Wonderings and Wanderings pt. 2

This past weekend I visited the region of Champagne via bus. The French countryside is stunning. It was a beautiful sunny day, and the fields just rolled out on either side of us, dotted by clusters of trees. The vineyards covered the gentle hills, and every so often a village would appear. All of the little towns were centered around the church, exactly as I had heard. I saw no strip malls, gas stations, billboards, or greasy diners as I would have in America. One didn't get the sense of going from town to town. It was more akin to passing by a town as one drove through the country.

Our first stop was at Pommeray, one of the oldest and most prestigious Champagne producers. We descended this staircase into the cellars:



There we were taken through a series of chalk cellars where the champagne was stored. The guide spoke moderately flawed English and was not terribly informative. What I found more interesting was that the Pommeray family has traditionally been a patron of the arts, and the whole compound was littered with contemporary art installations. In the dim light of the cellars, some of them were a little frightening, such as a room in which there were shadows for nonexistent objects atop pedestals.

There was another room in which there were vintage guitar amps and guitars set up horizontally on stands. Live birds flew about the room and made music when they landed. Another room had a life size inflatable tank. It was surreal, to say the least, but very enjoyable. The French seem to have no qualms juxtaposing the ancient and the modern. In fact, they seem to embrace it - for better or worse.

The second stop of the trip was Le Chevalier Blanc, an inn of sorts where we ate a three course lunch. It came with Champagne, red wine, and coffee. I think it was the best meal I've had since coming to Paris. And that says a lot, as one would imagine.


After lunch we visited Notre Dame de Reims, famous for being the site of Joan of Arc's consecration and the coronation of many French kings. Being a sucker for Gothic structures of any kind, I found it to be simply magnificent. After seeing this and Chartres, I have to admit that I think the best cathedrals in France are outside of Paris. Notre Dame de Paris is an incredible and historic icon, but I have my reservations which I will blog about later. Reims, like much of France, fairly reverberates with significance and history. I saw Joan of Arc's chapel, and stood in front of the altar where kings were crowned. Just seeing that in writing makes my soul quiver. The presence of history is all-pervading here, and it seems to lend another quality to life that is lacking in America. Somehow, and maybe this is just my own invention, life seems to mean more here. With relics of Western civilization everywhere, the struggles to achieve the comfortable lives we all lead today are more prominent. In France, one can feel the pain of history. America's history is different. Someone pointed out to me that in America, we are all technically strangers to our own land. The Native Americans were here first, but we seized the land, made it our own, and buried their history beneath shopping malls and skyscrapers. The pain of our history is there only sometimes, and even then it does not include the Black Plague, or the 100 Years War, or the Wars of Religion, or The Terror.

After Reims, we went to another champagne cellar, G.H. Mumm. Hemingway drinks this brand (which he calls Mumms) in The Sun Also Rises. This cellar was more corporate and far less atmospheric, but the tour was more informative. We got to see how they extract the dead yeast residue from the bottles over a period of months, and we got to look at a museum of old champagne machinery. One could really get the sense of the phrase "wine culture" and know the patience and hard work that goes into producing champagne. And, of course, we got to taste the champagne. I preferred the drier flavor as opposed to the sweet "demi-sec"; the sugar content was 8 grams to 40 grams per liter, respectively. I learned that apparently in the 18th century they liked their champagne extra sweet at 100 grams.

After Mumm, we headed back to Paris. I think everyone on the bus was asleep within twenty minutes of the departure.

Anarchy, Consumerism, and Flash Photography in the Louvre

Ah, the Louvre.

Let me preface this post by noting that I don’t take photographs of paintings. It seems pointless and slightly disrespectful to me. We go to museums to see and feel art – if you want to experience a painting, then there is no reason not to go to it rather than staring at someone’s soulless picture of it. On top of that, when you use a flash to take a picture of a painting, you are damaging it.

That being said, here is one thing I have found odd here: though the signs with long lists of prohibitions (standard to all French famous spots) are clear about flash photography being forbidden, there are shockingly few guards around to enforce this rule…anywhere.

I was horrified, then, when I visited the Louvre on the first Sunday of September when admission was free. The Mona Lisa looked like a red carpet celebrity, half-grinning to a crowd of maybe fifty flash bulbs inside a loud and busy Louvre. No wonder she’s falling apart! While that case was certainly the worst, there were countless other paintings that received similar treatment. And I didn’t see one guard to stop it. Maybe they had been overwhelmed. The place was like a mall at Christmas, except people were scrambling and fighting over photo-opps instead of Nintendos.

Speaking of malls, there is one inside the Louvre. Sort of. Beneath the front grounds of the palace is a vast, vaulted cave full of stores, metro entrances, and escalators. And lines. Lines of people waiting to get inside. If you come to France, be prepared to stand in line, no matter what you do. The good news is that there’s a food court. And the food court has beer.

There is a glass pyramid similar to the one out front which extends symmetrically from the ceiling into the center of this chaos, creating a mirror reflection of the structure above. It is the hub of this odd mirror world of tourists flitting and shopping to-and-fro beneath the lawn where kings once strode and battles were fought. This odd injection of what I think is degrading consumerism in the midst of sacred national monuments is completely and utterly common in France. It’s one of those paradoxes that I know I will be writing a lot about.

PS. There’s a Starbucks right by one of the entrances, if you are ever jonesing while you are in Paris.

PPS Don’t tell me if you decide to go, as I may hurt you. It’s a Starbucks. Inside the freaking Louvre! What a world…

Sunday in Paris, or How Paul Verlaine Saved My Life

It's actually quite difficult to eat in Paris, believe it or not. At least, dinner seems to be quite a problem for me as of late. Just the other day, a friend and I went out to get food around 5:15. Unbeknown to us, most restaurants stop serving food between 5:00 and 7:00. Many even shut down entirely. Our first stop was Chez Gladines, a raucous pub-style restaurant that we had been to before. On the previous occasion, we had been rather sassed by the management for various reasons that remain unclear. This time, in true American fashion I think, we returned determined to be liked. We stepped in announcing our decree: We will eat here, now! The management informed us that it was not serving food until 7:45. Defeat.

We wandered on for the next 45 minutes. My favorite creperie, closed. The interesting-looking Chez Nathalie, closed. Our hunger increased all the while. Eventually we went back to my apartment to snack on bread before going into the Latin Quarter to eat, where the rest of our plans for the evening were to take place. By then it was 8pm, and the only obstacle to our hunger was making a decision between so many different places to eat.

But there's another side to this story - while restaurants reopen at 8, many of the stores selling basic necessities close then. I have quickly discovered that if you need any staple item after 8 at night, you will either have to pay dearly for it or wait until the next morning. Every pharmacy in the city closes at 8, as do many of the “tabac” stores that sell various convenience items. The same goes for virtually any retail store, supermarket, or boulangerie (bakery). What remains open, then? Restaurants, cafés, bistrots, brasseries, bars, creperies – all different names for the same beast. Scattered here and there are Alimentation Générale stores specializing in questionable looking fruit, expired packages of cookies and crackers, and of course - wine. There are a few places that remain open late that do not adhere to this rule – Shakespeare & Co. and La Musée d’Erotisme come to mind.

My point here is that if you need food after 8pm, you have to go out to eat, most likely. If you’re cooking after that point and you realize you’re short on vinegar, you’d better ask your neighbor for some because any store selling it will probably be closed. If you are a generally healthy-eating, organic food-loving, tree-hugging American-bred hippie such as myself, either you or your principles are screwed after 8pm.

This rule is even worse on Sundays. I thought Boston was quiet on Sundays, almost eerily so. But about 60-70% of Paris closes up for the entire day every week, and presumably, spends the day outside. The city is very much awake and bustling, but not its commerce section. I was shocked when I stepped into a nearby shopping mall (in search of a wireless network) and found that the entire thing was closed. What doesn’t close for the whole day closes earlier than usual, at least.

Towards the end of the day one Sunday, I realized that I had absolutely no food to eat in my apartment. Panic gripped me. No, no, it would be okay, I reassured myself. There’s an organic grocery store down the street. They will be open.

They weren’t. My favorite creperie was closed. My bakery was closed. I was going to starve! I had only 5 Euro and my debit card in my pocket. All of the little stores I passed selling falafel or pizza à emporter (to go) would not take plastic, and had nothing on the menu that cost less than 6 Euro. I cursed the one Euro I had given to the man playing fiddle on the metro.

On I wandered, stomach groaning. I would have to find an ATM and settle for a café – but I had so much homework to do (and yet I neglect it still by writing this). I made a turn down a random street crushed between two high rise apartment buildings, trying to suppress my stomach’s complaint at the prospect of waiting until breakfast to eat.

At the end of the street, I found myself at the Place de Verlaine –a square dedicated to one of the 19th century’s finest poets. And what do you know – there was a boulangerie open, and a queue was forming outside the door. I was saved! Thank you Paul Verlaine, for writing well enough to merit a Place (pronounced ploss by the way) in Paris – a Place where this bakery had moved in and remained open late on Sundays. I had a baguette (only ,87 euro!) – a freshly baked, fluffy, buttery baguette that was still warm in my hands. It was half eaten by the time I returned home.

Bouton de Rose

That’s French for rosebud. I had an oddly, almost surrealistically “American” evening the other night. First, a friend and I went to Breakfast in America, or BIA, as it is abbreviated – a diner specializing in omelets, French toast, pancakes, and the usual greasy spoon fare. It is essentially an “American” restaurant – just as in America we have Chinese, Italian, and Mexican restaurants. But just like those sorts of restaurants, they are far from the real thing. First of all, my friend Matthew and I sat outside. That would never happen at any American diner that I know of. My omelet, while tasty, was lacking in grease – and my home fries weren’t darkened and caramelized, as most seem to be in America. Matthew ordered chocolate milk, and the waiter didn’t understand what it was. “You want milk, with chocolate in it?” “Yes.” “Hot chocolate?”
“No.” He ended up getting milk with hot chocolate mix stirred into it. For dinner he had French toast (in French, “pain perdu aux americains” – “The Americans' lost bread”), which came with little slices of banana on top. Perhaps too fancy a relish for American diner food, but I will let you decide that.

After eating at the American restaurant, we went to a cinema that just happened to be showing Citizen Kane, with French subtitles. I had never seen Citizen Kane all the way through, at least until that night. It’s quite an amazing movie, because it seems to say so much about America and the American personality. While watching, I could only wander what the mostly French audience thought with their quite inordinate subtitles. Citizen Kane captures the great emptiness and danger of the American dream so very well, in addition to the snappiness of the American dialect – and yet, in French, it seemed so lost. I will admit I felt a bit homesick watching the movie, with its evocations of individualism and reckless spending and extravagance. The world was truly our oyster for a few years between the wars, I think, and maybe while Europe was annoyed that we were buying its precious artwork and running drunken through its streets, we were contributing to the economy after all. But Citizen Kane has so much more to say than that – about perceived notions of American generosity, about wealth, about ambition…I could write on it for a long time, I think. Yet I understand now its importance in cinema, and I find it vaguely ironic that it could never appear clearer to me than when I was in a foreign country where the story of a poor farm boy-cum-millionaire who turns his back on the banker who raises him seems anything but likely.

Paris: Home of Manners (the best, the WORST, and interesting mixtures)

Allow me to discuss, for a moment, the interesting scenario of a Francophile dining in Paris. I have come to view the situation as an opportunity of tiny victory or immense defeat.

Such is it like being a foreigner in another country – the daily rituals accumulate massive importance, whether it be for their sudden potential difficulty, or their simple strangeness. Before Paris, I had never really been to a bakery that wasn’t outside of a supermarket. Before Paris, I had never not been urged to eat, drink, and get the hell out of whatever restaurant I happened to choose for my meal. These concepts, though simple, can be very strange for the foreigner – “Cool! A store that only sells bread!” one may say, or “It’s been forty-five minutes. The check is finally here, and I don’t have to leave immediately upon payment?”

In any case, I return to the French-as-a-second-language speaker attempting to eat or get service in any place that speaks real French – none of that academic mumbo jumbo. There are two of six situations that the speaker will face, based on his mastery of the language and the temperament of the server:

1) Server completely ignores eight years of study on behalf of the foreigner and speaks English, either with a begrudging cold shoulder or with an amused, patronizing smile. Thanks for trying, monsieur, but keep your dayjob. Defeat. Why did I even study??
2) Server is delighted that you are attempting his language and is happy to politely correct you, if need be. Makes the experience generally worthwhile and slightly uplifting. Victory!
3) Server speaks in French very quickly, so as to confuse you. Server hates that you came to his country, and that your country is bigger, richer, and more imposing upon the innocent masses than his. Ultimate defeat – unless, of course, the foreigner is able to understand and respond to the server in kind. Ultimate victory!

There are variations upon these situations, but for the most part one of those three has been the case for all of my dining experiences so far. I have encountered a few politely confused servers and a few that just seem to avoid me as much as possible – moreso than the norm for French service. Thus far, I have been lucky to have mostly positive experiences – many waiters have abounded with Gallic charm and wit, happy to answer questions about the language. I knew a couple times I have unknowingly violated cultural norms, and what could be so easy can turn out to be rather stressful. Yet I try my best, and I think the French appreciate that. Even if they do all stare at me when I walk into the neighborhood bar.

As my grafted (thank you BLAST) title indicates, there is some truth to the Anglo-American perception that the French are rude. I think grumpy is a more applicable word, because even the most flustered French server I have encountered has not strayed from saying Merci, au revoir monsieur. The French I have encountered are near redundantly polite, to the point that they must think all of us Anglo-Saxons (if you live in America, Great Britain, Canada, or Australia, you are Anglo-Saxon. Period.) are just downright savages. And sometimes I’m inclined to the sentiment. People greet you as you go into stores and restaurants in America, but theirs is a feigned politeness, a too-eager-to-be-your-buddy familiarity that offsets shy, introverted fellows such as myself. But in France, what many people perceive as an aloofness appears to me as the respect one only receives at the nicest places in America. “Bonjour monsieur” says much more to me than “Hey, how are you? How many?” Everyone is a monsieur or a madame/mademoiselle here.

It is so refreshing to have to say please and thank you, to say hello and goodbye when entering or leaving a store or restaurant, and to be responded to in kind. Even if you have just had a horrible experience, when leaving, you had damn well better say Merci, au revoir (and maybe bonne journée/soirée) – otherwise, who knows what could happen. This rigid, weighty social norm is just impossible to avoid, or so it seems to me. Even if one is just asking for say a map of the Montparnasse Cemetery from the gate guard, one must say hello to him first – or else! I’ve been too afraid to knowingly break this rule. For the most part the various servers and employees I have encountered have been too nice or at least bitterly polite to warrant my even considering an impolite move; but that very consideration is my Anglo-Saxon-ness coming through. It seems to be absurd to consider the impolite here; as absurd as it is to consider not tipping the server in America. Both actions would be the result of extreme circumstances.

I have to admit, I take silent pleasure in this pervasion of politeness. It makes you feel good, really. Sure, you can’t smile at anyone on the street (more forbidden than not saying bonjour/au revoir, I think), but you can still feel good that someone said thank you and goodbye just because you walked into their store and didn’t buy anything. Such is one of the strange paradoxes of French culture I have heard so much about, and am quickly discovering: everyone looks miserable, but as a whole, people here are certainly removed from the gloom and anger of the East Coast. One can feel it, in the air, and hear it in the voices of the children drifting over the walls of churchyards. I almost scoffed when Cormac McCarthy wrote about America that “It’s when folks stop using sir and ma’am that we’ll be in trouble” – but after being here, I think I agree with him.

The Days Are Just Full

Apologies for the long gap between posts. I have been acquainting myself with Paris, as it were. Every few hours this thought seems to cross my mind...


I am in Paris now.
I am IN Paris NOW.


Hard to believe, even almost two weeks after I have arrived. I will provide a quick overview of my trip thus far, followed soon by material more in the expose format.


Note to all travelers: Never, ever purchase a 17” laptop, and then try to take it to France. That is, unless you want a very prompt denial of passage while you are trying to check in for your flight with two carry-on items and a suitcase. Allow me to explain: I had my laptop in an appropriately giant messenger bag. Giant enough to fail the requirement of one “large bag and one small bag” according to the Air France representative’s simplification. I argued that she had just let someone through with the same size bag. But no – I had two large bags to bring on, not a large and a small, the rep explains with a dramatic eye roll. Fine. I stuffed a few pairs of boxers into my laptop bag and shoved forward, as the woman politely wished me a great flight.


In spite of the woman’s eye roll, she was polite to the end. She urged me to momentarily step to the side several times to consider bringing on my laptop by itself along with my backpack (yes, I had a backpack and a messenger bag) or to transfer items between the two. I had a suspicion that this strange mix of accommodation, politeness, and utter annoyance was a taste of things to come.
In any case, the flight was great: I watched Kung Fu Panda in French and drank white wine for the first time. It was still dark out as the plane passed by Paris and the surrounding area, a web of blinking white and red, tangled like last year’s Christmas lights.

As the three other Norheastern French majors and I got off the plane, the reality began to seep in: we were in Paris! Delirious with lack of sleep, we nearly skipped through a hamster cage-esque series of walkways into the customs area at Charles de Gaulle airport….

…and straight into a hot, dense room full of unmoving people, where we would remain for the next hour and a half. I hear that passing through customs here is usually quite quick, but for whatever reason things only trickled until the last twenty minutes, when the line finally began moving. Days later, I heard a rumor about exploding luggage causing the hold up. Who knows.

I took a shuttle with other American University at Paris students to the FIAP (Foyeur a International Acceuil de Paris) hostel in the 14th arrondissement (district). What followed was a seemingly endless line of form-filling and leaflet-taking, snaking through the series of rooms beneath the enormous hostel. Eventually, I was able to meet up with Carlotta, who had just come in from Bordeaux. We went out with the other French majors to walk about the 14th and grab a bite to eat – my first true glimpse of Paris! We strolled down a leafy boulevard and into a little market area, where I was overcome with a Technicolor menagerie of sights, smells, sounds. Dead chickens, squirming crabs, multitudinous fruit incarnadine; cooking meat, dog poop, ripening fruit, sweet fluffy bread that smells like clouds in spring; dancing children, cheap cheap books en francais; ornately arranged food displays. My first meal in France was in a tiny little shop with its entire menu sitting, freshly made, in the window. I ate a vegetarian quiche and some mousse au chocolat, followed by un café. The salad was so fresh that there were even tiny dead gnats in it – but I was so happy to be in France, so hungry, so delighted at eating the best quiche I had ever had, that it didn’t disgust me as much as it should have. And the mousse was appropriately rich, but the café – thick, bold, overwhelming – had me hooked for good. I have not passed a day since I came here without drinking café expres at least once.

We returned to the FIAP, thoroughly tired. After I sat, delirious, through a lecture by the Dean of Student Affairs to the general student body in the auditorium at the FIAP (yes, it’s a hostel with an auditorium), Carlotta and I took a walk through Montparnasse.

Montparnasse, the old haunt of oh so many literary gods.

And here was where I had my first of many religious experiences in Paris. Walking down the wide boulevard de Montparnasse, with its flashing lights and velvet brasseries, its cinemas and boutiques, I thought about the many Americans (some of them also writers – even fewer, famous ones) that had walked through this part of town, listening to the song of spoken French collecting in the air about them. I thought about how 8 years of learning French had brought me here, to a city that had seen more history in Western civilization than any one inch of the entire hemisphere I lived in; and I became another one of the masses the city had seen come and go, all slack-jawed and in love.

Paris does not have to sell itself to anyone.

I have been to many of the largest cities in America, and none have impressed me as such. In retrospect, many now strike me as claustrophobic and metallic, with their gleaming skyscraper canyons. Here there are tiny places, but there are just so many big places – big in history, in size, in their dramatic presentation. In America, things are taller, perhaps, but they are also gaunter, obeying almost religiously to the Spartan beginnings of the nation. This minimalist ideal is completely lost in France, and I love it! Everything is a feast of the senses.

In any case, Carlotta put up with my franchophile slobbering and accompanied me to Le Sélect, a favorite brasserie of Hemingway and Henry Miller, among others. I spoke French to the waiter, and it felt great, even though he was rude up until I left him an uncustomary tip. More on dining experiences in another post. On to the pictures!

Imperturbable, Endless Prettiness
I didn't think I could fit so much into a week. Here we go...


Montparnasse Cemetery
Here I saw the final resting places of Jean Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Tristan Tzara, Samuel Beckett, Serge Gainsbourg, and Charles Baudelaire. I just so happened to be there on Baudelaire’s death day! There was an old man reading his works by the grave, as a small crowd gathered.



Basilisque Sacré Coeur

At the top of the steep hill of Montmartre over the seedy 18th Arrondissement is a gorgeous church and a fantastic view of Paris both day and night. Unfortunately my camera is bad at any sort of night photography, so my photos of said view were not very impressive.



L'Arc de Triomphe
Much larger than I thought it would be. It is hard to imagine soldiers of any nationality marching beneath this today – they would be run over!



The Eiffel Tower
Voila. What else can I say? It was also much much larger than I thought it would be. Still an impressive piece of architecture in this day and age. I rode to the top the other night and took a bunch of pictures that didn’t come out. It’s really tall.



Palais du Luxembourg, Jardin du Luxembourg
One of the most famous parks in the world, formerly the garden of the palace you see above, which is now the weekly meeting place of the French senate. I only saw part of the park, and though I searched for the renowned statues of France’s greatest writers and political figures, all I found were random animal statuary and busts of various woman aristocrats of whom I had never heard. There was also a really cool set of sculptures about 30 yards long that from a distance spelled out Tolerance. It is little noted that much of the grass in the jardin is untouchable, and all of the walking paths are gravel. Don’t go there on a windy day.



Musée d’Orsay
The famous train station-cum-museum that houses many of the Impressionist works with which the Western world has become well acquainted. This is the first floor – there are five floors of art work by Monet, Manet, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Renoir, and others!



I have also been to Notre Dame and the Louvre, but I have special posts for them. Coming soon. Au revoir for now!