Paris

This year’s visit to IFPEN was a busy one, with sessions for the international Petroleum Economics & Management (PEM) and French-oriented Energie et Marches (ENM) programs; the joint BI-Oslo Executive Master’s program; and the Mini-MBA for Executives in Energy Management course. Since I was in Paris a bit earlier than usual this year, we had a full contingent of ENM students – the combined PEM & ENM groups totaled nearly 60 students.

My reading on this trip was a book I normally would have bought right away when it first came out – but this time I resisted that urge, & saved it (with obvious anticipation!) for this Parisian visit. I’ve enjoyed many of David McCullough’s previous works– especially his biographies of Truman and John Adams (both of which won Pulitzers), and the ‘big project’ books about the Panama Canal and the Brooklyn Bridge (the former winning a National Book Award). His latest work, The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris, goes back into the 1800s and follows the lives of numerous writers, artists, physicians, politicians, and others who headed to the city long before Hemingway & Fitzgerald made it fashionable to do so. I was not the only one reading the book – other passengers at the airport were similarly engrossed, and one elderly American couple who saw me reading it launched into a full-scale discussion. It didn’t disappoint – and McCullough is truly a national treasure!


Mont St. Michel

I also took some time between lectures & headed up to visit Mont St. Michel, the tidal island/religious abbey located off the northwestern coast between Brittany and Normandy. Its thirteen-hundred year history is rather complicated, but it was nonetheless interesting to hear the French version of the Hundred Year’s War (1337-1453), which was significantly different than the one I had learned as an English schoolboy. (Then again, my English schoolboy lessons about the American Revolution were even more radically different!) The English were never able to capture the Mont during that war, despite repeated attempts. The setting is really quite spectacular – with lots & lots of climbing on this visit too (just as in Florence)!