Seasons and Mushrooms

If you've been bowing at the altar of the internet gods for us, we thank you - we do now have real internet in the apartment! Everyone will be shocked to hear that the long wait was the result of an administrative mix-up, and our internet had been activated without any notification being sent. Ah well, bygones.

I'd mention all the very lovely food we've been eating, but Jeff is going to tell you more about that later. I will restrict myself to mentioning that the pig's ear salad at l'AOC. It is amazing: rich and caramely and sticky with a little balsamic vinegar, and not chewy at all. Truly wonderful, and that's coming from someone who is not that adventurous in her choice of meats.

The weather here has been gorgeous - cool, dry, and brilliantly sunny - so we've been trying to soak up as much light and flower power as possible before winter sets in. As you may have noticed, we are great fans of the city parks for our picnics and walks: any average day can be brightened up by an interlude in the Place des Vosges, lying on the lawn with a thousand other people.

Last weekend we went to the Bois de Vincennes, a very large park on the eastern edge of the city. This was originally a royal hunting preserve conveniently located outside the Château de Vincennes, later turned into a military training ground. Louis-Napoleon turned it back into a public park and added trees and lakes, and now it's a lovely place to spend a nice Sunday afternoon.

At the Parc Floral in the Bois de Vincennes, we also visited an exhibit on mushrooms. You may not be aware that this is the Semaine Nationale du Champignon, but it is, and even if you are not French, American mushrooms surely deserve some celebration, and maybe even a hug.

They're pretty high on my favorite food list, anyway, so off we went. We saw a few hundred different kinds of mushrooms in little trays: some tasty, some hallucinogenic, some that could shut down your kidneys or induce heart failure. Disturbingly, most of them looked very much alike. I left the exhibit convinced that mushroom-hunting is best left to professional mycologists.

There were also some mushrooms that smelled convincingly of something else: kerosene, ink, etc. Here I am, checking the garlic-scented mushrooms.

Okay, that was slightly exaggerated for effect, but they really did smell very strongly of garlic.

The Parc Floral has a lot of nice gardens, as you'd guess, and some interesting plants, including a giant rhubarb.

They also had a corner full of pine trees that smelled for a second like the North Woods. We were already feeling a little wistful after seeing the Santeri Tuori video installation at the Institut Finlandais, a very large-scale time-lapse projection of a forest going through the seasons. So we are currently planning a trip up to Bretagne (alias Brittany), which we think will be a lot like the North Shore but with oysters and medieval things. That will be the week after next, assuming the trains are running.

If everyone out there could just think a little harder about our home internet getting hooked up, I think we could make it happen. A few moments of silent meditation. A quick muttering before a shot of Beam, perhaps. Orange, as the formerly state-run telecommunications company is known, says it takes about 15 days to get things going. How is this possible? If someone could offer a reason I would be happy to wait the time needed to rev up our internet. Any explanation more than a shrug and a sympathetic smile would be sufficient. Anything to get this image of a guy waiting 15 days to press our Internet Button out of my head. Reasoned explanations not being regularly forthcoming over here, I am ready to resort to supernatural means. Thank you in advance for your prayers and small animal sacrifices.

In more cheerful news, we visited a lovely park. There is an old elevated rail line running from Bastille to Bois de Vincennes that has been converted to green space called the Promenade Plantée. While we haven't walked the entire length yet, we did explore far enough to reach Jardin de Reuilly, a beautiful collection of gardens surrounding a wide green space. Parks in Paris tend to be tight, formal affairs, without a lot of open spaces, so the big lawn is a welcome novelty.

The lawn has a footbridge arching over it. It's cool. Lia inspected the gardens. Satisfactory.

We pique-niqued with goods bought at the Bastille Saturday market. The bees and wasps were diverted by the release of decoy ham.

Another reason to love Paris was found at Reuilly- free sparkling water! Eau pétillante, all you the bottles you can fill, for free!

Today we visited Uniqlo, a fashionable yet bargain-priced clothing store based in Japan. Clothing is really expensive here so we are trying to find the good cheap stuff. I think only rich tourists shop at the regular clothing stores. Everyone else is buying €5 knock-off Converse from sidewalk vendors or shopping at H&M and Uniqlo. We bought jeans for €10 each. After shopping we grabbed some sandwiches and ate them on the steps of the Opera. While eating, a pigeon shit in our bag on our new pants. I was displeased.(no photo)

Right now, Lia is doing some heavy cinema theory reading while lamb stews away on the stove and I try not to drink too much wine before dinner. Our colds are waning. I have a new guitar. This weekend we are going to check out an exhibit at the Institut Finlandais. Something about forests.

Nuit Blanche

The first Saturday in October is "Nuit Blanche" ("white night") in Paris, which means that the city organizes a big, all-night art party. They invite people to create art installations in unusual buildings or spaces and open them up from dusk until dawn, more or less. It's a great event that attracts hordes of people with some 38 city-sponsored exhibits and another 50 or so others. Many of them had half-hour lines, so to see even a quarter of what's available, you would probably need the entire night. We went to seven or eight spots, and Jeff put together a little video to show you a few of our favorites.



It's hard to convey just how cool it is to be in a centuries-old cathedral with a giant LED panel (that's a statue of Jeanne d'Arc, by the way), or on a bridge above the Seine with several thousand people in a crazy cube environment.

Apparently there are versions of Nuit Blanche in a bunch of cities, mostly in Europe, but also in Toronto and Santa Monica. We think Minneapolis should institute one. It wouldn't be quite so big and we don't have any Gothic cathedrals to play with, but it could be a lot of fun anyway.

So that was the big excitement for this week. Other minor events: we found the Japanese noodle-shop neighborhood, a guitar for Jeff, and the parc Reuilly, yet another fabulous place for a picnic - hopefully the weather will continue to allow picnics a little while longer. Unfortunately now we have both got colds, so if the rain stops we'll go out for internet and decongestants, but otherwise it is going to be a quiet day at home.

Paris Food Excitement

The food here is amazing. This is an obvious statement I didn’t fully understand until I got here and started going to the markets. I feel like we have barely begun to investigate what’s available and yet I am already struck giddy with such frequency that I don’t know how people handle it on a daily basis.

“The rabbit still has its kidneys!” I exclaimed about an hour ago. I knew it came with heart, liver and head intact. These I saw at the butcher when he quickly morceaux-ed it for us. Unwrapping it at home I found the kidneys, still attached in their regular place. Even as a fairly intrepid home cook, I have little idea what to do with rabbit kidneys. I let the butcher keep the head, which I now regret on an emotional level, but rationally I have less of an idea what to do with the head than I do the kidneys. Here is a photo of our market haul tonight (in a style cribbed from Martha & Tom) We trekked to one of the few remaining wood-fired oven bakeries for the bread and pecan tart. Closer to home we hit the butcher and vegetable joints on rue Oberkampf. The yellow orbs are complimentary Mirabelle plums from the pleasant vegetable man. He also threw in the bouquet garni- fresh thyme and bay leaves. The wine is from Marché U, an annoyingly packed, basic market at which we buy dirt cheap yet still tasty wine. Here is a flattering photo of me eating all the tomatoes:

Last week we visited La Cocotte, a cookbook store not far from our apartment. It’s super cute, well stocked and knowledgeably staffed. We bought a pretty basic, comprehensive cookbook, Le Miamissime. The rabbit is my third attempt from the book. The first was the veal from the previous post. The second was the peas in this photo. Also included in this photo are a pork shoulder steak, some potatoes and a bunch of cream.

This weekend should be exciting. Friday night one of Lia's coworkers is throwing a party. I am excited to go and speak English. Saturday night is La Nuit Blanche, an all-night citywide art party, from what I can tell. I foresee lots of walking around and drinking rosé from the bottle.

RIBs, wifi, work, food, flowers

As Jeff put it, if living in France were a video game, the prize that you get at the end of the first level would be your RIB. This is a bank routing number which allows you to do all sorts of things, like have your paycheck deposited in your account, or get internet service in your home. Thrilled with our new powers, we ran off to the France Télécom shop to set up our internet. However, in the stereotypical French way, this cannot be done immediately. Though we have all the hardware necessary, someone, somewhere, must activate our account, and this process takes approximately two weeks. France Télécom keeps sending me cruel little text messages: you can track your order online! your television service has been activated! All things that are useless to me until the internet is connected! Le sigh.

However, right now we do have a little device that gets us a limited period of wifi in the apartment, so for the first time, we are posting from the comfort of our home.

Last weekend the weather was gorgeous, so we went up to the Belleville market, bought a bunch of food, and carried it up into the Parc Buttes-Chaumont for a picnic. Here's some pictures of the feast: we've got paté de campagne, some kind of dry cured ham, saucisse sèche, cheese (tomme de something), bread, a fromage blanc cake, figs (they're in a little bag), and cider.









As the name suggests, Buttes-Chaumont is elevated relative to the rest of the city. Here's a cool view of the urban landscape and the Sacré Coeur on top of the hill.



I have now started my job as a lectrice at the Institut Anglophone of the Université de Paris 7, Diderot. The first week, the main goal is to get your students to feel comfortable talking in class, so work consists mainly of introductions and icebreakers. I have them try to guess where I'm from based on accent: the first year students immediately say England, the third years can tell that I'm American. Despite numerous geographical hints, none of them came up with Minnesota on their own, but I guess that isn't too surprising. After I tell them that I am from the lovely, snowy, lake-covered birthplace of Bob Dylan and Prince, they work on introducing each other to the class, and the first-years stage little debates about the superiority of cats versus dogs, summer versus winter, and similar topics of heated discussion. In the future, however, a lot of my teaching will consist of watching students work through readings, listening and phonetics exercises; less interesting, but to be honest, a bit less work.

There are many fun things about living here so far - the restaurants, the shops, turning a corner and saying "oh look, there's Notre Dame/the Eiffel Tower/the Louvre" etc. - but one of the most fun is when we get to see friendly faces from home. This week we had dinner with AJ from Jeff's high school and his lady friend Lisa, which was a great time topped off by a strange waiter who told us that we need to get rid of Obama because he is an illuminati.

Other fun stuff this week: we went to see a Portland band (Musée Méchanique) at the Point Éphémère, a club/restaurant/art space down by the Canal Saint-Martin that we had been wanting to check out anyway. It's a little like what the Foxfire aspired to be, for those who remember that place, but much bigger and evidently successful, based on how packed it was in the bar.

This weekend, however, has been mostly grey and cold, with occasional spits of rain. Despite this inhospitality, this morning we decided to go to the Jardin des Plantes before the weather really turns cold. It was lovely and very worth it; there are large flower gardens, wilder forest areas, vegetable and fruit gardens and trees, and greenhouses with tropical exhibits which we plan to visit later in the winter when we need a little plant therapy.








(Jeff clearly found this plant really fascinating)



Jeff also took the opportunity to work on his Terry Mitchell photography style:



(The tree in the middle there is older than the U.S.A., having been planted in 1774.)

On the way home we stopped by the Arènes de Lutèce. Where gladiators once fought, people now play soccer and check email.


Later the rain set in with a little more vigor; here we are under the umbrella.


And of course, Jeff is still having fun cooking in our somewhat limited circumstances (though we just got a toaster oven, so things are looking up). Here is last night's blanquette de veau (veal stew) - we're starting to need comfort food now that it's fall.



Coming up is a plunge into the depths of the Bibliothèque (library) Nationale de France and an excursion to the Bois de Vincennes, plus whatever else comes to mind.

How small is the apartment? and other matters.

We have scored several victories this week: we now have a bank account! In the U.S. it’s pretty easy to get a bank account; you just apply online and give them money and it’s all fine, more or less. Here, however, you need to offer proof of address in the form of an electric bill, and no, your lease is not good enough. When we went back with the proper evidence, we signed so many papers we flashed back to buying our house. This does not, however, mean I can just have my bank routing number to give to HR. No, one must be patient when doing business with Le Crédit Lyonnais.

We also now have cell phones! Originally we had planned to get a whole phone/internet package, but it required a bank routing number, so when we found we weren’t getting that anytime soon, we decided to just get the pre-paid kind that require no paperwork. If you need our phone numbers let us know.

Even more exciting, we found the source of cheap housewares, such as towels and sheets! It is Tati, a giant store in the 18^th that looks like the hideous monster child of a K-mart and a carnival funhouse. We now have two towels at our disposal, instead of the one that came with the apartment.

Speaking of the apartment: people have been asking us, how small is it really? So here is the answer:

I can tell you there is not much it is bigger than-maybe a sandwich, or your shoes. Eighteen square meters was the quoted size. I have no idea what a meter is, so I measured by lying on the floor and converting Jeff lengths into feet. Standing flat with my arms outstretched I’m eight feet. The width of the room is about six inches past the tips of my fingers. The length is two Jeffs plus most of the bed, about five feet.

8.5 x 21 = 178.5 square feet.

You can tape off this space on the floor of a room in your house and imagine living in it. If you wanted to create a three dimensional model, you need to know that the ceiling is about 9 feet tall for half of the room and then descends to about 1.5 feet tall at the exterior wall. Now add a closet with a toilet in it. Put in a couple sinks, a shower in the corner and call it done.

Lia’s mom requested photos of the apartment with us in them to demonstrate the size, so here they are:

This is the kitchen/bathroom/storage area.

The bathroom. The kitchen is right behind Lia and the dining room table is to her left.

The shower. The ventilation system consists of holes in the walls. So far it works, but we're a little worried about winter.

Lia in the dining corner, with bathroom sink next door. The kitchen nook is about two feet to Lia's right.

View from the bed: WC, kitchen nook.

However, as dire as this may all sound, how much space does a person really need? There’s enough space to store our things, to sit at the table and have dinner and a glass of wine, and if we sit on the bed sideways we call it a couch and watch TV on it. Is there enough space for friends to come stay with us? Er… no.

What more than makes up for the studio’s small size is the neighborhood, which was the reason we chose this apartment in the first place. Rue Oberkampf has an abundance of great food shops, including several butchers, wine shops, and bakeries, plus a cheese shop, a great produce stand, and who knows what else. There are two organic food stores nearby as well, one of which we like. Twice a week an outdoor market sets up on boulevard Richard Lenoir a block away, with seafood, game, and cheese stands that could make you cry, everything looks so good (or possibly out of sympathy for the whole rabbits with fur and gunshot wounds still intact). It’s like a farmer’s market on steroids though actually, I don’t know if any of the vendors are actually farmers. We’re still working on choosing our favorites and might do a longer post about them later.

Here’s a dinner put together with pork chops from our new favorite butcher at Boucherie Leloup and some amazing figs from our new favorite fruit and veggie guy.

Pork plus mustard au chablis direct from the Maille shop.

French cider, which is ridiculously hard to find in Minnesota but so good.

Note that we are embellishing the figs with lovely Minnesota State Fair honey, given to us by Kevin and Lisa.

In addition to the things that are exciting to us, there are numerous bars and restaurants, gorgeous parks, museums, historic monuments, and whatever else you can imagine, more or less, within easy walking distance from our doorstep. Lately we have been to Victor Hugo’s former home on the Place des Vosges, the Jardin du Luxembourg, and the Musée Carnavalet, where we went through the exhibit on the Revolution and saw Robespierre’s shaving bowl, among other things. Walking through Paris every day, you can’t help but become curious about the history of the city, so that’s become the topic of study around here lately. Jeff is reading Alexander Hussey’s Paris: A Secret History, which is much recommended to anyone interested and planning a trip over here.

The Université de Paris starts Fall semester on September 20^th, so up until now I (Lia) have only had a series of meetings intended to prepare me for the joys of being a lectrice d’anglais. I do not, however, have a class schedule yet, so I’m not yet totally sure of what I should be preparing. More news on that later, I suppose.

Here we are eating sandwiches by the Seine, so you know we are happy.

First Days

After saying our goodbyes to everyone likely to read this, a long and uncomfortable night and morning on Icelandair, and two hours on a shuttle bus in Paris traffic, we finally found ourselves at our apartment. Our landlord met us, showed us the apartment, and asked, “c’est pas trop petit?” (it’s not too small?) We said no, but we might have been a little generous. It is très, très petit. The bedroom is approximately 1.25 Jeff-lengths by 1.1 Jeff-lengths, or maybe 7x8 feet. The kitchen/bathroom area is about the same size, with a slanty ceiling to further reduce the useful space. However, after a couple days, everything seems fairly functional and efficient and we think it will be all right.

Formalities over, we wandered around the neighborhood a bit. You can see what it looks like if you check out Google Street Maps and locate the corner of Boulevard Voltaire and Rue Oberkampf. Our door is the blue one right next to the Bar Au Metre on Voltaire.

The city of Paris graciously offers free Wifi in many of the city parks and green spaces, but reception can be a little spotty so you have to look for the groups of people huddled over their electronic devices. We sent emails and facebook updates and made a Google phone call from the Square de la Roquette. Here is Jeff a couple days later, communicating with the world like a pro.

Originally we planned to go out for dinner, but we felt about ready to die, so instead we got pizza to take back to the apartment. Note the white splotch in the middle of the nearer pizza: it is an egg.

We started the next day by figuring out some more of our apartment’s little quirks. One of them is that you have to watch your head, especially if you are tall, but even if you are rather short, like Lia, seen here making coffee.

So far our days consist largely of finding a wifi hotspot to check in on things, wandering around the city and trying to get our bearings, and getting food. Here are a couple miscellaneous daily life in the apartment pictures, including our exciting first home-cooked dinner (escalope of veal and green beans, raw milk Saint-Marcellin cheese, really good bread) and a badass rabbit paté we had for lunch today.

On September 7th several hundred thousand people marched past our front door in protest. Something about not raising the retirement age and hating Sarkozy. From 1:00 to 8:00 there was constant chanting, drumming, disco and vuvuzelas.

It made it hard to get around the neighborhood but it was a nice introduction to the French political scene. By 8:00 the crowd had dispersed, the streets were hosed and we went shopping for dinner.

Upcoming excitement includes Lia starting work, a bank account, cell phones, laundry and maybe a toaster oven.

Our apartment's door latch adorned with MN magnet.