Here is another set of “vignettes” from recent days in Paris (a reminder: “vignettes” is French for “I’m giving you bullet points and you’ll like it, tiresome American capitalist pig dogs!”)

1.) Anyone who knows anything about my love of Paris knows that my #1 fave is Berthillon, the world’s best ice cream. (Note: I mean ice cream in its purest form, perfect embodiments of the represented flavor in smooth frozen form. I love enormous American scoops of Ben and Jerry’s at least as much as the next guy, but when you taste a tiny jewel of a scoop of pure Berthillon perfection, it will give you pause the next time you indulge in Fat Ass Fudge, or whatever the latest Ben and Jerry’s concoction may be.)

[Josh, you ask, I thought these were supposed to be pithy vignettes. That monumental last parenthetical reference was hardly haiku. To which I respond:
Paris greets winter
Chill chases chaque chic chez soi.
Who let the dogs out?!? ]

Anyhoo, like I was saying, Berthillon rocks. And, in a breaking scoop (har har har) that you’ll only get from “His and Hers Parigi,” I think I have a new favorite flavor: Caramel au Beurre Sale (Caramel [made] with Salted Butter). Holy frigging crap this stuff is good! It gives you a touch of that salty-but-sweet tingle that you get from trail mix with chocolate chips, or a Reese’s Cup. How good is it? It’s so good, it cured my goiter. OK, so I didn’t have a goiter. The Caramel au Beurre Sale is so good it gave me a goiter, then instantly cured it (it’s whimsical, cute-but-dangerous, in that Gavroche-on-the-barricades kind of way). It’s so good, it made me forget the name of whosit, that woman I moved here with. Sally, or something…

Seriously, it’s good stuff that makes me happy. But I don’t remember ever seeing it before, and on the flavor “menus” posted outside the shops it’s written in magic marker instead of being professionally printed, so maybe it’s only here for a limited time. So you’d better visit soon!

2.) So, like I was saying, vignettes. One of my favorite “cheap entertainment” options in Paris is to get the weekly “Pariscope” magazine and scan it for the many free concerts held in Paris each week. They’re usually held in interesting spaces like neighborhood churches, so between the space and the music, you’re relatively certain to get your lack of money’s worth. Last week, we caught a Russian pianist playing in a Swedish church, speaking in French about the German composer’s music he was playing. If nothing else, this sounds like a solution to the Clue game (Colonel Mustard, in the Conservatory, with a Lead Pipe). Another piece played by the Russian, with lovely vocal work by a Swedish music student, consisted of selected poems by French poet Paul Verlaine set to music by Gabriel Faure. In a Paris-small-world coincidence, I was able to remind Sara that Verlaine was the person whose “famous guy lived here” plaque we’d seen a couple of days earlier at the top of the Mouffe, our market street. So, we’re practically neighbors. In another coincidence, Hemingway lived in the same building as Verlaine, though decades later. Depending on your perspective, Hemingway is either the George Washington or the Paris Hilton of Paris—virtually every building in the Latin Quarter seems to boast that he slept there.

3.) Help me solve a mystery. Each night Sara brings to bed earplugs, to wisely protect against by rumored-but-never-proven snoring problem. But she always brings three. What’s the use of Sara’s Third Earplug? (which, as Dave Barry would say, is a great band name)

4.) Sara and I saw a Humvee on the street the other day. Given the bite-size nature of French vehicles (I’ve seen American chicken nuggets bigger than the cars here), our first thought was: uh oh, the invasion has started…

5.) As indicated in another blog entry, my office is located in the city’s principal Jewish neighborhood. As such, there are several Israeli-style falafel stands in the neighborhood, and I’ve been trying each out on my workdays. The best known, L’As du Falafel, I have seen referred to not once but twice in print as “Leni Kravitz’s favorite falafel shop.” Color me nutty, but despite the Jewish-sounding name, isn’t listing something as “Lenny Kravitz’s favorite falafel shop” a bit like saying it’s “Kim Jong-Il’s favorite taco stand” or “Antonio Banderas’ favorite eggroll”? [A quick update/correction: after I wrote this, but prior to publication, a web search revealed to me that Lenny Kravitz is actually half-Jewish. So, an endorsement of his favorite falafel would instead be like bragging about "Tiger Woods' favorite Pad Thai. The Editors apologize for the error.)

6.) It makes me crazy, but there are now at least three Subway restaurants and seemingly a couple dozen Starbucks in Paris. These are fairly new, and join the several KFCs and several dozen McDonald’s that have been here for years. I have no bone to pick (har har har) with KFC, or with McDonald’s, but I do with Subway and Starbucks. Why? You can debate the merits, but KFC and McDonalds bring something to Paris that wasn’t here before: fried chicken and hamburgers, and both fast and relatively cheap at that. But what do Subway and Starbucks provide that the French didn’t have already? The French don’t need Jared’s savvy weight loss advice, and to paraphrase Dennis Miller, they also don’t need a coffee so big you can dock a Jet-Ski in it. Paris already provides what could be argued are the world’s best cold cut sandwiches and coffee. I’d much rather see French-style bakeries and cafes in the US than Subway and Starbucks here. There, I’ll get off my soapbox now.

The Priest France Loved

Have you ever noticed how few things actually stop us in our tracks? And have you ever then noticed what stops us isn’t at all what we think it will be?

I fancy myself a reasonably worldly woman who has seen enough to be only nominally surprised by everything. While about 100 times a day since arriving in Paris I have been shocked and delighted (and that only speaks to my reaction in the cheese aisle at the local Franprix), I have actually found myself stopped in my tracks twice each day this week—because of a priest named Abbe Pierre—a man I had never even heard of until Monday.

The Priest
Josh told me before I headed off to my first class that my walk should be a bit more interesting because “Abbe Pierre”died that morning" at the hospital I pass enroute to class.

Josh then went onto explain that this Capuchin Priest who was essentially “the French Mother Teresa” was the most popular person in France (and he meant that literally: there is a poll taken each year and Abbe Pierre won for 17 of 20 years years. He probably would have continued winning, but took himself out of contention to “let the young people have a chance”).

And Abbe Pierre had been a decorated Resistance fighter during WWII (the ultimate symbol of “a good person” in France) and he had spent the last 50+ years serving the homeless, founding an international organization call Emmaus that serves the poor.

This was clearly a good man, but I didn’t expect to be moved the way that I was, and maybe still am.

The first afternoon I passed the hospital and there were many news vans and the beginning of a small makeshift memorial. By the time I returned home that evening, the news vans were joined by more reporters and the make-shift memorial had grown even larger.

I stopped on the way to class that first day mostly out of obligation. It seemed to me that people who do good things should get my attention. I stopped on the way home, and each subsequent time this week, because there is something truly powerful about this vigil.

There was a sleeping bag with a flower in the top, there were many small candles burning, there were roses and potted plants—but more than that, there were always people. Even I could make out that every newspaper wrote all week about the loss of this national hero.

I was learning about the French by watching how they grieve the loss of a beloved figure. I also didn’t have any similar experiences from the States, so this type of grieving seemed new to me.

I asked Josh if he felt anyone in America captured so many people’s hearts and would have a funeral like this—we were slightly embarrassed to say the only person we could come up with was Oprah. Any modern president would be too controversial, and undisputed greatness is rare.

The funeral was at Notre Dame today, which seemed in stark contrast to the little I knew about this man. 3,000 people were inside the cathedral, thousands more were outside of every imaginable walk of life. I suppose Notre Dame seems like the only appropriate place to honor a man so beloved by a nation.

It is interesting though that the national funeral would be so obviously Catholic with the president of France sitting in the front row in a country that prides itself on separation of Church and state

But the more I’ve learned about Abbe Pierre, the more fascinating he becomes and the more interesting the national grief seems. He was undoubtedly a very good man who served France during the war and the poor, but he was also flawed and anti-establishment. He advocated for married and women priests, he admitted to breaking his vow of celibacy, he used the media to advance his causes, he accidentally created controversy when he supported a friend who wrote a Holocaust revisionist book.

Yet here he was, being honored by France’s greatest living people, in one of France’s grandest cathedrals.

France adored this man. In his life he seemed to have embodied France’s proudest values and his shortcomings seemed to mirror those that the French have been accused of throughout history, making it impossible for anyone to hold his faults against him.

And for me, a newly arrived visitor to France, this man showed me a side of this country I feel lucky to have seen so early in my stay. I didn’t need to see this side of France to begin to understand what a complex country we have chosen to live in for a short while. But I come away learning more from the simple vigil outside the hospital than any world history class ever taught me about France and its people.

sPg

For more about Abbe Pierre: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbe_Pierre

It Hit...

In the frenzied final days before our departure, people would ask us if the fact that we were moving to Paris for the year had “hit us” yet. My response was that, like the days and weeks leading up to the wedding, we were so close to the individual trees that the forest was lost on us (or we were each like the group of blind people who each knew about the one part of the animal they found, but had no clue to what the whole elephant was like…you pick which metaphor/simile serves you best). Long story short, we were so caught up the micro-level steps necessary to leave our two jobs, our apartment, and all our personal relationships behind, it was difficult to focus on the fantastic fun and opportunity that awaited us. Like with the wedding, “it” would only “hit” post-facto…

Well, on Monday, “it” finally did hit me...and at the strangest moment(s). I started work on Monday, which meant I had to find my way from our apartment in the 13th Arrondissement to my office in the city’s primary Jewish (and more recently, gay) neighborhood. Gritty and trendy urbanite that I am, I bundled myself in my overcoat, popped my iPod earbuds in my ears, and set out on foot for my destination.

Commutes generally don’t have the best reputation, but it was while I walked to work that morning (and home that night) that the enormity of our Paris year finally hit me. It hit me as I walked by our neighborhood’s unassuming St. Medard church, for which ground was broken in 1450, and whose “most recent” portions still outdate our country by well over a hundred years. It hit me as I walked by the community marketplace whose selection, quality, and prices would put Whole Foods to shame. It hit me as I stopped for a quick coffee, and realized that the $1.50 espresso at any of thousands of corner Parisian cafes easily outdoes many of the best coffees available in America. It hit me as I crossed the Seine, and the sorrowful warblings of a solitary bagpiper, alone with his thoughts down on the quai, lifted up to my ears. I suddenly felt a deep and grateful appreciation for the opportunity that has been presented to Sara and myself.

Before you start worrying that I’m getting all deep and reflective, rest assured that “it” hit me in a much more whimsical way during the evening commute. Walking back along the Seine, as the rear portion of Notre Dame Cathedral came into view and the 2000-era twinkling lights on the Eiffel Tower began their hourly sparkle, what did I hear on my iPod but some church-style organ music followed by a guitar going “junk-a-junk-a-junk-junk-junk, junk-a-junk-a-junk-junk-junk.”

With the concordance of the happy sights and sounds surrounding me, I tucked my hands in my pockets, walked quickly and in time with the music (help me out, what music video am I thinking of, with the guy walking purposefully along as the backgrounds behind him keep changing?), and broke out into a shit-eating grin the size of a Mercury Sable. I didn’t walk home, I damn near floated.

You gotta have Faith…

Clothespins and French Lessons

Do we ever really discover new ground or do we simply return to old ground with new eyes?

As I hung laundry in our small little apartment, I found my thoughts momentarily drifting to my childhood backyard. As a child, I watched my mother hang clothes from a line, and I was surprised (and slightly disbelieving) to find myself doing the same activity 20 years later.

At the end of the day, a 350 square feet apartment in the 13th arrondissement in Paris couldn’t be farther from acres of land in Northwest Indiana, yet here I was, hanging laundry—the exact same activity, regardless of the location of the clothesline.

In those childhood days of hanging laundry, I remember these large sticks, fashioned by my father, which seemed unwieldy but were designed to tighten the line. In my little Paris apartment, Josh traded large homemade poles for an elaborate system of stretching a single clothesline throughout our entire apartment. Our clothesline stretches past every door and window in our apartment, yet it only 20 meters long. Once again, the activity and necessity of tightening the clothesline is the same, regardless that we have a mere micro-acre.

[I could offer reflections on baby bottles, given that Josh and I found ourselves at a curious, but entertaining, fondue restaurant last night where wine was served in bottles—baby bottles. It seems, however, that I really don’t have any memory of “the last time I drank from a baby bottle,” so letting this one go makes sense.]

I didn’t have to drift back to my childhood to find myself retreading familiar ground once again. My first French lesson in France is tomorrow and imagine my surprise when I learned that the books that I will be using are the same ones that I used for my brief (and only mildly successful) classes in Washington, D.C. It seems that I will get to return to the same books that made me crazy in Washington, but with a new level of commitment… and urgency.

Before when I turned the exact same pages, I felt like a hobbyist at best and French seemed like a code word for “interesting adventure”. Now, as I look over these pages, they seem like keys to the kingdom. If I can actually learn the difference between avoir and etre, then maybe I have a chance at communicating with that corner vendor on the Rue Mouffetard who has beautiful greens or the butcher across the way who has the perfect chicken or the grocery store clerk on Rue Broca who is asking me if I need bags for my grocery.

To be honest, my expectations are fairly low. I don’t expect to be able to fully participate in French conversation, even by year’s end, given that the French take their conversation as seriously as they take their coffee or their baguette, but I do hope to at least consider myself a passive participant in time.

Finally, I find myself returning to a dinner table with new eyes. In life, I’ve been fortunate to rarely lack a place to share Sunday dinner and this was one thing I thought for sure would be absent for the foreseeable future.

But, in this new chapter, I have a whole new appreciation for the daily routine, which now gives me the chance to sit with Josh each night, at our table. In our lives before, there seemed to be endless good reasons why we found the dinner table only a few times a week at best. Now, our dinner table, with a short glass of wine, is the touchstone of our days.

I also have found myself extremely grateful for the invitations to join others at their tables in this time of new beginning in Paris. Iris, Sue and Beth (and their families) graciously invited us to share a meal, a tart or a snack with them in our first weeks here. But more than just offering delightful culinary treats, they truly opened their homes. We left each home having full of tips on life in Paris (including French telecom tricks, possible job leads and where to buy toaster ovens). We also left each home with a bag full of goodies ranging from extremely helpful books on how to live in Paris, to the ready made tart crust—which is the French woman’s secret to good tarts, to a borrowed pot and extra butter. At these tables, at a time when we are still figuring out what community is even possible, I felt lucky enough to feel comfortable, even for a moment.

So maybe I won’t spend all year re-seeing my old life through new eyes, but for now, seeing the new in the old or the old in the new makes Paris feel like another place that I could begin to imagine as another one of my homes.

sPg

Mixed thoughts...

For today’s blog posting, I will offer a few “vignettes” (“vignette” is French for “I don’t have the patience or the discipline to assemble my thoughts and anecdotes under one unified theme.”)

- First, the photos from our first week are now ready for viewing at http://www1.snapfish.com/share/p=536201169300768187/l=239907225/g=14513899/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB Not a lot of winners, but something for folks who like “people pictures” as well as those seeking the more artsy…

- Second, a follow-up on Sara’s most recent blog entry. It’s true that she has a keen eye for spotting and recovering from the kind of “Q and A” differences she has discussed. But she slipped up on one—you could say it was a “Q and A” on TP. On the early solo grocery shopping trip that Sara’s already detailed, she secured toilet paper and stashed the still-wrapped four-pack in the toilet-side cabinet. A couple of days later, gales of hysterical laughter unexpectedly poured forth from our bathroom. Moments later, Sara stumbled out, tears rolling down her face, with a roll of paper towels in her hand. Turns out that a two-pack of paper towels looks an awful lot like a four-pack of toilet paper. To give Sara the benefit of the doubt, maybe she somehow knew and was confused by the French words for “paper towel”--“essuie-tout”—which literally means “wipe everything.” Well, almost everything…

- Another odd example of a “Q and A” situation: on French calendars, the week starts on Monday and ends on Sunday. It’s much more intuitive this way, and demonstrates a better church/state separation that we do in the same realm. But then again, when American TV weather folks give the next day’s weather, they don’t say what Saint’s day it will be, like they do in France. It’s always interesting to see how our two quite similar countries have totally different takes on the same national guiding principles.

- Maybe it’s because we’ve been together nearly 24/7 since we arrived in France, but Sara and I are taking on each others’ bad habits. Sara is now sleeping late (as late as noon), and I am now napping. Before you know it, Sara will have started biting her fingernails like me, and I’ll start sniffing glue like her!

- Another of Sara’s and my “resolutions” for our Paris year is to see more movies. We always enjoy going to the movies, but for some reason we only make it to a couple a year in DC. Fortunately, we’ll have more free time this year, and, with apologies to Hemingway, Paris is a “movie-able feast.” In terms of the number and diversity of films showing, and the sheer quantity of screens, Paris is second to none in this domain. But sadly, cinema led to one of Sara’s and my first disagreements of our Paris journey. She rightly thinks that Paris provides us with an opportunity to see all the great American movies that we missed during their first release in the US. But I think that we should take advantage of the unique opportunities available to us only here in Paris, so we should see movies from other English-speaking countries that never make it to the US, and/or vintage films that are being shown on the big screen here but that otherwise, in the US, we’d have to see on cable or DVD, if at all. An example of what I’m talking about: “The Freshman,” a 1925 silent movie starring Harold Lloyd, is showing currently in Paris and likely nowhere else. So, to settle our dispute we talked it out, and it goes without saying that Sara won and we ended up seeing the latest Scorsese movie, “The Departed.” (Another “Q and A” example: whenever possible, the French refer to a movie primarily by its director, whereas most Americans refer to its lead actor). To avoid future disagreements on movies, I think what we’ll likely do is follow the example of many other couples, and create a alternating selection process, with each spouse getting a veto-proof choice of every other movie to attend. So, given that Sara got her choice this time (admittedly an excellent film…), I think I may flex my selection power next time and choose a moody Latvian silent documentary on wood chips…

That’s it for today, everyone. Enjoy the day!

Josh

Q and A

Have you ever found yourself in a place that is just different enough that somehow it seems even more foreign than if everything around you was new? If everything is new and different then expectations are non-existent. But if only some things are new, expectations are harder to pin down.

This is my experience in Paris—I refer to it as the “Q and A” problem. Q/A does not refer to in shorthand as “Question and Answer”; rather it refers to the orientation of the French keyboard where the letters Q and A are switched and symbolizes those many little differences that remind me around every corner that I am in a foreign country. Most of the keys are the same, but about five to six are different—just enough difference to trip me up, but not so much as to make the whole venture out of reach.

A disclaimer seems necessary: I feel like I have the luxury of this perspective because Josh navigates so much of the French culture and language easily. This allows me the wonderful chance to only bite off what I want to chew.

Another Q/A experience for me was my first solo trip to the grocery store. I am looking to food and cooking as my window into this country. I proudly set out to the Fran Prix, a small, but dependable French chain of grocery stores, a half block down the street, fully confident that I could locate some basic goods and pay for them, without actually speaking to anyone. I haven’t spoken to anyone at the Columbia Road Safeway in years, so this didn’t seem like a tall order.

I picked up my cart and my troubles began nearly immediately in the produce section. I knew I wasn’t doing something right, but I just didn’t know what I wasn’t doing and there weren’t enough shoppers for me to spy on. So, I picked up my lemon, apple and lychees (another note: lychees are everywhere. I don’t particularly understand them as a concept, but Josh loves them, so they were on the shopping list).

I started down the vast yogurt aisle, turned left at the vast cheese aisle and continued on. I am particularly amazed at the yogurt selections—there must be 150 different types of yogurt (and yogurt-esque products, which are too numerous to detail here).

It took a few confused interactions to acquire salt. I couldn’t find bleach (but I did find ammonia). I gave up on pepper. I found the diet coke. I decided the sparkling water could wait. I forgot about the paper towels. Finally, it was time to check out.

I braced myself. Grocery store clerks (at least according to Josh) are notoriously grouchy. I unloaded the basket, softly said, “Bonjour madame” and hoped for the best.

The line behind me grew. She then asked me a question. My heart pounded, I shrugged. I smiled (despite the fact I knew smiling would get me nowhere) and hoped it wasn’t that important. She sighed slightly and pulled out bags (lesson #4—it is best to bring your own bags to the grocery store). I thought I had dodged a bullet and then it came time to ring up the produce.

As she picked up my lemon, she asked a question—or was it a statement? Regardless, I smiled again and she kept talking. I managed a feeble, “Je no parle pas francais”. She sighed again. The line kept getting longer. I was literally sweating. Then she got up and left, with my produce!

I clearly had to stand there, absorbing the glares that were probably entirely in my mind. I cursed myself for not paying better attention in French class.

But what I thought was going to be a story of “How the French clerk made Sara Cry on Day 4” actually turned into the story of “How the French clerk took pity on Sara and Helped Her” The clerk returned a short lifetime later, with stickers attached to my produce, rang them up, announced my total and I was on my way. Lesson #5—there is a scale in the produce section that you use to weigh and print out a price tag for each item.

I then bagged up my groceries and left, with a bit of a zip to my step.

Maybe I never thought a trip to a grocery store would feel like a significant accomplishment, but maybe this is exactly the type of reminder I need about the importance of accomplishments of all sizes. I know there aren’t medals for every day moments like these, but maybe there should be and I know that I enjoyed the best apple of my life today at lunch and I even know how to buy another one—all by myself.


sPg

Picture Perfect: New Year's Resolution

I think this year, I may actually keep one of my New Year's Resolutions!

One of the goals of this year in Paris for Sara and me is to actually make time for those things that we give short shrift to in our normal rat-race lifestyle. [True story: for Sara, one of these resolutions is "get more sleep." This from the woman that makes Rip Van Winkle look like an insomniac Paris Hilton.]

So, my resolution is to take more pictures, and in general to take my amateur photography hobby more seriously.

To get a jump start, a pre-departure goal of mine was to go through all of my past photos and to compile a "portfolio" of sorts. You can check it out at:

http://www1.snapfish.com/share/p=76231167894379762/l=239668912/g=14513899/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB

Please let me know what you think in general, or which photos are your favorites.

Going into "The Paris Year," my intention is to hang my camera (a small point-and-shoot digital...I prefer this to lugging a Leica) by the front door of our apartment, so I can grab it each time I walk out the door, and never be without it.

Watch this space for ongoing evidence of my photographic expoits. (And, to be fair to Sara, I know one of her goals is to write more, so stay tuned to her blog posts and possibly other writings here.)