Comments by "John Warner" (@johncrwarner) on "Jay Swanson" channel.

  1. Oscar Wilde was only 46 when he died He was broken by the prison sentence he received from the British authorities for gross indecency - basically being gay. He served two years hard labour in Reading Gaol. I happen to think that 46 is not old being twelve years older than that myself. LOL
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  2. I first met the "France is a hexagon" when reading the English philosopher J. L. Austin who used the statement to explore what we mean by truth. He wrote: "Suppose that we confront “France is hexagonal” with the facts, in this case, I suppose, with France, is it true or false? Well, if you like, up to a point; of course I can see what you mean by saying that it is true for certain intents and purposes. It is good enough for a top-ranking general,  perhaps, but not for a geographer… How can one answer this question, whether it is true or false that France is hexagonal? It is just rough, and that is the right and final answer to the question of the relation of “France is hexagonal” to France. It is a rough description; it is not a true or a false one. " As this was written in the late 1950s it must have been reasonably well known at the time.
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  3. I had learnt "banlieue" to mean suburb in French and discovered "faubourg" only when going to places where urbanisation happened in the nineteenth century and places that were the suburbs in the 19th century are called faubourgs and those 20th century overspill areas further out are the "banlieue".
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  4. I always wondered why "French bread" is associated with the baguette. When I worked in a Chambres d'hôtes in the Limosin - I discovered that the French ate only the crust and took out the centre treating it like a crispbread. My job was going and getting the fresh bread in the morning and in the afternoon as it didn't keep. I also learnt about making French Toast (Pain perdu) as a dessert on a regular basis. Sourdough bread to me is more German because I associate it with German baked goods where you have a choice of many many different sourdough loaves.
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  5. Hi there, I was watching a video by a Danish - Canadian guy and he has an exhibition at the Danish Cultural Center in Paris "la Maison du Danemark" on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées The exhibition seems to be called: "Aux vélos, citoyens !" and runs from 18 June - 19 September, 2021. I thought you might be interested as it is about bikes and city planning
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  6. As a German resident - I have not since we went into lockdown been further than 4 km (2.5 miles) from my house and I only did that two weekends ago because I wanted to get some delicious wholemeal pita breads from a store on the other side of town. So Paris is slightly off the agenda in 2020 at least.
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  7. Side issue: do you get to vote in the upcoming elections as a French citizen?
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  8. There was a British children's television programme between the 1970s and 1990s called: "Why Don't You Just Switch Off Your Television Set and Go and Do Something Less Boring Instead" often abbreviated to "Why Don't You?" It promoted activities that did not involve just watching television ... which should be the aim of social media If it becomes its own small world will it not shrink people's worlds to fit their algorithm?
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  9. 80 in 8 sounds a sensible schedule as is taking "weekends" - though they don't have to be Saturday and Sunday - just two days off in a week.
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  10. "What's that rock?" - it looked like flint to me - which would not be surprising as flint is associated with ancient marine environments.
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  11. Have you read the book "The Power of the Positive No" by William Ury? William Ury is one of the co-authors of the book "Getting to Yes" a classic negotiation book I first encountered in the 1980s. "The Power of the Positive No" is a much later book written this century and explores how saying "no" can open things up. It might help
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  12. As the quarters and the arrondissement get bigger - doing a whole quarter and "doing all the boundary streets" becomes impossible. Though I miss them practicality means you should only do them when practical The Church looked interesting wikipedia in French had an article about it and a link to the painter who did the wall art. The style of the art reminded me of what in Finland is called Romantic Nationalism and especially the works of Akseli Gallen-Kalleli who I think studied in Paris at the end of the 19th century.
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  13. Just bought a copy from Amazon Germany.
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  14. Bonne chance pour ton entretien! I have done a lot of museums in Paris but never done the Louvre.
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  15. The Vasamuseet is stupendous I went twenty years ago and they were in the process of restoring the painted woodwork My biggest memory was the smell of the preservative which they were still spraying then. My friends went to the funfair next door but I made the best choice, I think.
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  16. Can I agree with you that, as someone who learnt to drive in Britain but live now in Germany, the hardest places to drive are car-parks and exactly because you have no references to help you. On the road and on the Autobahn is relatively straight-forward but car parks are a nightmare as I have to use instinct and even though I have lived in Germany for 17 years my instincts are distinctly still at a base level British so I yield to the left when I encounter a car but they yield to the right which isn't a good recipe. My favourite freak out moment - for a Finnish passenger was when I came to a roundabout in Finland and indicated left which is standard UK driving rules telling the people behind that you will take the third exit. My friend got very worried that I was going to go the wrong way round the roundabout LOL. My tip for making it easier is in Britain get a vehicle with the steering wheel on the correct side for that country as driving with the "wrong-hand" drive is much harder.
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  17. I wonder what shipping to Britain will be like? As the British excise authorities want the exporter to collect their VAT for them It has broken small business shipping at the moment.
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  18. Félicitations, je suis ravi que vous ayez atteint les 100 000 abonnés. Je ne sais plus quand YouTube m'a recommandé votre chaîne, mais je crois que c'était en 2018 ou 2019 ; vous y faisiez encore des vlogs quotidiens. Heureusement que vous ayez pu visiter le palais présidentiel ! Même si, pour être honnête, il ressemble à un « tart's boudoir » – il a un fort air français de la fin du XIXe siècle. LOL Au fait, le terme « tart's boudoir » vient du Symphony Hall, Birmingham , qui regorge de velours rouge et de laiton LOL
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  19. I was in Wetzlar in Hesse in Germany We parked in a multistorey car park I thought it was by far the best place to take photos from because you didn't see this car park in any of the shots Similar to 2e. arrondissement? BTW Goethe wrote "The Sorrows of Young Werther" in Wetzlar when he was studying to be a lawyer and it made him as a writer.
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  20.  @JaySwanson  Tour Montparnasse for Paris? LOL
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  21. Isn't the Musée Guimet in this quarter? I always think of this area - maybe this and the next quarter but definitely this corner of the 16. as having some interesting museums. I was sure Musée de l'Homme as in Chaillot but my map might be wrong.
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  22. One champagne house is enough - they all do the same thing. Rheims cathedral is fascinating though and you could probably do several days in that. There is the location where the end of hostilities in the second world war was signed on 08 May 1945 in Rheims. I say it the English way when it is spelt "Rheims" and the French way when it is spelt "Reims" - though my partner is German and makes a completely different vowel sound and a clear m - not a nasal vowel.
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  23. I lost a lot of weight from 120 kg to 80 kg and was amazed things I needed to change like my shoes (I dropped two European sizes of shoe) but a problem I did develop is a frozen shoulder (or adhesive capsulitis to give it its fancy name) and that was a big problem.
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  24. Our short-circuit break in Germany starts on Monday and runs through all of November But it isn't a complete confinement Restaurants, bars, clubs, theatres opera-house and brothels will be closed and shopping will be restricted.
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  25. Here in Germany November is always a sombre month there are a lot of memorial days and often the choral music concerts are requiems etc. So we are having a very very quiet month.
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  26.  @JaySwanson  I sent you a link to the video via Instagram
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  27. and the 16. arrondissement has the Bois de Boulogne in it making it one of the largest arrondissement.
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  28. Can I say I feel for you about forgetting words in your home language like you forgot "cilantro". I have been in Germany for fifteen years (a quarter of my life) and I forget words for things all the time. I think I might be doing over the festive season a set of salads and have pita breads and have a donor kebab station - great idea.
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  29.  @alpaktuna  Is that the phrase "France is a hexagon" or the use by the philosopher?
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  30.  @alpaktuna  The original comment, by the way, is a reference to the Café Hexagone at the start of the video and Jay's reference to L'Hexagone as a designation for France.
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  31.  @JaySwanson  I plan my visits and to be honest the Louvre is so big I would need to make multiple visits I have interests in their Egyptian collection and the middle east too plus I haven't seen their 1300 - 1848 Western Art collection. As when I was in Washington DC for a week I spent TWO days in the National Galleries there and they are combined smaller than the Louvre I think I need a week in the Louvre and still not see that damned picture.
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  32. Congratulations! One bottle for now The other for the French citizenship celebration.
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  33. The palace was interesting but disappointing as there is so little furniture and fittings in the place. The revolutionaries sold off the furniture to raise money and a lot of it ended up in Britain. The bike idea for the gardens is a good one as I remember a lot of walking when I visited.
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  34.  @JaySwanson  Though if this pandemic is like the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic - it will be back with a vengeance this winter!
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  35.  @JaySwanson  It is a badly framed law by the British. It will be interesting to see how quickly they can respond to clean up the mess. Two books I purchased with Christmas money from British providers have still not appeared and they were shipped before Christmas!
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  36.  @willnelson3362  I hope not - but he doesn't have his French birth certificate yet, does he?
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  37.  @JaySwanson  I was wondering how far French bureaucracy was going to frustrate you. I was in France working during the 2007 French presidential election and was fascinated by the THIRTEEN five minute presidential candidate videos shown on TV back to back - over one hour of television time taken up with political material. I am not sure what happens with an election to the Assemblée nationale - do all the competing parties get a five minute slot?
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  38.  @JaySwanson  I watch Télématin when I was living in France to improve my French as it was short items and they were repeated several times so when I was serving breakfast at the chambres d'hôtes in Bellac I could watch in the kitchen / servery between customers getting up and having breakfast.
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  39. I think the ultimate in art gallery visiting would be a wheel tour of the Louvre LOL Like in LA Story with Steve Martin.
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  40. We have a Gehry designed art gallery in the town next to us. Visually it is interesting but and it is a big but... there are few if any flat walls in the building and many of the art works are flat. I suspect the Louis Vuitton Foundation might have the same problem. I think that the building for art should not overshadow the art itself. In the town where the Gehry building is opposite the building in fact there is the old post office which is a "boring" and very rectangular building ideal for an art gallery but that has been turned into a shopping arcade
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  41. I do like my QWERTZ keyboard (though I do live in Germany) because you can do a lot more accented letters and the Z and Y shift isn't too hard I had used a Finnish keyboard before it is QWERTY with the extra letters and é and è etc for the French words in Swedish I do have my keyboard mapping to German and the operating system to English Not sure what my regional settings are I might have chosen Irish as they use metric and the Euro It is now hard for my fingers to locate a Z or Y on a QWERTY keyboard and all the things like ()&$€¢ø" not sure if I can make a cé cédille but I don't write French that often. Enjoy your keyboard.
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  42. Isn't the best view of Paris from the top of the Tour Montparnasse as it doesn't include the Tour in the shot?
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  43.  @JaySwanson  South Eastern England has a lot of flint and Northern France is largely a continuation And it was all underwater in the time of the Dinosaurs
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  44. Sounds like you are shifting from a "20 in 20" style to an "80 in 8" style for your travel vlogging.
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  45.  @JaySwanson  When my family went camping in Europe from Britain. We got off the hovercraft at Calais and my father drove to Rheims so every holiday started with a trip to something nearby before heading off for Northern Italy.
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  46. Amazingly the cut-out cops do reduce crime even more interestingly just a picture of eyes will reduce petty crime. This was set up in an office kitchen and a picture of eyes was placed in the kitchen after a picture of a plant was there and pilfering dropped.
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  47. When I was a child in the 1970s and holidaying in France (or passing through on the way to Italy) we had no expectation of speaking English to shopkeepers and had to use French which was great for my French In 2000 or so - I was in Paris at a conference queuing for a carnet and the woman in the metro station behind the glass had someone speaking a dialect of French very southern and I didn't understand them but she imperiously pressed the microphone button and asked very clearly: "Do you speak English?" The potential passenger was deeply offended and stormed off. I then realised that attitudes had changed.
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  48. Here in Germany, as a third country citizen (though married to a German) instead of going to the offices we are communicating by e-mail and having timed interviews by telephone - last one was 10:00 in the morning and the lady phoned at 10:00 on the dot. I hope the French bureaucracy is as organised, though hopefully less "beamter"
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  49. LOL - they are the famous things in Paris but though I have been there many times and seen some of them Sacre-Coeur, Tour Eiffel in the distance - you cannot help it. I usually do museums. The smaller and more obscure the better LOL
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  50.  @JaySwanson  I did think of the "If it's Tuesday, it must be Belgium" school of tourism that Americans especially specialise in LOL
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