Rue Rude

Saturday in Paris

I dragged myself to the market yesterday. When I got to my regular greengrocer, I shook hands all around as usual (they have heavy, calloused red hands and it makes me feel guilty for my easy life). I bought some avocadoes and was warned not to try to eat them right away, and given a sample of the mangoes and clementines. As I was leaving, the woman reached under the counter and brought out this little bouquet of lilies-of-the-valley. "And I wish you a happy May Day!" she said. "These are from my own garden."

In the afternoon, it was beautiful weather. Everyone who was left in Paris, and all the tourists, seemed to be with me on the Champs-Elysées. On the corner of avenue Montaigne, I saw this sexy cow with lipstick, high heels and black lace, by Chantal Thomass, who makes lingerie. It seemed to be the general favorite. Over by the Petit Palais there is another cow with a Moulin Rouge theme. It even has the big windmill wings over it.

I got into a conversation with a man from Mali, who was listening to the beginning of the big soccer game between the Olympique de Marseille and the Paris-Saint-Germain teams at the Stade de France. He said he was for O.M.

"Doesn't that make you unpopular, in Paris?" I asked.

"Oh no! All the immigrants are for O.M."

"Why is that?"

"The PSG is racist. I don't mean the team itself, but their fans. They're a bunch of racist hooligans."

Last night after midnight, there was suddenly an uproar of car-horn honking and cheering, and we knew that the PSG must have won.

Cordons rouges and a Tuareg

This weekend is the beginning of the ponts, or bridges-- it means the three- or four-day weekends that come all through the month of May and empty out the city.  I was in a hurry to do an errand and took the car. Bad idea, there was a big traffic jam along the quai and a cordon rouge policeman-- the ones who literally wear a red cordon around their shoulders (above) to escort and protect VIPs around Paris-- had blocked off the entry to the voies sur berges, the fast express roads along the river.

As I inched my way, red light after red light, past the policeman, who looked bored, a motorcyclist came and talked to him and he opened up the barrier and let him through. Just as I went too far to go back, the policeman opened up the barrier and all the cars behind me poured through, zooming past us. How annoying!

When I went by the Elysées palace, where the President of France lives with a huge garden off the Champs-Elysées, there were more cordon rouge policemen. Mahmoud Abbas, the beleaguered president of the Palestinian authority, is in town, so it was probably for him.

He picked a bad time to come, though. Chirac and Villepin are in big trouble! As of this afternoon, it looks very much as if they ordered the French secret service to spy on their rival Nicolas Sarkozy, possibly leak false allegations that he has an offshore bank account, and generally make him and various other political rivals look bad. Oh là là!
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Completely out of the blue, so to speak, I saw in the middle of Paris, standing on a street corner comme si de rien n'était, a tall jet-black Tuareg in full blue desert costume, complete with blue veil across his face and piercing eyes. He looked wonderful.

*Photos from Global Eye, leyeti at flickr,  beatm at flickr, and kaffee-tips.de   

Morose

Morose, je me sens morose.

This week has been depressing. Maybe it's the weather. "April is the cruellest month." Spring has not really arrived, and you still need a coat. My French friends are all in a bad mood. K told me he's unemployed as of last month, and H's new job isn't working out. C wants to move into Paris from the suburbs but can't afford to, and M can only find freelance work. T needs more people for his company, but he's afraid to hire anyone, so he's working night and day.

A friend and I had lunch at a nice cafe near here, and it took us almost an hour to get our coffee and our bill, because the four people working weren't enough for the fifty or so people in the restaurant. You can't even complain, because the owner is always so nice and was working so hard.

All those things are related.

I went to a party where I met a bunch of Americans and Brits who don't live here, and some kids who had just moved here for a year or two. A few lived here part-time and were the envy of the others. Everyone talked about how much they love Paris, how beautiful it is, how happy they were to be here. How they had dreamed all their lives of coming. I had too!

I didn't dare to say that these days my own envie is also to live here part-time, or even to leave Paris, and live far, far away. I'm not sure where. The grass is always greener.

Mais ce n'est pas demain la veille!

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I had to explain to the rôtisseur that I had not been unfaithful because of bird flu, but because I had been out of town. His business has picked up again after a big drop in February.

Then I walked by the cheese store. I wasn't going to buy anything, but the owner was lounging in the doorway as I passed and called out to me that she hadn't seen me in a while. I ended up buying a pretty chèvre "made by draping it over a teacloth" and discovering that cottage cheese made from cows' milk is called brousse in French, but that broccio (the kind for sale) was from Corsica and made with ewe milk.

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My favorite quote today is from an article in Le Parisien, "The strange silence of Bertrand Delanoë," the socialist mayor of Paris.

A socialist politician observed of Delanoë, "Il s'est réfugié dans le jospinisme incantatoire." [He has taken refuge in an incantatory Jospin-ism.]

How I love the French language!

More on Paris schools

[It was a beautiful day today. Everyone was wearing sunglasses. I took these photos on my way home this evening about 6:30 p.m.]

My upstairs neighbor, whose husband is foreign, met me as I was going out. We exchanged various tales of woe. She told me that she was sending her younger son out of the country to boarding school after a vain attempt to find a school here in Paris where he felt happy.

He is a free-spirited boy raised in a big house in the country, getting out of school with plenty of time for sports, and used to at least occasional praise from his teachers.

"We found a wonderful school run by Jesuits," my neighbor said, "and the director told me that they had had to put a stop to their exchanges with the French school Philippe was in. He said, 'At the French school, they care only for the prestige of the school, and nothing for the welfare of their pupils.'" And it's true; every year in June they throw out dozens of students, not for failing, but when they don't make the expected very high grade on their exams. This is called "rigueur" and they are proud of it. It gives the school a 99% pass rate on the Bac S!

A description of most of the top schools in Paris, unfortunately. The school system here concentrates on what you do wrong, and produces kids whose parents introduce them, "This is Nicolas, who needs to study harder." At which, instead of glaring or spitting, Nicolas bows his head, abashed. Where 95% of the population leaves school feeling dumb, and the other 5% becomes insufferably arrogant (and run the country).

(The U.S., on the other hand, specializes in self-esteem, "My child is an honor-roll student" bumper stickers, and straight-As for kids who would be hard-pressed to find France on a map.)

Bears come back to France

The French are very concerned about the dozen or so bears living in the Pyrenees. A few years ago I even saw a children's sweatshirt that said, "Maman, c'était quoi un ours?" [Mama, what was a bear?] as if they were already close to extinction. They actually are near extinction in France, and there was a huge uproar when the bear named Cannelle (Cinnamon) was killed in November 2004.

To me it seems a little odd. I am a bear-lover too (although I have met bears too close for comfort in Wyoming, Montana, and upstate New York). But after all, there are tens of thousands of bears safe in other parts of the world. I get the feeling a lot of bear supporters just love the way bears look.

Last summer while sojourning in grizzly country, I read a book on how to survive bear attacks* (it was the revised edition, which alarmingly shows that the original advice was not 100% bearproof!) and learned that the European bear and the grizzly are essentially the same animal genetically. But the European bear, after millennia of being hunted down for every aggression against humans, now flees from people, and so has managed to survive in remote places of the east European mountains and in Scandinavia.

I thought this story was funny and you can tell that the reporter did, too.

From AP news today.

The release of the female bear Palouma, planned for Tuesday at the end of the day in the village of Arbas (Haute-Garonne), was delayed by several hours because of the presence of about a hundred opponents of the reintroduction of the plantigrade [sole-walker], to the mountain, it was learned at the beginning of the evening from those accompanying the Minister of Ecology.

The anti-bear people had come in small groups, after hours of walking through the mountains, and placed themselves uphill from the site chosen for the release, making noise with bells and cans, which put into question the release of the animal, which had arrived by truck from Slovenia, according to information given by the press pool present, and confirmed by members of the Minister's group.

According to Philippe Lacube, president of the ASPAP (Association pour la sauvegarde du patrimoine Ariège-Pyrénées, or Association for the safeguarding of the Ariège-Pyrénées patrimony), this action allowed the opponents to display their disapproval of the reinforcement of the bear population. It showed Nelly Olin that "this is not the way we see the future of the Pyrenees," he said.

The Minister of Ecology called the opponents "cowards", "imbeciles", and "donkeys", and assured them that she would not renounce her plan of reinforcement. "It's a beautiful story turned into a nightmare," she declared, explaining that to release the bear under these conditions was too risky, and that it would be kept several hours in a secret place before being let go, doubtlessly during the night.

We all want to be a fonctionnaire

A recent poll shows that the vast majority (76%) of young French people are attracted by the idea of being fonctionnaires (government workers--you know, those people who go on strike every few minutes).

Interestingly enough, though, half of the jeunes de banlieue say they want to start their own business-- those troublemakers!

What a tragedy that all this human potential is going to waste. The French economy creates literally hundreds of jobs every few months for the entire country of 60 million plus.

(D'ailleurs quand je me plains de la France ce n'est pas pour dire que mon propre pays a tout résolu. Mais comme disait Jésus cité par Matthieu dans le Nouveau Testament, c'est plus facile de voir la paille dans l'œil du voisin.)

(Slogan on fence, above: "We will only get what we know how to take. Borrowing for everyone!" <Correction, thanks Marco: "Ready for anything!"> Slogan on yellow sign, above: "Money is only a fiction.-- Aristotle".)

White wine first

Just learned a little dicton about wine, last night.

Blanc sur rouge, rien ne bouge.
Rouge sur blanc, tout fout le camp.

[The white before the red, nothing moves (i.e. no problem).
The red before the white, everything goes to hell.]

The waiter spills

At lunch, the waiter spilled a long strand of fish on the armrest of the diner next to us.

He saw me laughing and said in an aside, "It's only on the armrest, il n'y a rien de grave!"

"Soupe de potiron would be worse," I said.

When he came back to our table, I told him that once when I was a student, working in a fancy restaurant, I knocked over the entire pastry cart my first day at work. "Eclairs au chocolat, napoléons, cheesecake, fraises à la crème, all over the floor!"

En surenchère, the waiter confided, "My first job was in a Michelin three-star restaurant. One day, we were so busy, we were running everywhere. The maître d'hôtel was after us. I had so many plates, they were coming up my arm. I had to put one on the floor and hide it with a tablecloth." He smiled triumphantly. "And I worked there for three more years!"

In France, it's traditional to have lunch on Sunday with your grandmother. We have this tradition in Louisiana also. The restaurant was full of families, grey-haired ladies, most with perfect red-nailed manicures, surrounded by children and grandchildren. It always makes me miss my family terribly.

[The plate in the photo is from a series of waiters by Guy Buffet for Williams-Sonoma. This one is called "The Poor Tip." Someone gave them to me because the waiters are French. But of course, I can't use them here.]

The grouchy expat

Tonight I was waiting for a taxi with some other people when a tall, well-dressed man about sixty came up. We waited for about five minutes, and then he said, "Would anyone like to share a cab?"  We wouldn't have minded, but no one was going in his direction. After exchanging a few sentences, I realized from his slight accent and button-down collar that in spite of his very European look and excellent French, he was American. The next taxi didn't come for a long time, so we griped about the mayor together. We agreed that Paris was the worst major city we knew of for finding a cab-- there are never any taxis when you need them, like in the rain, on weekends, after ten o'clock at night, and especially after the metro closes. There are fewer Paris taxis now than in 1920. Merci, Monsieur Delanoë!

The man said he had lived for thirty years in Paris, although he doesn't any more. By accident, we came to the same subject that I wrote about a couple of days ago, the requirement to say hello in France before any other communication. He was funny and had the truculent attitude some long-time expats develop. He said that when he gets in a taxi, he just gives the address where he's going: "16 rue Chaillot," for example.

"But some drivers will then turn around and say in exaggerated fashion, 'BonJOUR!' --I call them 'les Bonjouristes.' After waiting for twenty minutes for a taxi, I'm in no mood for that. I say, 'Vous allez me donner des leçons de politesse?' [Are you going to give me lessons in politeness?]. It usually degenerates from there."

If I had to guess, I would say he had a French wife he's now divorced from. Cela explique tout!

A taxi finally came and we said goodbye. This photo was taken about 8:30 tonight, just at sunset, looking towards Invalides from the taxi window. Isn't this a beautiful city? The driver was a West African whose phone played Haydn when it rang.

We had to wait at the bar at the restaurant for a short time. Instead of taking our names to call them out later in public (I always hate that), this resto had found a more elegant solution. Each party was handed a card with the name of a musician on it. Ours was Liszt, which the girl pronounced "Litts," but I also heard Gershwin, Bach, and Mozart. We had a drink at the bar and then heard "Litts! Votre table est prête."

 

Rafales over Paris

I heard on the radio that tomorrow, Friday, four Dassault Rafales will fly over Paris during a memorial service in honor of the twentieth anniversary of the death of Marcel Dassault. Normally, no planes are allowed to fly over Paris-- special permission is needed, as on Bastille Day-- so it should be quite a sight (and sound). They're striking fighter planes.

There will be three Rafales from the army and one from the navy.

His son, Serge, who owns the Figaro, said in the interview, in his gravelly voice: "It's the best airplane in the world. Everyone knows that."

"You seem to have trouble selling it overseas," said the interviewer (who would not let Dassault finish a sentence, and kept trying to get him to admit that he supported Sarkozy for President).

"Politics," said Serge. "Les américains, for example, told the South Koreans that they could not buy Rafales, they had to buy American planes or the Americans would leave South Korea."

A rafale means a strong gust of wind.