This trip would not have been possible without the generosity of Michele’s extended family starting with Martina and Christian Stabenow and their family who hosted the cousins’ get together in Schifferstadt, Germany. After the Re-U – to blatantly rip off Neal Stephenson’s term for a family reunion – Michele and I went to Strasburg for a couple of days and then we spent a night with Martina and Christian’s daughter, Uli, and her husband Timmy. Then it was back to Martina and Christian’s for two nights when we came back to Germany to see the qualifying for the German Grand Prix. Staying with a German family, even for a few days was great fun and gave us access into German private life that we wouldn’t have otherwise had. 
Both of the places we stayed were in small villages and one of the biggest surprises – to me – was that the villages were dense and discrete, at the edge of the village, the farming country started, Bam! just like that, unlike here where small towns seem to fade into the surrounding countryside. When we went for a walk, we were in the village and then in the country. It is very human-friendly. As an aside, I think the Europeans are much more serious about protecting their environment than we are. They had way more solar panels on roofs than we do and France had windmills everywhere. End aside.
And, now, a couple of non sequiturs: the German toilets have the water tank in the wall (which, as a builder, I found very interesting and kinda confounding) and the cousins use different kitchen appliances than we do. Martina had a meat slicer like I’ve only seen in a deli here, that made thin slices (to be politically correct, I should probably say that it was Christian’s also, but the slicer did seem to be Martina’s). Uli had a Thermomix gizmo that, according to their website, combines twelve appliances into one with functions that include weighing, mixing, chopping, milling, kneading, blending, steaming, cooking, whisking, precise heating, stirring and emulsifying.
In France, we stayed with Cousin Marion who showed us a corner of France we probably never would have seen otherwise and, I have to say, it is a corner I loved. Visiting Marion was fascinating, she was born in England but has worked most of her life as a photo-journalist in – among other places – South Africa, Afghanistan, Iran, Yemen, Portugal and, now, France. She photographed Jerry Brown and Linda Ronstadt in Kenya and spent five months on one of the last working Arab dhows as it sailed around the Middle East (and she wrote a super book about the adventure). Marion took us to Auch to see the unusual Cathedral – unusual,but not bad unusual, it is a Gothic Cathedral with a Renaissance front – and treated us to one of our best meals on the trip, lunch at a small hotel nearby. 
To finish our trip, we ditched the rental car and stayed at Cousin Claude’s home, in Paris (while she, as a proper Parisian, spent the summer out of town). It was an extraordinarily generous offer, a great opportunity, and a spectacular way to end our trip. 
Everybody I know loves Paris, it is impossible not to. Walking around it – her? – it feels like we are at the center of the kind of civilization we all want, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” and, I want to add, “Civility”. It seems to me that one of the things that give Paris that feel is its lousy housing. It is hot here, slightly under or slightly over 90° every day and most people live in small apartments in old, masonry, buildings, without air conditioning – or, even, much in cross-ventilation – so people live much of their private lives in public. If, at the end of the day, you want to wind down by reading a book, it is much more comfortable outside in a park or along the cooling Seine. 
If you want to get together with a friend for a glass of wine, it is more comfortable to meet at a local bistro where we are all jammed together. 
I think this public living is a good part of what makes Paris so attractive; it promotes tolerance and community, equality and fraternity, a Civilized world. 
Ok, I want to start with a disclaimer, I’m not a gothic guy. I know that Notre-Dame is great and I feel a little guilty that I don’t like it better, but… 
…the Panthéon, a Neoclassical Church dedicated to Secular Humanism, now that’s a Church. 
And, under the Church, in a vast Crypt area – simple and unadorned – the National Intellectual Heros are buried; the people who made France, France. This is so Civilized, so French, it brings me to tears and a big smile at the same time. We came to see Émile Zola, my family’s personal intellectual saint, and there he was, honorably laid to rest in the same room as Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo. 
As an aside, this year,