Au Revoir Paris

It's almost 10 pm, the taxi comes at 7 am, I'm still not packed. But we had a nice last day, which in addition to hours of packing, included a last lunch at the little restaurant on the side street next to our apartment (Le Daudet), a wonderful visit at the apartment of one of our instructors from the Alliance (coffee, tea, chocolates, and conversation), topped off by a trip after dark (our last on the Metro for a while) to the Grand Palais to see an exhibit called "Dans la nuit, des images," which was put together to celebrate the end of the President Sarkozy's time as the President of the EU. I had always wanted to go inside the Grand Palais; basically, it is a big empty exhibition hall, with a very, very cool roof. The exhibition itself was great, if a little bizarre -- a huge number of exhibitions of moving pictures and other things on big, medium, and small screens. Some were pretty, some were incredibly stupid (sorry), some were remarkable (like the exhibit showing the movement of cell phones in Paris, which was like looking at a strange beautiful living thing). I took a number of cool pictures, but don't have time to upload them all ... did I mention I still have packing to do ... but this one gives a sense of the exhibition:



Afterwards, we walked to the Champs Elysees (right next to the Grand Palais) to see the Christmas lights, which were still up.



Then we took the Metro back home (one last long correspondence through Montparnasse, ending the evening with crepes at the crepe-and-churro stand up Avenue du General Leclerc (Nutella for Andrew, sugar and butter for me).

Going into the Metro, because our pass was expiring at the end of the month, the little window next to the place you put your pass gave us a message -- "Fin d'abonnement december 31." Which is exactly the case for us and Paris, at least for the time being.

Au revoir, Paris. A bientôt.

The Penultimate Post from Paris, with Pictures

On the next-to-the-last day today, here are some things we did:

1.  We came across our first flat-out crazy person.  He was a guy with a scruffy beard and old shoes without any laces sitting by himself in one of the "booths" on the Metro.  About a minute after we'd boarded, he suddenly, violently, and for no apparent reason kicked the seat opposite him, letting out a kind of low grunt as he did so.  I had just gotten out my camera to take the 500th picture of the boys on the Metro (not really, it only seems that way), and so quite by accident caught this interesting picture of their response.  Son number one looks bemused; son number two is not quite so sure:



The crazy man didn't stop at one violent kick; he followed with several more, the last of which broke the seat opposite him. I decided it was prudent to get into another car, so at Denfert Rochereau we switched. From the next car, I took this picture. The crazy man is sitting to the left, slumped down in his seat.



One genuinely crazy person in 6 months is not too bad for a city the size of Paris.

2. We had lunch with the family with whom we'd stayed in La Rochelle. This is where we were going when we met the crazy man. We dined at a place we'd been to a couple of times before, called "Chez Fernand," on Boulevard Montparnasse near the Vavin Metro station. It is a very typical French bistro, serving excellent food in a very pleasant setting. Here are a couple of pictures of the boys, which give a sense of the place:





The best part of the lunch was seeing our friends Alain and Isabelle and their son Arthur again. They are the kind of people it is impossible not to like -- warm, genuine, and funny. We spoke mostly in French but a little in English, about a variety of things, during the course of a delicious meal that included wonderful, huge desserts. It was one of those experiences that strikes you as having a quality of timelessness to it, even while you are in the course of it. As Suzie and I remarked later, the lunch with them was the perfect bookend to our time in France.

3. Our other European friends, Suzie's old high-school friend Stacy and her family, were visiting Paris over the weekend. We'd had dinner with them out on Sunday, had them over to our house last night for burritos, and after lunch we went to the Gare de l'Est to see them off on their train back to Luxembourg. A picture of their extremely cute kids from yesterday, as well as a picture of the Gare, are below.





So that's about it for today. Tomorrow we see if we need to by just one new suitcase or two in order to get all our stuff back to California. Plus, in the evening, a special treat....

At a Loss for Words

I've been wanting to write a post that would summarize our time in Paris, succinctly and perfectly, but after several aborted attempts I've come to the conclusion that it will perhaps have to wait until after the return. We're both still sitting around saying, "how are we going to go back?", and I know that no one wants to hear that, the only proper response to it being, "Oh, mes pauvres, yes indeed it is a veritable tragedy that you spent only six months in Paris," or, perhaps more colloqually (I hear my friend Boyd in the back of my head now), "shut the hell up and get back to work."

Plus it's sunny, if cold, and I have only two days left, so why not leave the reflections for a rainy day in Santa Rosa?

"Lest you think I love everything about Paris...."

This is really silly, an annotated video I shot of myself a few weeks ago (not great camera work, I know, I was trying to be inconspicuous).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMY_NWmCtA4]

So upon my return to the States, when I am raving about such-and-such a wonderful thing in Paris, you can simply say, "Chatelet, Chatelet."

But, of course, Chatelet is also pictured below (the above-ground part, that is) so when you say "Chatelet, Chatelet," I will say, "Oui, mais aussi -- Chatelet!):

That 'Favorite Museum' Thing -- On Second Thought

Maybe I wouldn't say that the Musée des Arts et Métiers is my favorite museum in Paris.  Suzie and I visited the Picasso Museum today, and afterwards I was thinking, of all the museums and exhibits I've been to in the last six months, which did I enjoy the most?  The answer sort of surprised me -- the most enjoyable experience, perhaps because I wasn't expecting anything from it, was the exhibition at the Pompidou Center called Le Futurisme à Paris, a fascinating look at the beginnings of "modern" art.  The layout, the works selected, the space, everything worked, and the exhibition was small enough to be digestible in a reasonably short period of time.  And apart from the exhibition, the permanent collection at the Pompidou Center is in itself fantastic, as is the space in which it is housed.

So I'm tempted to say that is my favorite museum, except, of course, that Paris is also home to the Louvre, which is one-of-a-kind (but almost too much to contemplate in one, two, three, five, or maybe even ten visits), and the Musée de Orsay, which has a wonderful collection of Impressionist paintings housed in the most gorgeous, practical, goes-perfectly-with-the-art space you will ever see.

Personally, I enjoyed the Pompidou Center and the Musée de Orsay for the art, and the Louvre more for its incredible collection of ancient artifacts (to stand before the monolith containing the Code of Hammurabi is worth the trip by itself, for me anyway).  If you are in Paris, try to make it to all three if you can, and plug in the Musée des Arts et Métiers if you are a nerd like me.

I almost forgot ... the Picasso Museum was interesting, but definitely doesn't make the top five.  The works seems a little incongruous in the old "hotel" that houses them, and there are more enjoyable (to me anyway) works of Picasso in other Paris museums.

My Favorite Museum in Paris

I took the bus today to my favorite museum in Paris, the wonderful and interesting Musee des Arts and Metiers in the Marais.  The fact that it's my favorite museum probably proves that deep down (or maybe not so deep down) I'm a real nerd, as the museum is completely dedicated to the history of science and technology.  The museum contains the collection of the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, which was founded in 1794.  It is situated in the in an old abby, Saint-Martin-des-Champs, which provides a beautiful setting for the exhibits.  The exhibits themselves are often fascinating, sometimes beautiful, and sometimes laugh-inducing.  Best of all, the museum seems to be (from my admittedly limited experience) underused, which makes visiting the museum even more pleasant, as you don't have to fight crowds as is the case in most museums in Paris.

I've posted a bunch of pictures from my visit here, which I encourage you to view.  Some of the more interesting parts of the museum are the large Foucault's Pendulum located in the main cathedral:



The interesting exhibits in juxtaposition at the other end of the same space:



The beautiful interior of the building itself:



Old, old important artifacts, like this one, Volta's first battery:



Beautiful ones, like this early microscope:



And finally, as I said, laugh-inducing ones, like this technological antique:



I came away thinking that in 50 years or so, the technology we think is cutting edge today will look just as dated and funny as the stuff in the museum. Time, it seems, marches on, whether we like it or not.

La Musique Americaine Me Manque

Here, one of my favorites, Jay Farrar of Son Volt ... "highways and dreams together forever/in the minds of the free and the innocent" ...

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiGrpY7h92M]

And here, an excerpt from a concert I attended in Petaluma a couple of springs ago ... we'll know when we get there, if we'll find mercy...

Down to Nine Days

Time is winding down here, but we still find things to love about Paris.  This weekend they were having a small Christmas market on the two blocks of Rue de Alésia east of our apartment, which consisted of stalls of vendors selling mostly delicious things to eat.  We went to the market on Sunday, and by the time we traversed the two blocks, we were no longer hungry, having tasted several different kinds of bread, sausages, compotes, foie gras, cheeses, candies, and fruits.  We purchased among other things the most delicious cheese we've had since we've been here, a dry, crumbly, rich and deep white-ish cheese whose name escapes me, if in fact I ever knew it, and some hearty country-style brown bread, slightly sour, which made tremendous toast.  After lunch we went to the Musee du Quai Branley, a relatively new museum containing primitive "non-Western" artifacts from Oceania, Africa, Asia, and the Americas.  You weren't supposed to take pictures there, but everyone else was, so I took just one, to show the type of things on display; this isn't the most interesting (that title would go to the artifacts from Oceania, which were incredibly bizarre, almost scary), but it does give a sense of the place:



Unfortunately, I came away really not liking this museum.  The collection was wonderful, but the space was awful -- dark and claustrophobic, the space would seem crowded even if it had no one in it due to the arrangement of the artifacts.  I also disliked the exterior of the building, a blocky, dark, red-rust colored modern monstrosity, totally out of synch with the surrounding neighborhood, centered in a garden that is self-consciously non-French, which is fronted on the Seine side by a strange high glass wall.  To me, just nothing about the place is appealing.

So, you see, there are some things in Paris I don't like.  In fact, to ameliorate the growing depression, I'm going to try to come up with "10 Things I Hate About Paris."  So far I only have two, but I'm pretty creative....

Finally, here's a picture of my son Will, on the Metro.  I love this picture.  It's so evocative of our time here.

Le Laboratoire de Phonétic, Mon Cauchemar

So I returned, after my horrible first experience at the Phonetics Lab, for a second session, because I'd paid for it (mostly) but also because I thought maybe the second time would be more useful and not quite so discouraging.

Wrong.  If anything, it was even worse.

I was greeted this time by a friendly, vivacious, middle-aged woman whom I'll call "D", who asked me for the results of my phonetics evaluation, which I had, of course, forgotten, but which also was no big deal, since I simply told her that I needed to work on every vowel sound that existed in French (not entirely true, as you'll recall I did get 4 correct).  So she told me that it made sense to work on the cadence and flow of French, and in particular, to work on the way the French accent their words and sentences.  Which seemed to me to be a good way to proceed.

The rule was easy enough to understand -- sentence were divided up into smaller logical parts, and the last syllable of each part is accented, except for the one at the end of the sentence, which goes down.  The parsing sentences into logical parts was a breeze.  The difficulty arose when I actually tried to say the sentence.  Sentence one:  Il vit ici à Paris, mais aussi en Italie, aux Philippines, aux îles Fidji et au Chili, which you are supposed to accent as Il vit ici à ParIS, mais aussi en ItalIE, aux PhilipPINES, aux îles FidJI et au ChiLI. The problem, of course, was everything other than accenting the last syllable of the sub-phrases.  I'd get through three words, and "D" would say, writing every wrong word down, "no, no, no, "D" says (yes, she spoke of herself in the third person, something I find odd and annoying) ... 'D' says 'Paris' but Steve says 'Pèris'.  D says 'Italie' but Steve says 'Etalie'.  D says 'Philippines' but Steve says 'Félépines'.   D says 'Fidji' but Steve says 'Figi'." And so it went, through six more painful sentences, each highlighting a different vowel sounds, resulting in a list of 25 words (I have the paper to prove it) that D said correctly but Steve said incorrectly -- D says Belge but Steve says Belche (one time) and Beldge (the next time); D says amuse but Steve says amuise then amouse; D says musique but Steve says mousique then miusique; D says moiné but Steve says moi (a small victory there, saying it wrong only one way).

To say I was discouraged would be an understatement; I felt like a little baby sitting in a high chair trying to say his first words (no, no, no, D said "daddy" but Steve said "da da").   But D kept right on being vivacious, and my attitude started to get worse, the low point being this:  At one point, she was trying to get me to say some word in some particular way, and she said, "No, you have to say it like this if you want to sound chic."  To which I replied, "Je ne suis pas chic.  Je ne peut pas dancer non plus." (Non-Francophones click here.)  I'm not sure D got the joke.

So I'm done with the Phonetics Lab.  I didn't get a thing out of it, it being simply impossible to absorb (much less incorporate) so many different small differences in sounds.  Plus, my regular instructors say that although I have an American accent, it's not overwhelming and that I'm perfectly understandable in French.  My conversation partner Valerie says that my American accent is cute and that I shouldn't lose it.  So if I say Belche, the Francophone world will just have to live with it.

Why No Posts?

Chalk it up to the grey and the cold, the shortness of the days, the impending end to our time in Paris, a nagging cold, or a combination of the foregoing, but I haven't felt much like writing lately.  This is our last week at the Alliance Française; I'm acutely aware that the next few days may be the last we ever spend there, that the times I see my friends in the cafeteria may be the last time I ever see them, that I may never have the opportunity to do something like this again.  And because I don't like to be sad or complain in a non-funny way, it's hard for me to say anything.  Hopefully I will snap out of it soon.

Maybe It's Time To Go Home

Today had to be the low point of my time in Paris.  Where to begin?

Well, first of all, I'm getting sick, or am sick, or am fighting off sickness, I'm not quite sure which.  I've picked up Suzie's cold, which makes me feel like I'm running at fifty percent.  This morning I woke up and my throat felt like sandpaper and I wondered how I could possibly get out of bed.

But I did, and trundled off through the cold, dark morning, onto a painfully crowded Metro, to Boulevard Raspail, where I just started a new class with a new teacher and new students.  We were supposed to select a newspaper article to read and comment on, and I had done that, choosing an article about a proposed law that would increase the number of stores that can be open on Sunday, an issue that is big in France.  I was, of course, the first one called on, and it was almost as if I had never taken a French language course in my life.  The words would not come.  I was completely blocked.  I sounded like an idiot.  I felt like a fool.

Then later we were subjected to what I believe may be a uniquely French (or mostly French, or mostly European) treat, the "dictée."  The teacher reads something and the students have to write it down, getting the words and the spelling and the agreements correct.  Apparently this teacher has the practice of chosing someone each time to write his or hers on a transparency, to be corrected before the whole class.  Of course, I was chosen for this honor.  I didn't do too badly, maybe because I was writing so quickly that I didn't have time to think myself into errors.  Sadly, this was one of the two highlights of my day.

The second highlight was having lunch with Suzie and my son Andrew at the Alliance, a reminder of how great I have it right now.  I guess I should stop complaining, but I'm on a roll, so here we go again.

I had an appointment for a special phoentics/pronunciation workshop at 2:00 p.m., for which I requred a USB thumb drive, which I'd forgotten to bring with me, so I decided to to home and retrieve Suzie's.  Unfortunately, halfway through lunch, it had started to snow ... well, not really snow, but half-snow, a cold, miserable, steady half-snow, half-rain.  Although I always carry an umbrella in my bag, today I didn't have it, which meant that I had to walk through the miserable, cold half-snow, half-rain, feeling miserable because of a cold, without an umbrella, getting moderately soaked.  By the time I got home to the apartment I was thoroughly chilled.  But, I thought, I'll make some hot coffee and take a little break and also get my umbrella, so I'll be dry the rest of the day.

But when I stuck my hand in my pocket for my key, I realized I didn't have it ... I had given it to Suzie, because she was supposed to have been home before me.  So now I'm irritated in addition to being chilly, damp, and miserable, and still need a USB drive, which required a further walk through the cold half-snow, half-rain to the FNAC store where, I will note, I performed a trick I am often able to pull off, slowing down a line merely by standing in it, thanks to everyone in front of me having some problem or the other, which were all solved by the most chatty, talkative cashier in France.  But at least there I was warm, which was not the case once I ventured out again, another walk through the cold half-snow, half rain.  By the time I got to the Alliance, my hair was soaked, as was my nice leather jacket.

Finally, at 2:00 p.m., I presented myself for my appointment.  The woman in the office gave me a look combining irritation and puzzlement.  You were scheduled for 12:30, she said, you can see right here (showing me the schedule).  So I took out the card they gave me when I made the appointment for the workshop, which is, in fact, comprised of two sessions, an analysis session and a follow up session.  One would assume -- I assumed -- that the first date and time on the card was the first session, but no ... the second date and time on the card was the first session, a fact I just hadn't noticed.  And sure enough, the first session was scheduled for 12:30.  The woman said, I can't help you unless my next student doesn't show up, but we can at least try and begin the diagnostic; come over here.  So I did, and she proceeded to run my through a list of French vowels and accompanying sentences to test my pronunciation.

This, my friends, was ugly.  Very ugly.  It was a series of "well, you'll have to work on that," and "no, you've said the sounds backwards," and "that's typical of Anglophones," and "that's another thing to work on," until, finally, the last, most pathetic comment, "well, I don't think we have to go on to the consonants."  Ouch.  The paper she was marking on had a line for "overall evaluation"; I'm sure if she'd been honest, she'd have written "il n'y a pas d'espoir" or something to that effect.  (Google Translate is here for you non-francophones.)

At this point I was just about done.  Still cold, sick, run-down, and really, really tired of feeling incompetent all the time.  I've got seven years of post-secondary education at very fine universities, I have a responsible job, I am an intelligent, competent person, and right now I don't give two hoots and a damn if I can't say (or even hear very well) the difference between the two "a" sounds in "La patte dans la pâte!"  What the hell am I doing here, it's a lost cause anyway.

Maybe it's time to go home.

Tell Me What You Think

Wordpress has added a poll function, so here are a couple of polls for you.  Note that it is possible to vote for more than one response.  Thanks for your participation.

[polldaddy poll=1084175]

[polldaddy poll=1170748]

[polldaddy poll=1170775]

Quelques Videos

If a picture is worth a thousand words, is a video worth a million? I don't think so. Even so, here are a few recent videos, not particularly interesting in and of themselves, but they do give a sense of my life here in Paris.

First, I visited the Louvre yesterday (post to come, probably), and here is a 360 degree video taken on right outside the main entrance:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmBcMcBDlT8]

On the way there, I went with Andrew part way to his school, and here's a short video of him waiting at the Chatelet station:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jle3vp5d4X8]

More Metro, this one at my most-used, most loved station (not), Saint Placide:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVHCM_YGUZ0]

Still more Metro, through Montparnasse:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsXGGdYV8YE]

And finally, a view down our very busy street ... our apartment is about halfway down on the left hand side:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxkKQx6CWwA]

More tomorrow.  Words, not videos.

A Very Luxembourgeoise Thanksgiving

Last weekend we drove to Luxembourg to visit a friend of Suzie's from high school.  Longtime readers will recall that we made the same trip during our last visit to Paris, and encountered there the horrible Vaches Sauvages de Flaxweiler.  This time, the plan was to have (belatedly, on Saturday) a real American-style Thanksgiving, with turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, the whole, real deal.

The trip had an inauspicious start at the Hertz office on Avenue du Maine near Montparnasse.  Despite the fact that I was able to rent a car from the very same location two months ago without having to show my passport, the very snotty assistant manager (if you hate people so much, why did you go into a service-oriented position?) informed me that it was obligitoire, meaning that I had to go home and retrieve it before I could take the car.  Which turned out, in the end, to be a good thing, as it was also the case that my driver's license shows an expiration date of November 26, 2008, and even though I've renewed it, the new one hasn't found its way to me, meaning that even if I had had my passport, I couldn't have gotten the car, a fact which I remembered on my way back to get the passport.  So Suzie had to come with me to rent the car and, unfortunately for her, had to drive the entire weekend, which, as will be seen, was not pleasant, particularly at the very end.

But once we got the car on Friday, we got stuck in only moderately bad Paris traffic, and the trip there was uneventful.  Suzie's friend Stacey has a quite wonderful family -- a friendly, laid back husband from Finland and two adorable, fun kids.  They live more or less in the country in a very comfortable, very quiet house, which was a real treat for us after the constant Paris noise.

On Saturday morning, after eating a delicious breakfast (cinnamon rolls, various types of delicious bread, jam, etc.) we took a walk around the nearby countryside.  It was foggy and still, very peaceful and quiet.  We didn't go the same direction as we had four years ago when we had our savage cow experience, and the cows we came across on our walk were a different breed (literally, the mean ones were all white) and were appropriately placid and bovine (although this one, Ms. 93 613, does seem to have a bit of an attitude):





Here are the boys, with proof that we were, in fact, in Flaxweiler:



After the walk, we started cooking, and when I say "we," I mostly mean Suzie and Stacey (and Stacey's husband), but I also chipped in. We prepared a feast. Last in were the turkeys, stuffed, of course. At about 4 p.m., we drove into Kirchberg to attend the annual "International Bazaar." Held in a huge exhibition hall, it consisted of about 50 stands representing about 50 countries, to raise money for charity. At each county's stand, you could buy food (and drink, lots of drink) and products made in (and typical of) that country. It was very cool seeing all the different nationalities and all the different foods and products. It also felt more comfortable to me because there were many more tall and light-skinned people there, and many English-speakers, which made me feel a little more in-place.



(I found a video on-line showing the bazaar. Unfortunately the narration is in French, but if you are interested you can find the video here.)

The American stand, in addition to selling "American" dishes like hot dogs, popcorn, and brownies, had a grocery store section, selling things that you can't generally find in European grocery stores, including, most prominently, Bisquick and Rice and Corn Cheks cereals.

After the bazaar and a trip to a nearby grocery store (which was enormous, and located in a very modern mall), it was time for dinner. Everything at the dinner was absolutely delicious -- the turkey was flavorful and moist, the stuffing tasty and not too heavy, the mashed potatoes and gravy, the cranberries, the creamed onions (I love those), the bread, the cranberries, and, to finish it off, two wonderful pies, pumpkin and apple. I ended the day stuffed, completely stuffed, drowsy, and very contented. It was everything you could want in a Thanksgiving, except that there was no football (something I thought about from time to time but can't really say I genuinely missed).

After a long night's sleep (which followed an even longer night's sleep on Friday night), we got up and started ... eating again. It was snowing lightly in the morning, and I sat looking out the window watching it come down, thinking how much the countryside and the snow reminded me of where I grew up. An odd feeling. But about 2 p.m. we had to leave to drive back to Paris. By this time the snow and rain had stopped, the sun was started to come out, and we anticipated an easy drive back.

Which we got for most of the trip, but the last part was a nightmare. Starting at about 20 miles out from Paris, the traffic on the autoroute became stop and go, and continued like that most of the rest of the way. By the time we hit the Périphérique, the expressway that circles Paris, we were inching along painfully, so we decided to get off and take the surface streets, which was in retrospect a mistake, since that was also a slow, painful crawl along Boulevards Masséna, Kellermann, and Jordan, and when we got to Avenue du Général Leclerc, the traffic lights were out, which slowed traffic even further, and we couldn't find a place to park, so we had to block traffic to get our bags out, and it was cold and rainy and Suzie had to circle the block again, but finally found a place. But we still had to gas up the car and take it back to Hertz, which required more driving through the clogged streets, and after we'd finally, finally checked the car back in (at 8:30 p.m., more than 6 hours after we'd left Luxembourg on our scheduled three-and-one-half-hour trip), we went to the bus stop only to discover that, apparently, the electrical disruption affecting the traffic lights was also affecting the buses, so that ours wouldn't be there for 35 minutes, which caused us to decide to take the Metro, necessitating, from where we were, the huge transfer from Line 13 to Line 4 at Montparnasse (the two moving sidewalks, one normal and one "plus vite," were both broken, as usual), so it was well after 9 by the time we finally got home, the question in our heads being, for the last two hours, why in the hell would anyone in Paris have a car?

But, notwithstanding that last little unpleasantness (which fell most heavily on Suzie, who had to drive), the trip was definitely worth it, a very pleasant, if too short, getaway from the hustle and bustle of Paris.

The Boys and I Go to Chartres

Amidst all the blogging about snow and socialists, I neglected to tell about the trip the boys and I took yesterday to Chartres, a town of of about 40,000 located 60 miles or so southwest of Paris.  We decided to go because Suzie was off visiting a friend of hers in England.  We left our apartment in the late morning, took the Metro to Gare Montparnasse, bought tickets for the 11:15 train.  I will only rave about the train a little bit ... it was quiet (electric, so no engine noise), comfortable (like riding on air), relatively cheap, quick, and it deposited us a short walk away from the center of the city.  It's this latter aspect that makes the trains so useful; you can go from city center to city center more quickly than you could drive, because unlike a car, they train doesn't get stuck in traffic or have to stop at stoplights.

After a quick lunch we headed to the city's main attraction, it's magnificent gothic cathedral, dating from the 12th century.  It has two spires, the highest one being 370 feet:



The inside of the cathedral is an enormous open space, with amazing stained glass windows and an almost overwhelming amount of intricately carved stone. Unfortunately, it was so dark inside that it was difficult to take pictures, although this one gives a sense of intricacy of the carvings (although not the volume):



After viewing the interior, we walked out the western entrance, which was again flanked by detailed stone carvings:



The cathedral is located on a bluff above a small river, which we walked down to, and along, for a period of time.



Eventually we started uphill again, past old houses in the half-timbered style:



Eventually we came to the main shopping area of the city, and we stopped at a bar/cafe for hot chocolate and coffee, to get out of the cold. We walked about a bit more, got crepes (the best I've had in France so far, made by a friendly, meticulous young man), and generally took in the ambiance.



At this point Andrew, who had brought his skateboard with him but had not had much opportunity to stake, wanted to find a stakepark, so we went to the tourist office and asked if there was a stakepark nearby, and were told, erroneously as it turned out, that there was one in a park just north of the train station. We found the park but after a diligent search we concluded that there wasn't one there, which greatly irritated Andrew.



We took an express train back to Paris at 5:15, and were in our apartment by 6:30. A very nice, if cold day. More pictures for those who are interested are here.

Don't Sell the Bearskin before You Kill the Bear

At least I think that's how you'd translate La Figaro's paraphrase ("de ne pas vendre la peau de l'ours avant de l'avoir tué") of Segoline Royal's reaction to Martine Aubrey's declaration of victory, in the middle of what looks to become a really donneybrook between the two over the election for leadership of the Socialist Party in France.  What's happening is exactly what you'd expect -- lawyers are getting involved, disputes are arising as to the accuracy of the vote count in different locations, and, for better or worse, because the election was run by the party itself, there's no Supreme Court to step in and resolve the mess.  So I suspect the dispute will go on until the powers-that-be in the Socialist Party decide upon a winner.  Even then, it's hard to see how that winner (which will probably be Aubrey) will have much legitimacy.  Stay tuned.

La Neige!

After finishing the last post, I shared with my fellow Parisians the Sunday tradition of hunting for the few food stores open on Sunday.  In my neighborhood, it's the Monop store, which was packed, and after that I went to the bakery just down Rue Alphonse Daudet, which makes the most incredible baguettes, which they call "Tradition," and which are usually still warm when you get them, and absolutely delicious, an amazing bargain at 1.10 euro each.  As usual, there was a line, and as I approached the front one of the two women working in the store exclaimed, in a voice full of delight, "Il neige!  Il neige!" -- it's snowing!  And sure enough, it was, a few light flakes tumbling down from the sky.  I bought my two baguettes (warm and soft and chewy on the inside), and went home to tell the boys about the snow.  In the two minutes it took me to get home, the snow had intensified, and by the time I got into the apartment, it was coming down heavily, a little Parisien snow shower (note on the photo, for the best effect, click here for the large size):

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="683" caption="Snow in Paris, View Down Avenue du Général Leclerc"][/caption]

Andrew and I quickly got on our coats and gloves and went outside.  The snow kept coming down, along with a very brisk, very cold, very biting wind.  You can see here how much everyone was enjoying the weather (these folks were walking right into the teeth of the wind):



We had hoped it would snow at least once when we were here, and now it has.  It's a good day to stay inside, drink coffee, and blog ... which is what I intend to do.

Can I Take It Back?

Referring to this post, a pean to cold weather, which has of course caused the weather to change very much for the worst. The forecast this morning from Le Monde (my attempt at translation below):

PARIS, France

Mise à jour 08h13 heure de Paris

Maintenant

-2 °C Frais.

Vent - Direction : 6 km/h - SO Humidité : 93% Point de rosée : -3 °C Pression atmosphérique : 1015.24 mb

Météo à 7 jours

			min / max	% precip.
dimanche 23 novembre		Pluie verglaçante suivie de pluie. Nuages l'après-midi. Frais.	-2 °C / 7 °C	53%
lundi 24 novembre		Pluie. Nuageux dans l'ensemble. Frais.	1 °C / 7 °C	44%
mardi 25 novembre		Pluie se changeant en neige. Nuages l'après-midi. Frais.	-3 °C / 5 °C	37%
mercredi 26 novembre		Brouillard en début de journée suivi d'un ciel ensoleillé. Frais.	-2 °C / 6 °C	0%

Currently: 28F Cold.

Sunday: Freezing rain followed by rain.  Cloudy in the afternoon.  Cold.  High 44F.

Monday:  Rain.  Cloudy throughout the day.  Cold.  Low 33F, High 44F.

Tuesday:  Rain changing to snow.  Cloudy in the afternoon.  Cold.  Low 26F, High 41.

Wednesday: (My birthday, I note) -- Foggy early in the day followed by sun.  Cold.  Low 28F, High 43F.

Be careful what you write about!

The Socialists Implode in France

Being a political junkie, I've followed the contest for the leadership of the Socialist Party in France closely.  Since the summer, it's been apparent that the party is split between a more moderate faction, who are amenable to a coalition with the center-left "MoDem" party of Francois Bayrou, and a hard left faction, who believe the party should sharpen its differences with the right.  The more moderate faction is lead by Segoline Royal, the party's unsuccessful candidate in the last presidential election; the more leftist faction is now lead by Martine Aubrey, the mayor of Lille.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="360" caption="Martine Aubrey (left) and Segoline Royal"][/caption]

From the perspective of an American, the process by which the Socialist Party selects its leader (and its candidate for President) is an interesting hybrid.  Every member of the Socialist Party can vote, but to be a member of the party you have to actually join and pay dues.  The election itself is managed and run by the party; the government is not involved at all.  Members of the party go to the nearest "section" of the party to vote, and the voting is open during the evening between 5 p.m. and 10 p.m.  Thus the contest is something akin to, but not exactly like, a primary election in the U.S.

Originally, four candidates were in the running for the leadership of the Socialist Party.  Three of them, including Martine Aubrey, were in the "leftist" camp.  Early on, one candidate withdrew and threw his support to Aubrey.  In the first round of voting, Royal got 42.45 percent of votes, and Aubry came second with 34.73 percent.  Because no one obtained a majority of the votes, a second round of voting was required (which, amazingly, took place the very next evening).  The third candidate in the first round also threw his support to Aubrey, which meant that, mathematically, Aubrey had the upper hand.

The second round voting took place last night, and it looks as if a little bit of recent American experience has been imported into France.  During the night, it first appeared that Royal would win the contest, then as the night went on, Aubrey partisans claimed victory, as a result of large margins of victory for her in the areas in the north near Lille.  It commenced then to get ugly:  "Nous ne nous laisserons pas voler cette victoire. Nous contestons les résultats dans le Nord de la manière la plus ferme" 'We're not going to let this election be stolen.  We strongly contest the results from the North.'  Hmmmm, sounds familiar.

Finally, at 5:30, the party announced the official results of the election -- and whoo-eee, it's not pretty:  Martine Aubry, 67.413 votes; Ségolène Royal, 67.371 votes, a tiny margin of 42 votes out of more than 130,000, 50.02% to 49.98%.  More suggestions, of course, from the Royal camp that the election was flawed, that the party insiders who managed the election favored Aubrey, that the election should be redone.  The worst possible result for the Socialists, an contested election that did not produce a clear leader, a party still divided, which seems to have no clue and no clear path to challenge Nicholas Sarkozy's center-right UMP party on a national level (although, interesting, the Socialists have been quite successful in local and regional elections).

My view, as an outsider, is that the Socialists would have been better served by tacking towards the center.  Whether Segoline Royal is the best leader is, I think, another question.  But it is difficult to see a Socialist Party headed by the trenchant Martine Aubrey posing a serious challenge to Sarkozy in the next Presidental election.  But, as a political junkie, I look forward to the next few weeks -- charges, counter-charges, investigations, committees, allegations of wrong-doing, possibly a do-over!  Stay tuned.

Our Victory Over Orange

Based upon anecdotal evidence, it seems that cell phone customers here in France must engage in running battles with their providers.  Certainly that has been the case with us.  Shortly after we came, we managed to obtain three phones and a relatively inexpensive subscription from Orange, the mobile service trade name of France Telecom.  Unfortunately, about two weeks later, we received a letter and text messages telling us that our service was being discontinued because we had failed to provide certain documentation.  This came as a bit of a surprise, since we had gone to the Orange office just up Avenue du Général Leclerc, and the sales staff there had processed our paperwork.  So we made another trip to the Orange office to discuss the matter.  They checked with their back office, who told them that they needed a copy of my California driver's license for identification (why they needed this since they had my debit card info is a bit of a mystery).  So the staff made a copy of my license and faxed it in.  To no avail ... a week later, still no service, so we made another trip to the Orange office, sat through (stood through, actually) another call between staff there and their back office, and made another copy of my license to fax yet another time.  Again to no avail ... a week later still, no service.  So back a third time to the Orange office, this time with ... hmmm, how should I put this ... a more energetic and focused Suzie, who forcefully told the staff that she must speak with the manager to take care of this problem, which produced, miraculously, the manager, who spoke again with the back office and was told that, indeed, identification was needed, but it must be in the form of a passport, which I did not then have, necessitating a trip back home, then a return to the Orange office, and another fax.  Since we'd gone almost four weeks without service, we asked the manager to make sure that we didn't have to pay for our service during that time, and were told that we'd have to send a letter to such-and-such an address.  After our service was finally restored (a few days later) we decided that it wasn't worth the 30 euros to get into another conversation with the good folks at Orange.

Also at the time, we were told that it was very important to give at least 2 months notice of our desire to terminate our subscription, and to send the letter by registered mail.  Which we did (ahem, Suzie, actually) in late October, requesting that our subscription be terminated effective December 31.  So, of course, we received a letter (and a text message) 10 days later informing us that our subscription would be cancelled effective November 21.  So yesterday we made yet another trip up Avenue du Général Leclerc to the Orange office, armed with a copy of our letter.  By this time we knew the drill -- wait, wait, wait, then speak with a salesperson whose job is selling phones, not customer service aprés-vente.  We were lucky to get a very kind salesperson, who dialed the back office, got us to the right person (the phone tree is very much alive here in France), but unfortunately then handed the phone back to Suzie, who was stuck speaking with a person trying to be helpful but whom Suzie could not understand.  Here we were lucky again; there were in the store two ladies, an older American and a younger French woman who worked with the older woman in a company as an English translator, with whom we had commiserated earlier about the wonders of Orange service.  The French woman was still in the store, and Suzie convinced her to help us by speaking to the woman on the phone.  End result -- it seems that Orange immediately cancels subscriptions upon a receipt of a request for cancellation, even if the requested date is sometime later, but in our case they had only canceled one line immediately (mine), so we were able to cancel the cancellation of the other two lines, and convert my line to a "mobicarte" (a prepaid plan), which will get me by through December.  And it took less than two hours!

The whole experience seemed much less interesting this time than before.  I'm sure the next trip to Orange (and something tells me there will be one) will be even less interesting still.

I Love the Cold in Paris

This is what the past week or so has been like in Paris:



The days have been cloudy, foggy, damp, and sometimes rainy, bordering on cold. The kind of weather that some people would call "miserable." But I love it. There is something about the clouds and the drizzle that is embracing, enfolding, comforting; something about the cold that is cleansing and clarifying. To me it says: Be calm. Be at peace.

Perhaps I feel this way because I was raised in a place with a real autumn and a real winter, a place where in the winter people had to bundle up in warm coats, hats, and gloves to go outside, a place where the warmth of a house or a bar or a restaurant felt like a refuge, a place where "nature" was not a beautiful, abstract entity named Gaia, but rather a freezing, brisk north wind, two inches of ice on your windshield, and numb fingers and toes. The National Weather Service says that at 7 p.m. yesterday in Santa Rosa it was 75 degrees (23C for my one French reader); even though I've lived in California for 20 years, that is still bizarre and unnatural to me, part of the reason why, as I've noted before, in some ways California seems more foreign to me than France.

So I look forward to the temperatures falling even further, I revel in the damp fallen leaves, in a real autumn and a real winter, I enjoy the biting chill when I exit my building, and the warm welcome when I arrive at my destination. Intellectually I know that what one thinks of as "natural" are simply those things with which one is familiar, but what I feel is that this place of dark and damp and increasing chill is home, a place that puts its arms around me and says, be quiet, everything is going to be OK.

Sarkozy: You Wanna Be Like Bush? Putin: Nyet!

Funny-and-sad-at-the-same-time article in the Times Online today about a discussion in August between French President Nicholas Sarkozy and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin:

With Russian tanks only 30 miles from Tbilisi on August 12, Mr Sarkozy told Mr Putin that the world would not accept the overthrow of Georgia’s Government. According to Mr Levitte, the Russian seemed unconcerned by international reaction. “I am going to hang [Georgian Prime Minister] Saakashvili by the balls,” Mr Putin declared.

Mr Sarkozy thought he had misheard. “Hang him?” — he asked. “Why not?” Mr Putin replied. “The Americans hanged Saddam Hussein.”

Mr Sarkozy, using the familiar tu, tried to reason with him: “Yes but do you want to end up like [President] Bush?” Mr Putin was briefly lost for words, then said: “Ah — you have scored a point there.”

Finally, a concrete contribution to world peace from W, thanks to the fact that no one, not even Putin, wants to be compared to him.  Truly pathetic.

Télé-Paris Picture Time!

I realize I haven't posted any pictures since we returned to France, and since a picture is worth a thousand words (or perhaps worth even more than a thousand of my words), here are a few new ones.  As always, more are on my Flickr site.

I carried my large telephoto lens all the way to Paris, but didn't take it out of its case until just this week.  Don't ask me why.  But, as a result, all the pictures here are taken with the bigger lens.  The advantage of the telephoto lens is that it gives you great zoom shots; the disadvantage is that you miss some shots because of the inability to get far enough away from the subject.  Also, as you photographers know, a big lens reduces the amount of available light, and between that and the fact that the effect of unsteady hands is amplified with a big lens, often pictures can be not as sharp.  But most of these came out fine.  So, here we go, some pictures from the last week in Paris. The first few were taken on a walk I took alone on a cloudy, cold, windy day. First, a dark, moody shot of the obelisk in the Place de la Concorde:



For those who don't know, the obelisk is the real deal. The obelisk is

a pink granite monolith that was given to the French in 1829 by the viceroy of Egypt, Mehemet Ali. The edifice, which once marked the entrance to the Amon temple at Luxor, is more than 3,300 years old and is decorated with hieroglyphics portraying the reigns of the pharaohs Ramses II and Ramses III. Gilded images on the pedestal portray the monumental task of transporting the monolith to Paris and erecting it at the square. Installed in 1833, the Obelisk — weighing 230 tons and standing 22.83 meters (75 ft) high in the center of the Place — is flanked on both sides by two fountains constructed during the same period.

Here's a picture of one of the fountains, withe Eiffel Tower in the background.



From the Place de la Concorde, I walked up to the Arc de Triomphe, and took this picture of La Defense, the large business complex to the west of Paris:



And a final picture from this day, festive flags on the Champs Elysees:



Another day Suzie and her friend Sarah, visiting from New York, took a walk around Paris. Some shots from that jaunt include the Cemetery Montparnasse,



some Velibs:



and this shot, one of my personal favorites, taken just off of Boulevard St. Germain:



Yet another day we went to meet Suzie's conversation partner at a brasserie, and I had some time to kill beforehand, so I took this picture of Paris' Statue of Liberty, which is, I understand, an exact replica of the one in New York, which was erected by Americans living in Paris as a "thank you" to the French for the gift of New York liberty.



This picture shows where the statue is located:



Finally, today was a gorgeous day in Paris, sunny and clear, despite the forecast (which is wrong more than it is right, it seems), and our day took us to the big department store near the Opera, where these shots were taken.





Last but not least, something you rarely see, a nice picture of both me and Suzie (there are lots of nice pictures of her, but I have to be one of the least photogenic people in the world, so I avoid being in front of cameras most of the time):

A Good Sign?

Perhaps a good sign that the Democrats won't make the same mistakes they made during the first two years of Clinton's term:  This article in the Wall Street Journal, reporting on an interview with Rahm Emanuel, the new White House Chief of Staff.

[Obama wants] real solutions to real problems. And if we do an ideological test, we will fail. Our challenge is to work to solve the actual problems that the country is facing, not work to satisfy any constituency or ideological wing of the party.

Amen to that, but I'll believe it when I see it.

Our Election Night in Paris

On Election Night, Suzie and I attended the official U.S. Election Night party, which was held at a place called the Cineaqua near the Trocadero.  Because of the time difference, the party didn't start until 10:30 p.m., and was scheduled to go through the night, which meant that we were going to have do so something we hadn't done in a long, long time, namely, staying up past midnight.  We were also conscious of the fact that, polls notwithstanding, a small possibility existed that we would be saying "Vice President-Elect Palin" by the end of the night, which made us both a little, shall we say, nervous.

So at 10:30 we got on the Metro and headed for the party, wearing our Obama pins.  At one stop, a very serious, very French-looking woman got on and sat down directly across from us.  About 5 minutes later she noticed our Obama pins and said, in perfect English (because, it turned out, she was American), "Oh, are you going to the party, too?"  We ended up walking with her to the Cineaqua, and heard all about her interesting work (a former corporate lawyer, she is now working for an NGO that uses senior, retired or semi-retired attorneys to provide international legal services to NGOs and others who can't afford it).

As we exited the Metro stop and cleared the building directly in front of it, we were presented with a stunning view of the Eiffel Tower, lit in a deep blue light.  To the left, a series of spotlights were panning the dark sky, announcing the location of the election party, and giving a wonderful festive air to the evening.  Outside the entrance to the party there was a long line, which was due in part to the ample security check each person was given before they were allowed to enter.  (Suzie and I had both commented that the U.S. Election Party was probably not the safest place to be in Paris, threat-wise, so we appreciated the security efforts, although their necessity was a sad reflection on the Bush legacy.)

The crowd in line was happy and festive, a mix of young and old, mostly Americans but a fair number of French also.  There were also hostesses hired by France 24, an international news network, to find and accompany special guests into the party; the hostesses were wearing on their backs LCD screens showing the France 24 feed (I assume), which made them look like some kind of futuristic robo-women.  I noted to Suzie that this was every man's dream come true, an attractive woman and a TV all in one, especially if the combination came with an appropriate remote control.  She laughed but then again I bet she didn't expect a comment so crude would show up in the blog.  Anyway, here's a couple of clips of the wait to give you a sense of the scene:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-jXj_B19J0]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzU8UXsUw7I]

Pardon the quality of the video.  The camera doesn't do well in the dark, and when we entered the party, we were informed that we could not take pictures with the still camera, which I was required to check, although as it turned out the no-picture rule was broken by others more times than I can recall (and by me, too, with the little video camera).

Once inside the party we got a better sense of the crowd, which was mostly American, mostly ex-patriots, but otherwise a nice mix of young and old, well-dressed and casual, married and single.  There were also a huge number of journalists.  On the lower level, TV5 Monde, another French international TV network, was broadcasting its coverage of the election live, which was interesting to watch, and throughout the party there were a large number of cameramen and reporters doing reports and interviews.  At one point in the evening, Suzie and I were interviewed by a young woman reporter for Radio France International's Arabic language section; she told us our interview would be translated in to Arabic and broadcast the next morning (if peace comes to the Mideast soon, you will know now whom to credit).

The Cineaqua itself was a good location for the party, if a little small.  It is a strange combination of an aquarium (with some very beautiful and interesting exhibits) with a scary-film theme.  Thus, at one point during our walks about the party, we came across this exhibit of none other than Ahn-old himself, looking a little worse for wear.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8-IvsXLSE4]

The other slightly frustrating thing about the party was the food.  Not so much the quality (although in truth that wasn't really up to our expected French standards) as the distribution and the quantity.  If you were a French caterer, and you wanted to really frustrate an American crowd, how would you do it?  Eureka, I discovered the answer:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qspBTU395J4]

Petite, indeed.  And we laughed even more when we discovered what was being prepared at this station:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btS5jPrk4qQ]

Yes, tiny little one-bite cheeseburgers, each individually make, carefully and slowly, by the chef, down to carefully pealing each tiny slice of cheese and carefully placing them, one by one, on each tiny patty of beef.  After waiting for the better part of 10 minutes, here's what we ended up with:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbm0F9VEzh4]

Bon.

After a while, it was time for some serious election-return watching.  We had exhausted our drink tickets, and consumed enough food and caffeine to keep us awake, so we squeezed into the not-nearly-big-enough theatre showing the CNN election feed, and awaited the first batch of big results.  As you can see from the following clip, which shows the reaction to the results, this crowd was, not surprisingly, hardly a representative sample of American voters:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gt-V42CB-co]

I should make an observation here, because I can foresee someone named Palin viewing that clip and going into a tirade about how these aren't "real" Americans but rather a bunch of privileged left-wing hypocrites who don't even love their country enough to want to live there, and if they really loved America they'd be working in the U.S. instead of eating baguettes and Camembert and pretending to be something they aren't, and that just shows that the only "real" Americans are on the right and why the hell don't you all just stay in France, anyway?  And truth be told, there's a little grain of truth in that tirade, in that the people in that room probably don't have the kind of emotional attachment to the U.S. exclusively as do people who've never traveled outside the country.  That's only natural; when you've seen that there are other places with happy citizens that function more or less as well as the U.S., it's more difficult to see the U.S. as the overwhelmingly bright, shining, exceptional place in the same way as many on the right do.  But that doesn't mean that the expats (and others, like me) cheering for Obama aren't "real" Americans, or that they don't love their country.  In fact, the fervent reaction results, I think, from the fact that many of them saw the Bush years as a repudiation of they believe America stands for -- tolerance, acceptance, respect for human rights.

I should also make another observation here, to preempt the potential Palin protest (alliteration is a beautiful thing, no?).  Those who know me will affirm that I am anything but a leftist.  In fact, I'm pretty much a dead center-of-the-road guy, who leaks off to the right on some issues and off to the left on others.  But I voted for Obama and I cheered on his victory on Tuesday night.  Why?  Because the right in the U.S. is lost and without a compass, and badly needs reforming, and that'll never happen absent a solid defeat.

But I digress.  Eventually Suzie and I were able to score some real seats in the theatre, and we settled in and watched the returns come in.  When Pennsylvania was called for Obama, the crowd went wild.  Then the next big round of results came in, with more cheering:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghSaVnfX8ts]

Finally, when Ohio was called for Obama, everyone pretty much knew McCain was done; with the West Coast's block of electoral votes certain to go for Obama, the gig was up.

We finally left at about 4:30 a.m. and took a cab home.  We were tired, but not as tired as we had expected, and we were happy because "Vice President-Elect Palin" never materialized.

As I mentioned in my groggy post yesterday, it is a great week to be an American here.  My French instructor noted today that it is as if the collective French view of America changed overnight from disgust and disdain to respect and admiration.  The election drew huge media coverage here; in the last few days it was almost as intensive as in the U.S.  A quick story:  My son Andrew went stakeboarding on Monday with a couple of French kids he had met at the local skate park, and one of them asked him about the U.S. elections, including asking him if he knew what the "swing states" were!  Which brings me back, finally, to the reason why this election was so important.  We may like to pretend (and the right may like to believe) that what the world thinks of us doesn't matter, but that simply isn't true, for two reasons.  First, it is not correct purely as a factual matter; if America is hated in the world, that has real, solid, actual repercusions.  And second, if the world is critical, it may be worth considering what they are saying.  For sure, some of it may be envy, some of it may be self-serving, but at least in the past 8 years, much of it was, malheursement, dead on correct.

Walking a Little Taller, Feeling a Lot Prouder

Our internet connection was down today, and I was operating on 3 hours sleep, so the complete post of our amazing, wonderful election night in Paris (including goofy and wonderful video) will have to wait until tomorrow.  But I will tell you that I was very, very proud to be an American today.  I can tell you that the French view of America and Americans has changed. I can tell you that people ask where they can get an Obama pin like mine.  I can tell you that the French are now having to take a little closer look at themselves.  I can tell you that I feel like I've miraculously gone in a single day from being the representative of "W" himself (here, akin to being the envoy of the devil himself) to being the representative of a President-Elect Obama himself.  A nice change; that "W" cloud was a drag.  And before I retire to sleep, I will remind everyone of where it all started ... yes, that's right, that grand little state in the dead middle of the country, my old home, Iowa, of which I'm also unreasonably proud right now.  Hoo-ray for the U.S.A.

The Joys of Travel

The travel gods took a swipe at us this evening.  After an uneventful flight into Paris, and after our bags coming off of the carousel in first position, and after getting on a train into Paris that was an express to the Gare du Nord, which meant that there were only 5 stops until ours at Denfert Rochereau ... well, after that, everything went haywire.  Our "express" train made an unexpected stop at Aulney-sous-Bois, followed by a very faint, mumbled announcement that neither Suzie and I could understand, but which we eventually figured out (thanks to Suzie's asking, giving credit where credit is due) meant that we had to leave our train and take a tram line, which seemed to be heading the exact wrong direction, to someplace called Bondy (which neither of us had ever heard of), for a purpose that we didn't really understand.  But, everyone else with suitcases from CDG was getting on the tram, so we did, too.

The tram, it turned out, was excruciatingly slow, as it was running on a rail line on regular streets, and the stops from Aulney-sous-Bois to Bondy seemed endless (looking at the map just now, I count ten).  When we arrived at Bondy we figured out that we were to take another RER rail line into another station (Haussman-St. Lazare), so we carried our three heavy bags and our three heavy backpacks down stairs and then up stairs to another platform, where, sure enough, a train arrived to take us into Paris.

Unfortunately, the Metro transfers from St. Lazare to Alesia were horrible, beginning with getting from the RER to the Metro at St. Lazare, which involved not only a good walk, but also a set of stairs (thanks to a broken escalator) that has to be one of the longest climbs in the system, then a long ride on the 13 line, a long correspondence at Montparnasse (more stairs, but not as steep), and of course all of the Metro cars were packed, in part because of the problem with the RER.  We were unreasonably happy to see the Alesia Metro station, and the inside of our apartment, after a two-hour haul that should have been about 35 minutes.

But it turns out the problem with the train was a sad one -- "un accident grave de voyageur" -- which shut down the entire RER B line from Chatelet (one of the main Paris stations) north to CDG airport:



So we should count our blessings, I suppose.  We're now safe and sound in our little apartment, the plane didn't crash, we're all fine.  And tomorrow is election day in the USA, perhaps the start of something new.  With that, I'm going to bed.