A Six Euro Meal and a Million Dollar View

Before coming to Paris Lisa and I collected at least forty names and addresses of “must visit” Parisian restaurants from friends and family. Nearly all recommendations were accompanied by an, “this place is amazing! I ate the best ______ I’ve ever had there.” With our stomachs rumbling as we exited the plane, we were ready to embrace all the gastronomic delights our new city had to offer us. Bring on the crêpes with bananas and Nutella in the mornings, escargots in a garlic beur blanc sauce in the afternoons and boeuf bourguignon at night! While our appetites said, “Yes, yes, yes,” our new student budget said, “Jeez, that’s expensive. Maybe we’ll come back for your birthday.” And so, we were forced to find alternative means of filling our bellies every day.

Luckily in Paris you can eat very well without dropping a €150 a plate. One of our first cheap-eats discoveries were the bakeries. For a little over a dollar USD, you can buy an absolutely delicious baguette that is still warm from the oven. We next discovered Monoprix, a store not unlike Target but about one-twentieth the size with a great selection of meats and cheeses. Combined, these two economical food establishments allowed us to create what has become our favorite lunch meal: Italian thin-sliced ham, fromage du Chêvre, and a little mayo on a warm baguette.

We make our little ham sandwiches in the morning, slide them into a Zip-Lock bag, and stick them in our backpack when we leave the house for the day. What’s better than eating these little delicious sandwiches knowing we paid about €3 a piece for them is eating them in view of some of the most beautiful sites in the world. So far we’ve eaten our cheap and cheerful lunches in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, on the bank of the Seine where the Ile de la Cité splits the river in two, on a bench in the Versailles gardens while listening to classical music and watching a fountain water show, and about a dozen equally beautiful spots all around Paris.

This morning a dear friend from Chicago is coming into town for a few days. When emailing back and forth to make lunch plans, I left the decision to him. We could either find a quaint restaurant in the Marais or bring some sandwiches down to the Seine. I have to admit my joy when he opted for lunch on the river over a restaurant. After all, the restaurants here are still crammed with tourists and it’s shaping up to a beautiful day.

There’s no doubt that Lisa and I will check off each and every restaurant on our list in the year ahead. We’ll certainly find some excuse or another to splurge a few times a month to eat classic French dishes in an amazing Parisian restaurant. But while the skies are still blue, the air is still warm, and the bistros are still crowded with tourists, we are more than happy to take our €6 lunch with a million dollar view on the side.

The Character of a Neighborhood and Neighborhood Characters

Neighborhoods are usually described spatially as specific geographic areas and functionally as an amalgamation of social networks. Looking at our neighborhood, the Marais, from a functional standpoint, it immediately sounds as if the major social networks that inhabit this geographic area are characters in a bad joke: “the Jews, the Gays, and the Chinese all walk into a neighborhood and…” What is instantly clear once you walk down and around the streets of the Marais is that these seemingly disparate social groups have coalesced to form one lively neighborhood. Add in architecture dating from 13^th Century, numerous art galleries, and a cornucopia of the small clothing boutiques of up-and-coming designers and you get one of the most unique neighborhoods in the world. This is the neighborhood Lisa and I will be calling home for the next year of our lives and while we have yet to make any acquaintances within the major social networks that give our borough its overall character, we have certainly come across some neighborhood characters that give it some flavor.

The neighborhood character with whom we have the most interaction is our building’s caretaker. Although I converse in broken French nearly every other day with this women, I am ashamed to confess I don’t know her name nor the name of her small dog that is always by her side. I do, however, know that she is a devout Catholic as she very ceremoniously gave Lisa and I tickets to hear one of her favorite priest speak at Notre Dame Cathedral during the Assumption ceremony a couple of days ago. I guess it makes sense that some priests are more popular that others but I never knew the kind of rock star status a Catholic religious figure besides the Pope could obtain until I saw the lines waiting to hear this guy’s sermon. The sheer size of the crowd convinced us that the spaces our tickets reserved should be given to people who actually wanted to see this priest rather than two Americans who thought it was a good opportunity to see the interior of the church without paying the admission fee. We settled that evening on hearing a Phish-like jam band regale a crowd in a park adjacent to Notre Dame.

The other little tidbit indicating the piety of our building’s caretaker is how strenuously she attempts to inform us almost every time we see her that we should close the outer wooden shutters of our window when we are changing. Our apartment is on the second floor and directly overlooks the street. The proximity of our apartment to the street and the building we face gives passersby and our new neighbors a more or less uninterrupted line-of-sight into our living space. It seems that on our first or second day in the apartment a neighbor caught sight of one of us changing clothes and promptly informed the caretaker. Ever since that day she has spoken or mimed her warning about the shutters whenever our paths cross. Last week she even cornered another resident who speaks English and got him to tell me that I should be mindful of the shutters and the potentiality of peeping Toms. Here I always thought that Europeans were much more relaxed about the naked human body and it was us puritanical Americans who were spooked by nudity. Needless to say Lisa and I embraced our Puritanism and started closing the shutters after her first warning.

The other neighborhood characters who I have come to appreciate are a homeless man that sits next to our favorite neighborhood bakery and an old woman who hangs out in the laundry mat down the street. These two characters would just be your normal run of the mill crazies if not for some distinguishing things about them. The homeless man, who has perhaps the cutest dog I’ve ever seen, never leaves his little plot of land next to the bakery. He’s there at six in the morning and at nine at night. I’ve never passed by that stretch of street and not seen him. The old lady’s distinction comes in the occasional and variegated loud whooping sounds that she makes. In between her monkey-like cries, she’s as silent as a statue. Because the intervals between whoops are long and uneven, however, it’s easy to forget she is there and your thoughts inevitably relax back to the task of doing laundry. The moment when you’ve forgotten all about her is the moment when she hits you with a loud and startling whoop. I’ve never once heard her utter an understandable word. Only the whoops and only when you’re least expecting them.

If it weren’t for characters like these, our urban neighborhoods would be as bland and dry as toast. They add a little flavor to our day and a little color to our streets. Of course too much crazy in your neighborhood and you start to yearn for the suburbs. But in the right amounts, the crazy characters you come across in the streets of your neighborhood help to form its overall character and any urbanite definitely has a story or two of their own favorite crazy character. I recall a few of my favorites from Washington. There was the guy in Georgetown who attached a child’s sand bucket to the end of a fishing pole and would cast his line out to a group of passersby hoping to wheel back some cash. Then there was the guy, also in Georgetown, who opened the face-plate at the base of a street lamp to get to the power supply and used it to power the small television that he watched while begging for change. My favorite of them all, however, was the homeless man in Dupont Circle who used bus shelters and park benches as workout equipment. Whenever I saw this guy, who incidentally wore an elegantly groomed women’s wig, he was working out his biceps by lifting a bench or doing pull-ups on a bus shelter. He was the most physically fit homeless man I’ve ever come across. While there are many differences between the United States and France, I am happy to report that colorful and crazy characters seem to be universal features in urban areas. And, in a strange way, the characters who I’ve encountered in our new neighborhood have helped to make me feel more at home.

Breaking the Myth

A common subject that came up while discussing living in Paris was how rude the French can be. It seems that the stereotype of the typical Frenchman as being an arrogant a*^%$# continues to survive and thrive in our modern globalized world. Even the French I have known and met in America seem to hold this opinion of their countrymen. A few weeks before I departed Chicago I assisted a French family visiting the States on vacation. Upon learning that I was going to be living in Paris for a year, the patriarch took me aside and said, “You know there are the French and there are the Parisians. Don’t confuse the two.” I roughly translated his warning to an American saying that there is a difference between New Yorkers and Americans. The half Polish half French owner of a flower and wine shop that I use to go to two or three times a week when I was living in Ukrainian Village warned that the “only thing wrong with Paris is the people who live there.” Of course, as a quasi seasoned traveler and progressive thinker, I casted off the warnings as stereotypical stereotyping.

Approaching the two-week mark of our stay here in Paris I feel our experiences thus far have granted me enough perspective to comment on the subject. In a few words, yes, there are a lot of a*^%##^s living in Paris. The first glimpse of Parisian contemptuousness came when trying to retrieve my ATM card back from the bank. It took three visits to the branch and, when I had reached my limit of annoyance, I snapped on the clerk. It was only then that they felt obliged to return my card to me. Then there are the thoroughly unhelpful women at the post office. When you ask them a question about how to do something, they don’t respond, they just silently perform the task in a “you’re so stupid” kind of way. The worse experience I’ve had occurred yesterday at a restaurant in the Latin Quarter. Starving, Lisa and I stopped in to a café that was only sparsely occupied. Having been informed at another restaurant that lunch was over and they were only serving drinks, I asked as careful as I could if they were still serving lunch. The prick behind the counter acted as if he didn’t understand and another patron who was within earshot repeated what I said verbatim. Then he said in English, “sit wherever you like.” We sat at an outside table near the establishment’s chef, who was seated adjacent from us tasting mushrooms and sipping wine. After about ten minutes of waiting the chef noticed that while the prick-server/bartender had cleaned every table inside and out, he had failed to even ask us what drinks we would like. She then asked him in French if he was going to attend to us. At which, he responded “they’re tourist, they can wait” in French thinking we would not understand. A look of shock came over the chef and the prick’s faces when, having understood their exchange, Lisa and I got up abruptly and said to the a*$#%$# server, “Tourist! Aye?” and walked away. We ended up getting a fantastic and less expensive lunch from a restaurant right down the street.

Of course these experiences are only half the story. The whole story is that for every a*^%## server and b*&^% post office employer we’ve come across there have been five amazingly helpful and pleasant Parisians. Perhaps the most helpful came from the French involved in bringing my iphone back to life after I attempted to jailbreak it. Not only did the busy Apple store near the Louvre restore my phone to proper working order without a hint of judgment, the phone store that helped us set up our European phones sent us to the nicest guy who unlocked our iphones in a few minutes and for a nominal fee…he even gave Lisa a free scratch-resistant film for her screen and applied it so perfectly I became envious. I really would have been screwed if it weren’t for these helpful Parisians...iphones in France cost about $900 USD!

Being a city dweller most of my life, I know how annoying tourists can be. In Chicago I took the back streets to get to work so that I encountered the least amount of slow-moving tourists as possible. In D.C., I couldn’t stand it when a tourist didn’t know the unwritten rules of riding the Metro and would block the moving left lane on the escalators or would stand in front of the train doors while getting on rather than off to the side. Patience is certainly a virtue I do not possess in abundance. And honestly if I met my Parisian-self now, I’d probably think he was a bit of an a$$#%&. But being a foreigner, a minority, these last two weeks has exposed me to the not-nice feeling of being unjustly judged, of being dismissed as a stupid tourist. Judging someone while remaining ignorant of their true character is a sickness. But let us not make the mistake of thinking that it is a sickness that only afflicts the French and is concentrated in Paris. The truth is that we all catch it from time-to-time. The truth is that there are a$*@#*&s in every town and every city throughout the world.

Becoming a Pedestrian in Paris

A week before Lisa and I left Chicago for Paris, my mother sent us a book entitled, The Most Beautiful Walk in the World: A Pedestrian in Paris by the Australian writer, John Baxter. True to her long history of book-giving, Mom thought the book would be inspirational and add to our wonder of the city we were about to embrace as home. Baxter, an ex-pat living in a neighborhood in Paris that is famous for the literary geniuses who have lived there, would occasionally spend his time away from writing to give walking tours to the type of people interested in where Hemingway and Fitzgerald would get drunk. The book he wrote about these tours painted a picture of a truly pedestrian Paris, a Paris meant to be seen and experienced on foot.

Of course when I was reading this book while taking Chicago’s public transit, it was somewhat difficult imagining myself as a “flaneur” who sauntered down city streets for hours on end. Growing up on the East Coast and spending most of my time in large fast-paced cities, I was conditioned to walk with purpose. Weaving in and out of pedestrian traffic on the streets of D.C. or New York became my normal mode of walking. Moving to Chicago I found that while the pace was a little slower than back east, speed was still integral to walking and you always walk to get somewhere.

Paris is infinitely different. Still firmly rooted in its medieval pedestrian past, the city lends itself to those who walk and walk slow. In the last ten days, I have found that walking in Paris is like a Buddhist trying to reach enlightenment…the trick is to not try to get anywhere, but to realize that you are already there. I am not going to lie; it’s been difficult shedding the old skin. At least twice a day Lisa has to tell me to slow down. But when I do, I am able to not just see Paris, but to discover it.

So far on our little Parisian adventure, I’ve discovered the Jardin du Palais Royal (Royal Garden) hidden in the thicket of narrow streets in the city’s 1^st arrondissement. I have discovered the Seine at sunset and the Notre Dame cathedral at night. I have discovered the tiniest gas station I’ve ever seen place inconspicuously amongst the sex shops of Pigalle and I have discovered a vista of the Pantheon from Luxembourg Gardens.

Today, Lisa and I are going to meander our way down to the Ile de la Cité to go see the stained glass of Sainte-Chappelle and who knows what kind of discoveries we’ll make. While I may be uncertain about what I discover today, I know that whatever it is, I will discover it as a pedestrian.

Hubris

It’s about midnight here in Paris. The outer shutters to our window on the Marais are closed but we can still hear the muddled noise of six or so different conversations happening downstairs at the café next to our apartment. While a tangled web of German, French, and English hangs outside our comfy confines, I find myself not feeling all that comforted by my surroundings. Today was a lesson par-excellent in the meaning of the phrase “pride comes before the fall.” This morning I awoke in a good mood. I felt our jump on Paris a month before our respective schools semesters begin was going quite well. Beyond finding our apartment, setting up car service, and arranging all the other tiny little things one needs to do when moving abroad, we pre-opened a French bank account and transferred funds to it before we left the states. I also strategically procured iPhones months ago on a “GMS” network so we could “unlock” them here to use with a European mobile phone company. This morning all my/our good planning was going to be pay-off and I was feeling good about being so smart. Alas, life always has a way of making one feel like an idiot just seconds after feeling like a genius.

Stopping into the LCL bank branch that had our ATM cards waiting for us, Lisa and I proceeded to sign about 300 French legal agreements that apparently are necessary when opening a checking account. After about an hour of a half-understood conversation with the bank’s representative, he shook my cramped hand and Lisa and I were on our way to set up our new French mobile phones. But not before breaking for lunch on the Champ de Mars to eat in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. Arriving to the mobile phone store after a lovely lunch, Lisa and I worked the details of new contracts out with the clerk. He asked us for one piece of information after another and eagerly typed it into the computer. Then he asked us for our bank account’s “RIB” number. I shook my head as I recalled having rejected that piece of information at the bank thinking that it was unnecessary and probably could be found on one of the 300 copies of our agreement we had on us. I was wrong on both accounts. The clerk then said we could get the number by going to an ATM down the street. I left Lisa waiting in the store as I ran to the nearest LCL bank. Armed with a six digit code the bank gave me, I confidently typed the numbers into the machine. I got an error message that I did not really understand. Again, I typed the numbers thinking I somehow mistyped. The same message appeared. Third time’s the charm, I smartly thought. Well, it turns out third time was not the charm because the machine ate our new bank card. Walking back to the store deflated, I remembered that I had the number the guy was looking for in an old email that I could access on the iphone. With a few keystrokes, Lisa and I were locked into our new contract with French carrier, all I needed to do was go home, unlock our iPhones, and insert the new sim card.

We got home from the phone store around 8PM this evening and it’s now 20 minutes passed midnight. In the roughly four hours I spent hopelessly attempting to unlock my iPhone, the only thing I was successful in doing was to break it. Something that once was infinitely useful hours ago is now utterly useless. Someone who woke with such hubris only this morning is now feeling a little crappy for having “bricked” his phone and caused the ATM to eat his bank card. Perhaps tomorrow I can get the card back from the bank and maybe even un-brick my phone at the Apple store. But tonight I suppose that I should remember that a phone is only a only phone and a card is only a card and as the months and years go by I will probably only remember my lovely lunch with Lisa in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower.

The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful: Our First Few Days in Paris

It’s around 9:30 in the morning on our third day in Paris. I am sitting next to Lisa, who is working on her French with Rosetta Stone, on our futon sofa that takes up 75% of the space in our apartment while it is down at night and roughly 35% of it during the day. The large window on the other side of me is ajar and the sounds of the streets of the Marais (our neighborhood) request my attention every few seconds. A motorbike starting its engine, a conversation between two French women, and the beeping sounds of the recycling truck color the city that lies just outside our tiny apartment.

Inside our small but charming apartment, finding the proper way to perform everyday tasks within our minimized surroundings has taken a larger portion of our time that we would have liked. Navigating the tight confines of the shower, for example, requires practice on par with an Olympic sport and, in my opinion, should seriously be considered by the International Olympic Committee as a new competition to add the games. One cannot so much as turnaround in the shower without inadvertently turning the handle with one’s backside so the water becomes scolding hot or ice cold.

Outside our apartment, on the other hand, is a city that is more beautiful than a simple blog-post could ever hope to describe. Within a seven minute walking distance from our front door is the Notre Dame Cathedral, the Seine river, and the Place des Vosges and we have walked to and along them all in the last two days. Last evening, we walked down the narrow medieval Rue Vieille du Temple to the Seine and Notre Dame. Along the way Lisa commented that the scenery looked like a set from a movie which got me thinking of all the romantic films shoot in Paris. Watching such films, one thinks that the directors pick and choose out-of-the-ordinary beautiful places to heighten the romantic drama of their scripts. Walking along the streets last night proved that the beautiful scenery captured by those directors and cameramen is only a small sliver of the beauty Paris has to offer. I have traveled to or lived in some of the most beautiful cities in the world, but none of them compare to Paris in this regard.