Rue Rude

Americans in Paris: is this you?

Because I am what my family calls the Queen of Guidebooks, I couldn't resist this "Paris Survival Kit" I bought in a Paris museum recently, while on the prowl for something completely different. Isn't it it cute? Look how there's even a little fake hole at the top for the display rack. 

I bought it because of the genuine information I found in it, such as a few places to eat, work, or send visitors; also because it's fun to see how real Parisians look at themselves– this book is aimed at them. The only foreigners to get their own chapter in the book are Americans. But don't be flattered! Despite the scholarly-looking preface from the (bogus) Harvard professor John P. Kirkpatrick, Ph.D (the real author got it right in having him dateline it Cape Cod, July 2015), the book's Americans are there strictly to be avoided.

How do you learn to identify (and avoid) Americans in Paris?

1) The American in Paris smiles. 

This physiognomic particularity should warn you, since in Paris no one ever smiles. (see Gueule [attitude], p. 64)

2) The American in Paris is loud

You won't even have to bother looking around the restaurant to identify the Americans who have infiltrated the clientele. The background noise will tell you quite enough. Moreover, the American in Paris is the only person to call the waiter "Garçon," even when it's a waitress.

3) The American in Paris lives in an amusement park.

For the expat American, "Paris is a moveable feast," as Hemingway wrote, which shows you how completely he got things wrong. When you explain that your Paris life is nothing but an exhausting series of underground journeys, interminable office hours, and dreary evenings, the American in Paris laughs! Because as for him, he is having a great time going out, eating and drinking!

4. The American in Paris lives on the Île Saint-Louis.

It's not even an exaggeration to say that NO ONE but Americans is on the Île Saint-Louis. Our American– an upper manager in a multinational company, a gallery owner endemic to the rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, or perhaps a journalist for CNN–can therefore well afford to hire you as a private tutor of the French language.

The seventh arrondissement, especially buildings with a view of the Eiffel Tower, are also prized by members of the American upper class [in English in the original], who choose to live there in the hopes of making their friends back home jealous with their Facebook photos.

The Fantasy of the "True Paris"

A serious mental disorder affects the American in Paris: the Fantasy of the "True Paris," which is a sort of Stendhal Syndrome in reverse. The American Bohemian in Paris–possibly a jazz musician, a painter at Place du Tertre, a Yin Yoga teacher, a waiter at Breakfast in America, or another kind of artiste–has abandoned a job in a huge agrofood business to live simply, devoted to the discovery of the "True Paris."

What is the True Paris? It's a complex mixture of clichés that groups together the films of Jean-Luc Godard, perfume ads, Bateaux-Mouches tourist brochures, and of course scenes from the movie Amélie. The American in Paris, therefore, must struggle every day to be convinced that Paris resembles this fantasy.

Note: The American in Paris (fifty- to sixty-year-olds version) is the only person who still believes in existentialism and that Rive Gauche cellars are still wild places.

Paris > USA: sticker shock

There isn't a good dry cleaner near me in Paris since the nice fat French people retired and a couple of sour North Africans took over. Most of the North Africans around here are nice, but this couple is so sour-looking that even though they are always perfectly polite, they radiate ill feeling. 

Dry cleaners in France are called teintureries (or sometimes nettoyage à sec), and their prices are high; you also are lucky to get your clothes back less than a week later.

I was in the Midwest last week attending a conference and sent my jacket to be cleaned by the hotel. I expected it to be expensive and take days. Instead it was back that evening and cost $8.95. God bless America!

Le Monde asks its readers if young French must emigrate to succeed

Don't have much to say today, too busy elsewhere, so I thought I would translate these comments posted when Le Monde asked its readers if it was true that young French people feel that they have to emigrate to succeed. "Bailouga" and another commenter replied (it is a curiosity of the French language that Bailouga's comment required her to reveal her sex, which isn't clear in English). The discussion is still going on, if you want to add your two cents' worth.

["Bailouga":] 

After a Math Sup, a Math Spé, then two years at a Grande École for engineers, I left at age 19 to do my doctorate in the US, with the firm intention of staying there. And I'm not the only one who was leaving. In my circle many people left (very often the best), to England, Germany, the USA, Singapore. What made us leave? I can't answer for the others, but for me several factors were important.

The first and most important reason is the gloom of the French economy, the impression of living in a country that can't breathe, that is in free fall, not ready to make the necessary reforms. I am not talking only about the economic crisis, which may be temporary, but about a generalized gloom that has lasted several decades, and even more, a certain state of mind. Unemployment that has continuously grown for many years; non-existent growth; and even more, a certain feeling of immobility in French society. I was ambitious and dreamed of testing myself in the largest cities, of discovering new opportunities, and I was ready to work as hard as necessary to succeed. As time went by, I felt less and less in sync with a society that thought it was normal to work 35 hours a week; that considered that having a job was an inviolable right and not something that you have to deserve; that did not consider excellence as the model, or success as the result of sustained work, but as something that was disturbing and often considered undeserved. A country cannot disdain success and hope that those who succeed will stay. For several years I saw factories closing, and scandalized people shouting that the bosses were salauds; but no one was ready to doubt themselves, to try to understand what wasn't working any more, to be ready to make the necessary changes. This is not to mention that for the same job, the pay offered in other places has no correlation whatsoever: I could make five times more by leaving. Some people have reproached me for being unpatriotic, because after taking advantage of a free education [in France], I left to make a career elsewhere. Maybe I am, but we young people today live in a global world, like me, with a family from all over, speaking several languages, more and more encouraged to see the world as a whole. Today if you want to succeed, you dream of New York City, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and even London and Frankfurt... because that's where the opportunities are. They are much more dynamic cities, where the job market is much more open. In New York City, I discovered an incredible town with much better working conditions. Research is valued here, universities have far more resources, and doing a doctoral degree does not mean you are stuck in a job at a university: the private sector recognizes the excellence of the training. I will conclude by saying that the rise in racism that we see from abroad, and the rise of the Front National in France, makes France, at least to my eyes, even less attractive. And a return to France seems less and less probable.

"A new French school in London to manage the flood of expats" --Headline in French financial newspaper Les Echos last month

[Another commenter:] 

I left France for England and London eight months ago. While they came to me, offering me a job overseas, the idea had attracted me for several years. Why did I succumb to the offer? On one hand, because in my field, the salaries are much better in London (I almost doubled my salary by leaving for England); working conditions are much pleasanter; and in England they don't practice "presentéisme" [where everyone feels they have to spend long hours at the office to be taken seriously]: if you stay at work late, it means you're inefficient. Personal and professional life is better balanced, and indirectly, work is valued more.

Another positive thing with our Anglo-Saxon friends is that it is not enough to have gone to this or that school to get the job. Everyone has a chance. Truly.

I also think that this move to England happened at a time when I was getting tired of Paris, its stress, the aggressiveness of Parisians, their rudeness, the harassment of women, the feeling of not being safe there; a bunch of reasons that made me decide to leave.

Missing Paris, or not

I'm not sure I miss Paris enough. Maybe I've been there too long. I'm certainly not sad to miss the taxi strike. But... back to the City of Light this weekend. À moi, les soldes*, les cartes de voeux** et la galette***!

*     twice-yearly sales
**   New Year's cards [the French tend to send them instead of Christmas cards, very sensible!]
*** King Cake 

Love it and leave it

The check-in agent at the small airport in Colorado remembered me because I had been there a couple of days earlier sending N off to London. "So are you going to London too?" she asked A.

"No, Paris," said A.

"Wow. You guys really don't like the U.S.A., do you?" the agent joked.

The expats want to be counted

Mauritanians living in France protest near their embassy in Paris

In Paris, where protests and demonstrations are a daily thing, you often pass by a street demonstration. This was a typical one in that the protestors don't make it easy for you to see what they're protesting about. The marchers are almost always preceded by people with megaphones, walking backwards right in front of their main banner so you can't read it. 

But this manif thoughtfully provided flyers for passersby that explained the protest. These expat Mauritanians, living in Paris, want to be counted in their national census back home.

And why not? I thought. I'd love it if we Americans overseas, more of us than in West Virginia but with absolutely no representation (except lost in the mass of our home state where nobody cares about expats) as taxpayers, could also be counted in the U.S. census. In 2004 I did receive and fill out a census report that the U.S. census sent out as a test to three countries, Kuwait, Mexico and France. Here's an explanation of why the Census Bureau does not plan to count us any time soon. 

Taxation without representation, anyone?

Thanksgiving in Paris

Have you had a nice Thanksgiving? We had a very nice one, complete with our own traditional Vacherin cheese and sauternes to finish up. Everyone still left is now in the next room watching the 12th episode of the TV series Smash (I like Smash but I've already seen it) except for one or two who are fast asleep. 

The French don't tend to understand Thanksgiving, unless they have lived in the U.S. --in which case they often enjoy explaining to other French people how important it is to most Americans. N's best friend couldn't get off work today because of course his boss thought it was bogus to need to take the afternoon off for a big celebration-- because who does that?  

Art Buchwald once wrote a newspaper column explaining the whole thing to French people. The International Herald Tribune reprints it every year.

The night at the sous-préfecture of Antony: for shame!

A girl I know, from a proud and old but non-European country, has been trying to deal with the French bureaucracy for many months. She is in France legally, to study, but has had to jump through innumerable hoops just to get the most basic papers. 

Last week, this girl literally had to spend the night outside the infamous prefecture of Antony with a friend to keep her place in line and be seen the next day by a snippy, incompetent bureaucrat, one of only a few lucky souls (60, while hundreds wait for days) who got an appointment with a human being before the offices again closed.

This is not only not unusual but happens every night of the week, even though all that would need to be done is to post online a list of the required documents and a downloadable form. Instead, the only online information says, "For any information, telephone or go directly to the sub-prefecture."  The telephone, of course, is hopeless; no one ever, ever answers it. And if you go to the office, you discover, as my friend did, that even getting there at dawn will not get you a place to be seen that same day. No, it's spend the night outside the cold, gray concrete building, without even a roof over the line of helpless foreigners, or not get your papers to stay in France. 

All this to get four pieces of paper which could easily be put at people's disposal in the lobby and mailed in. 

She and her friend began their long night at 8 p.m., bringing along a thermos and a sleeping bag apiece. For a while, they kept up a cheerful face, reporting on Facebook. But around midnight, as it started to rain, the cheery words disappeared and a photo of feet in a wet sleeping bag, next to a dirty concrete wall, went up. 

I invite you, as the French say, to visit the website of this outpost of immigration bureaucracy. Looks nice at first glance, doesn't it? But go a little further, say to the FAQ, and you start to see what is wrong. In case the sous-préfecture of Antony actually does something about its service in some distant future time, here is a screenshot. 

Administration de la honte! Or "administration of shame," as we would say in English. 

Sod off, rich asshole! --French newspaper Libération shows its quality

Rude behavior. Arnault is now suing Libé for "public insult," punishable by law in France

I don't know if you've been following this, but French President François Hollande gave a big speech last night. In it he discussed France's urgent need to raise €30 billion by next year. (You get the feeling this was a surprise to him.) His plan is for two-thirds of it to come from tax hikes, mostly on the rich, including a rate of 75% on incomes above a million euros a year, with "no exception" for artists or athletes. Turns out that makes France suddenly very unpopular with the rich. Not coincidentally, France's richest man was reported this weekend to have acquired Belgian nationality. This morning, we all woke up to see this headline in Paris newspaper Libération. 

How American am I?

Living in Paris for so long, I have adopted many Parisian habits. Sometimes it's hard for me to know now which of my behaviors are me, which are French, and which are American.

In small-town Colorado, where I am right now, I have come to realize that certain things I'm used to just won't do. For example, people here have a much bigger "personal space" bubble around themselves than Parisians or even New Yorkers do. Going in and out the door to the post office here, I notice that everyone holds the door for the next person to arrive, even if that means standing there while an old person struggles slowly up the steps. How polite! But even when going down the outside steps-- which are about six feet wide within the railings-- sometimes people stand aside and wait for the first person to go down before they go up. Very un-Parisian!