Rue Rude

Dîner at eight (-thirty)

An American woman I know here was complaining that she invited some people for dinner at 7:30 p.m. and that at 8:30 p.m. they were just arriving. That is because in France, dinner is always (sauf exception) at 8:30 p.m., which means the guests will start to trickle in at 8:45. (If you are rude enough to arrive at 8:30, you will find your hostess flustered and possibly even still in the shower. This, by the way, proves that the American's friends knew they were invited at an earlier-than-usual time. They probably forgot exactly when and just retained "early" --thinking "eight."

In France, there are times for things. The American management at Disneyland Paris, when it first opened (and was still called EuroDisney), was astounded to discover that everyone, everyone, stopped for lunch at exactly one o'clock. (And expected wine with the meal; but that's another story.) Dinner starts at eight-thirty, 20h30.... If someone invites you, you don't even need to ask. If tourists go to a French restaurant at 7 p.m., much less 6 p.m., they will discover the waiters and cooks eating. 

This reminds me of the time I got sick and tired of how all French children's birthday parties (for lo, it is written) run from 3 to 6 p.m.... a horribly long time to keep a horde of small children amused. So I wrote on the invitation "15h à 16h30." 

Of course, all the parents showed up at 6 p.m., except for the usual stragglers at 7.

Well-dressed? Parisian style is ...uniform

A lot of what foreigners think of as Parisian stylishness looks a great deal like conformism. When I first moved here, I thought the other mothers at my children's school were wearing a uniform. They weren't, not exactly; but they did all have the same coat. All the children also wore the same coat. If anything was different about it, it stayed the same color: navy blue or black.

Last winter, all the students in my bourgeois neighborhood were wearing this doudoune, from the French company Moncler [pronounced mon clair]. It costs only three or four hundred euros....

This year, Moncler is selling the jackets at a deep discount. Why? Because this winter, the thing to have in Paris, which is having a remarkably warm winter by the way, is a Canada Goose, created, according to the company's website, for postwar bush pilots in the Arctic.

But in black, of course.

Christmas-tree recycling center, Paris

I am slightly embarrassed to admit that my Christmas tree is still up and twinkling. I haven't had time to take all the ornaments off, and as long as it's still up, why not keep it pretty? I believe in keeping Christmas till Epiphany or Twelfth Night anyway.... 

But just when I was thinking how sad it was to leave my little tree on the other side of the street, amidst the dog poop, for the éboueurs to pick up, I walked by a Recycling Point for Trees. This is new, in our neighborhood at least. Paris has not been famous for being green. I remember how horrified one of my relations-in-law was ten years ago when visiting Paris from Oregon-- roughly speaking, the Vatican City of recycling-- to find me throwing everything straight into the trash. But things are gradually getting better and this is one more step.

A block away, two young, handsome, buff policemen had parked their white motorcycles on the sidewalk and were monitoring a tricky intersection. As I watched, a motorcyclist in his late teens came roaring through and did not stop at the red light... until he saw them. Too late! "Au trottoir!"

They wouldn't let me take their picture, though, so trees it is for today.

Madeline's city

I was shocked when I got here to discover that the French had never heard of Madeline. The little red-headed Parisian in a cape, who says "Pooh, pooh!" to tigers at the zoo, is known to almost all American children of the reading classes, but is nobody to children in her native city (who would no doubt call her Madeleine. By the way, the hyper-fashionable name is not currently fashionable in France).

It's still fun to recognize scenes from the books now that I know Paris. The tiger in the zoo is on the quais near the Botanical Gardens. The zoo is still there; sometimes when you are stuck in a traffic jam or on a bus, you can look over and see an ostrich looking back at you.

Of course the twelve little girls in two straight lines are obsolete now, as is Miss Clavel with her veil-- she is not a nun but a governess, by the way; and yes, governesses did used to dress like that. But not that long ago there was an all-girls school in Paris not far from my house where the little girls had to wear hats and walk in lines two-by-two as they went out, just like the girls in the book. "I get so many parents with those hats," the headmistress once said to me. 

One of the loveliest things about Paris is that if you go away and come back, Paris will still look much the same; the central city is preserved as if in amber, and only the storefronts change with the times. So even though Madeline was written in 1939, it gives Americans who read it as children a shock of recognition when they finally see the Eiffel Tower, the Invalides, the Opéra, and the quais of the Seine, where Madeline fell in and was dramatically rescued by that noble mutt, Genevieve.

Anomalies of French life: marrons glacés

The first Christmas I was in Paris, which now seems very long ago, a friend of ours showed up for a Christmas party chez nous with a huge box of marrons glacés, which I had never seen before. There must have been fifty or sixty of the candied chestnuts in the box. The other guests oohed and aahed and I felt much as Europeans or Americans feel when presented with such Chinese delicacies as shark-fin soup or sea cucumber (which are often served at Chinese banquets so that the Chinese, not the foreigners, can have them...). I don't even remember what happened to the box-- I know we didn't eat the marrons. I can only hope someone else got them. Marrons last a pretty long time, although not at my house.

Oh! how I wish I could have that box now! It must have cost the equivalent of a hundred euros. Marrons glacés are such a luxury that you mainly see them during the holiday season, wrapped in gold foil with prices to match. I have developed a taste for them and greedily buy my local bakery's brisures de marrons (pieces that fall off accidentally when they're making them), which are still quite expensive. 

I was reminded of this when I saw an American girl at the airport today being given one by a French friend who didn't tell her what it was. "Eeew! What is this?" she said.

Paris CDG in the rain (getting wet)

As we flew into French airspace, I woke up and looked out the window. Unsurprisingly, there was nothing to see but horizon-to-horizon gray clouds covering the landscape. (A friend of mine from L.A. calls northern Europe "Grayland".)

We landed and deplaned to ... the nasty surprise of a steep flight of stairs into driving rain on the tarmac. By the time I realized I would get wet, it was too late to hold back till I could dash for it. People go down the stairs ve-e-e-e-ry slowly when they are old, or have heavy carry-ons, or are carrying little children and multiple bags. Plenty of time to be drenched. I was one of the last ones off the plane, so I couldn't take a photo of all the passengers trying to get their stuff down the stairs and over to the bus in the downpour. 

Was the bus parked close to the plane? No. 

After getting soaking wet, we had a literally 15-minute bus ride to the terminal. I saw a sign on the inside of the bus that said it had 20 seats and 90 standing places. So most of the 100+ wet people on the bus had to sway and hold on uncomfortably to their bags for the long drive to the terminal. Judging by the comments of my fellow passengers, this arrival did not create a positive first glimpse of France.

Rows of Air France planes in the rain at CDG

Uncle Sam, French version

"It's him."

"Uncle Sam as himself...."

Bonne année à toutes et à tous!

A's "little friend" (that's one way to say boyfriend or girlfriend in France) has been keeping a list of all the things A has been worried about. This includes the scary airborne fatal flu virus created by a Dutch lab, the possible explosion of the Yellowstone supervolcano (which makes me glad I never could afford to buy that longed-for real estate in Jackson Hole), and the end of the world which the Mayans are said to have predicted for December 21, 2012.

So here is a reminder that the world usually does go on.

Happy New Year, Bonne Année to you!

Lazy post: Spanish bus scraping its side mirrors in Montmartre

Just because the street is there doesn't mean it's big enough for your vehicle.....

Joyeux Noël everyone!

 

Anomalies of French life: transport strikes during the holidays

The airport of Lyons is closed. Planes are taking off from Paris CDG three hours late. Lines at the security checkpoints are madhouses.

It must be Christmas in France! 

This year and last year, it was the agents de sécurité, subcontractors hired by Brink's, complaining that salaries are higher in Marseilles than in Paris. Another year, it might be Air France, or as threatened this year, the cheminots of the SNCF or French national trains, who have issued as many as 400 strike threats a year, almost always during holidays and school vacations.

But their technique is always the same. Make the crowds of travelers suffer to put pressure on their bosses to give in.

The French are extraordinarily tolerant of this misery. Maybe they're just used to it, or can put off their travel more easily. Not so the foreigners taken hostage by this craziness that they have nothing to do with.

In the early 1990s, I knew a foreigner in Paris who loved France so much that he got his company's board to consider moving their headquarters there. The day the men arrived, there was a huge transport strike and the roads to Paris CDG were blocked by demonstrators. The board members had to drag their suitcases all the way to the autoroute to get a taxi. Needless to say, the headquarters went elsewhere.

Yesterday I spent five hours at CDG in lines and waiting on the plane for the missing passengers still in line. The lines were very well managed and the crowds for the most part civilized although you can always count on a few obnoxious people pushing their way to the front, harangued by the Americans and Brits. Passengers were called forward in the order their flights left, but there was still an advantage to getting to the airport very, very early. 

Once I was on the Air France plane, it was a haven of calm. The flight attendants were kind and attentive, the food was good, the entertainment system excellent. On Air France, your first glass of champagne is free and they still hand out pillows, blankets, eye masks and earplugs even in economy. I fell asleep in my comfortable seat with its supportive headrests and slept all the way to the U.S. It was a good example of the two sides of French life. 

G̶y̶p̶s̶i̶e̶s̶ R̶o̶m̶ "Romanians" in Paris

Like most Americans, I arrived in Europe with no prejudice I was aware of against gypsies. They do figure in a lot of songs and ballads, but usually in a swashbuckling, Johnny Depp kind of way:

"What care I for my goose feather bed wi' blankets strewn so comely, oh? 
Tonight I lie in a wide open field in the arms of a raggle taggle gypsy, oh." 

"How could you leave your house and your land? how could you leave your money, oh?
How could you leave your only wedded Lord for the arms of a raggle taggle gypsy-o?" 

My first encounter with a gypsy child was in Germany, where a handsome little boy with black hair and dark eyes came up and gestured to me, saying, "Milch, milch!" As it happened, I had just been to the grocery store. I fished out a carton of milk and handed it to him. He stood there looking puzzled and annoyed, then threw it to the ground and walked off.

I learned that the term "gypsies" could be offensive and that they were an ethnic group called (currently) Rom/Roma/Romani, although they consist of many different groups, only one of which is actually Rom. They originally came from India during the middle ages, no one knows why, and since Europeans did not know the world well, in those days they were called "Egyptians" or "gypsies." Because they traveled constantly, did not intermarry much (well, the ones who did have been absorbed into the rest of the population; I met some in Germany who revealed their heritage to me only because I was a foreigner), still observe Hindu caste regulations and customs including child marriage, and speak their own language, they met with hostility wherever they went. Hitler tried to wipe them out, and wherever Romani populations were under the Nazis, they were exterminated as mercilessly as the Jews were.

For historical reasons, the largest number of Romani are from Romania, which is now in the European Union. Although probably no one is as prejudiced against Romani as Romanians are, the Romani are now allowed, as EU citizens, to circulate freely in Europe. This does not mean other nations want them.

Since the beginning of the summer of 2011, there has been a crime wave in Paris caused, according to the police, by large numbers of young "Romanians" who are controlled by invisible adults. The French laws for juvenile offenders are very lenient and although the young people may be caught over and over again for pickpocketing (their main crime), they are out on the streets again within hours. Many of the kids have quotas to fulfill and are very skilled at extracting phones, wallets and cash from unsuspecting tourists who stop for their "Do you speak English?" or "Have you lost a ring?" or "I am deaf" scams while someone behind them is swiping their stuff. 

The children and their parents live in miserable conditions in temporary encampments near unwilling communities. Periodically, EU governments try to improve things, force the children to go to school, or alternatively toss them out of the country. The Romanians, who have sent 40 policemen to help the Paris police deal with them, don't want them back.

The latest arm in the French battle is a ban on begging on the Champs-Élysées, around the Louvre and Tuileries, and around the great department store zone of Galeries Lafayette and Printemps. "La quasi-totalité [est] de nationalité roumain*," a police spokesman said. So far in 2011, 10,000 "Romanians" have been arrested in Paris alone. 

 

*"Almost all" beggars given a fine on the Champs-Élysées were "of Romanian nationality".

Paris skyscape

Paris morning is night (in the winter)

I was drinking my coffee sleepily in the kitchen when one of my visitors from New York City came in looking groggy. He glanced up at the clock, did a double take and said, "I think your clock is wrong."

"Why?"

"Well, it says it's 8 o'clock, but it's pitch black outside!"

Anomalies of French life, redux: the chemical Christmas tree

For some reason, many French people prefer chemically sprayed Christmas trees to real ones. I don't know why this is, and can only think that it is some lapse in their usually keen judgment, along with drinking UHT milk instead of fresh and subjecting job candidates to handwriting analysis. 

I was excited this year at my usual flower stand at the marché. Not a single chemical tree in sight! But just as I was standing there thinking that the French were finally losing this strange taste, a woman in a fur coat walked up to the stand owner and said, "Where are your white trees? I can't find them."

"They all sold out already," said the stand owner. "But I'll have more next week."

 

The glamor of Paris

The way into Paris from CDG airport

Eat cakes more often!

I went to the bakery for a baguette tradition and got a cookie too. It came in this little bag.

The Andrés and the Birkins

"I was warned about the Andrés," said my pretty Californian visitor. 

"Who are the Andrés?" 

"Those are the older French men who come on to you," she said. "They try to get the American girls to fall for them."

I told her about Le Divorce (where the "André" is said to be based on a real person), in which the pretty Californian has an affair with a handsome, sophisticated much older man. When he is ready to break it off, he sends her an Hermès bag.

"You mean, a Birkin bag?" my Californian said.

"I don't remember," I said. "Maybe it was a Kelly bag."

"Those are beautiful bags!" she said. "What a nice souvenir! That would sure make you forgive and forget, wouldn't it?

"I like older men, too." 

 

Baby named Daemon? French government intervenes

Today there was a curious story in the news. It seems a family from northern France is very fond of the TV show Vampire Diaries. When their son was born, what could be more natural (as the French say) then to name the boy Daemon, after the show's character Damon Salvatore?

However, the French government authorities did not see it that way. There is a regulation saying "When the given names or one of them, either alone or combined with the other given names or the surname, appear to the civil registry official to be contrary to the child's interests, he immediately tells the Procureur de la République (a judge at the national level). The Procureur can then turn the case over to a family court judge, who can require that the name be "suppressed" from the registry. The family court is even allowed to choose the child's new name if necessary.

It wasn't always this way. Until less than twenty years ago, the government could simply forbid any name from being registered that a local official believed was bad-- unless the parents came up with proof it was a real name with a history in France or in their family. This was not just a French quirk-- in much of Europe the same thing was true. Not too long ago the province of Quebec turned down the name "Spatule" [spatula] for a child. A new regulation came into effect in 1993 that turned the rule around: now most names were allowed, but names considered "difficult to bear" are still preventable. Some of the names refused make you see the point of the rule: Babord and Tribord for twins [Starboard and Larboard], Babar, Clitorine, Némo, and Digimon and Pokémon for twins. Adolphe is also not allowed.

The officials point out that in twenty years, when the baby is grown, no one may remember the TV series, but the name Daemon (which sounds like Demon in French) will only remind everyone of the Devil. 

The parents say that when they consulted him, the local priest had no problem christening the child Daemon. "He said that all children belonged to God," the father told a reporter.

 

The countess's snails

One of my friends is a countess, as I found out more than ten years after getting to know her. Her nobility, as it should be, is in her perfect manners and bearing rather than in her clothes or house. Like much of the old nobility, she's a bit of a cheapskate and doesn't like to splash out except when it's really necessary. Dior bags and Louboutin shoes? Très peu pour elle! But you can invite her anywhere and she will turn up dressed perfectly and impress your friends. She lives in a small apartment crowded with the furniture of relatives' châteaux, and serves coffee under a gilt eighteenth-century portrait of a handsome young man in a white wig and a blue silk suit.

The other day she was telling me how to raise snails. "The ones you can buy are big and expensive and tasteless," she said. "The little gray snails that you pick off the leaves are much tastier and much cheaper too. When I was a child I learned how to raise my own. We would go pick them off the vines and then bring them home. Then we kept them for a month before eating them."

"Why don't you eat them right away?" I asked.

"You have to clean them. The ones you buy are raised in cages, but the outdoors ones have been on the ground and pick up all kinds of saletés. So you leave them for a month and feed them and water them every day, on a board with a groove around it. At the beginning, their crottes are black. Once the crottes are white, you can eat them. And they're delicious!"