Welcome to the 21st Century

It Keeps Happening

So we decided to restart the day, and went out to dinner at the little Italian place where the guy makes each dish of pasta from scratch for every order.  Wow.  It was super. And we sat next to a delightful American couple.  He is in TV, she is a Performance Artist.  They were lovely.

Then the chef was racing around as La Madame apparently was detained.  He greeted us like long-lost family; we've been there maybe 5 times this year.  Asked how we were doing, in English.  When he caught up he took our order and raced off to take care of the rest of the house.

Food was great.  Piping, steaming hot.  Fresh as can be. All ingredients fresh.  Aromatic.  Italian food in France. 

Then Madame arrived; shared with us that the Metro had a problem and she was stopped near Bastille for quite some time (she said how long, but my limited French failed me).  The American couple finished and left.  Nice folks.  Then the Madame stopped by to tell us about Christmas gift buying for her grandchildren, who aren't children anymore.  Now they want real gifts; Playstations, money and gift cards.  I suggested iPods.  She said it was all about family, food/eating, and now the gifts.  Longest conversation we've had with the Madame. Between us, we understood maybe 40% - that's an improvement.  As we paid and started to leave, we shook hands all around.  Everyone was thanked and wished a Joyeux Noel (Happy Christmas) and a Bon Annee (Good New Year). 

Le Monsieur was outside in the cold making phone calls on his cell.  When we met him outside we all shook hands, he thanked us and wished us a Bon Annee too.  It keeps happening.  We fall back in love with this town.   

The Neighbors

We got new next-door neighbors just a while back.  Like many French (most? all?) our new next door neighbors smoke a lot of cigarettes.  How much or many?  They smoke so much, they smoke themselves out of their apartment.  It actually becomes overwhelming to them.  So they open the door, and vent the smoke to the hallway.

Guess where it goes from the hallway?  That's right; the smoke pours into our apartment, to mix with the volatile organic compounds and paint fumes from the renovations on the third and seventh floors.  It's really nice.  Add that to the elevator (still broken after two weeks), the dust everywhere from the renovations, and it's an absolute joy in Paris right now.

The weather has been too cold for them to spray-wash the sidewalks, so the dogs**t is starting to pile up all over.  In fact there is a lovely half-frozen patch of it right in front of the door to our building.  Paris is charming in winter.  Susan says hello, too.

Sorry, bad day. 
 

26 and the Bubble

The bubble, that undefined personal area around each of us.  I finally got it.  The French bubble is way smaller than ours.  Read it somewhere, or maybe I figured it out. 

The French bang into you on the sidewalks and mass transit because they pay no attention to the bubble; yours or theirs.  They cut in front of you all the time.  A French woman dragging two roll-aboard suitcases almost knocked me off my feet leaving the Eurostar in London the other day.  She intentionally, and without a care, cut me off near a pillar.  Hit my ankle hard enough to take skin away - although I didn't notice that until later.  She hit me hard enough to flip one of the bags over.  When she caught up, she said "pardon".  That was it. 

We are constantly amazed that the French will walk out of a store right into you, stop, then go back in.  All without looking or considering the space around them.  They do it at the top of stairs and escalators, too.  It's fairly annoying.  Between the dogs**t on the sidewalk that you have to watch for, the adults on Razor scooters or roller-blades, the ladies pushing strollers, and the pedestrians cutting you off or stopping right in front of you. it can be like navigating an obstacle course here sometimes. 

On the bus, they just push through the crowd to get to the back.  Purses, backpacks, shopping bags all swinging and flailing.  Not unusual for older ladies to lean against you for support while the bus is underway.  And even for an American, I have a pretty big bubble.  Or had one, that is.  The root of my problem with the sidewalks, buses, Metro, and trains is my bubble.  This is official notice that I am shrinking my bubble.

And 26?  The number of flights of stairs I climbed up yesterday (I don't count downs - if I did the number would be almost double).  The elevator door is broken again.  It's been out all week.  We have no hope or expectation that it will be fixed soon.  Welcome to France.

It's Snowing

How odd. It is snowing like crazy here. Yesterday the city just about closed down. Limited bus service, and a lot of the trains were shut down.  It does snow, but for some reason they seem quite unprepared. 

An American pal of ours call Paris the world's largest library.  It is quiet for a big city.  And the French, as you know speak softly compared to Americans or Brits.  I've written about that in the past.  Well, the snow seemed to put even more of a damper on the sound.  It was sort of ghostly; here you are in the most densely populated city in Europe, and there were no cars, no sirens, and hardly any buses.  This is our street when it was really coming down.  I had to run out to grab some food and stuff for cooking.  I was standing under the awning of the nice bakery lady.

Our Snowy Street

This is the bus stop across the street from the apartment.  As you can see, some of the snow is sticking, even as it gets sunny out.  Still pretty cold though. The daily highs are around 29-30 F.  Nightly lows around 20 degrees. By the way, we are absolutely freezing.  Man are we spoiled.  30 years on the west coast of the US has ruined us for real winters. 

It's Sticking

And this is the Cluny Museum over by St Germain.  Sort of a famous place.  They have some tapestries from the 16th century called The Lady and the Unicorn.  Very rare.  One of a kind, in fact.  The wall on the far side of the museum was constructed early in the 14th century - I think 1334.  To the far right, behind the wall is an excavation to the Roman bath ruins below.  You can see them from the street around the corner.  The baths are from the Third (!!) century.  You might notice, this is sort of an old town.

The Cluny

 

Some Things are the Same

Funny, when you spend a lot of time in foreign countries, the differences start to really stand out; so you are very aware when the train goes from France to Germany for instance.  Architecture changes at the border or approaching the border, churches start to look different, of course the language changes along with the billboards and advertising, and stuff like food and drink changes.

Even the celebrities change country-to-country.  Some elderly American was complaining on the Eurostar the other day about all the French news coverage of the botched surgery of French pop star Johnny Halliday.  This old fellow had never heard of him.  So he complained about it to the railway steward?  Good thinking pal.  Anyway, in France, Halliday is just slightly less famous than Elvis was in the US.  But Johnny Halliday did not overdose.  He has continued his career into his mid-60's, until the recent botched back surgery, that is.  Well, as I was saying, even the celebrities change from country to country.  Although the French adore Jerry Lewis and Woody Allen - I do get the feeling they liked Woody Allen better when he was funny, but then who didn't?

The Brits are mystified that soccer star David Beckham is not a big star in the US. He and his odd-looking fashionista wife, a former Spice Girl, are the biggest celebs in the whole darn British Commonwealth.  On the cover of magazines, billboards, and newspapers.  They each have a fragrance too, which has the single funniest TV commercial I have ever seen.  Unintentionally funny. Like an inadvertent SNL commercial. It's like a parody of that old one where the girl runs through the field in slow motion.  Except this pretentious couple seems to take themselves verrry seriously.  It's really jaw-droppingly funny. Lots of stuff is very, very different here in Europe.

I may have pointed out that they seem to be enamored of Big Brother on TV in England.  People who got voted off in some previous season are invitees to red carpet affairs.  In the US, these folks don't even make the D-list.  Oh, yeah, and the British blogs and newspapers are much nastier than ours.  They say stuff you wouldn't believe when being critical of some celeb, politician, or sports star.   

But then you round a corner, or notice something that is exactly the same country-to-country.  Or exactly the same as in the States.  That happened to me earlier this week in the London area.  I was coming back from visiting a customer outside London.  Of course, it took me a 20 minute walk to to the right Tube station, a missed Tube, two missed trains, and about 10 flights of stairs at various Tube stations and train stations, along with a 20 minute walk at the end to get there.  On my way back to London, at the train station, however, the thing got me.  Not the difference, but the absolute sameness the world over.

The train company had recently promoted this guy on the poster to station manager.  Check out his picture.  This could have been done by any 12 year old boy on the planet.  And how funny and silly that of course it was.

Thank Goodness for Magic Markers

American Music

We were walking through a Christmas market in Paris the other night, and the music was really funny.  We heard all sorts of American Christmas music over the PA system.  First there was White Christmas, then Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, then Frosty the Snowman, which was the really funny one - it had Jimmy Durante singing. 

You gotta' remember, this is Paris, France. they have their own Christmas traditions.  They even used to have their own Santa Claus; a guy named Pere Noel.  But now, their Santa Claus looks just like ours. And our Santa Claus is just a commercial designed by Coca Cola in the 1920's.  This pop-cultural stuff is just surreal. 

But we see all sorts of evidence of encroachment.  The American pop culture is everywhere: Simpson's billboards in Berlin, Disney's Christmas Carol with Jim Carrey over Regent Street in London, and then you see this stuff on the side of restaurant in Paris, and you just shake your head.  I get the Don McLean part.  World famous singer-songwriter, genius copyright owner (he publishes and owns all his own music - got to keep every dollar earned on zillion-selling song American Pie), still touring.  But check out the poster underneath.  Kevin Costner and his band.  Who would pay money to see Kevin Costner and his country and western band in Paris?  I told you; surreal. 

Yep, Kevin Costner

Apple

Everyone here in Paris has an iPod or iTouch.  Those who don't have iPhones.  This picture is the most interesting hi-tech juxtaposition I have seen recently.  It is a series of Christmas season billboards for iPods and stuff hanging in the Gare du Nord, over the TGV trains.  Just looked cool to me.

These are the 180 mph trains going to Brussels, Amsterdam, London, Cologne, etc.  Pretty neat. 

Cool Picture

Travel

Just love the difference between going to England, and then returning to Paris.  Leaving Paris from the Gare du Nord, you stop and stand at UK Passport Control.  A very serious person (the women are much more serious than the guys) takes your passport, and runs it through a reader.  Then that same person asks you all sorts of questions:  how long are you going, where are you staying, what are you doing there, where do you live, when are you going home to the States, how long have you been over this time?  And they ask these questions every time you come and go.  I read that the UK Border Police are taught to distrust everything you say, and they are also taught to assume that you are trying to sneak into the UK.  Not the basis for a very good relationship from the start.

When you get off the train at St Pancras, there is this series of winding hallways where people with clipboards are stationed to give you the evil eye, in case you are a smuggler or something.  Some are in uniform.  You avoid eye contact, and walk out into the station.  You are now in England. 

Now, returning to France.  You hand the guy your passport.  He continues talking to the guy he shares the booth with.  He takes your passport.  Doesn't look at it.  Does not run it through his passport reader.  Eventually stops talking to other guy.  Flips through your passport to find a blank.  Stamps it.  Hands it back.  Starts talking with the other guy again.  That's it.  You walk through, enter the lounge, and wait for your train. 

By the way, when you get back to France, there is no customs, there is nobody waiting for you, or even looking at you.  there is nobody official at all.  You just get off the train, walk into the Gare du Nord train station and disappear into Paris and the Continent.  Welcome to France.  

Actually, Food May be the Religion Here

We are constantly amazed by the glittering array and variety of foods, food ingredients, and food products here in France.  There is also a mystifying difference in the names of ingredients and spices and it took me months to figure out what everything was (well, as much as I could figure out). 

We went looking for nutmeg, and all we could find were these nuts that smelled like nutmeg.  Duh.  It's Noix de Muscade - the "nut" in nutmeg.  And we went looking for Cinnamon.  We couldn't find cinnamon in the stores, until we looked for Cannelle. 

Case in point.  How many kinds of pepper do I use in the States to cook with?  Three.  I use black pepper, white pepper, and cayenne pepper.  I'm a pretty ok cook, and I didn't know there were many more than that.  Well, here is the pepper shelf at the spice department of a top store.  See if you can figure out how many kinds of pepper there are here. 

Pepper

And what about salt?  White salt, kosher (coarse) salt, maybe sea salt.  At the same store, they had about 22 kinds of salt, including; black Hawaiian, pink Himalayan (yes, Himalayan - don't ask me, I just report this stuff), and three different colors of sea salt - blue, green, and pink. Apparently these all have different tastes to real gourmands.

This shelf below is for varieties of cinnamon and curry, I think.  By the way, this department smells so good, and is so alive with aromas, that it is intoxicating.  I always walk away from this department in a state of near-frenzied hunger.  Susan seems to be fairly immune.  She just wants a crepe.  

Spice

More Christmas in Paris

So I mentioned the Christmas Light Show at the Eiffel Tower.  The French got really playful with their Tower at the Millennium.  For some reason, they had been quite conservative with decorating and lighting the big Tinkertoy.  But at midnight in 2000 they tossed all that out the window and shot fireworks out of the sides and top, ad had all sorts of lights going off.

They decided to keep the lights. Every night, exactly at the hour, sparkling lights go on all over the Tower front face, and put on a show that lasts exactly 5 minutes.  It's really sort of neat.  Well, at Christmas, they light the Tower with a series of multicolored lights all over every crossbar, top to bottom.  The lights make X patterns all the way up.  Not static, either.  They pulse, move up and down, and change in between green, red, orange, indigo, red, white, blue, and a couple others.  And the show lasts 15 minutes.  It is really pretty unbelievable.  Kids clap during the show.  Adults just stand and marvel.  We did. 

And this is pretty marvelous too.  While we were over at the big department stores looking at the windows, we snapped a couple pictures of the street and the buildings.

Lights