Toussaint Part 1

We have become nocturnal. The vacation-loving French gave us 10 days off for All Saints Day…er…Week, and absolute lethargy ensued. Both the beauty and the tragedy of three people like me, Rach and Saul becoming friends/roommates/neighbors is that we all appreciate and enjoy the luxury of doing nothing. This does not define us—on the contrary, we have the capacity to be incredibly active people when the mood strikes us—but you can’t deny the allure of waking up around noon and lazing around until you motivate yourself to go buy enough wine, bread and cheese to last until 4am when you finally crash.

That’s pretty much been the past week of my life. Naturally things differed each day. One evening we cooked up a pretty decent curry-esque dish for all our French friends as a sort of “Thanks for being ridiculously friendly” gesture. Everyone seemed to appreciate it; I even got Saul to eat it Indian-style with his hands. Bolstered by the success of this culinary endeavor, the next morning I crafted a delicious French toast (no pun intended) seasoned with nutmeg, cardamom, and cinnamon, topped with a creamy apple-almond shebang and drizzled with honey. This was definitely the impromptu culinary achievement of my life.

The chronology of all this is beginning to escape me, but one night our friend Keith invited us out to the Champ de Mars, which is the big field in front of the Tour Eiffel, sort of like the mall in front of the Washington monument. Kids traditionally set up camp there for the evening and drink wine—not a bad tradition if you ask me. The Tour Eiffel is lit up dramatically at night and twinkles magically every hour on the hour (yes, magically). One of the more annoying Parisian habits is the metro closing at 12:30am. This often leads to long walks home late at night unless you feel like springing for a taxi (which I almost never do). Rachel had the foresight (and need for speed) to buy a bike off craigslist, but Saul and I are wheel-less, so our walk home from the Tour Eiffel took a good 2 hours. Luckily, Paris is a fabulous place to walk around at night. (In case you’re looking for a second opinion).

Sunday Saul and I went up to the marché aux puces (flea market) at Porte Clignancourt looking for nothing in particular (except maybe a bike) and finding nothing in particular (no bikes). Porte Clignancourt is at the very edge of Paris on the boulevard périphérique (ring road) and is somewhat more “urban” and less quaint than central Paris. The market was basically composed of three types of booths: 1. Marked down but still expensive designer clothing, 2. Marked up but still cheap imported Asian incense and wall-hangings, 3. Rap and hip-hop CDs and DVDs. This got a little old after awhile so we wandered a bit off the beaten track and found a cute alley full of antique books, prints, furniture, etc. Highlights included some random person’s daily planner from 1926 and a 19th century engraving of the smallish town Saul’s French family is from. Sadly, neither was cheap enough to justify buying. Apparently we only saw perhaps half of the marché and there are definitely several other ones as well, so I forsee plenty more opportunities to buy cheap crap (maybe a bike).

Fact 1: 5 beers fit in an upside-down Frisbee.
Fact 2: Rachel did not believe fact 1.
Fact 3: I proved her wrong.

Now, perhaps it sounds as if we have been doing some cool things with our break, but I swear we were mostly lazy as all hell. The one thing we DID put some modicum of effort into was Halloween.

I actually found some decent pumpkins at an alimentation (sort of like a bodega for those familiar with Spanish Harlem or Ghostwriter) for 7 euro a piece. Sunday night we took the pumpkins over to Fabien’s and had a little pumpkin-carving party. Considering the lack of authentic pumpkin-carving tools I think we did a damn good job. We displayed one on a ledge outside Fabien’s window, which looks out on a really busy boulevard. I hope people saw it and smiled, though they may have just scoffed. Fuck ‘em.I had promised my French and British friends not only an authentic jack ‘o lantern but also the authentic American delicacy of toasted pumpkin seeds. The combination of loads of time on my hands and residual French-toast-glory led me to dream up more than your average seeds. Inspired by an online recipe for “Pumpkin Seeds: Three Ways” I made one third regular salted seeds, one third curried seeds, and one third chai tea seeds. Honestly, I think they all taste pretty similar, but the Brits seemed to dig ‘em, especially the chai tea ones, which they claim taste like sausages. Go figure.

The biggest bummer of French Halloween is the costumes, or rather, the lack thereof. The French simply do not understand the fine art of crafting the perfect Halloween costume. They think it’s all about witches and ghosts, end of story. When Rachel explained to them that last year she and two friends went as Pink Floyd albums (with the real album art painted on their backs) our French friends seemed impressed but also a bit flabbergasted. It was pretty obvious from the get-go that we could easily get away with not dressing up at all, but I love Halloween far too much to stoop to lame French standards. I wanted to somehow keep it real while still keeping it French, so I ended up concocting this bizarre costume out of Camembert cheese containers. The upside of this was definitely getting to eat all the delicious Camembert (seriously, it’s divine). I crafted a Camembert cheese bra, necklace, and earrings, and entitled my costume ‘Mademoiselle Camembert.’

Our night started out late as usual. In fact, it seems the preceding week of late-nights was really just warm up for this, the latest night of all.

Another American assistant, Susie, had a Halloween gathering, which was quite pleasant and tame—kind of reminiscent of my 4th grade Halloween party put on by the class-moms. Indeed her mom had sent her honest-to-god American candy corn and fake spider web. There was a best costume prize, which I was told I WOULD HAVE WON had I showed up on time…oops. Turns out some girl dressed up as Hawaiian won (not nearly as deserving as Mademoiselle Camembert…)

We hadn’t gotten to Susie’s until around midnight, so by the time we had finished off all of Susie’s wine it was around 1:30am and thus, post-metro. Our French friends are chummy with the guy putting on this techno party on a barge in the Seine, so we had been promised free entrance (a 12 euro savings—whoever says the French aren’t friendly has just met the wrong French people). Naturally, the party barge was a good hour’s hike from Susie’s party. We finally showed up around 2:30/3am.

Turns out it was worth the hike. The party was packed, but there was still room to dance. NO ONE was in costume, so I quickly ripped off my Mademoiselle Camembert bra and stuffed it in my purse. I’m not much of a connoisseur of techno, so I can’t speak to the quality of the DJ’ing, but I think it’s fair to say it was solid without being ground-breaking. Knowing the guy throwing the party was money—we hadn’t managed to get in for free, but he made it up to us with several free drinks, and Rachel got to dance up on stage.

We finally headed home around 7am. The metro was up and running again, and we were just about Halloweened out. We mustered up enough energy to pick up some delicious buttery flaky pastries for a pre-sleep breakfast. The perfect end to a pretty decent Halloween all things considered. Though after three days defending why we carve jack ‘o lanterns, bake pumpkin seeds, and put effort into our costumes, I definitely missed a real American Halloween.