Rue Rude

Civilized waiting at the airport

If I have a choice, I try to arrange my family's and friends' flights on Air France to leave and come through CDG's Terminal 2E. This is the waiting area. Lots of nice chairs, tables, and benches. Behind where I am standing to take the picture is a little cafe. Nice, huh?

Absolutely swamped with work!

I had to go to the airport twice yesterday (séquelles de Thanksgiving) and saw this book in the bookstore as I was hanging around. It's become quite famous in France and got its author (Aurélie Boullet, whose nom de plume is Zoé Shepard) fired.  Actually only suspended with no pay for six months, because Aurélie, like the ridiculous characters she depicts, is a fonctionnaire of the French government and for all intents and purposes cannot be fired. 

It's a world in which people claim they are "swamped" [débordés] with work, but work "35 hours... in a month"; where most jobs are filled with relatives or friends of the people hiring; where meetings and telephone calls, long lunches, chatting, vacation planning and birthday parties take up most of the week, and where a short report that should take an hour to write exhausts someone and is not expected to be finished before several weeks have passed... nor ever read. 

Aurélie said in an interview that she had tried to disguise the names and location of the office, but that a colleague and friend from work had read the book and said, "T'es foutue, tout le monde va te reconnaître, c'est exactement ça." ["You're screwed, everyone is going to recognize you, it's exactly like this."]

 

 

Skies of Paris: One week

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

 

Monday

 

Tuesday

 

Wednesday

 

Friday

 

 

No Mo!

On Saturday some New York friends of ours had tickets to the Monet expo at the Grand Palais at noon, and invited us along.

"Mo-naaaayy," groaned my family member. "Anyone but Monet!" I do feel as if we've been seeing all too much Monet lately. We had visited the Orangerie, where Monet's water lilies are enthroned in a cathedral-like, hushed space of reverence, and the Musée Marmottan, in the 16th arrondissement, where frankly I was a lot more interested in the medieval illuminations. 

A college friend of mine who later became a famous artist used to say that there was a certain kind of girl he could tell even from a distance "just adored the impressionists." He said it with slight disdain and I am starting to know what he was talking about. Monet is great, fine! I'm just sick of him, is all! But I digress.

It was freezing cold and two of us had unwisely chosen to wear skirts. But the coupe-file [line-cutting] tickets were for noon, and we showed up at noon, so I thought, no worries! I'll soon be inside the warm Grand Palais. Wrong! Forty-five minutes later we were still standing outside watching our breath with everyone else who had noon tickets. "We have a lunch at one," said our friends, who do not understand French time or they would never have programmed two events in two hours. "Let's give the tickets away."

Looking around for the line of ticketless art-lovers, I asked a guard where it was. He was not the brightest bulb. "You want to give away your tickets and go stand in line over there?" he asked, puzzled. "There the wait is for three hours. Why would you do that?"

"Bienvenue en France!" said the Frenchman we had lunch with. "There are no consequences to anyone for keeping those ticket-buyers in the cold. That is why it happens." [It happens quite a lot, apparently. Here's another account.] He then told us how someone had rented his boat over the summer and crashed it into a rock at five in the morning, totalling the boat. "Of course we both have insurance," he said gloomily, "but the person who rented the boat is best friends with the chairman of the insurance company. Who knows if I will ever be reimbursed."

It's snowing in Paris!

Wow-- really pouring down snow. This rarely happens, but a cold wave is arriving from England.

Ten Things Not to Do in Paris... la suite

Intrigued by this post, which I don't completely agree with (the Champs-Élysées can be fun, especially right now when the Christmas market is up, and I love the 24-hour Maison d'Alsace late at night, a restaurant sponsored by Alsace, with its own boutique....). So I decided to post some of my own rules. 

1. Don't wear teal. 

(The caption under this photo (left), in German, says, "This jacket belongs in every closet!")

Also, shorts are for sports (only) in Paris. Anyone else you see wearing them is a tourist. (Exception: at the moment short shorts are in style for girls and you see a lot of them over tights. Cute look!)

2. Talk softly. 

3. Don't try to be French. It's okay to do things they won't do.  While I was gone, my charming American tenants invited everyone in the building and most of the local commerçants to a cocktail party. The South American concierge came all dressed up, looking very pretty. Everyone is still talking about what a great party that was. No French person would have had the nerve to throw it.

4. Don't think the Latin Quarter and Saint-Germain are where the action is. Buy the Pariscope for a cheap look at what there is to do. The Canal Saint-Martin is a good place to start.

5. Don't wear a lot of makeup or dress up too much-- it's better to look casually chic. 

6. Paris is an old people's city. For a wild time, go to London. Seriously.

7. In a nice restaurant or store, don't decide too quickly and don't ever be cowed by a waiter or salesperson. The more you care, the better they'll treat you.

8. This may be the most important rule of all. Don't ever walk up to anyone and just start asking a question. Always say hello or something else first. Bonjour Monsieur! Bonjour Madame! (The Monsieur/Madame is a class marker. Observe when people say it and then decide for yourself if you want to say it or not.) When you leave, say "Goodbye," not "Thank you."

9. Don't say Bon appetit. 

10. Don't assume trains and planes will run as scheduled if you are traveling during a French holiday-- that's the favorite time for strikes.

I'll probably think of more tomorrow. Meanwhile, have a happy Thanksgiving!

The devil in my kitchen

I bought quite a bit of wine for Thanksgiving and had it delivered (that is something I love about Paris!). The delivery man arrived very late, nearly nine o'clock in the evening, and brought the boxes upstairs and into my kitchen on a dolly like this. 

"Aren't you the propriétaire of the store?" I asked, surprised. 

"Yes, and my partner and I do all the deliveries too," he said. "You'd think with such a high unemployment rate we'd be able to find someone to deliver. We have tried for so long, but each time we hire someone on a temporary contract, he is not correct. And yet it's not a hard job. It's unbelievable how people don't want to work in this country."

"Well, at least you have a ... a ...." I realized I did not know the French word for "dolly." After all these years. 

He laughed. "It's called a diable," he said. "You have a diable in your kitchen!"

 

The old lady who pays for tenderness

I don't have much to say today so I thought I would translate this, by cosette50 on the journalists' website Rue89:

One afternoon in Lyon I was walking alone along the Saône, then into the city center. I sat down for a moment on a bench, a peaceful rest I thought I deserved.

At the end of the bench an old lady was sitting, discreet, silent. I'm the one who began talking to her; she didn't seem surprised. We exchanged words, and silences too.

A bit about Lyon, a few memories, a bit about the weather, and then, brusquely, she said goodbye, telling me she had an appointment with the hairdresser. With a fond smile, I wished her a nice afternoon, and that's when I learned her sadness.

With misty eyes, she confided to me that she goes to the hairdresser every week because it's the only place where she is touched, where her head is caressed, where two or maybe even three minutes are given just to her; besides this intimate moment, no one comes near her 85-year-old self any more. So these few minutes are the most precious in her week, when she quietly pays for this ritual shampoo and set. 

She dreams silently, without showing anything; she takes refuge in this magical interlude and feels the attention showered on her, even so briefly.

She doesn't delay further. She already missed the salon when it closed for Veterans' Day on 11 November, so this time she asks, almost begs for this right to a lost tenderness.

I see her walk away from the bank of the Saône, I'm sure she'll be very early; she is no doubt worried about getting there.

Un après-midi à Lyon, je me promène seule le long de la Saône, puis dans le centre-ville. Je me pose un instant sur un banc, repos mérité et paisible.

Au bout de ce banc s'assoit une dame âgée, discrète, silencieuse. C'est moi qui vais vers elle ; elle ne s'en étonne pas davantage. Nous échangeons nos mots et nos silences aussi.

Un peu de Lyon, un peu de souvenirs, un peu de temps qu'il fera et puis, brusquement, elle prend congé, me parlant de son rendez-vous « chez la coiffeuse ». Je lui souhaite une bonne fin d'après-midi par un sourire affectueux et là, j'apprends sa détresse.

Les yeux embués, elle me confie qu'elle va chez la coiffeuse toutes les semaines car c'est le seul lieu où on la frôle, où on lui caresse la tête, où on prend deux voire trois minutes uniquement pour elle ; en dehors de ce moment intime, personne n'approche plus ses 85 ans. Ces quelques minutes sont alors les plus précieuses de la semaine, lorsqu'elle accepte de payer en douce pour ce shampoing et cette mise en plis rituels.

Elle va rêver en silence, sans montrer quoi que ce soit ; elle va se réfugier dans cette parenthèse magique et sentir l'attention pour elle, même si brève.

Elle ne s'attarde pas d'avantage. Elle a déjà subi la fermeture du 11 Novembre alors cette fois, non, elle, demande, elle implore presque ce droit à la tendresse perdue.

Je la vois quitter le quai de Saône, je suis certaine qu'elle est très en avance ; elle a sans doute peur de ne pas y parvenir.

 

Going to the same Mass

"We don't all agree about everything," said Nicolas, "but we go to the same Mass [on va à la même messe]."

We might say, "We're on the same page."

A good car to have in Paris