of bad baguettes…. and cute puppies!

5 June 2010; Eagan, MN; 12:43 am

As I said, I’m going to keep posting….

Only one day after I got back from Paris, I developed a serious craving for a baguette. A *real* Parisian baguette. So, I did a quick google search for French baguettes in the Twin Cities area, convinced Jason to join me in a baguette-hunting escapade, and thus begins the quest to find the best baguette in Minnesota…

Turtle Bread Company is most definitely NOT the winner. Jason and I drove all the way to their Chicago Avenue location in Minneapolis (I couldn’t believe that I had to *drive* to get a baguette. Where is my corner boulangerie? On every corner?), and we were sorely disappointed with the results. Not only did the baguette cost about $3.60 (in Paris, baguettes cost between 80 cents and 1 euro), but the taste was revolting. The best way I can describe it is week old, stale, crunchy wonder bread. Blech. I couldn’t choke down more than a bite off the end on the way home, and opted instead for Sara Lee sandwich bread with the salad Jason and I made for dinner. Sad.

The worst baguette I have tasted in my life.

The crummy (no pun intended) baguette almost ruined the evening except….. my family decided to get a new lab puppy! This has absolutely nothing to do with France, but he’s so darn cute, that he deserves a mention anyway. His name is tentatively “Theo”, but we’re still throwing around ideas…..

Theo and me. Isn't he darling?

So, a major “fail” for the baguette, but the puppy more than made up for it!

Closure?

5 June 2010; Eagan, Minnesota; 12:27 am

I’m back in Minnesota. Have been for three days now. But I haven’t nearly finished writing all I want to write about Paris. During my last few days especially, I was in a bit of a panic, thinking of all the unfinished “snapshots” I wanted to write, but I simply did not have the time with all the last minute running around that needed to be done before my departure. So, although I’ve left Paris, I think I will continue to post little Parisian anecdotes from time to time. As often as I can. So, do continue to check the blog if you’re interested, and I’ll try to have something new up pretty regularly. If nothing else, it will be a way for me to “keep in touch” with my Paris memories…..

For now, here’s a “farewell” picture, taken on Jason and my last full day in Paris….

You know you're no longer a tourist when the fact that you catch at least a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower every day becomes "no big deal." But, even when you have absolutely no desire to pay 11 euros to ride the elevator to the top once again, the tower still manages to evoke a certain sense of wonder. Less than a week before I left, for example, I was struck by that wonder one more time, sitting in the Thurber room at church, when I happened to glance out the window and catch the tower glittering against the darkening sky. Even after eight and a half months..... And, after eight and a half months, Jason and I still didn't have a good picture of the two of us in front of the tower. As it happened, we went walking past the Champs de Mars on our last afternoon in Paris, and some German tourists were kind enough to take this lovely photo for us..... Au revoir la Tour Eiffel.

Old house in Paris covered with vines…

28 May 2010; Paris 75015; 11:00pm

So, you may have noticed that my zip code has been different for the past couple posts. This is because Jason, my remaining flatmate Erin, and I have moved in with a friend who lives in the 15th arrondissement (district) of Paris for our last week. [we leave this Tuesday!] The main reason for the change of address was to avoid having to deal with our crazy landladies (really, they’re quite insane) on our last day in Paris. But the added benefit is that I’m finally living in my Parisian dream apartment. A quaint little one room apartment in a four story Haussman-looking building, with wrought iron balconies. No vines per se, but there are window boxes with cheery red geraniums. I love it!

Below are a couple pictures from the move….

Here's my room. All cleared out. Pretty depressing, really, without the little personal odds and ends to give it some life.

Erin's former French host family helped us with the move. Thank heaven for them! Not only did they save us from getting scammed by our landladies as we went through the formalities of moving out (go back to the laundry machine fiasco for an example of how they take advantage of young foreigners who rent their appartment), but they also loaded all of our stuff into their car and carted it across the city to our friend's apartment for us. Quite honestly, I don't know how we would have managed without their help. We have surprisingly few possessions for having lived in France eight months, but it still would not have been pleasant to cart it all through the metro. Thank you Sandrine and Patrice!

"Our" new apartment. Actually, we're staying with Erin's friend Kyle, who was gracious enough to let Erin, Jason, and me share his place for the week. It was a bit crowded the first two nights with all four of us, but Kyle is now gone on business and Erin is on vacation in Morocco, so Jason and I have the place to ourselves....

..... and what a quaint little place it is. This is the view out the back window. *This* is what I dreamed my Paris apartment would look like! No 1970's orange space ship style in sight! A lovely place to spend my final week in Paris.

better late than never….

26 May 2010; Paris 75015; 11:00pm

So, there were serious issues with the visa validation process in France this year. Apparently they just changed the system, which made for lots of chaos and lots of rumors and not many concrete answers on how one should proceed….

I’ll spare you all the sticky details at the moment. Suffice it to say that after following the instructions and handing in all the required paperwork on time, I have been waiting since October (about eight months) for the immigration office to send me a summons for the medical visit that you need before your visa can be “validated,” which makes your stay in France officially legal. I was finally “convoqued” this Tuesday morning. Along with fifty or so other people from every continent (it was great fun to listen to the doctors pronounce all the foreign names in French accents), over four hours I was shuffled through three “welcome” desks, two waiting rooms with terribly uncomfortable chairs, about eight very friendly doctors, a joke of a vision test, a quick height and weight check, a somewhat humiliating chest x-ray to check for tuberculosis, a cursory physical exam, a medical history interrogation, and lots of tedious wait time in between. In the end, a week before I return to the States, I am 300 euros poorer (you also have to pay a tax to get your visa validated) and an officially legal resident of France. Better late than never I suppose….

If nothing else, having to deal with the visa bureaucracy as a foreigner living in another country has increased my sympathy for immigrants and foreigners in my own country. Everybody who jumps to critique and complain about immigrants (legal or not) should have to live for an extended period in a foreign country before they are allowed to pass judgement….. and heaven knows that my experience at least (as exasperating as it was) was incomparably smoother than what most immigrants (whether in France or the US or elsewhere) have to go through….

Ok. Stepping off the soap box. Anyway, I am fortunate to have gotten through the process and admittedly grateful to now have a nice little stamp in my passport, good for one week after eight months of bureaucratic ring-around-the-rosie. C’est la vie.

My passport, which now sports an OFII (the French immigration office) stamp. I'd show you the stamp itself as proof of my success, but I don't particularly want to go flashing my passport info all over the internet.... you'll just have to take my word for it :-)

Tour of the Observatory!

24 May 2010; Paris 75015; 11:00pm

I have a bit of an amateur obsession with astronomy. I’m awed my the magnificent  universe “out there.” If astronomy didn’t involve math and physics, I might have ended up an astronomer instead of an historian…. as it is, I still greatly enjoy marveling at the work of real astronomers. So, you can imagine that I jumped at the opportunity to tour the Paris Observatory thanks to one of the other Fulbrighters who is working there this year. Here are some photos (with hastily composed captions—my last week in France is a bit hectic) from the tour…..

The Paris Observatory dates to the mid-1600s on the orders of Louis XIV. Remarkable in its time, it remains one of the foremost astronomical observatories in the world today. The observatory has expanded since the 1600's, but this is the original observatory building,

The entire observatory building is made without wood to avoid fires. This staircase is of particular note, with its unique curve designed to avoid the use of wood.

An engraving of the Observatory in the 1600's, showing early observing techniques.

Jason and me standing on the Paris meridian, which competed with the Greenwich meridian for the distinction of "prime meridian" until Greenwich beat it out during a conference in Washington DC in 1884. Apparently still a point of Franco-British contention..

I'm entirely infatuated with these really old astronomy instruments. They're so cool!

The Observatory roof. Not everybody gets to go up here!

The view from inside the telescope room up on the roof.

The telescope! It dates from 1854 and is still in use today, though they obviously have more modern, advanced technology as well.

Just one final pic for fun: I had to laugh at the car camouflaged against the observatory. Makes me think Indian Jones for some reason.....

gumbo and bars

23 May 2010; Paris 75019; 1:40 am

Another cooking escapade. On Thursday night, my flatmate, Jason, another friend, and I made dinner for fifty at church for Thurber Thursdays. It was great fun, from the grocery shopping to the cooking to the serving to the sharing of the meal and even the clean up. We were running like crazy (crazy, in a good way) during the whole cooking adventure, so I have only a very few scattered photographs to document it, but here’s a little “taste”…..

So, there are a number of foods one simply cannot find in Paris, unless one is willing to pay a pretty penny at a speciality shop, like the appropriately named "Thanskgiving" in the Marais. Here you can find peanut butter.... at 10 euros a pop. You can also get similarly overpriced Cheerios, Poptarts, Quaker Oatmeal, Hershey's Brownie mix, etc. etc. Now, our team of cooks was able to buy all the ingredients for for our planned menu (including gumbo, rice, potato salad, green salad, baguettes, lemon bars, brownies, and special k bars) for only about 75 euros. A rather good record, when you consider we were cooking for 50-plus. The only problem: the gumbo require cajun spice and the special k bars required karo syrup, neither of which you can find at a French grocery store. So, we resorted to Thanksgiving..... and found our pocketbooks 12 euros lighter for just those two measly items! Ouch. Luckily we had a stash of our own imported peanut butter (I can't live without it!), so we didn't have to purchase that too, though they apparently have quite the selection!

Unfortunately, I have no picture of the cooks in action because it was pure chaos (but delightful chaos) in the kitchen. But I do have the results. The main course: two pots of steaming gumbo. One of them is vegetarian, which actually turned out quite well, despite everyone's sceptiscism at the concept of a *vegetarian* gumbo. Erin is always an amazing cook but she gets extra points for that one! Whether vegetarian or meat-eating, everybody was raving about her delicious Louisiana gumbo.

And the desserts. Bars. We were short on 9x13" brownie pans, so I actually had to triple my recipies to make them fit in the massive casserole pans we had to work with.... so, we had a lot of dessert. In addition to a little fig tart we found in the fridge, Jason and I whipped up three kinds of bars using our mothers' recipes. The lemon bars turned out just lovely, as did Jason's special K bars. The one difficulty with the latter was that we couldn't find any special K at the grocery store, so we had to substitute "special flakes" instead. "Special flake bars" doesn't have quite the same ring to it..... but they still tasted wonderful. However, we noticed that there were some tables where these bars in particular remained untouched: we suspect the French reticence to the idea of creamed nuts in a jar came into play here..... The brownies, on the other hand, were a near complete disaster. Something went wrong in converting the chocolate from ounces to grams.... They came out lighter than they should have and didn't really taste like chocolate. But, actually, they didn't taste bad either. I mean, you can't really go wrong with butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla, and chocolate. We christened the new creation "gooey bars" and in some cases they actually went over better than the special K bars. To each his own. Ah, the joys of French cooking in an American Church :-)

First goodbye

22 May 2010; 75019 Paris; 1:40 am

Alise, Katy, and Erin. There once were three..... and then there were two. My flatmate Katy left for the US this morning. Now it's down to Erin and me. The first of many many goodbye's. We'll miss you Katy.

Window

21 May 2010; Paris 75019; 1h43 am

I love this window: medieval stained glass on the three panels above and modern glass on the bottom four panels. An interesting melding of past and present. At the Vernon Cathedral, about an hour outside of Paris.

aldjfklad

La meilleure baguette

18 May 2010; Paris 75019; 12:45 am

We had another wine and cheese night this evening in honor of this week’s guests at Auberge Erin, Katy, and Alise. This time we outdid ourselves with a selection of ten cheeses, three wines, an assortment of vegetables along with hummus, a choice of Erin’s Louisiana fudge or “imported” Godiva brownies (or both) for dessert, and two kinds of baguettes. One of the baguettes in particular deserves special mention. Jason, my cousin Megan, and I went on a field trip today in search of “la meilleure baguette de Paris.” Every year a committee proclaims the baguettes of one lucky Parisian boulanger (baker) to be the “best baguettes of Paris.” The boulanger gets a nice little plaque and the honor of supplying the baguettes for the Elysée Palace (the French equavalent of the White House) for one year. We found this boulangerie up near Montmartre and bought one of their baguettes to accompany our feast. It definitely lived up to expectations!

LA MEILLEURE BAGUETTE DE PARIS. yum.

Here’s a link to two articles about this year’s winner (it was a rather interesting competition this time around, as the laureate is of Senegalese descent, which “ruffled some feathers”….):

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8658953.stm

http://www.france24.com/en/20100326-best-baguette-town-fit-president

Baking experiments

16 May 2010; Paris 75019; 12:30 am

So, the stress level has been slowly building in our little Parisian apartment. Time in Paris is winding down for my two flatmates and myself. There are logistical details to sort out (will the internet company really keep charging us a month after we leave even if our paperwork is all in order?) as well as an emotional side to leaving a place that has become “home” that begins to take its tole. All three of us are dreading the reverse culture shock to come.

So, in this increasingly tense climate, what do we three girls do? We bake! To borrow a quote from Katy’s mom: “no matter what happens, you can always bake a cake.” So, we have fudge and cupcakes and brownies coming out our ears. Good things we now have a couple of boys (Jason and Erin’s friend Jake) in the apartment to help make it all disappear ;-)

My latest baking exploit involved three over-ripe bananas, turned into a delightful trio of banana bread loaves in our toaster oven…..

Baking with a toaster oven is always an adventure. And making-do with only the skimpy IKEA kitchen furnishings that came with the apartment..... well, let's just say necessity is the mother of invention. No bread pans, but I did manage to scrounge up a mini casserole dish from the back of one of the cupboards.....

The results: three glorious loaves of banana bread. The best I think I've made in France. Cooked to a perfect golden brown. They ended up a little misshapen (rather like little ski jumps, sloping up on one side) due to the way the toaster oven heats up..... but that doesn't hurt the taste any! One for the homeless guys down the street, one for Madame and Monsieur Rolland, and one for the apartment.

Now, my banana bread was good, but there certainly wasn't a line queing up outside my kitchen around lunchtime to get a slice. This, on the other hand, is a typical scene around boulangeries across Paris starting at about noon each day. Except, of course on Sunday (or Saturday, as is the case with our nearest boulangerie), when the boulangers take their day of rest.

A related site note: I am going to sorely miss the taste of real, fresh French boulangerie baguettes. American attempts frankly don't cut it. And I'm going to miss the sweet smell of newly baked bread and pastries that wafts onto the street when you walk by a boulangerie. There's nothing like it anywhere else. And I'm going to miss the common place sight of a boulangerie on every corner..... aaaaand reverse culture shock begins.

The goodbyes begin

15 May 2010; Paris 75019; 2:45 am

As you have probably gathered from the couple most recent posts, Jason is back in Paris until I leave France at the end of May. We’re spending the last three weeks saying “goodbye” to the city of Paris, the places and the people, together…. (I’m also running around like crazy polishing off bits of unfinished research, but that’s another story entirely)

Yesterday Jason and I were able to get together with Monsieur and Madame Rolland, the family that hosted me during my first stay in Paris during junior year at university. It was wonderful to see them one last time before I head back to the States for at least awhile. The first in a long line of goodbyes to come…..

Monsieur, me, Jason, and Madame.

10 pizzas! en meme temps!

15 May 2010; Paris 75019; 2:07 am

Every-other Tuesday, the American Church in Paris holds a young adult (18-late 20’s) pizza night. We make home-made pizza from scratch and enjoy a time of fellowship and discussion. As pizza-making is one of Jason and my favorite culinary past-times, we love pitching in. We were lucky enough to have a pizza night on Jason’s first day back in Paris last Tuesday. Usually we end up manning the ovens from about 6:30 until 8:00, as the pizzas come out in shifts beginning at 7:30 when dinner starts. But last Tuesday, for the first time, we had all ten pizzas cooked and ready to go at 7:30 (almost) on the dot—all thanks to wonderful kitchen crew who helped out! Here’s a little picture of the results:

All 10 pizzas en meme temps! Unheard of! As an added bonus, not one pizza had the same combination of sauces and toppings, which is quite an impressive feat of pizza permutations. Each one a unique piece of art. In particular, I have to give kudos to Fitz for his masterful half-red, half-green pizza: tomato sauce, red peppers and red tomatoes on half / pesto, green peppers, and yellow tomatoes on the other half. Lovey! and tastey, as were they all :-)

Oh, how I am going to miss ACP pizza nights……. the pizza and, even more, the people.

Golden Arches

11 May 2010; 75019 Paris; 1:00 am

This is just a “for grins” post because I’m drained from a long day of interviewing and document hunting, but I’m waiting up until Jason’s flight leaves Philly for Paris. So, an observation from my sleepily muddled mind:

After eight months in Paris I ams still quite amused by how closely the newer Metro signs resemble the McDonald’s Golden Arches….

Metro......

..... and MacDo. With a Metro train in the foreground. Big yellow M's that look suspiciously similar......

..... I'm rather partial to the Art Nouveau Metro signs myself..... much less easy to mistake for a MacDo!

Eyjafaewrsdfjaopsdjfewrasdjfcvxbn-what?

10 May 2010; 75019 Paris; 8 am

Eyjafjallajokull. Yeah. That’s the one. It’s baaaaack. Déja vu, right? Pray that this it keeps its lid on for the next 24 hours….. Jason just needs to get out of Philly at 6 tonight…..

Eyjafjallajokull. Who ever named this volcano must be laughing up in heaven as we all stutter over it's entirely unpronounceable name.

Fête des Mères

9 May 2010; 75019 Paris; 11:50pm

Happy Mother’s Day! Or la Fête des Mères, as it is know here in France, though the French version doesn’t arrive until May 30….. but why not take advantage of both occasions to tell our mothers how much they mean to us! I wish I was home to make a cheerios and orange juice breakfast-in-bed for my mom like my siblings and I used to do when we were little :-)

Love, hugs, and bisous to all you mothers (and grandmothers, and great-grandmothers…) out there!

Je t'aime ma maman. I love my Mom.

Another pic

8 May 2010; 75019 Paris; 1:14 am

This is my Paris. Pure and simple. Lovely.

Baguettes, fromage, patisserie, and….. tacos?

5 May 2010; 75019 Paris; 11pm

Matt and Annie have been out in Paris visiting for the past five days. Today was their last night, and we had decided to do a bread and cheese meal. French bread and French cheese, of course. We had purchased the baguettes and the fromage in addition to some French patisseries (pastries), but then my flatmate, Erin, reminded me that today is Cinco de Mayo. And we had taco fixin’s in the kitchen….. So, the five of us decided to celebrate with a whole heartedly Franco-Mexican meal. Baguettes, four kinds of cheese, four kinds of pastries…… and tacos! An appropriate culinary mélange I think, as Cinco de Mayo began as a commemoration the Mexican victory over the French back in the 1860’s, and I figure that after some 150 years after the fact one can find a bit of rapprochement in bring together the two countries’ food :-)

Happy Cinco de Mayo en France!

Our Franco-Mex meal. The Mex = tacos with hamburger, refried beans, lettuce, onions, peppers, and salsa. And a bit of a French twist with Emmental cheese (in place of cheddar) and creme fraiche (in place of sour cream). (you make do with what you have) The Franco = the baguette (bien sur) and the four *real* cheeses. An interesting mélange to be sure.

I have a bit of an obsession with French cheese. I'm not a big cheese person in the States, but in France, I never pass up an opportunity to try new varieties. Here was the selection of the night, purchased from a very friendly fromagier on rue Mouffetard: comte, two types of chevre, and fromage bleu made from cow's mild. All four were delightful, as always.

And the four beautiful patisserie that brought the meal to a close. An Opera, Caramel, Moka, and Tarte aux Fraises. Mmmmm. We all love our black boulangerie on the corner.

Matthew will probably kill me for putting this pic up, but I think it's pretty wonderful. He wasn't to thrilled about the cheese, but was plenty excited about the baguette, as evidenced by his enthusiastic brandishing of the bread knife :-)

Just a pic

27 April 2010; 75019 Paris; 1:00 am

From awhile back…… the photo is from December, the sentiments from April……

This gargoyle who sits atop Notre Dame bares an expression that perfectly mirrors my rather blasé feelings toward work at the moment..... Like him I'm staring with longing out over a beautiful city, but I'm am stuck closeted in my own tower of an apartment building with too much to do. Sigh. Spring is calling At least my imprisoning "tower" is in Paris :-)

piano man

1 May 2010; 75019 Paris; 11:51 pm

There’s a piano man just off of Place du Tetre on Montmartre. He plays at a battered old instrument in a quirky little hole-in-the wall Italian restaurant. It’s a rather miss-matched mélange of jazz standards like Fly Me to the Moon, 90’s pop including Madonna and Michael Jackson, a couple scattered show tunes, and a Beatle’s medley. Neither the tourists who sit at the crowded tables absorbed by eating their food and rehashing their most recent sightseeing exploit, nor the waiters who whirl by similarly preoccupied by the margarita pizzas that just came out of the oven seem much interested by the music. But the piano man seems to be thoroughly enjoying himself, even enough to look up and greet the latest customer with a cheery “bon soir!” He pauses for a moment to pass the hat, so speak, strolling from table to table with a grin and a flourish, asking the diners to contribute what they will. With his little basket a bit heavier, it’s back to the piano, plunking at the keys with enthusiasm and a smile, late into the night as the sun sets, the Parisian lights go on, and Sacre Coeur begins to glow white against the darkness….

This piano man is actually not the same one mentioned above. He's the piano man who played at the same restaurant when I last visited two and a half years ago. The piano is still played, but by a different man. Anyway, I took Matt and Annie (who are out visiting for a week) out to this Italian place for pizza tonight. The food was excellent, but my focus was really drawn to the enthusiastic, if eclectic in terms of music selection, man at the piano.

may day!

1 May 2010; 75019 Paris; 12:30 am

I love May Day. I wonder how those of bouquets always ended up on my grandparents’ doorsteps…. that I, of course, knew “nothing” about…..

In honor of May Day, here’s another one of those scenes I happened upon while walking…..

Which, incidentally, is another reason to celebrate the first of May: I get to start using my monthly metro pass again! Hurrah! Though I will miss happening across random scenes of beauty like this one…..

Absolutely gorgeous tulips, poppies, and cosmos at Buttes Chaumont park. A whole garden of a May Day bouquet for you all back home :-)

vous etes ici.

28 April 2010; 75019 Paris; 12:30 am

I’ve been doing a lot of walking in Paris since I got home from Lyon and Strasbourg. For several reasons 1) It’s gorgeous outside. 2) I need to get out of the archives and into the fresh air. 3) I don’t have a metro pass for April because I was traveling, and, as a “poor starving doctoral student,” I’ve been trying to save money by making it by on six metro tickets for a week and a half. So far so good. I have three left and three days to go until May….

Even if my motives for walking are pretty mundane, random strolls in Paris to get yourself home can bring you across the most interesting sights. Here’s one of my personal favorites, which I stumbled upon a couple days ago:

This really wonderful mural on the side of a building on rue de Lafayette (yes, after the famous Frenchman who lent the Americans a hand during the American Revolution), near Gare du Nord (one of the main train stations in Paris). This gentleman clearly has Paris on his mind, and I love how the little caption in the corner says "vous etes ici" ("you are here"), which is the phrase one always scans the map for here in France. And a nice little reminder to take a look around and wonder at the fact that, yes, I *am* in Paris! See if you can spot such sites as the Eiffel Tower, Invalides, Tour Montparnass, Notre Dame, the Louvre, Concorde, the Tuilieries, the Arc di Triomphe, the National Assembly, the Seine, the Pantheon.... Like Paris confetti!!!

A quick parliamentary tour

27 April 2010; Paris 75019; 12:55 am

Shame on me. Jason told me today I should update my blog….. and he’s absolutely right. First off, I should probably clarify that I am back in Paris now. My problem is that I am currently in the midst of writing up questions for six (and maybe eight or nine!) interviews that I have to conduct in the next two weeks. Along with writing up my final report for the Fulbright Commission here in Paris and another report for the Fulbright headquarters back in New York. While all the while anticipating the arrival of my brother and his girlfriend, my cousin and Jason….. and I leave in a month and a week! So much to do!

I am working on a post about the two lieu de memoire/museums that I visited on this last trip. My problem is that they were such moving sites that I want to do them justice, so it’s taking me awhile to write the post amidst the other chaos going on. So, here’s just a little picture post of a walk I went on in Strasbourg up to the buildings of the European Parliament. Strasbourg, along with Brussels and Luxembourg is one of the main political centers for the European Union, so I figured I should check it out during my stay….

Avenue de l'Europe. The aptly named road I walked down to get to the European Parliament buildings. With lovely cherry blossoms in the background.....

......I ran into a mini-zoo on the way to the Parliament buildings. And they had real live storks! You see stuffed animal storks for sale as souvenirs all over the city because storks are a symbol of Alsace (don't ask me why), but these were the first real ones I'd seen in the city. Rather pretty birds actually......

.....the Council of Europe's building. Not technically an EU organization, but an organization of European states that works for human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. Yulia, one of my hosts, works for this organization.....

.....European Court of Human Rights......

.....the EU Parliament. Part of the bicameral legislative branch of the European Union along with the Council of the European Union (not to be confused with the Council of Europe mentioned above). 736 MPs from 27 European countries. Quite the transnational democratic body. The sun was in the way, but you get the picture. It reminds me of a whale for some reason.....

.....a better picture of the EU Parliament, but not quite as good a view. Other parliament buildings are just across the way.....

.....aaand a gorgeous view of the Rive Ill to top it all off.

flowers from the archive window

19 April 2010; Jean-Baptiste and Yulia’s apartment; Strasbourg; 11:45pm

My apologies for not being as fastidious about keeping up the blog during this research trip. It’s no excuse but the combination of early mornings, full days, and tons of work as meant that in the evenings my brain just wants a bit of respite and vigorously protests anything that involves too much exertion. I especially want to write about the museums I have visited on this trip, but I also want to do them justice. So, consequently, that’s probably going to have to wait until I get back to Paris. Not that my exhaustion to brain power quotient will really get much better in Paris. I only have about one more month left before I return to the States on June 1, and at least 5 interviews to conduct, 2 archives and 1 library to hit up, 2 more camps to visit, thousands of pages of “photo-copies” to read, three people coming to visit not including Jason, plus all the “fun Paris stuff” I still want squeeze in before I leave the city….

Strasbourg has been productive in some ways and extremely frustrating in others. I’ve visited two memorial museums (Natzweiler-Struthof at the site of the former Nazi concentration camp in the Vosges mountains and Schirmeck which covers the unique history of Alsace during WWII) and conducted really useful interviews with museum professionals at each place. At Natzweiler, for example, the man in charge of educational programs originally told me he could only spare about five minutes…. and he ended up talking to me for over an hour! I have also done a fair amount of “monument hunting”….. but more on that in a later post when I have more time to devote to a real story.

Archives Départementales du Bas-Rhin. Complete with the most amazing pink flowering trees just outside the door.

For today: this picture says it all. Or most of it. The Departmental Archives of the Bas-Rhin region of France. I spent all day in this building, shuffling through yellowing documents pounded out on 1950’s typewriters along with carbon copies that gradually turned my fingers grey. Meanwhile, these lovely rosy blossoms waved at me through the window, teasing me and calling me to come out and play….

And as soon as the clock hit 5 o’clock, I was out! I dropped my computer and book-laden backpack off at the apartment and set off for two hours of monument hunting and pleasant strolling. Outside! I usually enjoy my work, but today I was definitely like a little kid who waits and waits in agony for the school bell to ring and then rushes outside to revel in the glories of spring.

The tree in Strasbourg

17 April 2010; Jean-Baptiste and Yulia’s apartment; Strasbourg; 3 am

I need to go to bed because I’m off to do more museum visiting tomorrow and I need some sleep….

But I went walking in Strasbourg today. I have now traveled to this city in the fall, winter, and spring. I fell in love with the tree pictured below when I first visited Strasbourg three years ago, and I have now happened upon it twice more. A new scene each time, but equally beautiful. So, here’s another of those comparative Monet studies for you….

Bonus points if you can list all the differences between the pictures. You know, like when you were a kid and you played those “spot the difference” games. Like in the first picture there’s an apple on the table and in the second one it’s a crayfish? Or just enjoy the simple beauty of a tree of all seasons.

Fall.

Winter.

Spring.

Irish pub quiz night. With an American, a Francais, two Francaise, and a Belarussian

16 April 2010; Jean-Baptiste and Yulia’s apartment; Strasbourg; 1:00 am

I had a frustrating research day. Mis-information from prior contact with the archive in Strasbourg, along with the fact that they’re in the midst of major renovations means I probably won’t be able consult the majority of the documents I was hoping to look at either because there are consultation restrictions or because they are currently stored at another site until the new building is finished at the end of 2011…. Ah well. Tant pis, as the French say. At least I know the documents are there and once I have actually finalized and honed my dissertation topic, I’ll be able to come back if I need to…. Hopefully….. And, to the archive’s credit, I do have to say that the archivist who helped me today was really very kind and is doing everything in her power to get me the information I need, bless her. So, maybe there will be some progress by the time I leave Strasbourg on Wednesday. If not, she was able to get me access to some architect16 April 2010; Jean-Baptiste and Yulia’s apartment; Strasbourg; 1:00 am I had a frustrating research day. Mis-information from prior contact with the archive in Strasbourg, along with the fact that they’re in the midst of major renovations means I probably won’t be able consult the majority of the documents I was hoping to look at either because there are consultation restrictions or because they are currently stored at another site until the new building is finished at the end of 2011…. Ah well. Tant pis, as the French say. At least I know the documents are there and once I have actually finalized and honed my dissertation topic, I’ll be able to come back if I need to…. Hopefully….. And, to the archive’s credit, I do have to say that the archivist who helped me today was really very kind and is doing everything in her power to get me the information I need, bless her. So, maybe there will be some progress by the time I leave Strasbourg on Wednesday. If not, she was able to get me access to some architectural plans and maps of Strasbourg from 1942 and 1943 when the Nazis were originally building the camp. Interesting and chilling at the same time. I’d post a picture, but I don’t think I’m technically allowed to “publish” them without official permission from the archive. Why escapes my understanding. Archive rules are funny sometimes.

The evening, however, was more enjoyable. I joined my hosts, Jean-Baptiste and Yulia at an Irish bar for an evening quiz night. Good fun. Jean-Baptiste and Yulia are part of an association that brings together people working for various European organizations in Strasbourg. They’re hoping to get a quiz night group going, so they’re scoping out different bars to see what their options are. Tonight it was Mary Malone’s Irish pub. Great fun. We ended up coming in 9th out of 13. Which may not sound spectacular, but when you consider that the winning team requires their members to take a test in order to join, we didn’t do terribly. My trivia talent always depends on the slant of the questions: if we’re talking history or geography or even science sometimes, I’m not bad. But pop culture? Completement nul. Today’s music? Completement nul. Sports? Completement nul. Math? Completement nul. Ah well. It was a good time, regardless. The others were quite savvy without need of my input. And, as the token American-speaking member of the group in an Irish-speaking pub (one thing you realize over here is that American English is indeed different from British English, which can result in some very funning malentendus between people who supposedly speak the same language), I was able to help a bit to clarify things like the meaning “landlocked”…. Best question of the night: a cheese that starts with “c” that is a combination of camembert and garganzola? Apparently “cambozola.” Who’da thunk. Oh, and Louis XIV apparently bathed three times in his lifetime. And April 22nd is the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. And there are 206 bones in the human body, which I am proud to say I remembered from elementary school science class……

.... and we did completely dominate the picture identification section. Mostly thanks to the fact that for some reason the theme was famous Russians. And we just happened to have a native Belarussian on our team in the person of Yulia. Score! So here's the picture quiz sheet with all the Russians.... along with the Guinness logo in the background, evidencing the "Irish-ness" of the bar, if the name "Mary Malone" and the bi-lingual staff speaking rather Irish-y French wasn't already a pretty clear indication....

Puppy Love

13 April 2010; Jean-Baptiste and Yulia’s apartment; Strasbourg; 9:40pm

I just arrived in Strasbourg. The second and also the final destination of this research trip. But, I’m not nearly done with my Lyon posts yet. I’m in the middle of figuring out the best way to post on the museum I visited in Lyon, La Maison d’Izieu. I want to do it at least some sort of justice, though, I as I have to be up by 7 tomorrow, I probably won’t get it posted tonight……

So, in the mean time, here’s a little picture of one of my favorite friends from Lyon:

Bookie, the golden retriever who stole my heart away :-)

Francois’ house was full of people: Francois, his wife, and their grandsons Oscar and Romain who were staying for the school holidays; plus their nephew, his wife, their three girls, and the Polish nanny who are staying with them for three months while they renovate their house down the street. The days were full of a loud, but not entirely unpleasant cacophony of dishes clattering in the kitchen, little girls chattering, beeps and whistles from a computer game, Chopin plunked out on the slightly out-of-tune piano….

At the same time, it was also full of animals. Well, there were only two dogs, but that made it pretty full just the same. I hadn’t really realized how I missed animals until I got to petting Bookie, the golden retriever you can see above. I think he sensed I needed some “puppy love.” He’d just walk right over, sit next to you, let you pet him, give you kisses, smile a bit….. At other times, of course, he’d be begging for table scraps or roughhousing with Banjo, the other puppy in the house, but he was a sweetie nevertheless. Woman’s best friend?

Flashback and flashforward: mon appareil est cassé

10 April 2010; sitting on the loft bed in a room in Didier’s house in a suburb of Lyon; 11:45pm

A self-portrait of the culprit of the day: my camera.

I wish I could take a picture of my camera [which I actually managed to do above with the help of the bathroom mirror]. Although I have to give the thing credit for putting up with technologically in-ept me for almost 25 000 photographs, it has given me more than my share of difficulties. Flashback three years to my first stay in France, studying abroad as a college junior…..

The summer I turned 20, Mom and Dad gave me a brand new digital camera. Just in time to take it with me on my semester abroad in Paris that fall. A Casio Exlim Megapixel, or some such outlandish sounding name. Compared to the previous cameras I had owned (an clunker of a digital camera that is now a dinosaur by technological standards; preceeded by a similarly clunky film camera; preceeded by countless Kodak disposable cameras), this was high class material: slim, sleek, and black, I could slip it right in my pocket. And the picture quality, while perhaps not up to the most exigent professional standards, was actually quite good. I couldn’t wait to get to Paris and to put it through its paces. Ever since I got my hands on my friend Lea’s digital camera during our high school trip to Italy, I had developed an incurable photo-taking compulsion. On the upside, all my trips end up veeeery well documented, down to the minuate of what I had for dinner—Jason rolls his eyes every time I take out my camera to take photos of our dishes when we’re eating out in a foreign restaurant. On the downside, photos are quickly consuming all the memory space on my computer….

But I digress. The new camera definitely saw plenty for use from the very first day I arrived in Paris back in September 2007. Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Louvre, all the conventional sites. Plus, all my lesser-know escapades to local markets, an auction house, hidden parks and gardens, the nooks and crannies of the city. That is until I returned to my room at Madame and Monsieur’s apartment one October night to find that the camera would not turn on. No matter how many times I pushed the on/off button, alternating between a pleadingly gentle and aggressively frustrated touch, all I got in return for my efforts was bright red letters reading: “LENS FAILURE.” Lens failure, eh? Great. I’m in Paris with two months remaining and I have no camera. Or at least I have no working camera and no way of repairing it…..

Thanks to the internet (technology isn’t all bad), my father discovered a Casio shop up by Place de la République in Paris. So began yet another adventure: getting a camera fixed in a foreign country in a foreign language. My French language studies certainly did not provide instruction in camera repair vocabulary! But, in the absence of another option, I took the metro up to République, wound my way through an area of the city I had never before visited, and managed to find the shop. A little hole in the wall…… that appeared to be closed for lunch. I still have yet to learn the lesson: never try to do any business in France from about 12-2. It’s a hopeless cause because the French hold tenaciously to their lunch breaks. But I was lucky enough to have arrived at 11:50, and the employees were kind enough to let me in before they left for their lunch. And they patiently listened to my fragmented French, fumbling for words: “mon appareil photo, il est cassé….” And I left it behind, with their assurance that it would be fixed within a week. Come back next Thursday.

Realizing that I was over by Pere Lachaise Cemetery, I decided to wander over and check it out. The only image I had ever seen of the cemetery was an illustration in a Madeleine book, as the twelve little girls wander among the tombs of Chopin, Moliere, and Oscar Wilde in search of their lost dog, Genevieve. Like so many of Bemelmans’ illustrations, this picture intrigued me and I had been planning to make my way over to the cemetery for awhile by this point. So, down Avenue de la République I walked, a little over a mile until I came to the craggy cemetery wall, located right next to a flourist shop that, in addition to selling grave flowers, was also selling cemetery maps. Through the open gate and up a crumbling staircase. And the sight took my breath away. Along the road that ran up the hill from the steps a joyous canopy of strikingly yellow leaves arched above the somber grey tombs. A solemn reflection on death and a manifestation of the pure joy of life, held in perfect if fragile harmony, in this single scene . Without thinking, I reached into my pocket to grab my camera…..

When I returned to Place de la République to pick up my repaired camera a week later, I walked down to Pere LaChaise a second time. It was now November 1st, Toussaint, All Saint’s Day, and the tombs were abloom with bouquets and alight with candles left to honor and remember the dead. But those joyous yellow leaves that I had hoped to capture with my camera? They had turned a lifeless brown and fallen from the canopy to become a crunching carpet on the roads and graves. They too had passed on. And today I have only a photograph in my mind, but it’s one of the most dear photographs I possess.

Back to the present and the latest camera mishap. It’s 2010, I’m back in France, and the camera decided tonight in Lyon would be a good time to wreak havoc on my nerves. The lens was stuck out and it wouldn’t budge no matter what I tried. Mon appareil est cassé. Another lens failure. Just what I wanted to have happen on a research trip. I literally depend on this camera for my livlihood. I use it to take pictures not only of site visits but also to “make copies” of archival documents. What would I do without it?! Photos in my mind are great for random visits to Pere Lachaise, but they don’t work so well for dissertation research…..

Luckily, after a bit of assertive “jiggling” (yes, that’s the technical term), the lens all of a sudden popped back into place! Crisis averted! A the capriciousness of technology.

The inexpressible kindness of strangers.

10 April 2010; sitting on the loft bed in a room in Didier’s house in a suburb of Lyon; 11:45pm

I’m having some terrible writer’s block at the moment. I’m just left sputtering on the page, unable to find right words to express precisely what I feel, either in terms of my five senses or on an emotional/spiritual/intellectual level. This happens from time to time; thank goodness I’m not at the end of a school semester, fumbling as I try to churn out five or so final papers before fast-approaching deadlines. Could be worse. Much worse!

What I’m struggling with at the moment is how to explain the tremendous human generosity I have experienced during these research trips. A difficult task to accomplish with mere words at my disposal at the best of times; a near impossible task when suffering under a bout writer’s block. Perhaps if I just start with the facts of my present situation…..

For about a month now I have been in contact via email with a Frenchman in Lyon who is a former Fulbrighter. And that’s about all I knew about him: his name was Francois, he was French, lived in Lyon, once had a Fulbright grant to the States…. And he was willing to let me stay with him during my research trip to Lyon…. in his house, along with his wife, his nephew, his nephew’s wife, their three daughters, the Polish nanny, and himself. “A bit like Woodstock, but quite amusing” he said. Oh, and he eventually gave me his phone number and told me that he would pick me up at the train station upon my arrival. And, so, with only these bits of information in my mind and on the pages of my moleskin, I hopped on my train at 4:54 pm today and rode the TGV down to Lyon.

And that’s about how I have arrive in every one of the six (soon to be seven) cities I have visited thus far. There’s an enormous amount of trust that goes into these things, but it is remarkable how well they always turn out. Back to this example. There was a bit of a snafu at the train station finding Francois because there are apparently about seven meeting points in the Lyon train station, all with the exact same sign hanging above. However, if you wander around enough and look lost enough, you’ll eventually run into someone who looks just as lost and wandering as you and it typically turns out to be just that person you are seeking. After following this formula for about ten minutes are so, I eventually locked searching eyes with an elderly gentleman…. “Alise Smith?” he says tentatively, making sure to emphasize the “th” that gives so many French people trouble. “Oui!” Voila! I had found Francois. “Enchanté.” He took my bag and we headed out to his car…..

And that was the beginning of a lovely evening. We chatted all the way from the train station, with him giving me his views on anti-Semitism and the Holocaust in France, peppered with personal anecdotes from his own career in medicine. Upon arriving at his house, I was introduced to dog #1, dog #2, and then his wife Michelle. The nephew and his wife were out for the evening, so it was just the three of us (plus the dogs). Francois and I had a little aperitif out in the garden while Michelle made dinner. We chatted some more about World War II, and he told me about people he knew who had sheltered Jews or had known Jews before the war. His father-in-law’s brother, for example, hid Jews on the top floor of his house. It still gives me a bit of a shock every time I run into stories like this; this history is still so close to people here. Everyone was touched in one way or another; these aren’t just stories from another time and place. Even if those who actually lived them have passed on, the stories continue to live at a very personal level….

While we talked, I also got some puppy love from Bouchie and Banjo. Despite the fact that Paris is positively crawling with dogs, I have been sorely missing animals during my stay in France. Back home, I’ve been known to walk up to someone in the park and ask if I can pet their dog when I get to missing my Tucker-puppy; you just can’t do that with Parisians. But Bouchie and Banjo were perfectly happy to have my attention. Particularly Bouchie, who is a golden retriever. Such wonderful animals. Added bonus to be sure!

Then there was dinner with Francois and Michelle. Good food and good conversation, two things that the French do so well. Conversation about museums, and history, and memory, and Algeria, and the Holocaust, and Primo Levi, and movies, and the liberation of Lyon, and vegetarians, and cheese, and health care, and Obama…. while dining on salade, a cauliflower gratin, French bread, cheese, blood oranges from a Sicilian vendor, and chocolate chip cookies American-style made by the three little girls who I have yet to meet.

And then after dinner Michelle and Francois settled into armchairs, Michelle with a book and Francois with Le Monde. They left me to the computer so I could send my emails along to my parents and Jason to let them know that I was safe and sound in Lyon. More than safe and sound in fact.

I am presently sitting and typing perched in a lofted bed in a little room in a neighbor’s house across the street. No, I wasn’t evicted. Every room in Francois’ house is full at the moment, so he asked a neighbor if I could sleep at his place. No problem! So, around 10pm, we grabbed my suitcase and strolled across the street and over to Didier’s house. Here I was met by two little girls and Didier himself. They set me up in this little room, showed me the bathroom as well as the kitchen just in case I needed a glass of water during the night, and told me to “fais comme chez toi” (make yourself at home). I am so grateful to both these Lyonnais families for welcoming me to their city. And that’s the part that comes off sounding cliché and tiresome because the words are failing me at present. But the feeling is so strong, I have to give it a go anyway. In brief: I started on these trips expecting to come out of them with purely academic information: notes, site photographs, copies of archival documents, interview recordings. And I have made amazing strides in my research. However, the real of value of these trips wasn’t (and isn’t) to be found in any archive. Quite unexpectedly, I stumbled upon it in ordinary homes, among ordinary people. A real discovery and experience of the human warmth and generosity to be found all around the world. Forgive the cliché, but I’ll blame it on the writer’s block.

This picture has absolutely nothing to do with the above post. It's actually an illustration of the lovely stroll I took through Lyon central yesterday. What a perfect day to stroll along the Rhone and enjoy the sun sparkling off the strikingly blue water. Apparently most of Lyon had the same idea as I did :-) I guess I could make the link that these are the kinds of experiences I have been able to enjoy (in addition to the research I have been able to accomplish) thanks to the generosity of no fewer than seven or eight French families who welcomed me into their cities and into their lives.

Paris is not France and France is not Paris.

10 April 2010; 75019 Paris; 2:17pm

L'Hexegone. France is sometimes referred to by it's nickname, the hexagon, because it kind of has six sides..... if you scrunch up your face and squint really hard you can see it.... sort of :-)

Don’t get me wrong. I love Paris. But Parisians do have a tendency to forget: Paris is not France in its entierty and all of France is not to be found Paris alone. Look at the map for heaven’s sake; the whole of “l’hexagone” is out there just waiting to be explored! Today I am breaking the Parisian bubble once again for a final stint of research traveling in “les provinces.”

First stop: Lyon, which you can see on the map south and a little east. Here I’ll be visiting the Maison d’Izieu, a memorial museum dedicated to 44 Jewish children and their educators were deported to Auschwitz on 6 April 1944 on the orders of the notorious “butcher of Lyon,” SS Officer Klaus Barbie. The museum has especially active pedagogical programs that use the tragedy of Izieu to teach young people today about human rights and civic responsibility as well as World War II and Holocaust history.

Then I’ll be heading back north and further east to Strasbourg, where I’ll be spending a week visiting and researching the concentration camp Natzweiler-Struthof. This area of France, Alsace-Lorraine, was annexed by the Germans during the war, and Natzweiler-Struthof was the only Nazi concentration camp (like Dachau or Buchenwald—as opposed to French internment and transit camps like Gurs or Rivesaltes) in France. Today the camp is a “haut lieu de mémoire” (high place of memory), and the site includes a memorial and two museums dedicated particularly to the history of the Resistance in World War II as much of the camp’s population was made up of resistance members who were deported for their activities.

I’ll try to do as I did on my last trip and post a picture a day, but there’s no guarantee what Internet access will be like. However, I’ll do my best! A bientôt!

Joyeux Paques! (Happy Easter!)

5 April 2010; 75019 Paris; 3am

Happy Easter! I really failed in taking pictures to document the day, so I’ll have to settle for a brief summary and the two somewhat related photos down below. Easter in Paris started off with a “sunrise” service on the quai outside the American Church at 7am. In quotes because although the sun did still rise we did not see it, due to a typically Parisian overcast sky, complete with a chilly wind. Luckily the rain held off from the beginning of our heart-felt, guitar-accompanied “Christ the Lord is Risen to Day” all the way through to the benediction.

I spent the remainder of the morning into the afternoon helping prepare and serve a first breakfast to the congregation…. and then a second breakfast to the choir. It was lots of work, but full of good food and good fellowship. And a good Easter, despite the lack of photos.

I wish all of you back home a “Joyeux Paques” — A Joyous Easter! He is risen!

The American Church. I should have taken a picture during the sunrise service just to prove to you all that, yes, I really did get up that early, but I dropped the ball on that one. I took this photo as I was leaving at 2:30 in the afternoon. It was comparatively warm sunny by this point, though you can still see the remnants of the morning clouds around the steeple.

You know how I wanted to live in a Madeline house in Paris? Well, somebody decided to build my old house in Paris covered with vines for a bunch of peeps! This is from the DC "Peep show" competition. If you want to see the rest of the finalists, I've posted the link down below. Some of them are really quite creative......

DC “Peep Show” : http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2010/03/29/GA2010032903934.html

Minnesota has one too! : http://twincities.upickem.net/engine/ApprovedSubmissions.aspx?PageType=APPROVED&contestid=14457

Vendredi Saint (Good Friday)

1 April 2010; 75019 Paris; 11h45

Notre Dame. The crucifixes all over Paris are covered for Lent. Perhaps I missed something somewhere, but I have never encountered this tradition before. A covered cross. A covered Christ. They will be uncovered again in two days and appearances will be back to usual, but I found it a striking reminder to stop in the midst of the whirl wind of my everyday life to reflect.

Addendum: I realized that I had actually seen covered crosses during Lent before. The difference being, having grown up in the Minnesota Lutheran milieu, my crosses never had Christ on them. So, it was just a covered *cross*. Makes a rather different impact when it is not only the wooden beams of the cross draped in cloth, but the image of Jesus that is hidden from sight. I’m not sure the Protestants had it all right when they started going after the Catholics for religious imagery…..

A story of a bad research day, told via a rather forced metaphor (it’s late)

31 March 2010; 75019 Paris; 2:35 am

The sun doesn’t always shine on springtime in Paris. For the past two days we have had roaring, pelting, flashing afternoon thunderstorms. Similarly, the figurative sun does not always figuratively shine on my research. Today was a thunderstorm of a day for academic pursuits, for oh-so-many reasons. Here, however, for the sake of time and space we shall treat only one.

France is well known for its government bureaucracy and the loads of accompanying red tape. Government archives are far from exempt. To elucidate: in order to get access to a dossier on one of my memorial museums in the archives of the Ministry of Defense, which I only discovered last week (because it took me six months to get a meeting with the man who donated them—but that’s another story), I have to fill out a request form and send it *snail-mail* (what are we in the stone age?) to the Ministry of Defense Archives. The archives then apparently sends it to the director of the archives or the secretary general of national defense, who gives his approval and then sends the form to the individual who donated the dossier, requesting their permission to let me access it. In my case, this is the aforementioned gentleman who told me about the dossier and who has already told me that he is perfectly willing to let me look at his documents. And so it comes full circle. Confused yet? This process, as I understand it, can take up to two months. And I leave France in exactly sixty-two days. So, as time is running short, I thought I would cheat the system, and deliver my document request to the archives in person rather than dealing with the capricious French mail system. This way I could also make sure everything was in order and see if there was any way to expedite things as I essentially already had permission from the donor. The archives are only at 45 minutes metro ride for me, so no big deal. Plus, the Defense Archives are located in the Chateau de Vincennes, and I figured it would be fun to see the castle if nothing else.

I carefully organized all my paper work last night and checked online to make sure the archives would be open today…… only to arrive at the chateau and find that the archives are closed for renovation and staff training. All week. Until next Tuesday. They failed to mention that little detail anywhere on the website. So. BANG. CRASH. A smashing research low for the day.

The sign on the door of the archives, politely informing me that they are closed for the week..... so that they can improve their services for my benefit. Thanks soooo much. Might have been nice to know before I showed up knocking at their door....

Yet, if you look hard enough, you can always tease out an upside to these figurative thunderstorm-y lows. First: because I headed home earlier than expected, I avoided getting caught in a rather monstrous *real* thunderstorm this afternoon. Second: I did get to visit a rather splendid castle today. I guess I can’t really complain about that!

Chateau de Vincennes. A ray of light on a crummy day, to stick with the somewhat corny metaphor.

7 Ingredients

The ingredients for a delightful evening in Paris. Mix together:

#1 An assortment of French cheeses, purchased from your local fromagier (cheese seller). In this case, Ellen, Claire, and I stopped by the cheese stand at the local Thursday market and I asked the rather amused fromagier for some good cheeses for my American friends to "gouter" (taste). I rarely enjoy cheese back home, but French cheese is divine! Maybe it's because it's usually un-pasturized. Maybe it's because there are so many to different kinds available. Charles de Gaulle once quipped: "Comment voulez-vous gouverner un pays qui a deux cents quarante-six variétés de fromage" (how can you govern a country that has 246 kinds of cheese?). Good question Général de Gaulle, but while it might make France ungouvernable, I have yet to meet a French cheese that I didn't like. And, actually, some people today claim there may exist over 500 varieties to choose from. Here we have, from left to right, Comté (a hard cheese from the Comté region---my host family during my first stay in France always had Comté on the dinner table), chevre frais (an soft, unaged cheese made from goat's milk with a relatively mild taste), and montbriac (a beautiful blue chees---not a strong as roqueforte but it still has a bit of zing). I've been told you should always serve a hard cheese, a soft cheese, and a blue cheese on your cheese plater. Voila! All three were delicious.

#2. French baguettes. Again, Americans just don't know how to do baguettes. Buy a baguette from a grocery store back home, and you'll usually just get wonder bread masquarading in baguette form. But real French baguettes from a real French boulangerie (bakery), well.... they simply can't be beat. To day we tried a baguette normale (regular baguette), a baguette festivale (special baguette), and a baguette aux six céreales (six grain baguette). The four of us (Claire, Ellen, my flatmate Katy and I) finished off three and a half baguettes with this meal.....

#3. Ok. So, I guess I'm partial to the French way of doing a lot of foods. Wine is no exception. I hardly ever drink wine at home, but I make a point of always trying a glass when it's offered in France as I figure it's part of the culture and I ought to take advantage of the experience. I'm actually beginning to acquire an appreciation for it. This little bottle of Bordeaux went rather well with our little cheese platter.

#4. A little fruit platter, with apples and pears from the local market. There is a market right across the street from my apartment every Sunday and Thursday. I make a point of never buying my fruits and vegetables from the grocery store because the market produce is so wonderful. And, unlike the farmers' market back home, I often find that at my market here I get a better deal for the better produce . Double bonus.

#5. Cake! The French might not "get" cookies, but they certainly know how to make a pastry cake. Ellen picked up this gorgeous little chocolat noir cake from the patisserie (pastry shop) down the street, succeeding in carrying out here entire order in French after my brief vocabulary lesson :-) Shared four ways, it disappeared in minutes. But every minute was savored. Good choice Ellen!

#6. A table at which to share the meal. Another thing the French are very good at: taking the time to eat loooong meals filled with good conversation. We may not be French, but the four of us enjoyed a very good meal and plenty of friendly conversation over this table tonight. Tulips, thanks to Claire, and daffodils, thanks to Katy, made for an especially cheery setting.

#7. Friends to share it all with. From left to right: my cousin Claire, myself, and my friend Ellen. Not pictured is my flatmate Katy, who also joined us for dinner tonight. I will miss these two girls when they go back to Italy and Maryland tomorrow! Thanks for a wonderful week ladies---it was great fun showing you around "my" Paris.

Passover preview

26 March 2010; 75019 Paris; 2:30 am

Today I (and Ellen and Claire and several other amazing volunteers) helped to prepare a seder meal for 70.  Not an every day happening for a little Lutheran girl from the suburbs of Minnesota!  Actually, it was technically a “pre-Passover” meal, as Passover doesn’t actually start until sundown on March 29, but it was a fascinating experience just the same, both in the preparation and the meal itself. It is too late to describe the evening at the moment, but if you’re interested, keep checking back: I’ll post a little photo-essay within a couple days…..

The seder plates I prepared this evening, stretching off into the distance . Actually, it was only 12, but it still makes for an impressive-looking line-up I think. I found the plate in itself rather beautiful: the subdued neutral tones of the horseraddish, egg, lamb bone and charoset, with the sudden spark of color in the bright green parsley....

Tour-guiding again

25 March 2010; 75019 Paris; 12:40 am

I’m back to tour-guiding for the week. Ironically I have no new photos to illustrate this fact. After almost six months living here, my I-photo is full of literally thousands of photographs of the “Parisian sites” already. I don’t think I need to emulate Monet in exploring the effects of light and seasons on Sacre Coeur, Notre Dame, the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, and all the rest. Lack of photographic evidence aside, I am loving every minute of showing my cousin Claire and good friend Ellen around this city. I think tour guide is my true vocation. To really dig into the history of a city, to live it’s life, and then to share your knowledge and love of that place with visitors. I couldn’t be happier planning out excursions and then taking my friends and family out to explore. Now, if only I could find a way to make this into a career….. But at the moment, it’s time for bed. We have a busy day planned tomorrow: the local Thursday market, Montmartre tour, Invalides, Musée Rodin, Musée d’Orsay, and then a seder (Passover) dinner at church….

*The* Parisian tourist attraction. A "must see" on any itinerary. I admittedly skipped out on the Eiffel Tower visit this evening, as I figured I should get *some* actual work done today. But it sounds like Claire and Ellen had a good trip up la Tour. Although I feel absolutely no urge to go to the top *again*, the sight of this famed tower along the skyline still gives me a little thrill even after six months of seeing it almost daily.

Printemps

21 March 2010; 75019 Paris; 11:50pm

Spring has come to Paris…..

Some of my favorite signs of the season: DAFFODILS! Or, as the French call them, des Jonquilles.

In the park......

..... and in the house!

I go walking nearly ever day, just for the sheer joy of taking in “springtime in Paris.” Happy first-day-of-spring to all of you back home!

Dumpster-diving Parisian-style

20 March 2010; 75019 Paris; 3:00 am

You know you’re a nerd (and a poor nerd at that) when you get really excited about….

….. new bookshelves acquired via curb-side dumpster-diving Parisian-style.

In the dead of a frigid February night, three girls arrayed in mis-matched winter coats and pajama pants shuffled out of the apartment building at the end of the quai. There, piled before them was a snow-caked heap of misfit furniture and other household odds and ends someone had dumped on the sidewalk: a television set with its innards spilling out the busted back, an electric fan with the cord cut, two twin-sized mattresses, a green wicker coffee table, a rusty laundry drying rack, chipped plastic chairs, an assortment of twisted metal pipes and wooden planks. Most of it was unredeemable junk. But, in the eyes of two under-paid teaching assistants and one budding grad student, there were veritable treasures to be found among the refuse. The wicker coffee table for one. Perfectly good condition really. Excepting, perhaps the pea green color. The drying rack was rusty, but could be fixed up with a little electrical tape. Extra space for drying laundry is, after all, quite the commodity in an apartment of three girls. The fan would be invaluable come spring time with no air conditioning. Surely one of the handy-man boyfriends who were planning to visit within the next month could fix that cord. The two plastic chairs, on the other hand, would make fine porch furniture come spring. And then there were the bookshelves. Several perfectly good black-painted wood shelves. Simply too good to pass up.

Shivering violently, while at the same time laughing at the absurdity of it all, the three very cold dumpster divers first set to chipping off the layer of icy snow that had settled on everything earlier that day and then to hauling their booty inside and up to the apartment. For once, the luxury of having an elevator beat out the romance of living in a Haussmann building. Imagine having to lug all of this up seven flights of stairs!

The spoils of our curb-side Parisian-style dumpster-diving escapade. From left to right. Rusty laundry rack, green wicker coffee table, black wood bookshelves, and electric fan. Not pictured: white plastic chairs.

Although the fan may soon be back out on the curb as it has proved rather more difficult to fix than expected, the drying rack was quickly drafted into use. The chairs are already sitting on the porch, waiting anxiously for spring’s sun and warmth. The coffee table is installed in the living room, where it nicely compliments the rather motley decor: the blue corduroy clic-clac couch, the wobbly IKEA kitchen table surrounded by three black fold-out chairs, the TV table painted bright orange and red with green and blue glitter, the shelves lined with previous tenants’ trashy romance novels and travel guides, and the ever conspicuous mini-fridge nestled in the corner. Pea green wicker adds a nice touch to the ensemble. The bookshelves are now installed in my room, and what joy they give me! After living four months with a terribly spindly matrix of discolored plastic and splitting plywood as the only shelf to my name, it is an indescribable luxury to store my ever-growing stacks of books, museum brochures, research notes, rent receipts, French bank statements, and other papers on a proper “bookshelf” that is actually deserving of that illustrious title. You know you are a nerd (and a poor nerd at that) when every time you look across your room you fall in love again with your “new” dumpstered bookshelves.

Moltmann speaks at ACP

18/19 March 2010; 75019 Paris; 4 am

I really need to go to bed, but just a couple of sentences about the day before I do.

Jurgen Moltmann speaking at the American Church in Paris

For the past three evenings I have been at the American Church here in Paris, listening to a lecture series by esteemed German theologian, Jurgen Moltmann. Absolutely fascinating. On the one hand, the lectures were interesting on a spiritual level because Moltmann was speaking on his theology of the cross, Quite honestly, in all my years of attending church services, confirmation classes, and the like, I’ve never really considered this question of what actually happened on the cross too deeply despite it’s centrality to what I believe as a Christian. It was just something that “was.” And, now, after listening to Moltmann’s lectures, I have been inspired to explore the question further. I absolutely love how every single time I walk into the American Church, I walk out somehow transformed in my faith, asking new questions that deepening my understanding of what I believe and drawing me one slow step closer to God. On the other hand, the lecture was also interesting to me as a historian of the Holocaust because so much of Moltmann’s theology has been influenced by his own experiences as a boy growing up in Nazi Germany, the fact that he was drafted at 16 into the German army, the years he was inprisoined as a POW, and his horror at the discovery of the Holocaust. His ideas about God’s solidarity of victims is particularly intriguing from this perspective….

However, I won’t even begin to try to summarize Moltmann’s three talks tonight. Rather, the church is going to try to post a video-recording on YouTube, and I will be sure to post the link once they do….. it may be awhile, but it will be worth the wait. I *highly* recommend these lectures to anyone. Anyone at all. Christian or not. They’re captivating and incredibly thought-provoking.

Starting to be spring-y

17/18 March 2010; 75019 Paris; 2:30 am

Today is St. Patrick’s day, and while Paris has not quite going green yet (referring to the foliage), it is starting to feel distinctly like spring. Sunny and sixty, with almost no wind today. Perfect weather for a stroll. As a born and bred Minnesotan, I still marvel at the concept of spring in March! Baffling, but oh so appreciated. Hopefully I won’t be eating my words in a week because I am simply enjoying this far too much….

Spring comes to Paris. Along the Seine.

In need of reflection

16/17 March 2010; 75019 Paris; 2:00 am

I’m home, but today was chock full, so I still have not yet had time to myself. Time to let my thoughts coalesce. To reflect. So my mind is still swimming with a disorderly (albeit rich) montage of images of and ideas about these places:

Les Milles

Rivesaltes

Gurs

Récébédou

Nexon

Oradour-sur-Glane

Tomorrow, I am letting my body sleep as long as it needs to (which really *is* needed), and then devoting the rest of the day to the photographs, notes, and thoughts that I simply did not have the time to properly examine and integrate during my trip. I am sorely in need of some deep reflection…..

Day 32: Limoges/Paris

15/16 March 2010; 75019 Paris; 2:23 am

I’m home again. Paris home, that is. After one month of travel. A little strange actually to come back after that length of time—I have to re-learn how to live in a big city again!  I had a wonderful trip, both in terms of research and in terms of the people I met, but it is good to be back and to finally have some time to pause and process the thousands of photograph photocopies waiting in my Iphoto library, the thousands more site photos I took, the myriad of new ideas bouncing around in my head. I definitely have my work cut out!

A side note: ironically, while one might think that one goes south to escape the cold, it is actually warmer here in Paris than it was almost anywhere during my time in the south. I guess I should have migrated north!

Sitting on the bridge. You can't see the mallards, the passersby, or the butterflies, but you can see the cause of the traffic noise; a little blue car in the background. (Day 32: Limoges)

How I spent my final hours in the South: sitting on a 13^th century stone bridge that cuts through Limoges. Writing in my notebook.  Snacking on a chunk of delicious comte cheese. Listening to bird songs mix with the muted whir of nearby traffic. Watching the mallards on the river, the passersby on the bridge, and the occasional yellow butterfly flitting past. Feeling the warm sun on my back and a cool wind on my face. Delightful.

Day 31: Limoges

14/15 March 2010; Ouaked Apartment; Limoges; 3:15 am

When I visit a historic site, I find that I usually react on three very different levels. To begin with, I objectively observe. At least I try to be relatively objective, though even the most valiant effort at objectivity is inevitably colored by one’s personal background and biases. But that’s a whole other post in and of itself. Point being, this first level involves straight observation and description sans commentary. On a second level, I analyze and critique (sometimes subconsciously—my brain is always ticking on this level whenever I go through an exhibit nowadays) what I see according to my knowledge of museum best practices as well as according to my personal sensibilities. As if I were writing a review of the site for a newspaper or journal. The third level is emotional. One can’t helped be moved on a very basic human level when visiting sites of atrocity. I am usually pretty good about keeping these various levels in equilibrium, but on today’s site visit of Oradour-sur-Glane, I was deeply shaken on this third level of reaction.

A brief word of background: Oradour-sur-Glane was and is a small village near Limoges in the center of France. On June 10, 1944, four days after the Allies landed at Normandy, the Nazi Waffen SS surrounded the town and massacred the entire village. They shot the men in the streets and burned the women and children in the church. 642 people died that day and the entire village was torched. Immediately after the war, Oradour became an archetype of Nazi barbarity. The remnants of the village were quickly classified as a historical monument, and they were preserved in their ruined state. Today you can still visit the “village martyr” itself, and a centre de la mémoire (memory center) opened on site in 1997 with an exposition that provides historical background and context for the massacre before a visit to the site.

The museum was well done, and I took plenty of notes that will allow me to analyze its parcours later. However, what really hit me hard was my walk through the village itself. They are striking, these ruins. An entire town preserved as it crumbles. Walking down the street you feel as if you’re walking through one of the hundreds of bombed out cities reduced to rubble during the war. But the history here is even more sinister. Walking through this village with knowledge of the history was an extremely difficult experience for me. Stepping inside the remains of the village church, for example, I felt physically ill, sick to my stomach, similar to the feeling that struck me while standing in the gas chamber at Auschwitz. While the number of lives lost is certainly not as high (and I am by no means trying to equate the 6 million who died in the Holocaust with the 600 who died at Oradour), the fact remains that 400 woman and children were murdered in that very spot. 400 innocent human beings. The thought is almost insupportable, mentally and physically. It sort of stretches your mind thin and plunges your heart into your stomach.

The centre de la mémoire also hosts temporary expositions. As the current expo is on 9/11, I figured I ought to check it out after my visit to the village. The expo was created through a partnership between the French Memorial de la Paix at Caen and the New York City Museum. It consists of a series of panels recounting the events of 9/11 and the aftermath as well as numerous objects related to the attacks. Building fragments, fire hoses, mementos left for the victims, etc. My own memories of that day came rushing back. Like any American, I can remember precisely where I was when the news first came through: I was sitting in Ms. Hedine’s ninth grade math class at EHS, watching in a haze of surreal disbelief as the events unfolded on the classroom television. Here too, I was almost surprised to find myself catching back tears. Perhaps my reaction was a function of the fact that I am an American far from home, the only American among several French visitors walking through the exposition. I’m not fanatically patriotic, but this was *my* country here. And I remember. I have to wonder as well if this reaction wasn’t somehow accentuated by the experiences I had in the village martyr not five minutes before. The enormity of human suffering (and of the ever re-occurring man’s inhumanity to man) linking the two events, quite different in terms of scale, location, time period, etc, etc. Why and how do we continue to inflect such pain on our fellow human beings?

My apologies if this all seems a bit rambling and disorganized. It’s rather late, and I’m still absorbing the experience. So. I will leave it at that with a couple pictures to follow.

Oradour-sur-Glane. Main Street. Looks like it could be Dresden. (Day 31: Limoges)

Oradour-sur-Glane. (Day 31: Limoges)

Oradour-sur-Glane. Almost looks like it could be Roman ruins. Maybe Pompeii. Which is another interesting comparison that I never really thought of before..... (Day 31: Limoges)

Oradour-sur-Glane. Remnants of cars that survived when the Nazis burned the village. (Day 31: Limoges)

Oradour-sur-Glane. Stone walls, trolly cabels, car skeletons, bikes, a pot or pan here or there, and scattered Singer sewing machines are what remain. (Day 31: Limoges)

Oradour-sur-Glane. Plaques marking one of the places in the town where the men were shot. The only five to survive the massacre escaped from this barn. (Day 31: Limoges)

Oradour-sur-Glane. The church. The visceral feeling in the pit of one's stomach cannot be conveyed through a picture. (Day 31: Limoges)

Oradour-sur-Glane. The tomb for the 642 victims in the old village cemetery. (Day 31: Limoges)

Oradour-sur-Glane. (Day 31: Limoges)

Day 30: Limoges

13/14 March 2010; Ouaked House; Limoges; 12:40 am

Officially one month on the road! Two days remaining…

One of the oldest bridges in Limoges, Pont St. Etienne dates from the 13th century. Today, pilgrims still walk across it on the route of Santiago de Compostella.... and it also provides a beautiful view for those of us out on a reflective afternoon stroll along the Vienne river. (Day 30: Limoges)

Limoges does not have a reputation as a particularly quaint town, but I still quite enjoyed my three and a half hour walk this afternoon. Two churches, a cathedral, a city garden, a library, a Resistance museum, two historic districts, two medieval bridges….. and a stroll down by the river. Not bad, not bad at all!

Day 29: Limoges

12/13 March 2010; Ouaket house; Limoges; 2:11 am

I’m cheating again. Three pictures to give you an idea of what a “disappeared” internment camp looks like:

Twin stele marking the former entrance of the Nexon internment camp. (Day 29: Limoges)

Street of new houses that runs next to the steles. If my suppositions are correct, this land was once part of the Nexon camp. (Day 29: Limoges)

Open fields on the location of the former Nexon internment camp. (Day 29: Limoges)

Official map of Nexon village, posted just outside the tourism office. The steles are marked in the upper lefthand corner. (Day 29: Limoges)

This morning I hopped on a bus, and headed for a little village in the middle of nowhere to visit a camp that no longer exists. Nexon, the name of both the village and the internment camp that was formerly located on its outskirts. Nexon as a camp has ceased to exist in a sense rather different that the sense in which Gurs, for example, no longer exists. At Gurs, there are no longer any substantial physical vestiges of the camp on site. However, the memory and history of the camp remains etched onto the landscape through the work of the Amicale de Gurs (the association dedicated to the history and memory of the camp). At Gurs you find not only steles and a cemetery, but also a reconstructed barrack, wayside signs with historical commentary, and a modest welcome center. Furthermore, commemorations take place on site annually, keeping the memory and history of the camp vividly alive today.

Similar ot Gurs, at Nexon nothing remains of the orignal camp buildings. Modern homes have been built on the land that once housed internees in 13 barracks. Barbed wire, which used to seal off the camp from the outside world, now encircles private fields and vegetable patches. The only reminders that there ever was a camp here are the twin stele marks the former entrance of the camp, the second stele that marks the train station from which deportations departed, and a tomb in the town cemetery for 59 Jews, “victimes de Nazisme.” However, unlike at Gurs, this site has ceased to live. There is no Amicale, there are no commemorations here. School children don’t visit the site, and, excepting a few relations of internees here and there, neither does anyone else. If not for the steles, the memory of the camp would have completely faded from the landscape. However, at the same time as forgetting seems to be the predominant current here at Nexon, it is interesting to note that the city map you can pick up at the tourist office in Nexon village marks and highlights the two steles. So, perhaps the history of the camp on the landscape has not died after all if it is inscribed upon the official city map, along with the town church, train station, gendarmerie, post office, bank, cemetery, and the mayor’s office? What one chooses to note on a map, can, after all, be a powerful indicator of what one feels is important….

Day 28: Toulouse/Limoges

11 March 2010; the Ouaked house; Limoges; 12:00 am

I’m now in Limoges, the last stop on my voyages du sud (travels in the south). But, as I didn’t arrive here until 8pm this evening…..

Jane and Lucien's "fixer-upper." (Day 28: Toulouse)

This is the French version of a “fixer-upper.” Jane (a former Fulbrighter from 1983 and mother of the woman who hosted me in Toulouse) and her husband (also a Fulbrighter from waaaaay back in the 1950s) bought the dilapidated old Toulousian house years ago and have been improving on it ever since. Today it is absolutely gorgeous, with its façade of red Toulousian brick and stones from the Garonne river, enormous kitchen, sunny terrace, cozy salon…. They also have a beautiful garden, complete with a little swimming pool. Jane vowed that once she retired she would have her own pool. With that mission accomplished, she can now enjoy a morning swim in the summer time. While the garden is still currently speckled with the remnants of Monday’s snowstorm, it is easy to imagine how beautiful it looks with blooming flowers, verdant hedges, and chirping birds in the spring and summer.

Irony of ironies, I discovered over dinner with Jane and Lucien that both have links to Minnesota. Lucien roomed with the then future mayor of St. Paul, George Latimer, when he was on his Fulbright in Chicago. Of course, Latimer was mayor back in 1977-1990, so I don’t personally remember him. But now my name is written along with his in Jane and Lucien’s “Livre d’Or” (literally Book of Gold. actually, guest book). Jane’s Fulbright, on the other hand, actually took her to Minnesota itself for a two month long class at the University of Minnesota for professors from all over Europe. The subject was American diversity. Always fascinating to hear an outsider’s perspective on our “melting pot” or “salad bowl” or whatever your preferred metaphor may be. And, of course, always to encounter “fellow Minnesotans” (of a sort) abroad!

Day 27 B: Toulouse

10 March 2010; Anne’s apartment; Toulouse; 1:30 am

Another day, another camp, another museums. Number four of the trip. Each with its own unique history, both before, during, and after the war….

Récébédou Camp Museum. (Day 27 B: Toulouse)

Today, the camp was Récébédou. At Les Milles you have a building from the period that is completely in tact, at least as far as the exterior is concerned. At Rivesaltes you have the slowly deteriorating ruins of a camp. At Gurs you have nothing but a reconstructed barrack amidst the forest that now covers the site. And here, at Récébedou, you have the camp’s sole remaining barrack, which has been turned into a tiny museum that recounts the camp’s story. A tiny museum to be sure, but run by a man who clearly has a passion for what he does. He basically took his entire afternoon to show me around and to answer all my questions about the museum. Not only that, but he took a half hour *after* his work day was officially over (it is absolutely UNHEARD OF for a Frenchman or woman to work overtime) to take me to see the Jewish cemetery and the train station from which the three convoys of Jews deportation from Récébédou departed. Freeman Tilden, who wrote the veritable bible of historic site interpretation, says that love, of subject and of humanity, is the “essential ingredient” for effective interpretation. Time and time again during this trip I have run across individuals who possess a clear passion, a love, if you will, for their subject and for sharing it with the public. Of course, no museum is perfect, pure and free of politics and squabbles. But the love is there, perhaps all the more essential when dealing with a subject that seems to negate love as much as the Shoah.

Side note: something that continues to shock me about these camps is how they were often re-used after the war. Les Milles returned to its original function as a tile factory. Rivesaltes continued as a military camp, as well as serving as a “centre d’accueil” for the harkis in the wake of the Algerian War. Drancy, just north of Paris, was originally built as a social housing unit, and, after serving as the French “antichamber of Auschwitz,” is back to being a home for low income families today. Similarly, the barracks of Récébédou were reoccupied after the war by working class families up until the 1970s. I met a woman who lived with her family on the site of the former camp in the post-war years. As a child, she says she found life quite comfortable in these former barracks that had witnessed terrible things, but that she also grew up quite aware of her home’s history. My thoughts still have not quite wrapped themselves around all this…..

Day 27: Toulouse

Same issue as last night….. will post in the morning…. France time….. If I’ve learned nothing in France, it’s to go with the flow :-)

Day 26 B: Toulouse

9/10 March 2010; Anne’s Apartment; Toulouse; 1:30 am

My apologies for missing yesterday. The sleeping arrangements are a bit complicated at the place I’m staying, and once my host, Anne, decides to go to bed I’m out of luck as far as internet is concerned. Additionally, I had to prep for tomorrow/today’s interviews and I have to be up at 8 tomorrow, so, per usual, I don’t have as much time as I’d like to recount the day….

Toulouse "la ville rose." (Day 26 B: Toulouse)

The 10th labor of Hercules. Combatting the Giant. (Day 26 B: Toulouse)

Toulouse is know as “la ville rose,” (the pink city), not to be confused “la vie en rose” (life in pink—ie seeing the world through rose colored glasses). Why this colorful appellation? The city is largely constructed with red brick from local quarries, a practice started by the Romans who inhabited this area over 2,000 years ago, and carried on today to a certain extent. Branching out from the Shoah a bit, I spent several hours today strolling around the local museum of antiquity, marveling at the archaeological finds of the city. Of course, Toulouse today is a thoroughly modern city, with its Monoprix (French Walmart) and its FNAC (French Best Buy) and a McDonald’s on its main square (quelle domage—too bad). But even as the city keeps up with the times, new reminders of the past continue to pop up. Digging the metro, for example, revealed a slough of Roman artifacts. Excavations at the nearby Chiragan uncovered a series of twelve magnificent panels depicting the twelve trials of Hercules, one of which is pictured above. Stunning. I am forever fascinated with the amount of history that is forever right beneath our feet, wherever humans once lived. I should have been an archaeologist…..

Day 26: Toulouse

Sorry all. The computer is in my host’s bedroom and she is going to bed…. so no photo tonight…I should have it up tomorrow morning, though…. apologies…. and I was doing so well! I promise two posts tomorrow to make up for it….

Day 25: Pau/Toulouse

8 March 2010; Anne’s Apartment; Toulouse; 10:54

No time to write tonight because my host needs the internet…. So just two photos to sum up the day: The photo is being stupid. Just click on it and you can see it.

From Pau: the city's famous Chateau, where Henri IV was born. A splendid mish-mash of different architectural eras. I had a view of the chateau from my bedroom window :-) (Day 25: Pau/Toulouse)

This is photo is borrowed from Claire, who I stayed with in Perpignan. It is snowing all over the south today. A LOT. My train to Toulouse was consequently delayed by about 2 hours! But I'm safe and sound in my newest city. (Day 25: Pau/Toulouse)

Day 24: Pau

7/8 March 2010; Cauhapé Family House; Pau; 1:30 am

Once again, I have material from the day that would make for a wonderful post if I had the time and energy…. Yet once again, I am “tres fatigué” (completely exhausted) after a long but exciting day. And I have to be up at 8 again tomorrow. So, a duo of pictures will have to suffice…. and I will write a longer, narrative post out of them at a later date.

A brief note before the photos, though. My question of the day is the following: why, in twelve years of elementary and secondary school and four years at university do I not remember ever really learning about the Spanish Civil War? It was definitely mentioned as a footnote once or twice, but did I just miss the day where the topic was actually covered, like I some how missed the day in about first grade where they explain that you can’t divide by zero (I discovered that one in calculus. Hmmmm.) Or do they really just brush over it? If so, is it simply because the Spanish conflict gets overshadowed by the arguably more consequential World War II? Or is it because Americans are that scared to touch anything as enmeshed in the history Communist/Anarchist activism? I’ve run into such “memory lapses” in other historical topics as well. Betcha didn’t know, for example, that Helen Keller was a devoted socialist (as well as a suffragette and pacifist), working for social causes? Maybe I’ll have to write my dissertation on America’s complicated relationship with “socialism” in terms of history and memory….

Now back to our regularly scheduled program:

Hiking in the Pyrénées. The view. (Day 24: Pau)

Hiking in the Pyrénées. The pique-nique. (Day 24: Pau)

I climbed a mountain today with my French hosts in Pau, Christine and Jean-Paul. The first picture above is included because I just had to show a bit of the view. Breathtaking. The photo doesn’t come close to doing it justice.

But what I really want to write about is the second picture; the last course of our French “pique-nique.” Now, when my family goes on a hiking picnic back home, lunch will usually consist of the following: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, smushed to perfection in the backpack. Bottled water or juice boxes to drink. Grapes or some other variety of fruit packed in a zip-lock. Pretzels or a can of Pringles. Poptartes and/or chocolate chip cookies for dessert. Pretty standard picnic fare, I think. Now, for comparison, here is the menu of today’s French picnic: celery-potato soup kept warm in a thermos and poured into real glass bowls and eaten with actual spoons. Rice pilaf with tuna, tomato, artichokes, and olives, served in plastic bowls. But the forks were real. Left-over quiche lorraine from dinner two nights ago. Baguette slices and your choice of cheese: local ewe’s milk cheese or swiss. And then Betty Crocker brownies (brought back from American by Claire’s sister, who is an English teacher) and coffee in actual coffee cups for dessert. A veritable four-course French meal on a mountaintop! I don’t know if I’d call it a “picnic” (I’m rather partial to my smooshed pb & j), but it was certainly a gastronomic experience :-)

Day 23: Pau

6/7 March 2010; Cauhapé Family House; Pau; 12:30 am

I am utterly exhausted. Being that I am only in Pau for three days, I have to take advantage of the time I have! So, today I was effectively on the run from 8 am until 8 pm. An exhausting day, but incredibly valuable in terms of research…. with some extra unexpected treasures on the side Most significantly, we stopped at the Sainte-Marie Cathedral in Oloron, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site thanks to its location along the Saint-Jacques de Compostelle pilgrimage route. Gorgeous.

The main event of the day was my visit to the camp of Gurs, which saw some 60 000 individuals pass through it’s barbed wire fences from 1939-1943. Spanish republicans, Jews, and thousands of others deemed undesirable and imprisoned by the French Vichy government. Beginning in the summer of 1942, the French deported six convoys of almost 4 000 Jews, handing them over to the Nazis and to almost certain death at Auschwitz or Sobibor-Madjanek. Would that I had the energy right now to recount the entire history of the camp, as it is a story that deserves a proper treatment, but my eyes are drooping, so I will leave you with some of my own raw impressions of my visit.

Gurs. The now tree-lined road that used to cut through the center of the 2 km long camp. (Day 23: Pau)

Hardly anything remains of Gurs. A cemetery with the graves of around a thousand internees who died in the camp. Scattered ruins of the cement floors of the kitchen barracks. A sole original building, the cabin of one of the camp’s aide workers, know as the “Angel of Gurs” for her work saving children. That’s it. Very different from Les Milles and Rivesaltes where there is very obvious, tangible evidence of the existence of the camp on the landscape. On the contrary, the barracks of Gurs, made of wood and infested with vermin, were raised after the war, and a forest was planted over the former camp. Over fifty years later, those trees have the appearance of a long-established, even ancient forest. People stroll casually along the central ally that once split the camp down the middle, along with horseback riders, out on a jaunt from the equestrian school across the street. Two immense kilometers of a tree lined road with a hidden history.

On one hand, the presence of these trees is incredibly troubling. Undisturbed nature on a site of appalling atrocity, these trees symbolize forgetting, silence. A failure, perhaps deliberate, perhaps unintended, to recognize what happened here, to pay tribute to the terrible experiences that marked thousands of individuals. The history, the memory, has been over-grown and covered over…. by the deceving innocence of trees. A similarly incongruous tranquility now reigns over many former World War II camps, even extermination camps like Auschwitz. Chilling.[Please note, none of the camps I am visiting were extermination camps, with gas chambers and crematoria. They were, nevertheless, places of very real human suffering]

However, there is another view one can take of these trees. Thanks to the work of the Gurs Amicale (an association that brings together survivors, their relatives, and other supporters), the camp’s history has not been forgotten. Despite the lack of “authentic” traces from the actual period of the camp, a visitor to the site today can still come to understand, and to feel, what took place on this site thanks to the work of the Amicale. In addition to a small welcome pavilion, the site today has a system of wayside signs marks a two self-guided paths through the camp, one that focuses on the history of the camp from 1939-1943, another that explains the history of the camp after the war. The Amicale also spearheaded the re-creation of a barrack that now provides the visitor an illustration of “la vie quotidienne” (every day life) in the war era camp. In addition the Amicale promotes awareness in the community through a variety of activities, including guided visits of the camp for schoolchildren, passing this knowledge on to the next generation. So, the camp, per se, no longer exists. But, the history of the camp and even the site itself continue to live. So, perhaps the trees can also be said to represent renewal of life and hope after all. A renewed life for a dead site. A renewed hope in humanity that we can learn from the past and live accordingly, a hope lifted gracefully toward the sky on the branches of these trees.

Day 22: Pau

5/6 March; Cauhapé Family House; Pau; 12:30 am

This morning I left Perpignan for Pau (pronounced “Po.” Yes,  as in the Teletubbie). After five hours of train travel, I conducted my first interview not thirty minutes after my arrival. And tomorrow I’ll be visiting another camp, Gurs. Sunday will be a day of rest, comme d’habitude in France, and then on Monday afternoon I’ll be off to the next city on the itinerary…. Whew!

Playmobile pirate ship.... right out of my childhood memories (Day22: Pau)

There are some moments from childhood that I can remember with striking clarity. It’s usually just a moment, no longer, and the memory usually drawn out from the all too cluttered storage shelves of my mind with an unexpected encounter in the present. I had one of these little mnemonic encounters tonight when I happened to spot  a Playmobile pirate ship precisely like the one we used to have in my house sitting on the armoire  in my room right here in Pau. My mind composed the scene: a much younger Matthew and myself, concocting stories of mayhem on the high seas with scores of Playmobile pirates (as well as some knights in shining armor) strewn all around us, and the pirate ship floating in the center of the bedroom floor, which served quite well for a makeshift ocean. Funny to come across that very same ship across thirteen years and a real ocean. I wonder what stories played themselves out on this toy ship and where the children who dreamed them up are today. Do they remember like I do every time they see this ship? Funny how inaimate “things”, much like places from the past (I’m obviously thinking here of the camps I’m studying), can recall such potent memories.

Day 21: Perpignan

4/5 March 2010; Claire’s house; Perpignan; 3:30 am

Tomorrow I move on. After two and a half weeks, Perpignan has become yet another home, especially living with Claire and her family. I’m sad to leave, but excited to see what Pau, Toulouse, and Limoges will bring….

Along with Claire's family and the archives, I will miss Perpignan's gorgeous mountains. (Day 21: Perpignan)

Day 20: Perpignan

3/4 March 2010; Claire’s House; Perpignan; 2 am.

In accordance with the Smith family traveling curse, it poured today in Perpignang. All day. And it never rains all day in Perpignan. As we’ve said for years, if you have a drought, call in the Smith’s and we can fix that for you….

Dry pants. And my first experiences with straight leg jeans. Taken in the bathroom mirror. Side note: notice the bucket of grey sewer piping parts to my right? The folks at the store thought Claire had a really bad piping problem when she bought them. Actually, they're Guilhem's bathtoys. The 7 year old is already an engineering wiz; his drawings of houses, for example, always include the piping and electrical wiring, and if you ask, he'll give you a thorough explanation of how it's all supposed to work. (Day 19: Perpignan)

What this picture *should* show is the water mark on my jeans after walking an hour from the Departmental Archives to the government offices of the Conseil General in Perpignan this afternoon in an utter downpour. From toe to thigh I was sopping wet. I had an umbrella, of course, but that does little good when there are divets in the sidewalk a good foot deep filled with murkey puddles. Nor is it especially helpful when a car goes driving by and hits a similar water-filled divet on the side of the road. It’s like getting sprayed by a bloody fire hose! Anyway, but the time I reached the Conseil General, I was soaked through. Of course I didn’t have a change of clothes, so I shivered through the rest of my day’s archive digging, helped along by a cup of instant chocolat chaud provided by the other ladies working in the office….

The above picture is the conclusion to the story. At 5, Claire picked me up to go to one of her friend’s houses; Claire was going to watch her baby daughter while she went out to a meeting and the two of us were invited for dinner. Dinner, in France, means 8 at the earliest, so I was looking forward to shiver-filled evening as well. Luckily, Claire’s friend was kind enough to lend me a pair of jeans and some socks. Here I am in my borrowed attire, which she was also kind enough to let me wear home as my clothes still had not dried out by the time we left at 10:30! The significance of the outfit lies in the fact that this was my first experience with those straight-legged jeans that are all the rage. I don’t quite get the appeal, but I guess that’s true of my opinion regarding much of women’s fashion….

[Drenched pants, socks, and shoes aside, it was a wonderful evening. Always exciting to meet new people and to hear their stories. As it turns out, Claire’s friend is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor (Claire had no idea), and she lent me a little book her father wrote, recounting his story. The first time he told his war-time experiences as a half-Jewish boy in Germany, over 60 years later. I am always amazed by the frequency with which I run into people, simply by happenstance, who have some connection to the Shoah, each with a unique story that deserves to be heard and remembered….]

Day 19: Perpignan

2/3 March 2010; Claire’s house; Perpignan; 2:30am

Today was a day of research ups and downs, but also a day brimming with new ideas that will hopefully someday coalesce into a coherent doctoral dissertation….. So, as research dominated the day, I’m paying it a little homage with the below photo:

The cluttered but productive chaos of an afternoon of Alise’s research. (Day 19: Perpignan)

This is how I work. First, you have the laptop, with about fifty word documents open at once because my thoughts are bouncing all over the place: notes on Rivesaltes, my bibliography, interview summaries, a journal I keep of dissertation ideas…. Plus Itunes so I can listen to a bit of Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Vivaldi and John Williams to keep me going. The paper covered in red ink writing on the right are my notes from an interview I took this morning, and my trusty moleskin sits on top with more notes scrawled across the page. I have two pens and a mechanical pencil in use at the moment. And I wonder why I’m always losing my writing utensils. My glasses are off because while I need them desperately to see long distances, they give me a headache when I’m reading documents up close. Note the backdrop as well: toiles du soleil. I’m definitely in Catalan country. There’s some other project specific sprawl here as well: the CD’s are discs of photos of Rivesaltes, and the teal folder under the computer has annual reports on the Rivesaltes museum project. Those keys open the door to the education office where I’m working; the woman who runs the educational programs left them with me while she went out to lunch. And the cup of already-drunk instant cappuccino on the left. I never drink coffee at home. However, I make and exception in France, so I get quite a buzz. I’m both blaming and crediting the caffeine for all the ideas I had whirring around in my head today :-) My family calls this cluster of chaos “messy,” but I call it a comfortable, cozy, and productive work space.

Day 18: Perpignan

1/2 March 2010; Claire’s house; Perpignan; 2:43 am

Another blog subject that deserves better treatment. But after getting up at 7 and spending the entire day conducting interviews in French, I’m drained. More of the same tomorrow, so I should probably get some sleep here…..

The tables at the tennis club where, not two minutes before, sat four very lively tennis-playing ladies. (Day 18: Perpignan)

After my day of interviews, I spend an hour sitting kitty-corner from the most interesting group of ladies at Claire’s tennis club while she played a quick game before picking up her kids from school. A quartet of gregarious 60-ish-year-old women, holding on tenaciously to their tennis playing prime. They were quite interested to meet Claire’s “American girl,” especially Marta, who is originally from the US herself. I settled back into my white plastic café chair and enjoyed following along with their energetic conversation, which covered everything from paella to tennis rackets to Rivesaltes to clothing sales. The afternoon culminated in Marta’s purchase of some new tennis shoes for her exceptionally large “American” feet :-) They were apparently a bit expensive, but it was worth it for her as tennis “ne me donne que du plaisir” (“gives me nothing but pleasure”). I hope I can be like that when I’m 60: living an active life, with meaningful relationships, and reveling in it all, despite the inevitable ups and downs.

Day 17: Perpignan

28/29 February 2010; Claire’s house; Perpignan; 1 am

I have to be up at 7 tomorrow to conduct 3 (!) interviews, so this entry is going to get shafted; it really deserves a story. Perhaps I shall make it the subject of a proper post later.

Memorial to the Spanish interned at the camp on Argeles Beach from February 1939 (Day 17: Perpignan)

I went memorial hunting with Claire today. Finding Holocaust, and in this case Spanish Civil War, memorials is no walk on the National Mall! You don’t have a map or the massive Washington Memorial piercing the sky to orient yourself. But, with the help of some friendly British tourists and French locals, we found it quand meme. The memorial to les camps sur la plage of the Spanish refugees who fled to France as Barcelona fell to the fascists. Some of the Spaniards who were interned by the French 3rd Republic at the beach at Argeles would eventually end up at Rivesaltes under Vichy…..

Day 16: Perpignan

27/28 February 2010; Claire’s house; Perpignan; 2:30 am

I went swimming today. “Gasp!” Yes, my friends, all you need to get me in the pool is warm up the water to 30 degrees Celsius (85 F) and I’m as happy as a dolphin. :-) Add in a sauna and a Hamam steam bath for good measure…. Sorry, though, no photographic evidence. The pools were at a sort of aquatic health club to which Claire belongs…. not really the kind of place it’s appropriate to go around snapping photos…..

But no matter. We also stopped at a palace before swimming….

The beautiful Palais des rois de Majorque (Day 16: Perpignan)

I hate Versailles. Really, I do. It’s too ridiculously over the top for me. Gaudy to the point of ugly. A visit to the place last time I was in France confirmed this opinion, and I feel no desire to repeat the experience. However, give me a medieval castle, even if its foundations are crumbling, its walls are strangled by encroaching vegetation, and I’m a happy girl. I can actually trace the attraction back to my infatuation with the cut-away medieval castle that provided the illustration for the “Castle” entry in the Doring Kindersley Children’s Encyclopedia I used to pore over as a kid…..

Anyway, the Palais des rois de Majorque in Perpignan is a fascinating little medieval castle situated smack dab in the center of the city. On any weekday you’ll find teenagers playing in the basketball court at its foot, moms pushing strollers along the path that winds along the outer wall, and little old ladies gossiping on the benches under the castle’s shadow. But today, the castle interior was open with free entry for all to see the archaeological excavations that the local government has been conducting for some years now. Great fun to explore the place, from the exquisitely decorated chapel on the bottom floor to the stunning view of all Perpignan you get from the top of the central tower!

Day 15: Perpignan

26/27 February 2010; Claire’s house; Perpignan; 2:00 am

Another productive day spent in the archives. On the way home I stopped by the Maison Quinta to take a look at the “toiles du soleil”— fabrics of the sun. You can see where they get their name!

Toiles du soleil (Day 15: Perpignan)

Perpignan, and indeed, the entire French department of Pyrénées-Orientales, has strong ties to the region of Catalonia in Spain, which is located right over the Pyrénées mountains (see previous post). You see the yellow and red Catalan flag flying next to the French tricolor and EU flag in public squares, you often come across street signs in Catalan rather than French (Zoé, Guilhem, and Ferréol actually go to a bi-lingual school where their classes are mostly in Catalan), and the city has a rather Spanish rather than French “feel” in many places. The fabrics pictured above, which you can buy in the famous Maison Quinta store in the heart of Perpignan, are emblematic of Catalan France. Not to mention the fact that they’re absolutely gorgeous. Too bad Jason and I aren’t looking to furnish a house in Perpignan, eh?

Day 14: Perpignan

25/26 February 2010; Claire’s house; Perpignan; 5:13 am.

Yup….. I’m watching Olympic figure skating at odd hours of the French morning/North American evening. I figure this only happens once every four years, so why not? Plus I’m pretty sure I’ve watched ladies figure skating during every winter Olympics that I can remember, and I can’t let a little time difference put a damper on my record now…..

Photo of the day, not actually taken today because I spent my day archive mining and my night trying to keep my eyes open so I could watch the skating….

Canigou. Mountain near Perpignan, part of the Pyrénées mountain range in between France and Spain. (Day 14: Perpignan)

Mountains surround Perpignan; we’re right on the border with Spain here, which means the Pyrénées are right outside the window. I love living by mountains. The romantic in me can’t resist.

Day 13: Perpignan

24/25 February 2010; Claire’s house; Perpignan; 2 am

Of all the days that I should be writing one of my blog-tomes, this is certainly one of the foremost. Today I visited the former Rivesaltes internment camp, future site of one of the memorial museums on which my Fulbright research and eventual doctoral dissertation focuses. However, I am still processing and reflecting the visit, and rather than rushing into an account and botching it, I’m going to put up three pictures (I’m limiting myself to three and three alone) as an experiment to see how well the site “speaks for itself.”

Rivesaltes camp. (Day 12: Perpignan)

Rivesaltes camp. (Day 12: Perpignan)

Rivesaltes camp. (Day 12: Perpignan)

That said, if you are interested in more info on the camp and the memorial museum project, you can visit: http://www.cg66.fr/culture/memorial/index.html ……except now I’m remembering (duh) that the site is in French, so it’s not all that helpful for all you English speakers….. I never thought I’d do this, but if you really want some information, the only English site on Rivesalte I can find without digging too deep is Wikipedia (of all things!): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_de_Rivesaltes . It will at least give you some idea of the camp’s troubled history, which spans from the 1930’s all the way up to today.

Never you fear, though. If you’re close enough to me to be reading this blog, you can probably expect to get a good dose of Rivesaltes history next time you speak to me…. and for the next five years…… or so……

Day 12: Perpignan

23/24 February 2010; Claire’s house; Perpignan; 3:42 am

Claire invited two of her good friends over for dinner to meet me tonight. They were really lovely people and dinner was delicious, so it was a great way to spend the evening after a long and grueling (if highly productive) day spent archive mining. And…..

A trusty little stool and chair standing in for a coffee table. Claire is in the background at the dinner table on her new Iphone :-) (Day 11: Perpignan)

…..I received wonderful (if unintentionally imparted) lesson today from Claire on how not to “sweat the small stuff”: if your coffee table is buried under your daughter’s meticulous set-up of Polly Pockets and Littlest Pet Shop, arranging your classy hors d’oeuvres and wine glasses on a napkin-covered chair and stool works just as well. True friends won’t bat an eye. It’s the meaningful conversation, warm hospitality, and general conviviality of the evening that really matter in the end.

Day 11: Perpignan

22/23 February 2003; Claire’s apartment; Perpignan; 2:00 am

Warning: this is an rather shallow post on the subject of shoes. I just can’t help but be a bit excited about the new boots I finally found today….

Trying on boots. One shoe off, and one shoe on.... (Day 11: Perpignan)

Unlike in the States where really almost any store that sells clothing from Walmart on up always seems to be plastered with placards proclaiming some variation of “SALE” or “CLEARANCE” or “20 % off,”  French stores have sales only twice a year: January and July. The “soldes d’hiver” and “soldes d’été” (winter and summer sales). Now, I’m not a shopper. In fact, I’m a notoriously miserable shopper. Just ask my mother. But in France, I have to admit that I do spend my share of time sizing up the fashions, both on the passersby and in the shop windows. Parisian women seem to be able to take anything and make it work. I’m certainly not that talented, but if I could choose anywhere to re-do my wardrobe, Paris would be the place. First off, while you’ll find a lot of crazy clothes here that I wouldn’t touch, as it is a capitol of fashion, you’ll also find an overwhelming amount of class, classy, and classic. What I would at least like to be my style. though I’m hopelessly flawed. Second off, they make clothes for small people over here. I can buy a small rather an extra small and its fits me like a glove. So, while I’m not one to let loose and go on a frenzied-buying spree in the soldes, I was keeping my eyes open for a couple specific items: a nice black wrap, a brown sweater, a cute skirt, and a pair of casual black boots. I found the wrap, sweater, and skirt back in Paris several weeks ago, for under 30 euro total! That’s a steal, when you consider that you don’t have to look hard to find skirts going for 150 euro in Parisian vitrines, which is frankly disgusting. But the boots were a bit more difficult. I could picture precisely what I wanted in my mind, but it just wouldn’t materialize on the store shelves. Simple, casual, comfortable, black, leather, flat, form-fitting, knee or calf-high. It didn’t help that I don’t like suede, buckles, or cowboy boots, all of which seem to be all the rage right now…. Yes, I’m picky. Simple, but picky, which has a tendency to nullify the benefits of having simple tastes.

Well, today, after I spent a long day in the archives, Claire took me on a shoe shopping field trip. There’s this massive complex outside Perpignan, rather like an outlet mall, but more sprawling. An interesting sight in itself: a sprawling outlet mall is not exactly what you think of when you hear “France.” Hm. Anyway…. at the Besson shoe outlet, I happened upon “my” boots. Simple, casual, comfortable, black, leather, flat, form-fitting, knee-high. Plus, I just caught the tail end of the soldes (which have stretched on for longer than usual this year because of the economic crisis), and the normally 60 euro boots were on sale for 30. Voila! They have their imperfections, of course, but I’ve resigned myself to the fact that perfection is impossible in clothing unless I find someway to wear the picture in my mind. I’m still completely hopeless when it comes to fashion sense, but, really, I think it’s better than way because life is about so much more than a Vera Wang this, a Louis Vinton that, a Gucci such and such, and a Chanel thing-a-ma-bobber. Actually, that’s all the designers I can name off the top of my head! Quand meme, I now have some lovely French boots that will serve me well. So, a successful solde season. Say that 10-times fast :-)

Day 10: Perpignan

21/22 February 2010; Claire’s House; Perpignan; 2:30am

Ok. Back to the one photo a day. It’s a difficult choice between two today, but I picked the one that better illustrates the idea….

Palm trees blowin' in the wind at Villeneuve. (Day 10: Perpignan)

Perpignan and the surrounding area is notorious for its wind. The “tramontane” it is called—you know you’re in for it when they start *naming* the winds. And today, the tramontane was in prime form, blowing full force as I walked around Lac de Villeneuve with Claire and one of her friends. Normally the water is smooth as glass, but this afternoon it was in a boiling tumult. At times the gusts of wind literally almost blew me over; it was all I could do to stay standing up, much less to walk forward into it. It was like being caught in a steady stream of the powerful wind that sometimes comes up before the calm-before-the-storm back home, but without the impending storm! Strangely disconcerting to face such an ominous wind on a delightfully sunny day.

I have read more descriptions than I can count of how Rivesaltes was a camp “battu par le vent” (battered by the wind), how this wind, along with the more typical internment camp deficiencies of food, water, heat, shelter, sanitation, made life a hell for the internees. But it wasn’t really until today (even after my windy walk on the beach last week), that I really started to grasp the terrible particularity of this wind of which survivors speak with such vivid memories.  There is certainly plenty to debate to be had regarding the merits of memorials and museums on the actual site the event, the “scene of the crime,” so to speak. But this wind, its sheer power to leave you powerless, is one thing for sure that you can only appreciate in situ.

Day 9: Perpignan

20/21 February 2010; Claire’s house; Perpignan; 1:00 am

I’m cheating again on this picture-a-day thing, but I can’t resist. Today really requires a series of pictures. Really. Rather than writing my typical novel, though, I’m going to let the photos and their captions tell their story. Think of it as an amusing little photo-essay……

But first, a word of explanation. In Perpignan, I am staying with a single mother, Claire, and her three kids, Zoé (10), Guilhem (7), and Ferréol (5). They’re a handful, but really sweet at the same time. This morning I offered to babysit because Claire had a meeting. The kids are actually pretty good at keeping themselves occupied with books, stuffed animals, coloring, blocks, littlest pet shop (imagine! Kids who still know how to make-believe. Though, they do have a thing for Mario Kart on Gameboy….), but I figured that making chocolate chip cookies might be fun. France doesn’t really do American-style cookies. Delightful pastries and cakes, but try to find a really good, soft-baked chocolate chip cookie (or any other kind of cookie for that matter), and you’re in for a long and likely hopeless search. Thus, “des cookies,” especially home-made, are novelty. So Claire taught me how to use her oven and helped me gather up the ingredients, my mother sent me our chocolate chip recipe, and the kids and I set to baking…..

The recipe for chocolate chip cookies. Compliments of my mother and Nestle. Written in my trusty Moleskin notebook. You'll notice my little scribbles of French baking verbs: "to mix", "to melt", "to add".... so that I could actually explain what I was doing to the kids. Of course, I also had to "translate" the baking temperature into Celsius. However, I decided not to attempt changing the measurements into grams and litres, which is how European recipes are written. I figured I'd just wing it with coffee cups and dinner spoons and hope for the best....

Mixing the batter. Claire actually had an electric mixer, which was a great help, though I have nothing against mixing by hand. Guilhem, who loves all things mechanical, enjoyed helping me finish mixing in the flour.

While I whipped up the batter, I set the kids to making chocolate chips. Unlike in the US where the grocery store shelves are stocked with milk chocolate chips, semi-sweet chocolate chips, mini chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, peanut butter chips, chocolate chunks, ETC., chocolate chips in any form are simply not to be found in France. So, we had to make our own. No problem. Just take a chunk of baking chocolate and break it up, right?Except this chocolate bar happened to be especially stubborn. It refused to break down beyond 1 in. sq. pieces no matter what we tried! After several futile attempts (which resulted in a broken plate, but no broken chocolates), Zoé came up with the brilliant idea of melting the chocolate a bit first in the microwave to soften it up. It worked! Though, in addition to making soft, chop-able chocolate, it also produced quite a bit of excess melted chocolate sauce. No matter. Zoé dumped in some sugar, and she and her brothers enjoyed some accidentally home-made "nutella."

The site of our chocolate chip (or, more accurately, chocolate chunk) making operation, complete with broken place (our sole casualty), chocolate dust evidence of successfully cut up pieces, and the remnants of Zoé's newly discovered "nutella" recipe. We did ended up with quite a chocolaty mess, both on the table and the kids' faces. I bake like I do art; I can't use markers or paints or craypas (or chocolate, apparently), without getting it all over! But what fun is baking if you can't make a bit of a mess, as long as you clean it up in the end :-)

Completed chocolate chip cookie dough. With chocolate chunks thanks to Zoé and Guilhem, who did the chopping, and Ferréol, who transported them from the chopping station into the kitchen.

I wasn't quite sure what to think of this baking "pan": a perforated metal skeleton covered with a rubbery, silicone (?) baking mat. I've only ever used nonstick pans, preferably the ancient ones my mother has had forever. But this little beauty worked slick! May need to add this to my wedding registry......

The first pan, prepped to go into the oven. My nerves are always a bit strained before putting anything into an oven in France, as I'm never quite sure that the ingredients are going to behave as they should given the amount of fudging I usually have to do. This time around I was dealing with a decidedly un-measuring-cup-sized coffee cup and rather strangely shaped dinner spoons as my ingredient measuring devices; an extra yolk in the mix because the gloppy un-pasturized eggs were not behaving themselves and I wanted be sure the batter would actually bind; vanilla-flavored sugar rather than vanilla extract; the typical issue of the different gluten content of French flour; un-refined brown cane sugar, rather than properly moist American brown sugar.........

Into the oven! First, let me say, after five months of relying on a toaster oven, it was soooo nice to have a proper oven to work with! I was a little anxious when I saw the cookies puffing up like this. They were also rather more pale in color than is usual....

.....but the first dozen actually turned out quite well. The cookies on the whole were lighter and more cakey than usual, but still plenty tastey......

......as evidenced by the fact that there was only one of the first dozen left about 5 minutes after they were baked. We all had to "gouter" one...... or two..... or three.....

Ferréol also enjoyed his beater.

Guilhem doesn't look particularly enthusiastic in this picture, but he tells me again and again that "les cooookies" are amazing. And he definitely ate over a dozen all by himself over the course of the day :-)

This one just makes me laugh.

Ferréol has dubbed me "la reine des cookies". That is, "the queen of cookies." Quite the honor, I think :-) Notice the flour on my face. Yup. Can't cook without covering myself in whatever ingredient I happen to be using. As Jason puts it, I'm "messy." :-)

Des vrais cookies americains. Délicieux.

Day 8: Perpignan

19 February 2010; Claire’s house; Perpignan; 11:59 pm

You could argue that the events depicted in this photo took place if you are calculating days as punctuated with periods of sleep or according to the time zones on the continental US. However, for the sake of this post, we’re going to go exclusively by French time.

France 2's interview with Brian Joubert after his disappointing performance. I felt rather sorry for the guy. Lots of expectations riding on his shoulders.... I wish I had had the presence of mind to take a photo of Evan Lysacek's win, but my brain was running about ten times slower that usual due to the ungodly hour. Congratulations to him, quand meme. (Day 8: Perpignan)

Ask anyone who knows me well, and they’ll tell you I’m most definitely not a sports person. I used to watch football when my brother and dad had it on as a kid, but I could have cared less who won; I should like hockey as a Minnesotan, but it’s just too cold; I’m hopelessly lost when it comes to tennis; I find basketball is a bit of a bore; I think baseball is enjoyable and will go to a Twins game every once and awhile for fun, but don’t follow it….. But I *love* the Olympics. Maybe it’s because of the international aspect; sports are more interesting when you add a little bit of culture to the mix. Maybe it’s the romantic allure of the gold medal. Maybe it’s simply that it’s an opportunity to watch sports that you never see on US TV otherwise (if you don’t have cable, that is): swimming, track and field, diving, skiing, soccer (I should really start following the international soccer scene), gymnastics, and….. figure skating.

I can’t let a winter Olympics pass by without seeing my figure skating. Unfortunately, I have discovered that here in France figure skating, at least during these Olympic games, does not receive particularly good coverage. Part of the problem is the fact that we’re almost half way around the world from Vancouver over here and the time difference creates logistical difficulties. But I don’t seem to remember that ever being a problem back home when the Olympics were held in, oh, say Nagano, when Tara Lipinski won the gold over Michelle Kwan. Pretty sure that was showed in prime time, and the 12-year-old-me was in bed by midnight…..

Not so in France. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a 3-minute recap of all the French skater’s exploits in normal hours. If you want to see anything of substance, you have to flip your nights and your days. Or just go without sleep. Time difference or no, I was determined to see my ice-skating! And, luckily the woman who I am staying with had absolutely no problem with me watching the television at bizarre hours. So. 2am yesterday night/this morning saw me curled up on the couch downstairs, with a cup of tea, a spoonful of nutella, my laptop and two big fleece blankets with the television on mute, eagerly awaiting the start of the men’s Olympic figure skating free program. “Vers 2am, the TV guide had told me. “Around 2am.” Well, 2am passed. And 2:30. And 3. And 3:30. Hockey and the ‘alf-peep (halfpipe, if you have a French accent)…..

Finally, at 4:00 the figure skating seemed to start at last. A rather hyped-up French skater, Brian Joubert…. who proceeded to fall several times during his program. Then a short interview with the fallen star. I snatched a quick picture, excited that France was finally showing my figure skating, when suddenly the coverage switched back to……hockey. Seriously! Wrong kind of skating, France! By this point it was 4:30 and I descended into the depths of despair: of course, it makes sense for France to show and support her own athletes, but when the TV guide tells you you’re going to see the men’s free skate, you expect to actually *see* the men’s free skate. Not just a clip of one over-glorified French star who whiffed! But I refused to give up hope. One more hour, I figured, and then I’d concede defeat….

And lo and behold, patience is in fact a virtue. At 5am, France time, full coverage of the men’s free skate finally began. At last!  As it turned out, they were showing the exact same thing on NBC back home (at a far more sane time of day), so I settled back in to watch “with” Jason. We kept up with the action together, instant messaging back and forth with bits of amusing commentary in French and English, respectively. On the subject of Evan Lysacek, for example, the French couldn’t have been more complementary: “Sensationnel!  Sensationnel! Un chef d’oeuvre! Un chef d’oeuvre!” A rather unconventional way to watch a sporting event, but actually great fun.

By the time the medal ceremony rolled around at about 6:15, I was in a bit of a fog. I could very well have simply curled up on the coach and slept soundly through the night, and I could barely drag myself up the stairs and into bed. But, I must say it was well worth the loss of sleep to watch a fellow American earn the gold in one of my favorite Olympic sports. There may even be a sequel to this story, depending on how I’m feeling the night of the women’s free skate next week…. If nothing else, I’ll certainly never forget the day I stayed up until 6am to watch Olympic figure skating in France!

Day 7: Perpignan

18/19 February 2010; Claire’s house; Perpignan; 3:29 am

Again. I am sitting up in the wee hours in the morning in a vain attempt to watch men’s figure skating. No such luck. I’ve seen hockey (wrong kind of skating), ladies halfpipe (pronounced ‘alfpeep in French), and two tantalizing snippets of the skating stadium. But no Free Program as of yet. Please France, je t’implore, please give me my figure skating……

Walking along la plage (the beach). (Day 7: Perpignan)

Today I went to the beach. A la plage, in February. The beaches of Roussillon are carpeted with people in the summer months, but faced with the bitter tramontane wind that tears through the Perpignan region in the winter, the sea side is abandoned by all except for little old ladies walking their dogs, families out for a stroll, and a few hearty kite-surfers braving the icy wind and water. It was a delightful afternoon, walking Claire (my host in Perpignan) and her three children along the beach.

However, as immersed in history as I have been these past few months, I cannot help but recall that seventy years ago the beaches in this region were packed full in the middle of the winter. Les camps sur la plage (camps on the beach) were set up by the government of the French Third Republic to hold the tens of thousands of refugees who fled over the boarder from Spain in the winter of 1939 in the wake of the Spanish Civil War. Women, children, the elderly, as well as the remnants of the Republican army were sent to these and other hastily organized camps, where they lived in tents under appalling conditions, exposed to the elements and lacking basic necessities. For thousands of these refugees, this internment would endure for years, first on the beaches, and then in camps “en dur,” including Rivesaltes, just north of Perpignan, where they were interned along with other “undesirables” as defined by the Vichy regime, particularly Jews and Gypsies. These beaches are thus intensely connected with the complex and problematic history of “La France des camps” (France of the camps).

Carnet-plage admittedly never hosted one of these camps itself, but two of the main beach camps for Spanish refugees were located just south of here at Argles and Saint Cyprien. Walking the beach today in the cutting wind gives one some idea of what it must have been like for the thousands of refugees crowded onto these beaches with only their flimsy tents for protection. At the same time, one realizes that to be a refugee on these beaches is something so far from one’s own experiences that it is impossible to fully understand, even standing in the very same physical location. Which begs the question: can a place, a beach in this case, help us remember memories that were never our own to begin with? Can they grant us a modicum of understanding of the incomprehensible? What happens to the “power of place” when all traces of history have been whipped away? Can you preserve history in a place where nothing exists in tangible form any longer? Do the place matter anymore? Forgetting and remembering, past and present, place and history…. all these terms, all these questions involving the past have been stirring in my mind since I got home this evening. But earlier today, I walked a beach in the present. A living beach, with the little old ladies and their dogs, with the kite surfers, with two warm little hands in mine.

Note: This post could really use some more development. Far too many complex question brought up, not dealt with well or completely. Trying to do too much for one night. Poorly judged and over-ambitious, probably due in part to the hour…. it is currently 6h15 and bed is calling. My reason for staying up into the wee hours of the morning: watching men’s Olympic figure skating on French TV. Turns out I just had to be reeeeeeally patient. I was led to believe it would start as 2, but it ended up really starting up around 4. I may regret it tomorrow, but it was soo worth it. Hurrah for Evan Lysacek! Now bed is calling and I’m going to force myself to leave this post, as imperfect as it is.

Day 6: Perpignan

17/18 February 2010; Claire’s house; Perpignan; 2:18 am

I thought I was going to be able to watch Olympic figure skating tonight. Which is why I am up at 2 in the morning. France can’t seem to show figure skating at normal hours. Unfortunately, I misread the TV schedule, and it will actually be on *tomorrow* night at…. again at 2 am. Sigh. Double disappointment. No figure skating and no sleep. I would have gone to bed hours ago….

The office where I spent my day conducting interviews. You can see Garage Band up on my computer, finalizing the files of my recordings. (Day 5: Perpignan)

…..mostly because, as the above picture illustrates, this is how I spent my day: sitting at this table in an office of the Conseil General de Pyrénées-Orientales, with my laptop, recording hour-long interviews, in French, with two of the individuals involved with the Rivesaltes memorial museum project. To add to the pressure of conducting my first official interviews for my doctoral dissertation research (as if having to do them in French wasn’t enough), it turned out that neither of the two men I interviewed was the person I was supposed to interview today! While I had arranged interview meetings with both of them for my stay here in Perpignan, these interviews were supposed to take place a week from now. Consequently, I hadn’t really finailized my interview questions for them, and I certainly hadn’t printed them out to bring with me this time around. So, I was kind of flying by the seat of my pants, which I don’t usually do very well…. but if researching in France has taught me nothing, it has taught me that if you go with the flow, it will all pan out in the end. In fact, both interviews went rather well. Lots of useful information and interesting insights into the memorial museum process. And my technology even behaved itself today, and my interview recordings turned out without the slightest problem.

Now comes the challenge of transcribing them. Transcribing interviews in one’s native language is a difficult and time consuming “art.” But to do it in a foreign language, not to mention a foreign language that delights in words that never look the way they sound, particularly when one cannot even spell in one’s native language…. I was always abysmal at dictées in French class and now I have the biggest dictée of my life taunting me from my “to-do” list…. Tonight I was rather drained from just conducting the interviews, so I only transcribed for about 45 minutes, at the end of which time I came out with just over 2 minutes transcribed. So, if my calculations are correct, that means that 1-hour of recording will take me about a day (22.5 hours) to transcribe. That is, if I’m lucky. Good thing I generally enjoy this process…. Hopefully I won’t eat my words by the end!

Day 5: Aix-en-Provence

February 16/17, 2010; Claire’s house; Perpignan; 1:30 am

I made it to Perpignan from Aix without a hitch. I’m now set up in a new house, with a new family. The woman who I am staying with is incredibly nice and her three kids are great. But, as I arrived at 6:15 this evening, I don’t yet have a Perpignan snapshot of the day. So, I’m posting one final Aix photo, which technically isn’t cheating because I spent the morning at least in Aix. I am, however, going to cheat and steal a Cezanne print from the internet to help illustrate….

One of Cezanne's many depictions of Mont Sainte Victoire. (Day 5: Aix-en-Provence)

The Mont Sainte Victoire in person. Seen from a slightly different angle than you get in Cezanne's painting above. Though, as amazing as the "real" thing is, I must say, Cezanne's painting rather puts my photograph to shame. Perhaps that is as it should be. (Day 5: Aix-en-Provence)

I fell in love with Paul Cezanne (or at least I fell in love with his artwork) in Ms. Maranin’s eighth grade art class. We had to pick an artist to research, write up a report, and reproduce one of their works. Cezanne was my choice, and I poured a lot of thirteen-year old passion into my little craypas reproduction of his “Great Pine.” However, this painting of a little tree tossed by the violent winds of Aix-en-Provence is a rather exceptional piece in Cezanne’s repertoire. Far more common are the dozens of views of Mont St. Victoire the artist produced over his lifetime. Much like Monet’s haystacks and Rouen cathedrals, Cezanne experimented with views of this strangely shaped mountain from every imaginable angle, in various weather conditions, in different seasons and times of day. He left behind 44 oils and 43 watercolors of this mountain.

The mountain is located just outside of Aix-en-Provence, where Cezanne painted for much of his life, and the city of Aix takes advantage of this fact for tourism purposes. This is the self-acclaimed “pays de Cezanne” (country of Cezanne). You can take a self-guided walking tour of places associated with Cezanne in Aix with a brochure from the tourist office; you can take a day trip out to Mont Saint Victoire; you can wine and dine at Café Cezanne or stay at the Hotel Cezanne; you can visit his studio north of the city, which is furnished with knickknacks attributed either to Cezanne himself or to his era. Although I visited the atelier and passed by a few of the Cezanne sites, the most powerful evocation of Cezanne in Aix for me came not from any set Cezanne tourist itinerary. Rather, I found Cezanne in this simple view of Mont Sainte Victoire, discovered unexpectedly during my visit to (of all things) the Celtic ruins north of the city. This view, in the peaceful quiet of an ancient abandon city, made it easy to image Cezanne pondering this same mountain as he painted one of his many depictions of it over 100 years ago.

Saints Superbowl + King Cake = Mardi Gras Paris-Style

10 Feb 2010; 1 am; 75019 Paris

I’m cheating a bit today: I’ve had this post written up for awhile and was waiting until Mardi Gras to post it….. So, today you get an unheard of two posts in one day!

Certainly, I am in Paris and surrounded by French culture day in and day out. However, as I think I mentioned in a previous post, France is about more than baguettes and la Tour Eiffel. So, in this post, I’m going to take a little hiatus from all things French for a little exposé on a bit of culture that hails from the good old USA.

My flatmate, Erin, is from Louisiana. Over the past week or so this has been much excitement in the apartment centering around two things: the Super Bowl and Mardi Gras King Cakes.

I don't know much about football..... I think this is the Saints logo?

—In regards to the former: while Jason and the rest of my family back home in Minnesota were either crying or cursing at the Vikings’ play-off loss, Erin was jubilant at the Saints’ victory. She watched the entire game on her laptop, from the kick-off to the final field goal that sealed the deal….. at about 5 am Paris-time. Erin had to wake up two hours later for work, where she proceeded to instruct her French elementary schoolers in the New Orleans rouser: “Who dat? Who dat? Who dat say dey gonna beat dem Saints?” Priceless. The Saints deserved to go to the Super bowl if only for the fact that they have fans that dedicated!

—In regards to the latter: I walked in the door after a long day at the Memorial two weeks ago to find the kitchen in a flurry of activity. Erin and her friend Kaylie were in the midst of an Ethiopian food cooking experiment, with King Cake planned for dessert. As I love Ethiopian food and was curious about this King Cake, I signed onto the cooking team for the evening.

Ethiopian food. A successful Parisian culinary experiment.

As I have noted before, cooking anything in France is an adventure. Turmeric, for example, which was called for in one of the Ethiopian recipe Erin had found online, is apparently not to be found at your standard corner grocery store in France. But they had managed to scrounge up some Mexican spice mix that had turmeric in it to try as a substitute. We were also lacking the whole-wheat flour we were supposed to use for the injera (an Ethiopian bread rather like a spongy pancake), but our white “bio” flour would just have to do. In the end, the meal came out remarkably well given the lacking ingredients and the in-experienced cooks. Erin can work wonders in the kitchen.

And, Erin had one more wonder up her sleeve for the dessert. While we were enjoying our thoroughly delicious (if probably entirely in-authentic) dinner, our little orange mixing bowl was sitting next to the radiator covered with a damp towel. In side a ball of King Cake dough was slowly doubling in size. After dinner and the dishes were done, Erin went back to work. Kneading out the dough; rolling it out with a plastic cup because we have no rolling pin; buttering the surface and sprinkling on a mixture of brown sugar and cinnamon; then winding the dough into a tightly twisted oval. While it was rising again, she used the yellow, green, and purple food coloring she had found at Monoprix to make Mardi Gras colored sugar for the topping. After popping the cake into the toaster oven (ah, the miracles you can work with a toaster oven), she whipped up some sugar icing. Another pause, then out came the cake and on went the icing with the sugar sprinkled on top. Voila! A New Orleans King Cake made in a Parisian toaster oven. The only thing it lacked was the traditional baby figurine, representative of the baby Jesus. A word of explanation: in theory, you’re supposed to eat your first King Cake of the year on Epiphany (thus the name *King* Cake), which also marks the beginning of the Mardi Gras season, which really is an entire *season* of festivities in New Orleans. King Cakes are eaten from Epiphany right up until Fat Tuesday itself, and whoever gets the baby in their slice of King Cake is responsible for bringing the cake to the next celebration. In Erin’s elementary school classes, for example, the teacher would bring in a King Cake on the first Friday after Epiphany. Whichever child “got” the baby would bring another cake the next Friday and so on. So, here in Paris missed out on the baby, but the cake itself was lacking nothing! Delicious and all the more fun for the education that went along with it!

Mardi Gras-colored sugars. Food coloring compliments of Monoprix. I am especially impressed with the vibrant purple.

Erin's King Cake baking.... in the trusty toaster oven.

Erin's King Cake, ready for tasting....

Mmmmmmm. Nuf said.

The Super Bowl and King Cakes. Normally, you’d never think of them as having any relation, but when your flatmate is from New Orleans and it’s Mardi Gras season and the Saints are going to the Super Bowl….

Erin had vowed to stay up all night to watch her Saints play the biggest game in their history. Decked out in black and gold she set out with Katie and several other Louisianans she had met by chance at church earlier that morning at about 10pm to the a Canadian-run bar in the 6^th to watch the game. I admittedly bummed out and sat this one out. I’m in cramming mode as I start my month-long research trip this Thursday. I figured staying out all night to watch a game I frankly don’t care two beans about (sorry Erin!) would probably not be the best life decision at this point. So, my knowledge of the details grows sketchy at this point. What I know is: the crowd at the bar was made up of the “Who dat” nation; the Saints won; Erin (along with New Orleans) was ecstatic; they stayed out until the metro started running again at 6am; and came home and rolled into bed. And when she woke up the next morning/afternoon, there was a package waiting for her in the gardien’s office. An express mail, 3lb FedEx box. With a genuine New Orleans king cake inside, sent specially by one of her good friends so she could celebrate both the Super Bowl and Mardi Gras with a little piece of home. Genuine “Manny Randazzo” New Orleans King Cake. Which, according to Erin is *the* best king cake to be had. However, after trying two king cakes this Mardi Gras season, I have to say that I think Erin’s “took the cake,” so to speak. Home-made is always best, even when it’s away from home.

"Real" New Orleans Manny Randazzo King Cake. Notice it's already 1/3 eaten......

A slice of the "real" thing. I have to say, the sparsely-used, common sprinkles were far less glitzy than Erin's colored sugars.

These are the baby-Jesus' that are supposed to go in a King Cake. Erin imported two little boxes of them from home so she could make King Cakes for her school kids. So, the celebration continues......

Wishing you all a Happy Mardi Gras!

Day 4: Aix-en-Provence

15/16 February 2010; 3am; Tory’s apartment; Aix-en-Provence

My apologies: this post is going to be far shorter and of less quality that it merits. However, it is 3am and bed is calling….

Les Milles. Former French internment camp. (Day 4: Aix-en-Provence)

Les Mills is an old brick factory on the outskirts of a town by the same name. The “ancienne tuilierie des Milles,” which is the name by which the local bus driver who dropped me off just outside the gate recognized it. It looks like any abandon factory might: boarded up windows with shards of broken glass, crumbling brick walls, a film of fine redish dust covering the ground, an empty parking lot, a high fence with signs warning “danger” to keep out the curious and the vandals alike. Nothing very remarkable, except for perhaps its imposing size on the field beyond the railroad track that separates factory from town. But like so many buildings, this former factory has had more than one vocation in the past. Namely, between 1939 and 1942 Les Milles was a French-run internment camp that saw over 10 000 individuals pass through its gates.

Originally, the government of the French Third Republic requisitioned the factory to intern “sujets ennemis” (enemy subjects) here after the beginning of World War II. These individuals were German and Austrian citizens considered dangerous to French internal security after France declared war on Germany. However, many of those interned at Les Milles and elsewhere were in fact anti-nazis and/or Jews who had fled to France to escape Hitler’s oppressive regime. After the Germans defeated France in June 1940, directly occupying the North and leaving the South under the collaborationist Vichy regime, the camp entered a new era. Run by the French under Vichy, it became both a transit center for refugees holding foreign visas in hope of emigrating and a general internment center for all sorts of individuals considered “undesirable” in the eyes of the Vichy regime: Jews, International Brigadiers from the Spanish Civil War, other foreigners….  In the summer of 1942, Les Milles became one of the many camps from which a total of 75 000 Jews were deported from France. In the case of Les Milles, about 2 500 Jews were deported to Auschwitz via Drancy in six convoys between 14 August and 9 September 1942. The Vichy regime was responsible for these deportations, which took place before the Nazis invaded the Southern half of the country in November 1942.

Today, the enormous dusty red building stands out against the wispy green pine trees that dot the Provencal landscape. Along with Drancy, which currently serves as a low-income social housing unit, les Milles is the best preserved of all the French internment camps, of which there were once around 200. Although today it still stands derelict and empty except for the skeletons of the former factory that was put back into service after the war until the early 1990s, new life is being breathed back into this place that took the lives of thousands. A memorial museum is slowly taking shape, over twenty years in the making. Restoration and renovation work is set to begin in two months, and a museum will open to the public in 2011, transmitting a disturbing but important history through a neglected, but now reclaimed site.

Day 3: Aix-en-Provence

February 14; 11:59 pm; Tory’s apartment; Aix-en-Provence

Gros bisous pour la Saint Valentin! (ie. HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY)

Not too many Valentine’s Day festivities going on in Aix, which is not helped much by the fact that my valentine is thousands of miles away on this 14^th of February…. for the third year running. We will spend our very *first* Valentine’s Day together next year…. *after* we’re married! But “love conquers all” …. even the Atlantic Ocean…..

Still, my Valentine’s Day was not a wasted day by any means; I still went out and got my picture of the day….

Ancient French boulangerie ovens. (Day 3: Aix-en-Provence)

France is a country of many layers, and one often comes across places where the borders between these layers dissolve, revealing lives of bygone eras to those of us living today. The Oppidum d’Entremont two miles north of Aix-en-Provence is one of these locations. Perched on a hill overlooking the city rest the ruins of an ancient Celto-Ligurian settlement. The site was built around 175 BC and abandoned soon after the Romans conquered Gaul. The settlement covers around 2.5 acres at the top of the hill, and consists an Upper and Lower Town. Today all that remains are a series of calf-high rectangular outlines in centuries-old limestone rock that mark the foundations of the town’s buildings. Excavations have, however, uncovered certain artifacts that provide a glimpse into Celto-Ligurian life here: ancient bread ovens; an oil press; iron axes, pliers, and sickles; local ceramic pottery as well as vases imported from Italy and Greece. Archaeologists also discovered several sculptures evidencing Greek and Celtic artistic influences that are now held at the Musée Granet in Aix-en-Provence. I was especially drawn to the ancient bread ovens pictured above: the first boulangeries in France, which is today home to arguably some of the best boulangeries you will find anywhere. A delightful confluence of past and present.

Day 2: Aix-en-Provence

13 February 2010; 2 am; Tory’s apartment; Aix-en-Provence

Today I was sorely tempted to put more than one picture up. However, I figure that if I start down the slippery slope I will want to include my typical 10-100 (!) pictures in every post again…. and then I start trying to write a novel again every day…. and there is simply no way I can keep up posting everyday with full-length illustrated posts….. When you give a mouse a cookie….. I’ll start up my novels again when I’m back in Paris, but I really want to try and post everyday while I’m away for this month. So. I am resisting temptation, and your single photo of the day can be found below…..

[I am working on getting a Shutterfly site up and going so that I can post up more photos than is possible on just a blog. First installation will be Normandy….. from last November. Hopefully I will have it up and going by the time I get back to Paris]

Market Square. (Day 2: Aix-en-Provence)

Aix hosts several delightful markets in the city’s main squares on Saturday mornings. Here you can find everything from apples to leeks, olives to figs, oysters to sausages, winter hats to table clothes, honey to tampenade, curry spices to lavender soaps. Market flânerie (essentially strolling the streets combined with people-watching) is perhaps one of my favorite past times in France.

Day 1: Aix-en-Provence

12 February 2010; 11:30pm; Tory’s apartment; Aix-en-Provence

I made it South! There was an anxious moment when my train from Paris to Marseille was delayed and I consequently missed my connection to Aix, but I was able to hop the next train without any difficulty. The delay meant that I have had to post-pone my meeting at the Les Milles memorial museum near Aix until next Monday, but that actually works into my schedule better anyway. For now, I’m planning on a weekend of (hopefully) productive article-reading, note-taking, photocopy-organizing, and interview-writing….. punctuated with some excursions to the Cezanne-related sites with the fellow Fulbrighter who is letting me stay in her apartment. Cezanne, who was born and painted here, pops up all over Aix, and I can’t complain about a weekend spent in the city of one of my all time favorite painters.

Before I go any further: a note on the purpose of my trip south. As most of you know, my Fulbright research is on Holocaust memory in France and the creation of memorial museums at sites of former internment and concentration camps in France. I had originally chosen three sites on which to focus my study: Natzweiler-Struthof (near Strasbourg), Drancy (near Paris), and Rivesaltes (near Perpignan). As part of my study, I had planned to travel to each of these three sites to actually visit the museums I am examining. This was originally supposed to consist of month-long trips to Strasbourg and Perpignan, and several day-trips to Drancy. However, two developments led me to change my plans.

First, I have discovered since coming here that there have been a profusion of memorial museums at former internment camps created (or re-done) over the past two decades. Intrigued, I really wanted to visit memorials and museums more than my original three sites in order to place my study within a broader context of memorialization. Furthermore, having not even started my grad school coursework, I am not locked into a dissertation topic, and such a trip could spark new ideas and lead me in new, potentially fruitful directions.

However, Fulbright did not give me a travel stipend and I could not afford trips to Rivesaltes and Natzweiler along with the others I had identified. This is where the second development comes in. Fulbright tapped into its alumni network and former French Fulbrighters (Fulbright also sends French students to the US) popped up in every one of the cities I wanted to visit. Because these individuals graciously offered to allow me to stay in their homes, I was able to plan out a month-long trip to the south of France, including five cities on my itinerary—Aix-en-Provence (for the camp Les Milles); Perpignan (for the camp Rivesaltes); Pau (for the camp Gurs); Toulouse (for the camps Récébédou and Noé); and Limoges (for the camp Nexon and the “martyred village” Oradour-sur-Glane). If any Fulbrighter ever needs a place to stay in whatever city I am living, I will certainly pass along the favor! This trip provides me with an invaluable opportunity to survey the “lay of the land” in terms of memorial museums, and I am excited to see where my explorations lead me!

I won’t be posting many lengthy blogs while I’m away, but I’m going to try to post a “photo of the day” with a little story about it just for fun, maybe with a little update on the work I’m doing every now and then.

So….. here’s the first.

Ice-baby fountain. (Day 1: Aix-en-Provence)

Aix is beautiful, everybody says. Gorgeous landscape. Quaint winding streets. Friendly people. Warm, sunny weather. All the usual clichés that you think of when you here about “the south of France.” Indeed, Aix is beautiful. But Aix is also numbingly cold at the moment. I thought that in fleeing south I would escape the current freeze gripping Paris. No such luck, as evidenced by the poor little cherubs, ice-bound on their swans at this fountain in the center of town. Maybe the sun will warm enough for them to break their frigid shells (and for me to more fully enjoy this beautiful city) over the weekend.

Migrating South

Just a very quick note to let you all know I am leaving tomorrow to go to the south of France for a research trip. I’ll be looking at museums/memorials at sites of former internment camps near five cities—Aix-en-Provence, Perpignan, Pau, Toulouse, and Limoges—and will be gone about a month. In all five cities I will be staying with Fulbright contacts who were gracious enough to open their homes to me. If any Fulbrighter ever needs a place to stay where-ever I am, I will certainly pass on the favor! I should have access to internet during most of my trip, so I will try to continue posting while I am gone. Hopefully it will be a productive month; I’m excited to see where it leads me! I’ll try to keep you all up-to-date.

Musée Rodin in Shades of Sun and Snow

12 Jan 2010; 1:21 am; Paris 75019

Rodin's "Thinker" in sun......

......and snow

Canal d'Ourcq covered in ice. This is after the ice- breaking boat had made its rounds.

The sign intended to keep adventurers off thin ice.

Paris winters never get that cold, so they say. Snow hardly ever comes and when it does it never stays, so they say. And the Seine never really freezes over, so they say. Well, this winter has certainly disproved all these “nevers”. The temperature has remained steadily below zero (Celsius, of course. But, still) for the past several weeks, coupled with a biting wind. Snow has not only fallen but has remained, clinging tenaciously to isolated patches of pavement where it is safe from the shuffling of thousands of Parisian feet. The canal outside the apartment has not quite frozen over, but there is enough ice that we see ducks out for a walk rather than a swim on the water each morning, and the city felt the need to put up a sign reading: “Danger, forbidden to walk on the ice!” Just in case you thought that would be a good idea.…

To provide a little illustration of how capricious Paris weather can be in winter (while showcasing one of my favorite museums in Paris), here is a little photo-journal that we shall call “Musee Rodin in Shades of Sun and Snow.”

Musée Rodin makes an impact. Or rather, Rodin’s sculpture makes an impact; how can they not, coming from the workshop of the man who revolutionized sculpture, bridging the gap from the classical to the modern. The bronze sculptures in the garden are some of the most “frappant” (a wonderful French word that means “striking”) pieces of artwork I have encountered in Paris. Passion, beauty, power, and raw emotion flowing together, intertwined in bronze that seems to remain fluid even as it is frozen in space and time. I could spend hours simply wandering through the museum garden, past Rodin’s most famous work, “The Thinker”, on to encounter lesser-known masterpieces, such as his disconcerting yet elegant depiction of Eve in the wake of the fall. Exposed to the elements, these garden sculptures offer more than a pleasureful stroll. Visits two days apart in the dead of winter provided the opportunity for a little study on the effect of weather on visual art, à la Monet’s studies of haystacks or the Rouen cathedral at different times of day and in different kinds of weather. So here is a stroll through the garden of Musée Rodin in shades of sun and snow.

Garden of Musée Rodin, with Invalides in the background. The museum, located in the beautiful mansion to the left, houses many of Rodin's studies; it's rather like walking through the sculptor's equivalent of a painter's sketch pad. In garden one finds the realization of these fermenting ideas in the form of the bronze statues along the paths. The visit costs only 1 euro, and makes for a delightful stroll on a sunny day....

.....though snow can certainly spice things up although the accompanying cold can make for a rather frigid walk. This is Victor Hugo's foot under a light dusting. "Artsy," if I may be so bold.

The Whistler Muse with the museum in the background......

....the very same picture (almost), two days later, now in shades of grey. Amazing how a shift in light can completely change the entire color scheme.

The Burghers of Calais, a monument to the leaders of Calais who, during the Hundred Year's War, offered themselves up to the enemy to save their besieged town from destruction. Here they trudge between sun and shadows.....

.....while here the Burghers make their march to almost certain death on a bed of snow. While the story had a happy ending historically, as the Burghers' lives were spared, Rodin, however, depicts their suffering and despair before liberation. An even more sobering scene in the chilly winter light.

Rodin's Eve shrinks away, scorched by the piercing light and smouldering heat of the mid-day sun and God's burning wrath....

.....but here she shivers, covering her body from both the newly acquired shame of nakedness as well as the numbing cold left in the wake of the original sin. Eve is actually one of my favorite Rodins. It is not a cheery statue, but Rodin's depiction is so moving that you can almost

Circling through the gardens leads to unexpected encounters behind seemingly every tree. Here me meet Balzac, the prolific French writer who wrote over 100 novels and plays during his life.....

............and he's still playing hide and go seek, even in the freezing weather. But Balzac has a bit of an advantage all wrapped up as he is in his nice warm cloak, though he seems a bit distracted. He must be searching for a muse. :-)

The Thinker is one of Rodin's most famous sculptures. The photos at the beginning of this post show how various meteorological conditions change the sculpture's appearance. On the other hand, the sculpture also makes *an appearance* in many different locations. First we find The Thinker sitting pensively top and center of Rodin's unfinished chef d'oeuvre, the Gates of Hell, which was commissioned by the city of Paris. Here, The Thinker was indended to depict Dante, author of the Divine Comedy. As poet, one wonders, is he contemplating or actually creating the inferno below him? One thing is certain: poised above it all and somewhat removed, he is a tiny island of calm, albeit tension-filled calm, amid all the fury and chaos....

.......Rodin re-created many of the characters form his Gates of Hell throughout his life, and one can find The Thinker here in perhaps his most recognizable manifestation. A solitary figure deep in thought, which begs the obvious question: about what? Interestingly, the surrounding context (like the weather) can vastly change the meaning of this sculpture. Over the Gates of Hell, the Thinker's thoughts are purposefully ensconced within the context of the inferno, whereas in this free-standing form the viewer seems to have more freedom to decide where this introspective man's thoughts are wandering. He may be pondering eternal damnation and Dante's poetry, but he may just as well be debating with himself over the best was to ask his beloved's hand in marriage... or trying to remember where he put his keys... or puzzling over some multi-variable calculus equation... or troubling about whether to have spaghetti or hot dish for dinner.....

.....transferred to a new medium, the Thinker" is captured on two-dimensional canvas by Edvard Munch, the expressionist painter better known for disturbing work, "The Scream." Perhaps here the Thinker is a manifestation of similar strains of modern anxieties embodied in Munch's other painting......

.....as Rodin made his sculptures through a process of bronze casting, copies of his works can be found all over the world. There are actually several in the sculpture gardens across from the Hirschorn on the DC National Mall. In Paris itself, after seeing The Thinker once in the gardens of Musée Rodin, you can find him again down on the platform of the nearest metro station, Varenne. And then hop on the metro with your own thoughts reflecting upon the moving power of the sculptures in the museum you just left.

Playing Tour Guide

7 January 2010 (!); 12:30 am
75019 Paris

Please note: I really did write most of this blog on 7 January. It has taken me over a week to actually post it because it is remarkably difficult to get pictures up and formatted in any semblance of order. My apologies for 1) any spelling/grammatical errors that I missed in the rush to finally get this up; 2) any formatting issues, as I continued to be mystified as to why the formatting sometimes turns out as bizzare as it does. One can only do so much when technology is misbehaving….. I HATE technology at times. Rather frustrating when you spend so much time working on a thing and it fails because of technical glitches. Please forgive the formatting mess that is this blog. Hopefully the stories come through.

Over two weeks have past since I have had the energy to sit down and write in the evening. Two weeks that have seen visits first from my parents and Mara, who were then closely followed by Jason’s parents. For Christmas, Jason and I gave our respective parents custom-designed guided tours of Paris….. provided by (who else?) ourselves. The two of us enjoyed the hours spent carefully designing the itinerary for each of our families’ visits, which included the standard “things to see and places to go,” augmented by more minute details like color-coded metro directions, museum hours and ticket prices, and even dining options. It is a wonderful thing to be able to share a place one has come to know and love with the people that one loves.

At the same time, both Jason and I have discovered that playing tour guide can be surprisingly exhausting! The Smith family arrived in Paris the day after Christmas and departed four days later. The Hansen family was to arrive on New Years Day. Thus, Jason and my single day of rest between families happened to fall on New Years Eve. Drained of all energy by a week of showing my family Paris and in no mood to brave the raucous crowds and sub-zero (Celsius) weather, we found ourselves quite contented to stay in, watch My Fair Lady, and relax. However, we realized that we *were* in *Paris* and it was *New Years Eve*….. so, feeling compelled to do *something* special, we did wander out around 11:00 to Pont Neuf to see if we could get a glimpse of the fireworks at the Eiffel Tower through the fog, while still remaining at a distance to avoid the crowds. We saw no real fireworks to speak of, though I understand there was a magnificent light show if you were on the other side of the tower to see it. No matter. We saw the tower sparkle hazily, got our own personal fireworks show put on by the armatures across the bridge (fireworks are apparently legal in Paris. Yikes!), and we kissed at midnight—when in Paris, do as the Parisians :-) Then we hopped the metro back home to nibble on some left over Christmas cookies from our trip to Strasbourg and to sip hot cocoa to warm us up before crawling into bed to get at least a bit of rest before the next tour session.

The view from Pont Neuf. You should be able to see the Eiffel Tower in the center of this picture.....if it wasn't so cloudy

Now you can barely see the Eiffel Tower as it sparkles

Pont Neuf with the amateur fireworks show across the bridge

Midnight kiss :-)

Jason’s parents arrived the next afternoon and the grand Parisian tour part deux began. Despite the lingering exhaustion from the Smith-family tour, I found that I still quite enjoyed delivering my little spiels on important historical and cultural landmarks as well as little practical tidbits about day-to-day living in Paris. Perhaps I’ll pursue my true vocation as tour guide “when I grow up.” :-)

The Hansens leave for Minnesota tomorrow morning and we will settle back into our regular routines again: research and music work during the days, punctuated by grocery shopping expeditions, a trip to a boulangerie, American Church pizza nights and Thurber Thursdays, evenings spent cooking dinner together, a Friday night visit to the Louvre on a whim…..

Below you’ll find your own abridged version of the  Smith-Hansen tours of Paris, designed and delivered by Jason Hansen and Alise Smith. Back to normal blogging after today.

Note: S=part of the Smith tour; H=part of the Hansen tour; S and H=part of both tours. Jason and I got a healthy dose of déjà vu giving these tours :-)

SITES SEEN

Eiffel Tower (S and H): Perhaps the most recognizable icon of Paris, and, indeed of France as a whole. Its almost a rite of passage for visitors to ride make the elevator to the top, though if you’ve done it once you frankly don’t feel the need to it again. But the tower itself still exacts a powerful fascination even when the site of the tower has become commonplace after four month’s living in Paris. The below pictures were taken while the Smiths were visiting, during which time there was a special nightly light show in honor of the 120th anniversary of the construction of the Eiffel Tower for the World Expo of 1889.

Tour Eiffel decked out in the colors of the French Tri-color

Tour Eiffel in rainbow colors

Cité d’architecture et du patrimoine (S): A newly renovated museum that contains casts of architectural wonders from across France. It originated in the 1800s as a project of Viloet-le-Duc, the same man who restored Notre Dame. Visually stunning and first-rate in terms of museography.
Photo Caption: I especially love how they have designed the museum so that the casts serve as the doorways from room to room.

I especially love how they have designed the museum so that the casts serve as the doorways from room to room

Montmartre (S and H): A hill in northern Paris, that constitutes a little world unto itself. For each family I basically retraced the steps of a walking tour Jason and I had taken earlier in the year. Below are pictures of the stops on my modified tour, with brief summaries of their significance.

The Moulin Rouge. Famous (and notorious) cabaret in Paris' old red light district.

Blanche Metro. This is a crummy picture, but the stop showcases the art nouveau signs that characterize many metro entrances. The Paris Metro is absolutely wonderful.

The 2001 movie Amelie was partially filmed in this café on rue LePic. If you haven't seen the film, I highly recommend you go out and rent it. It's an absolutely gorgeous film that shows Paris as it ought to be and look all the time :-)

Vincent Van Gogh lived in this house with his brother while he was down-and-out during his short sojourn in Paris.

You will find plaques such as this one the outer walls of schools throughout Paris. They are hung in memory of the Jewish children of the various arrondissements of Paris deported during the Holocaust.

One of the two windmills remaining on Montmartre. The other is the "Moulin de la Galette," made famous by Renoir's painting of the same name. Today this windmill sits atop a café by.....the same name.

This is writer Marcel Ayme walking through a wall. Ayme, who once lived on Montmartre, penned a short story about a man who had an affair with the woman next door by walking through the wall.....until his wife caught him in the wall mid-stride. So, someone thought it would be humorous to construct a statue of the writer in the same pose. Legend has it that if you rub his hand you will have good luck.

Bust of the famous French singer Dalida. Apparently she was quite the star.

Picturesque view of Sacre Coeur. Montmartre maintains a kind of village feel even though it was incorporated into Paris proper over 150 years ago.

Famous Montmartre café that was the former home of artist Maurice Utrillo. Many artists have congregated in Montmartre over the years, but Utrillo possesses the distinction of having been born there.

The only remaining vineyard on Montmartre. They still use the grapes to make wine, but they say it isn't actually very good.....

Le Lapin Agile, another of Montmartre's cabarets. Frequented by the likes of Picasso. It's name comes from the painting of the dancing rabbit above the door.

One of the windows from St. Pierre de Montmartre. Some of my favorite stained glass in all of Paris, most of which deal with the life of Peter. This particular example depicts the story of Christ walking on water.

Place du Tertre. A traditional gathering place of artists, you will always finds artists selling (and creating) their wares at this square near Sacre Coeur.

Sacre Coeur itself. A giant white basilica built in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War, which France lost spectacularly to Prussia. A kind of public sign of contrition for the wrongs the French believed they must have done to lose the war. People tend to have strong opinions of this church. Either you think it's gorgeous or you think it's an abominable eyesore. I think it's kind of nice myself, but then again I tend to like byzantine architecture in general.

Opera Garnier (S and H): Built in the mid-1800s on the orders of Louis Napoleon, grandson of *the* Napoleon. Incredibly grandiose. Some people think it’s gaudy, but in my opinion, it is ostentatious without out quite stepping over the line. This is the setting of the Phantom of the Opera.

Exterior

Mom, Mara, Jason and I attempting to take a cool picture inside the opera.

Interior. A fitting setting for the Phantom of the Opera, I think.

My personal favorite: the ceiling of the main theatre painted by Marc Chagall, compete with giant chandelier.

The opera had a fascinating temporary exhibition on the Russian Ballet, which included costumes designed by Picasso for the ballet, Parade.

Also in the Russian Ballet exhibit we found costumes from Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. Magnifique!

Jason and I thoroughly enjoyed our second visit to the opera, especially having discovered the new Russian Ballet exhibit.....

....but the jet lag was starting to set in for Mom and Mara.....Paris is sooooo fun.....

Galaries Lafayette (S and H): One of the main department stores in Paris.

Mom and Mara got to see the Christmas window dispalys. The themes this year seemed to be wacky gingerbread-men and scenes form a Russian pipe dream.

Jason took his parents to the roof of the store to get this lovely view of Paris. One of the few panoramic views of the city where you can avoid the sight of the single skyscraper that sticks out like a sore thumb (literally and figuratively) above everything else. The dreadful Tour Montparnasse.

Louvre (H): Needs no introduction, I think. One of the most famous art museums in the world. A reputation well-deserved.

The Louvre taken at an earlier date.

The Mona Lisa, also taken at an earlier date.

Tuileries (S and H): I also have no photos from the Tuileries this time around. These manicured gardens adjacent to the Louvre used to be the home of the Tuileries palace before it was burnt down by the retreating Communards in the late 1800s. I’d put an older pic up, but the blog is being difficult and will not let me put any more pictures up for this post.

Musée de l’Orangerie (S and H): One of the most remarkable, if less famous, museums in Paris. Built to house Monet’s waterlilies. Also contains an interesting collection of post-impressionists in the basement.

The exhibit space for the waterlilies.

A waterlily. Fascinating to examine them up close. You can see very color, every flurried brushstroke.

Cezanne. One of my favorite post-impressionists.

Matisse. A room of one's own?

Jason and the waterlilies.

Alise and the waterlilies.

Marché de noel (Christmas markets) (S): While one really has to go to Germany, or at least to Strasbourg to get the true Christmas market experience, Paris does host several of its own marché de noel during the Christmas season, along Champs Elysées, near St. Germain des Pres, up at St. Denis, out by La Defense…..

The Smith ladies bought hats at the marchés.

Musée d’Orsay (S and H): A train station-turned-museum, Orsay is worth going to just to look at the building itself. It’s collection includes some pre-impressionist works by the likes of Delacrois, Daumier, Millet, Manet, and Courbet as well as impressionists such as Monet and post-impressionists including Van Gogh, Cezanne, and Gauguin.

During the Smith family tour we arrived at the museum at 5pm, to find a ridiculously long line. Apparently Christmas Break is high tourist season in Paris. We thought we had no hope of getting into the museum before 5:30, which is when all the signs say they stop selling tickets. As it turned out, we reached the front of the line at about 5:31, and all the ticket counters were in fact closed. But somehow (I'm still not sure how) we, along with more than a few others, simply walked into the museum without having to purchase a ticket amidst the chaos of closing time. Welcome to France, where the rules simply do not apply.....

Orsay at night. The museum is a former train station, and would still be absolutely beautiful, even if it wasn't filled with fascinating works of art.

The third floor, where all my favorite post-impressionist works are located, was closed for renovations. They had a tiny temporary exhibit of some Van Goghs and Gauguins, but it was rather lackluster. But, hey, we got in free, so I can't complain.....

Notre Dame (S and H): Again, needs no introduction. This gothic cathedral is not only the setting of Victor Hugo’s famous Hunchback of Notre Dame, but is also one of the most (if not the most) visited churches in France, not to mention the fact that it continues its original vocation as a house of worship despite the incessant tourist incursions.

The line to go up into Notre Dame's towers. The Smith family waited in this line for over 2 hours!

But the crazy man in the mask provided some entertainment in the meantime. Here he is giving Mara a hug.

And here is another crazy man following Alise out of the bell tower :-)

The wait was well worth it. The view from Notre Dame over the city is magnificent. Especially in the company of a delightful chimera or two (even if they were an anachronistic to the cathedral by Viloet-le-Duc).

Memorial de la Deportation (H): This memorial, created in the 1960s, commemorates all those (resistants, communists, gypsies, Jews, etc) who were deported from France during World War II. I’ll leave it at that or you’d be in for a mini dissertation. Smiths attempted to visit this site but were foiled because the thing closes for lunch. I always seem to end up there during lunchtime. Jason managed to get his parents in to see the memorial before lunchtime, so they were able to see it. No photo here because I think I have used up the limit for this blog….. I’ll have a later post on Holocaust memorials anyway and you can see it then……

Musée Rodin (H): Another of my favorite less famous museums in Paris. Rodin’s sculptures occupy the garden, while the museum contains many of his studies and other works.

The Thinker. Perhaps Rodin's most famous work. Originally sculpted to surmount Rodin's Gates of Hell.

It had just snowed the morning that the Hansens visited the museum. Burrrr. Adds a nice touch to the sculptures, though.

Invalide/Musée de l’Armée (S and H): Invalides, a former church as well as a veterans hospital, houses Napoleon’s tomb and a military museum.

Napoleon's tomb. Why does such a small man need such a big tomb? Well, there are apparently six coffins here, one inside the other. Rather like a Matryoshka (or babushka) doll.

I took this picture for my dear friend Dayna Wells, who is well acquainted with my beef with M. Bonaparte. I'm biting my thumb at him......all in good fun, Dayna :-)

Child armor of one of France's King Louis' in the Army museum. The entire section on medieval and renaissance armor and armaments was fascinating.

More modern military garb in the WWI/WWII exhibit. We got cleared out of this exhibit too quickly to really take anything in. I shall have to return at a later date.....

An image of a typical Smith-family-vacation. The rain falling in the background being the crucial ingredient.

American Church Paris (S & H): The ACP congregation dates from the 1810’s making it the oldest American Church on foreign soil. The building dates from the 1930’s. Today the church is an international and interdenominational congregation that welcomes all with open arms. Jason and I have been blessed to be a part of this community.

A view of the Church from across the Seine at dusk.

Interior of the Church. We took the Hansens to an actual service as they were here on a Sunday.

Shakespeare and Co. (S and H): Quirky English-language bookstore near Notre Dame.

Books line the stairs. The shop is wonderfully cluttered, as a book store ought to be :-)

Musee du Moyen Age (H): Wonderful museum dedicated to the Middle Ages, housed in the Hotel Cluny, which was a former medieval residence of the abbots of Cluny.

The architecture of the building is interesting in its own right, combining Gothic and Renaissance styles.

The museum collection includes gorgeous stained glass, such as this example from Sainte Chapelle.

Also on this site one finds the ruins of Roman Baths. Paris is a city of so many historical layers.

The museum is now home to many of Notre Dame's original statues, which were defaced and stolen during the Revolution. They were found again in the 20th century, in a bank.... Pictured here is a statue of Adam.

A temporary exhibit on Asterix was also underway. Asterix is a beloved French comic strip that depicts the adventures of a feisty French Gaul in the face of Roman tyranny.

The real treasure of the museum are the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries. There are six tapestries of mysterious meaning and origin. What is clear, however, is that they are artistic masterpieces. It is thought that perhaps five of the tapestries (all of which include a lady and a unicorn) depict each of the five senses. Pictured here is the tapestry believed to depict taste. You can't see it from this picture, but the lady is reaching out to a tray of candies.

St Germain des Pres (H): An abbey founded in the 6th century. Still an active church.

Exterior.

I particularly love the interior of this church, with it's vibrant reds, blues, and golds.

Jardin du Luxembourg (H): Gardens originally created by Marie de Medici. Now the Luxembourg Palace houses the French Senate.

The gardens are much prettier in the spring and summer....

Pantheon (H): The former church where France now buries it’s “great men.” And when they say men, they mean *men*. Marie Curie is the only woman interred in the Pantheon of her own merit. (there are one or two other women interred with their famous husbands) Hmmmmm.

The Pantheon. Notice the Christmas trees outside.

Philip Augustus Wall (H): Remaining fragment of one of the walls that used to encircle Medieval Paris.

The wall. Embeded in a Hausmann building. Interesting contrast in terms of time and design. Layers again.

Arenes du Lutece (H): Roman arena re-discovered during excavations for Haussmann’s city renovations in the mid-1800s. Now mostly a soccer field for local kids.

There are probably more soccer balls that people down in the arena.....which makes it such a peaceful place, full of history but tucked away from the tourist hub-bub.

Rue Mouffetard (H): One of the many streets in Paris the exudes character. Used to be part of one of the main routes from Paris to Rome. Later a site of tanneries, which gave the street a reputation for a rather nasty smell. Now the smell is gone and the streets are lined with quaint shops, ethnic food restaurants, little cafés, markets, and even a public library.

I really got no good pictures of le Mouffe during this visit, so this picture of the fish market will have to suffice.....

.......or this picture of the tart shop where we bought some quiches for dinner.....

Centre Pompidou (H): Modern and contemporary art museum. Also houses a public library. The building is constructed inside-out.

The exterior. We had no time to explore the collections on these tours. I'm not always a fan of some of the more bizarre contemporary art unless I know what was going on in the artist's mind, but they do have a lovely collection of early-20th century abstract pieces by the likes of Picasso, Braque, Chagall, Dali, Matisse, etc.

Rue des Rosiers (S and H): Former center of the Jewish quarter of Paris, known as the Marais. Still has a thriving Jewish presence as witnessed by the many kosher bucheries and boulangeries along the street, as well as the many Orthodox Jews you see on the street.

Orthodox boys outside a Kosher pizza shop.

The Kosher boulangeries along this road have bread and pastries you won't find anywhere else in town, from bagels and challah to apple strudel.

Memorial de la Shoah (S and H): Located in the Marais, this museum is dedicated to the Holocaust, with a particular focus in its permanent exhibit on the Holocaust in France. Its origins lie back during WWII when a group of Jews in Grenoble decided to to collect documents detailing the persecution of the Jews in France, with the particular goal of obtaining financial restitution at the end of the war. After the war the CDJC became an important archive for documenting the Holocaust in its entirety. One of the first Holocaust memorials in the world was later built on the site of the current museum in the 1950s. The current museum opened in 2004, and the archives and library of the CDCJ are housed on the 4th floor of the same building. I spend a lot of time here doing research.

Both the Smiths and the Hansens took the time to walk through the permanent exhibit. It is very different from that of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, but similarly powerful and sobering.

Place des Vosges (H): A famous square in Paris, built by Henry IV in the 1600’s.

This is what the Hansens *should* have seen when we ducked into the Place des Vosges to have a look before dinner one night. Unfortunately 1) it was winter so no pretty yellow leaves; 2) it was night, so it was dark; 3) there seemed to be some sort of technical difficulty with the street lamps, so it was *totally* dark and you couldn't see anything! We still made a stop outside Victor Hugo's house, though.

Pere Lachaisse (H): Paris’ famed cemetery that is now the resting place of hundreds of those who have passed on, some famous, some not so famous.

The Hansens took a trip to the cemetery on their own, so I'll just illustrate Pere Lachaise with the metro sign. But I do hear they found Oscar Wilde's kiss-covered grave (see the Halloween post from October).

Buttes Chaumont (H): One of my favorite parks in Paris. Rather than the ridged, strictly regulated design of gardens like the Tuileries and Luxembourg, Buttes Chaumont has a more free-flowing feel. It’s a peaceful place with a rather dark history has the former town gibbet…..

Snow. Yup. These three kids thought it was pretty fun stuff.

Buttes Chaumont under a light dusting of snow.

FOOD
Food is an important part of travels to any country, as Jason is forever reminding me. So we also planned our our families’ meals to make sure they got the best of Paris cuisine, at least according to our humble tastebuds.

French Bistro (S and H): We wanted to take each of our families out for an “authentic” French meal. So, while Mom and Mara went up the Eiffel Tower during the first night of their visit, Jason and I went restaurant hunting. We found this little bistro down a side street about 15 minutes away from the tower. They had an excellent three-course form-menu for “only” 25 euro. Delicious food and a delightful ambiance. So much so that we took the Hansens here during their visit as well. Ironically, reading the local paper a week later, I found an article that featured this very restaurant, and characterized it as a “bistro authentique.” Apparently, we unknowingly did quite well in our random restaurant selection :-)

The restaurant. Like many French bistros, it offers a form menu with three courses for a set price. You get to choose from about seven dishes for each course. We took pictures of everybody's entire meal, but given the constraints on space (and the fact that I doubt anybody wants to look at 15 photos of dishes!), I'll just feature one example below......

First course (entré---in France, your appetizer is called an entré, which can be confusing to Americans): walnut, apple, and cheese salade with a light vinaigrette.

Second course (plat): plain broiled salmon, with steamed potatoes.

Third course (dessert): molleux au chocolat and delicious vanilla bean ice cream.

Pizza (S and H): Sure, pizza is Italian, but an Italian-run pizza joint in Paris comes pretty close to the real thing…. I found this little place thanks to an article in the Le Figaro (one of France’s main daily newspapers), entitled “Les meilleures pizzas de Paris.” (the best pizzas of Paris). It tied for the highest score in their taste-test, and I have to agree with their evaluation….

The restaurant. Just off the Champs Elysées.

The pizza. Nothing beats a *real* Margherita pizza! Whether in Italy or France. C'est bon!

Falafel (S and H): Paris is a cosmopolitan city. It’s not just about baguettes and cheese, though there is a lot to be said for the French baguette and they certainly know how to do cheese. Anyway, in an effort to illustrate the variety of Parisian cuisine, we went to dinner at one of the several falafel joints along rue des Rosiers.

A man stands outside L'As du Falafel every night, calling out to passersby "the best falafel in the world"! And, at least in our assessment, he has every right to make that claim.

On a Sunday afternoon, there will be a line all the way around the corner for the take-away window, and the restaurant interior will be jam-packed. On a Tuesday evening at 7pm, however, we had the place to ourselves, though it filled up quickly after we sat down. (Dinner time in Paris is usually later than in the States. 7 is a bit early. Though, Parisians have nothing on the Spanish, who think you're crazy if you start dining before 10pm!).

Happy family waiting for falafel. Everybody is awake for this picture :-)

The falafel. Pita bread stuffed with chickpea patties, tomato, fried eggplant, red cabbage, and yogurt sauce. Yum. Surprisingly, even the meat and potatoes types enjoyed it :-)

Quiche (H): Jason wanted his parents to try some real French quiche. So, we each bought a quiche slice from one of the two quaint quiche shops on rue Mouffetard one night.

Spinach quiche and chicken-broccoli quiche. We took the quiche home to the apartment to eat for the following night and Ron and Sandi came over for dinner.

Fondu (H): After purchasing our quiches on rue Mouffetard for the next night, we went to a fondu restaurant for that night’s dinner. None of us had ever had fondue before, so we had no clue what we were doing. But fondu is French, and we figured, why not try it out? And it turned out to be great fun.

One of the fondu pots. This one held the hot oil that Ron would use to fry his meat.

The rest of us had the traditional Fondu Savoyarde, which is bread dipped in hot cheese. Apparently, we learned, wine is also added to the mix, so you have to keep it stirred up otherwise the wine will separate out.

Ron's plate of raw meat ready to fry up.

The salade, ham, fried potatoes, and apples that accompanied the bread and cheese of fondu savoyarde.

Place St. Michel Tourist Fare (H): We had originally planned on taking Jason’s parents to a marvelous hole-in-the wall Egyptian restaurant one night, but to our surprise and dismay, we discovered it has gone out of business. So, we fell back on the old tourist standard of a Place St. Michel form menu. Not quite as unique as the Egyptian place, but still a decent meal. Jason’s meal is pictured below….

Jason finally got his French onion soup in France.

.....Coq au vin.....and French fries....

....and creme brulée.

Crepes (S and H): Jason and I enjoy making crepes back home, but you must try crepes salé and sucré actually in France! This was the last meal for each of our families.

"Italian" crepe. Note: these darker colored crepes are "crepes salé" (salty or savory crepes) made with buckwheat flour. Delicious.

Ham and cheese crepe. A crepe standard.

Crepe with the works: eggs, mushrooms, ham, cheese, and salade.

Crepe with mushrooms in a tomato-based sauce.

Nutella crepe. The following crepes are crepes sucré (sweet or dessert crepes), which are made with regular flour and filled with anything sweet from jam to chocolate. As good as this crepe was, I think nutella crepes are actually made to be eaten on the run from a street-side stand.

Chocolate crepe with whipped cream.

Chocolate crepe with pear and ice cream.

The Hansens at the creperie.

Bertillon ice cream (S): Famous ice cream unique to Ile St. Louis, though it is sold at some other establishments in Paris. Regardless, it is uniquely delicious ice cream! Only the Smiths got the opportunity to taste it thought, because it was simply too cooooold on the Hansen’s ice cream day.

Bertillon cones. French chocolate ice cream is divine.

Gelato (H): Another Italian speciality that you can get in France……Venice still has the prize for the best gelato. Though the Hansens missed out on the Bertillon, we braved the cold for gelato.

Half eaten cones. Enjoyed despite the cold.

Paul (S and H): French “fast food.” And by “fast food” I mean delicious, non-greasy sandwiches.

Sandwiches from Paul. A rather chaotic process to order sandwiches for a party of five with only one French-speaker :-)

Panini (H): More French “fast food.” A bit greasier that Paul sandwiches, but still good.

Paninis from the quick stop stand that we grabbed on the fly.

Bredles (S): Jason and I brought these little Christmas cookies back from the maché de noel in Strasbourg. So, the Smith family got a taste of Alsatian Christmas, including “spritz.”

Bredels! Etoile de cannille. Spritz. Almond-sugar cookies. Almond-coffee cookies. Jelly-almond cookies. Yum!

Macarons (S and H): NOT like the American macaroons. They’re tasty little almond cookies filled with a sweet pasty fudge (my roommate likens it to something in between mascarpone and marzipan, but there’s really no good way to describe it). They’re good, but I’m not quite sure what warrants the outrageous price patisseries can charge for them. The wonderful rainbow of colors, though is certainly appealing….

Look at all the colors!

A wonderful chocolate macron.

Gallette des rois and Gateau (H): The 12th day of Christmas, Epiphany, in France is an occasion for celebration. For days before hand the windows of every boulangeries in Paris are filled with gallettes de rois (kings cakes). Delightful little pastry cakes filled with almond paste…..and a prize of some sort. Some lucky sole will bite a piece of cake and get the prize….which means you have to buy the kings cake for the next year. Katy, one of the flatmates, actually made her own gallette des rois, and was generous enough to let us try some. We contributed to the dessert with a birthday cake for Jason, purchased on one of the best patisserie shops down the street. Happy Birthday to Jason and Happy Kings Day to all!

A boulangerie king's cake, complete with crown.

Katy's homemade king's cake.

Jason's birthday cake. It's apparently called a Venezuela. Don't ask why. I've no clue. But regardless, no one does cake (or desserts in general) quite like the French :-)

Three little delights: gallette des rois, venezula, complete with a mini macron from the venezuela.

The birthday boy with his cake.

Birthday boy as king. He looks good in a crown :-)

.….and, to conclude, this is perhaps the best picture ever of my parents and sister……

Love to you all and I hope you enjoyed the mini tour.

Christmas Joys and a Joyous Christmas

December 23, 2009; 4 pm/December 25, 2009; 10:00pm

75019 Paris

I love all the reliable little joys of Christmas, those little things that you can depend upon each time Christmas rolls around. Every year, without fail, my family bakes Christianson sugar cookies, Smith spritz, peanut butter blossoms, and, last but not least my favorite, ginger snaps. And, every year, without fail, my dad waits until the coldest day of the year to put up the Christmas lights outside. The frozen fingers that result may not make anyone particularly joyful, but seeing the house glowing warmly with blinking lights certainly does. 


Dad also hauls the Christmas boxes up from the basement, and I rediscover all my favorite Christmas decorations: my mother’s Nativity set, the string of jingle bells that hangs on the front door, the little Joseph Originals angel candle holders, the five stockings that will soon be hung by the chimney with care. These boxes also contain the Christmas ornaments. We throw on some Bing Crosby, Robert Goulet, Kenny G, and the Mannheim Steamroller Christmas album to hang all the ornaments up on the tree, which is always a real evergreen that we’ve picked out from the nursery as a family. It has to be just tall enough to fit in the living room without hitting the ceiling, and it can’t have any bare spots. Skinny but full is the motto. Our decorated tree never looks anything like a Martha Stewart tree where colors, shapes, and patterns of the ornaments are meticulously coordinated to perfection; on the contrary, it ends up a delightful hodgepodge of antique baubles, annual candy canes marking each year since nineteen-eighty-something, multicolored balls of blown glass, Precious Moment’s figurines, silver and gold stars, crayola teddy bears, simple paper ornaments my siblings and I made in preschool, a bell or two that really ring, an assortment of Santa Clauses and angels, clear glass icicles, and even a couple souvenir ornament from trips to Disney World and Washington DC. And, of course, the tree is always topped off with the spike. A slightly odd choice, perhaps, compared to the more typical star or angel, but our Christmas tree wouldn’t be the same without it.

At the bottom of the Christmas boxes I also find all the Christmas books. I love to page through the lovingly worn pages: The Nutcracker, The Twelve Days of Christmas, The Little Match Girl, The Polar Express, a pop-up The Night Before Christmas, and several versions of the Christmas story itself. Christmas specials also start showing on TV around this time and, even though we own several of them on DVD, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Merry Christmas Charlie Brown, and It’s a Wonderful Life  we always seem to end up watching at least a couple of them on TV. This may appear rather paradoxical given the inevitable annoyance of commercial breaks, but the fact that these TV showings happen only once a year makes them special events nevertheless.

Coming from Minnesota, it is also a joy to watch the brownish-grey of October and November slowly transformed into a winter wonderland. And, of course, one mustn’t forget the Dayton’s (yes, Dayton’s) display. Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, Puss in Boots, Peter Pan, A Christmas Carol, even Harry Potter. Fairy Tales and Christmas stories come alive in the details of the display. And, of course, you also have to brave the cold to see the Holidazzle parade, which is always punctuated with comments from the family: “oooh, I love the snowflakes”; “spin, snowman, spin”; “look out for the Wicked Witch!”; “aren’t the little kids cute in the mouse costumes”; “my favorite is the chain of walking Christmas lights”; “Mom, I’m freezing!” Yes, it’s cold, but there is always Panera soup to follow to warm you up.

At the very beginning of the season, my mom will break out her special Hearts and Pines china made in Norway, which only makes an appearance at the beginning of Advent. We use them every Sunday for dinner through Christmas morning when we light the last candle at the center of our faux-evergreen Advent wreath. And those are just the little joys of *preparing* for Christmas. Then there are the joys of the day itself: Tiny flickering candle flames as you sing Silent Night at the 11pm Christmas Ev
e service and giggle under your breath with your brother when the wax inevitably drips down through the paper holder onto your fingers. Glittering tinsel on the tree Christmas morning, left by Santa Claus while you were sleeping. Reading the note that Santa wrote to thank you for the milk and cookies you left out for him the night before. Rudolph says “thanks” for the carrot as well. Three gifts left by the fireplace by the same man in red, representative of the three wisemen’s gifts to Jesus. Doughnuts for breakfast, a tradition that continues even thought the little mom and pop bakery where we used to buy them has shut down. The fun but ruthless dice game with the Christianson family Christmas Eve, and a similarly intense round of Continental with the Smiths Christmas Day. Driving home after it all with the five of us in the car, listening to the Christmas Carols playing on the radio.

These are the little joys of Christmas that I remember, the little joys of Christmases past, if I may. These are the joys that have always made Christmas really *Christmas*. Staying in France this Christmas season, I find myself far removed from these comfortable and comforting joys. The cookies my flatmate baked in our toaster oven were rolled far too thick to taste anything like *Christianson* sugar cookies. The little plastic Christmas tree balanced precariously on the mini fridge in the living room looks like a sad, scraggly Charlie Brown tree compared to the fresh evergreen we have every year at home. We don’t have a nativity set on the mantle piece (or even a fireplace for that matter), nor do we have any spare socks to nail up as stockings, nor do we have Christmas books to lay out on the coffee table. Watching a choppy version of Rudolph on YouTube, where the sound doesn’t quite match up with the picture, just doesn’t quite cut the mustard. The chipped hand-me-down Ikea plates left over from the last tenant don’t measure up to Mom’s Christmas china. The decorated display windows at Printemps and Galaries Lafayette are ostentatious and fantastical, but they don’t have the same magical quality as the Dayton’s display and Holidazzle. Parisian drizzle is  certainly no substitute for a good Minnesota blizzard……

However, in the absence of the little joys that I have come to expect around Christmastime, I have found myself increasingly conscious that I am surrounded by so many other Christmas joys that are far greater still. It is such a joy that I am in Paris in the first place, growing in so many ways, as a researcher and as a person. It is such a joy that I get to spend this Christmas in Paris with my fiancée, who I grow to love more every day. It is such a joy to have a church family at ACP with whom I can share this holiday. It is such a joy that I have a wonderful family-family back home to whom I will return when these eight months are at an end. It is such a joy that I have the memories of all those little Christmas joys past and that I can look forward to so many more in the future. And such joys, great and small, all point toward another joy. As the angels told the shepherds in Bethlehem one night: “I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.” (Luke 2: 10-11 NIV) And *that* is certainly the greatest joy of all. Joyeux Noel to you all!

Bonus Photo Essay: How I spent my Christmas Vacations, Paris edition.

Christmas Eve.

-Jason and I spent the afternoon browsing the Galaries Lafayette and Au Printemps. That may sound a bit “commercial”, but we weren’t actually shopping, but rather, exploring. We circled all nine floors at the Galaries and then walked along the Christmas windows outside the two department stores. These windows are a mix of fashion displays and children’s displays, and there is quite the contrast between the two. Female manikins seductively modeling the most outlandish fashions imaginable vs. fuzzy bunnies, cuddly teddy bears, mischievous gingerbread men, and dancing Russian dolls. Not exactly the Dayton’s display, but still a fun way to spend the afternoon.

—–A tour of the nine floors of Galeries Lafayette. First three pictures are general pics of the store, and then the fourth picture begins on floor -1.

 The ornate glass ceiling of the Galaries

The massive tree in the centre of the Galaries

Here’s the floor plan from floor -1 up to 7…..

Floor -1: Shoes and boots. Some really outrageous specimens here.

Floor 0: Make up and other fashion accessories

Floor 1: “Creative” women’s fashion (I’ll say!)

Floor 2: Contemporary women’s fashion (aka what actual women, at least actual Parisians, wear)

Floor 3: “Seductive” fashion. Read “lingerie.” Welcome to France…..

Floor 4: Swimsuits…..and winter coats lurking the the background

Floor 5: Children’s fasion. Baby Dior. Cute, yes. But really, really?

Floor 6: Bridal registry. The second dress back costs $3000 euros. Ouch.

Floor 7: The view from the roof of the Galaries. Makes me think of the Chimney sweep song in Mary Poppins, though that was on the rooftops of London….

—–A tour of the department stores’ Christmas windows, beginning with Galaries Lafayette and moving on to Printemps.

 

-We then returned home to cook up some home-made pizza in our toaster oven, which turned out lovely despite the lack of conventional cooking appliances. And despite the fact that we are still missing Jason’s suitcase, which was carrying the yeast. Thanks to Ginger for lending us the pizza night yeast :-) While dining on our Christmas Eve feast, we watched It’s a Wonderful Life on YouTube.

-Then it was off to the 10:00 candlelight service at ACP. The music was wonderful and worshipful. Ironically enough, the sermon dealt with precisely the theme I had chosen to write about for this blog entry two days before! Joy. The French wish each other “Joyeux Noel” (“Joyous Christmas”), which, as Pastor Scott reminded us in his sermon, actually captures the essence of the Christmas gospel far more faithfully than the conventional American “Merry Christmas” or the British version, “Happy Christmas.” See Luke 2 above. The birth of Jesus is a *joyous* happening for all people.

-Following the service there was a cookie and eggnog reception held up in the Thurber room. I tried eggnog for the first time in my life. The non-alcoholic version was actually quite good; rather like a milkshake actually. However, from more experienced eggnog connoisseurs I gather it tasted nothing like eggnog in the States. Perhaps because it was made with *real* raw eggs rather than from a packaged powder? The French don’t give much credence to fear of salmonella poisoning. The cookies were darling as well. And the fellowship was warm and full of genuine Christmas-spirit.

Christmas Day

-We woke up early on Christmas morning to find that “Pere Noel” had come that night. He left Jason and me three little gifts each in our shoes, which we had set by the fireplace because we had no socks to spare for stockings. The gifts included: an apple (appropriately attired in Christmas red and green), a clementine, and little chocolates for each of us. Three petits cadeaux à la the Wise Men’s three gifts to the baby Jesus.

 

-Then we headed back to ACP where the youth pastor, Ginger, was hosting a lunch in her apartment for the 20-30 somethings of ACP. I made up a loaf of “the best banana bread in the whole while world” in a new rendition of my Thanksgiving experiment. It didn’t cave in this time, but it still ended up more of a crumble. But that certainly didn’t affect the taste! We had a lovely lunch. The menu included an assortment of dishes from all around the world: American chili and Christmas cookies provided by Ginger, Romanian cheese salade and cheese pie, British fruitbread, Swedish spiced wine, Chinese shrimp dumplings, purple Dutch cabbage, German stollen, French baguettes with Chevre cheese and Bouche de Noel…..

 

-Jason and I capped off the night with a walk over to Notre Dame to see the Christmas tree……

 

-…..ran into Pere Noel in the Metro…..

 

-And returned home to call/email our families a Merry Christmas and crawl into bed because we had to be up at 6 for a morning train to Strasbourg the next day!

Delta Airlines (almost) ruins Christmas

22 December 2009; 1:35 am

75019 Paris

I haven’t much energy to put into this post at the moment, but I feel the need to vent my spleen at Delta Airlines one last time. My apologies to those of you have already heard this sob story, and my apologies for any sloppy writing or poor grammar as I am not going to read this over before posting. I need to get to bed! This post is also lacking in illustrations until the very end. And even then the photo doesn’t really even pertain to the story. Ah well, on with a bit of composed ranting:

Jason is currently stranded in London. He was supposed to get in to Paris this evening around 3:30pm. And, according to the flight status updates I kept checking all day from Delta, Air France, and Charles de Gaulle airport, he should have. His flight from MSP to Heathrow was listed as on schedule all day, and although his flight from Heathrow of CDG was delayed it got into Paris only about an hour late. I was so excited when I saw that the plane had landed. I finished the emails I had been writing to French museum contacts, threw on my hat and coat, and headed off to Gare du Nord to wait for his train from the airport to come in.

And there I waited. And waited. And waited. Hundreds of other travelers, a whirling blur of shapes and a jumbled babble of voices, whisked past me, each intent upon his or her own trajectory, taking no notice of this young woman in the bright multicolored knit cap standing out above the crowd as she perched up on one of the metro benches. One man did stop and give me a good-natured smile: “tu montes à la haute.” (“you climbed up high”) Good observation sir. I probably looked a little strange, but I wanted to be sure Jason could see me in the mass of people. Not an easy task when you’re only 5’3”.

But, as it turned out, it wouldn’t have mattered if I had been lost in the crowd. Two hour passed. And I saw no one I knew. No familiar face walking toward me, smiling that wonderful grin I know so well. I started worrying that maybe we had missed each other and Jason was back at my apartment, waiting for me outside in the cold. I gave it another two minutes and gave up.

I emerged from the metro to find a light Parisian drizzle had started to fall. Welcome back, Jason, I thought. I hoped he didn’t have too much trouble wheeling his bags back to the apartment in this mess. After all, much of what he is brining is actually for me. A restocking of peanut butter; new Flintstone vitamins, one of my favorite shirts that I had forgotten the first time around… What a man.

I swung into my favorite boulangerie on the way home to grab a baguette. I had planned out the whole evening. We’d do a quick, simple dinner of delightful little clementines I had bought from the market across the street, brie cheese, and a baguette [it has been my quest to find the best baguette in Paris. This boulangerie on av. Juarez has my vote thus far], and then we’d head off for an evening at the American Church where volunteers were baking and decorating Christmas cookies for their Christmas Eve reception. As we had missed out on decorating cookies together this year, I thought this would be a nice way to spend our first night together… and then the next day we had our trip planned for Strasbourg to see the Christmas markets….

When I got back to my apartment Jason was not there. Instead I found an email waiting for me, entitled “12 hours!” This did not bode well. Upon reading it I found that Jason’s plane had been delayed out of Minneapolis, he had missed his connection, and he was stranded in London until tomorrow morning. At this point I broke down into tears. I think I just had all this pent up anxious excitement about finally seeing him tonight that it needed someway to get out. And tears were to means. I called my father to see if he [as a pilot] might have some insight as to what on earth had happened, but his sources showed the same information I had been seeing all day. Everything was normal. What on earth had happened?!

Now, under normal circumstances, this would have been no big deal. I’m a pilot’s daughter. I fly on passes all the time. And even if I’m going as a paying passenger, I realize that delays happen, flights get canceled, and sometimes you just have to go with the flow. But this was no ordinary situation. Because Jason and I had tickets to go to Strasbourg at 6 am the next morning. At 6am he would be boarding a plane leave London. He wouldn’t be in to Paris until 10am, and that was assuming that there were no other delays. So, what to do? The two of us managed to talk briefly over Google Chat. Delta was putting him up in a hotel for the night and he managed to get internet access for a bit. We decided that even if we had to pay a bit extra, it would be worth it to change the tickets and still go to Strasbourg. But according to the terms of our ticket purchases, exchanges had to be made before the day of departure otherwise you would incur an additional fee. So, I would have to go out that night and make the switch. The problem was that by this point it was 7:30pm, and all the SNCF boutiques (where you can get train tickets) within a reasonable proximity were already closed.  I thought I might try my luck and see if the ticket counter was still open at the nearest train station….. So, Jason and I said a hasty goodbye (hopefully for only 12 hours) and I flung on my hat and coat yet again and ran back out into the cold.

When I got to Gare de l’Est I found to my surprise and gratification that the ticket counter was in fact still open. Th
at was a relief. So, I waited in line for about an hour. Waited. Waited. Until I finally got up to the ticket agent and explained my situation. Now, Strasbourg is an incredibly popular destination around this time of year because of its famed Christmas markets, so I was doubtful that there would still be any trains with seats open. Sure enough. The 23^rd was booked solid. The 24^th was as well, excepting a couple first class seats that were out of my price range. The Christmas markets are closed on the 25^th….. Luckily, there were some open seats on the 26^th, so the ticket agent was able to exchange the tickets. For an extra fee of 31 euros (ouch!) because the new tickets were slightly more expensive than our original tickets, which we had gotten a deal on because we had purchased them so far in advance. But, I suppose the important thing is that we will be going to Strasbourg in the end, even it it’s a bit painful for our all too small piggy bank….

And the real important thing is that Jason is safe and that the problem was just a delay and not something more serious. And we will be seeing each other tomorrow as long as nothing else goes wrong. Some of the gate agents had told him that there were no seats open on flights to Paris until after Christmas! That would really have been the last straw. We could use some prayers for Jason’s safe and successful from anyone who reads this between then and now!

I was frankly boiling mad earlier this evening (and I don’t get angry easily), and though I have cooled considerably I still maintain that Delta Airlines owes me 31 euros, a day with my fiancé, about four hours of my own life back, and some Christmas cookies thrown in for good measure. They will be getting a polite, but “strongly-worded” letter to that effect within the next couple days….. Bah Christmas. Bah humbug, eh?

But to conclude on an “up” note: here’s a bit of Christmas happiness that came my way a couple of days ago. I may have missed out on decorating Christmas cookies tonight at ACP, but my family back home still carried on with the our traditional sugar cookie baking and decorating session. Each year, in addition to mountains of snowmen, Santas, trees, bells, and angels, we also make five little gingerbread-shaped men. Each member of the family then decorates one of them to look like him or herself. If you’re not home for the day of decorating, you are at the mercy of those who are there. This year the family has grown and there were seven cookies to decorate in this manner. See if you can guess who each cookie represents… If I may say so, I think they did a marvelous job :-) 

Laundry update (see the previous post before reading this)

December 19, 2009; 1am

75019 Paris

Today, almost exactly one month after the washer first broke, we now have a new lave-linge sitting in our kitchen, installed for free by the good people at Darty. We also have a nasty broken washer sitting in our entry way waiting for the ladies to come and pick it up. Why they want the thing is beyond my capacity to fathom. The new machine has already been put through its paces twice by two veeeery excited young ladies, and is performing admirably. A new washer means 200 euro split three ways down the hole, but it is sooooo worth it to have luxury of clean clothes again without having to resort an overpriced Parisian laundromat or handwashing in the bathtub. A very true cliché: you don’t realize how much such little technological conveniences mean until they break on you!

Photos: Clean laundry (!) drying in the living room; new lave-linge. ooh ah; old lave-linge. yes, it has no top. gross.

The Brewster sisters gone-bad meet Rudolph

Dec 4, 2009 1:45 am

75019 Paris

This evening I unexpectedly gained a new appreciation for all the generations of women who came before me…..and before the invention of the washing machine. Our Parisian apartment is equipped with a tiny washing machine or “lave-linge” in the kitchen, though a dryer is not included. Really, we’re fortunate to have even a washer. Many a 7^th floor Parisian studio lacks such amenities, which usually means carting laundry down and up eight flights of stairs (because there’s not elevator either) every time your clothes need a wash. To add insult to injury, you then have to pay between 4 and 12 euros per load at the laundromat. We’re lucky in that we not only have a washing machine, but also in that water is included in our rent, so the only cost of doing laundry is the detergent….and the time it takes to dry out on the rack.

However, I should say we are lucky in that we *had* a washing machine. About two weeks ago I heard a commotion in the kitchen, and hurried out of my room to investigate. I found Katy and Erin sopping up a massive puddle on the floor with several towels and filling our big red all-purpose cleaning bucket with cupfulls of water from the washing machine. Apparently when Erin had opened the machine door to remove her load at the end of the cycle a torrent of water came pouring out. Having no handy-man or woman expertise as far as washing machines (and especially French washing machines) are concerned, we could do little more than conclude that it was not draining as it should and that something (who knew what) must be broken.

So, what to do? Should be a relatively straightforward question, but this story contains an additional layer of complexity. Normally, if something like that were to break in a Parisian apartment such as ours, one could simply call one’s landlord/lady. However, our landladies are frankly quite insane. Example: when I bought them my dossier of documents to look at before signing the lease, they took my passport and scrutinized it with little plastic magnifying glass, all the while making such sage comments as “oh, c’est toi, oui, c’est toi” (“oh, that’s you, yes, that’s you”) and expressing their amazement at how young I look in my passport picture, taken when I was about 15. First: of course I look younger in a photograph taken almost 10 years ago. Second: how is that relevant to anything at all? Third: what purpose does examining my passport with a magnifying glass serve? As if I’ve forged my passport for the express purpose of renting your apartment? And as if you’d be able to tell if a passport was a fake by looking at it through a magnifying glass that looks like it came from the bottom of a cereal box??? Additionally, the benign little old lady appearance of these two sisters apparently belies their real malevolence: according to our building’s guardian, they specialize in preying on unsuspecting, naïve foreign students. Makes me think a little bit of the Brewster aunties in Arsenic and Old Lace, except those two actually had good intentions at heart. Luckily, my flatmates and I only have to deal with our landladies once a month when we pay the rent. That is, unless the washing machine breaks. Nobody really wanted to call them and get into an inevitably round-about discussion over the phone about how it broke, who was responsible, what to do now, etc. etc., so we decided that we could wait to do laundry for another week until they came by to pick up the rent.

So, we conserved our clothing, wore a lot of deodorant, and sprayed generous amounts of fabrize for the next week. To tell the truth, though, it wasn’t quite so dramatic, and we always had the laundromat down the street if one of us got really desperate. On Thursday night we received one of the customary spluttering phone call from the ladies saying they would be by that evening to pick up the rent. Ok. Judgment day. We had been planning to decorate for Christmas that night, so we diverted our minds from the unpleasant prospect of the imminent washing machine debacle by trimming our little four foot tree from Carrefour with blue and silver ornaments and white blinking lights purchased at the “1euro
50 store”. Katy and Erin had even bought a blue and silver spike to top it off! It made me so happy to see our little faux-evergreen topped with a spike, that quirky little Christmas tradition that my family has followed ever since I was little. It made it feel a little more like Christmas and a little more like home.

After finishing the tree, Erin and Kayle (another friend) whipped up some sugar cookies in our mini-oven, and Katy and I started making cinnamon-applesauce ornaments. We turned on some Bing Crosby in the background…… and then the buzzer rang. The ladies had arrived.

We shook hands and exchanged “ca va’s” as a formality. Then we handed over the rent check and went back to our Christmas preparation activities while we waited for the ladies to write our quittances de loyer (rental receipts). It probably took them about 15 minutes, when it would have taken anybody else about 5. While Katy returned to the cinnamon ornaments, I migrated into the kitchen to check out the cookies and chat with Erin and Kayle. In the middle of our conversation, we heard the words “lave-linge” (washing machine) from the living room. It had started. What ensued was a battle of words, mostly between Katy and the ladies. In essence, they insisted that they had rented the apartment “vide” (empty) and therefore weren’t responsible for paying for any repairs on appliances. What doesn’t make sense, however, is that if they rented the place empty, how come they took an inventory of all the furnishings and how can they reserve the right to charge us if we damage, for example, the clic-clack couch? Yet they don’t have to fix the washing machine? According to our reading of the lease, they do; but (surprise, surprise) according to their reading, they don’t. Finally, we dropped the argument, deciding that it wasn’t worth the strain and that we would have to call some of our French friends to get their advice on the situation. The ladies left us to our broken machine and our holiday decorations.

Fuming a bit, we decided it couldn’t hurt to give the machine a whirl without any clothes in it. So we set the cycle dial to 3 and carried on with our apartment decorating and cookie baking. To the Christmas tree, sugar cookies and cinnamon ornaments we added pomanders (oranges pierced with cloves), which gave the apartment a glorious spicy-citrus smell. About the time we had settled down around the living room table with a plate of newly frosted cookies and mugs of hot chocolate, the washer had run its course. Seemingly successfully. It had completed all the cycles and all the water had drained as it was supposed to. It turned out to be an excellent night after all! We topped it off by watching Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. All three of us were looking forward to being able to finally break our laundry fast.

In view of the steadily growing pile of dirty clothes in my closet, I asked the next day if I could be the first to try out the supposedly fixed washer. A risky move, I knew: I could either end up with a batch of wonderfully clean clothes or a soggy mess to clean up. But I figured it couldn’t hurt to try; one of us had to take the role of proverbial guinea pig. The clothes went in the washer and I went back to my work for about an hour. When I returned to the kitchen to get my dinner and my laundry, I discovered to my dismay that the washer was back to its old shenanigans. My clothes were wet and soapy, and stewing in the dirty wash water trapped at the bottom of the stalled machine. Spectacular. Not willing to let go of all hope, I decided to let it sit for another hour or so and then try to run a complete cycle again. So, I ate my dinner and then returned to the kitchen. I cranked the timer around to 3 again, jostled it a little as you sometimes have to do to get it going. The machine whined a bit, but moved not an inch. It was most definitely kaput, and I resigned myself to the next hour spent wringing out my clothes by hand into that trusty red bucket, passing the waterlogged assortment of shirts, jeans, bras, underwear, and socks to Katy (who graciously offered to help me out) so she could hang them on the drying wrack in the living room, and then scooping out the excess water with the aid of a juice glass and a sponge. It was at this point that I started identifying with all the washerwomen of bygone eras. Bless ‘em. It appears, however, that despite the mishap that my clothes are actually drying at a relatively normal rate: in fact, thanks to the nifty trick of draping wet clothes on the radiator that I learned from Olga, the jeans I wanted to wear tomorrow may even be dry for the morning. But we are still left with our dilemma: we are either going to have to replace the machine or suck up the cost of weekly laundromat trips. Our first step is to make some phone calls to see if it is in fact the ladies’ responsibility to fix it. If not, we have already started at looking at new washers: it seems we can get a used machine from 50 euro on Craigslist and a new one for about 180. In either case, if split three ways it will come out cheaper than 6 months of a Parisian laundromat…..

I let it lay for the night, grabbed a sugar cookie, and buried myself in revamping my bibliography while listening to my itunes run through am eclectic assortment of Beethoven, Copland, Tchaikovsky, Gershwin, Chopin, Schutz, Handel, Stravinsky, Bach, Mozart, Dvorak, Debussy, Vivaldi…. Good classical music, Christmas cookies and books can make any situation better. As an added bonus I do have clean clothes fortomorrow, despite the uncertain future of the lave-linge in the kitchen.

Photos: Me and the Christmas tree! [I stole this one off Katy’s facebook page. Mom always complains that there are never pictures of me, so there you are]; The Brewster aunties aka our landladies [courtesy of Arsenic and Old Lace with Cary Grant]; a progression of tree trimming: nude tree, add lights, add ornaments, add a spike on top; a progression of baking sugar cookies in a mini-oven: dough cutouts, plus ten minutes at 170 C, equals Christmas cookies!; cinnamon-applesauce ornaments. We went a little heavy on the applesauce, so they took about three days to dry. But they’re on the tree now; pomanders. They made the entire apartment smell absolutely delicious!; our make-shift “fireplace”; a beautiful plate of Erin’s sugar cookies, now complete with icing and coconut sprinkles; Rudolph and Hermey about to set off for an adventure involving a crazy prospector, a bunch of misfit toys, and a cranky bumble. I love Christmas movies :-) [courtesy of Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer]; a shirt drying on my radiator after washer disaster take 2; scooping out the washer; hot chocolate and cookies make everything better.

Bonus Picture Series: Katy tries to put the spike on the top of our poor little Charlie Brown Christmas tree

1) Katy discovers she is too short to reach the top of the tree on top of the old mini fridge, which, incidentally, makes a quite nice tree stand [The mini fridge came with the apartment, but it was pretty gross. So it was promptly banished to the living room and replaced by a hand-me-down full-sized fridge from Erin’s former host family, which has since developed problems of its own….. but that’s another story]

2) We solve Katy’s height problem with a stool……

3) only to find that our poor little tree from Carrefour is apparently a French relative of Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree. [we did eventually manage to get it to stand up properly]

Snow in Paris, a winter wonderland :-)

December 18, 2009; 12:00am

Paris 75019

This entry, for once, is actually written and posted in “real time” because I am soooo excited that: IT’S SNOWING IN PARIS! I woke up this morning, and, after washing my face and brushing my teeth, I traipsed into the kitchen to scope out just how many dishes my flatmates had left in the kitchen sink this morning. [see footnote] To my amazement and delight when I looked up from the creole rue-caked tupperware, eggy spatula, greasy fry pan, coffee stained mug and three streaky plates I discovered that the world outside the window was covered in fluffy white. Snow!!!!! It gave me the biggest grin I have had in a long time. Snow!!!!!! I quickly grabbed my camera and snapped a couple pictures. Here, for your viewing enjoyment are a couple actual snapshots of a snowy day in Paris. Merry (almost) Christmas!

 

Photos: The evergreen behind my apartment covered in white; the courtyard behind my apartment nicely dusted; the view from our front balcony. If you look across the canal you can see the roofs of the Thursday market. They were still there selling their fruits and veges despite the weather; view of the other way down the canal. It gets really slippery even when it’s only raining. So slippery that I make sure to give myself a good couple feet between where I’m walking and the water’s edge for fear of falling in! It’s worse with the snow as Paris has not quite mastered the art of salting and sanding public streets; little pink chairs outside a café. Occupied only by snow today; Hausmann building powdered on top; the canal by my apartment at night. It started snowing again around 10pm as you can see by the slanted streaks in the photo. A real winter wonderland with the streetlamps glowing; this is the stuff itself: SNOW!; unfortunately I don’t think the snow will last very long. This pictures shows you the transition from snow to slippery slush….. But maybe, just maybe we’ll have a white Christmas?

Footnote from above: my family will described me as “messy”, and, granted, when I’m working on a paper (say, like a 75 page history thesis) I do have a tendency to allow my stacks of library books, a motley assortment of pens and pencils, hand-scribbled notes, folders stuffed with photocopies, half-read newspapers, etc. to spill out from my desk and bookshelf onto the floor, the top of my dresser, a spare window ledge……. But if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a dirty kitchen. Again, my family may refute this, and I know I left some raisin bran caked bowls and peanut butter knives in the sink when I was a teenager, but since moving away from home, I have increasingly developed an aversion to messy kitchens. I *always* put away any ingredients I use for cooking right away, I *always* wipe down the countertops, and I *always* wash my dishes directly after using them. The sole exception being if some concoction has completely melded itself to the pan and requires a good soak before I attempt to scrape it off. Far better to just wash
the dishes right away while they’re still covered with *food* and not gelatinous goo that’s starting to both look and smell like some creature out of a Goosebumps book left lurking in the back of my mind from third grade reading. “It came from beneath the sink: It’s warm…it’s breathing…and it doesn’t do dishes!” [Book #30. I admittedly only read about three or four Goosebumps books and this wasn’t one of them, but the fright I got from that small sample makes me pretty sure the analogy holds here] To put it bluntly: dirty dishes left sitting in the sink gross me out. My flatmates, on the other hand, clearly do not possess the same revulsion. When I first moved in, I decided to experiment and see how long it would take them to wash their own dishes. So, I just washed the dishes I used and waited…. Bad idea. The stack in the sink just continued to pile up until I simply couldn’t take it any more. I broke down and washed. It took me so long that my fingers were pruney by the end! It looked like I had taken an hour long bath! Now I just wash whatever is in the sink every morning to prevent the pile-up. Actually, I don’t mind at all as I quite enjoy dishwashing anyway. Plus Katy usually takes out the garbage and Erin cleaned the toilets the other day, so I figure that’s a pretty fair trade-off!

Three Thanksgivings!

Dec 3 2009; 2 am

Paris 75019

A note: I fully expected Thanksgiving to be a rather depressing day in Paris. I imagined just tossing a frozen pizza in the toaster oven for dinner and spending the night with my nose in another Vichy book. On the contrary, I found myself with an overabundance of potential Thanksgiving dinners. Four were in the offing, and I managed to get to three. Here are little summaries of each:

Dinner #1: Thanksgiving soup and a show.

Location: American Church Paris

Date: Thanksgiving night (Thursday, November 26)

Time: 6pm-9:30pm

Menu: Your choice of spaghetti bolognaise, minestrone, or pumpkin soup (yum. It was just a frozen soup from Picarde, but it was delicious!); mixed salade with vinaigrette; baguettes and camembert cheese; assorted brownies and cookies (typical Thurber Thursdays fare).

Notes: A special Thanksgiving rendition of Thurber Thursdays that included the usual Thursday fellowship meal, which was followed by an “art happening” in the sanctuary. Composed by an American artist living in Paris who left banking to pursue his true passion in art, it drew inspiration from the story of the prodigal son and the artist’s own experiences growing up in Appalachia. A difficult performance to describe, it included a conglomeration of visual art installations, drumming, live painting, interpretive dance, projection, and recited poetry. See pictures below. After the performance, we had dessert and the characteristic Thurber Thursday discussion. Many interesting points were raised, but here’s just a little “food for thought”: the artists made a point of noting that for him art, whether it be painting or writing poetry, is an act of worship. How is it that we as Christians in the 21^st century seem to have restricted the idea of “worship” to the service that you attend every Sunday if you’re a “good” Christian? Are there not a multitude of ways in which we can worship God, as many ways as we are unique individuals with particular talents and callings that can be put to work for the glory of God?

Photos from Thanksgiving #1: The canvas on which the artist painted during the performance; art installation in the sanctuary; some of the artist’s work; part of the art installation; the artist himself

Dinner #2: Traditional Thanksgiving by amateur American 20-somethings

Location: the borrowed kitchen of a French family in the 17^th arrondissement

Date
: Saturday after Thanksgiving (Saturday, November 28)

Time: 2-4:30 pm

Menu: Turkey (which cost one of the hosting girl’s parents 60 American dollars at a French store called, appropriately, “Thanksgiving”); box stuffing (sent from the US); wild rice (also sent from the US; the girls who were hosting and many of the guests were from MN); gravy made from scratch and the packet; cranberry sauce; mashed potatoes; sweet potatoes; banana bread (my addition to the meal); pumpkin pie; apple pie; baguettes (you can’t have a real meal in France, even for an American holiday, without a baguette).

Notes: The kitchen is a mess. Mixing bowls, pans, spoons, knives, sticking out of the sink at odd angles. Three massive pots on the stove, full of bubbling potatoes, simmering wild rice, and slowly crisping stuffing. The counter is barely visible thanks to a carton of a half dozen eggs, a bottle of demi-crème milk, salt and pepper shakers, a Stovetop stuffing box, bright red oven mitts, a half-eaten baguette, several mugs of half-drunk coffee and a bottle of half-drunk Coke, two half-used 1-kilo bags of sugar and flour, one or two potato-caked spoons, and a gradually melting slab of butter. But in spite of the apparent mayhem, Thanksgiving dinner is slowly taking shape. The stuffing appears to be done, except for the addition of a couple of chopped onions. The rice, an import from Minnesota, is ready to remove from the heat and the 5 kilos of potatoes have finally softened enough for butter, milk and mashing. The turkey still needs a bit more time, but every time we open the oven door to baste, it lets out a distinctive smell that says “Thanksgiving” quite clearly. Our group of green American ex-pat 20-somethings, in charge of making Thanksgiving happen for the first time in their lives, appears to be succeeding thus far. Four thousand five hundred miles from home in Paris, no less.

Of course Thanksgiving dinner must have a turkey, and stuffing, and mashed potatoes, but for me, there is an additional requirement: bread. I love to bake bread for holiday meals. So, wanting to contribute something of my own to this Thanksgiving dinner in Paris, I offer to make some of my mother’s banana bread. Now, France may be famous for its baguettes, but nothing compares with my mom’s “best banana bread in the whole wide world.” I have a banana from Franprix in my bag, and a bit of scrounging around the cluttered kitchen uncover the butter, sugar, egg, flour, baking powder, and salt I need to mix up a loaf. No baking soda, but you’re always flying by the seat of your pants when baking with American recipes in France, so I figure its absence won’t be too much of an handicap. The different gluten content of French flour is far more of a concern. Plus the fact that the French measure in mL rather than cups, which can make following an American recipe a test of one’s creativity. I end up using an espresso cup and calling it a half cut, though I later discover a set of American-style measuring cups buried in the sink. Tant pis (Ah well). We also manage to unearth a bread pan from the depths of the kitchen cabinets. It is a bit too large for a single batch, but with only one banana at my disposal there is not much I can do but throw it all together, spoon the batter into the pan, and hope for the best.

The bread, however, has to wait its turn as the turkey occupies the whole oven. Luckily it isn’t very long and the bird is out and ready to be carved. Into the oven goes the banana bread. Not feeling too confident about my turkey-carving abilities, I opt instead to try my hand at the gravy while keeping an eye on the bread. I have watched my grandmothers and mother whip up Thanksgiving gravy countless times before, but now when put in a situation where I have to make it myself, I’m at a bit of a loss. A Google-search for “gravy from scratch” is only so helpful. In fact, gravy from scratch is, I think, one of those things you can only learn by feel and experience from those who have done it before you and do it well. But, in the absence of any gravy-making elders, I have to improvise. I have vague recollections of a whisk, a saucepan over the stove, and some sort of starchy powder that comes in a baby blue container…. So, start with what you know, right? I dig a whisk out of the utensil drawer and start heating the turkey drippings on the electric stove over “5” heat, which I assume is perhaps about medium? Stir it all around a bit with the whisk. Ok. I have no starchy stuff in the blue container, but perhaps flour will work as a thicken
ing agent? Dump a little in, whisk a bit. Dump a bit more in, whisk a bit. A dash of salt and pepper seem in order…. At least the formerly watery drippings have started to look something like grandma’s gravy… [I have no idea how this ended up tasting, as I wasn’t present for the meal itself. It may very well have found itself in the garbage can…. But I like to think my improvised gravy from scratch surpassed the packaged instant gravy sent from the US by leaps and bounds….]

While I am whisking flour into turkey drippings, I simultaneously keep an anxious eye on my masterpiece baking in the oven. After 30 minutes the timer goes off, and I open the oven to take a peak. Freshly baked banana bread smell has overtaken the turkey smell. It’s just as, if not more deliciously enticing. A good sign, too. As for appearances, the bread looks as it should. It has risen a bit and is lightly browned on top. But when I stick a knife in the middle to see if is done, the blade comes out sticky and the top of the bread caves in. Oh no! Most definitely not done! It seems that the bread has risen more than it should have, creating an air bubble between the top crust and the rest of the bread. Perhaps I had over compensated for the lack of baking soda with too much baking powder? An absolute bread disaster looms as I finish up the gravy. However, after another ten minutes or so in the oven, the bread comes out smelling delicious and looking perfect. It even slips out of the pan without any sticking. I dump the loaf a plate upside-down and start slicing with a breadknife. A little more moist than usual, but it cuts nicely. But then I go to turn the newly-sliced loaf right-side up, and it crumbles in my fingers! That over-risen top! So, rather than properly sliced banana bread, we end up with banana bread crumble. But, after I snitch a nibble, I can attest to the fact that it still lives up to its reputation as the “best banana bread in the whole wide world” at least as far as taste goes. And that’s what really counts. [again, I didn’t get to see how the banana bread went over at the meal, but I hear it was enjoyed all around]

Everything has been a success: we have a veritable Thanksgiving feast, just waiting to be eaten by the hungry cooks. The final step: carrying all the dishes across the street and then six floors up to the hosts’ apartment. In a misty Parisian rain. This is where all could be lost. If a car swerves around the corner too fast while we’re crossing the street. If somebody slips in a puddle and drops the turkey. Disaster! But there’s nothing for it but to suit up for the charge. We have used just about every dish in the kitchen, some of which have plastic tops to shield them from the rain. For others we have to make do with paper towels. We stack up dishes in our arms, one on top of the other, and carry them down seven flights, up and over two streets, and reach the hosts’ apartment without any major mishaps. At this point I leave my banana bread behind and head off to the next dinner. I might not get to share in the meal, but the cooking alone was great fun!

Photos form Thanksgiving #2: mayhem in the kitchen; the perfectly done turkey; StoveTop stuffing box, courtesy of Thanksgiving carepackages from the US; home-made pumpkin pie; turkey drippings waiting to be turned into gravy; improvised gravy from scratch; best banana bread in the whole wide world ready to go into the oven; best banana bread appears to slice nicely; best banana bread transformed into the best banana bread crumble in the whole wide world. We’ll call it “banana bread Parisian style.”

Dinner #3: Vegetarian Thanksgiving

Location: a fellow UofM PhD student’s apartment in the 15^th arrondissement

Date: Saturday after Thanksgiving (Saturday, November 28)

Time: 5pm-11am the next morning

Menu: Tofurkey garnished with artichokes and Brussels sprouts (laugh all you like; it was delicious! It got rave reviews, even from the carnivores); braised Brussels sprouts; mashed potatoes; sweet potatoes; stuffing made with baguettes; actual baguettes; camembert; grapes; clementines; fruit salade with apples, cranberries, walnuts, and yogurt;  pumpkin pie (I don’t usually “do” pie, but this was pumpkin pie was amazing! May have been the graham cracker crust); chocolate ice cream (which doesn’t exactly go with pumpkin pie, but it worked); strawberry tart from a neighborhood boulangerie;   chocolate “maxi plaisir” bars.

Notes: Best Thanksgiving ever :-) Nice to be among people (three Americans, two Aussies, and a Brit. An international Thanksgiving to boot) who actually understand that not eating turkey does not mean that you come from another planet, nor does the fact that you actually *like* tofurkey. But more than the food, it was a great opportunity to converse with some people who are several years into their PhD studies about their work, the quirks of historians and history, and just life in general. The conversations were so intriguing, in fact, that by the time somebody actually looked at a clock, it was 1am! The RATP metro site was down, and nobody was sure when the Metro closed. Although two of the other guests gave it a gamble, I wasn’t especially keen on the idea of walking home alone at 2 am, and my hosts graciously let me stay the night. They made up a little bed for me on the floor, complete with air mattress and sleeping bag. I slept very well…..that is until about 4 am when I woke up with a terrible crink in my neck…..to discover that the air mattress had deflated halfway and my back had sagged into a u-shaped depression, which accounted for the pain that woke me up. I deflated the mattress the rest of the way and spent a rather pleasant rest of the night snoozing “par terre.” (on the floor) A bit like an indoors boundary waters excursion. In the middle of Paris…..it’s all part of the adventure!

Photos from Thanksgiving #3: The vegetarian spread. The pan in the middle behind the apples and potatoes is the tofurkey for those who are curious; my Thanksgiving plate, appropriately stuffed full. We all went back for seconds…..and thirds; dessert tarte and pie. Delicious.

Final note: I truly was blessed this Thanksgiving in Paris and I am truly thankful for that.

addendum

November 27, 2009

1:15am; 75019 Paris

A late addendum to my last post: I discovered today that there is a Christmas tree set up right by my usual metro stop on avenue de Flandre. Paris knows just how to make me smile sometimes!

A surprise encounter with Christmas

November 26, 2009

1:00 am; Paris 75019

There seems to be an unspoken rule back home that you can’t start Christmas until Thanksgiving is over. In Paris, however, Thanksgiving is not a “thing” (outside of American ex-pat circles), so Christmas, I guess, can start whenever it so pleases. For the past few weeks as November draws to a close, I have seen hints of Christmas cropping up throughout the city. A decorated evergreen tree set up in a public square, ads for Casse Noisette (the Nutcracker) in the metro, swaths of blue lights hanging above rue Mouffetard, store window displays in-the-making with the traditional Christmas décor of red and green accented with sparkling silver and gold. But today I unexpectedly walked into Christmas full force.

Today is/was Thanksgiving, which (at least in my own experience) means a big meal and family if you’re in the United States and a wistful feeling of loneliness if you’re not. However, I am blessed to have the American Church here in Paris, which was holding a community dinner and art performance tonight. Plus I have two Thanksgiving dinners to look forward to this coming Saturday…. But Thanksgiving can still get a bit lonely without the family. Especially in a country where most people are not really aware that the day has any special meaning elsewhere in the world. Not that most Americans are conscious of Bastille Day when it comes around, either…. So as this day was a day like any other from the perspective of the French, I spent the first half occupied with an entirely ordinary regimen of emailing and reading. Then in the afternoon I decided to run an rather mundane errand that I had been meaning to take care of for weeks: I metroed over to the SNCF boutique at La Madeleine to purchase the youth discount card for train tickets on my way to the church for dinner. I bought my card, and with that mission accomplished, I found myself left with two hours to spare before dinner at church. I could have gone back home or just metroed to the church really early and gotten some extra reading in, but I decided that it was Thanksgiving, I was in Paris, and I was going to make a holiday of it after all. So, I went walking, which is always a pleasure in Paris. Down from La Madeleine toward the Seine. As I strolled, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that all the ritzy shops that run from La Madeleine to Place de la Concorde were now fully decked out in their holiday best: the windows were decorated with lights and baubles and crammed with merchandise, as if each shop was competing for the most extravagant display. Such outer trappings may be (often rightfully, especially in France where laicité reigns supreme) considered superficial and overly commercial, but, in that moment, these secular decorations were for me striking reminders that Advent is upon us; it seemed that Paris was preparing for the Christmas season and Christ’s coming.

However, it was when I reached the Champs Elysées that I really found Christmas. The trees that line the Champs Elysées were strung with chains of blue lights, twinkling against the black sky. At one end of the famous street, a ferris wheel at Place de la Concord lit up a dazzling circle and at the other end Arc de Triomphe was glowing brightly. Running in-between on either side of the road stood white market stalls selling every kind of Christmas merchandise you could imagine: golden amber jewelry; petrushka dolls from Russia; Christmas tree ornaments; tea pots and a selection of exotic flavored teas; intricately carved wood vases; bookmarks made of real gold; fuzzy red Santa hats; metal wind catchers spinning rapidly in the crisp wind; crèche figurines made of plastic, plaster, or wood; gingerbread in the shapes of hearts, Christmas trees, and stars, covered with puffy sugar frosting; colorful cashmere scarves, knitted wool hats, and soft slippers; expensive silk ties; gourmet sausages from the provinces; decorative candles; scented soaps; stuffed animals. You could even have your picture taken with Pere Noel (Santa) or visit the “crèche de noel avec les animaux vivant” (Christmas crèche with live animals), for a fee
of 2 euro. There are food stalls every couple of feet. Some sell the French Christmas market version of “fair food”: crepes sucré and salé (sweet and savory crepes), gauffres (waffles) piled with neutella or whipped cream, churros, French fries, sausage sandwiches, smoked salmon on a roll, foie gras on toast, assorted panini, chocolate chaud, vin chaud (hot spiced Christmas wine)…. In addition to these concession stands, there are other stalls for those looking to purchase some more high-end Christmas goodies. If you’re lucky, you may even get the chance to “gouter” (taste) a sugary candied cranberry, a cookie made with maple syrup from Quebec or a dark chocolate hazelnut truffle that melts divinely in your mouth. Once again, an argument can be made that these markets stand for all that is wrong with Christmas; the season, after all, is about so much more than purchasing gifts. But is it not these very traditions that help us get into the “spirit” of Christmas, that remind us that this is a special time of year when we welcome God’s son into the world? In the absence of all the traditions of home (trimming the tree, baking cookies, making up boxes for Operation Christmas Child, etc, etc), a run-in with Parisian Christmas traditions was precisely what I need to remind me both that Christmas is coming and that on this Thanksgiving Day (as cliché as it sounds) I have so many things to be thankful for, far too many to list or count. This unforeseen trip to a Parisian Christmas market is only one of them.

Interesting note: one of my flatmates, who is an English teaching assistant for French elementary schoolers, taught a Thanksgiving lesson today. She had the kids trace their hands to make turkeys, something we probably all remember doing when we were young. Then she asked them to write things they were thankful for in each of the fingers. The kids were rather confused, and it took a lot of explaining to finally get them to understand what “thankful” meant. It was apparently difficult concept for them to wrap their heads around, even when she explained in French. “Thankful” is another one of those words for which there is no really good translation that has quite the same connotation in French as it does in English. You can say “reconnaissant,” but that implies something more along the lines of “grateful.” Perhaps part of the reason the word “thankful” carries the weight it does in English (at least American English) is because we’ve been instilled with the Thanksgiving story, however historically incorrect it may be, from the time we’re little?

Photos: Christmas tree in a Paris square; lights above rue Mouffetard; frosted leaves decorate the Rolex shop; Ladurée’s windows are brightly lit; star lights decorate the exterior of this Hausmann building; waterfall Christmas lights spilling out of hotel windows; window display of crystal ware….Jason and I should do our registry shopping here!; Christmas markets along Champs Elysées; Arc de Triomphe at one end of the illuminated Champs Elysées; the Concorde ferris wheel at the other end; Christmas market stalls selling sausages, wooden vases, maple syrup, soaps, wind-catches, teas, nativity figurines, scarves, wood carvings, gingerbread and other sweets, Christmas decorations, Santa Claus paraphernalia, chocolates; and the cow from the live-animal crèche.

A new home in Paris….though still not covered with vines….

November 22, 2009

2:00am, 75019 Paris

Just a quick practical update here. For those of you who haven’t already heard, my housing search in fact continued after my previous blog entry on the Paris-apartment-hunting-process. For numerous reasons, I have left the tiny room in Olga’s apartment for another tiny room in an apartment shared with two other American girls who are teaching English here for the year.

Old room…..

…..new room!

I’m now located in the 19^th arrondissement, which possesses a quite different feel to it than that of my former home in the 16^th. As a general rule, the 16^th is an upscale, predominantly white, rich, conservative neighborhood. A kind of American-style suburb within the city (keep in mind that as a rule the suburbs of Paris are actually the US equivalent of the inner-city). The 19^th, in contrast to the 16th, tends to be a somewhat less well-to-do area of town. Some might call it shabby, but it certainly has “character.” It is home to a wide range of diverse people and cultures: on a typical 5 minute stroll to the metro you might run into black women in a brightly patterned African headscarf; another woman wearing a sparkling Indian sari; several Orthodox Jewish men with sidelocks, beards and yarmulkes; a pair of second-generation maghrebin in jeans and leather jackets; an Asian man pushing his baby daughter in a stroller with three baguettes laid over the top; a little silver-haired French lady walking her dog; kids of all origins running down the sidewalk to school together. France, much like the United States, has in fact long been a country of immigration (as opposed to emigration), with people coming from all over Europe as well as many of France’s former colonies in Africa and elsewhere. The topic of “immigration to France” and the resultant issues in all their complexity requires a far more nuanced and thorough discussion than I’m able to devote time to here; suffice it to say that, living here in this arrondissement, it is interesting to witness the incredible diversity that characterizes Paris in actuality. An interesting and related note: Sarkosy recently launched a national debate on French national identity on the web. http://www.debatidentitenationale.fr/. 
 National identity is an issue fraught with controversy in France. Since the Revolution, France has operated under the motto of liberté, egalité, fraternité (liberty, equality, fraternity), priding itself on seeing all people as equal and the same. The upshot, however, is that France has also tended to ignore ethnic differences, which at times manifests itself in outright hostility and xenophobia when faced with “the other.” Witness the Holocaust. I could of course go into a long digression on this topic, but Vichy’s homegrown anti-Semitic policies at face value evidence this xenophobic current. Then add to that the fact that the majority of Jews who were deported from France were in fact foreign Jews who had come to the land of liberté, egalité and fraternité seeking refuge from tyranny and oppression. Or, more recently, witness the notorious Jean-Marie Le Pen and his anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic ultra right-wing nationalist Front National political party, which has won seats in the French National Assembly as well as the European parliament. In the 2002 presidential elections Le Pen himself came in second to Jacques Chirac, though he was defeated in a second round run-off. Or the now well-known headscarves debates and subsequent 2004 ban on wearing any religious symbol to French public schools. Differences are to be effaced as far as possible. Complete assimilation into the French way of life is expected of immigrants. There is no room here for a melting pot or a salad bowl or whatever metaphor you may prefer to describe the mélange of peoples who have come to constitute “America.” An interesting contrast. When one immigrates to France, one is expected to discard all links to one’s country of origin and become *French,* whatever that means exactly. At the same time, ethnic and cultural differences are real and becoming more pronounced as immigration from Africa, Asia, and Arab countries has swelled in the later part of the 20^th century and into the 21^st century. This all begs the question: qu’est-ce qu’etre Francais? (what is French?) Is France more than just baguettes, the tricolor, and Marianne? I’ll stop here or a real dissertation will ensue.

The architecture here in the 19^th is similarly diverse: a somewhat incongruous mixture of shabby modern high-rises and pockets of Hausmann buildings. I’m sadly still not living in a Hausman house covered with vines. In fact, walking into my new apartment building, with its square-ish, orange tiled entrance hallway, feels more like walking into a Star Wars spaceship than the romantic Parisian apartment of my dreams. Basic description of the living quarters: the apartment has a living room with a table, book shelves, and a massive blue couch; one toilette; two salle de bains; a tiny kitchen with a sink, microwave, mini-oven, stovetop burners, and fridge; and three bedrooms, one of which is mine. The place has its flaws: the shower drain has a tendency to clog, for example. The couch in the living room is lopsided and creaky. There’s no real oven, though the mini-oven works in a pinch. And the washer broke yesterday….. Nevertheless, it feels more like home that Olga’s place ever did. An actual “room of one’s own,” to borrow from Ms. V. Woolf. Moving all my things across the city was murder (thank heaven for Jason and my roommate Erin!), but now I’m quite settled into my new room. After some heavy bleaching and fixing up, the rickety plastic shelf left over from the previous occupant has been put to work. It only has three little shelves, but that’s sufficient. A brief edition of “on my bookshelf” follows. On the bottom shelf: bank statements, passport copies and other important documents along with napkins, a bar of dark chocolate I’ve been saving for a special occasion (thanks Sandi!), two chocolate cookies left over from church last Thursday, a can of lentils, a sack of rice, a box of tea, and a bag of “American Sandwich Complete” bread. On the middle shelf: boxes of extra pens and pencils, rubber cement, playing cards, scissors, and multicolored paper folders stuffed with research documents. On top shelf: scattered papers waiting their turn to be filed, my calendar, an altoids tin full of bobby pins, my ipod, a pyrex dish I borrowed from a friend, and a ceramic cup I stole from the kitchen to hold my pens and pencils. And, last but not least: under and next to the shelf are stacks of books from the Paris municipal library. The physical manifestation of my reading list. Tan-ish parquet floors, which aren’t the greatest, as it’s difficult to tell if they’re getting dirty or if it’s just the texturing. I could use a rug, but am too cheap to invest in one for only seven months. I am lucky enough to have my own closet in the room; a rare find in France where an armoire is more typical. No shelves, but I have a little hanging “etager” from Ikea that works rather well as I hardly have any clothes to store anyway. The closet also houses my peanut butter stash…. My little twin bed is still covered with borrowed lime green sheets compliments of Erin. I should really go out and buy some of my own. And a pillow, though Erin’s pillow may be the most comfortable pillow I have slept on in my life and I’d be happy to pay her for it…. The room also has it’s own bit of charm: a tiny balcony of my own. It doesn’t look out onto a particularly remarkable view, nor does it have a wrought iron railing like a Hausmann balcony. However, I just hung up some white sheer curtains along the windows (using paperclips) and they give the room a kind of orientalist-fantasy British-Empire-India ambiance. And the balcony does receive some lovely morning sun, and it will be nice to be able to sit out there and soak in the sun while doing some reading in the spring. The apartment itself overlooks Canal d’Ourcq, which was built in the 1800s to supply potable water to Paris. It has a certain amount of charm; our own little Seine right outside the front door. Finally, my roommates are wonderful and have welcomed me to my new home.

Home is a funny word. In English it carries a lot of weight, a sort of *feeling* that is intangible and inexpressible but understood. A feeling inextricably entangled in the meaning of the word. It is an idiosyncrasy of French that there is no word that quite means the same thing as the English “home.” You can say “ma maison” (my house) or “chez moi” (at my house) or “ma patrie” (my homeland), but none of them really mean home. Home. This is home for now. My home in Paris. I love Paris, just as I loved DC when I lived there, or Zambia when I visited there, or Guatemala, or any number of other places I have visited in my life. But home, for me, is still Minnesota. But it’s more than  just Minnesota alone. Perhaps the reason why the French quasi-translations for home don’t quite work is that they leave out the people. They refer to merely physical locations: a *house*, a *country*. Home has another layer: it is where you find the people you love. Only when you are with those people are you really home in the true sense of the word.

Happy Thanksgiving to all back “home” if I don’t post again before Thanksgiving itself!

Photos: My old room at Olga’s house. You’ll notice it seems a bit cluttered. Granted, I had a bunch of library books and had started accumulating research documents, but this is larger because Olga was still storing many of her things in the room. One of the reasons for the move; My new room in the 19^th. I’ve been able to make this room my own. Notice the Peter Pan and Wendy painting on the bookshelf and the blessing from my Mom and Dad along with a rosary from Jerusalem hanging over the bed. The pile of library books is hidden behind the bookcase, though :-); Liberty Leading the People by Eugene Delacroix. This painting hangs in the Louvre. Is this France?; Canal d’Ourcq from the front balcony #1; Canal d’Ourcq from the front balcony #2; the living room with the big blue couch. Yes, my flatmates have yet to take down the Halloween decorations; the tiny kitchen. Notice the washing machine in the kitchen. Typical of a French apartment; the apartment building from the outside; the orange-tiled space age apartment building entrance.