The Accidental Racists

G overheard me talking recently with a local friend about how the Parisians dress almost exclusively in dark tones, especially black.

 

In fact, the city itself is dressed in shades of black, and gray, and beige. It's very easy to imagine yourself in an old photo by Robert Doisneau or Henri Cartier-Bresson: the buildings are gray or tan; the sky is gray (and even when blue, it's a soft blue-gray that doesn't approach the blue of California); the cobblestones and roads are black and gray; the Seine is silvery, or black. It's a beautiful city, but beautiful in the way of a black-and-white photo. One of the few things I already miss is the vibrant color of San Francisco.

 

 

On the subway today, G pronounces loudly, and in French, "They really are all black!" The train happens to be filled with African immigrants at the time, so it takes me a moment to make the connection back to the recent conversation on wardrobes. Since the Earth does not, as hoped, open up to swallow me whole, I have no choice but to reply loudly, "Yes! Their clothes really are mostly black... and brown, and gray! Nobody's wearing red or pink except us! Black clothing, ha ha!" At this point, the only thing redder than my jacket is my face.

(An aside: Last year, P came home from school in San Francisco and proclaimed, "I only like white boys!" This was met with horrified silence from myself and Anthony until I suddenly realized, "Oh, you mean the boys from your class?" Her school had four kindergarten classes -- called Blue, White, Red, and Yellow. "The boys from the white class?," I repeated. She nodded, and said earnestly, "Yes. Yellow boys aren't as nice. I only like white boys.")

Foodchitecture #2, Hole-y Sites

I like to call this O's-Henge. How was it constructed? How could anybody be strong enough to lift...her wallet to afford Cheerios in Paris? Will this mystery ever be solved?

Well, yes. Our friends are visiting Paris from San Francisco and asked if they could bring anything from the U.S.. Along with pounds of pecans; enough chili powder to give every man, woman, and child in Paris indigestion for a year; American cup and spoon measures; two vanilla bottles; and Costco-sized bag of chocolate chips and jars of Excedrin Migraine, they also brought us three large boxes of Joe's O's. Christmas morning, and I have made our traditional Christmas breakfast of spinach-egg-cheese strata. P takes one look at it and pleads, "Can't I just have O's?" Evidently, she is suffering from O's withdrawal. It may be her favorite Christmas breakfast ever.

We calculate that if we were to buy Cheerios locally, we would pay the same amount for the cereal as we did for the entire delivery from San Francisco.

P likes to create O's-Henge with the special O's twins, triplets and most-coveted quadruplets. Our hypothesis is that it is used as a sun-based calendar, anticipating the sacred and joyous moment of the next bowl of O's.

A Sprink and a Bong and a Ding Dong Ding

Pippa wakes up completely excited and rarin' to unwrap her presents at 11:30pm, Christmas Eve. She catches me at the computer and Anthony cleaning up. The presents are all under the tree, the stockings are filled, and Pippa catches us in flagrante delicto (go ahead, look it up, it doesn't have to refer to sex...), preparing for Christmas morning. She tells us she's awake because she heard footsteps on the roof (which is 4 stories above us) and the "'sprink' of a magic sprinkle from Santa Claus." So we think up a lie, and we think it up quick: it is well after midnight, and we too we were woken up by the "sprink." We've gotten out of bed to check the Santa tracker online. Fully appeased, she goes back to bed.

Perhaps Santa does hit Paris before midnight, or well after. In any event, it seems clear he could never stand to fly over Paris at midnight on the dot. The bells ring here for 15 solid minutes: Not just every bell of Notre Dame, but also the bells of the dozen other churches within spitting distance. Basically, churches here are like Starbucks in the U.S.: one on every block, sometimes two right across from each other. There are Eglise St.Gervais St. Portais and Eglise St. Paul St. Louis just on the Rive Droite side of the isles; Eglise St. Nicolas du Chardonnet and Eglise St. Julian le Pauvre on Rive Gauche; and of course Cathédral de Notre Dame in the middle.

It is an impressive display of bell ringing, in surround sound, and the biggest Christmas miracle is that it seems more melodious than cacophonous. But still, poor Santa. I hope he wears ear muffs.

I'm On Fire! (No, Really)

We have friends from San Francsico visiting Paris this week, and we meet up with them to go up the Notre Dame towers. We are there around noon, and it's pretty awe-inspiring to be up there when the famous bells of Notre Dame are ringing.



In the afternoon, we go to the home of a boy in G's class to celebrate with friends. The hosts are originally German, and one of the families is French, another one is part-French/part-Colombian, and with us there as the Americans, it's a very international crowd. It's also a crowd that loves the spotlight, and among the six children that are there, there are at least three who are professional actors/models, and five who are in a variety of performing groups. The one excepted is only three years old, and she may be the biggest attention-hound of all. There are songs in many languages, a cello performance, chopsticks on the piano, and it turns out one of the men there is a noted concert pianist (Jonas Vitaud, whose most recent album just came out last month), and he plays us a Brahms tune. That's the kind of gathering that makes you really feel like you're living in Paris!

After the party, we cross the Seine, walking by Notre Dame, where barriers and an exterior video screen have been set up to accommodate the expected influx for Christmas Eve mass. We bypass the madness (and late hour) to go instead to a 6pm mass at Eglise St. Severin, a 13th century church on the Rive Gauche side. Since I have the camera with me anyway, I absolutely cannot resist snapping photos of the candelight service, especially since they have the first live nativity play I've ever seen. It turns out that one of G's classmates is Mary and another a shepard. The baby Jesus is played by a real live baby, a very calm little black girl in a white tutu. 

During the service, the priests hand out votive candles to all the children for a parade through the aisles of the church -- not just the nativity scene children, but all children attending. By this point, Anthony has taken P home, but G and I are sticking it out and enjoying it. Some of the parents are accompanying the children, and of course I want to be one of them so I can get photos from different angles, so I walk amongst them. As they start handing out real, lit candles to four-year olds in a very crowded parade of children and a packed church, I think, "They would never do this in the States. It's got to be too dangerous. I just hope G doesn't catch her long hair on fire." As a reader, with the benefit of foreshadowing, you see what's coming, of course. But in the church, I don't. Twenty seconds after I have this thought, I simultaneously smell the unmistakable stink of burning hair and feel the boy behind me swatting at my head.

A sizeable chunk of my hair is burnt, to about 7 or 8 inches up from the bottom. My friends assure me it is not noticeable at all, however. I'm not sure which is worse: having my hair incinerated or finding out that my hair always looks like it's been incinerated. I mean, what does that say about my normal hairstyle -- that literally lighting it afire makes no discernable difference? Other than the smell, that is: My friend Fabrice calls the new scent "Eau d'Enfer No. 5." ("Enfer" meaning "hell.")

My friends and I originally decide that it may be God punishing me either for being Jewish attending mass or, more likely, for being Jewish attending mass and taking photos throughout the ceremony. However, upon reflection, I decide that it cannot be that: if God really wanted to punish me, he would corrupt all my digital photo files. Instead, I think it must mean that God is a huge fan of my blog. And he just wants to contribute his own little joke.

Does Batman Smell?

Some things are universal, like bastardizing Christmas songs. American children sing (and have always sung, and will always sing) to the tune of Jingle Bells:

Jingle bells, Batman smells,
Robin laid an egg.

I don't know the rest of the real words of the fake version because G has bastardized the bastardized version so that it continues:

So who cares, about those two?
They are very stupid.

This, of course, is deliciously fun to sing because it includes the taboo "S" word.

Well, in France, the real words to this song are:

Vive le vent, vive le vent,
Vive le vent d'hiver...

(Long live the wind, long live the wind,
Long live the winter wind...)

But the children sing, as you can see in this posting by G (and I can confirm by what I've heard from the Parisian children, in endless loops, for weeks now):

Vive le vent, vive le vent

Vive le vendredi

Car demain c'est samedi et on fui camp d'ici, hey!

Vive le vent, vive le vent

Vive le vendredi

Car demain c'est samedi et on fui camp d'ici.

On met l'école en feu
Tous les profs aux milieu

Aussi la directrice et on fou camp d'ici, hey!

(Long live Fri, long live Fri

Long live Friday

Because tomorrow is Saturday, and we'll flee from here, hey!

Long live Fri, long live Fri

Long live Friday

Because tomorrow is Saturday, and we'll flee from here, hey.

We'll set the school on fire,

All the teachers in the middle

And also the director, and we'll flee from here, hey!)

I'm so happy we've given our children this opportunity to immerse themselves so they can become fluent with the language and comfortable with the culture, and so that I can hear their sweet, angelic voices singing out this holiday classic. Repeatedly.

Vomitorium, Redux

It turns out both P and I came home from Strasbourg with one more souvenir: a gastrointestinal virus. Just after we got home, I got very sick and assumed it was from the ride home. Though I am prone to motion sickness, I must admit even I was surprised at this level of reaction after only a smooth TGV and subway ride and thought, "How on Earth do I still love traveling?!" But I realized it was a bug deep into the night when I was repeatedly hugging the toilet -- not just euphamistically, but physically, because the cold porcelain felt so good. And the joys of parenting: P came down with it in the middle of the night, and I had to take care of her, get up with her, and clean up after her all night long.

Some sharp readers will be remembering that I am not a single parent and wondering why Anthony didn't help P. Around 2am when she came into our room sick, he switched places with her. He went to sleep in her top bunk, saying he hadn't had a lot of sleep with coughing/kicking kids in the hotel room for the past few nights (wait -- wasn't I in the same hotel room/bed?). If you are thinking that is a seriously lame excuse, and that he should have let me rest, and that this posting will publicly vilify him....well, let's just leave it at that.

Except to add that the next day when I finally felt like I might be able to hold some food down, he made himself and G some lunch and left me to make my own oatmeal.

I should add that this is the first sick day I've had since I was pregnant with P six and a half years ago. At that time, I was on bedrest, and my mother and nephew Sam were both staying with us to help out with G, then a toddler. Because our flat only had one bathroom at the time, and we were all sick for days, we issued everybody their own personal pail. Indelibly etched in my mind is the image of my mother shuffling down the hall holding her little bucket. This video, from TV cartoon Family Guy, says it all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eYSpIz2FjU

After 24 hours of our house being just like a Roman vomitorium -- but without the fun of first getting drunk -- we are all back to normal. And perhaps, after the notoriety gained from this posting, I can count on Anthony to bring his nursing skills to the next level (to any level, that is) when I next get sick six and half years from now.

Strasbourg, Capitale de Noël

We have been warned that we would return home from our long weekend with a lot of Christmas tchochkes we don't need. With that in mind, we are pretty pleased when it turns out that all we come home with is (and, yes, of course this is "sung to the tune of..."):

12(hundred) photos
11-inch wreath
10 art projects
9 glass tree balls
(8 of them unbroken)
7 other ornaments
6 German beers
5 cups of Alsace wine [a.k.a. 1 bottle]
4 wood shapes to paint
3 figurines
2 ceramic houses
and a partridge for our Chistmas tree.

The town proclaims itself the "Capitale de Noël." While it is unclear whether it is the Christmas capital of Alsace, of France, of Europe, or of the world, what is clear is that the title is well deserved at some level. At one point P remarks,

(note from P, age 6, grade 1, called CP here):

strasbor is mor decretid then paris and paris is mor decretid then san fransisco!  so
by the transotiv proprte of inecwolates, strasbor is more decretid than san fransisco!]

[Ed translation: "Strasbourg is even more decorated than Paris and Paris is more

decorated than San Francisco! So, by the Transitive Property of Inequalities,

Strasbourg is more decorated than San Francisco!" Ha, ha! Just threw that last

 bit in to see if you were paying attention. She's not that precocious. What she

actually says is "by transitive logic..."]

 



 

There are markets everywhere, most of them selling Christmas decorations, treats, or things-one-gives-as-gifts-that-may-or-may-not-say "Strasbourg" in red glitter.  We give the girls 10€ each for a shopping spree (ironically, we call this their Hanukah present...), and they choose a few ornaments and little ceramic houses as souvenirs of the town. As you can see from the photos, the houses do, indeed, look just like the town.  The main difference between these old colombage house (the wood-beam and plaster style) and the ones we saw in Normandy is that many of them in Strasbourg are colored.

 

The city has put up the best children's village I've ever seen at any festival, with craft projects that rotate from day to day and an assortment of two-person strategy games that are new to us, such as sortilege, assaut, moulin, and alquerque.

 

Naturally, this is the girls' favorite area of the whole city and festival. What I love most about it -- and find to be culturally fascinating -- is that not one of the art projects or games has anything to do with Christmas. You know with 100% certainty that if this were in the US, the children would be making ornaments or decorating gingerbread men and every item would be in the silhouette of candy canes, bells, reindeer, Santa Claus, gift boxes, Christmas trees, candles, snowflakes, snowmen and of course the P.C. obligatory menorah, Jewish star and Kwanzah candelabra. Instead, the girls made silhouettes of dragons and unicorns. They made Mardi Gras masks. The face painting station went with unicorns, monsters, and fairies. There was print-making where they combined animal heads with different bodies. At a sewing station you could make up your own creatures. And G went to a station for older kids where she was instructed to make a stamp of a monster (she went multi-armed alien) using very use sharp tools.

There was hail and the tiniest bit of snow, hot chocolate, and a lot of Christmas spirit. And just a two-hour TGV ride back to paris. A wonderful winter weekend.

Borderline Menu

We have come to Strasbourg for a long weekend, determined to get ourselves in a real holiday mood with whatever this French city on the German border has to offer: cold weather, festive decorations, charming architecture. I have been told -- by a Frenchwoman no less -- to make sure to try Strasbourg's delicious foods, which are Germanic, but improved by being Frenchified and more refined. That is like saying Arnold Schwarzenagger would be a great ballerina if only you put him in a tutu. So let's call a spade a spade: it's German food.

The jarret de porc, or pork knuckles, are my "best" local meal in Strasbourg. We try the flamenkuche -- known here also as tarte flambée, and in English as flatbreads with cream and toppings. There is no other way to describe this other than to say that it is Germanic pizza, and that there is a reason there's no such thing as a German pizza parlor in the U.S.. You know that expression that even bad pizza is good pizza?  Well, when even 6 and 8 year-old American children refuse to order it any more, you know that, in fact, this pizza is so bad, it's bad. Anthony tries the choucroute with its many boiled pink sausage meats on top. This means sauerkraut, and it is fine and tangy -- at least you would expect them to get that right here -- but the boiled meats are (avert your eyes, bad pun coming) the wurst. 

[Ed. note: Anthony just read this and told me he liked the meats that came with the sauerkraut. But he just doesn't have good taste. Except in women.]

On the streets, the pretzels are soft, but served cold and without mustard (Why? What did I ever do to you, Strasbourg?!). There are at least twenty varieties of bredele, cute button-sized Christmas cookies in a variety of shapes. The stars taste just like the crescents which taste just like the bells which taste just like airplane food cookies. The only exception is the bredele we find that is flavored with geranium, which tastes -- according to Anthony -- like dishwashing liquid. I almost liked that one: At least it had flavor.

Ironically, never in my life have I been someplace where it is so hard to get a table in a restaurant. We are turned down from nearly ten restaurants over the course of an hour wandering around town on a Sunday night, no less.

I do like the roasted chestnuts being sold around town from train-shaped stands: hot, slightly burned, and great hand-warmers in their paper bags. The biggest hit, for myself and Anthony at least, however, is the glühwein -- hot mulled wine -- along with the utter lack of open container laws. The entire town is walking along blissfully warming themselves up with hot spiced wine. So much of the alcohol has burned off that even I am capable of downing a whole coffee-to-go-sized cup of it. Both red and white. Perfect for the winter weather. When indoors and not presented with glühwein, Anthony makes do quite happily with a big almost-Germanic beer. No complaints there.

Go to Strasbourg for the Christmas markets. Go to Strasbourg for the colorful buildings. Go to Strasbourg for the cobbled streets and storybook lanes. But Gott in Himmel, just don't go for the food.

Fellini Feline Felony

Weeks ago, we put tonight on the calendar for the Ubisoft company holiday party. Anthony and I worked closely with his HR department who has a wonderful service where, working through an agency, they find and largely subsidize vetted babysitters for parents who have either child-care emergencies or work-related functions.

The venue is the Cirque d'Hiver, a classic, red-velvet-and-gold-trim style circus ring inaugurated by Président Napoléon III, just 9 days after Prince Louis-Napoléon (nephew of Napoléon Bonaparte) took on the office and title of first elected president of the republic in 1852. As a creative company, Ubisoft throws very colorful, costume bashes, and this year in Paris, the theme is "Dompteur ou Dompté?," which means "Tamer? Or Tamed?" The invitation was delivered to us with two pins which are supposed to serve as admissions tickets: one with a picture of a top hat and the other of a lion's muzzle.

Anthony goes as the tamer, and I go as the lion. No, this is not a commentary on our relationship, so don't get up in arms. I mean, if you just happened to have in your house, and in your size, a leopard-spotted fur cape (not natural, naturally), what would you do? Plus, Anthony's the one with the tuxedo jacket. So now I've dressed up as a lion/tiger/leapord and have found long gloves and nylons from a local costume shop that may be more cheetah/jaguar/panther, and Anthony has his costume-shop whip attached to his belt.

The invitation says "les duos les mieux assortis seront récompensés." This means that "the duos in the best costumes will win prizes." While we don't actually expect to win, we figure we'll give it the old college try -- in this case literally, since I am wearing tiger ears from a Princeton University reunion (either my 20th, or Anthony's).

One of the first people we run into there that Anthony knows is Serge, who Anthony later tells me is the CCO (Chief Creative Officer). He recognizes me from the incredible circus-themed Ubisoft children's party held last week. There the kids had circus activities to try, video games (of course...), individually selected gifts, treats galore, free popcorn and cotton candy and crepe stands, art projects, and a visit from Santa and Raving Rabbid (it is Ubisoft, after all). It was held in the Cabaret Sauvage in Parc de la Villette, a venue built just in 1997 but made classically lavish and old-looking in that same red-velvet-and-gold-trim style.

 

  

  

Standing next to Serge is Emmeline, the CIO, and Anthony's ultimate boss. Both are very friendly and chatty, and Serge asks me where I work in the company. "Oh, no -- I'm a writer! I work at home. I take care of the kids. I'm just the wife! Anthony's the one who works at Ubisoft." We are speaking in French, but that's the gist of it.

About half an hour later, another colleague of Anthony's is chatting with us when she mentions that spouses are not invited to the party. At first we assume she is teasing us, but then slowly it dawns on us that she is serious and also that we have not met anybody else's husbands or wives.

Does the fact that it's forbidden fruit make it that much sweeter? Well, not more delicious than the passion fruit-white chocolate tartelette, my favorite of the finger foods. But mostly we are just baffled: In San Francisco, where the office is admittedly much, much smaller (about 250 total versus 1000 or so here in the various regional offices), the spouses/partners are always invited. And there are two buttons on the invitation, which clearly states that the best-costumed "duos" will win prizes. His HR department even knew we were getting a sitter for the event. Yes, the invitation also says "Cette invitation est strictement personnelle," which means "This invitation is strictly for employees," but even that never clued us in that spouses are not invited. To us, it simply meant that the party isn't open to the general public.

The main circus ring is turned into a dance floor, and the DJ plays a wide variety of songs. At one point, a French song comes on that Anthony and I find atrocious. Impossible to dance to, very late '80s or early '90s, just as buggle-gum-poppy as can be. But then we look around and realize that virtually all of the dancers on the floor -- nearly all French men and women -- are not just dancing enthusiastically but in sychronized choreography. Imagine everybody doing "Thriller" moves when Michael Jackson's song is played. It must have been the choreography from a video of a song that was popular when they were teenagers, and it is a cultural reference point they all share. They are on the inside of the ring throwing their hands up in unison, and Anthony and I are slinking out of the inner circle like, well, a couple of cats.

So it is now clearer than ever that I may speak the language, but that doesn't always mean I understand what's going on. There are some cultural gaps that no amount of bilingualism will bridge. On the plus side, at least we already know who will babysit the kids for next year's holiday party...me.