We fell into Sh*t and came out smelling like... well it was a hot day too. 4-17-15

Our last hurdle almost came up and threw us on our butts.  Early last week we went down to the National Railway, SNCF, and bought our Senior + cards which will enable us to travel in France at a significant discount.  I mentioned before that our first trip was excluded because unfortunately Belgium is not included.   Be that as it may we forged on and bought no change no refund tickets and reserved a hotel in Brussels under the same terms, and it was expensive.  We joked at the time that we would probably get our letter from French immigration telling us we would have to come in for the last interview and health screening for sometime during the trip.  Well guess what, it came the day before yesterday and was for the day we would be returning from Brussels.  Our choices were to either return one day early and lose a couple hundred Euros in prepaids, or to go to the Immigration Office to see if we could get another interview date.  We're talking French bureaucracy here, a very daunting prospect especially in French.

 
But we actually got out around 8:30 am and caught the Metro to go to the office which we had scouted out yesterday.  It was shades of Japan with the press of people on the train and hotter than a two dollar pistol.  My pictures are too late but you get the feeling.





So we got to the Immigration office in a somewhat perspirant condition and girded ourselves for a siege.  The receptionist, keeper of the keys, greeted us and Deb stepped up to explain our plight.  Now we had just heard her speaking English so we knew we had an out, but Deb went through our explanation in French and we watched her shake her head and mutter a bit.  Disheartening but we persisted and mentioned that we had all the required documentation with us including the required revenue stamps.  So she called upstairs and told us to sit down for 10 minutes, then she asked us again if we had all the documentation to which we affirmed, yes.  She jumped up and ran upstairs then came back and told us they would process us today.
Sure enough a few minutes later someone came down and brought us upstairs and we were processed and out by 11:30 am. Not one curt person; not one cross word!  EVERYONE of them was genial, courteous, and efficient. 

We know we're living on borrowed time regarding the bureaucracy but for now VIVE LA FRANCE!

Deb is back on food topics yet again. 4-14-15

 

***It’s interesting to me that here, raw eggs not refrigerated. They sit right out on counters. You can buy them by 4’s, 6’s or dozens, or by the individual egg. Many of them are dated on each egg. I guess the assumption is that you buy them as you need them and use them fairly quickly. Of course, there are all sorts of eggs available besides chicken: tiny quail eggs, big goose eggs, duck eggs of different color, and I’ve even seen ostrich eggs. That’s one place where buying a single egg really makes sense.

 

***The Parisian tap water is perfectly safe to drink and actually doesn’t taste bad, but it’s very hard with a whole variety of minerals (perhaps one reason fewer French women suffer from osteoporosis.) The hardness is quite a pain to deal with. Anything that the water touches (faucets, sinks, etc.) show spots right away, and if neglected can be challenging to deal with. You must add salts in dishwasher and washing machine to keep them from clogging up from the minerals. I guess clothes can ever get “crunchy” if the salts aren’t added to keep the minerals at bay.

 

***I’m still adapting to cooking differences here, and grateful for the cooktop advice I got from Reba Savageau (and hoping the Elizabeth is having similar good luck adapting to my gas stove in Denver.) I’m amazed at how quickly onions & shallots cook. I’m on the verge of scorching them each time. It’s like Madrid and once I get it beaten into my head, it’s wonderful and fast. Must be the altitude, or that they’re so fresh, or that they’re a different variety. Who knows?

 

***We’ve eaten the best mangos we’ve had since we were in Bali with Gail & Peter. There are bunches of varieties. One was the meatiest and sweetest I’ve ever had, but I can’t identify it dependably. I have trouble reading French handwriting and it affects all sorts of things, like not being able to figure out what the handwritten labels on produce bins say. So, for example, I can’t figure out the name of apples I bought so I can tell the cashier. I point and gesture a lot.

 

***Speaking of gestures, we have to concentrate with our number gestures in the markets. “One” is signified with a thumb. If you hold up an index finger, you’ll invariably get two of whatever. Even reading numbers requires some concentration. It strikes me that European numbers look closer to their Arab originals from the medieval period. Ones look a lot like our sevens, fours look like nines, etc. But maybe it’s just me.

 

***I had commented on food spoiling quickly, but had neglected to mention that we found one source of our problem: our refrigerator has a distinct temperature zone for each shelf, colder on the bottom, at least as warm as room temp on the top (Warren refers to it as the “slow cooker”). I only discovered it a while ago, and thought our refrigerator was malfunctioning until I read the manual. Since storage is such a premium here, people want to be able to store food at exactly the temperature they want, for example, cheese much warmer than meat.

 

***In our neighborhood, not noted on any of the Paris guides for fine dining, we’ve been exploring the local possibilities. I had spotted a restaurant/salon de the (teashop) near our shops as I was washing my hands in one of my beloved Wallace fountains. The outside was certainly not impressive, but I liked the look of the menu. Yesterday, after we spent a morning hunting the brocantes (used stuff dealers) at little weekend flea market near us, I suggested that we try lunch at the place I’d seen. When we got there, no one was in sight except one waiter in white shirt and long red apron. The lack of patrons made Warren decidedly and understandably concerned, but we were quickly greeted by a dark-suited waiter and led through several rooms toward the back, into what turned out to be a nicely furnished room complete with a lush outside grotto and fountain, and with several groups of discretely chatting eaters. Place was very elegant and we had a delightful, if a bit expensive, lunch. Actually, it was only expensive because of the wine we opted for. Service was impeccable (one young waiter almost tripped over his feet trying to get to Warren before he poured his own wine.) I won’t bore you with the food, but suffice to say, we’ll be going back soon. It was another lesson in not taking things at face value here, just like the doorways into unexpectedly lovely courtyards. (We found the restaurant later online and were unsurprised to find that other diners had liked it as much as we.) 
 
 
 

One of us is derelict (depending on your fantasies of Paris) 4-13-15

You'll have to decide. I know, I know.   Being Sunday, Deb decides she wants a day at home but that includes a cleanup of the house.  Given the size of the apartment, she tells Warren to get out and do something so as to not be underfoot.  

Warren seizing on the opportunity decides it would be a good thing to go to the book sale at the American Library of Paris.  This is a private lending library that provides English language books, tapes, videos, etc. to the ex-pats in Paris, one subscribes or pays a daily fee to use it.  So off on the bus where as usual along the way appears a vide-grenier ( basically a flea market) for the Belleville neighborhood, so off the bus and into the fray.  It's packed and mostly garage sale like items, but in our everlasting attempt to 'fleece the locals' I wade in.  At this point I should to address an interesting phenomenon I've noticed, people will be walking along and suddenly, as if stunned by a blow to the head, will just stop in midstream and stare off, maybe at some trinket for sale; or maybe across the street at some shop that they just noticed for the first time, hard to tell.  So you start to move around them and they take a step or two forward, you pause; they stop again; you start again; they step, it's a stuttering tango until either they get moving again or you force your way past them.  I have a lot to learn regarding this, so I tried to learn to go with the flow, but of course there are other locals that have the same need to move as us American ploucs and they are pushing the flow from behind. 

In my slowing up and adjusting to the flow, I spotted a little a vendor with a table full of little sculptures that looked as if they might have promise, but they were on an opposite aisle. So I decided to just finish my look at this aisle and come around to it on the way back.  So I just walked and gawked and made my way around, but just as I got to the table the woman finished covering up everything and pushing boxes under the table and left, for lunch no doubt!  So I left. 

I boarded the next bus on my way to the library and it turned out to have a truncated route and they pushed us off the bus well short of the normal end of the route.  So I took off on foot in what I felt was the basic direction to link up to a connecting bus.  I finally got to a spot where I was confident of my location and headed off for another quick look at a Marche des Brocantes (antiques and collectibles) in the St. Paul village neighborhood along the way.  It was very much different than the earlier one, no crowds, high prices, etc. but interesting nonetheless.

I did actually make it to the library 5 hours after starting, when they had about 2 hrs before they closed, but didn't find anything interesting for sale.  I found an impressive Art Nouveau building just at the corner of the street the library inhabits, reminiscent of Madrid and Barcelona quite beautiful. Then it was the bus back home using a new route.

Deb cleaned the apartment, and I'll leave her to describe that. 

In my own defense I do vacuum the apartment after her cleanup, with only the lightest of prompting. From the Red Green show,  Possum Lodge credo, " I'm a man and I can change... if I have to... I think"

Everyday is not a highlight reel unfortunately 4-10 &11-15

These last two days have been fairly quiet, yesterday we spent time getting some logistical issues addressed.  We took the metro down to Gare de l'Est and purchased French rail passes that are available to residents over the age of 60.  These will allow us to travel on the SNCF (French Railways) at up to 50% discounts depending on time of day and routing.  This is a great deal since we will be travelling around France a lot more in the near future. 

So our first planned trip is to Brussels, pure whim and maybe good flowers.  So once we got the passes we made our reservations only to find out that the discounts are good for France, Luxembourg, and Germany but not Belgium (mai oui)!  So we bit the bullet and got tickets, once we got home and started a little research it turned out that the best time to visit Brussels is on the weekends, not mid-week, when all the business people are trying to feed at the European Union trough.  Ouch, things are expensive but that's water down the pissoir.  Now of course we're in dread of getting our summons to appear at the immigration office during that time period.  This was not really well thought out I think, so I look in the mirror for the fool that thought it up.  A bright note however was how extremely courteous and nice the woman who assisted us at the railway ticketing office was.

 Yesterday it was overcast and threatening to rain so of course we headed over to Place des Fetes, which is a neighborhood outdoor market where there was also a marche des brochantes.   As you know too well we're addicted to 'fleecing the locals' when it comes to little antiques and bits of art and ephemera.   We made a couple small purchases and gloated on our perceived good luck.



 1914 Marseille
    
                          

                                1 euro- Nocturne W.C.

Then it was a really good lunch at a local restaurant which as it turns out is very highly thought of on some of the internet sights.  You would never guess it from the street appearance. La Laumiere specializes in seafood and food from Brittany, wow what a good lunch!

An Early Spring Recap 4-09-15

***Went to a huge, high-end antique show down at the Carrousel du Louvre. Just fun to see the nice quality things for sale. It was intended to tap a younger, poorer market than the gargantuan Bicentennial des Antiquares, and so offered that it had “many nice items for as low as 1000 euros.” We didn’t see many of those, but quite a few nice little Dutch paintings in the 5” by 7” range for only 100,000 euros. I loved a booth from a framer (Galerie Montanari). Remarkable gilt frames grouped by the period, Louis IV, V, VI, etc. If you drop 100k on a nifty little painting, you do want the right frame…

 

***About Easter egg hunts, there's an interesting variation here. Bunches of the municipalities sponsor hunts in the parks, because so few people have gardens or yards in the urban areas. The Easter Bunny (actually, I think it may be the Easter Chicken, but I'm not sure) will put groups of candy eggs in the hiding spots. I watched little hunters find the stashes, and then each child carefully took only one egg and put it in their basket. The only exceptions were older children who sometimes took a second egg to give to a clueless younger sibling (quite a few itty-bitties, standing around holding baskets and looking confused). Lots of scrambling and squeals of delight and running around and a generally good time had by all.

 

***Warren helped an elderly lady with her shopping cart coming from the market at Place des Fetes the other day, and she fell into conversation with me as we waited for the bus. She spoke in her bird-like, gracious French of being 87 in May “by the grace of God” and we chatted a bit about the flowers and little bush she had bought (that is, she chatted and I stammered.) She noticed the bag I was carrying from the butchers, and commented sagely “Ah, he’s the best butcher in the market, the best, but very dear (expensive.) His grandfather was just the same…” I said I would just try to buy a bit less. She nodded and said something like “Absolutely, buy the best but buy less. I WILL NOT die in debt. Absolutely not.” She departed then, calling Warren an angel for helping her.

 

***We’re trying to get some music in our schedule. We have tickets for a concert at the nearby new Philharmonic Hall in May. We went yesterday to the Pierre Boulez exhibit at the Musee de la Musique I’m afraid it was almost totally lost on me except for the Kandinsky, Klee, Mondrian, etc. paintings. Boulez’ compositions are way too advanced for me. I still seem to need some melody or rhythm, techniques he has moved beyond since 1945. But a couple of days ago we attended a concert of the City of Birmingham (England) Choir at the Madeleine, accompanied by the church’s celebrated organ. The choir’s lovely voices singing Vaughn Williams’ mass in that soaring space just brought tears to a person’s eyes. Even an agnostic like me.

 

***We have been interested in the architect Gehry’s work since I saw it in California years ago, and we visited Bilboa during our Madrid time. Our friends the Baldwins stayed in a hotel he designed in Spain and loved it. So we were anxious to see his new creation in the Bois de Boulogne.  I was totally dazzled by the Louis Vuitton Foundation. I sat up on the high terrace and just let myself be mesmerized by the craftsmanship of the building. All the neat decorative wood and steel and glass features Gehry put into this exuberant structure. It strikes me that it’s a cathedral for the 21^st century, showing joy and pride in workmanship. Struck me that, like the DAM in Denver, exhibition spaces were a fairly secondary concern. Getting to one drove me to a fit of querulous irritation when we nearly succumbed to “can’t get there from here” syndrome, after 3 tries from different portals. The effort was worth it, though, to see a temporary exhibit, with its Picassos, Matisses, Monets, etc., on and on. But still, I think the building was the star of the visit.

 

*** One last thing about the Gehry: he did a water feature, a fountain or basin of water flowing down a long, wide series of steps, all done in a dark tile. The idea was to give the impression of waves propelling the “ship” that is the building. The truly nifty thing to me, though, is that he made the water flow in a constantly changing pattern, falling off each step. The cascading waves break in a different symmetry with each fall. I can’t figure out how he did it, and haven’t found any mention of the technology. The fountain is alive with its variations. I sat for a long time, watching it. 
 
 

Fondation Louis Vuitton 4-8-15

Today we went to the Fondation Louis Vuitton, the new Frank Geary building in the Bois de Bolougne.  It is certainly a building to look at as another conceptual link that began with the museum in Bilbao Spain.  I think it was described as looking a bit like a ship out on an arboreal sea, and it does all of that.  The interior spaces are all enclosed in a series of 'sail-like' outer envelopes that are supported by them .  Very curvilinear and many crossing planes.

It also reminded me a bit of the 1919 model for a Constructivist  

building by Tatlin that was proposed for one of the Internationals in the Soviet Union of that era, i.e. working structures inside of an outside framework that looked like an upward curving ramp (courtesy of  World History Connected).  They don't have any physical similarity just the spatial arrangement.




Anyway it's pretty spectacular and has a number of great modern art installations.  There is currently a temporary exhibition which traces the threads of modern art from the first decade of the 1900's up through the mid-century.  It is really a wonderful exhibition and if you're in Paris while it's here you should make an effort to see it.

We finished one of our impromptu goals of circling Paris using public transport, our first venture had us going from our apartment via the trams all the way around Paris to La Defense, and today we closed the circle back to our apartment by taking the PC3 bus from Port Maillot around to Porte de Chapelle and then connecting to the tram that takes us to Porte de Pantin.  A 10 minute walk later and we were back at the apartment for a nice dinner.

She's looked at Paris from both sides now - 4-7-15

Living in a different place always has negatives and positives. I must say that there are remarkably few negatives to being here, but then again, this is something we’ve wanted to do for ages, so we’re not spending much time looking on the down side. However, people have asked about drawbacks of living here so I’ll try to outline a few plusses and minuses:

 

NEGATIVE: Food goes bad fast, even olives for example, because no preservatives in so many .

things. It also means we have to shop more often and buy in smaller quantities.

POSITIVE: I can eat bacon, ham, sausages, etc. here, things that drive my arthritis crazy in US because of the additives. And I must admit shopping is kind of a hoot, especially as we find our favorite shops and establish relationships. Our cheese monger (La Ferme de Chloe – Chloe’s Farm) is getting down to serious recommendations now that she is understanding more of our taste, although Warren was almost banished when he kindly asked for one of my favorite cheeses, Pave d’Affinois, and was told in tones of horror that they didn’t carry such “industrialized cheeses.” I’ll have to secretly buy it at Monoprix, a grocery store chain, and hide it in my shopping trolly. (ed. note: you think she's kidding but she's not)

 

NEGATIVE: Fruit is sold ripe rather than green for shipping so we often have to ask our fruiterer what day to eat something (today, tomorrow, the next day) so that it doesn’t go bad.

POSITIVE: The flavor of lots of this fruit and veg is unbelievable. I had forgotten how strawberries could taste, not to mention these funny little softball sized melon that are like candy.

 

 NEGATIVE: We’re in a non-touristy neighborhood, so everyone just assumes you can speak French and speaks to us accordingly. I stare like a deer in the headlights (Guffey memories) and try to catch one word out of twenty.

POSITIVE: When you explain that you don’t speak French all that well, they slow down and are pleasant and helpful.  They may not see many tourists, but they have lots of customers from different backgrounds in this multicultural neighborhood. We’re certainly getting lots of practice with the language.

 

NEGATIVE: This is a huge, crowded city. There are nearly 3 million people within the city limits, but more than 12 million in the greater Paris area and it’s one of the densest urban areas in the world (#27, even outranking some of the big Asian towns.) Amazingly, over 35 million people visit the city each year, so roughly 3 times the population in tourists visit over the span of a year.

POSITIVE: There is so much to do here that a year is only going to scratch the surface.

 

NEGATIVE: The city is dirty, trashy, polluted, noisy, gray.

POSITIVE: The city is vibrant, active, fascinating, charming, alive. Paraphrasing Samuel Johnson: “When a man is tired of Paris, he is tired of life.”