The Deluge

My aunt Sue and uncle Pat visited Paris this weekend along with their friend Heike from Munich. Wednesday was spent perusing the Champs-Elysees, where we happened upon a free Zazie concert and the French premiere of Letters from Iwo Jima (almost saw Clint Eastwood!). Thursday we enjoyed the perfect view from the top of the Tour Montparnasse (the only thing missing from the view is the ugly Tour Montparnasse itself), and savoured a 10 bite-sized course meal at none other than L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon (apparently he's a big deal).

Friday Pat contracted Napoleon's revenge and was forced to pass the day running between my bedroom and my bathroom, meanwhile Sue and I checked out designer furniture after finding the Musée d'Orsay closed indefinitely due to a strike.

Saturday Pat was back to life and I had planned out a full day of sightseeing to make up for the lost day. First, the Louvre, then lunch in Saint Michel, followed by Notre Dame, the Centre Pompidou, and a classic ending at Sacre Coeur overlooking all of Paris at night. After Notre Dame Sue caught a cab back because, "I can't believe how many stairs there are here. I feel like I've been to the gym three days in a row!" NOTE: Sue insists she lost weight over her 5 days here, and people wonder why Parisians are slim.

Pat, Heike and I wished Sue off and continued sightseeing. About half an hour later my phone rings, it's Sue:
"Erin, you've gotta come back, there's this massive flood in your apartment."
"What? What do you mean there's a flood?"
"There's water spraying everywhere out of the kitchen; I can't even get in to see where it's coming from it's coming so fast. You gotta call your super."
"I don't think I have a super. My landlord doesn't even live in Paris."
"Well call a plumber or someone cuz this is out of control."

I convey the preposterous news to Pat and Heike, then fish my landlord's number out of my wallet and begin to contemplate how to articulate something of this magnitude in French. I definitely don't know the French word for "leak," but I know "water," and I remember "flow" from a Apollinaire poem I had to memorize in high school. "There is water flowing in the kitchen" should get the point across. In any case, my landlord proves to be useless; she doesn't know of a plumber or of anyone else in the building to contact.

We finally get back to my building and are greeted with water slowly trickling down the stairwell and down the elevator shaft. Holy fuck. We push through the crowd of neighbors occupying the stairwell and make it to the 3rd floor, ground zero. Sue informs us that some handy neighbor with long hair and glasses has turned off the building's water, and thus stopped the flooding, but in order to turn the water back on I need to call a plumber asap. Just then there is a knock on the door; it's long hair and glasses; he has called a plumber, god bless him. He wants to speak with my landlord. I get her on the phone and give it to him. They do not seem to get along. He hands me the phone back after a bit and scowls, "She's not very nice, is she?" I get back on the phone with my landlord, who whines, "He's not nice at all, is he?" I choose to politely agree with both of them. I haven't used the formal "vous" form this much in my entire time in Paris.

The plumber arrives, a short young mustachioed dude with a shaved head. He acts as if spending his Saturday night fixing my leak is not a bummer at all. He assures me I did nothing wrong; the coupling on the tank was simply old and calcified. It's supposed to be replaced every 3 years or so, but this one looks like it's 8 to 10 years old.

Meanwhile neighbors keep poking their heads in to find out why their water has been shut off, or for a few lucky winners, why their flat is soaking wet. At this point my aunt is bundled up on the futon trying to warm up after being soaked in the initial blast. My uncle and Heike are drinking wine and occasionally interacting with spectators while I continue to juggle between the plumber, long hair and glasses, and my landlord on the phone.

Finally the plumber finishes his temporary fixit and turns the building's water back on. He'll have to come back Monday to replace the tank and until then my flat will be without hot water. He takes me aside and asks if I have renter's insurance.
"Uhh, no, I don't have any insurance. I never even signed a lease. I just live here with this guy who's a friend of the owner's family. Nothing's official; I can't even prove that I live here."
"OK, well Monday morning you should go with your roommate first thing to get insurance. I'll date my report later in the week so it'll be covered."
"Won't the insurance company figure that out?"
"Nah, that's how we do in France."
"But why should my insurance be the issue here. Aren't things like plumbing the responsibility of the owner, not the tenant? Doesn't she have insurance?"
"She says she's not sure, and in any case you're supposed to be insured so you gotta take care of that on Monday."
"She's not sure? How can she not be sure?"

My roommate Antoine, who is conveniently home for the weekend calls:
"What's going on? Corine (the landlord) called me, she asked if I had insurance. I don't have insurance. We are totally screwed. My dad is gonna kill me."
"Antoine, I'll call you back."

The landlord calls:
"Erin, I need you to pay the plumber and I'll pay you back when I come into Paris on Monday."
"OK, and what's the deal with the insurance?"
"You need to get insurance as soon as possible."
"Why didn't you tell me I needed this insurance when I moved in?"
"I should have; just get it on Monday and I think everything will be OK."

The plumber almost sits on what appears to be a pile of blankets but is really my shivering aunt. She pokes a hand out from her cocoon and waves "Hi" just in time. He chooses to remain standing and adds up the bill:
"The total including tonight and Monday will be 1283 euros. I need 600 of that tonight and the rest on Monday."
"I don't know if I have 600 euros to give you."
"Well if not you can write me a check for the whole thing and I promise I won't cash it as long as I get a check from your landlord on Monday."

ACCOUNT BALANCE: 554 euro. I am less than thrilled about the prospect of writing a check for more than twice the money I have in my French bank account.

Thankfully, just then, Amory shows up. This is good news both because he is a friend of mine and my landlord's son. Incidentally, he lives downstairs in a freshly watered apartment. Poor guy. He says he'll write the check on behalf of his mother. I am saved.

The plumber wishes us all a good evening. Long hair and glasses and the other neighbors return to their respective flats. I catch Amory before he leaves.
"So what's the deal with this whole thing? Am I gonna have to pay for all this? This wasn't my fault. Shouldn't your mom's insurance pay for this? I can't pay for this. I can't even prove that I live here."
"No no, I mean, I don't think you'll have to pay. My mom will have to figure this out. All the arrangements are really hazy I know (the word he used was "flou" meaning blurry, ethereal, unclear). It's the same downstairs with me and my cousin, who owns the flat. Don't worry about it; it'll be alright."

48 hours later I think he was largely right. I have a brand spanking new water heating, and the damage to my flat is minimal, the microwave might be fried, but otherwise all that was ruined was some tea and a cookbook. The water shot out of the leak so quickly that it didn't have time to stick around chez moi. Downstairs, chez Amory, however is another story. There the water trickled down through the ceiling and into the walls. The paint is cracked and bits of drywall have begun to crumble off. The electricity has been shut off for fear of starting a fire. Even on the first floor water is dripping from the light fixtures in the ceiling. I'm not sure who's paying for this but I'm pretty sure it's not me. Antoine rigged something up with an insurance company, and they said they'd backdate coverage for our flat to before "the incident." The landlord stopped by today and in so many words thanked me for dealing with everything.

Yesterday morning, right before my aunt and uncle caught their flight back to New York, we all enjoyed a pleasant brunch and rehashed the events of the night prior. The four of us were quickly hysterically laughing recounting the look on the plumber's face when he almost sat on my aunt, or the look on a neighbor's face when my uncle mustered up what little French he could remember to ask "Do you speak French?" We decided the whole incident could make a great sitcom episode starring John Leguizamo as the plumber, Hilary Swank as me, and Lily Tomlin and Jon Favreau as my aunt and uncle. Long hair and glasses would have a cameo as himself.

French Kids Say the Darndest Things...

During a lesson about American high-school curricula:

Me: What do you think "Social Studies" is?
Kid: Euuhhh, Segolène Royale? (French leftist presidential candidate)
Me: Hah no, nice try, but it's not "Socialist Studies."

French Kids Say the Darndest Things...

Kid: But how do American universities decide who to accept if there is no standard exam?
Me: Well, you submit a dossier including all of your activities, sports, clubs, jobs, summer trips, career plans, and anything else they ask for.
Kid: That sounds like prison!

Vendredi soir

Stage 1: Perusing Near Eastern antiquities at the Louvre with Saul and Keith (free youth night). I tried really hard to offer what little knowledge I have of the archaeology of Iran, Iraq etc. without coming off as a know-it-all. I might have gone a bit far when I started quizzing Saul on my explanation of the origins of cuneiform. Incidentally, he did not pass.

Stage 2: Pasta and tequila chez moi. In a blind taste test all three of us preferred presumably crappy 10 euro tequila to presumably superior 50 dollar tequila (the latter a generous gift from a friend who had visited). I find this incredibly perplexing and shameful. Though it's nice to know my 10 euro tequila is palatable, it's distressing to find my palate is not nearly as discerning as I'd hoped. We controlled for a variety of factors--salt, lime, sipping versus shooting--the results were consisted across the board. If nothing else, the rigorous nature of this test did produce sufficient inebriation.
Quote of the night:
Keith- "Hey, are your roommate and his friend gay?"
Me- "No. What makes you think they're gay?"
Keith- "Hm, I guess it's mostly the way they were dressed. Come to think of it, I don't know if I'd be able to distinguish a gay French guy from a straight one."

Stage 3: Party at cité universitaire, the campus for international students in southern Paris. Each country essentially has a dorm, it's sort of like a bizarre combination of Epcot center and the Greek row at your average American university. As we wandered around looking for the party the conversation went something like:
Me- "Where the hell is this party?"
Saul- "The text message I got says it's at the American dorm."
Keith- "Well that's Canada and that's Germany. I think America is somewhere over here."
Me- "Man, it's a small world after all."

OK fine, I didn't actually think to say that at the time, but I wish I had...

Stage 4: The long trek home. The party ended abruptly and inconveniently at 4am. The Paris metro is closed from 12:30-5:30am so it really would have been nice if the party had lasted a measly hour and a half longer. Cité universitaire isn't all that far from where I live, but I had to hop on a night bus that went up to central Paris in order to catch another night bus that went down to my neighborhood in the 15th. I fell asleep on the second bus and woke up in time to find myself in Boulogne, sufficiently past where I was supposed to have gotten off. To add insult to injury it was raining. By this point it was almost 5:30 so I decided to take the metro home, which required three line changes. I finally got home at 6am drenched, exhausted, and my belly still full of an odd mix of high and low quality tequilas.

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…

Noël

I feel incredibly blessed and lucky pretty much every day I'm here, but Christmas was overload on the blessings and luckiness. My friend Rach and I had planned to be alone in Paris on Christmas when our friends Luigi and Clement invited us to spend the holiday with their family in Paris. We were looking forward a good meal and some familial vibes. What we got was a full-out Christmas, complete with a walk down to the major department stores to see the holiday lights, presents--THEY GOT US PRESENTS!!, and a massive delicious home-cooked meal. And, as if things couldn't get any better, there was an adorable giant dog (and you know how I love giant dogs), we played French Taboo (and you know how I love Taboo at any time in any language), AND they gave us each a scratch-off instant-win lotto thing and I WON 100 EUROS! To top it all off we had an encore meal the following night complete with oysters (les huitres) and lamb (gigot d'agneau). It still sucks that I couldn't be home, but this was seriously the best possible surrogate Christmas imaginable.

Antoine Says...

He only studied French authors in high school. "Why would we study foreign authors in translation if there are so many good French ones?" A fair question, though I'd rather have a broad knowledge of world literature than a pinhole knowledge of American lit. I can shoot the shit on Twain, Dante AND Flaubert, he doesn't even know who Twain or Dante is...

Authorized Voyeurism

You may have wondered why I've stopped adorning my posts with lovely pictures of my exploits around Paris. Honestly I haven't taken that many post-worthy pictures believe it or not. Paris has already been photographed so thoroughly and artfully that for the most part I feel it a waste to take one more picture of Notre Dâme or Place de la Concorde. Sure one could argue that my own pictures carry significance beyond their mere aesthetic merit, that fact that I can find a superior picture of Notre Dâme on Google is besides the point. Fair enough. Admittedly at times I find that carrying my camera around compels me to pause and truly observe the picteuresque or dramatic qualities of my surroundings. At other times I find my camera to be a burden because I am constantly stopping to freeze-frame fragments of my life that will never add up to the sum of their parts. In college a friend of mine complained that people spend too much time recording their life and not enough time living it. After college people always complain that they didn't take enough pictures. This seems to be yet another case of finding a happy medium.

In any case, I had begun to fear that I was erring towards too much living and not enough recording, so I forced myself to document an average day in simple snapshots. After several hours spent warring with Facebook I managed to put them up there for those of you with Facebook access. The battle wounds are still fresh; I may not endeavor to put photos up there again for some time to come... I also played around with this map site called Community Walk, which is pretty similar to Google Earth. Basically I linked my pictures to a map of Paris, so you can follow me around Paris on normal, satellite, or hybrid view. Enjoy: http://www.communitywalk.com/map/40567

Just Desserts

Tonight Antoine tried cooking fondants au chocolat with creme anglaise. The creme came out great; the fondant was tasty (it's hard to make something out of melted chocolate and sugar not-tasty), but the texture wasn't quite right. This may have partially had to do with the fact that he hadn't bought the proper baking tins, so we made ersatz tins out of an empty beer can. In any case, I'd be lying if I didn't admit I got mild sadistic pleasure out of watching a Frenchman fail to cook perfect French pastries.

French lesson: Same but Different

American English (AE): I left my tooth for the tooth fairy.
French (F): I left my tooth for the tooth mouse.

AE: I feel like such a third wheel.
F: I feel like the fifth wheel of the carriage.

AE: I've really got a green thumb.
F: I've really got a green hand.

AE: The teacher uses a lot of pie charts.
F: The teacher uses a lot of camemberts.

French Kids Say the Darndest Things

Me: “Do you know what Spring Break is?”
(long pause; kids in deep thought)

Kid: “Is that like Prison Break?”

Antoine says...

French people don’t use credit cards. The idea of spending money you don’t have is perilously frightening to them. I tell him that many many Americans have accrued thousands of dollars of credit card debt, and that furthermore, credit cards, loans, and credit ratings are at the core of a good chunk of American’s personal finances (I qualify this assertion by noting that I am just beginning to understand my own personal finances). He says there is pretty much one kind of loan in France, and there are no credit ratings. If you have a good secure job you get a loan. However, many French bank accounts allow you to maintain a modest negative balance without interest or penalty.

Antoine says...

French people don’t invest in stock because they find it far too risky. “Who invests in the French stock market then?” I ask. Americans and Brits largely. “What do French people invest in?” Real estate.

44 rue du Docteur Roux

I have moved. Why? What was wrong with Emma and her perfect flat on Rue la Bruyère? Well, nothing was wrong with it per se. When I first showed up in Paris the idea was that I would crash with Emma for the first few weeks and then we’d discuss and see how things were going. That conversation was significantly delayed because of life getting in the way, but finally we did sit down and chat. Emma made the valid point that my American fresh-out-of-college lifestyle was on a somewhat different wavelength than what she is used to and perhaps I would have more fun having a place of my own. She also said, “It’s not your fault you’re loud, it’s just that you’re American.”

My reactions to this turn of events were many and varied. I didn’t disagree with her; I did often spend my days lazing around the flat and my nights out until the wee hours, and I can be loud (though I found it unnecessary to attribute this quality to my nationality).

I was however somewhat shocked to be flung into the impossible Parisian housing market without even a chance to redeem my ways. Life at Emma’s had generally been just that—life AT EMMA’S, so I was almost excited about the prospect of HAVING a place of my own. But I was not at all excited about the prospect of FINDING a place of my own. I had friends who had been looking for 6 weeks and still hadn’t found anything; Emma was giving me until the end of November; time to get a move on…

The details of searching for a flat are painful and uninteresting. If you’re familiar with the New York housing market, envision that but as a foreigner from a generally despised country. However, I can’t really complain, because in contrast to my many friends who were and are still searching nearly two months into our contracts, I found a place within 10 days.

I’m now living on the other side of town in the 15th arrondissement in a really cute flat with a French kid named Antoine. Antoine is 23, from Lille (a town near the Beligan border), and a business student. He’s spent summers working in California and London so his English is great, and he hopes to return to the US for more business school. So far he’s taught me a lot about French politics, economics and slang, I’ve tried to return the favor.

I would thus like to commence a regular feature of my blogging called “Antoine says…” Naturally Antoine is as fallible as any other mere mortal, and he’s always up for a good debate, so if you’ve heard conflicting opinions do let me know.

Turkey Day and Tequila

In almost all things food-related France beats American hands down. Thanksgiving is a notable exception. Not only is Thanksgiving a magnificent display of the few dishes Americans know how to cook well, it is also a significant milestone in the lead-up to Christmas. Many stores around Paris have had Christmas decorations up for two weeks now; it just doesn’t seem right. However, manually tearing down premature tinsel seems a bit dramatic, so I opt for a more civil protest—throwing my own Thanksgiving feast and making Europeans eat it.

The invitation is my first attempt at French poetry:

"Thanksgiving sera," un poème de E. Silverstein et S. Shimanoff

Thanksgiving sera
Ce jeudi, ooh la la la
Dinde dinde sur le plat

Samedi chez moi
Festoyez, n’oubliez pas
Tarte à la citrouille.

Translation:

Thanksgiving will be
This Thursday, ooh la la la
Turkey on the plate

Saturday, my place
Celebrate, do not forget
To eat pumpkin pie.

As anyone who has hosted a Thanksgiving knows, it requires considerable advanced preparation. Step one is acquiring my mother’s pumpkin pie recipe and my grandmother’s turkey and stuffing technique. Step two is finding a turkey. I am told that the best way to secure a good turkey is to order one in advance, so I go down to the market near my school on Wednesday to discuss turkey matters with the butcher. They butcher me a beautiful 4.3 kilo turkey, which I pick up Friday afternoon. Step three is waking up at 9am Saturday morning to begin the long haul to dinner. Early on I give up converting English measuring units into metric and am pretty much eyeballing everything. Therefore, the recipes from my mom and grandmother serve mostly as inspiration rather than true recipes. My grandmother had been extremely precise on the turkey-cooking process: 325 degrees for 15 minutes per pound. Much math ensues: 4.3 kilos = 9.5 lbs. x 15 minutes = 2.4 hours at 325 Farenheit = 163 Celsius. After seasoning and stuffing the turkey I turn to my oven to put my calculations into action. I am confronted with a temperature dial numbered 1 through 9. 1 through 9?? Grandma didn’t say anything about a 1 through 9. I am screwed… In my head I envision where 325 might be on an oven dial back home, turn the knob, stick the bird in, and pray. Saul and I then decide to head out for some last minute shopping, leaving the turkey alone to slowly cook on mystery temperature 6.

We head to one of the two American specialty stores in Paris, The Real McCoy, in search of fresh Ocean Spray cranberries. This store creeps me out big time. It has the feel of a 50s bomb shelter, lined with boxed and canned products that will never go bad, ever; mostly things I am glad to not be eating on a regular basis anymore: Doritos, Fluff, Jello, Shake and Bake, Goya Adobo. The prices are astronomical. 10 euro for a bag of Reese’s peanut butter cups, 7 euro for a box of Pop-tarts. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy me some Reese’s and Poptarts back home, but it seems absurd to spend so much money on products so obviously inferior to their French equivalents—chocolate and breakfast pastries that is. We buy the cranberries and flee.

As we head home I’m beginning to think it was a mistake leaving the turkey unsupervised on mystery setting 6. For all I know my flat is burning down. Turns out a Thanksgiving miracle has occurred. Not only is the flat not burning down, the turkey has beautiful golden crispy skin and moist white meat beneath. I might actually pull this Thanksgiving thing off…

Friends show up slowly but surely, in fashionably late French style. My French friend Catherine informs me that the oven settings are clearly meant to be multiplied by 30 degrees Celsius. Thus, setting 6 is equivalent to 180 degrees Celsius, or 356 Farenheit, close enough to Grandma’s recommended 325. ‘Twas a good guess.

I’d like to take a moment to parade my cosmopolitan guest-list before you:

Team US:
-East Coast: me (NY), my friend Henson (NJ, in Paris for the weekend)
-West Coast: Saul (OR), Keith (CA)
-South: Rachel (TX)
-North: Wayne (AK) and Dave (MN?)

Team Europe:
-La France: Fabien, Catherine (co-worker), Claire (Rachel’s roommate)
-Deutschland: Yvonne (my German counterpart at work)
-The United Kingdom: Raj (Fabien’s girlfriend), Emma and Anna

The 14 of us (delightfully split 50/50 US/Europe, no?) devour dinner and move on to devouring the tequila Henson graciously brought duty-free from the States. Europeans tend to savor their liquor; we Americans show them how to quickly down it with salt and lime. Incidentally, Henson had bought nice enough tequila that it was sort of a shame to contaminate it with such collegiate rituals, but old traditions die hard.

Voila, two American traditions imported to Europe in one night: Turkey Day and tequila.