him up and give him a ride to Nice. We spent a rather nice extended aperitif with Marie and JJ, catching up and making ambitious travel plans (me and JJ have some very hazy plans about a kayaking trip from Marseille to Nice – but figured we might go for something a bit less ambitious first). Very nice catching up with JJ again – hopefully we’ll see more of him in September when he’s back on the Riviera!

On Saturday, we decided to venture into Cannes again – we still had those darn tickets to make use of. This time, we headed down to Cannes La Bocca, to another venue. The queue was shorter this time than on Thursday, but we still had no luck! This time, it turned out that the tickets were no good for this venue – they are only valid at the main venue off the Croisette! There you go then… Not about to give up, we made our way back to Palais Stephani, and queued again… Obviously third time is sometimes the charm – we got in this time! We saw the latest film of the late and great Raoul Ruiz, Le Noche de Efrente. I haven’t seen many films by Mr Ruiz, but I loved his last one (the Mysteries of Lisbon). This one, however, was a bit, dare I say, arty-farty for me. Or perhaps I just wasn’t in the right mood for it after all that queuing… Anyways, at least we got to see a movie finally! ;)

Fine dining in Juan-les-Pins

Back on the Cote d’Azur, but no time to rest or recover from the jet lag! My parents were heading back to Finland, and wanted to dine with us before that. So, we opted for dinner at Juan-les-Pins, a place we don’t often venture to. Juan-les-Pins is known to be a bit of a party spot for holiday makers on the Cote d’Azur, and is also rather famous for its jazz festival (there’s also a kind of “walk of fame” for jazz musicians, with handprints on the ground, like they have for movie stars in Cannes).


After some deliberation, we selected Le Paradise as the venue, a rather well-rated restaurant by the seafront. We were a bit dubious, since seafront often means “over-priced” rather than “good food”. We needn’t have worried, this place is well worthy of its good reviews. The food was a bit on the steep side, but very well presented, and most importantly, absolutely delicious. The location is pretty much perfect, being on the beach. A pity we didn’t truly get a sea view from our table. But for sure, it’s a place I could well consider going back to in the future!


It was great catching up with my parents and Tutta (whom we’ve not seen for absolute ages) as well. All in all, quite a nice way to settle back to reality and working life!

A few days in the Silicon Valley

I guess each software engineer needs to go to the Silicon Valley at least once in their lives. This is, after all, where quite a few of the modern-day companies were born. Google, E-Bay, HP and Apple are just a few of the companies that were born here. So, me being a software engineer, I was rather looking forward to seeing what the Silicon Valley was like, for a few days at least.

After picking up my colleague Sakari at the airport, we made our way down to Sunny Vale, where we were going to spend the next few days. After checking in at our hotel, we made our way into the “town center” for dinner. I put town center in quotes, since Sunnyvale is, like pretty much all of the Silicon Valley, more or less a residential suburb, with a few offices dotted amongst the residential houses. Sunnyvale does have one “historic street” with plenty of restaurants, Murphy street (named after the founder of Sunnyvale, Martin Murphy Jr.). Actually, Sunnvale does date back to the 20th century, but there isn’t much of historic interest left to see. Anyways, we ended up dining in the Firestone steakhouse – a nice enough eatery serving rather tasty burgers.

The next day, Timo, a fellow Finn working at our Silicon Valley office had promised to take us for a tour of Palo Alto. Palo Alto is home to one of the most prestigious teaching establishments in the US of A, Standford University. We started our visit of Palo Alto by having a walk around the campus. Stanford University was founded in 1891 by a railroad tycoon called Leland Stanford. The campus is very impressive, but I have to say I was less endeared to the place than to Berkley. The buildings look somehow more austere than the ones in Berkley. But, nonetheless, I was quite impressed by the Memorial church, and the Rodin sculpture garden.

Having done the touristy bit, we made our way to the “strip” with its restaurants. It’s a fair bit more lively than the Sunnyvale equivalent – unsurprising given the student connection, I suppose. We ended up in a very nice Asian-Latino fusion restaurant – I had some rather excellent tapas.

On Wednesday, we decided to go for some proper burgers for lunch (instead of tempting the canteen, or ordering in pizza). We ended up in a real Silicon Valley institution (apparently), St John's. Well, the burgers were good - and the bar looked pretty cool as well. Fot the evening, some of our colleagues wanted to discuss one a project of theirs with us, and kindly enough bought us dinner. We made our way to an Italian restaurant in San Jose, where they pitched their ideas to us. It all felt very Silicon Valley like, so it was quite an experience. One of the chaps was a real Silicon Valley veteran as well, so he had some funny “war stories” to tell.

Thursday was our last night out, so we finished off with dinner together with Heng, Tuukka and Leif, who’d been working with us all week. We ended up in a Chinese restaurant near the Sunnyvale office. The food was kind of average, but it was all good fun anyway.

That brought an end to my stint in the US of A, as we caught our flight back to Europe the next day. All in all, it had been quite an interesting experience to see what the Silicon Valley is all about!