Third -- and I Hope Final -- Day

The full post -- days 1, 2, and 3 of this whole awful episode in Paris is at A Year in Fromage. But in case you've already read it, here's just the update from today:



DAY 3: Out with Gigi at the Bastille, and we see a convoy of 16 police vehicles racing by with sirens blaring. In fact, the city has an almost constant hum of sirens.

 

The hostages have been taken, and now the texts I'm getting from Anthony are about how his building is in lock-down mode. This BBC map, modified by somebody Anthony works with, will show you why:

Our kids still have school today, but with full security measures in place. Even at the middle school dismissal, they are now asking each individual child where they live and judging if the route home will be safe. After all, at the time of dismissal, there are still hostages being held, and all of the gunmen are at large. I've never seen so many parents at pick-up.

The streets are just covered with machine-gun-toting, bulletproof-vest-wearing police and military. There's even the Protection Civile, which I understand to be akin to the National Guard. I've never even see these blue and orange uniforms or trucks before.

 

 

And everywhere, everywhere, the signs of solidarity.

Now it's dark -- Friday night at 11pm as I'm writing this. The weather is nice -- mild and dry. But I have never, ever heard the streets so quiet, especially not on a Friday night. All the neighborhood cafés are closed. In fact, it is so unbelievably still that I actually research to see if the city has instituted a curfew (appropriately called a "couvre-feu" or "fire-cover"). The gunmen have been killed; the remaining hostages -- those that weren't murdered -- have been freed. No curfew, but I think everybody is just hunkered down at home, breathing easier but still happy to be inside.

And I hope -- I hope! -- that this is the end of the updates for this post.

Getting Romantic in the City of Romance

I've been horrible -- horrible! -- about posting here, because it's been, well, quite a month. So I hope you've been keeping up over at A Year in Fromage. If not, here are two recent postings on love and romance (and dead fish) in Paris.

All you've ever wanted to know about the love locks popping up -- Whack-a-Mole-style - everywhere in Paris. And in the world.

And a wedding album like no other, mostly because it's a collection taken over the years from my local perspective. And also, because Anthony, the girls, and I just can't resist taking our own.

 

Sharp Photo

As soon as I hear the bell ringing, I rush to the window to see what this guy is doing. At just a glance, I instinctively know he's an affûteur -- a knife sharpener.

My knives have been dull for a good half year, and just yesterday I finally stopped procrastinating and brought them in to the sharpener. So this morning, when I see him walking on the street below, I'm distressed that I don't have any knives to give him; then I realize we have one old, cheap, chopping knife that came with the apartment that barely cuts butter. So I run down with it (yes, running with knives) in my pajamas, with my camera. It's 5€ to sharpen a knife I don't use or care about, and it's worth every penny just to get the photos. Note that he's powering the wheel with his feet on wooden paddles.

 

I suspect some of these old professions won't be around much longer, so it feels good to get my knife sharpened in the streets while I still can. For more about these old professions dying out in France, check out the story at A Year in Fromage, which I write back in May; however, I've had to update it with this morning's encounter with the knife sharpener. The fact that I catch up with the knife sharpener -- by accident -- in just the right spot to photograph him with Notre Dame in the background just tickles me.

A Tragic, and Heroic, History

The 70th anniversary of the Rafle de Vel d'Hiv, arguably the single most shameful day/event in French history, has just come and gone. Even though it's a tragic affair, I stumble across the fact that one of my best friends here has an incredible family history that puts at least a glimmer of hope back into one's opinion of humanity, in general. To read all about it, check out A Year in Fromage.

 

 

My D-Day Hero

Why am I posting such an ugly picture of myself over at A Year in Fromage? It's a story that's well worth a little humble pie.

 

I've met a fair number of very (very) famous people in my time, and rarely have I been so star-struck, and never have I been so moved. It's the 70th anniversary of the Normandy Invasion:

 

 

For the full story, click here.

The Eurovision Factor

Drumroll please...It's time for the 59th annual Eurovision contest: the Europe-wide hunt for the best, newest, freshest, and undoubtedly cheesiest new song and performer from each country. We have Eurovision to thank (or blame) for ABBA (1974, Sweden, "Waterloo") and Céline Dion (1988, for the song "Ne Partez Pas Sans Moi", representing Switzerland despite being Canadian. I call shenanigans). It's like the Oscars, the X Factor, the Olympics, and the Miss America pageant all rolled together, with more fog machines and floor lighting and almost no commercial breaks (God, I love Europe sometimes!).

 

 

If you're feeling at all fabulous, festive, morbidly curious, or feel the need to see identical twins, dairy maidens, teeter totters, ice skating, Matlese country singers, and/or transvestites. you really need to see the videos and read the scoop at A Year in Fromage.

 

May Day!

It's May 1st, May Day, and that can only mean two things: 1) lilies of the valley, and 2) nearly everything is closed. OK, I exaggerate. A couple stores are actually open and do not have a sign in the door saying "specially closed on May 1st", but seemingly 99% of Paris is off-school, off-work, and off-duty -- except the people selling lilies of the valley on the streets.



If you want to know about one of the stinkiest cheeses known to mankind, or learn more about this holiday, and help me create the inevitable holiday to celebrate the official 35-hour work week here in France; or the 4-day school week; or the 6-weeks-on/ 2-weeks-off school schedule, check out A Year in Fromage.

About Time

Long ago, you've heard me complain about the wonky clock on my cell phone (it turns out I was the one who was wonky, and just didn't know how to set it). But now that I know about a little historical tidbit called French Revolution Time, my wonky clock seems like child's play. Go ahead, just try to wrap your mind around all this clock conversion math at A Year in Fromage.

photo from: http://io9.com/5886129/the-short-strange-history-of-decimal-time

Pastry P*rn

In case you're in the mood to look at pastry p*rn, you can check out A Year in Fromage, where viennoiserie waits for you. I hope you like your pastries flaky, because it's a really crummy posting.

Game Theory

I've talked about Ticket to Ride, a board game about trains around Europe. But that's just the tip of it. We're big into family game time, especially on cold, rainy winter weekends, and we especially love games that tie in thematically with our lives here.

Memoire de France is a memory-match game with special places around France, including many Paris spots we know and love -- one of which we can see from our window, and exactly half of which we can walk to in five minutes or less:

 

To read about more great French- and European-themed games, check out the post at A Year in Fromage.

It's Not All Romance

When I look out my window or walk around my neighborhood, I see gorgeous old buildings that look just like the Paris of your dreams. But this, too, is Paris...

 

To read more about "inner" vs. "outer" Paris, and to see the not-so-romantic buildings in my life, check out the posting, This Too Is Paris.

And to see everything from Senegal's glorious color to its goats and from the garbage to the giraffes, check out Family In Senegal.

Rats Love Farmers' Markets

So those of you who've checked out A Year in Fromage will have noticed that you're already familiar with some of the material. Yup, it's true: You have been my guinea pigs. But not my dead rats. For those, you'll need to check out the new material on A Year in Fromage, but I wanted to make sure you knew about it here:

There are not one but two taxidermy shops right by Pippa's elementary school. Even after two years in Paris, and with her new middle school big-girl status, Gigi still refuses to look in the windows, much less the stores. So I guess I won't be taking her by Aurouze, which Anthony and I happened upon recently while walking through the 1st arrondissement. With twenty gorgeous nearly-antique dead sewer rats hanging in the window from the same number of nearly-antique traps, it's quite a sight to behold. These are 91-year old dead rats, and I know this almost-precisely because the sign proudly proclaims, "Captured around 1925 at Les Halles."



Click here to read more...

And another story that will be new to you, and is much more appetizing:

These pretty pears, with the tips of stems dipped in bright red wax are Passe-Crassane. Why the wax? To cauterize the end and prevent dehydration. They remind me of the beautiful $100 melons I used to occasionally receive as a gift when I lived in Japan, but less uniformly perfect. Forget about the occasional Bosc (how boring), here we buy Guyot Rosée, Comice Extra, Packam, Conference, William Rouge, Abate, and others I can't even name.

 

 

Click here to read more

Where the Streets Have Old Names

Paris is so old that some of the streets were named before they were even, well, really streets. Especially in our section of the city, which is the oldest bit, many of the roads were named simply out of a tradition that grew from whatever distinguishing feature the locals noticed as long as a thousand years ago.

This one, for example, which is officially the narrowest street in Paris (you can touch both walls with your outstretched hands) could barely fit a person on horseback, let alone any sort of motorized vehicle.

 

 

It's called "Street of the Cat Who Fishes" because of the cat who fished in the Seine at the end of the block, back when there were still lots of fish in the Seine and before there was a busy four lane road to cross.

Or this one:

 

"Street of the Mule's Footseps" is in the Marais, where nowadays one sees boutiques, tourists, Bobo-chic Parisians, and plenty of cars, but no mules.

I like this one not only for being a name that's evocative of years gone by, but also because it's just so long. Imagine trying to fit that into the squares of an official document.

It translates as "Street of the Market of the White Coats." I wonder if the market sold only white coats? That seems rather limited.

In modern times, there are of course some streets named for famous people. But in France, these wouldn't just be generals and presidents, but also philosophers, artists, writers, and composers. My personal favorite is the 4th arrondissement's Rue de Nicolas Flamel -- not just a character in the Harry Potter series, but an honest-to-goodness Parisian alchemist and philanthropist who lived from 1330-1418 (unless, of course, he really did create the immortality-inducing Philosopher's Stone, as legend claims, in which case his end date is in dispute).

But perhaps my favorite street name in all of Paris:

 

This means, literally, "Street of the Bad Boys" -- you know, the kind of boys who would put stickers on a street sign and graffiti the wall.

 

 

 

Break in Burgundy

After Guédelon, we drive deeper into Burgundy with our visiting friends to take a relaxing break from our previous break, picking wildflowers, a.k.a weeds, on the lawn of Sully castle, which dates roughly from the 14th century. It turns out to be a private residence, and we are 99% sure that the woman we meet going in and out of the imposing doors is the Duchess of Magenta. She explains the carvings of boar on the door, with a very posh Queen's English accent, saying that "the owners were very keen on hunting." At first I am very impressed with how well she speaks English. Then I learn she is Scottish. In any event, I feel I can now boast that I hobnob with royalty.

 

 

Then we visit the little town and castle of La Rochepot, so magical that the entire minivan literally gasps when it comes into sight. The 13th century castle itself is, to me, one of the more unusual and memorable in all of France, because of the colorful tiles typical of the Burgundy region.

 

 

 

Here, a view from the castle into the town:

Since the children are less than thrilled with any more historical sites ("Oh, noooooo! Not another castle!"), we find we need to take frequent breaks from the break we are taking. After an arduous half-day of touring around and eating ice cream, the hotel swimming pool is a welcome relief. Even our hotel looks like a little castle, however, with gorgeous grounds, and an indoor-outdoor pool, all in an adorable little village with several excellent restaurants less than 20 steps away. I just have to put a plug in and say that at around 70€ per night, the Logis de Trois Maures in the town of Couches (pronounced "koosh" not like the word that means "many sofas") may be the biggest hotel bargain I've ever come across.

 

 

 

 

One of those neighboring restaurants, La Tour Bajole, is in a monastery from the 12th century, converted at some point within the last 900 years into a restaurant. Food -- delicious; service -- friendly; ambiance -- jaw-dropping.

 

 

Even the children appreciate it to a degree and also admit, begrudgingly, that this little town of Semur-en-Auxois out-Disneys Disneyland. This is high praise indeed, but we get this concession from them only as long as what we do here is simply eat ice cream, and not actually go inside any historical buildings.

 

 

 

One day, we take a break from relaxing to try to educate ourselves by visiting the city of Autun, which is supposed to have "rivaled Rome" in its heyday. But rivaled Rome in what, we ask? Watermelon seed spitting contests? Armpit farting? Because it sure wasn't about the constructions or the ruins. There are the remains of an amphitheater, with excellent acoustics, and two remaining gates to the city. Supposedly, there is also a Temple to Juno, but no amount of GPSing, sign-post following, or asking directions from locals can get us there.

 

 

Perhaps our favorite day in Burgundy is spent biking along old train tracks that have been converted into a "voie verte" or "green track". It's relatively flat, with beautiful French countryside, almost no traffic to worry about except at a couple small crossings, and views of the occasional castle popping up in the distance. ("Shall we ride to the castle, kids?" "Nooooooo!!!!") But at one point, Pippa's brakes break. We have the tool kit on our rental bikes; but as it is only us two non-mechanical moms and four kids, we very nearly call the rental company to come help us. Luckily, just before that happens, we swallow our pride and ask a man riding by in full racing gear for help. Within seconds he realizes that Pippa has accidentally wound the brake cable around her handlebars. He twists her handlebars around, and we're good to go. It is embarrassing, but much better than it would have been if we'd made somebody drive out to us from the rental shop.