ST-RI-IKE Two...

Sorry to disappoint if you were expecting a blog on Euro-baseball— not that it exists… If Parisians have a national pastime, there are probably many possible nominees like chain-smoking, pouting, constructing 3-part abstract philosophical arguments, drinking 17 cups of espresso and/or glasses of red wine per day, soccer (to name an actual sport), riding motorbikes in very fast and dangerous ways so as to kill as many bicyclists as possible or going on strike.

Paris public transit is on strike for the second time in the past 2 months and we’re now entering week 2 of this strike. It’s strange to think that I lived here for an entire strike-free year last year—what a sheltered and protected existence never to have experienced the Parisian grève! Now, I’m getting to know it well. For the first strike, my French friends advised me to stay home and not waste my time, but rather than take their French word for it, I dutifully checked the RATP website to see if my RER train would be running the next day and got the confusing message that is was ‘quasi nul.’ What was nul, exactly? It seemed to be missing a subject— did that mean hardly any service or hardly any interruption? I called a friend to ask and she reminded me that I lived in Paris and that if there were ever 2 possible interpretations for anything—especially relating to the service-industry—it was always the more negative and inconvenient one.

Why is the rail industry on strike, you might ask. I don’t really know all the reasons and I think there are some legitimate complaints like salary cuts despite the rise in the cost of living, but I’ve also heard that it’s about retirement benefits. SNCF employees used to be able to retire at age 50 and then the president seemed to realize that although it was nice for former train conductors to have time (like 25 years) to garden at their country homes and build model trains with their grandchildren, such a young retirement age was also INSANE and costing the république tons of money. I hate that in France when I oppose something like retirement at 50, I sound like an American republican since they are against social welfare, retirement benefits, and the poor in general. (I’m extremely left in American politics—Bush and American foreign policy regularly horrify me, socialism and national healthcare are great, etc., etc), but when everyone you know back home will be happy if they can retire at 65, I can’t get excited about the right to stop working when you’re only 50. My parents are both older than that. Also, At the risk of sounding reactionary once more, I’m also not entirely sure you can have a successful national economy if no one works more than 35 hours a week and they go on strike all the time, but I do appreciate the quality of life here and Americans definitely work too many hours with too little vacation. I am secretly a little impressed that a strike in France can really paralyze the nation. And that the SNCF does it despite all the money they lose. My experience of strikes in the US is usually just a small picket line of maybe 5 or 10 guys who work on the assembly line at the local Chrysler or any other automobile manufacturing plant standing around drinking coffee outside in the cold with a few hand-lettered signs about unfair management. It only affects me in that I’ll honk my horn in vague support as I drive past.

For the second strike, it’s prevented me from going to work for the past 2 days. It’s been on for a week now and I’ve never walked and biked so much as I did this weekend, so at least the strike is good for my health and the motorbikers seem less fixated on trying to kill cyclists, mainly because they now ride their motorbikes exclusively on the sidewalk— to avoid traffic, of course. Now there are other messages on the RATP website like ‘strongly perturbed traffic’ and ‘1 train out of every 6.’ I’ve actually forgotten that other things besides transit can be perturbed in French—it took me a few minutes to realize that the news broadcast I was watching earlier was about the weather perturbations (that seems to mean cold fronts) instead of public transit ones… Despite feeling like a big slacker this morning, I didn’t go to work, figuring that one train would come like every 2 hours and I’d be trampled alive by the Parisian crowd trying to take it with me and if I even managed to get to the suburbs alive, I would have no students. Tomorrow I will probably also stay home. France is slowly robbing me of my Protestant Work Ethic, but I have to admit that when the RER is perturbed, I feel ok—very unperturbed, in fact— about staying in bed…

Paris is beautiful in November- despite strikes and rain

Le bonheur, c'est peu de choses.

"Hi, my name is Taylor and I'll be your waitress today..."

I'd forgotten that restaurant staff in the US really said that. And spontaneously refilled your water glass multiple times and were generally friendly, cheerful and smiley.

In short, I was ready to sponsor Taylor for a French visa should she ever wish to work in a Parisian cafe.

A Supermarket of One's Own

I never really saw the French supermarket as worthy of much consideration, let alone respect or prime blog material. They're all tiny, they all close at 8 pm and don't open at all on Sundays. Sometimes I just long for a 24-hour Safeway the size of an entire Parisian arrondisement. "Who goes shopping at 2 am?", the French will ask disdainfully as I fill their heads with nonsensical notions of 24-hour shopping. Me, I will tell them, just because I can.

At the French supermarket, there are often long lines, at some you have to buy your own plastic grocery bag if you forget your Special Grocery Bag you are supposed to bring with you each time you shop, there are no baggers so there are often checkout traffic jams when elderly patrons buy 5,000 groceries and carefully pack everything away in their little grocery trollies. Most people have back-up supermarkets in case G20 or Franprix or Monop or ED is out of what you want or if they have the food product you seek but the quality is dubious at best. It's normal to have one store where you go for vegetables, one for dairy products, etc. thus making buying groceries an ongoing project. It can be very decentralised shopping. (Decentralisation seems like a key part of the French experience). However, I now love Champion. Not that my 'hood is posh enough to have one, and not that I have ever bought actual food there more than maybe twice, but I love it because they have afterhours winetasting events.

It was by invitation only-- my friend made the elite guest list thanks to her membership card from last year when she actually lived near a Champion. Apparently, store loyalty counts for something, since she was allowed to bring a guest to this event. We dutifully checked the box on the invitation saying that Mademoiselle would attend and be accompanied by a guest and returned it to the supermarket. We wondered if we were supposed to dress up. And what host/hostess present to bring to the supermarket that has everything?

The night of the supermarket foire aux vins, shoppers (those foolish souls not elite enough to have received invitations in the mail and who actually wanted to buy groceries) tried to enter the store when we arrived and the ever-helpful security guard laconically informed them that Champion was closed "except for the wine." Unfortunately, we couldn't drink and shop for regular food, as they sectioned off the store and set up a bar in the frozen food aisle. But even if you couldn't pick up regular groceries, of course they had 5 percent off all wine purchases, so older French people duitifully arrived with their infamous grocery trollies to fill with discount supermarket wine. There was also cheese to eat and there were little catalogues and friendly French people explaining all the different wines. Everyone got increasingly drunk and therefore helpful and friendly to the American girls. Honestly, I've never had so many French people make spontaneous friendly conversation with me in a public place as at the supermarket wine tasting and it was much the highlight of my entire week. As Virginia Woolf once wrote, every woman needs a supermarket of one's own. Especially if they give you wine there.

Hugs and kisses

French friend of mine: Hugs are catching on here more and more. Have you seen those people giving "free hugs" in the street?

Me: Yeah, I've seen them, but I've never taken them up on the offer. I figured that if I did, they would probably just steal my wallet.

French friend: That's very cynical and Parisian of you.

Love Hate Relationship

So, in personal relationships I don’t look for a love-hate roller coaster of passion but prefer laidback drama free dating. However, geographically, it’s a different story.

Typical question from Americans back home: how's Paris? Even after being here a year, the answer still depends on the day and its various living-in-your-second-language challenges...

On Thursday, it was: Well, I thrive on hardship, urban misery and surrealism, so I enjoy Parisian life. It's kind of a similar taste to bitter espresso, dark chocolate or smoking unfiltered cigarettes. If you're neurotic, anxious, pessimistic and only happy when it rains, you would enjoy Paris. It rains a lot here, the summer of 2007 widely acknowledged as the worst June-August weather in French history and attributed to global warming. Paris is kind of teen angst but in a more glamorous and sophisticated form in your late 20s (latest possible 20s, if you’re facing your 29th birthday like I am) and that is why great writers, philosophers and pretentious intellectuals alike lived and continue to live here.

However, Friday’s answer was very different, as if the French national healthcare system that filmmaker Micheal Moore is so enamored with slipped everyone some government-subsidized prozac overnight: I feel like I’ve made so much progress—I can now read a French book in one evening and I'm starting to feel like I have some real friends here who understand my French and even claim that I speak it well. My students are all absolutely lovely and even though I speak a lot of English in my job, I now have more contact with the French than I did last year and we often discuss French culture. My students love explaining Symbols of France to me, like the car the deux chevaux and singer Michel Polnareff, and you have to admit that the Fete de Musique is one of the all-time greatest urban events. Paris in August is also incredibly pleasant because it contains fewer Parisians (even if more rain) since everyone is out of town on their European annual month of vacation, leaving the metro uncrowded and the supermarket checkout lines on Saturday afternoons remarkably short.

All I can do is enjoy the highs and try to be prepared for sudden rollar coaster drop off lows. I catalogue the good days-- like pasteries at Angelique’s and riding the ferris wheel at Tuilleries with Kim and Cory, champagne tasting in Reims, Music Day with Tiffany, swimming in the lake at Annecy with my cousins, Bastille Day with Kate, and every single delicious dinner I’ve had at my favorite Ethiopian restaurant-- to remember on the rainy days.

Every day is a holiday

There are lots of holidays in France-- a record 3 long weekends in the month of May alone. The impressive thing was that these were 4-day and not 3-day weekends because various catholic holidays that I am not familiar with fell on Tuesdays and why not take the whole week off or at least the Monday before? This strategy allowing the maximum vacation time possible is called 'making the bridge.'

People not from catholic countries always point out the excess of holidays as the most tangible advantage of catholicism.

Tomorrow is another holiday (Assomption) although this is almost redundant as the entire country of France is on vacation for the entire month of August. Paris is empty and very pleasant now, despite rain and tourists. Everyone here is horrified that in the US, you only get 2 weeks of vacation per year, which is admittedly quite horrible. The "per year" is always an important qualifier for the French-- it suggests that alternate possibilities like 2 weeks per month or every 2 months would be acceptable...

Hope you're all enjoying your vacation-- however long or short it might be per year.

Dallas

How to explain the strange allure of this 1980s Faulknerian drama? In the words of another of my Dallas-obsessed friends, "if the TV show Dallas were a person, wouldn't you want to make love to them?"

Little puzzles

My dad, trying to open a bottle of milk we just bought at G20: "wow, everything in France is like a little puzzle you have to figure out!"

Me: "Welcome to my life."

On the rue

If you are a French professor at the university of horror in Paris giving a class on 17th Century French Lit, Francophone Lit or French Cinema (or any other class imaginable with “French” in the title), it naturally follows that you will be unable to resist a brief treatise on American literature, film and culture from time to time. If this seems completely illogical, welcome to Paris. The more outlandishly bizarre your unchallenged statements about the US, the better.

Here are some of the facts I have learned about American culture according to French professors which will no doubt leave you with a big, “huh?”

· Ben Franklin, William Penn and Samuel Adams were Naturalist writers. And Zola wasn’t a real naturalist (I guess since he wasn’t an American politician, duh.)

· The 80s Eddie Murphy film Coming to America is an allegory to the life of Marcus Garvey.

· Political correctness in the US only exists in American universities.

· 60% of Americans support the war in Iraq (although we corrected the professor that actually 62% were against according to the last CNN poll).

· Phillip Lovecraft (gothy comic books for surly teenagers?) is a great contemporary American author and recommended reading according to my French cinema professor and he couldn’t believe that none of the three Americans in the class—all well out of their surly teens—had never read him.

· Frequently recurring experience, especially in cinema class: “blah blah blah great American film/text by [someone I’ve never heard of and not culturally important.] And the invariably following: “Oh, none of you American exchange students have ever seen/read it? Well, you need to read/see some American books/films and know your own culture.”

But this is not American Culture. This is a Weirdo French Intellectual Version of American Culture. It’s a sort of fascinating shadow culture populated by French-Canadians and what role have they played in the American national consciousness? They’re always just vaguely up north being polite, maybe even when they play hockey. This Great American Text/film was invariably written or directed by someone part French or with some sort of French influence which explains its obscurity at home. I remember that one—or possibly all—of these mystery Great Cultural Figures are named Jacques and I don’t remember their last names. They’re always men, of course.

But frankly, if it’s not Jack Kerouac, the only partially French famous American Cultural Figure I can think of, I don’t know who they’re talking about. Although he might not be obscure enough for them, I’m just waiting for one of the French professors to mention him. And call him Jacques.

Cecil's Report Card

As I recently got my grades for last semester, my cat's current caregiver (my dad) was inspired to give me his report card for the quarter June-January from his East Coast boarding school. He is progressing nicely:

FELINE ACADEMY, Fall, 2006 Evaluation for Cecil B. Gulpy, affectionately known as Cecil Burper His Greyness

Attendance: A-
Always present in house during the afternoon; one unexcused absence one night.

Cat Flap Mechanics: A
Operates flap efficiently.

Eating Etiquette: C-
Has difficulty discriminating his own bowl from that of other cat.

Hunting 101: F
Cannot locate, let alone capture, bird, mouse or moth. (Note: he has successfully caught one poor woodland creature since his fall report card was issued which will raise his hunting grade for the next marking period).

Human-feline Interrelationships: A
Shows affection to humans, especially to males.

Inter-feline Relationships: C
Tolerates fellow cat, but still evinces occasional pouncing and hissing.

Adaptive Ability: C
Slow to improvise, but reliable in habits.

Toilet Habits: D
Poos in neighbor's yard (editor's note: neighbor thankfully does not read my blog!)

Overall Grade: B
Clearly, an above average cat!

Majoration Blues

At the moment, I have the every-type-of-blues, I think, but to anatomize foreign country depression, the specific blues in question refer to an evening out at the Salty Kiss jazz club that boasts free jam sessions on Monday nights. J-dogg and I proceeded upstairs to jazz land without having to pay a cover for entry-- jazz-tasic we thought. Then ubiquitous Surly Waiter brought us menus for drinks and there was something about 7 euros for the first drink. The word accompanying this information—a word I didn’t know—was majoration. Being an ever optimistic American who feels like, if there’s no cover, the jazz jam session really is free, I generously interpreted this foreign word with no near English cognate as something that would benefit me, a reduction on the first drink to get you to order more or to get people to come out on a Monday night. The fact that this word appeared twice on the menu was clearly French advertising encouraging us all to take advantage of the majoration. However, I asked surly waiter to make sure. What’s this majoration thing? Does it mean that the first drinks are only 7 euros? He indicated a positive response which he would later explain as meaning that he either hadn’t understood the question or that he had actually explained what a majoration was.

J-Dogg and I obviously ordered drinks that cost more than 7 euros to take advantage of the fabulous Monday night majoration offer. The jazz was great, the musicians were having a blast and started bantering with the audience a little. Everything was jazz club cool, and when my drink came like 4 hours after I’d ordered it, it was nothing extraodinary.

What was, however, extraordinary, was the 32 euro bill that came with our 2 over-iced-to-conserve-the –actual-alcohol-at-the-bar cocktails. The next time surly waiter delivered drinks I confidently told him there was a mistake and our bill should be 14 euros. He responded in surly fashion that, no, that was right because they added 7 euros to everyone’s first drink of the evening. This is what the “majoration” acutally meant, which I verified by asking random bar patrons. It comes from the verb to major, which in French means to increase. (What is that, secret code? Jazz club slang? I’d never heard it before and made a point of sharing the lexical discovery with all Americans in my masters program—grad school did not prepare me for the Parisian Jazz Club— so that they would avoid a similar fate and not embarrass themselves in front of visiting college friends—especially ones who told me upon arriving that my French must be great, thanks to graduate program and my 5 months in friendly and helpful, always willing to lend a hand when linguistic misunderstandings arise Paris).

After much arguing with surly waiter whose nickname was now surly drink-vending-under-false-pretenses-waiter, the explanation was that they added a drink surcharge to pay the musicians and that it was expected that everyone order a drink to make it worth the musicians’ time. This is the Beckettian logic that I have come to expect in France. Maybe the next time I’m at the post office they’ll say that stamps are free, but I have to buy the teller a sandwich. Instead of a sensible cover that everyone pays, there is an order an overpriced drink expectation. What if no one orders drinks—does surly French waiter kick them all out? Do the musicians not get paid and leave in a music diva hair-flipping huff or would they stay in the hopes that one person would order a drink which would allow them to split 7 euros 5 ways so that they could buy food for their children? What if you just stared at a menu for the duration of the concert and constantly pretended you were about to order something and then didn’t? “Who would create a system like that,” I find myself wondering about everything from jazz club prices to the post office (even when sandwiches are not involved) to the University of Paris.

How do you say majoration in French, my translator bar pal asked his friends after giving several synonyms in French—all of which I understood perfectly. Majoration, someone replied, the same word with an American accent. The bar found this hilarious—they’d downed several non-majoration drinks already. After my best Listen, Mister directed at false pretences waiter (“ecoutez, Monsieur”-- this is a French phrase that you can use either for very friendly or very angry situations—I did the angry face with it as I did not want to part with 16 euros for glass of ice with lots of ice, mint and a vague odor, if not much of a taste, of rum), I had to conclude, however, that if the money really went to the musicians that was ok, since they were very talented so I paid for it in my best sullen waiter way. I seriously considered signing: Your club sucks, you majoration bastards, instead of my name (it’s about as long) on their copy of the credit card receipt.

I thought back on the jazz jam session and imagined myself on stage playing a mournful “I just bought a 16 euro cocktail without realizing it and it was mainly just a glass of ice” saxophone riff and then explaining, that one’s called Majoration Blues. Before all the French-as-a-second-language patrons got their bills.

The Downwards-Facing-Dog Yoga Promise of 2007

Holding your arms outstretched in a New Year’s day (or any day) yoga class for 11 minutes is painful. But the arm pain was supposed to symbolize toxins and anger that you were purging from your body and that you wouldn't take with you to the next year. I was definitely more relaxed after yoga, but we’ll see if it’s an anger and toxin-free year... I remain guardedly optimistic rather than flat out skeptical.

The Best Vacation Ever

I’m back in Paris now where the classes haven’t yet started again, so this means museum time and tourism, both activities to be well documented in the blogosphere. (Hopefully, no more about libraries and final exams as I try to balance student life and actual life better this semester and to resist the obsessive time suck of misguided attempts to making my thesis perfect).

Highlights of winter vacation were, in no particular order:

1. Seeing snow in Boston.
2. Seeing a local indie band called The Snowleopards in Boston. They are possibly the only band in America to be influenced by Heart, so of course they rock.

3. Despite the snowiness in Boston, daffodils were blooming in Delaware to illustrate global warming, drastic climate changes and how only Al Gore can help us now. I saw An Inconvenient Truth and it was amazing-- Al shares his passion, charisma (yes, really) and the most awesome powerpoint presentation ever.

4. Seeing the Longwood Gardens Christmas display. This is just a magically beautiful garden bedecked in Christmas lights for the holidays that is a regional-national-international-intergalactic treasure. If you don’t find yourself near South Eastern PA, here’s a link to their website for pretty photos/ http://www.longwoodgardens.org/.
5. Seeing my parents’ Christmas tree, which was very Longwood Gardens itself.

6. Seeing my whole family, in general, and spending a lot of time with them. My dad was on break between semesters (ah, the life of a teacher) and always down for a trip to the coffee shop (see number 9) and my mom reduced her crazy busy schedule and even cancelled a meeting! (To put this in perspective, she’s the director and sole employee of a non-profit social justice organization, so she really does it all, since there’s no one else, and she has her hands full with all the injustices of the current administration. Bush is really putting peace activist groups to work).

7. Seeing my cat again, although he is now in love with my dad—guess who feeds him now? What am I, Cecil, something chopped and vegetarian, since chopped liver would probably be appealing to cats? Since they are so easily won over by food.

8. The new ICA in Boston. Modern art that’s playful, makes you think about it and…actually artistic. No bricks or wads of chewing gum as objects of found art to ask ‘what is art’ or anything.

9. Drinking coffee at Brew Ha Ha in Delaware. And they have Peet’s (best California coffee ever) on the east coast now.
10. Eating lotus cakes in Chinatown in Philly.
11. Talking to my bay area best friend who is all kinds of fabulous.
12. The prospect of having visitors next semester!

Lowlights were:
1. Being sick, but to prevent it from being too low, it was nice that was that it was at my parents’ house where they were very sympathetic and medically equipped with the vitamin C and the robitussin.
2. Flying Paris-Philly and back via Chicago-- which is not actually on the way.
3. Realizing when we were practically at the airport on the way to Chicago/Paris that I left my iPod charging in my parents’ kitchen. How to endure public transit and attempts to go jogging now?