Passage Brady is Bonk

One of my favorite areas of Paris is the few blocks between La Chapelle and Gare du Nord. The reason is simple; this is the "Little India" of Paris. The streets are lined with shops where I can buy all the essentials: mango pulp, tamarind pump, turmeric, cardamom, chai masala, kheer mix, hot peppers, brinjal, and more. Piles of 10 kilo sacks of rice spill out onto the sidewalks next to stalls selling the latest ripped bollywood DVDs and soundtracks. Sari-clad women crowd into sari shops. In my mind the streets smell of coriander, but that might be more fantasy than truth. The signs are mostly in Tamil with spatterings of Hindi, Bangla and Urdu. There are restaurants and then there are more restaurants, most advertising Sri Lankan specialities. My favorite, Ganesha, offers idli for 4 euro, curry for 2 euro, thali for 6 euro, and poori for 1 euro. These are as close to Indian prices as one will see in Paris. At least once per meal a man will appear at the table hawking jasmine garlands or roses. I am the only person I have ever seen buy one of their roses. Tall lanky trees rise from the sidewalks and overhang the streets creating a rugged canopy that gives the place an aura unlike anywhere else in Paris. On the whole it feels like a chilled out, sanitized version of India; India without the honking rickshaws, the beggars or the urine.

I was taken to La Chappelle months ago and have coveted it every since. Passage Brady I only heard about much later. A colleague mentioned the "Indian" area of Paris, and when I said "Oh right, La Chapelle," he said "No no, but it's near there. Passage Brady. It's lined with Indian shops; you'd love it." Being as I already loved La Chappelle I was pretty psyched; But wait! There's more!

Passage Brady is one of Paris's many quaint covered alleyways, and it is indeed lined with Indian shops of the same general profile as line the streets of La Chapelle. However, there is no room to breath in Passage Brady, no vantage point from which to enjoy the sights and sounds. The alley is so narrow the shops and outdoor restaurant tables encroach on both sides leaving room for barely two people to pass by shoulder to shoulder. The shops and restaurants are largely empty--never a good sign--particularly in contrast to the busy main streets on either end of the passage. A man stands outside each restaurant, intentionally blocking the way of passersby, entreating them to come in and enjoy an aperitif on the house before their meal. They act and sound desperate, and given the obvious lack of customers it's easy to see why. The passage truly feels deserted, abandoned, a film set in between takes, but the restaurant hawkers didn't hear the director yell "Cut!" There are elements of this Little India that ring true, particularly the shameless begging, but mostly it feels shallow, hollow, empty, especially in contrast to the canopied enclave a few blocks north.

If I ever get around to doing my ever-theorized never-realized research project on South Asian Paris I'll let you know what accounts for the difference. For now I'm pretty sure I'll go back to Ganesha and by me another rose.

French Kids Say the Darndest Things

Playing Taboo:

The word is "George W. Bush"

Kid: "Who iz ze master of ze world?"

The Supernatural Industry

Saul and I were walking through the Cimitière Montparnasse the other day (resting place of Sarte and Durkheim among others) when a colorful looking dude stepped into our path: "I couldn't help but notice that you're speaking English." We couldn't help but concur. He asked us if we knew where the entrance to the infamous Parisian catacombs was. We didn't BUT we had been discussing the very same catacombs the night before...creepy... As I pulled out my map to see if I could be of some help the dude started chatting us up. Turn out he's from Salem, Mass. "Ah cool," I said, "I heard that's a great place to be on Halloween."
"Yeah," he replied, "actually, I work in the supernatural industry." I noticed he was wearing a button-down shirt covered in skulls...creepy...
"So that's why you came to Paris then? To see all the cemeteries and the catacombs?" Saul asks.
"Nah," said the dude, "I just needed to get away from some stuff going on back home so I hopped on a plane to Paris. Never take Iceland Air by the way." Alrighty then, duly noted. "Hey, being as you guys seem to know the area pretty well, do you have any recommendation for other things I should check out while I'm here?" We started rattling off some classic tourist destinations as he copied them into a small notebook.
"What was that last one you said?" he asked.
"Le Marais," I repeated, "M-A-R-A-I-S."
"And what was the first word?"
"The first word? Oh, um, 'le,' L-E."
"Cool thanks, thanks a lot. Have a great day guys"
"Yeah you too, good luck with everything."
Saul and I went one way and he went the other, searching for the catacombs, and whatever else he was hoping Paris could offer him.

P.S.- Sartre's tomb was pretty plain, especially in contrast to that skull-checked shirt.

Ambition

According to the Census Bureau’s 2007 Statistical Abstract of the United States, most college freshmen in 1970 said their primary goal was to develop a meaningful life philosophy. In 2005, by contrast, most freshmen said their primary goal was to be comfortably rich.
-Jim Holt, "You Are What You Expect," The New York Times Magazine, 21 Jan. 2007.

Do you find this as troubling as I?

SAT LSE GRE KFC

I am surrounded by other people's acronymic aspirations. I've been helping this kid Jinhong prepare for his SSAT for admission to American private school. Then he asked me to edit his application essays. Then his sister, Doyen, a senior in high school, asked if I'd read over her Penn application. Now Jinhong is done with his SSATs but Doyeun is taking her just-one-S-ATs again so I'm back at the Kim's place three times a week demystifying multiple guess questions.

Antoine took the TOEFL three weeks ago, an exam which is shockingly difficult. My attempts to help him a bit with that mostly ended in embarassment when I, a native English speaker and American college graduate, got a couple questions wrong. In fact, I have spent a decent amount of time recently apologizing for shitty American test questions. For example, Following a lengthy and dull passage on microscopes, "The compound microscope is used most often ____" We narrowed it down to two plausible answers: A) for bacteriology, or D) by teachers. After pouring over the passage for far longer than the alloted time I eventually guessed (D). The TOEFL answer guide claims this phrase CLEARLY must be followed by the word "for," therefore, (A) is the right answer regardless of the contents of the passage. I emphatically object. I find nothing grammatically wrong with the statement "The compound microscope is used most often by teachers." You may disagree. In any case, I find this distinction so petty I can't believe they're testing foreigners on it.

Just when the TOEFL was over and done with Antoine realized he has to take the GMAT in about a month. So, we sat down to tackle some practice GMAT questions. Poor Antoine is unfamiliar with English mathematical jargon so I tried to help him by explaining things like "integer" and "prime number," admittedly no feat of genius, but still concepts I haven't thought about in oh, 5 years. Suffice it to say the GMAT writing section was arguably more petty than the TOEFL.

Then my friend Margot asks if I'll help her friend Anne with her application for the London School of Economics. Sure, why not. The following evening Anne shows up bearing the preposterous news that she speaks little to no English and thus would like me to translate her entire personal statement from French into English. In retrospect I should have refused outright being as this amounts to blatant lying and potentially injuring the chances of honest applicants. For some reason (I guess I liked the idea of being useful) I agreed to aid and abet her bullshit. I think I figured her chances of getting in were pretty nil anyways so why not be a nice guy. I gave her my name and email and asked her to send me the essay. The following day there was no essay in my inbox. I inquired as to the essay's whereabouts; she insisted she sent it. A brief investigation into her sent-mail revealed that Anne is not the sharpest tool in the shed. I had written my name and email on a scrap of paper like so:

ERIN- erin.silverstein@gmail.com.

She had sent the email to "erin-erin.silverstein@gmail.com." Seriously... She also managed to misread my cell number, (which she had written in her own handwriting,) lie on the app. about several things aside from her English ability, almost forget to pay the application fee, and so on. I am embarassed to have participated in such ineptitude.

The following evening I helped Antoine fill out a Bank of America summer internship app., all the while I have barely looked into what I'll be doing with myself this summer or next year...and forget about the GREs...

Mmm, I could go for some KFC.

Sylvester in Deutschland

As far as 14-hour periods of time go the overnight bus trip was entirely innocuous. Most of the time I felt I could have just as easily been on a bus from New York to Philly. Once in awhile I peeked out my upper-deck window to estimate how far we had traveled based on the ratio of French to German shop signs. My plan to teach myself German did not materialize, but I slept a decent amount, which is all one can really ask of an overnight bus trip I think.

I arrived on the outskirts of Berlin at precisely 9h30 as planned. I hopped on the S-bahn, Berlin’s above ground express-style metro network, and headed to Alexanderplatz station to meet Yvonne. I was immediately struck by the open space around me. In Paris narrow rues lined with immeubles anciens enclose you in a 19th century film set; wide open spaces appear periodically as a generous gift of Haussmann via one of his grand boulevards. Berlin sprawls, and monuments and parks seem to dominate an otherwise unassuming expanse of low-lying residential buildings.

Yvonne, her friend Ise and I spent the bulk of the day lazing around her chic former East Berlin apartment. I speak French to Yvonne and English to Ise; they speak German to each other. Conversations amongst all three of us proceed via periodic summaries to the linguistic odd-man-out of the moment.

Twice we watched an eccentric British comedy sketch called “Dinner for One,” which has somehow become a German New Years tradition. As such, it airs repeatedly on German TV. Further research is required to uncover how this has come to be…

Our evening plans started off at a flat in former West Berlin full of Yvonne’s university friends. My reflex in Paris has been to pronounce my name French-style and quite frankly, I prefer it that way (comparable to pronouncing Target ‘Tarjay’.) This proved immediately confusing for the Germans: “Ah, so you’re French? American? You just flew in from New York? Oh, from Paris, you visited Paris first. Ah, you’re living in Paris, I see.”

Admittedly it is unfair and unscientific to compare 3 months of living in Paris with one day in Berlin, or for that matter to generalize a roomful of people to the national character. Allow me to be unfair and unscientific for a moment. The Germans I met seemed actually much more like Americans than the French, not in the sense that they were more Americanized at all, but in the sense that they looked like “real people” rather than skinny, meticulously groomed and dressed aspiring runway models (that would be the French). The Germans also seemed less immediately interested in or impressed by my New York origins. Not that they should be, but I had gotten used to a moment of mild awe after introducing myself to most French people; the Germans were much more excited to here that Ise was from near their hometown. The French kiss, the Germans hug. There was no cheese.

Yvonne and her friends all study music at university, so there was an appropriately trendy collection of old American LPs playing on a turntable all night. My German sure wasn’t up to par for the evening, but I could belt out “Hang on Sloopy” and “If I Had a Hammer” with the best of ‘em. Johnny Cash and the Ronnettes filled up the last hour before midnight. Then, as amateur fireworks lit up the street outside we counted down. I managed to join in for about every other number: “…neun…seben…funf, fier…zwei, ein!” We made our obligatory rounds of the room, wishing each and every person “Frohes Neues!” and sealing it with a hug.

We continued the party at a nearby club. “Nearby” in Berlin is much further away than “nearby” in Paris, but I was in no position to complain. The club was free and incidentally continued the Anglophone musical repertoire of the evening. It was quite an excellent eclectic mix—The Chili Peppers, The Roots, The Jackson Five, The Beatles—and all English all the time. As much as I personally enjoyed rocking out to some sweet tunes, I found it simultaneously kind of sad for two complimentary reasons. 1) Because German kids don’t have enough native pop music and must rely largely on English imports. 2) Because American kids have so much native pop music we’re largely unfamiliar with imports. I suppose I see some ideal balance between native and foreign cultural production, and the balance seems skewed towards the native in the US and towards the foreign in Europe. One day I’ll flesh this theory out in a more nuanced and arguable form; ‘till then you can take it or leave it.

In any case, we danced our asses off at the club and finally dragged our exhausted selves home by around 5am. I think I fell asleep during every leg of the trip, waking up just long enough to transfer U-bahn lines. As far as New Years go this definitely beat playing Halo at Marc’s house, to say the least…