Rue Rude

Stateside for Christmas (in spite of snow chaos at CDG and Heathrow)

With a large family and travel chaos, it's been hard to post. I was caught up in the Europe snowy airport problem. When I saw the snow pouring down last weekend, I knew our flights would be canceled. But we were lucky and after a storm of postponed and rescheduled flights, a miraculous escape from Heathrow, hurried online changes, and long long drives, all of our scattered family finally got to Colorado in time for Christmas together. We'll see what happens when it's time to return... the snow has something more to say.

I flew out of CDG on Tuesday 21st December (which I had picked because the snow was supposed to stop after Monday). Some people at the gate had already been waiting for days to  leave and had colonized one corner of the gate area. The airport had supplied them with neon-chartreuse-colored blankets which they wore around their shoulders-- as they had not been able to get access to their luggage, and the airport was cold. The gate agents would call passengers' names, often almost unrecognizable in a heavy French accent, and if the passengers did not show up by a certain time, give their seats away. Each time a gate agent called a stranded person's name, the whole group let out a cheer. When a middle-aged Frenchwoman was called, she waved an affectionate goodbye at the group. One of the passengers who had been there since Friday was a musician who called out, "I hope I never see you again!" She replied in French, "I don't understand what you are saying, but happy Christmas and good luck to you all!"

Heathrow Airport got less than five inches of snow, which had stopped several days before this photo was taken

A young American woman I know, who lives in London, was not so lucky as my family member. They both were supposed to leave on Friday 17 December; her flight was only a couple of hours later. But after she spent eight hours sitting in the plane on the tarmac, the plane was forced to turn back to the terminal. After living for six days in the airport chaos without her luggage amid thousands of other passengers in the same fix, she was told on Wednesday 22nd December that she could fly out on ...December 29th, missing Christmas with her family. 

She gave us updates via Facebook and seemed to keep her spirits high throughout the ordeal. Her friends all said they spotted her on the BBC coverage because her yellow scarf stood out in the crowd. At least she had a home in London to go back to. Tens of thousands of transit passengers had nowhere to go. It's a big disgrace for the British that so many hundreds of thousands of people had their holidays ruined after a day or two with five inches of snow. When you add that unbelievable incompetence to the new huge British per-flight tax and the constantly threatening British Air strikes, why would anyone who had the choice fly through the U.K.?

It's Christmastime in Paris

 Chocolate high-heel shoe and Eiffel Tower on the rue de Rivoli

Goyard was established in 1853, a year before Vuitton

Little Napoleon at the Louvre's children's store

More great costumes at the Louvre children's store

Place Vendôme

Twilight in the snow

Movie set near the Eiffel Tower

Today as I was doing some Christmas errands in the seventh arrondissement I saw these movie trucks and lights. Funny, I must have walked by a hundred times and never noticed this grand mansion and enormous garden before. That's the Eiffel Tower through the trees.

Apostrophe's

Galeries Lafayettes: Fêtes, yes! Christmas, no

Yesterday evening I went to Galeries Lafayette, which exceptionellement was open till nine p.m. during the runup to Christmas. It was the first time I'd been back there in a while, and surprisingly not nearly as jam-packed  as I expected-- the crise?

All the announcements are now made in Chinese as well as English, Japanese and Russian. The store was full of foreigners, including lots and lots of Chinese. And the stores have Chinese-speaking salespeople now too. I heard a Vuitton saleswoman, who looked like a Chinese-Frenchwoman, say to a young Chinese man, "I don't speak Engleesh." And he answered charmingly, "Mon français n'est pas très bon non plus."

Outside the grands magasins (Printemps and Galeries Lafayette stand side by side, each with several buildings), the Christmas windows were attracting a big crowd of children. There is a little platform for them to stand to see the windows so that adults' heads don't block the view. What struck me was how resolutely secular the windows were. Not a trace of the religious holiday, and scarcely of the pagan one-- instead, the featured character was a Halloweenish ghoul. But to be fair, the crowd was pas très catholique-- lots of veiled women, Japanese tourists and gay Americans!

Paris paralyzed by snow: tens of thousands of drivers blocked on the roads

In the temperate days of Olde Paris... back in the 1980s and '90s, any snow on the ground quickly evaporated and summers were cool.... so in the different climate of today, stores and offices still aren't air-conditioned, and there are no snow plows or snow plans. The solution to everything is: salt the roads! (You think they would realize that salting is what enemies do to your soil.)

Right now it's nearly 7 p.m., the height of rush hour, and there are tens of thousands of drivers blocked in Ile-de-France and 400 km of traffic jams, the absolute record! The amazing thing is how little snow we are talking about here. 

People send in their photos from mobile phones:

http://you.leparisien.fr/appel-contribution/bloque-par-la-neige-venez-temoigner-sur-you-85.html

 

Les Miss

One of the funny things that happen to you when you live in a long time in a foreign country is that you get interested in obscure local topics like.... Geneviève de Fontenay, the Lady in the Hat [la Dame au Chapeau], whose real name is the more prosaic Mulmann.

For many years she has been the face of the Miss France contest. Her husband [or rather her concubin] ran it, and after he died, she and her son Xavier took it over. Her distinctive look-- she always wears black-and-white and the same hat in either white-and-black or black-and-white--  and socialist views have made her a distinctive figure on the French scene.  

In 2002 she sold the television rights to the Miss France contest to a company called Endemol, and continued to be its host. But there was a scandal around Miss Réunion in 2008, who had, against the rules, previously posed for nude photos, which of course promptly made their appearance after she was elected Miss France. All of the islanders of Réunion united around their Miss-- even the Bishop of Réunion (who had complained that one of the photos showed her in a bikini on a crucifix in a swimming pool). Geneviève de Fontenay was forced to allow Miss Réunion to keep the title of Miss France, but saying that she didn't want to be seen with "a girl like that," she chose the runner-up to accompany her around France and to compete in the Miss World and Miss Universe contests. 

Earlier this year, the Lady in the Hat informed Endemol that she was leaving because of the scandals.  And on Sunday, 5 December, the same night as the Miss France contest on the television station TF1, she ran her own competing contest, which is called Miss Nationale. The French, with bated breath, got to see not one but two Miss. Miss Brittany won the Miss France contest; Miss Provence won the Miss Nationale contest.

"I find the TF1 Miss France très ordinaire," remarked Geneviève afterwards. Poor Miss Brittany! An online vote between the two Miss went massively against her.

 

The cliente is always wrong

After a few errands I dropped into my favorite local bookstore [not the one in the photo], where I have spent literally thousands of euros over the years, but hadn't returned to since I moved back to Paris. 

My bag was heavy and I looked around for a convenient place to put it down, not on the floor (if you see what Parisians walk on, you don't want your bag anywhere near that). I found a perfect place where the bag hid no books, on top of a stack of unopened book boxes.

A few minutes later a snippy miss who didn't recognize me (all the older vendeuses do) came bustling over to tell me to move my bag. "You are blocking the books."

"It's not blocking any books," I pointed out.

"Soyez gentille," she said [this is what rude people often say in Paris]. 

"My bag is heavy. It's not hurting anything there," I said.

"It's hurting the box," she said.

Paris in the snow

Although it has been snowing for about a week, and the snow has caused all kinds of delays, traffic problems and even deaths, the French still don't seem to be able to deal with it. I have never yet seen a snowplow in France, even in a blizzard on the autoroute as I was going through the Vosges.

On the rare occasions when there is more than half an inch of snow on the ground in Paris, the whole city comes to a halt as if it were the Blizzard of '88. During my last "heavy" snowfall in Paris, the official in charge of keeping the streets clear of snow claimed that the snowplows couldn't get through because there were cars in the streets. Today I read in the Nouvel Observateur that le travail des chasse-neige a été très difficile à cause des chutes de neige incessantes-- the work of the snowplows has been very difficult because of the constant snowfall!

So whay are you doing now?

At the airport (again), I thought I might buy a Donald Duck in French for a niece or nephew learning French back in the States. But the comic I picked up was in English, for French children. I felt sorry for a French child trying to make head or tail of it, because it was truffé (truffled, or stuffed) with mistakes like the ones here. 

Well, wave to go!