Rue Rude

Intriguing use of the word "menu"

A non-French scandal, but a very French use of the word menu!

Silvio Berlusconi, the picturesque Prime Minister of Italy, is in trouble again over his sex life, this time over "Ruby", a 17-year-old Moroccan-Italian "dancer" to whom he had earlier given € 7000. When Ruby was arrested for stealing € 3000 from a friend, police were surprised to get a phone call from the Prime Minister, saying they had to let her go, as she was the "daughter of Hosni Mubarak," President of Egypt. Since she wasn't, of course, the news eventually came out. Moreover, the Egyptians are now furious!

Moreover, Ruby revealed that although the Prime Minister had not slept with her, she had been present at several soirées with him, including one where he and one of his employees, a television host, were the only men among twenty or so young women, "and I was the only woman who wasn't naked."

The French newspaper Parisien, in describing the news, added that his wife asked for a divorce in May of 2009. "At the same period, he had been weakened by another scandal, after a prostitute, Patrizia D'Addario, asserted that she had passed a torrid night with him, which she also described par le menu (in great detail) in a book a few months later."

A la même époque, il avait été fragilisé par un autre scandale, après qu'une prostituée, Patrizia D'Addario, eut affirmé avoir passé avec lui une nuit torride qu'elle a d'ailleurs décrite par le menu dans un livre quelques mois plus tard.

The Salon du Chocolat

 

I'm not actually très chocolat, myself, but yesterday was the first day of the Salon du Chocolat. My visitors from the States went, and came home piled high with bags of chocolate in all forms, and so enthusiastic that they are going back this weekend.

Don't bother to go to the Salon du Chocolat's website. It suffers from all the usual French website idiocies. But here is the schedule.

The Charles Proust prize, described as "the most prestigious trophy in the world of pâtisserie," given only every two years, was awarded yesterday, at the Salon, to Christophe Renou of the Ecole du Grand Chocolat Valrhona [surely not another Flash animation. Ah ben oui!]. I love how the trophy looks like a kebab of silver macaroons.

Paris parking ticket, 2010

The new parking tickets look much politer than the old ones:

Parking in Paris has changed a lot since I first moved here. There used to be free parking in front of my building, but after the long strikes of 1995 everyone started driving into the city and a lot of people never went back to public transportation. Now I believe there is no free parking anywhere in the city.

However, the price of a parking ticket has not changed since 1986. It is 11 €, and I have to admit that I have often calculated that it's cheaper to pay the occasional contravention than to pay the parking meter, which can cost €3 an hour. Apparently I wasn't the only driver making that calculation, because legislators have just decided to raise the price of the amende (parking ticket) to 20 €. However, no date was given for this change.

The clean buildings of Paris

Ravalement on a Paris street

AAAAAaaaaaaa! So much noise when I'm trying to write! The building next to mine is being ravalé. 

In Paris, there is a legal requirement to clean a building every ten years. Although it is observed mostly in the breach, you can't let it slide too long, as there are penalties. So at least every 15 or 20 years, a building in Paris must be cleaned. This is paid for by the owners of the building, can cost more than 100,000 euros, and takes up to six months-- six months of scaffolding around the building night and day, ear-shattering noise all day long, and access by burglars to all the apartments. Everyone hates it, but it's one of the reasons Paris is so beautiful today.

I read once that when they were making the 1966 movie Is Paris Burning?, about World War II, the film team had to blast all the Paris buildings they filmed with dirt to make them look as grimy as they were during the war. Then afterwards, they had to pay to have them all ravalé to look shiny clean again.

The talkative florist

At the florist's I get into a long conversation with a passionate traveler who works there. "Oh oui, j'adooooore les États-Unis [the United States]! I have been to New York-- I loved New York-- la Floride, and I went to Las Vegas, I love Las Vegas! Although it's true, I was only six years old when I went, and the mini-Tour Eiffel had not been built yet. Las Vegas, some people think it's garish, but I love it! I saw the white tigers there. It was the hotel Mirage, do you know it? I love to travel. I want to go to Sundance, I might see Robert Redford [she was about 25; it surprised me she wanted to see Robert Redford]."

As she prattled away, doing odd jobs, the other florist finished my autumn bouquet, tied a raffia bow around it, and wrapped it in a handsome cone of brown paper. The talkative one asked me, "You're American, right?"

"Madame est parisienne," said the quiet one, to my delight. "She is a Parisian from an American background!"

What to wear if you're a Paris student, October 2010

I wondered why all the students in my neighborhood, boys and girls, are wearing shiny puffy black jackets that look like this, until I looked for a photo on the web. This one is a Moncler doudoune, €500 and more. Sometimes that's all it takes to realize why something catches on in France. Black, and expensive! What could be more classique!

The Toussaint holidays arrive with no gas

This evening the Toussaint school holiday begins-- all French public schools are out until the 4th of November. Normally, this is one of my favorite times of year. Paris empties out as everyone flees south to country houses or their southern relatives. The weather is crisp and fine, the flea markets and museums are open but uncrowded, and it's the best time of year to visit Paris. I have a wave of visitors to prove it.

But this year, with the strikes and gas shortages, Toussaint promises to be a bit morose.

"Why France is impossible to reform"

Lack of inspiration today, so I just took a photo of this week's cover of L'Express, which says it all.

I have an old university classmate who is quite far left by American standards, although he would be fairly mainstream left for French-- oddly, he used to be far right in college; I have always thought that people on the extremes politically have much in common. Anyway, on a listserv discussion of the French strikes yesterday, he wrote, "Really, do you think [France would] have a welfare state without the strikes? We've [Americans] got no strikes and no welfare state." 

But I thought back to the Dutch, with their long history of taking care of the poor and orphans through city foundations, or the Germans, who had Bismarck impose a welfare state from the top, or British, many of whom had never been as well off as during the war when everything was rationed, so voted for Labor after the war in spite of loving their Churchill. Why are the French so different? Would France really be worse off if they weren't always in the streets?

 

Why don't we understand?

Retirement at 62 as a problem? Lycée students demonstrating for something they'll have to pay for and will never get themselves? I notice the Socialists aren't saying they won't raise the retirement age, either.  I think it's partly just that everyone wants to complain about Sarkozy, the economy, life. 

This is one of those periods, or rather paroxysms, that make Americans in France feel very, very foreign. 

Everyone in France is on strike

As Jeff Danziger (the cartoonist) may not know, being unemployed (which in France is an active verb: chomer) does not keep you from going on strike.

So far the strikes and protests haven't been a problem for me, tucked away in my little "village" within Paris. But the truckers have just joined the strike and the airport may run out of fuel by this evening. I will stock up on groceries today, I think. 

The way strikes work in France is that people strike till they get what they want and the government caves in. I'm really curious if that will happen this time. There is general agreement among people in other countries (where retirement ages are higher, e.g. 67 in the U.S. now) and among economists and businessmen that France can't afford a retirement age of 60 now that most people live so much longer than before. But there is general agreement among people in France (70%) that raising the retirement age is an outrageous attack on the French way of life. Thus, the strikes.

Meanwhile here is this interesting threat from Maxime Dumont, head of the biggest transport workers union, interviewed on RTL.

"We're going to hit harder and harder the way we know how, in other words, stop supplying the country. That should lead things to evolve once there's no more money in the cash machines or there are no more sick people to be transported [he means, ambulance workers are on strike too]. Anything could happen."

On montera crescendo dans ce que l'on sait faire, c'est-à-dire ne pas approvisionner le pays. Ça peut permettre de faire évoluer les choses lorsque l'on n'a plus de billets dans un distributeur ou lorsque l'on n'a plus de malades à faire transporter. Tout peut s'envisager.