Crépuscule, Paris

Pretty sunsets symbolic of our pending departure!

 From our window

From Canal St-Martin

We leave tomorrow, but we must return our internet hardware to the (hopefully) fine people of France Telecom today, so this will be the last post from Paris. If the opportunity arises we may update the Twitter feed, so look up and to the right for that.

We talked about writing a big sentimental post about all the things we'll miss most, and then a snarky post about things we really won't miss. But surrounded as we are by bags and boxes and with an unpleasantly long to-do list, a short version will have to do.

The things we'll miss most: friends, visitors, the markets, the parks, apéros by the Canal. See our previous posts for details.

One thing we will definitely never, ever miss, not even for the teensiest little second:

First note that I had to press the button several times. There's always a moment of tension when you're not sure if it's going to work at all. And then it makes the noise. That enormous, apartment-rattling, horrible noise. And then a pipe somewhere in the kitchen makes a noise and you're terrified that's gonna blow. Someday it will. But (knock wood) we're thankful we won't be here when it does.

But adieu to all that.

- Lia

The Last Popincourt Marché Haul

On Tuesdays and Fridays, from sometime before we wake up until about 2:00pm, Boulevard Richard Lenoir between Oberkampf and J-P Timbaud turns into an open-air market. It's amazing, and it's not even considered one of the bigger or better of the 60-some marchés volants that open and close twice a week all over the city. A short walk to the south is the Bastille market. Open Thursdays and Sundays, it is the biggest in the city. It attracts hordes of shoppers- locals and lots of tourists. We go on most Sundays, but the crush of people can be tough to bear. Popincourt is a mellower affair. It has most of the same vendors I like from the Bastille market, plus a few extras. It has none of the photo-taking crowds, just sharp elbowed, line-cutting little old women. These photos show our final haul from our favorite market. It's a pretty normal collection. Usually there would also be a chicken, maybe some potatoes. We are not going to be cooking much more so we splurged on things like nice mushrooms, extra cheese and a good fish. We felt a little sad making the final rounds, but we hit all of our favorites. 

Here are the details, for those interested: 

The bag in back was a give-away from the marché organization. Look for it this summer as we show it off at the Farmers Markets back home. Moving forward, the brown, dirt covered mushrooms are champignons de Paris. Like cremini, but much firmer, they are the basic mushroom around here. The light colored mushrooms to the right are pleurotes jaunes (yellow oyster mushrooms), and the golden mushrooms toward the front are girolles (chanterelles). The big ugly thing on the right is a turbot- a lovely and expensive flat fish from the North Atlantic. To the left, the green things with the red band are wild asparagus. They have thin stalks and wheat-like tips. Above them are simple cherry tomatoes. A lemon is in the middle, next to the bunch of spring onions. Above the onions are chives and parsley. Moving on to dairy, we've got six eggs and three cheeses. Oh, the cheese. The herb-covered mass is a Corsican brebis, the small one is half a Tommette de Brebis and the large slice is Abondance. 

Parc de Bagatelle and a lunch

Parc de Bagatelle is located within the Bois de Boulogne on the western edge of Paris. It was built by the Count of Artois in 64 days in 1775, on a bet by Marie Antoinette that he could not turn the land into a park in such short time. It is well known for its spring tulips, rose gardens and peacocks. We were a little late for the tulips, but the roses were beautiful and the peacocks were screeching.

The rose gardens were built in 1907. There are about 1100 roses on display, roughly 20% of them pre-1920 varieties.

 

goslings and ducklings

 Enough beauty. The next day we hit the Popincourt market and checked another food item off the to-do list. Cuttlefish is somewhere between an octopus and a squid. It has a strange bone in its back, the cuttlebone, which is the calcium-rich thing you put in birdcages for them to peck at.  It wasn't pretty but it was fun and educational to turn it from the first photo into the last. We ate it with salad and some raw milk soft-ripened cheese, which we are consuming in heroic quantities before our return to the land of ruined food.

Photos I have Taken of People Taking Photos of Dumb Shit

When you live in a city with a lot of tourists, art students, models and photographers, it's not unusual to see someone taking a picture. You get used to it, you even get a little jaded about it. And sometimes you think, really? You're gonna take a picture of that?

And thus, a photo series was born. 

This last one turned out to be actual French pop star Yelle, 

who just played at First Ave in Minneapolis and at Coachella.

If you look at the photos on her Facebook site, 

you will see her wearing this exact leopard-print catsuit in concert.

Who knows, maybe the rest of this photo series will also turn out to contain famous people, amazing works of art (I mean, besides the Victory of Samothrace), or the work of celebrated photographers!

Random Cool Things in Paris, part 2

Here's another couple of fun or interesting things we've seen over the past couple of months, which for one reason or another we didn't write a whole post about at the time.

1) Les Passages de Paris
We Minnesotans like to take the rather dubious credit for inventing the indoor shopping mall (oh how I do loathe Southdale). But we can blame the concept on the Parisians, who began building covered, semi-enclosed shopping passages in the early 19th century. Frankfurt school philosopher Walter Benjamin wrote a great deal about them, if you're into that kind of thing. One day back in February, Jeff and I set out to explore some of them.

Some of them are lovely, with what appear to be original lamps and decorations, and are filled with high-end clothing, antiques, gift shops, little cafés and restaurants, or design offices. Others are less well-preserved and a little ratty, but still retain some charm. If you get out of the center of town, you can find passages that are full of cheap wholesale clothing shops. Up by Porte St-Denis, some of them seem to host prostitutes, but we're not sure.

2. Église St-Eustache
We went into this church on a whim - we just happened to be walking by, and we wondered what it was like inside. Pretty cool, it turns out. This church was built in the late 16th-early 17th century, so it is a good example of the late Gothic style. Here's their website, in French, but if you've got Google translator you can figure it out.

And here's the apse end, peeking out through the Passage St-Eustache.

The nave and the organ.

Not sure who scandalized Peter Lorre so much,

but we didn't know he was a Catholic cardinal, either.

St-Eustache is right by les Halles in the 1st, for centuries the largest wholesale food market in Paris and the setting of Émile Zola's novel, Le Ventre de Paris [The Belly of Paris]. But the old market was demolished in 1971 and the food vendors banished to the suburbs. The diorama below dramatizes their departure.

There is now an underground shopping mall and a large, not terribly appealing park where the old Halles used to be. The city has ambitious plans to remake the space yet again.

We have just over two weeks left here in Paris, and parts of them will be pretty busy, but we'll try to update a couple more times before we leave.

Paris Parks

If it weren't totally obvious how much we love the Paris park system, I have to tell you we just spent most of a week dragging a friend from one park to another, plopping him down on our pique-nique blanket with wine and cheese, and exclaiming "Isn't this fantastic!" And truly, it is a good time.

Place des Vosges

Jardin de Reuilly

More of our pictures of sundrunk Parisians here and there

Paris parks are not only places where you can huff flowers or promenade yourself. If there's sunshine, there is essentially a big, happy, relaxed party on every lawn in every park, where you can read, nap, have a meal or an apéro, people-watch, dodge flying toddlers, and otherwise just enjoy the life.

This may be a common experience in large cities, where people tend to live in tiny apartments without any green space to call their own. But as far as we know, it is not very common in Minneapolis, where many people have their little patch of land and stay within their fences. At home, we don't hang out among strangers nearly as much; so we were really surprised to find that we liked being two of a hundred or so people sitting around together. Not necessarily paying any attention to each other, but relaxing in proximity. At least for us, the Parisian habit of really using and enjoying public spaces, with the rest of the public, is new and different and enormously pleasant.

We have repeatedly vowed to each other to start a pique-nique ritual when we get home. Frankly I'm not sure it'll be quite the same if we can't be in a giant field with a ton of other people, but we'll try. Expect to see us spreading out the big yellow blanket somewhere in Minnehaha Park later this summer.

Musée Carnavalet Garden

Musée Carnavalet houses a collection related to the history of Paris. Entry to the museum, as well as the clean, functional bathrooms, is free, which is a great thing to keep in mind if you've downed too many Heinekens with your lunch at l'As du Falafel. While you can see much of the garden through the doorway on Rue des Francs Bourgeois, you need to enter through the courtyard on Rue de Sevigné to enjoy the view without the roving hordes. Get cleared through security, enter the lobby and then head out the wooden door at the end of the corridor to the left. Voilà - roses and topiary! 

La Commune de Paris

While you mostly see pictures of Jeff and I in various states of leisure, there are certain practical reasons the University sent me to Paris. One of my goals while here was to learn more about the city and its history during the 19th century, a time when France in general and Paris in particular was a pretty crazy place to live. An event that's always been fascinating to both Jeff and me is the brief, four month period when Paris had its own revolution and formed its own socialist government. 

This was right after the rather humiliating loss of the Franco-Prussian war and a very long, painful siege that left Parisians in bad shape. When the French army came in the middle of the night to get some canons that the Parisians had bought for the National Guard, on March 18, 1871, people in the working class areas of Montmartre weren't having it. Along with their local National Guardsmen, they chased the national army out of the city entirely.

We recently went to an exhibit of photos and other documents from the Commune at the Paris Hôtel de Ville. You can see some photos of the city under the Commune here. 

This poster is calling for the construction of barricades to defend the city streets. 

When Parisians have a revolution, they like to tear up the cobblestones and build giant walls out of them. That is the correct and traditional way to do it.

These posters publicized the new laws established by the Commune. Among them are the separation of church and state; free, universal and secular education; and the abolishment of night work for bakers. Some of these things later became French law under the Third Republic.

Unfortunately, things didn't go so well for the Commune. Internally, things were tough - the city was once again under siege, now by the national French forces. There was little money to pay soldiers or employees, and though they probably could have raided the Banque de France, they did not. Besides, not everyone was excited about the new government, and I imagine the formation of a Comité du Salut Public (Public Safety Committee) didn't reassure them - that's the same committee Robespierre lead during the Terror.

Long story short (here is a more detailed version, from a pro-Communard standpoint, for those interested), during the week of May 21-28, things turned ugly. The national army invaded the city with the help of some Prussian troops who were still hanging around. There were battles in the streets. Knowing they were about to be defeated, angry Communards decided if they couldn't have Paris, nobody could, and set fire to a number of major buildings, like the Hôtel de Ville, the Palais de Justice, the Palais des Tuileries, and the Palais Royal, among others. 

A lot of the fires were blamed on working-class women called "Les Pétroleuses," 

later vilified in the press.

In order to put a definitive end to the Commune, the French government decided that all support for it was a serious crime, punishable by death or exile. Accordingly, they summarily executed many people believed to have fought for the Commune - sometimes this belief was based on light evidence, such as  looking at a man's hands and deciding he might have shot a gun recently. People disagree about how many people were killed during la Semaine sanglante (the Bloody Week), but estimates range between 10 and 30,000. 

A good number of them were shot against one of the walls of Père Lachaise cemetery. There is now a sculpture and a monument on either side of this wall, commemorating the people who fought and died in Paris's 1871 Revolution.

So while many people may think Paris is about luxury goods, or "who can doubt that Paris is a woman?", or la vie de bohème or whatever, and it is all those things (except a woman), but it's good to remember it's also a battleground.