The Layover- Paris

"My plan is, I'm gonna eat some f***ing cheese and I'm gonna get drunk. You're almost guaranteed to have a really good time." Anthony Bourdain understands Paris perfectly.

Bonjour Mademoiselle !

Click here for a rambling video update.

Before Sunset

"Can I learn to look at things with clear, fresh eyes? How much can I take in at a single glance? Can the grooves of old mental habits be effaced? This is what I'm trying to discover. The fact that I have to look after myself keeps me mentally alert all the time and I find that I am developing a new elasticity of mind. I have become accustomed to only having to think, will, give orders and dictate, but now I have to occupy myself with the rate of exchange, changing money, paying bills, taking notes and writing with my own hand." 

-Goethe, 11 September 1786

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     When I leave a week in-between posts, it feels like there's too much to say. In Minnesota, I can go weeks without anything notable happening, but even a day in Paris is so saturated that when my head hits the pillow I can't even remember waking up that morning. I can't commit to anything with anyone without first consulting my Google Calendar. I feel scattered.

     I know I'm definitely learning how to be independent much more this time than last time, even though last time really kicked my ass (in a good way). I've had to get my whole life set up (phone, bank account, rent, internet, etc.) without anyone helping me and usually not in English, either. This is the first time I've ever lived completely alone before. It's no longer, "Hey, whose turn is it to buy toilet paper?" but instead, "Okay, how am I going to tell my landlord that my pipe burst in the kitchen?"(Luckily for me, water started leaking through my landlord's ceiling, so she knew about it and thus I didn't have to figure that one out.)

     Maybe I've been so busy because the weather's so nice and I don't want to spend any time inside. Last week, I was convinced that summer was over and we were already doomed for a seven-month stretch of cold, continuous rain. But then the sun came out and the scarves came off. Well, off anyone non-French, anyway. In my observations, I've come to the conclusion that Parisians only experience one season: cold. It can be seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit and they still refuse to remove their wool scarves and fur-lined coats. I've been wearing jeans just to be polite, but I'd be much more comfortable in shorts like any reasonable Minnesotan would. When I don't wear a jacket, they look at me like funny. Same goes for when I smile in public. Anyway, it's so beautiful that I was struck by how gorgeous the light was streaming through the windows at McDonald's on boulevard St-Michel at sunset today. And then I felt stupid because it was McDonald's. 

     One night last week, I sat in the empty square in front of Saint-Sulpice, my favorite Parisian church, staring at its golden façade and I realized I want to start doing sketches again. It makes me so happy to just sit and observe and listen to the fountains. It's nice to not be in a constant state of mild anger over things like people who think it's okay to flâner in the métro or cough in your face and instead do something that doesn't require any thinking.

      On Saturday, I spent time sitting in one of the green metal chairs in the Jardin du Luxembourg watching, listening and sketching with my watercolor markers. A French girl approached me, asking "Qu'est-ce que vous faites ? Est-ce que je peux regarder ?" She told me she came to draw, too, and that my drawing of the palais was beautiful. She left and I sat there for a long time with the sun warming my face and I thought if I had to live in the Jardin du Luxembourg for the rest of my life, I could be happy. I'm not sure why that would ever be a legitimate situation, though. (Sidenote: I can make watercolor postcards. If you want me to make you one, send me your address.)

Jardin du Luxembourg

Jardin du Luxembourg

Jardin du Luxembourg

The Medici Fountain, Jardin du Luxembourg

     One of my favorite leisure activities is to browse the bouquinistes, which almost always takes me to the Pont des Arts. Even though Romantic Paris is starting to really annoy me, I still like reading the locks to see where they came from. On late Saturday afternoon just before sunset, there was a brother duo playing a set of their own music and a few American covers (Watch it here) and you wouldn't have guessed from a distance that they were actually good since a swarming group of girls usually doesn't hint at greatness. They mentioned an upcoming show of theirs, but I could only hear "October" and "frères." I actually Googled "Octobre concert Paris frères musique" but that didn't direct me to anything. I still have one of their songs in my head.

Pont des Arts

Pont des Arts

Pont des Arts

     I covered most of the sixth on foot, which I never would've done last year since I was such a métro enthusiast. I really couldn't see the forest for the trees. I had no concept of how the city is connected. For example, I had no idea that the Montparnasse Cemetery is right next to Raspail or how close I used to live to avenue du Maine. None. On Sunday, I went down to the fourteenth to find a Monoprix or Franprix that would be open in the morning and I ended up walking all over my old stomping grounds. Simply put, the fourteenth is my jam. For real. I literally walked down the street with a huge smile on my face before realizing I was in Paris and shouldn't do that. I love how real it feels when I'm there and I feel like I fit in. My new neighborhood in the sixth is mainly upper-class and the traffic on the boulevard St-Michel is a constant roar in the background. In the fourteenth, I can actually hear my feet hit the ground and it's beautiful.

     

One of my goals this year is to find someone to take me for a ride.

Cour du Commerce Saint-André

Institut Hongrois on rue Bonaparte

Jardin du Luxembourg

Jardin du Luxembourg

View of the Tour Montparnasse near home

      I went with my new friend Rebecca to a French-English "meet-up" at Café du Châtelet in the first, where a big group of French speakers and English speakers hang out, have a beer and do trivia. Each time it was a new round we had to speak only in one language. It's really, really strange and absurd to hear French people struggle to speak in English to each other. My team was three Parisians, a grad student from UW-Madison, an Indian man who lives in Spain (and spoke no English or French) and a Swedish man. We ended up winning the whole game and got free shots. We stayed long after it was over, analyzing life to death as they do in Paris. This is part of why I came here; where would I be able to meet so many different people at home? It puts your life into perspective when you realize the world is so much bigger than the United States. That's the cross-cultural studies degree talking.This wasn't the only time, either: On Friday, Rebecca and I hung out with people from Israel, Mexico, Switzerland, Spain and France (And their eighteen-year-old tabby cat and I fell in love), and last night I talked about my favorite books at Shakespeare and Company with a guy my age from Luxembourg and an older, seriously snobby man from Boston who was quoting entire passages of Gatsby to me just because he could and acting like he personally knew Henry James and James Joyce.

     Here are more pictures of the past week. I realize I almost never talk about school, which is why I'm here in the first place, I guess. Another time.

Rachel

RER at Port-Royal

Picnicking on my balcony/terrace

Musée de l'Orangerie

Braved the lines for their famed hot chocolate, which outshined their terrible service.

I finally got down to the quai to drink wine. There is really not much better than that.

The staircase in an art studio we wandered into in the first. Some of the craziest stuff I've ever seen.

Pub Quiz Night at the Highlander and trying to reform a winning team.

All The Small Things

"I have only just realized how bold I was to travel unprepared and alone through this country...and anyone who travels alone for the first time, hoping for uninterrupted pleasures, is bound to be often disappointed and have much to put up with."

-Goethe, 26 October 1786

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    It's now the second week of classes and my schedule has already changed. I decided to drop my elective, Communication and the Global Public Sphere, because I found out about an undergraduate course that is basically my whole life dream class if there ever was one: Scripts For Travel. I get to learn how to write about travel. I'm about to be the biggest nerd I've ever been. Today, which was my first day, I turned into Hermione Granger. It's mainly a lecture course, but I managed to explain both Stendhal Syndrome and the plot of A Room With A View to the class. What's wrong with me? I have to do extra work outside of class with my professor to make it worth a graduate course, but I think I'll be okay with that.

     My nerdiness excitement continued into my meeting with Anne-Marie, a professor with whom I might do my directed study for the semester, or possibly even my thesis. I wasn't really aware of this or a lot of things about my program, but almost everything is up to us to decide. It's so flexible. I can literally work on anything I want to for my projects as long as they relate in some way to cultural translation. In a way, that's great that we have that luxury, but it also gives me absolutely no help in understanding what I need or want to do. Since I eventually want to work in study abroad and travel, we decided that my general subject for the semester will be "foreignness," or l'étrangeté in French-- ultimately the experience of being foreign in a new place. I'm really interested, obviously, in the experiences of Americans in France, but that doesn't really work within my framework of translating from French to English, but we can do a research paper aspect within our projects, too, so maybe that's where that piece will fit. To flesh the whole thing out, I want to include topics like Parisians' perspectives on French people in the countryside and vice versa, l'orientalisme (Historical French depictions of Middle Eastern and East Asian cultures- I took a whole film class on this at Macalester in the spring) and French-American relations (Why we love and hate each other). I might also throw in a few récits de voyage by Hugo, Chateaubriand or Balzac. I'm supposed to choose really any AUP faculty member to work with and I think I'm really liking the idea of working with a French person like Anne-Marie, because she can help me when I don't know what something means in my translating and she also has the opposite perspective on the France and U.S. portion.

     If I'm being completely honest, coming back here hasn't really been what I thought it'd be. I think maybe I thought I'd be strutting back in like it's only been a short break and it's back to school with everyone and everything you know. But it's totally not at all. I need to keep telling myself that it's only been two and a half weeks, but I kind of thought I'd find myself laughing on the Quai des Grands Augustins or on the lawn at the Eiffel Tower instead of slumming it around the somber seventh, desperately trying to hold onto my shitty umbrella that's more like a kite and cost less than a kebab and frites or spending hours cleaning the grime off my kitchen walls. Anyone who romanticizes moving to a new country where no one even knows or really cares what your name is has to be out of their minds. This is hard. Really hard. And I've even done this all before. That doesn't make it easier.

A sketch I made from my window in the middle of the night last night

        However, there are some nice moments of early bliss in this new life: Watching the Eiffel Tower sparkle from my window, drinking a café noisette and eating madeleines from the machines at school (Which always reminds me, Proust-like, of class at the Institut Catholique), getting on one of the new RER trains that doesn't smell like decay, drinking wine and sketching the view from my apartment late at night and those rare, fabled moments of sunshine that makes the city extra-beautiful. A specific moment today was when I left school and was going down the wet steps into the Invalides station and I almost tumbled all the way down (Whenever things like this happen, my mind flashes to the description of Piggy's head cracking open in Lord of the Flies. Every goddamn time.) and a man smiled at me, concernedly, and asked if I was okay. Another man held the sortie turnstile door open for me longer than needed. I like being in a country where women are treated nicely.

Le Recrutement in June 2006

Today

    I also ran into Le Recrutement Café in the seventh where I remember taking a picture seven years ago. It didn't feel familiar at all to me. Isn't that weird how you can remember a place so vividly and then when you go back, you start second guessing whether you ever really knew it at all? New impressions always seem to erase old memories. That happens for me in Paris constantly and I feel like I'm losing my mind.

Rachel

Rainy Days & Mondays

     Here come the melancholy skies, whether we're ready or not. Since last Monday, the official start of classes, it's been the dreariest, most dismal weather. I'm not so sure I'm prepared for the months ahead where sunshine will become as rare as peanut butter. C'est la vie à Paris.

     Here's a Monday anecdote that I have to get off my chest, courtesy of about an hour ago:

     Four loud, obviously wealthy Americans came into the Zara store in St-Germain-des-Prés where I was shopping. They shouted across the store to each other and touched everything they walked past. One of them went up to the caisse with a necklace in her hand and said to the woman working, assuming everyone in the world speaks English, "Excuse me, is there a way I can try this on?" The necklace had one of those big, gray security tags on it. The employee then asked for her coworker to come over because she didn't know English. The other employee apologized in English and said it wasn't possible to take the tag off and that she would just have to hold it up to her neck instead. The woman then had an absolute fit and kept saying, "Seriously? Like, I don't understand why you can't just take it off. How am I supposed to buy it?" He apologized again and walked away. The woman then started to complain loudly about the employees, right in front of them, because, St-Germain-des-Prés is in America, remember, and customers have the right to be assholes. The group then started to loudly discuss how this wasn't like Bergdorf's and how mistreated they were. After everyone in the store was staring at her, she decided to just buy the damn necklace anyway, after threatening the employee again, "So, if I don't like it, I'm just gonna return it." After they left the store, the two employees started talking about how impoli the Americans were. 

     I was so close to telling off the rude customers and now I realize I should have. Good going, guys. Way to not embarrass every American in Paris.

Rachel

You Are Just A Little Speck

"Americans always think Europe is perfect. But such beauty and history can be really oppressive. It reduces the individual to nothing. It just reminds you all the time you are just a little speck in a long history."

-Before Sunrise, 1995

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     If I was stupid enough to have a swear jar in Paris, I'd probably have enough funds to get a bigger apartment. So much of my time during this weird, getting-back-into-the-swing-of-Paris-life period consists of me muttering not very quietly under my breath and making Jim Halpert faces to no one in particular. The Paris you see in movies is from an imaginary, sunny world when little fairies move the crowds out and the sun in. The real Paris, the other ninety-eight percent of the time, kind of makes you feel a little more violent inside than is probably socially acceptable.

     But no, I don't hate Paris. Obviously. I'm just confused and have a lot of burning questions.

1. How sanitary are baguettes? Am I just a huge American germophobe who wouldn't dream of buying food that isn't vacuum-sealed, or is it actually just a little bit questionable how, when you buy bread in France, half the baguette is out of the bag and they usually chuck it right on the counter while you're paying? People walk around everywhere with unwrapped baguettes just poking out of their bags. Call me crazy, but that has always unsettled me. Food poisoning isn't a route I'd like to travel down for a second time, merci.

2. Why does Monoprix sell nail polish and nail files, but no nail clippers? I didn't pack any because the airport would probably confiscate them just because I'm Rachel and always get stopped, so my nails were starting to turn into talons before I just went into a tourist shop and bought a pair with a big purple Eiffel Tower on it (It also doubles as a beer opener). Monoprix, the closest thing France has to Target, also sells adult-sized towels for thirty euros. I instead bought one for half the price and thus half the size. Again, maybe I'm just a huge person. The mirrors certainly seem to think so, since I have to bend down in front of every single one.

3. Why are business hours so limited? I'm down with stores being closed on Sundays. I get it. I truly do. But how are you supposed to get anything accomplished during the other six days when many businesses are closed from 1 to 2 P.M. and close at 5 or 6? This isn't small town America, I don't think. If you work full-time, how do you ever get to the bank? Thinking it was open until 5:30, I walked confidently into my bank on avenue Bosquet and said to the teller, Bonjour, je voudrais retirer de l'argent, s'il vous plaît. I had been repeating that phrase in my head all the way down the street from the métro. He looked blankly at me and said they closed at 5. It was 5:02. Why in the hell didn't they lock the door then? And here's a concept, how about not being a douchebag and just quickly getting my money?

4. Why does the RER suck so much? Now that I have to take it every day, I kind of want to start beating my head on the seat in front of me. That is, if I even get a seat (I usually don't).

5. Why do I feel ashamed eating while walking around but French people pick their noses? Almost every time I've bought a croissant (I'm keeping a tally for the year- I'm at thirteen so far), I feel every single Parisian turn their eyes in disgust towards me. Like I'm the one picking my nose. Or I'm the one sneezing without covering my face. I usually hit up a boulangerie and head for a side street where I can devour my bread away from their judgment.

6. Why do people in Paris think it's cold outside? Last time I checked, it was about sixty degrees Fahrenheit. Please stop judging me for not wearing a parka and scarf. I really don't want my Minnesota body to heat-stroke out in order to pretend this is really cold and wear what you all are wearing.

     I think a lot of my frustration is coming from the readjustment into really-big city life. Sure, I lived in Minneapolis for my four years of college, but Paris has twelve million people. That's four times the population of my metro area at home. So no, my Minneapolitan friends, you do not live in a big city despite all the bike lanes and hipsters and moderate traffic flow. In Paris, we are all crammed into these Haussmann buildings like sardines, so once people get out onto the boulevards, I guess they don't really give a shit about each other. For all the times I've been bumped into, coughed on, Oh, bonjour mademoiselle!-ed by homeless men and desperate waiters looking to fill tables in the Latin Quarter or nearly getting sliced in the eye by a passerby's umbrella, I need to remember that no one is trying to inconvenience me on purpose; it's just a side effect of survival in Paris. There are far too many people in this town to be overly considerate to any specific person. This city has had a long history before me, and will have a long history after me; my time here is less than a blink on its timeline. I just need to shut up, accept the culture and probably eat my damn bread in private.

Rachel

P.S. Check out my two-week video at https://vimeo.com/74541100. Not a lot happens, but I don't know, maybe you're into that.

Careless People

  

"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy--they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made."

-The Great Gatsby, 1925

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I need to share something.

     I just had a real geek moment, so let me indulge. A few days ago, during my flâner-ing about Paris, I came across this sign outside Shakespeare and Company:

     Well, as The Great Gatsby is my favorite book- my iPhone case is even the cover art- I got a little excited. Excited enough that I hurried home from my first day of class, blow-dried my hair from the heavy rain today that made me swear under my breath every other second, and walked from my apartment over to the rue de la Bûcherie. I've read Gatsby probably four times and written a few high school and college papers about it, so I was thrilled to join in. Plus, they promised free cocktails and I'm not one to pass on that.

     Sarah Churchwell, author of Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby, came from London to read excerpts and talk about her book. I think Gatsby is a book that is open to so much interpretation, so I was interested to hear what she had to say. I stood outside on the sidewalk among the enormous group that gathered and listened to her speak from inside the bookstore.

     According to Churchwell, the novel, set in 1922, actually predates the images of flappers dancing the Charleston. Women didn't start wearing knee-length dresses until later in the 1920s and the Charleston was a phenomenon that swept the nation in 1925. Daisy and Jordan probably would've worn lightweight, white dresses down to their ankles. 

     An audience member asked Churchwell why Daisy doesn't stay with Gatsby at the end of the novel, and I've always been grappling with the same idea. Her interpretation is that when Daisy comes to one of Gatsby's parties, she's repulsed by the overtly gaudy display and his lack of true friends and from this point on, she begins to draw away from him. She wants nothing to do with the lifestyle of West Egg and it makes her uncomfortable. "She cares for Gatsby, but she's a careless person," Churchwell explains.

     The films are problematic due in part to their casting. "What I can't understand is why would Daisy leave Robert Redford, who's rich, good-looking and Robert Redford, for Bruce Dern? It doesn't make sense," Churchwell says with a laugh. She says that Leonardo DiCaprio is the best Gatsby because he can play both criminal and earnest, but that Carey Mulligan was miscast completely. In regards to the film versions, Churchwell thinks they still can't be filmed properly, because Gatsby has already been told in its most perfect version: literature. What makes the book so beautiful is its commitment to ambiguity and "Gatsby is a book that grows with you. You can read it at 16 and again at 27." I agree. 

    

      The Shakespeare staff then served us French 75s--Champagne, lemon and gin--while a jazz band played and Churchwell signed books. I went over to her corner and handed her my copy. After telling her my name and that I really enjoyed her talk, I added that I was from St. Paul, Fitzgerald's birthplace. "Oh, I'm so glad to have met someone from St. Paul," she smiled. "Fitzgerald would've loved that." 

Rachel

I Know Places

"How I wish my friends could be with me for a moment to enjoy the view which lies before me."

          -Goethe, 12 September 1786

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    "I'm going to push you to have more confidence in knowing what you want," my advisor said to me this week during our meeting. He's right. I probably should, in a lot of areas. What he was getting at is that I need to figure out what I want to work on for my directed study this semester and ultimately, my thesis. It's hard for me to grasp that I'm at the academic level of having to do a thesis or that I could even be capable of it. I have the mindset of the underdog and to be really successful at this, I'll need to drop that. My school has a lot of Ivy League-ers and once again, I've been thrown down among the youngest and least accomplished. I have a lot to prove, but I still don't know what I want, in my program or in my life.

     Orientation week is now over and I'm looking forward to classes starting tomorrow. I'm taking five classes: Communications and the Global Public Sphere, What is Cultural Translation?, Translation Workshop, Historical Systems of Cultural Translation and a directed study. I'm also going to try and audit a French course, if possible since it's free for grad students. I felt like it'd be weird to be in Paris and not be taking a French course. I've been continuously enrolled in French courses since I was fifteen. I think it'd be good for me, since my classes are all in English and everyone at school speaks English. I'm actually surprised to find I'm a rare breed in that I speak French pretty well. I can't imagine coming here to live and not knowing a lick of French, but there are plenty of people in that boat. They'll learn.

      On Friday, the cultural translation (CT) program had an eight-hour meeting to introduce ourselves and for the faculty to introduce themselves. I tried with every speck of energy in me to not fall asleep. I haven't had coffee yet in Paris and oh boy, do I need it. To top it off, we sat in a circle, so I'm sure all my new, impressive and distinguished professors thought I was narcoleptic or hungover.

My campus

      That night, we had a cocktail hour and Bateaux-Mouches night for the graduates, which was awesome considering we got free dinner, wine and a ride on the Seine (Not technically free, since our orientation fee was five hundred euros). For the rest of the weekend, when I wasn't attending optional orientation activities or trying to clean my slightly dirty apartment (I opened the fridge today and almost gagged. The American dollar doesn't take you far in terms of getting a spacious, clean place to live, let me tell you.), I've been reacquainting myself with my favorite Paris haunts. Yesterday, I spent my day on the Ile Saint-Louis and in the Latin Quarter, eating Berthillon sorbet, browsing the bouquinistes and sitting in the sun with my eyes closed in parks. This week has been so hard, so it was nice to walk around by myself and not have report to anyone or have any sense of time. I don't yet have a phone and I didn't bring a map, either. That is freedom if I've ever known it.

Bateaux-Mouches- it wasn't freezing like last time in January 2012!

In the park behind Notre-Dame, creeping on children and enjoying the sunshine

Berthillon sorbet. I dare you to find better sorbet/ice cream.

     I joined a few other grad students on a tour of the Latin Quarter and we passed so many memories, particularly the steps at St-Etienne-du-Mont, which were featured in Midnight in Paris and where I last spent time with my favorite Paris friends. If you're reading this, I miss you and think of you guys all the time. Come back to me!

     If I had to say one really great thing about my new school, it's how diverse its population is. I made a friend who's from Athens and her and I had a great dinner and conversation outside on the rue de Buci on Saturday night. These are the kinds of people I probably would never encounter at home and what an awesome experience it is to have.

Dinner on the rue de Buci

    Today, I put on my photographer cap and ventured into the Jardin du Luxembourg to take photos. Just as I was settled against a tree, basking in the sun, listening to a jazz band play in one of the pavilions, and thinking, This truly is the most beautiful city on Earth, a bird took a shit on my pants. That's Paris for you. You can never be too content for too long, or it shits on you.

I forgot that I'm a GIANT in France and always need to bend down for mirrors

Jardin du Luxembourg

Jardin du Luxembourg

Jardin du Luxembourg

Bird merde right on my new pants

My street

St-Sulpice, my favorite church in Paris

The Highlander. I need to recruit new team members for pub quiz night.

Jared & Taylor's lock

Enjoying the sunset from home

   
     I walked to the Institut Catholique de Paris and The Highlander, two of my past hangouts and then on to the Pont des Arts to affix Taylor and Jared's lock that I gave them at their wedding in prime real estate on the bridge, which has gotten so much fuller since the last time I saw it. I then spoiled myself with speculoos gelato from Amorino on rue de la Huchette. In Shakespeare & Co., I found the screenplay for Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, the latter of which starts in the bookshop. I got into the Before series this summer and I'm completely hooked. The other day, a few people were telling me I remind them of Julie Delpy and that they'll need to find me a Jesse in Paris. I thought that was funny and cute to say. But I hope I'm not that neurotic.

Extremely excited about this.

     Anyway, the Eiffel Tower is sparkling for four more minutes, so I think I'll go and enjoy that on my balcony before I have to be professional and go to sleep at a reasonable time. Bonne nuit, mes chéries.

Rachel