Pierre & Wendy On the Road

Spring has Sprung in Brittany (a false start)

I woke up the other morning with the sun streaming into my window and felt that it was Spring all of a sudden, right on time!  I swear it has been 20 or 30 years since I have had Spring Fever, since I lived in NY.  In LA I don't ever remember having had this particular feeling connected with a seasonal change, have you?  Have I just forgotten it because I am so fickle?

My most potent memory of the first day of Spring is from sometime in the late 70's.............my best friend Charles (now gone) called me up, excited by the seasonal shift, and we "met in the middle," he walked over from the East Village, me from the West Village, and we had lunch or coffee somewhere.  Eventually we split up, each going back to our own neighborhoods, still in the daylight.  I remember being somewhere near the wonderful boite 1 Fifth Avenue, the restaurant with the interior from The Normandy (now gone), when a street guy trained his eye on me from 100 feet away, reeling a bit, pointing a crooked finger at me.  "You........you......." he said, I instantly felt myself do that thing I had learned to do, erecting an invisible boundary around myself to deflect his attention somehow (this figures later into why I left NY but that's another story) but he was coming right at me and there was no escape.  He came right up to me, a little dirty, a little drunk, a little toothless, a little wobbly, "You.........you...........look better than a government check!"

I was ashamed of myself for expecting the worst, elated to be able to share this moment, the first sensation of Spring, with a fellow denizen of the city I still loved, the season I loved best, the month I was born, so very New York, so very communal, here we were together on the best day of the year.  I laughed and thanked him for the compliment and continued on my way, thinking I would always remember this moment, and so I do. 

Oddly I remember exactly what I was wearing, a red cashmere turtleneck, as it was still chilly, with a kind of what is it called, a pareo I think, from Guatemala, a kind of split poncho in light gray and black alpaca, a bit furry on the outside, you can wrap the two sides of it tighter around you in the cold, and red lipstick, to match the sweater of course.  

New York has changed immeasurably, I have changed more measurabley, dear Charles is no longer with us, but I can still experience the sensation, the change of light, my imagination of what is to come, of the first day of Spring, and remember Charles. 

Fast forward to Brittany, where the Springy feeling was but a moment, it is still gray and cold and I have learned to tend the fire, but that taste was all I needed to buy a couple of rose bushes and plant poppies and iris and wait impatiently for the next burst.

Pierre was painting this while I was making my last blog entry.....

.........maybe we are feeling the same things at the same time, which only happens about 50% of the time here! In direct relation to daily life we have very similar reactions and takes on what is going on and how we feel about it, but about our lives here and there, the vagaries of our feelings are not as attuned to eachother!

 

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Que Sera Sera....... (don't you just love Latin?)

Here I am doing exactly what I said I would do, living in an ancient culture with all of its inherent strengths and weaknesses exposing all of mine, and moving from day to day thinking experiencing, eating wondering...............I said that I wanted to see what I would think and do when I had the mental space to think and do ANYTHING, and here I am, uh-oh ~ was it Confucius who said "Be careful what you wish for" (because you might get it)?  No this isn't our house!  It's the Jagu Roche Museum in the Northern part of Brittany, gorgeous!

There really isn't a major down side to what we did, other than the fact that we can't just go back to our old lives and pick up just where we left off, as Pierre sometimes says "you can never be what you were," in fact it seems like it would be like moving cultures again and making a huge life change again, or would it?  One can never know these things until one does them, and all I know is that having moved 6000 miles East will inform any other big changes we make in the future, but each experience will still be totally different!  Sometimes I wish I had a crystal ball, but here, with the "Welcome" and "Expert" tents combined I know I will be fine! 

It's funny that the French never say "C'est la vie,"  but often say "La vie est comme ça."  You might be wondering what the difference is: the first one has that cute Doris Day che sera sera sort of upturn at the end of the sentence, and the the second one has more of a gallic shrug and downturn at the end.  C'est la vie tra la la is the American take on it, and La vie est comme ça has a bit more of the quality of resignation.   

Why did I get off on that tangent?  Oh, I know, I got my wish now what to do with it?  I guess time will tell (tra la la).  Now that the learning curves have gotten shallower, and I can get around well in French most of the time -- except when I am particularly tired or have had a day of lots of listening intently to and speaking French -- and we have things to do, friends, occasional events, outings, and we know where to get everything and what to make for dinner, normal life begins. 

My brain has almost lost the frequent little buzzer that goes off as a warning that something unexpected and tricky is about to happen.  It used to buzz frequently, each time I had to do a little reality checkup and regain my footing, now it happens much less.  This is the internal barometer that tells me that I am actually aclimated to our new life here.  Naturally this is just in time for us to go back to LA for a month, which is exciting and a bit scary too.  I am anticipating a bit of a culture (and weather) shock, then relaxing into the familiar, enjoying the things and friends and familiarity I have missed, then leaving again!  

If you are reading this and you know me, what do you imagine me doing?  What have you always thought I SHOULD do?  Spill!

Pierre's Life in Brittany

While I search for my blogging voice here is Pierre's fully formed one! 

Happy New Year to all ... we hope that you have not fallen off the cliff ... while we here are not in the process of being taxed 75% of our non-existent income ... politics of revenge are just campaign promises, taken seriously by actors looking for an excuse to become Russian citizens ...  

Life in France has been a most interesting and revealing experience  ... everything that I imagined has not really happened in the way that I thought it might and all else that has happened has been a surprise and a revelation.   

What does that mean?  Well what I like to say when debating the age old questions of why, what and where ... it means: You can never become what you were.  I love the past, have reveled in it and also often day dream about the future ... but really it all happens right now
and that acknowledgement is a tough discipline to work within.  So Here I am, unable to deny my life and time in America while trying to live up to my French ancestry ... what a pain in the butt it can be, altering the context of my life of the past 50 years.

Onto more real and dionysian pursuits ... obviously this is the place for such activities, especially if you come here as a tourist, without a care, a spending budget, looking to fulfill whatever fantasies about a place one might have ... oddly enough very few harbor any kind of fantasies about Bretagne, longing instead for the more tried and true destinations of the "south of France". 

Just a few words of advice ... France, as The #1 tourist destination in the world, is overrun most of the time with people wearing baseball caps and clam diggers, you know those shorts cut off at a spot between knee and ankle, awful things and tack on those knobby plastic athletic sandals and a smug attitude and you've got the world's population flocking to all the sights associated with Picasso or Van Gogh, or closer to home ... Paul Gauguin and Pont Aven.  I guess they are touching base with a "first world" set of cultural markers which makes those involved feel at one with the globalized culture ... a hybridized version of the California look ... although I must say, I have not seen any Silverlake style hipsters anywhere, very few tattoos of any kind, and very few running shoes, except on people actually running!

Happily there is very little of the "hip" pursuit here, rather more the "stylish" one, which transcends generations ... although the "kids" look like they've just stepped out some  American High School year book.  What I also like about what I see about me is the fact that I do not live in a "youth Ghetto".  In the streets, at the movies, by the ocean, out at dinner at night, I see every generation represented ... how refreshing ... but I guess that was a result of living in the hippest neighborhood in the universe ... and that is so 1992 , n'est ce pas?

By comparison to LA, the weather here is cold and damp, although the skies are beautiful and dramatic, night and day ... the stars glimmer bright and the moon when full shines through the skeletal branches of the forest a few steps from here ... toss in a few owls, some bats, frogs underfoot and a fox at a distance and you've got a pretty good idea of the mood (at least at night) here ... then you rush into the house, watch Downton Abbey and life goes on as one might expect except it is really another world.

My work seems to have hit its stride ... painting and drawing and taking photos of night monsters in the forest ... normal as could be.  Wendy is in a holding pattern for now -- cooking knitting learning french making necklaces reading, as she says "being an artist's wife" ... and has the luxury and time to do so ... she is off to NYC next week to see her family and I will be staying here, kind of "Heathcliff like" , lord of the manor and the moors surrounding, well not quite, but you get the fantasy.

There is so much more to talk about but that would become an endless one-sided conversation who knows how long this period might last, but for now things have turned out quite well ... just different. 

You can take a peek at some random images I have posted of Pierre's work in an album I have loaded there on the left side of the blog, right after the space to add your email address to be updated when we make new posts, more often in 2013 ; )  Xxx

What's for dinner? Lunch? Forget Breakast!

First Grocery Shopping

It's embarrassing to admit that our lives revolve around food here, but we have to eat, and we are living in France for god's sake!  I only make a cooked dish for lunch if I am heating up a leftover or cooking some sausages, homemade by our local place or by a lovely fellow from the Reunion Islands so they are a bit spicy, which is a nice change.  Otherwise lunch at home is a selection of smoked fish and/or paté and cornichons and salad and tomatoes and maybe cheese.  If we eat out for a nice lunch special it can be anything at all but I usually try to opt for a cooked dish to get familiar with local cooking so I can learn from it ; ) Of course it's nothing at all like what I might have eaten at my fave Little Dom's..........more like Veal Normande or Marinated Mackerel Fillet or Mignon de Porc, and I always ask for a bit extra sauce ; ) 

First Meal: Duck Breast Etc.....

This is the region for Crepes (and very thin crust pizza, for some reason they go together), but they are most certainly not of The Magic Pan variety like most crepes in the US.  In France a Savory Crepe is ALWAYS made with buckwheat (Blé Noir) which is a totally different taste and texture from the delicate white flour (Froment in French) which is only used for Dessert Crepes.  Nowadays you can even find or ask for your Dessert Crepe to be made with Buckwheat, which is fantastic with Caramelized Apples for instance, I like it with anything!  The crispy lacy kind of crepe is best for me, with any Scallop preparation I am happy, and one with pears and chocolate for dessert, heavenly! 

Spinach Roquefort Walnut Cre

You will find me much more ambitious when I make dinner at home, quite often these days, alternating between trying different fish dishes (most of which I have no idea of the equivalent for at home) and local meats.  The fish is so very fresh, really right off the boat so that is has quite a strong smell, and a texture that can't be beat, and nothing like what I am used to. The meat and fowl all have a specific pedigree!  The seafood is so amazing it really almost cooks itself, you just have to make some heat available to it ; ) With a simple sauce, like a beurre  blanc with anything at all, coriander seeds or lemon or vinegar, and it's fantastic.

Bulots or Whelks in English

The meats take more practice since everything is fed and grown locally, and the level of moisture is much less, so things cook totally differently.  Some things much faster, others slower, it's all very odd.  Side dishes of sauteed leeks or caramelized endives or Tomates Provencale or this fantastic Tomate Tarte Tatin my friend Camille introduced us to, or my go to dish of duck breast with any kind of sweet and acidic sauce, fig or black currant works beautifully. The other night we made a duck stir fry with Onions and Hoisin Sauce and fig jam (the jams here are mostly fruit and hardly sweet at all) with sauteed endives and roasted carrots with Ras al Hanout in about 40 minutes total. 

Tomate Tarte Tatin

Since the season has changed we are eating oysters regularly, along with extremely sweet little clams called Palourde Roses which we steam and then broil with butter, garlic, parsley and breadcrumbs.  Frankly I haven't tired of any of these things yet, so I haven't really gone beyone classic preparations!  OK I just started to get bored with the same old prep for the Palourdes so I'm going to add curry next time. 

I have made dinner for friends three times since we have been here I decided to make "exotic" dishes for them instead of my brand of classic French cooking, to surprise their palates a bit and also so my cooking isn't compared with what they already know, which is a French cultural tendency, which probably happens when you are making anything fairly familiar to anyone in the world.

Check out the dirt on these Carrots!

The first dinner I made for friends who go to India, and like spicy food, I made a green curry (with Thai curry paste I brought from LA) with Monkfish and scallops, kohlrabi and carrots. I loosely follow this recipe from Bon Appetit which I have been using for the last year or so, with tons of variations.  I did make a classic french dessert, a Clafoutis with Rhubarb, since I am curious about Rhubarb, and my audience was pleased even though I was bored.  I promised myself only to make creamy and/or chocolatey desserts from now on, since they are really the only ones that excite me, both to make and to eat!  I think I started to bake when I was a little girl, so I could eat the things I craved, and I still have exactly the same inclination!  I mean, Pierre Herme is all the way in Paris, and I am here! But I will be in Paris next week!!!

The other night we were having new friends over for dinner, and I know that she cares deeply about food.  In fact when she invited us to a "simple cold dinner" on a Sunday night (it's very rare to be invited over by brand new friends here ) she told me that she had a Michelin 1 star restaurant in Paris with several friends about 20 years ago, eek, what an audience.  Another cultural difference here is that the host is supposed to make whatever s/he wants and the guests have to be good sports no matter what!  My American habit of asking guests what their predilicitons are is met with a bit of confusion. Great!

At first I wanted to make classic French seafood dishes for our new friends, but this is when it dawned on me to make things that would be fresh and new to them, as well as well known by me ; )  So I made Scallop Ceviche with a bit of Passion Fruit in the citrus mix, with the totally amazing velvety sea scallops we have here, which was absolutel luscious and an unexpected texture even for me!  Then I made a fish dish with a plain firm fish called Cabillaud so it would hold together, since it is steamed with a mixture of soy sauce, vinegar and fresh ginger on top, then drizzled with oil and crispy garlic, and this went over really well.  Pierre and I started making this dish when we first met from Mark Bittman's Fish cookbook, and is still great! 

Modernist Oyster Plates

I have totally screwed up some dishes too, at least I had the sense (unusual for me) to cook familiar things for friends and save the first timers for us, like a classic Potato Gratin (duh?) so I could gracefully throw it in the garbage!  What happened?  Well I skimmed 3 or 4 Julia Child recipes for Potato Gratins and conflated them fast and loose in my usual style.  Well if I had read them through (like I did the next time) I would have learned that a gratin made with cream (so abundant and delish here I always have some on hand) cannot be cooked at too high a temperature or it boils and curdles!  Cream low temp milk high temp.  Since I am ever the Quick and Dirty Perfectionist, milk usually wins (also delicious, we only buy organic here, like at home there's a pesticide problem but that's another story). 

I swore that I wouldn't do a cheese course every time I made a nice dinner here but it is almost impossible to pass up a lovely raw goat cheese or a nice smelly Pont L'Evec with some crusty bread and an strong green salad, the lettuce here really tastes like you are eating leaves!  Then I made Robert's Brownies from David Lebovitz's Ready for Dessert and served them with Pistachio Ice Cream, a very American plate, and absolutely delightful for French pals.  I added several drops of Thyme essential oil to the herbal tea after the meal which is so aromatically satisfying and great for digestion.  In fact I am going to make some for myself right now! 

Do ask any questions, I know there are things about food here on people's minds!!!

 

 

Our New Home

Everyone has been asking for details about our place, so here goes........take a look at the photo album I posted at left for more visuals.......Pierre keeps asking "what is home?" and I say "where we live!"  Oddly, there is what Pierre had assumed, who knows why, was a kind of LA gang sign at the turnoff to our road from the village, I think it is the mark for a Saint or of Local interest, something Breton which also means Celtic, but the jury is still out.   It sort of softens the approach when we come from this direction.

We live in a small wing of a big house, with once white walls and original stone details retained from the 1770's during the 2006 renovation of our space, which is a lovely way to blend the old and the new.  I wonder, if it were up to us, how much more of the old character we would choose to keep, and how much the practical considerations would reign us in?  We both love old things, Pierre especially loves rusty wormy patinated things, while I like them a bit more refined, luckily he likes these too. 

The set up is a bit similar to our house in LA, with a combined living and dining room on the first floor, with the odd name of Rez de Chausée in French) but with super high ceilings.  This is a welcome change for us, a bit lofty, and neither of us has lived with such height before.  It makes for rather an echoey room with all the hard surfaces, but with a few area rugs and paintings arriving it will get better. 

The kitchen is modern and plain and just fine for us, again, structured like ours in LA, longer than it is wide, with two windows facing south to the cows grazing.  No, we don't seem to have access to their product, we have never seen the farmer who takes care of them.  We can make do with the delicious stuff at the market!  

Upstairs there are three bedrooms in a row, just like our house, two a bit bigger and one a bit smaller (welcome guests ;-)  We are using one as a closet and studio computer area, with two nice windows facing South. 

The 18th Century original almost spiral staircase connects the two floors, and is quite a climb, almost vertical for our little cat who delights in running up and down.  For us it is a bit of a balancing act, best to be holding on or at least touching a side for stability.... happily the fellows delivering our goods are contracted to put everything in the proper room, and fortunately there are two lavatories, one up one down! 

The property is quite spectacular, with a wide allée leading to the grand house of which ours is maybe 1/8, the only thing like it for miles around, so it is quite legendary here.  Because of the large flat surfaces front and back the wind can be very strong (or maybe it is some kind of sympathetic Hurricane Isaac reaction), and there is a nice wood all around, with a small lake that has sadly turned into a swamp, but will soon be fixed, yay!  Oddly there is a lovely grove of bamboo very near our house -- one sees them here and there, probably one of the garden trends of the 2000's -- and we have two very picturesque outbuildings and walls containing our private patio, which you have seen in the last post.

Everywhere in our region there are Hydrangeas in colors I have hardly ever seen before In the US, particularly the dark red velvet I saw in the winter.  This summer they have been every color from white and light green (rare and my fave) to pink lavender blue violet and a sort dark rose pink (my least fave).  It is common knowledge in the States that to change the colors you simply have to change the soil ingredients, but here they say that "no one knows" how they change color.  Right, I thought, just more stuff of local legend and the magic that is the French Countryside.  BUT.  A couple of weeks ago they started to change, and I mean all of the colored ones, OVER NIGHT.  We had a friend visiting from Warsaw so there was an impartial witness, Saturday they were one color (in a day we see maybe 50) bushes) and Sunday they were changing.  Here is some evidence, look at all the colors on the same bush, the pinky green is the direction they are going.......I'll make an album soon.

The album at left has pics of the ever changing and hard-to-stop-taking-pictures-of sky as well as bits and pieces of the house and our stuff in an album at left, I know everyone is very curious about it, as we continue to be...........it is very interesting to start from scratch, conceptually as well as aesthetically, though we both find the empty dirty white walls rather bleak, but have welcomed the chance to be have less instead of more, for the time being anyway........

Our cartons arrive tomorrow, so we will have art, a carpet or two, beloved books, dishes, a few choice pieces of furniture and Hoisin Sauce!  First dish - Peking Duck Crepes........more soon.

Why we did it .............

Here I sit, in our yard, typing on my computer, outside in the shade of a stone wall built in the 1760's, thinking about my relationship to where I have come from and where I am now.  It's a great luxury to have the time and mental space to think and read and wonder about things.  I was afraid that I had somehow lost access to my Self and my personality with our dramatic move, but it turns out that it just took me a month to come back to feeling like myself. Here's Pierre in the same spot.

 

The move, the change, and not having my old stuff around has cleared out some of the clutter in my mind and makes it possible for me to approach doing and thinking about things that I wanted to do before but there was too much in the way.  I used to say that if we didn't move to France, I would have moved us out of our house and back in, instead here we are!

We have known that we wanted to experience living here since our second or third trip together, almost 15 years ago.  Each time we came to France, trying to get over here once a year a month, we explored a new area or two with the thought of making the move.  We would find a village we liked and I would say "who would be my friends here?" and we would imagine what we would eat and actually DO there. Answer: hang out at Chez Max, a cafe in the family home of Max Jacob in Quimper, owned by our new friends!     

 

 

For Pierre it was to be a kind of homecoming, having been surgically removed from Paris at the age of 10, and for me it would be a way to live inside an ancient culture that either invented or developed the things I love most -- food, fashion, perfume, furniture, gold leafed trim on buildings, joie de vivre, l'amour, pastry! -- you know the drill. 

 

 

We had the chance to live in Brittany for 6 months in 2006, when Pierre taught at an American art school and I took a break from everything, reading, cooking, relaxing and learning more French from The Nanny dubbed on TV, while Pierre fell in love with the region that helped to transform his work.  He had never lived within this kind of nature, walking daily through the Bois d'Amour, a forest that had inspired tons of other painters, rain or shine, while I loved its reminder of where I grew up in New York, playing in the forest.

 

 

 

 

Last year our lives in LA changed dramatically when Pierre's beloved mother died in her 90's, after living in LA for over 50 years and we decided to take the chance. Why?  Because we could, and we were still young enough to handle it!  And because we both wanted to shake up our lives, having become alternately complacent and numb as we watched LA transform from the backwater it had been to a thriving metropolis that represents an American Dream that had lost some its lustre for us.  When I moved there in 1983, it was a welcome respite from the claustrophobia and constant jockeying for position in New York, the implicit need to be moving forward, onto the new thing, jetisoning most the old things I had loved about it. 

 

 

Yesterday I discovered (thanks to the Internet -- which took 3 weeks to get, but that's another story-- I can live in a village and follow the trails of friend's recommendations and books I've liked and get them instantly) Luc Sante's Kill All Your Darlings. He talks about everthing I was thinking and feeling in NY when it started to change irrevocably in 1980, with the advent of money and power triggered by Reagan's election.  He says "(We) had no interest in power.  We just wanted power to go away." which is still true for me, as a creative professional, I only really want to have the power over my own life and work.

For the time being Pierre has processed a lot of his self questioning and missing home, and I feel placed in our new environment, shopping for food, cooking and eating and reading (gosh that sounds boring but it's not yet), waiting for our TV to be delivered, and also for our 60 cartons from home.  Yes, it's still home over there, but it's home here too, we accomplished a kind of alchemy with our move, which I knew I couldn't look ahead to when we just closed our eyes, held our noses and jumped. 

Next up, more about where we live (including photo albums), commentaries from Pierre, and about the food, natch!

Pierre & Wendy Move to France!

We sure don't have these at home -- beet chips yum!

Yes, we finally made it! Getting out of our house and Los Angeles was the hardest thing either of us has ever done, except maybe for moving to a different country! Check out these beet chips, can you imagine these in the US?

In case you are wondering, we definitely question our sanity almost daily. We have no idea why we have done this in certain moments, especially when confronted with the daunting beaurocracy and terribly different ways of communicating what seems to us to be objective information! BUT, we remind ourselves, we have wanted to do this for 15 years, and this is the moment we actually could, just in the nick of time. If it had happened just a few years from now I doubt either of us would have been able to handle it, phew!

As dear old Mark Twain put it, more or less -- "When you are old, you never regret the things you did do, only the things you didn't do.". So here we are!

 

Take a look at what I had for lunch yesterday for 9 euros......Mixed Grill Pommes Dauphin!

It is two weeks exactly from the moment we left LA, in a limo (thanks Groupon) with four suitcases, three carry on bags and Minxy the Cat in her travel box. We spent three days in Paris, had a few great meals with friends (I will do a post on Camille's amazing Tomato Tarte Tatin next week!), did some Paris Sale Shopping for the first time (mon dieu!) and got over our jet lag.........then onto Brittany, with the nightmare of taking a train with vacationers with all those bags and the cat, thank heaven I got bargain first class tix, just for the space.

Poor Brittany, it has rained here for almost three months straight, so they all say. Since we have been here, it has instead rained on and off, with the dramatic sky and weather changes Brittany is justly famous for. Not that it isn't a pain, it poured rain the day we drove 80 kilometers to IKEA, and our house, which hadn't been occupied for a year was wet inside and out! The dehumidifier has helped a lot, as has the intermittent sun, and it's alright now. As someone who is terrified of mold and my particular health issues connected to it, it has been fascinating to observe that the walls can actually be wet without the kind of mold growth we are accustomed to, and then simply dry out! My skin loves this climate, it always feels moist although I have not have not seen myself in a proper mirror in natural light nor have worn any makeup except for lipstick in a couple of weeks, so I have no idea at all how I look! And I think it's the cool light in combination with the water that oddly silvers my hair.......... Happily I am living in a culture that actually seems to admire women over 50, so refreshing!

Here is a view from our bedroom, which faces East, imagine the dead quiet!

Stay tuned for Pierre's post tomorrow, he has much more interesting observations about our sojourn here and the culture we find ourselves in, while I seem to still be in the nuts and bolts aspect of the trip. I am still surprised by being The Practical One! Once I get everything arranged, then I can be more of a Dreamer....Or so I promise myself.......off to look at an automatic car, very rare in these parts! Xxx

 

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Our First Photo Book

 
Click here to see Pierre & Wendy's France on Shutterfly

A Great Story About Travel Insurance (& the Medical Insurance Racket) Part 1

This is a perfect story for our nelected Travel Blog -- I broke my ankle on a trip to NY a month ago, and had had the foresight (?dumb  luck ? prescience ? paranoia ?) to add Travel Insurance to the expense of the trip.  You see, I had had a bizarre mishap on my last trip to NY and ended up in a Brooklyn emergency room to get two stitches in my toe.  For this my Anthem Blue Cross Insurance (catestrophic) was billed $2000 so the price got discounted to $800 and I got accepted for charity at the hospital so I've been paying off $400.  Now this is what two stitches should cost, but I still wish I didn't have to pay it.  So when I was ordering my tix to NY, I realized that if I had had Travel Insurance they would have paid for it, ostensibly :)  

Enter Squaremouth.com, the Travel Insurance comparison site.  Just go there, put in the costs of your trip, and sort the results by your most important benefit (lost or misplaced luggage, medical, flight delay, cost etc) and do a little research.  I researched people's nightmare travel insurance battles (everyone shares their bad experiences online), and chose the cheapest insurance, which coincidentally, I couldn't find any complaints about (no one rants about their good experiences, that's why I'm blogging about it here).  I hadn't heard of the insurance company, USI (Travel Insurance Services), but they had a AAA rating, and were based in No Cal, which I took as a good sign, as a diehard Leftie. 

To cut to the chase, one week into a two week trip, I fractured and sprained my ankle, which simply twisted and turned under me, ouch!  This sent me to a suburban NY ER, required crutches and a horribly designed big black walking boot, big painkillers, and ruined the second half of my trip.  After all of the aforementioned had taken place, I called the Emergency contact number on my Travel Insurance and found the most sympathetic advisor imaginable, who said things like "we're here to take care of you" and promised to take care of all of the expenses connected with my injury, including rehab and a flight change to get home sooner so I could recuperate in my own home.  Do you believe this? 

This is what has transpired so far: Travel Guard (with an AIG email address, Chartis on the documents, and USI on my contract) arranged a new ticked for me go to home a couple of days earlier, in Business Class so my ankle would have room to relax, and sent me a car to take me to the airport, with an offer to have one pick my up at home which I declined.  I have a sheaf of forms I need to add documentation to in order to have them pick up the medical and rehab bills, so tune back in to this space to see how it goes.

Regarding the Medical claims so far, I have a statement from the ER stating that the doctor's charges were $175.  He sent me to an Orhopedist in the same building who has billed Anthem almost $1400 for looking at my Xray, telling me about my walking cast, and prescribing painkillers.  This took about 15 minutes and has been billed as "Surgery" for $1200 in addition to an Office Visit for $166.  The Boot cost $140 from someone else because the doctor couldn't fit me properly into the one in his office which would have been $50, and is priced similarly online.  My fabulous Anthem Blue Cross membership entitles us to a big discount, so the orhopedist's bill gets discounted to $400, and the crutches in the ER cost $111, almost as much as the human contact with the ER Doc (they are about $20 online).  So Blue Cross is making all of the profits from my Premium, and the people who provide the actual services have to bill at 3 or 4 times what they need to make in order to get paid, by someone, anyone, except not Blue Cross in this case.  You know, Blue Cross, the ones who are having trouble figuring out how to make it look like 85% of our premiums go into medical costs, no wonder! 

A note about the B&W photo above -- I lifted it off the internet and it's well worth checking out the work of the Street Photographer Markus Shartel for more.