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.