The Banking Dilema

A word of warning for those planning to travel to France – France is the only country I’ve visited where they bookend the financial system with the most primitive form of finance and the most advanced, leaving those of us from countries that exist in the middle on shaky ground.  France is one of the few remaining countries where a majority of transactions can still be paid with cheques (checks).  In fact, in some places that is the primary form of payment.  This is, in my opinion, the more primitive form of finance and has fallen out of favor in most of the world due to the rampant fraud and other issues associated with check-based transactions.  On the other end, typical, magnetic stripe credit cards that are used in most of the world are virtually useless here, at least from our experiences.  The “standard” French credit card has a small chip embedded within the card and is inserted in to the machine, much like an ATM.  However, the machine reads the card from the chip rather than a magnetic strip.  I can’t speak for others in the US but this technology has not caught on with my bank yet, making my credit cards essentially a useless occupier of space in my wallet.  To combat this, we have been forced to rely on cash, something that I rarely do in the US in this age of instant debit transactions.  Thank goodness for international ATMs!

It’s a Small World

Today, Mark and I had an outstanding French dinner at a quaint little "Brasserie" with our colleague from UA, Dr. Arpad Somogyi.  I say this primarily to point out how small the world really is. Arpad is the Director of the Mass Spectrometry facilities in Chemistry and Biochemistry and I have the pleasure to interact with him occasionally. However, it takes an opportunity like this to really get to spend some quality time chatting about life, science, etc. outside the confines of our buildings at UA.  It was a very enjoyable evening!

Arpad is involved in a number of scientific research projects outside his normal duties in the facility and he was in Grenoble working with collaborators at the University of Grenoble.  It's quite amazing that a group of researchers, with vastly different research programs and from the same department, find themselves in the same small town in the middle of France (in the absence of a conference, of course).  

The international scientific community is quite small and high quality science is performed throughout the world, and Grenoble is no exception.  In fact, Grenoble has the second largest number of research scientists in France, behind only Paris – a city that is 80 times bigger.

It was an exceptional evening and I hope to be able to do it again without having to travel half-way across the world.

Happy Fourth of July!

 Hello All and Happy July 4th!  As we begin another week here in Grenoble, it occurs to me that today is the anniversary of the birth of our nation.  In France, it was just another day in the lab.  Bastille Day, the French version of July 4^th will be celebrated next week.


This is the week where all of the conversations from last week should start to come to fruition in the for of new lab experiments for Mark (and maybe me).  We have at this point finalized the plans for two grant applications and now have to decide how to attack the international paperwork issues.  That will be a post for another (probably boring) day.


Cheers!

Only Lyon

We decided to take a break from Grenoble today and head a bit north to Lyon.  In France we are not allowed to work in the labs on the weekend (I hope Mark doesn’t get addicted to this) and we are here to expand our culture and celebrate the international nature of science.  We hoped on a train from Grenoble and took the 1.5 hour ride through the French country side. It was really beautiful and looking out at the small towns and villages along the way is very eye opening. Most of the villages are centered around a church, many of which are hundreds of years old – older than most of the surviving structures built in the US.  It is also a great reminder of history and a testament to building materials and standards from days gone by when one considers the tests that these structures have withstood. 

Lyon is a bit bigger than Grenoble and a bit more industrial (at least from first appearances).  After taking a few minutes to gather our bearings (with no map) we set out in what we hoped would be a good direction.  It turns out we struck gold!  Lyon is situated on the banks of the Rhone and Saone Rivers with what appears to be the older part of town in between.  During the course of the day, we walked many miles and climbed untold stairs.  While Lyon lacks the mountains around Grenoble, there was a large church with a park on the hillside that we decided we had to see.  Notre Dame de Fourviere is a beautiful, and enormous, church built with a surrounding park that provides an unprecedented view of the city.  After checking this out and numerous other beautiful sites in the city, we found some of the Roman ruins, remnants of an era long ago before heading back to Grenoble on a much more crowded train.

Overall, it was a great day of exploring and now we are ready to begin a new week with lots of exciting research activities.

As it says, Only Lyon!

 Roman Ruins in Central Lyon

Notre Dame de Fourvier (from the riverside, before hundreds of steps up the mountain side).

They apparently have these everywhere

I'm not sure what is was in honor of but it is very impressive

Some of the many, many steps up to Notre Dame de Fourvier

A view of the city from the Notre Dame de Fourvier courtyard

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An Evening with the Moreau Family

Today, we decided to chill a bit in Grenoble and explore a bit more. Grenoble is a pretty small city but a very nice town with lots of history. After spending several hours in town, we headed back to relax before having dinner with our exceedingly gracious host, Dr. Christophe Moreau, and his beautiful family. Christophe lives in a village on one of the mountains surrounding Grenoble. It’s really difficult to begin to explain how beautiful and serene this little mountain hamlet is – there’s just no way to do it justice. It is immediately adjacent to the site of the ski jump from the 1968 Olympic Games that were held around Grenoble. Christophe, his wife Katarin (I’m sure I misspelled this) and two lovely children were the most wonderful of hosts and we are very grateful to have had the opportunity to spend a little time with them. I hope that one day I am able to return the favor!

A view of the city from the former Olympic Ski Jump Arena

The former Olympic Ski Jump Arena (this hill was deemed to scary by many of the jumpers due to the steep slope and poor visibility of the landing area)

A view of the village from Christophe's front balcony

A chance to show our stuff

Today I presented a lecture titled “Highly stable polymeric lipid membranes – applications in sensors and beyond” to the good folks at IBS. It’s good to share science with interested audience and lots of potential collaborators.

Afterwards, Mark and I headed into town for some dinner and relaxation. We had a nice evening exploring the streets of Grenoble, even if we did pick a dud for a restaurant, but then the surprise came. Around 10:30 when we were ready to head home, we realized that the public transportation in France shuts down early in the summer time – very early. About 45 minutes later we arrived back at our guesthouse with sore feet and a new appreciation for “follow the river”.

My new friend!