In addition to researching internship opportunities (and mailing off about fifteen applications), I have been my usual busy self, stretching time between seeing the city, reading, school, and social engagements. The good news is that my February intensive six-hours-a-day French course is over, so I have more free time. What's more, I can officially state that I received my first rejection letter from National Geographic. While the intern apps are still rolling out via the French postal system, I've begun a new set of classes at the Institut Catholique de Paris, the school I'm attending this semester.
Here's the course load. Pretend like you're interested:
The Media in France: A course taught in French about, well, the media in France. It's a bit like what I imagine journalism 101 is in the US -- lots of talk about newspapers, layouts, different types of titles, when publications were founded, how they've changed, etc. etc. The French press may have more in common with the US press than it has differences, but still. A country whose modern press began after the Revolution, and who still has a tabloid founded by Sartre called Libération certainly has my attention. It's fun to gather more information than I will ever use about which newspaper is on which side of the political scale.
The EU: A course taught in English by a professor who has my heart. She was schooled in Britain, has Norwegian citizenship, speaks French, English, and Norwegian fluently, and has lived in France for twenty years. Also I feel like she should be teaching at Hogwart's. She wears purple every day, which matches the purple she wears up to her eyebrows. Also she has frizzy hair that defies gravity, and peppers all conversation with bon, donc, and ouais, regardless of what language she's speaking. In the EU class we learn about its foundation, its treaties, and its purpose, building up to issues within the EU today and debates concerning its effectiveness.
France today: After attending my first EU class, I immediately dropped a course titled "Contemporary Art" without even sitting through the first session. I then joined this France class, taught by my EU professor. Beginning with the Revolution we discuss the Fifth Republic (and how it came about, taking into consideration the Republics that preceded it). Using the Revolution as well as the structure of its government, we use France's history as a lens for today's culture. Supplementary reading that I have been devouring: Sixty-Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong by Jean Benoit-Nadeau and Julie Barlow. Once I finish I'll move on to their book on the French language, The Story of French. I highly recommend both as relatively in-depth look at French culture. Their writing style is a bit dryer and more textbooky than say, Adam Gopnik's, but it's still a good read.
In other news, travel plans are shaping up for the semester. First up are American visitors. Last weekend Melinda, a graduate of UA's French program, came to Paris. She's been living in Nantes and we finally managed to cross paths. We saw Fontainebleau and Victor Hugo's house (pictures forthcoming). Next up are three other Alabamian friends who found affordable tickets and have nothing better to do for their spring break than to visit me. Immediately following is a trip to Dublin, to see another Alabamian friend from high school who's studying at Trinity for the semester. The following weekend I see Adis in Sarajevo. Then for spring break I'm going to Greece for a few days with friends. All I can say is that even with terrible service and inconvenient airports, thank goodness for RyanAir and easyjet alike. Though most of my savings are now pocket lint, if there's anything left over I might hop over to Casablanca for a weekend. All of which is to say that if you have any tips or recommendations for any or all upcoming destinations, please send them my way.
Things I owe you, now that I fixed Movable Type (it's been broken for about two weeks, making it impossible to update until I found time to reinstall everything):
Notes on Italy
Photos from Melinda's visit and our trip to Fontainbleau and Victor Hugo's house
Photos/stories from the north of France, a weekend excursion I recently took with my program
Istanbul (maybe it's been so long that you've forgotten)
My life, the future, and everything
Current expos and photography showing in Paris, and what I think about all that, including but not limited to: David Lachapelle, Marc Riboud, François Rousseau
Other trips, travels, and things I wish I could do before I return to the US -- a bit of flickr magic and web research on cool places to see in the future
French culture via Sixty-Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong.
Cast your vote in the comments for which should come first.
If the French have taught me one thing, its perseverance. Before I left the States, a professor who had studied and lived in Paris for a number of years gave me these sagely words of advice: learn how to argue in French. Loudly. Her suggestion stood out from the more typical "bon voyage!" sentiments I garnered from others, and though I knew I was in for a ride, I probably should have taken to heart what she said.
A few days before I left for France, I watched the film Two Days in Paris, which has much to teach about how one argues and accomplishes things with the French language. This scene is particularly helpful. It lacks English subtitles, but it's easy to get the general idea without understanding French. It begins quite innocently, quite formally. And after it escalates, one must always deny that one has argued, that one is responsible for anything. If all else fails, one can insult another by accusing them of slighting France's image, or else one can call them a tourist. These, my friends, are pillars of French argument.
Since my arrival in September, I have run the gamut of French bureaucracy, utterly and completely. After months of struggling for air, I surfaced with the only trophy one can win: the carte de séjour -- a residency card. To get a carte de séjour, one must stand in line for three to five hours with around twenty official documents: an original birth certificate; a financial guarantee from your study abroad program; a financial guarantee from your parents, signed by a notary, stating that they will support you; a bank statement belonging to the financially responsible party; an enrollment letter from any and all schools you plan to attend in France; a copy of your student card(s); enrollment verification from your study abroad program; a copy of your passport; a copy of your visa; a letter from Campus France, an organization one must register with in order to obtain a visa; a copy of your landlord's identity card; a current electricity bill; an attestation de domicile signed and dated by your landlord, who confirms that you do in fact live where you say you do; copies of all aforementioned documents; etc. etc. so on and so on and forever and ever. Should any of these things not be up to par, or perhaps if the woman letting people through the line is in a bad mood that day, you will be turned away without explanation and forced to wait in line again. And to get your carte de séjour, you must make it through before your visa expires or you will no longer be a legal visitor in France.
Once you make it through the line, which of course comes only after several attempts, you get a recipisée (a temporary carte) which only suffices until you show up for your medical appointment where they test your eyes and take a chest x-ray to make sure you're not blind or infectious. If you miss the medical appointment, it cannot be rescheduled, and you are, as the French like to say, dans la merde. I hestitate to describe more of my experience getting my carte, since remembering the whole process is almost as painful as living through it the first time around.
Life in Paris is beautiful, and truly one of the most delightful things I've ever experienced. Whether or not the French planned it this way, it seems one must pay for life here -- especially when one is not French -- by enduring long lines, refusals, mountains of paperwork, and banking errors. Living in a foreign country is a lot like being a character in a game. I frequently return to this entry, written by Mike Cosentino about his own experiences in France. He says it so much better than I can:
It got me thinking that the entire process of getting settled here
closely resembles a Role Playing Game, be it Zelda, Final Fantasy,
Oblivion, and countless others. There's an overarching story that
you'll be following, but for the most part you're placed in a strange
land with little knowledge of what to do. Your experience points are
low when you first start out, and the only way to improve your standing
-- and get closer to achieving your goal of saving a princess or the
entire world -- is to complete a myriad of seemingly random quests.
You'll wander around aimlessly until you get a lay of the land, and
then you'll want to start getting things done. When you're ready to buy
that shiny new sword you visit the shopkeeper but he won't give it up
until you travel to the snowy mountains on the other side of the
continent, kill 20 trolls, and return with their gemmed chalice. When
you finally return to the shopkeeper he notices that one of the rubies
is missing from the chalice, and again, won't sell you your sword until
you commandeer a boat to take you to an island where you need slay a
giant goblin, grab the ruby, and head all the way back to town. By the
time you get your sword it's been three straight nights of playing and
you can't even remember why you were even playing this ridiculous game
in the first place.
Rinse and repeat, and you have a pretty good idea of what it's like
to set up camp in a new country. It's an endless stream of running back
and forth, not having just the right things, forgetting the exact thing
you needed, not understanding, and not being understood. You've paid
your hard earned cash for this game and dammit you're going to get your
money's worth no matter how convoluted the storyline is.
Now if I can only find that one cave where the +3 Repel Bureaucracy amulet is hidden.
When I return to the States, most of my incredulous stories will be not of the places I've visited or the monuments I've seen, but of the hours I've waited in line, the papers demanded of me, or how one completes otherwise simple tasks while a resident of France. Like that one time I tried to make a simple return at FNAC because I'd bought the wrong textbook. I had to go to two separate desks on opposite ends of the store, where two separate women handwrote receipts of very long numbers on carbon paper, and handed me one of the three copies. Only then was I able to return to the caisse, where the woman operating the register handwrote another form full of long numbers, stapled all of them together, and finally gave me my reimbursement. Despite the fact that, like any store in the United States, the French have computer-operated cash registers with barcode scanners. It seems to me that the French like to work near computers, rather than with them.
I was pleasantly surprised today when I went to my French bank (my bank account has its own horrific and ridiculous paperwork story) to solve a problem, and accomplished it on the first try. Part of perseverance and part of daily life in a foreign country is feeling like a moron on a regular basis. In today's case, it was asking why I can't access my bank account online (answer: that wasn't part of the contract I signed), why my card didn't work when I tried to buy groceries (answer: there wasn't enough money in my account), and why it seems that a check I deposited didn't go through (answer: I deposited it incorrectly). Sometimes it pays to be an obsessive pack rat and keep receipts so that when a 220€ check disappears into automated teller never-never-land, someone can track it down for you even if it will take a month.
After signing a new contract that allows me to see my account online, checking my card to make sure it works correctly, and putting a recherche on the check I incorrectly deposited, the young teller assured me that "Nous sommes vraiment desolee, hein? Je sais que c'est un très longtemps." I assured her that, "Non, c'est vraiment ma faute. Merci bien, c'est gentil," then confessed that "c'est toujours comme ça en France, pour moi. Toujours compliqué! Complètement different aux États-Unis. Je me trompe beaucoup." She assured me that her sister experienced the same trouble when she moved to Rome, then shouted a "bon courage!" as I left.
Customer service and efficiency may not be France's forté, but if you get over the fact that you're going to feel like a moron a few times a day and persevere, you can get things done. A little manners and some humility can go a long way; so far I've not needed to resort to the French pillars of argument. Speaking bad French and lightly playing on the "stupid, helpless American" stereotype can apparently be effective, too.
I wanted to visit a Turkish bath while in Istanbul, but ultimately ran out of time and wasn't up for it after my migraine. After searching a little on the web I figured I could find something comparable in Paris, and sure enough -- the Mosque has a hammam open seven days a week. It's just a few stops away on the metro and a short walk. Léti, her sister, and I decided to give it a go, and I loved it. For all you men and ladies who are curious and don't know what to expect at a public bath, here are some facts and observations.
The hammam at the mosque separates the sexes by day. It's open to women Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, and to men on Tuesdays and Sundays. You can see a list of hours on the mosque's site (French and English available).
The mosque also has a restaurant and a tea room. Before we went into the hammam we had some mint tea. Though the case of sweets and pastries tempted me at the door, I didn't try any. The tea room was beautiful, with hand painted tiles, gold table tops, and intricate designs on the ceiling. It reminded me of a lot of things we saw in Istanbul. Even if the hammam isn't your style, I recommend a cup of tea and a quick visit to the mosque, if only to see the decor and experience a little of the culture.
There's a sign on the door of the hammam that says bath robes are required. Women seen wearing, carrying, or touching bath robes while at the hammam: 0. It's a good idea to bring your own towel, shampoo, sugar scrubs, or whatever other bathing goodies you think you might use. The hammam has a lot of these things on hand, but they will cost you. Towel: 4€. The hammam supplies flip flops, but you can certainly bring your own.
Entry in the hammam is 15€. After that, you pay for what you want. They have packages, or you can choose services individually. The list of prices can be seen here. The English page for prices doesn't work, but here are some rough translations. Gommage = you lie on a table and a lady rubs you down with a scratchy glove after you've been in the steam rooms a while. Savon noir = literally, "black soap," or a mud skin treatment. Didn't try it, but it looked fun. Épilation = wax/hair removal.
When you enter the hammam you pay for everything you want upfront. The lady working the register will give you tickets, which you then hand to whomever performs the service. The caisse is inside the main room of the hammam, which is where a lot of massages take place. Probably the most awkward I felt while in the hammam was walking fully dressed with scarf, hat, coat, and gloves through the room of mostly-naked women to get to the locker room.
Each successive room in the hammam gets hotter and hotter. They're all steam rooms with marble floors and elevated areas where you can lie on the hot stone. There are squeegees and buckets everywhere for cleaning the stone if you're squeamish, but the buckets also make for good ways to cool off. The final room is almost unbearably hot with steam visibly hanging in the air. There's a very cold blue pool of water there, which makes for interesting temperature contrast.
There are shower heads where you can lather up if you bring shampoo and all your shower goods.
Léti's sister had a massage that she said was incredible. We went at night when almost everyone was arriving after work, and there was a long wait for massages. I suspect that in the mornings and afternoons that's not the case.
Everyone in the hammam wears bottoms, whether it's underwear or a bikini bottom. Most everyone was topless, save a few who were in bathing suits, but they were the odd ones out. No one ogles, and it's not awkward or weird as most Americans might assume.
All in all, I enjoyed it and intend to go back. Perhaps next time I'll grab something to eat and take a few photos of the tea room. As for potential tourists, the hammam is a great relatively inexpensive way to relax after a long day of sight-seeing.
UPDATE: Looks like I won't have time to get back to the mosque before heading State-side for the holidays, but I found some photos of the mosque, the tea room, and the hammam here.
The past week or so has been a whirlwind of exams, goodbyes, au revoir dinners, studying, and generally trying to see as much of the city before I leave for a month. Today I finished my last exam, and began cleaning the apartment and assessing what needs to be packed and what can stay here. I fly back to the States this weekend for the holidays and won't return to Paris until mid-January. I can already anticipate how much I will miss it.
I've been collecting links for a little while now, some on Paris and some on language in general. Enjoy these while I get around to writing something more substantial.
Insiders' guide to Bohemian Paris: Lots of good suggestions in here from locals, all pretty local off-the-beaten-track places. Hope to report more on some of them, myself.
How Germans really see English ad slogans: It's been popular in recent years to advertise in Germany using English slogans. Turns out people only vaguely know what they mean, despite English words entering the German vernacular.
On dubbing "The Wire" into German: Covers many of the difficulties in translating films and television shows, which often use slang and other words that aren't easily translatable.
Uptake anxiety: I've always been annoyed? By those people who seem to end everything with a question mark? Turns out there's a name for it? And more than just teenage girls are guilty?
Ooh la langue: A blog post on learning French, losing English, and all the little things in between. 100% true. "There is no French equivalent that I know of for the phrase I know, right? And this saddens me. But maybe it's just because they don't know how good it could be. To just break out of their formality and say Je sais, vrai?!"
My friends in the States are a bright bunch, but I was surprised to discover how few of them had considered the difficulty of Thanksgiving overseas. Though most realize that Thanksgiving is uniquely American, what with the history of pilgrims, etc., I find that there's a surprising lack of understanding regarding the food -- that is, nearly everything Americans eat for Thanksgiving feasts is indigenous to North America and not sold elsewhere in the world with any regularity. About the only thing Thanksgiving meals lack in terms of indigenous goodies is peanut butter and barbecue sauce.
And so began the quest for ingredients. There are a handful of "American grocery stores" in Paris, which usually manifest themselves as tiny boutiques that sell Orville Redenbacher microwave popcorn, jars of peanut butter, bottles of Tobasco sauce, Jell-O, and a few other random items. There's a shop like this on the way to my art history class on Avenue Bosquet. Also in the city is "The Thanksgiving Store," which, if I understand correctly, is a year-round market that sells American decorations and various holiday goods, as well as food. The map on their website cracks me up.
So which items are difficult to track down, and how much do they cost? Good question. Here are a few.
Turkey. Most Parisians only eat turkey on Christmas Day, which they special-order from their local butcher. It's difficult to find turkey, especially a whole one, anywhere in the city without making a special request. However, every now and then you'll see a turkey breast or some sandwich meat in the grocery store. Not sure how much a whole turkey will set you back, but for a dinner party earlier in the semester, my friends and I payed 24€ for a rotisserie chicken.
Canned pumpkin. 4€ per can at an American market.
Sweet potatoes. 2€ each at an American market. I bought some in order to make my family's delicious sweet potato casserole, and the two that I found were probably the smallest, most pathetic-looking sweet potatoes I've ever seen in my life. Fortunately the casserole turned out okay.
Brown sugar. If someone can explain this one to me, I'd be grateful. How do the French not have brown sugar? I mean...it's in every good cookie recipe. You can easily find cane sugar in any grocery store, but not real brown sugar. A box will set you back about 3 to 4€ at an American market.
Condensed/evaporated milk. Available in any and all grocery stores.
Frozen/prepared pie crusts. Hah. You think the French would let their dessert be so easy? This is a country full of pastry chefs. I didn't see any pie crusts during my shopping, but I bet they have them at the Thanksgiving Store.
Stuffing. I rather love the Stove-top boxed stuffing that we have in America, I'm not going to lie. Not sure whether the French have the same concept of stuffing that Americans do, but I'm willing to bet that if they do, they make it themselves and it doesn't come out of a box.
Cranberry sauce. Can at American market: 4€.
While at Monoprix shopping for ingredients, I could tell who was American just by how intensely they were searching for things in specific aisles. I overheard some English and approached a young couple. "Excuse me. Are you shopping for Thanksgiving ingredients?" I asked. They seemed somewhat relieved and delighted to find someone on the same quest. I asked if they had found sweet potatoes anywhere in the city, which they hadn't. Holding a crumpled list in one hand, one of them asked, "Have you found pumpkin? Brown sugar? Cranberry sauce?" I gave them the address of the shop on Bosquet, and wished them luck. "Happy Thanksgiving!" they said as I walked toward the check-out.
I think I can safely say this Thanksgiving is the only time I will carry a casserole through the metro and down the streets of the Latin Quarter. Happy Belated Thanksgiving to all, or as the French like to call it, jeudi.
Of course right after I made this video it started really snowing,
but whatever. It's very rare to see snow in Paris, and Alabamians are
forever impressed by even the tiniest bit (thus, this video). For those of you itching to hear me speak French, this one's for you.
Now I suppose I should get back to writing that paper...
Paris has a plethora of museums. The Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay, the Rodin Museum, the Pompidou, the Picasso Museum, of course. But what others? I recently stumbled across Wikipedia's entry for all the museums in the city. I've visited some of the lesser-knowns, but have yet to see all the ones that interest me. Here are some that I've visited and some of the more unusual ones that I've yet to see.
Musée des Lettres et Manuscrits - Located in a townhouse from the 1600s, the museum displays original works by Descartes, Voltaire, Diderot, Stendahl, Flaubert, Zola, Verlaine, Nadar, Magritte, and plenty of other Frenchies. They also have some manuscripts/letters from Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, etc. See the Wikipedia entry for a full list.
Palais de Toyko - Not sure exactly what's in this museum, but I've walked past it many a time. It's very close to the Eiffel Tower, and I think the building in which it is housed serves as a kind of Japanese cultural center for the city. Looks very interesting.
The Catacombs - Paris's ossuary, which was primarily used during the years of the Plague, I believe. Essentially, underneath the city in a series of tunnels there are thousands of bones piled neatly on top of each other. If you visit the city during the summer, this is a great place to escape the heat.
Musée de la Poste - A postal museum that specializes in the postal history and philately of France. This one's high on my list, but I've yet to visit.
The Jeu de Paume - A museum of modern art not far from the Louvre. I don't know much about their permanent collection, but since September they've had two incredible photography exhibits: one of Avedon's work and one of Lee Miller's. I think they frequently host exhibitions of high-caliber photography.
The Gobelins manufactory - Not far from where I live, this is a small manufactory where tapestries are made. The Gobelins were a family of dyers who began business in the city in the 15th century. I believe tours are only offered in French, but a tour is the only way to see the actual manufacturing process -- otherwise, you can only see the show rooms.
Musée d'histore de la médicine - I've yet to visit this one, but I hope it's akin to Philadelphia's Mutter museum. It houses one of the oldest medical collections in Europe.
Musée de l'erotisme - Paris's erotic museum is located in the heart of the red light district, near the Moulin Rouge. On display are sculptures, figurines, toys, a few costumes and furniture, as well as a collection of drawings. Most interesting, perhaps, are photos of (if I remember correctly) the interior of an old Parisian brothel -- photos made on glass plates. Though they don't exactly compare to Bellocq's work, they bring it to mind. Though the museum has seven floors, one can easily see everything in about an hour, two for slowpokes.
Paris has been tucked under a cloud layer for what seems like weeks. Though that sort of Parisian weather is often quite pleasant, I miss the sun. It's becoming rather wet and wintery. I have frequently experienced what I now call "Parisian rain," which is a mist without origin or direction; umbrellas offer no defense. Often while wandering through the city during this kind of weather, I feel like a vegetable keeping fresh in the produce aisle.
As the semester finishes, the work load gets heavier. After tomorrow, I have only five days left with my class at the Sorbonne, which has come to rank high on my list of greatest educational experiences. Our final written exam is November 29th, and the oral follows a few days later. Paris will soon begin to empty of the people that have colored my life here. The first goes home Tuesday the 25th without funds to change his ticket to stay for the exam. The next few leave a week later, and with each departure a piece of what I have made here will begin to disappear. They will disperse across the globe like the plumes of a dandelion wish, taking with them the understanding of how I've lived my first few months of twenty-one. Some of them will blow too far to encounter again -- too far to see what grows where they land -- and others I may see again before the summer.
Among the emotions that arrive with impending loss comes a desire for the South that swells, pulsing each time I dream of forests or dirt roads. Though college has often separated me from my family for extended periods, I have never anticipated their embrace quite as strongly as I have this season. That troubles all of us in Paris, I think -- finding ourselves with two places at our fingertips without the ability to touch both at once.
I have not forgotten my promises to report on Istanbul. Finding time between homework, studying for exams, and a ten-pager on Diane Arbus has been difficult lately, but I hope to write again soon.
I've had a few Paris-centric tabs cluttering my browser for a while, so I figured I'd share.
Forvo is a site that collects sound bytes of countless languages, some of which I didn't know existed. As a native-speaker of your own language, you can record various words and phrases to add to the site's incredible library. Though I'd encourage you to poke around and listen to some Gaelic or Icelandic, or even some Esparanto, Forvo also has a large French library if you need to brush up. In the right panel of each page you can click tags to browse words by category. French, for example, has a "vins" category where you can learn how to pronounce all those fancy French wines.
Need a more structured way to learn French online? Check out Coffee Break French, a free podcast that covers the basics.
There's a new group on flickr called My Day, Yesterday, which features videos of < 90 seconds. The videos serve as a catalog of events. Here's my first go at "My Day, Yesterday," which I filmed this past Friday. You can click over to the flickr page to read more detail about its content.
For Julian's birthday, a bunch of us met at the Champs de Mars--the lawn in front of the Eiffel Tower. It was a mess of languages, to be sure, but we had a good time.
There are several English language bookstores in Paris, a handful of which I've yet to visit. Each one seems to have its own specialty.
The Abbey Bookshop, just down the street from the Cluny La Sorbonne RER stop (off Boulevard St. Michel), has the largest selection of travel books I've seen in Paris. The shop is floor-to-ceiling books. The owner, a friendly Canadian, makes recommendations based on my purchases each time I visit. I've never wandered the shop when he wasn't on a step ladder shoving books into tiny crevices, or rearranging large stacks of them to get to the shelves behind. Because of the narrow aisles, I don't recommended the Abbey for those with clumsy tendencies, great height, or especially round bellies. Though there's a wide selection of nearly every genre, I primarily visit the Abbey Bookshop to buy travel guides.
See the Abbey's interior here and here. Information from the Abbey's website:
Established as a S.A.R.L. in Paris in 1989: Corporate Name: "The Abbey
Bookshop (Europe) S.A.R.L."
subsidiary of "The Abbey Bookshop" in Toronto, created in 1981
only bookshop outside of Canada representing Canadian publishers - both
anglophone and francophone
established and existing without any grants, 100% independent
in 1996, creation of "The Canadian Club"
Shakespeare & Co. is another beloved Parisian bookstore that has been around much longer. The shop's history, in addition to a schedule of readings and a 360 tour, can be found here. The shop is across the Seine from Notre Dame, with the
Abbey Bookshop just a few blocks away, deeper in the Latin Quarter.
Shakespeare & Co. opened in 1951 after its owner, George Whitman, amassed a large collection of English-language books during several years living in Paris. The bookstore served as a base for many members of the Beat generation, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs among them. Its name comes from a previous Parisian bookstore (in a different location) run by Sylvia Beach, who catered to members of the Lost Generation -- Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Man Ray, James Joyce, etc. Today's shop is now run by Sylvia, George's daughter, who is named after Beach.
The store hosts several readings every season, and also serves as a meeting place for small writers' workshops in the city. Next door in another store front, Shakespeare & Co. houses its collection of rare and antique books, which I've never seen open to the public. I suspect to see the collection one must know the owner or make a special request. There are a few beds on the second floor or the main shop where visiting writers can stay the night, or where "tumbleweeds" can sleep in exchange for a few hours of work.
Just inside the front door of the shop is an entire shelf of books on Paris and France, ranging from historical texts to novels that use the city as a setting.
There are still some English-language bookstores in the city that I haven't visited yet, most notably the Village Voice where David Sedaris is reading later this month.
I feel I should begin by describing how I have arrived here this evening. This description will not flatter me, but somehow recording it seems vital to beginning whatever it is I am to say, explore, or discover this evening while addressing a somewhat formless and indefinite audience (Oh Internets, will we ever truly come to know and understand each other?). I woke moments ago after drifting off for what may have been half an hour. I had a tissue stuffed into one nostril, my face propped up with one hand, and a thick drool of sickness rolling halfway down my forearm. In my lap, my computer; I'd made it halfway through an interview with David Foster Wallace, which I say not as commentary on the quality of his writing, but to reveal something about which and what kind of sentences may have helped usher me here.
All of Paris seems to have caught cold. Everyone is sniffling and coughing. Unfortunately I am no exception. My head feels swollen with snot, I can't stop sneezing, and I feel miserable enough to wish I could stay in bed, but not miserable enough to feel justified in doing so. I took notes on Southworth and Hawes in art history this morning, met some girls in my program for lunch, then attended grammar at the Sorbonne, where things began to fall apart. Madame Berthier spied me looking pathetic halfway through her lecture on les adjectifs, and declared, Vous êtes vraiment malade, ma chérie, and advised me to arm myself with more than a bag of honey-flavored cough drops. After grammar I descended the twelve flights of stairs to phonetics to explain, Excusez-moi, je suis très malade--trop malade pour parler le joli français.
I write this not for pity, but for context.
Earlier this week I went to speak with my program director in her office. Primarily, I went to collect paperwork for my trip to the prefecture tomorrow, but I stayed longer to chat. She asked whether my room mate and I got on, if I was enjoying life in Paris. I told her a little about the people I've met, my plans for travel, how every day living here is like a gift. She confessed that even after thirty years of life in Paris, when she wakes up in a bad mood, a trip to the park or a stroll around the neighborhood can quickly lift her spirits. I'm inclined to agree with her.
Certainly there are experiences I grumble about--this cold, for one, or the long line I must wait in at the prefecture tomorrow. I share my hardships with other students, who suffer many of the same experiences. Over lunch, two California girls and I made light of forking over what seems an exhorbant amount of money for shampoo, which comes in tiny bottles. We anticipate our next trip to Sam's Club with both excitement and dread. I know that when I return, everything in America will seem ridiculously large--the cars, the roads, the buildings, the people. The fact that you can stock an American bathroom with gallons of shampoo and a year's supply of toilet paper with a single trip to one location baffles and excites me. The idea of not returning to Monoprix each week for a tiny 5€ bottle of shampoo appeals to me. Simultaneously, there is something to be said for living life one liter of milk at a time.
When I studied creative writing in high school and lived from workshop to workshop, critique to critique, we spent a lot of time thinking about our lives as creative writing students. The more we progressed with our expression, the more it seemed we wrote about the same thing over and over. I often felt like a broken record, and often said so. Here's an excerpt from one of my favorite poems that I wrote (was it sophomore year?), "On Finding the General Vicinity":
And I wonder when we will resign ourselves
to the fact that we write the same poem
our whole lives,
that our existence is a poem
that merely revises itself;
no matter how much we change
we have only twenty-six letters
and a teaspoon of punctuation.
We are our own memories
rearranged.
Though it hasn't quite happened yet, I'm beginning to feel the same way when I write here. If I come to write something personal rather than informative, it is always about the way Parisian life doesn't seem real. Even small things seem the stuff of dreams--the afternoon light, the collective murmur of softly-spoken French in a crowded park, the cobblestone pedestrian streets lined with specialty shops that sell globes, tea pots, or some other equally marvelous and unusual thing. If there is one thing I feel is difficult to capture, it is the sense of well-being and excitement in everyday life, since nearly nothing seems mundane in this city. I hope you will forgive me as I try again and again, with increasing sentimentality, to wrap my brain around the fact that I live here.
The feeling only grows, since daily life is growing larger than Paris. I have booked a trip to Prague the weekend of my birthday, and this weekend I will purchase tickets for a visit to Istanbul mid-November. I've asked my parents to consider allowing me to stop in Reykjavik on my way back to the States next year. My program director encouraged me to see Croatia, to visit north Africa--Morocco, Egypt. There are still dozens of places in France that I've yet to see. I have never been to Spain. Though I've been to Austria, I have never seen Vienna. Even with a small budget the possibilities seem limitless. The world seems closer and more accessible than ever, and there's hardly a place I don't want to visit. Ayelen and I are counting the weekends we have left together, syncing our calendars, and creating lists of places near and far that we can squeeze into one weekend and a meager budget. The Canadian man who owns the Abbey Bookshop, an English-language bookstore with a sizeable travel section, is beginning to recognize me. I am leafing through guidebooks and reading literature to accompany the cities I plan to visit. I started The Unbearable Lightness of Being this morning, and have some books by Orhan Pamuk, who writes extensively about life in Istanbul.
It's becoming apparent how quickly I should find employment that requires me to travel. Life as a flight attendant sounds miserable. Do travel guide companies hire undergraduate interns with mediocre writing skills and minor ability to operate a camera?
Every September dozens of sites across all of France open to the public for one weekend. The public is invited, often for free, to visit some of the governmental institutions, private residences, old mansions, and other national treasures generally inaccessible during the year. For example, the Hôtel de Ville is open for tours. At the Eiffel Tower demonstrations are given to reveal how the elevators work. Unfortunately, with only one weekend, it's hard to squeeze everything in, since by the middle of the day lines can be long for the more popular sites. If you ever find yourself in Paris during September, try to time your trip to coincide with the Journées du Patrimoine. However, Paris isn't the only city that participates; sites across all of France open to the public for the same weekend.
Ayelen, my Argentinian friend, and I only made it to École Militaire before seeing tremendous lines elsewhere and eventually wandering up to the Marchés aux Puces (a HUGE flea market in the north of the city, report coming soon). The best strategy, perhaps, is to visit the more popular sites during the early morning, and the lesser ones later in the day. Oops.
You can read a little more about the history of École Militaire on Wikipedia. Today it is an institution for military higher education. I believe students actually live on the premsises, since during our visit we noticed a cafeteria. There are also stables, a library, and lots of fancy offices decorated in typical 18th century style.
After speaking briefly with a friend tonight, it occurred to me that those without French class are not familiar with the geography of Paris. As Joachim said, one forgets "how natural it's for a french person, yet how strange it must be for a stranger, just to know how everything works." So. Une petite leçon, mes chéris.
Paris is divided into twenty arrondissements, or little neighborhoods. We might call them "districts" in the U.S. Sort of like the boroughs of New York, except les arrondissements are much smaller. The arrondissements begin with the Louvre, and continue by spiraling outward, like a cinnamon bun (or, if you want to be French-y, comme un escargot). Notre Dame is essentially the heart of Paris (geographically, at least), since Paris's first inhabitants lived on the île de la Cité, and Notre Dame is nearly at the center. The "cinnamon bun" arrangement makes sense in the context of such an old city; Paris's larger streets and boulevards are arranged circularly, rather than on a grid system.
Often, when asked where you live, you reply with the number of your arrondissement as well as the metro stop nearest your residence. Où habitez-vous? Dans le treizième (13e). Above every street sign in Paris is the number of its arrondissement. You can also discover a location's arrondissement by examining its zipcode. 75005 is in the fifth, 75014 in the fourteenth, etc.
A fun fact about les arrondissements: each is required by French law to have an open-air market at least two days a week. This means that you're never too far from fresh produce. My room mate and I visit our market every week to stock up on cheap produce, which is often half the price of what you can find in supermarkets.
See a map and lots more information about les arrondissementshere.
There are a few golden rules to getting by in France, and as one might guess, those rules deal primarily with etiquette and food. In most cases, manners will serve you well and you will be well served if you use them. Though the French aren't known for their friendliness, they are very formal and very polite. I would argue that the snooty French waiter cliché is born mostly out of language barriers and cultural misunderstanding, though as with any other country one is bound to encounter a few sales cons every now and then.
So. Some facts, some advice, and some tricks for your French foodie experiences.
It is perfectly acceptable in France to enter a restaurant or café and order only drinks, sit for hours, and not leave a tip. This is true in most locations, especially those that have tables and chairs set up along the sidewalk outside. However, if you sit at a table that has paper, a tablecloth, or place settings, the waiter will expect you to order a meal (rather than a drink and a croissant or something similar). Although it's rare, some restaurants will expect you to order food no matter where you sit, but typically it will be obvious. Restaurants with foreign cuisine (Indian, seafood, Mexican, etc.) like many of those found in Saint-Michel, for instance, expect those seated to order food. Their seating areas are usually indoors or somehow offset from the sidewalk/street.
Smokers are quarantined to outside tables. Only recently has this become the case.
Prices can change depending on where you sit, especially if you're only ordering drinks. If you sit inside a café and order coffee, you may spend as much as 2€ more than if you ordered the same drink at a table outside. The same is sometimes true for food. By the same token, restaurants charge less for to-go/street food. Part of this has to do with service.
Service is included with the price of your meal, which is to say that your waiter has already been tipped. However, it's not unheard of to leave some extra change after a drink, or a few small bills after a meal. The fancier the restaurant, the more obligated you should feel to "tip on top," and leave your server a little extra cash.
For cafés and more casual restaurants, there is no hostess. Seat yourself and your waiter will come by shortly.
Always greet your waiter, your baker, your cheese-maker, your neighbor, your cashier, and anyone else you speak with (the only exception being those you bump in the métro, to whom you should say "pardon" not "bonjour"). To enter a small market or specialty shop without greeting the owner or employees is very impolite, and this may be a large part of why Americans and non-French speakers are perceived as rude and insolent. Likewise, upon exiting, you should say thank you and goodbye, especially if you've purchased something. To say hello (depending on the time of day): Bonjour / Bonsoir. To say goodbye: Merci, au revoir! You may also wish someone a good day or good evening with Bonne journée / Bonne soirée. The more you Madame, Mademoiselle, and Monsieur people, the more formal and polite you sound. "You're welcome" is De rien, or more formally (like "the pleasure is mine"), je vous en prie. If the salesperson is someone in your neighborhood or someone you see frequently, you may extend your etiquette even further with "see you tomorrow" or "see you [day of the week]" to indicate that you appreciate their service and will return for business. À demain, or à lundi / mardi / mercredi / jeudi / vendredi / samedi / dimanche. Since my arrival in Paris I have been saying hello to every neighbor I pass in the hallway or on my way into / out of the building. The more formal and polite I've been in restaurants and bakeries, the better the service I've received.
Waiters in France differ from those in America. French waiters are often career men, which is to say that people rarely wait tables on the side to make ends meet; for Frenchmen it is serious business. French waiters are also more formal than American waiters, and will never introduce themselves ("Hi y'all, my name's Cindy and I'll be takin' care of you tonight.") as that would be improper. Furthermore, they will leave you alone unless you get their attention; they will not stop by every five minutes to refill your sweet tea and ask if everything tastes okay. There are no refills in France (and I can't imagine what sort of look one might receive upon requesting sweet tea), and it's a French restaurant--of course everything tastes okay. By the same token, you must request your check. Unless you have ordered only drinks, it will rarely be brought to you. Again, this fits into French etiquette and formality. Often the French take their time with a meal and talk at length when they've finished. If the waiter arrived with your check alongside dessert, he would be rushing you or disturbing your conversation. To request the check, you can get your waiter's attention with a little eye contact and a politely raised index finger while uttering the phrase, L'addition, s'il vous plaît.
Table manners in France are pretty much the same, except both hands are kept on the table while eating (as opposed to the American one-hand-in-lap). It's perfectly acceptable and even prefered during a meal to place your slice of bread next to your plate on the table. The French will rarely put a serving of bread on the same plate with their meal (and you'll only see bread plates in nicer restaurants).
If you bump into someone, need someone to get out of your way, or make a mistake counting change, etc., a little pardon or excusez-moi never hurt anyone.
Before I left the States I often wondered how much culture shock I would experience upon my arrival in France. I suspect that, as friends who have studied abroad tell me, the reverse culture shock will be much more severe, if not nearly unbearable. Because I have visited France before, I figured my grasp of French culture would more or less fall into place, and that I would begin life in Paris without too much trouble.
I come from a truly Southern university saturated with Greek life and American football culture. Our stadium is one of the largest college stadiums in the nation. According to Wikipedia, it currently has a seating capacity of 92,138+, and is the seventh largest on-campus stadium in the nation and the 17th largest stadium (by seating) in the world. During the fall, the town population grows by thousands each game weekend. People from all over the South come to see the games. They cook out on the quad, and often the entire campus smells like hamburgers and hot dogs. Sometimes people set up televisions on the quad if they don't have tickets to see the game in the stadium. Hundreds of RVs park all over town. The interstate backs up for hours with bumper to bumper traffic as people go to or leave the game.
I left a campus full of res-rats, sorority girls, boys in polos and baseball caps, students wandering campus early morning in pajamas and flip-flops. I left Friday nights of beer-pong, Waffle House, bowling. I left behind "y'all" and "ROLL TIDE!" and Gordo, Alabama's yearly "Mule Day" craft fair with a parade of livestock. I left behind bluegrass house shows and Mexican grocery stores. I haven't heard the Alabama fight song or Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" since early in the summer. One of the last nights I spent in Tuscaloosa was July 4th, when I went with some friends to a giant field to watch a fireworks show. We found ourselves engulfed in stereotypical Tuscaloosa culture--all the things most people think of when they picture residents of the rural South. But also there was my South: twenty-something men in plaid shirts with full beards, tattoos, and deep Gulf Coast accents; dudes who play in folk-punk or bluegrass bands; twenty-something crafty women in vintage dresses and cowboy boots.
I think it's hard to capture the South as I know and experience it--the South that is truly my home. I find it difficult to explain things that I find uniquely Southern, but that don't fit into the stereotypical picture most outsiders have of the region. The South has given me such a rich life, and such rich experiences, and yet I find its charm and influence impossible to capture verbally. I feel closest to revealing My South when I use images, but they are images entirely informed and brought to life by my own experiences and sentimentalism that I often wonder if non-Southerners can tap into the same magic if they lack the direct experience. My South is full of childhood--catching fireflies in my neighbor's backyard, playing in the creek behind my house, riding bikes through the neighborhood for hours until dusk, baking pumpkin muffins and sleeping over every weekend at my best friend's house a short walk away. It is the heavy summer air and the cicadas singing in the backyard. It is a cookout at my uncle's. It is the pet caterpillar, Wooly, that my sister and I kept for an entire season. We kept lizards in empty strawberry containers. One summer we kept tadpoles in one of the bathtubs, and the neighbor's cat broke in for a snack. The South is driving through the same streets I played in as a child, with the windows down. It is breaking away from a party and sitting on a trampoline in the dark. I am nostalgic and sentimental about the South the same way I am about these memories, and the two are inseparable for me, if not the same thing.
So much of that South--My South--is present in Tuscaloosa, even if it's sometimes eclipsed by the more stereotypical Southern culture of football games and hounds tooth hats. When I finished summer school in July, I felt relieved to abandon that for a little while. It was the people as much as the place--an inexplicable separation from someone I loved, crumbling friendships due to busy schedules, a strange and disheartening short-lived romance. I lived alone in a dark apartment for the summer semesters. I often felt lost, hardened by my fierce independence. The things I created frustrated me further. My photography seemed totally incapable of capturing what I needed it to, yet I often retreated to the dark room to develop sheets of film late into the night, hoping to feel the same catharsis I had during my first photo class in the fall. My work moved from vibrant figure studies to vacant documentary landscapes, from 16x20 high-contrast prints to muddy 4x5 argyrotypes.
When I finished summer school in Tuscaloosa, I was anxious to leave. Just as I tie so many of my memories to their setting, I associated much of the frustration and loneliness I felt with the place I experienced it--with Tuscaloosa--and leaving in July felt liberating, like a gasp of air after a long struggle under water. Leaving the country felt even better. Life in Paris is the genesis of a new character--one that, by the time I return to the States, may eclipse the person I was when I boarded the plane in August.
Last night, I wrote to a friend I've known since kindergarten. College has separated us by five or six states, and we do well to see each other a couple of times a year. When we're able to meet, it's usually for grandiose conversation over coffee; we summarize six months of events and emotional experiences, and try to have time left over to address the philosophical questions that plague us simultaneously. Last night I wrote:
Isn't it sort of strange where life has taken us? I suppose that seems
like a pretty obvious question--cliché, even. But I have so few true
friends that have known me so well through so many stages of life, and
vice versa, that it really is an odd experience to reflect on. I feel
sometimes as though we're now living the epilogue of a movie about our
lives. The scenes stopped years ago, and now we are mere sentences in
the final frame of the film. "Glynnis went on to study at the Sorbonne
in Paris." "M. and S. continued to date in college."
Things like that. I don't mean to say that a movie about our lives
would have already ended by age twenty-one, just that our lives as
we're living them today seem removed by epilogue-distance from what
they used to be. Yet we knew each other when. I think I always have that sense with you, perhaps more so than with other
friends, because we really do see each other rarely, and when we do, we
converse in big, sweeping updates about all things philosophical,
grand, and confusing about life, and sometimes lack the time for simply
"hanging out." C'est la vie.
For now, I feel that is the best summation of my experiences in Paris: I am living in the barely-conceivable sentences of the epilogue following a film about my adolescent life.
Just as Tuscaloosa overwhelmed me in the summer--rendered me nearly useless, sucked life out of me--Paris has overwhelmed me today. Though primarily I have good days, I'm beginning to see how the city can get to me. If I were keeping score, Paris would be winning. This, my friends, might be a bit of culture shock. Most of the frustration stems from French bureaucracy, and obtaining all the documents I need to apply for my temporary residency card. I will write more extensively about la carte de séjour later, but essentially I have been using what little energy and free time I have to commute to every corner of the city looking for offices and photo studios, often with very bad or wrong directions. Frequently when I finally arrive at a destination, the people I need to speak to are out to lunch, the location is closed for the day, or the usual office hours aren't being kept.
This, my friends, is France. Where nothing is open on the weekends, everything closes for lunch (sometimes at irregular hours), and the laundromat down the street locks up without warning or explanation while all your clothes sit wrinkling in the basin of a dryer. Thankfully, after several hours of returning to the same locked door, I have pants to wear tomorrow, but it may be several more days before I can wait in line at the préfecture to get my residency card. If you imagine the hassle, wait, and disgruntled workers of the United States' DMVs and multiply it by foreigners, students, twenty more documents per person, taxes, and language barriers, you might have some idea of what I have to look forward to. All this plus the water in my apartment shut off without explanation for most of the day, two repair men who mocked me because they thought I couldn't understand them, and you have a picture of my day. Oh Paris.
But I did score one against Paris today. The lady who works in the pâtisserie next door stopped me before I left with my chausson aux pommes and baguettine to say that she thought my hair was vraiment jolis, très très jolis. Red hair will always have its perks.
I hope that as my relationship with Paris blossoms and my French improves, my score will be higher than the city's. As Hemingway said, "If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then
wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for all
of Paris is a moveable feast." If Paris renders me unfit for life elsewhere, I will consider my year a smashing success. But tonight, I long for the comfortable--for a snuggly couch with a friend on it, for a familiar face across from me at a café, or for a little of my father's cooking.
