Good News Bad News

The good news is that we officially don't have to pay our rent anymore.

The bad news is that our building is slowly sliding down the slopes of Montmartre.

Earlier this week a man knocked on our door. Greg was in the living room wearing just a bath towel so I opened the door. A scruffy looking man in his early sixties was standing in our hall way. He had longish hair and a stubbly beard. I assumed he was a nicely dressed chlochard who had come to knock on our door and ask for money. Bold I thought, as I half listened to his spiel. He asked me if I am a renter or an owner in the building? I told him that we are renters. He then says, "Well I have good news for you ce soir, you can stop paying your rent!". "Well isn't that something" I say smiling, realizing that this man is nuts, shooting glares at Greg hoping he would put pants on and get rid of this guy.

The man goes on to explain why exactly we don't have to pay our rent anymore. It turns out that there is a problem with the foundation of our apartment building and the three other apartment buildings that surround us are also part of the problem. Apparently the individual owners of each of apartment in each of these four buildings have been arguing for the past 10 year about how to fix this problem and this guy has been spear-heading a movement to have our buildings officially declared to be in "a state of peril" so that we can legally stop paying rent in protest.

The unkempt appearance of this man, which I mistook for a life sleeping under bridges, is in fact a popular look for his generation which lived through the infamous protests of May '68. A wave of demonstrations and marches swept across France that spring. University students took over the city, throwing cobble stones and throwing out the capitalist ideals that were starting to creep in to society. Many of the socialistic protections and benefits we enjoy in France today are thanks to the work of these revolutionaries. As the man continued to share the history of the situation with us, I could see embers of his fiery youth reigniting in his eyes as he was explaining to us how we are going exercise our rights and stick it to the man!

He told us that we should keep our eyes out for an official posting from the Prefecture de Police and once we see it we can officially stop paying rent in protest of our landlord renting us a apartment in a building with a cracked foundation.

Sure enough, the very next day a four page document was hung in our entry way declaring that our building is in a perilous state. Due to a structural issue originating from the shared foundation of our building the rich and evil (ok I added that part about rich and evil but that is the tone we are dealing with here) land owners who are renting these slums to innocent workers are no longer allowed to collect rent. As long as the repairs are not done the renters are allowed to live in the building rent free. Based on the fact that it took between 10-15 weeks to set up our internet connection in our apartment I cannot fathom how long it is going to take these land owners to meet, decide, delegate, fund and fix the foundation. I think it could take at least a year.

Now I should say that we live in a beautiful apartment, in a lovely building, in a great part of town. Anyone can see that the people who created this law didn't intend to cover buildings like ours and renters like us. But thanks to our activist neighbor and our apparently negligent landlord we find ourselves in this little legal loop hole that allows us to save 800€ a month! Vive la France!

Indigestion and other French Conversation Starters

The French like to talk about their bodies. They unabashedly discuss, analyze and share their body's functions with the world. They are only too happy to report on the current state of their bowels, talk about their level of water retention that day or how well they slept last night.

If you have dark circles under your eyes or have gained a bit of weight, chances are someone is going to ask you about it. On the flip side, if you have just returned from vacation and you are looking tan and rested, I guarantee you someone will inquire about your bonne mine which translates to your physical glow. In most cases the person is neither criticizing nor complimenting you, they are simply trying to strike up conversation.

When you wake up in the morning in France one of the first things you will talk about is what kind of shape you are in that morning. As soon as you arrive at the breakfast table someone will ask you how you slept last night? At first I thought this was one of those hollow 'How are you? Good. And you?' type of questions but the answer I received when I asked, and you? was a full on report about how they woke up covered in sweat because of the weather or how they had a hard time falling asleep because of the spicy dinner they ate which had given them indigestion. This level of information often leaves me speechless, uncomfortable with the amount of information I have received I am both uninterested in posing follow up questions and uninterested in talking about how much or how little I sweat last night.

That fact that you are unwilling to offer unsolicited updates on a rash that is bothering you or the wart on your toe, does not discourage others from sharing this kind of information with you. During one of my first days at the design agency I greeted one of our account executives and asked how he was doing. His answer was, "Not great, I just ate Chinese food for lunch and am feeling really bloated and gassy. Don't you find greasy food like that impossible to digest? Always gives me the runs!". At this point I did not even know this person's name and I certainly did not need to know this level of detail as to how he was processing his lunch.

As the weeks progressed at work, I got used to hearing this kind of insider information on the physical conditions of my coworkers so I decided to try sharing a few details of my own. Last week I had diarrhea...see...evening typing this to you blog fans makes me feel uncomfortable....so I come in to work and when my coworker asks me how I am doing, I answer à la française and say, "Oh, I am not doing too well. My stomach is feeling a little unsettled." My colleague was disappointed with my vague terminology and genuinely interested in my condition. She replied, "Unsettled? Unsettled how? Did you throw up? Do you have gas? Is it diarrhea, and if so how many times have you pooped today? What do you think caused it?". Woah woah woah. I instantly wished I had never brought it up but since I initiated the conversation I had to finish it, "Yep, unsettled, must have been something I ate, anyway how are you?"

These conversations do not just come up between friends and colleagues. If you missed the story about how bluntly the immigration doctor commented on the gas that showed up on my x-ray be sure to skip back and read it. Turns out his comment is par for the course in France. Not long ago I had a gynecological visit. The doctor was a lovely sophisticated lady in her late 50's. She preformed a traditional ladies exam which in this office includes an ultrasound. She was looking around, showing me on the little screen what my ovaries look like, and then she scrolls over to my bladder and says, "Oh oh oh! Somebody has to go pee pee!". She was right and despite my gut reaction of surprise and horror I reminded myself she is just trying to be chatty so I replied trying to sound french and said something like, "Oh yeah. Isn't coffee the worst? Runs right through me".

At the UW I had a French Professor who presented a theory about this subtle but distinct cultural difference. He says it all comes back to religion. The French are a historically Catholic society while America is traditionally Protestant. When you enter a French Catholic church you see a large cross with a dead or dying Jesus on it. Jesus usually doesn't look that good (understandably so) his head it hanging, his body is limp and blood is dripping from his head, hands and from the slash on his side. When Catholics look to the cross they see a mangled body. Now, when you enter a American Protestant church the cross is usually bare and is often represented in a more abstract way, like a cross shaped window. Professor Collins argued that these two different crosses illustrate the two cultures different philosophies about the human body. Catholics are focused on the flesh in all its glory and sinfulness. Protestants prefer to ignore or suppress the body, hiding or ignoring it's sinful and dirty nature.

So while books like "Everybody Poops" may help the next generation to more openly and loudly discuss their gas and bodily functions, I guess I am just an old-school American Protestant kind of lady.

Scolding

The French rarely miss an opportunity to scold. They appear to relish in it and show no mercy to the young, the old or the foreign.

My dear American friend Michelle was strolling through the Champs de Mars with her sun-screen slathered child sitting in the stroller in front of her. It was a beautiful summer day so she pulled back the cover and let Jackson enjoy the light. A French mother came striding over tisk-tisking Michelle for exposing her child to such a dangerous amount of sun! Michelle starts to explain that Jackson is covered in sunscreen but the woman isn't having it and scolds Michelle unmercifully for being an inattentive mother.

I have identified several situations in my life which tend to provoke an unsolicited tongue lashing and I now avoid them like the plague.

In spite of my efforts, from time to time, I find myself on the wrong end of a wagging finger. This happened just the other day in the metro. Grégoire gave me a beautiful new wallet for Christmas. This pale soft leather portefeuille neatly closes with a hidden magnet to contain my cash, cards and metro tickets. The trouble is that this magnet demagnetizes my about half of my metro tickets every time I put a carnet (10 pack of tickets) in there. When you run a demagnetized ticket through the turnstile there is a loud meeeeeep as the bar locks in to place and a crash and sigh as the people behind you bump in to you not understanding why you have stopped up the system. You then have to make your way through the crowd to the ticket sales desk, explain your situation and hope that they replace your ticket.

I have had less than pleasant experiences with ticket sellers in the past so I stock up on demagnetized tickets and trade them all in at one time when I see a nice looking salesperson. I thought I found such a person last week, a young plump girl with an eyebrow ring. I really felt like we would connect and bond over these silly low tech tickets that are always demagnetizing themselves.

"Bonjour, I believe these tickets are demagnetized." I say as I smile and slide the tickets under the window. Silence. Eye roll. She looks suspiciously at my tickets and asks if I know how it is that my tickets have magically demagnetized themselves? I shrug, unwilling to admit that my wallet is surely the culprit. Admitting fault is a rookie mistake in these kinds of situations. More on that another day. She says, "It's not surprising madame that they are demagnetized given the sate they are in..."Oh God. I picked the wrong person. "...you know these little tickets have value! They should be stored is a specific and safe location." I nod, assuming her little scold was over and assuming that if I seem sorry then it would speed up the reissuing process.

But she continued, "And this one! I can see that you ran it through the machine!" She was in an indirect, yet very clear way, accusing me of laundering metro tickets. Of making false claims of demagnetization in order to get fresh tickets in exchange for my used ones. I suggest she run the ticket through the ticket reader which will tell her if it is used or if it is simply demagnetized. She scoffs at this suggestion and tells me that computers don't know everything and that she can see as plain as day that this ticket has been used. Mid-rant I pull out another demagnetized ticket out of my pocket that I forgot about and hand it to her, I figure I am already in trouble so I might as well get as many tickets traded in as I can. This sent her over the edge. She turns red and squawks at me through the holes in the glass, "Metro tickets must be respected! You can't just stuff them anywhere like kitchen rags!!". Silence. I nod. She hands me 3 fresh tickets and holds the 4th up to the glass, "I am keeping this one to teach you a lesson. Next!"

I walked away from the window 1.18€ poorer and laughing. When this kind of thing would happen when I first arrived I would have surely left in tears assuming I had done something wrong. Now I just shake my head and think what is wrong with these people? They are so crazy! I am looking forward to the next step which will surely be having the courage and the vocabulary of a native Parisian to scold her back for selling such flimsy and delicate tickets to me in the first place!

The Scarf

A well stocked French wardrobe will contain at least a dozen scarves. Frenchwomen own silk scarves, wool scarves, exotic scarves from Morocco, fringy scarves from Barcelona, wool scarves from England, flimsy lace scarves....and on and on. It is not only a important accessory (allowing you to dress up or dress down an outfit) it is a question of health. Everyone here firmly believes that having your neck skin exposed is a surefire way to get sick.

I have, for the most part, adapted my wardrobe to accomodate this trend. In part, because I happen to love scarves and in part, because I live in fear of being scolded by the French (more on that another time). This trend however went to new heights today when I walked by my local Princess Tam Tam shop. See left.

A bikini and a scarf?! Come on now.

The French Calendar

I find the French population to be incredibly in sync. If you were take a peek at your average Parisian's ical I have a feeling that it would be almost idendical to their neighbor's ical. This phenomenon is most apparent in the month of August when the entire population in Paris leaves for their summer vacation.

For those unfamiliar with the French annual schedule I will break it down for you.

January: Ski vacations and les Soldes. French merchants are only aloud to put their inventory on sale twice a year, in January and in July.

February: Busy working. Valentine's day is barely recognized.

March: Working.....yes....the French all have a minimum of 5 weeks of paid vacation per year but they do work hard especially in the Springtime.

April: Still working. Somewhere in here their is a school holiday.

May: Working when not enjoying one of the three (THREE!!) national holidays this month. This year was a perfect storm of May holidays, they all landed near the weekend which prompted most people to faire le pont or make the bridge. For example, May 1st is a holiday and were it to land on a Tuesday I can guarantee you that no one will be at work on Monday because they will have 'made the bridge' and turned this one day off in to a 4 day weekend extravaganza.

June: Very busy working because oh la la it is almost vacation season and soon we won't be able to order any more ink, speak to our clients or repair our delivery truck.

July: First wave of Parisians leave the city. Remaining Parisians panic as they try to cram in the last of their work before the tsunami wave of workers leave the city of lights for their country residences or campsites. Second round of Soldes! Summer clothing blow out for those headed on vacation and to make room for the fall collection they will buy when they get back from vacation.

August: Entire population of Paris is replaced by the population of Rome. Most of Paris can be found lined up like sausages along the coastlines of the Hexagon.

September: La rentrée. School beings. Workers begrudgingly return to work.

October: The strike season begins! In September workers are overwhelmed with catch up on projects put on hold by vacation season. By the time October arrives they are lusting after their long summer vacation and have enough free time at work to start organizing les grèves or strikes that block the streets, paralyze the rails and shut down schools.

November: Working. I try to presuade Parisians to embrace Thanksgiving.

December: Holiday time! Use up remaining 2 weeks of paid leave from work plus a few more recoup days (when you surpass the 35 hour work week limit you get to add up those extra hours and cash them in for vacation time at a later date)! Ski vacations!

Better off alone....

Roaming the streets of Montmartre my friends and I were on the hunt for a good crêperie. Having lived in Bretagne (the birth place the crêpe) and being married to a Breton I have two simple rules that must be respected when selecting a crêperie. 1. No pizza crêpes. I am not saying that the menu must be limited to only the traditional complète (eggs, ham and gruyère cheese) but when you start to bring in mozzarella and the tomato sauce I start to cringe at the outlandish lack of respect for tradition. 2. They must use two different batters, one using blé noir ou buckwheat flour for the galettes or savory crêpes and one using white wheat flour for the sweet crêpes. It's not asking much...really...but you would be surprised at what they try to pass off as a crêpe in this city.

We scanned the menu in the window which passed muster. Seeing several open tables we enter and request a table for six. The gentleman's reply was something like this, "Baahh...sit down if you want but it will be at least 20 minutes before I can even come over to set the table". We take a look around, see that half of the 10 or so tables are full, assume he is bluffing, and sit down. Sure enough 20 minutes roll by and during this time we see him dash from the kitchen to the dining room, back to the kitchen, dart downstairs to the cellar, back to the front door to frighten away other potential diners with long wait times, into the kitchen and finally to our table.

My friend Maxime inquires about the lack of staff. The man laughs and says "Il vaut mieux être seul que mal accompagné" which means it is better to be alone than in poor company. I have heard this expression before in the context of divorce proceedings but never in a business setting. The man, pictured here, runs this 10 table crêperie single handed. He tells us that he had a larger place with a staff and it was a nightmare, someone was always sick or late or pregnant. So a few years ago he jumped ship and bought this little place in which he is the host, cook, waiter, dishwasher and owner.

While clearly he could do more business if he so desired (he successfully managed to scare away the group that came in behind us even though there were enough tables and chairs to seat them) but when we point this out to him, he says, "Why? I earn enough to pay the rent, I can close when I want, if I were to serve more people it would only cause me problems". More money more problems, I hear you guy.

Jumping to Conclusions

I have been speaking French for nearly 10 years now. While my spelling and grammatical skills could still use some work, I have always been proud of my accent. As it turns out, sounding more French than you are can really get you in to trouble.

The problem is, French sounding words come out of my mouth but they sometimes come out in the wrong order or in the incorrect tense. Or at times the words come out correctly but my questions are so silly and basic that the person I am speaking to isn't sure how to respond. For example, the first time I went to the doctor's office here in Paris I had to ask them how to open the door? Or when I went to the pharmacist and asked if she could show me how large a 6cm band-aid is? In these situations, the person I am talking to, looks me up and down, and thinks hmmm...this lady looks sort of French and sounds fairly French (or given her accent she has at least lived here for a while) why is she asking me such a stupid question? And why didn't she use the correct form of the verb to be? In earlier days people would assume that I was a tourist. Their expressions would soften, their speech would slow and they would kindly respond to my question. Unfortunately, nowadays most people conclude that I am an idiot. Or a racist as the case may be.

I first realized this phenomenon when I was buying bread one morning. I walk in to the bakery, greet the sales woman and ask for a baguette. I greet people all the time and have successfully ordered more than a hundred baguettes in my day so these sentences flow easily and accurately from my lips. She replies, "Trad ou Gana?". My brow furrows as I search my list of vocabulary words looking for trad or gana...nothing...I obviously look lost so the saleswoman repeats her question to me, "Trad?! ou Gana!?". The man behind me in line sighs with impatience and the saleswoman glares at me wondering what my problem is. Apparently she decides that I must be an idiot because she pauses and smiles in a pityful and slightly condesending way then in slow motion points to the two baskets of bread and says, "ça ou ça? this or this?". I quickly realize by Trad she means a Baguette de Tradition and by Gana she means a Flute de Gana. Some bakeries buy the rights or special ingredients which permit them to sell a certain kind of bread. There are a handful of these bread brands which I am now familiar with but at the time I only knew of the Tradition which I had never heard being referred to as a Trad. Native French people are familiar with this kind of bakery lingo, tourists rarely pick up on it, and I land somewhere in between. Not familiar enough to understand her abbreviated terminology, but too familiar to get the nice explanation reserved for visitors.

This same issue comes up at work. This week a man named Saïd Rachidi (a name not of French origins but a common North African name that most French people would be familiar with) called in to our offices. I pick up the phone and from my brief greeting he is unable to detect that I am not French. So when I ask him to repeat his name five times and then finally ask him to spell it out for me he is offended and assumes I am ridiculing him because of his non-French name. Little does he know that I make 90% of people who call in at work repeat their names five times then have them spell it. This man leaves our interaction concluding that I am a racist and not a foreigner who honestly could not understand his name.

When I lived in the States and would come to France for vacation or for work, I wanted to appear as French as possible. I used my very best accent, used French hand gestures and put on my most Euro-fabulous clothing. These days I usually to identify myself as non-French right away, especially in situations where I don't know exactly what I am doing or how to explain what I need. Generally speaking the motivation for doing this is practical. However recently I have been feeling simultaneously motivated by feelings of patriotism. These recent feelings of patriotism are still under review and will surely be analyzed further in a future post. All I know is that ever since I moved here I no longer feel the need to minimize my American-ness, it just gets me in to trouble anyway.

A brief intermission...

It know it has been a while since my last posting. I started to feel a little directionless in my blogging and I was concerned that I was being negative and overly critical. 

Today, I am here so say that I am back! I am officially driving my husband nuts with my daily stories and observations and ranting and raving and have concluded that in order to maintain his sanity (and mine) I should continue writing. So, without further ado....my latest thoughts...