Cannibals and Carnivals: Nikki's trip to Paris
Mar 23rd, 2011, 11:13 AM
#1
Original Poster
Cannibals and Carnivals: Nikki's trip to Paris
As our plane landed in Paris before dawn on Monday, March 7, it was freezing outside. When my daughter Eileen and I left Boston the evening before, it had been warm enough that some of the five feet of snow banked up on either side of the driveway was starting to melt. It felt as though we were being plunged back into winter. The weather reports I had checked on line before we left had predicted temperatures in Paris in the fifties during the day and forties at night. Hoping that the freezing weather would not last, we retrieved our bags and headed by taxi to the apartment I had rented for two weeks.
Eileen was going to spend a week with me and then I was going to have a week on my own. I had been in San Francisco with my husband visiting our other daughter for a week in February and had only been home for a few days before embarking on this trip to Paris. A bit dizzying, all this time change and rapid change of scenery, and somehow the preparations for Paris had taken a back seat.
I did have a number of things planned for months: tickets I had bought for various concerts, operas, and theater; a schedule for courses at the Collège de France; ideas for art exhibits, places to see, restaurants to try. But I did not put a lot of time into deciding what to pack or how to spend our time. Eileen informed me that she wanted a somewhat relaxed pace as she needed to recuperate from a very hectic schedule at work and at school. So the idea was to play it by ear within the framework of activities that had been planned ahead of time. We ended up being pleasantly surprised at the things that came our way: the peacock displaying its fan in the Parc de Bagatelle; the combination bookstore and organic juice bar down the street from our apartment; the railroad car we shared with a group of boisterous men dressed in bridal gowns and hot pants on the TGV to Bethune.
My plans were to challenge my French comprehension, to enjoy my daughter's company for a whole luxurious week, and to feast at the urban cultural smorgasbord that is Paris. Mission accomplished.
Eileen was going to spend a week with me and then I was going to have a week on my own. I had been in San Francisco with my husband visiting our other daughter for a week in February and had only been home for a few days before embarking on this trip to Paris. A bit dizzying, all this time change and rapid change of scenery, and somehow the preparations for Paris had taken a back seat.
I did have a number of things planned for months: tickets I had bought for various concerts, operas, and theater; a schedule for courses at the Collège de France; ideas for art exhibits, places to see, restaurants to try. But I did not put a lot of time into deciding what to pack or how to spend our time. Eileen informed me that she wanted a somewhat relaxed pace as she needed to recuperate from a very hectic schedule at work and at school. So the idea was to play it by ear within the framework of activities that had been planned ahead of time. We ended up being pleasantly surprised at the things that came our way: the peacock displaying its fan in the Parc de Bagatelle; the combination bookstore and organic juice bar down the street from our apartment; the railroad car we shared with a group of boisterous men dressed in bridal gowns and hot pants on the TGV to Bethune.
My plans were to challenge my French comprehension, to enjoy my daughter's company for a whole luxurious week, and to feast at the urban cultural smorgasbord that is Paris. Mission accomplished.
Mar 23rd, 2011, 11:24 AM
#3
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Great that you had the kind of trip you wanted. Often, the best memories are of the unplanned moments, aren't they?
As another Mom who loves traveling with daughter who prefers a relaxed pace --and has to remind me to slow down-- I am so glad you got to enjoy your DD's company for a wonderful week in Paris! We're headed there in June and your post added to the anticipation.
As another Mom who loves traveling with daughter who prefers a relaxed pace --and has to remind me to slow down-- I am so glad you got to enjoy your DD's company for a wonderful week in Paris! We're headed there in June and your post added to the anticipation.
Mar 24th, 2011, 01:21 AM
#10
Original Poster
The taxi from the airport to the apartment is slowed by rush hour traffic, and we leave the périphérique to make our way through the twentieth arrondissement and past Père Lachaise Cemetery to our apartment near the Bastille.
We are just at the apartment long enough to drop off our bags. The previous occupants are still there but getting ready to leave, and the woman who manages and cleans the apartment tells us to come back in an hour. We go off to a cafe a couple of blocks away and have breakfast, which includes, among other things, the best fresh squeezed blood orange juice I have ever had.
After breakfast we get settled into the apartment. I have stayed here twice before, and it feels like home. http://www.vrbo.com/24464. There is one bedroom with a queen sized bed, where I will stay, and a sleep sofa in the living room for Eileen. We sleep for a while. I don't remember much about this first day. We have dinner at a restaurant in the neighborhood, Chez Margot, where I believe I enjoy some smoked salmon, a lamb shank, and the wonderful atmosphere of dinner on a heated terrace in Paris.
Morning comes sooner for me than for Eileen. It always has, and I suspect it always will. But in my relaxed frame of mind, it doesn't matter much. I'm pretty sleepy myself from the time change. At lunch time, I head out to find a bakery I read about on line that I had not seen in my previous visits. Around a corner I apparently never rounded before, I find it and buy myself a baguette sandwich.
The weather has improved considerably since yesterday, and there are lots of people on the grass next to the houseboats in the marina of the Bassin de l'Arsenal, eating their sandwiches and soaking in the sun. I find a bench overlooking the scene and have my sandwich. At 2:00 the scene changes. The picnickers are replaced by meter maids and street sweepers. Alternatively, they turn into meter maids and street sweepers.
I am headed to a class at the Collège de France. I have been following it on line and know from the videos that the lecture hall with 420 seats is always filled, so I get there forty minutes early. There are only a few seats left. Everyone has come prepared to wait with livres de poche or today's issue of Le Monde.
The course, taught by a professor of literature, focuses on the year 1966 in France from multiple perspectives: literature, film, society, politics, culture. A visual survey of the audience reveals nobody who would not remember it well. For the first hour the course's instructor speaks about controversial films of the year and for the second hour there is a guest lecturer who speaks about jazz. This guest speaker is the first person I see who would not remember 1966 well, although he is not as young as the crowd I joined at the Village Vanguard in New York last month. Jazz seems alive and well among people significantly younger than I am, although for this speaker the jazz of 1966 is history, not memory.
After class I stop into a nearby bookstore to look for some of the books from the extensive bibliography for this course. I score some used books and think about how this is probably the last neighborhood on earth which will continue to provide bookstores in a world gone increasingly digital.
I am meeting Eileen at the Café du Métro, on the Place Maubert, and I find her loaded down with packages. Clearance sales have netted her a nice wool coat, a colorful skirt and some inexpensive shoes. After a drink on the terrace, we take the bus to the eleventh arrondissement for dinner at the Bistro Au Vieux Chêne, a favorite of mine from previous visits. www.vieuxchene.fr
This small place is decorated still with the original flooring and atmosphere that it had when it welcomed exiled Italian anarchists and woodworkers from factories in this traditional furniture makers' neighborhood. My first bite of my stuffed cabbage appetizer elicits the "aaah" that I associate with great culinary pleasure and Eileen tells me I am getting "that look" that I get. I am in my happy place. The short market-based menu provides delicious food at 28 euros for two courses or 33 euros for three courses at dinner. The lunch menu is only 13.50 for two courses and I would like to try that some time also. The restaurant is closed Saturdays and Sundays.
We are just at the apartment long enough to drop off our bags. The previous occupants are still there but getting ready to leave, and the woman who manages and cleans the apartment tells us to come back in an hour. We go off to a cafe a couple of blocks away and have breakfast, which includes, among other things, the best fresh squeezed blood orange juice I have ever had.
After breakfast we get settled into the apartment. I have stayed here twice before, and it feels like home. http://www.vrbo.com/24464. There is one bedroom with a queen sized bed, where I will stay, and a sleep sofa in the living room for Eileen. We sleep for a while. I don't remember much about this first day. We have dinner at a restaurant in the neighborhood, Chez Margot, where I believe I enjoy some smoked salmon, a lamb shank, and the wonderful atmosphere of dinner on a heated terrace in Paris.
Morning comes sooner for me than for Eileen. It always has, and I suspect it always will. But in my relaxed frame of mind, it doesn't matter much. I'm pretty sleepy myself from the time change. At lunch time, I head out to find a bakery I read about on line that I had not seen in my previous visits. Around a corner I apparently never rounded before, I find it and buy myself a baguette sandwich.
The weather has improved considerably since yesterday, and there are lots of people on the grass next to the houseboats in the marina of the Bassin de l'Arsenal, eating their sandwiches and soaking in the sun. I find a bench overlooking the scene and have my sandwich. At 2:00 the scene changes. The picnickers are replaced by meter maids and street sweepers. Alternatively, they turn into meter maids and street sweepers.
I am headed to a class at the Collège de France. I have been following it on line and know from the videos that the lecture hall with 420 seats is always filled, so I get there forty minutes early. There are only a few seats left. Everyone has come prepared to wait with livres de poche or today's issue of Le Monde.
The course, taught by a professor of literature, focuses on the year 1966 in France from multiple perspectives: literature, film, society, politics, culture. A visual survey of the audience reveals nobody who would not remember it well. For the first hour the course's instructor speaks about controversial films of the year and for the second hour there is a guest lecturer who speaks about jazz. This guest speaker is the first person I see who would not remember 1966 well, although he is not as young as the crowd I joined at the Village Vanguard in New York last month. Jazz seems alive and well among people significantly younger than I am, although for this speaker the jazz of 1966 is history, not memory.
After class I stop into a nearby bookstore to look for some of the books from the extensive bibliography for this course. I score some used books and think about how this is probably the last neighborhood on earth which will continue to provide bookstores in a world gone increasingly digital.
I am meeting Eileen at the Café du Métro, on the Place Maubert, and I find her loaded down with packages. Clearance sales have netted her a nice wool coat, a colorful skirt and some inexpensive shoes. After a drink on the terrace, we take the bus to the eleventh arrondissement for dinner at the Bistro Au Vieux Chêne, a favorite of mine from previous visits. www.vieuxchene.fr
This small place is decorated still with the original flooring and atmosphere that it had when it welcomed exiled Italian anarchists and woodworkers from factories in this traditional furniture makers' neighborhood. My first bite of my stuffed cabbage appetizer elicits the "aaah" that I associate with great culinary pleasure and Eileen tells me I am getting "that look" that I get. I am in my happy place. The short market-based menu provides delicious food at 28 euros for two courses or 33 euros for three courses at dinner. The lunch menu is only 13.50 for two courses and I would like to try that some time also. The restaurant is closed Saturdays and Sundays.
Mar 24th, 2011, 07:40 AM
#11
Original Poster
Wednesday morning we make our way to the Galerie Côté Seine in the Parc de Bagatelle on the western outskirts of Paris. The art gallery where Eileen works represents a French photographer whose work is displayed as part of the Festival of Young European Photography. We take a bus from the Porte Maillot métro station through the Bois de Boulogne to the entrance to the Parc de Bagatelle and walk through the park to the gallery.
The lawns are planted with bulbs that are just starting to bloom. In a week they should be gorgeous. But at the moment the color is being provided by two male peacocks strutting about the grounds. "Those colors exist in nature?" remarks Eileen. We spend some time watching and photographing them and trying to will them to open their fans. One of them walks away from us across the lawn and when just far enough to make it difficult for us to follow ("Do not walk on the lawn! It is planted with flowering bulbs!"), the peacock opens up its tail and begins to do a slow spin to show itself off from all angles. As it catches the rays of the sun, which is just starting to peek out from behind the clouds, the peacock takes on a dazzling glow. We walk around the path toward it, certain that it will close up its fan just as we approach, but it is having too much fun showing off to the gathering crowd of young parents and grandparents walking children through the park, and we all stop and watch it for quite a while.
When we finally tear ourselves away, we meander down the path toward the park's chateau, built and completed by Charles X within three months in 1775 to win a bet with Marie Antoinette. The gallery is housed in an underground space flanking the chateau.
The exhibit is interesting. Young European photographers are interested in, among other things, transvestites in Istanbul and the illegal shelters built by homeless people in Rome. Much of the work is pointed social commentary. We find the photos by the artist Eileen knows, which are of a less political nature, and consist of trees superimposed on Parisian buildings.
We return to the bus without making a peacock detour and take the métro back into central Paris. I am going to a class at the Collège de France about Dante's Purgatorio. This draws a smaller crowd than yesterday's lecture, and there is no need to arrive 45 minutes early to get a seat. There are lots of gray heads in the audience but nobody for whom Dante is memory rather than history. I miss many of the details of the lecture, partly because this course is not available on line and I have not been able to follow the previous sessions and do not know the specific reading to be covered. But I do come away with the conclusion that the exercise of reason is seen as the foundation of liberty; that creation follows a rational plan; and that the supreme intellect of God created man, while the exercise of reason alone will not succeed in making man understand faith.
Or something like that.
Dinner tonight is at Le Buisson Ardent in the 5th arrondissement at 25 rue Jussieu. This is perhaps our favorite meal of the trip. http://www.lebuissonardent.fr/ The atmosphere is very pleasant in the setting of an old coaching inn with a staff that appears to be having an excellent time and enjoying the company of the guests and of each other. The food is delicious and creative. I start with a rouleau de lapin, which surprises me by being cold. And then I have duck with couscous and seasonal vegetables. Back in my happy place. Eileen tells me it seems pretty simple to put me in my happy place. Right. First you start with a plane ticket to France, and then you get me into a cheerful bistro with wonderful food. Easy as pie.
The lawns are planted with bulbs that are just starting to bloom. In a week they should be gorgeous. But at the moment the color is being provided by two male peacocks strutting about the grounds. "Those colors exist in nature?" remarks Eileen. We spend some time watching and photographing them and trying to will them to open their fans. One of them walks away from us across the lawn and when just far enough to make it difficult for us to follow ("Do not walk on the lawn! It is planted with flowering bulbs!"), the peacock opens up its tail and begins to do a slow spin to show itself off from all angles. As it catches the rays of the sun, which is just starting to peek out from behind the clouds, the peacock takes on a dazzling glow. We walk around the path toward it, certain that it will close up its fan just as we approach, but it is having too much fun showing off to the gathering crowd of young parents and grandparents walking children through the park, and we all stop and watch it for quite a while.
When we finally tear ourselves away, we meander down the path toward the park's chateau, built and completed by Charles X within three months in 1775 to win a bet with Marie Antoinette. The gallery is housed in an underground space flanking the chateau.
The exhibit is interesting. Young European photographers are interested in, among other things, transvestites in Istanbul and the illegal shelters built by homeless people in Rome. Much of the work is pointed social commentary. We find the photos by the artist Eileen knows, which are of a less political nature, and consist of trees superimposed on Parisian buildings.
We return to the bus without making a peacock detour and take the métro back into central Paris. I am going to a class at the Collège de France about Dante's Purgatorio. This draws a smaller crowd than yesterday's lecture, and there is no need to arrive 45 minutes early to get a seat. There are lots of gray heads in the audience but nobody for whom Dante is memory rather than history. I miss many of the details of the lecture, partly because this course is not available on line and I have not been able to follow the previous sessions and do not know the specific reading to be covered. But I do come away with the conclusion that the exercise of reason is seen as the foundation of liberty; that creation follows a rational plan; and that the supreme intellect of God created man, while the exercise of reason alone will not succeed in making man understand faith.
Or something like that.
Dinner tonight is at Le Buisson Ardent in the 5th arrondissement at 25 rue Jussieu. This is perhaps our favorite meal of the trip. http://www.lebuissonardent.fr/ The atmosphere is very pleasant in the setting of an old coaching inn with a staff that appears to be having an excellent time and enjoying the company of the guests and of each other. The food is delicious and creative. I start with a rouleau de lapin, which surprises me by being cold. And then I have duck with couscous and seasonal vegetables. Back in my happy place. Eileen tells me it seems pretty simple to put me in my happy place. Right. First you start with a plane ticket to France, and then you get me into a cheerful bistro with wonderful food. Easy as pie.
Mar 24th, 2011, 10:34 AM
#15
Original Poster
Thursday morning I hear parade music outside my bedroom window. Yesterday it was carnival music. I am puzzled for a while but listen until I identify the unmistakable cadences of a band rehearsal. Somehow I have found the only apartment in Paris with its own band rehearsal. It must be like pheromones; I am irresistibly attracted.
The band is rehearsing inside the building of my neighbor, the Caserne des Célestins, which houses the Garde Républicaine. It also houses their horses, which one can smell while walking alongside the building. Now that I know the smell comes from horses, and not from random men marking territory as in some urban neighborhoods of my youth, it reminds me of home. There is a stable across the street from our house. If you look out my bedroom window here in Paris, you can see into the courtyard where the horses are fed and exercised.
Eileen and I go out for lunch at Le Pré Verre, down the street from the Collège de France at 8 rue Thénard. http://www.lepreverre.com/ There is a bargain lunch menu priced at 13.50 euros for two courses, wine and coffee. I am brave and go for the daily special of sweet potato soup with Indian spices and andouillete de canard. I have avoided andouillete in the past because I have read of its strong and off-putting aroma, but this is duck, and I have never met a duck I didn't like. When it comes to the table, Eileen immediately says, "I'm not used to smelling other people's food," and I have to admit it does have a rather strong aroma. I eat it but admit to not enjoying it as much as I usually enjoy duck.
After lunch I go to my next course at the Collège de France. I'm not sure how early I have to get there, but I have been following this class on line and know that it is always filled. Plenty of people are there when I arrive forty minutes early. Not as crowded as 1966, but more so than Dante. For this lecture we head even farther back in time. Not in people's memory, like 1966, and not in history, like Dante, but into prehistory and beyond. The topic is no less than the origins of God in the Hebrew Bible. This professor is fascinating, and I really enjoy the class.
We eat an early supper at Le Sully, a cafe near our apartment at 6 boulevard Henri IV. http://www.lesully-paris.fr/ I have a slice of pâté and a salad with warm goat cheese on toast. We are then off to the Opéra Comique.
On the program tonight is a group of silent short films by Georges Méliès. This turn of the century French filmmaker and magician made a series of films filled with fantasy and illusion. One of them is based on Cinderella, and since the Opéra Comique is mounting a production of the opera Cendrillon by Massenet (which I will see later in the week), they have assembled these silent shorts as part of their Cinderella programming. A pianist and a clarinetist provide live accompaniment to the films, and it is a delightful evening.
The band is rehearsing inside the building of my neighbor, the Caserne des Célestins, which houses the Garde Républicaine. It also houses their horses, which one can smell while walking alongside the building. Now that I know the smell comes from horses, and not from random men marking territory as in some urban neighborhoods of my youth, it reminds me of home. There is a stable across the street from our house. If you look out my bedroom window here in Paris, you can see into the courtyard where the horses are fed and exercised.
Eileen and I go out for lunch at Le Pré Verre, down the street from the Collège de France at 8 rue Thénard. http://www.lepreverre.com/ There is a bargain lunch menu priced at 13.50 euros for two courses, wine and coffee. I am brave and go for the daily special of sweet potato soup with Indian spices and andouillete de canard. I have avoided andouillete in the past because I have read of its strong and off-putting aroma, but this is duck, and I have never met a duck I didn't like. When it comes to the table, Eileen immediately says, "I'm not used to smelling other people's food," and I have to admit it does have a rather strong aroma. I eat it but admit to not enjoying it as much as I usually enjoy duck.
After lunch I go to my next course at the Collège de France. I'm not sure how early I have to get there, but I have been following this class on line and know that it is always filled. Plenty of people are there when I arrive forty minutes early. Not as crowded as 1966, but more so than Dante. For this lecture we head even farther back in time. Not in people's memory, like 1966, and not in history, like Dante, but into prehistory and beyond. The topic is no less than the origins of God in the Hebrew Bible. This professor is fascinating, and I really enjoy the class.
We eat an early supper at Le Sully, a cafe near our apartment at 6 boulevard Henri IV. http://www.lesully-paris.fr/ I have a slice of pâté and a salad with warm goat cheese on toast. We are then off to the Opéra Comique.
On the program tonight is a group of silent short films by Georges Méliès. This turn of the century French filmmaker and magician made a series of films filled with fantasy and illusion. One of them is based on Cinderella, and since the Opéra Comique is mounting a production of the opera Cendrillon by Massenet (which I will see later in the week), they have assembled these silent shorts as part of their Cinderella programming. A pianist and a clarinetist provide live accompaniment to the films, and it is a delightful evening.
Mar 24th, 2011, 01:02 PM
#16
Original Poster
Friday morning Eileen and I walk to La Maison Rouge, a contemporary art gallery along the Bassin de l'Arsenal. Their current exhibit is entitled "Tous cannibales", a reference to a comment by Claude Lèvi-Strauss: "We are all cannibals. The simplest way to identify with another is still to eat them." I remember reading The Raw and the Cooked in college. I ask Eileen, who majored in art and in anthropology, whether they still study Lèvi-Strauss in anthropology classes. She said yes, but that they are told to take it with a grain of salt.
The exhibit displays works in many different media on the general theme of cannibalism, most by living artists but including some historical works including engravings by Goya. There are some humorous images and some horrifying ones. Toward the end of the exhibit there is a display of fingers and other body parts arranged like the models of menu items at a Japanese restaurant. The exhibit empties into the gallery's cafe, and one wonders whether that display showcases the lunch offerings. Please pass the salt.
We decide to pass up the gallery cafe and have lunch down the street at Mondial'o, an earthy-crunchy bookstore and ethical organic restaurant that advertises a vegetarian lunch special for ten euros. http://www.mondialoparis.com/ Eileen says if this place were in Boston it would be filled with people working on their laptops, but we are among the only customers when we arrive. We have soup, brown rice, organic vegetables and hummus. I order fresh squeezed orange juice. Eileen is happy. We haven't seen a lot of vegetables in the bistros we've been frequenting. I'm just happy we're not eating at the cannibal exhibit.
This place is new, having been established in 2009. We talk about the kinds of new businesses that appear in old neighborhoods in cities and speculate about what urban neighborhoods will evolve into when they have all gentrified. What is the climax forest of the urban environment? There was a photo at the exhibit in the Parc de Bagatelle of an Ikea sign sinking into a field of yellow flowers. Maybe it's that.
The exhibit displays works in many different media on the general theme of cannibalism, most by living artists but including some historical works including engravings by Goya. There are some humorous images and some horrifying ones. Toward the end of the exhibit there is a display of fingers and other body parts arranged like the models of menu items at a Japanese restaurant. The exhibit empties into the gallery's cafe, and one wonders whether that display showcases the lunch offerings. Please pass the salt.
We decide to pass up the gallery cafe and have lunch down the street at Mondial'o, an earthy-crunchy bookstore and ethical organic restaurant that advertises a vegetarian lunch special for ten euros. http://www.mondialoparis.com/ Eileen says if this place were in Boston it would be filled with people working on their laptops, but we are among the only customers when we arrive. We have soup, brown rice, organic vegetables and hummus. I order fresh squeezed orange juice. Eileen is happy. We haven't seen a lot of vegetables in the bistros we've been frequenting. I'm just happy we're not eating at the cannibal exhibit.
This place is new, having been established in 2009. We talk about the kinds of new businesses that appear in old neighborhoods in cities and speculate about what urban neighborhoods will evolve into when they have all gentrified. What is the climax forest of the urban environment? There was a photo at the exhibit in the Parc de Bagatelle of an Ikea sign sinking into a field of yellow flowers. Maybe it's that.
Mar 25th, 2011, 12:25 AM
#18
Original Poster
Dinner Friday night is at the Bistrot Paul Bert in the eleventh arrondissement at 18 rue Paul Bert, 01 43 72 24 01. For starters I order croustillant de groin de porc and it isn't what I think it is. It is fried pig snout with tartar sauce. An interesting experiment that I probably won't be repeating. For my main dish I have a less controversial pork dish consisting of roast suckling pig with apricots, and I love this.
There is a French family next to us with a four year old boy who is up very late eating in a pretty adult setting. He is doing quite well until he isn't. His father keeps telling him, "On se calme." It works pretty well until it doesn't and the family leaves, to be replaced by a Spanish woman with an emphatic voice and grand gestures and two companions. Eileen and I share a grand marnier soufflé for dessert and walk out happy.
Saturday we are off on an overnight excursion to the city of Bethune in northern France. I have tickets to a concert there by Sanseverino. This is a French singer and songwriter whom I love in a way I haven't loved a performer since my adolescence. I was giddy with excitement when I realized he was touring in a place I could visit during this trip to Paris and pushed the button to buy the tickets. Eileen has graciously agreed to accompany me to this town about which we know nothing to hear a concert in French at which her mother will be hooting and hollering in a most embarrassing manner.
The first stage of our journey is a taxi to the Gare du Nord. I call Taxi Bleu and it is all automated. "She" knows my address and just asks me to confirm it. I push a button and "she" tells me a white Peugeot will appear in seven minutes. I think. I have to push the repeat button several times. And by the time we get to the curb, a white Peugeot is waiting. A polite young taxi driver takes my bag and we begin to drive. There is a motorcyclist coming startlingly close to the taxi, to the point that the cab driver rolls down his window and has words with the motorcyclist when we are both stopped at a light. A little way farther down the street, the biker cuts us off from the right as another car swerves into our lane from the left. The polite young man is transformed by road rage. He slams on the brakes, gets out of the car and goes over to the motorcyclist yelling and cursing. "On se calme," shouts the motorcyclist and the driver gets back in the cab to drive to the station. I'm worried about his blood pressure.
I ask him if this happens to him a lot. All the time, he tells me. "No more law in France," he asserts. "France is finished." "All France?" I ask. "Yes, it's not what it used to be." "You're too young to say that," I say. "I've been told," he says, and then continues, "It's like Brooklyn!" Is Brooklyn a French icon of lawlessness, I wonder. I tell him my father came from Brooklyn, and then we are at the station. Transformed once again into a polite young man, he pulls over and helps me with my bag.
There is a French family next to us with a four year old boy who is up very late eating in a pretty adult setting. He is doing quite well until he isn't. His father keeps telling him, "On se calme." It works pretty well until it doesn't and the family leaves, to be replaced by a Spanish woman with an emphatic voice and grand gestures and two companions. Eileen and I share a grand marnier soufflé for dessert and walk out happy.
Saturday we are off on an overnight excursion to the city of Bethune in northern France. I have tickets to a concert there by Sanseverino. This is a French singer and songwriter whom I love in a way I haven't loved a performer since my adolescence. I was giddy with excitement when I realized he was touring in a place I could visit during this trip to Paris and pushed the button to buy the tickets. Eileen has graciously agreed to accompany me to this town about which we know nothing to hear a concert in French at which her mother will be hooting and hollering in a most embarrassing manner.
The first stage of our journey is a taxi to the Gare du Nord. I call Taxi Bleu and it is all automated. "She" knows my address and just asks me to confirm it. I push a button and "she" tells me a white Peugeot will appear in seven minutes. I think. I have to push the repeat button several times. And by the time we get to the curb, a white Peugeot is waiting. A polite young taxi driver takes my bag and we begin to drive. There is a motorcyclist coming startlingly close to the taxi, to the point that the cab driver rolls down his window and has words with the motorcyclist when we are both stopped at a light. A little way farther down the street, the biker cuts us off from the right as another car swerves into our lane from the left. The polite young man is transformed by road rage. He slams on the brakes, gets out of the car and goes over to the motorcyclist yelling and cursing. "On se calme," shouts the motorcyclist and the driver gets back in the cab to drive to the station. I'm worried about his blood pressure.
I ask him if this happens to him a lot. All the time, he tells me. "No more law in France," he asserts. "France is finished." "All France?" I ask. "Yes, it's not what it used to be." "You're too young to say that," I say. "I've been told," he says, and then continues, "It's like Brooklyn!" Is Brooklyn a French icon of lawlessness, I wonder. I tell him my father came from Brooklyn, and then we are at the station. Transformed once again into a polite young man, he pulls over and helps me with my bag.
