Month: May 2015

In old buildings, for the second time I encounter such sockets. As an engineer, I couldn’t rest until I figured it out. It’s a French telephone socket F-010, which is no longer used in new homes.

Traveled the first 1200km on a Mercedes Benz B200 CDI (2014).

I really like it, even compared to my X-Trail. The car insists on a coffee after a long drive, engages the parking brake automatically when the door is opened, and releases it when starting; it has seven gears and a distinct sport mode. There’s also a built-in navigator and a convenient multimedia system. I’ll remember this little car)

http://www.kolesa.ru/test-drive/test-drayv-mercedes-benz-b200-tvoy-pervyy-mersedes-2013-01-20

Visited a Breton church where

a) the Virgin Mary LIES under a blanket, with Jesus also under a blanket beside her

b) ships are around

c) the altar is made in clay modeling technique.

Chapelle du Yaudet. There is no information available in Russian or English online, so I will translate some details.

Handwritten text on the wall states that at the bedside sits God the Father in a crown with a scepter and the book of biography (more precisely “Le livre de la généalogie”), flanked by Mary’s parents, St. Anne and St. Joachim. The Holy Spirit appears as a dove.

The image of Mary lying down is generally a rare thing. In Brittany, there are other places where this is found (listed).

In the evening in the outskirts of Le Mans, we were the only odd ones out walking the forest trails without lanterns after a heavy downpour. Normal French people – dinner at 7, bed by 9.

The Samsung Note 4 has an excellent WiFi adapter. It catches the network where nothing else can. Right now, I have two bars and working internet, while two laptops (Lenovo/Apple) and three Apple phones don’t even show the network in the list. This is not the first time this has happened.

Kicked off the swimming season in the north of France. The water is still 10 degrees, windy and rainy, but Liza and I are happy!

In a house in France, I found a book with a chapter about the history of the Kremlin, where a legend is told that I had never heard before and seems to be unknown to the Russian-speaking internet as well.

A free translation from French:

Boyar Stepan Kuchka and his lads stopped at a hunting lodge. The next morning, he gathered people for a boar hunt. But the boar was quicker and attacked first. Kuchka and his comrades were about to get scared, but then a miracle bird with two heads appeared, lifted him onto a hill and there pecked the boar to death. Thus, the hill washed by the Moskva and Neglinnaya rivers became the village of Kuchkovo, the place where the city of Moscow and the Kremlin would later emerge. And the two-headed bird became the symbol of the Russian Empire.

Visited Le Radôme near Lannion (Brittany), the largest inflatable structure in the world (50 meters) – a 2mm parachute covering 1 hectare, weighing 27 tons itself + 6 tons of paint, with a rotating antenna on rails inside, from 1962, weighing 350 tons. Made the first direct video broadcast from Europe to the USA via satellite, where a similar device existed (the Americans dismantled it). Cryogenic signal receiver, minus 261°C. Inside the sphere, the pressure ranges from 4 to 12 millibars. The youngest national monument in France.