Insupportable: something that is intolerable, unjustifiable, etc. I realize that this word exists in English, but it's simply not used with the same frequency or enthusiasm as it is in French. In Paris, many things are insupportable -- the one-minute delay on the metro, colors that aren't black, the amount of reading for a class, life in general.
La grève: a strike
When something that is especially insupportable happens, the Frenchman's first recourse is to stage a manifestation -- a protest. When things get especially insupportable, however, he must turn to la grève.
I should correct myself: the word "must" implies that the Frenchman hesitates to use -- even dislikes -- la grève. This is not the case. Over the past month or so, professors (and some students) at public universities in France have been staging des grèves over President Sarkozy's proposed privatization of the French university system: Until he drops the proposal, many departments are refusing to hold any classes. Since Sciences Po is private, I have been, sadly, unaffected by the no-school grèves.
Until today. As an American who wasn't even around when President Reagan fired the air traffic control workers, my experience with grèves is limited to a few childhood memories of picket lines at the grocery store. Today, though, the French showed me how it's done. This is France, so la grève necessarily involved emotional highs and lows.
When I left for school, the metro was still running, but it took me an extra fifteen minutes to get to class. "I hate la grève, I hate la grève." When I left school for my lunch break, I was craving a ham and butter sandwich, made with the delicious, delicous ham from the butcher shop near my apartment. I hop back on the metro, go to the butcher, and... the BUTCHER is on grève. "I just took the metro back to the right bank and the butcher is on strike? What the heck is he angry about? WHERE IS MY HAM?" Needless to say, I was very hangry (hungry+angry) at this point, and not at all a fan of la grève.
Not a fan, that is, until I realized why the French are such fans of la grève: it is one huge party. Walking into the Place de la Republique was sensory overload: the entire plaza was blocked off and literally packed with members of different labor unions, all protesting the French government's response to the economic crisis. There was a lot of shouting and sign/flag waving, yes, but there was also live music, dancing, drinking in public, picnics, pamphleteering... and, merciful Mother of God, barbeque. The emotional low of the morning metro rush and the ham failure was more than offset by the fantastic cooked sausage I got for lunch. After enjoying my lunch and watching the grève for a bit (seriously, this is a real activity), it was time to go back to school for my evening class. Worried that I hadn't done the most complete job on the reading, I hustled to my class to find... it was CANCELLED! Turns out there had been threats against Sciences Po, since it's a very bourgeois, political school, and the purpose of the nation-wide grève was to protest France's supposedly (read: not) bourgeois economic policies.
So, instead of a ham sandwich and a two-hour class, I ate barbeque and took a lovely stroll in the sun (!) along the Seine. Vive la grève, indeed.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Monday, March 9, 2009
Earthly delight and otherworldy horror
Long time no post, I know... it has been a busy few weeks with classes starting and friends from BC visiting.
Something that Paris does very well: this city is full of cafes and restaurants in which time seems to stand still, in the best possible way. Though this means there really isn't such a thing as a quick bite to eat (with the delightful exception of crepe stands), it lends itself to everything from epic steak-frites dinners to perfect lazy afternoons with a glass of wine. This time-and-calories-don't-exist phenomenon most recently manifested itself on Saturday morning. My friend and I wandered to a restaurant in the Marais called "Le Loir dans la Theiere" -- The Dormouse in the Teapot. This place was so cozy, with big leather chairs and wooden tables, walls plastered with posters, and retro toys hanging from the walls...the perfect place to spend a languorous Saturday morning. (For those of you who have been to Sydney: this is like Gertrude and Alice, sans books). Kristen and I ordered the prix fixe brunch and proceeded to spend three hours eating, chatting, and people watching. It's a fantastic country where three-hour meals are considered a birthright, not an indulgence.
After brunch, Kristen proposed that we check out the catacombs. Quick history lesson: Paris quarried much of the limestone used for the city's construction from beneath its own streets, largely on the left bank. While some Parisians were busy building monuments to their country/emperor/monarch's greatness, other Parisians were dying and being buried in the middle of the city, causing major public health problems and cemetery overcrowding. When important Parisians realized that if they quarried any more limestone the buildings above the quarries might collapse, they decided that -- voila! -- they could make efficient use of space by moving the other Parisians' remains to the quarries. (Apparently, this was ethical in the 18th century, but frankly, I'm surprised someone in Paris didn't protest this decision). And so it came to pass that there are 1.7 kilometers of subterranean, human-boned-lined passages in Paris.
An aside: I've always had a soft spot for Indiana Jones. Adventure, history, travel... really, it has it all. So suffice to say I was pretty excited about the catacombs -- an urban Indiana Jones experience, how cool!
...Or terrifying. You enter the catacombs via a staircase and a long set of dark, low-ceilinged tunnels. The staircase is circular, very steep, and goes on forever, so by the time you reach the bottom of the stairs you've completely lost your sense of direction. The tunnels twist back and forth, with no sources of light save the occasional overhead lamp. Even scarier than the flickering lamps, however, are the barred-off side tunnels that recede into darkness: we hurried past each one, fully expecting poisonous darts to shoot past or a skeleton to reach out and grab us. You see, when Indiana Jones does something like this, it's adventurous; when I do it, I feel like I'm in a horror movie. The catacombs themselves are simply unreal... all the walls are literally covered in closely-stacked human bones, which are sometimes arranged into designs (not sure why -- the bones aren't going to get cuter if you put the skulls in a circle and surround them with femurs). And, since this is France, the bones are supplemented by tablets inscribed with philosophical quotes on death. For those of you who are so inclined, here's a link to a picture on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DJJ_1_Catacombes_de_Paris.jpg
So, I'm back in the world of the living. My classes (which I'm taking in French and English) are a bit hit-or-miss, but I am taking one class, The Origins of American Identity, in which Benjamin Franklin's "Advice to a Young Man on the Choice of a Mistress" is assigned reading. Ben suggests that young men look for older women because, unlike young women, "they are so grateful!!" Politics, architecture, science, agriculture, and illicit relationships -- The Founding Fathers really were experts on everything. Gotta love history.
A bientot!
Something that Paris does very well: this city is full of cafes and restaurants in which time seems to stand still, in the best possible way. Though this means there really isn't such a thing as a quick bite to eat (with the delightful exception of crepe stands), it lends itself to everything from epic steak-frites dinners to perfect lazy afternoons with a glass of wine. This time-and-calories-don't-exist phenomenon most recently manifested itself on Saturday morning. My friend and I wandered to a restaurant in the Marais called "Le Loir dans la Theiere" -- The Dormouse in the Teapot. This place was so cozy, with big leather chairs and wooden tables, walls plastered with posters, and retro toys hanging from the walls...the perfect place to spend a languorous Saturday morning. (For those of you who have been to Sydney: this is like Gertrude and Alice, sans books). Kristen and I ordered the prix fixe brunch and proceeded to spend three hours eating, chatting, and people watching. It's a fantastic country where three-hour meals are considered a birthright, not an indulgence.
After brunch, Kristen proposed that we check out the catacombs. Quick history lesson: Paris quarried much of the limestone used for the city's construction from beneath its own streets, largely on the left bank. While some Parisians were busy building monuments to their country/emperor/monarch's greatness, other Parisians were dying and being buried in the middle of the city, causing major public health problems and cemetery overcrowding. When important Parisians realized that if they quarried any more limestone the buildings above the quarries might collapse, they decided that -- voila! -- they could make efficient use of space by moving the other Parisians' remains to the quarries. (Apparently, this was ethical in the 18th century, but frankly, I'm surprised someone in Paris didn't protest this decision). And so it came to pass that there are 1.7 kilometers of subterranean, human-boned-lined passages in Paris.
An aside: I've always had a soft spot for Indiana Jones. Adventure, history, travel... really, it has it all. So suffice to say I was pretty excited about the catacombs -- an urban Indiana Jones experience, how cool!
...Or terrifying. You enter the catacombs via a staircase and a long set of dark, low-ceilinged tunnels. The staircase is circular, very steep, and goes on forever, so by the time you reach the bottom of the stairs you've completely lost your sense of direction. The tunnels twist back and forth, with no sources of light save the occasional overhead lamp. Even scarier than the flickering lamps, however, are the barred-off side tunnels that recede into darkness: we hurried past each one, fully expecting poisonous darts to shoot past or a skeleton to reach out and grab us. You see, when Indiana Jones does something like this, it's adventurous; when I do it, I feel like I'm in a horror movie. The catacombs themselves are simply unreal... all the walls are literally covered in closely-stacked human bones, which are sometimes arranged into designs (not sure why -- the bones aren't going to get cuter if you put the skulls in a circle and surround them with femurs). And, since this is France, the bones are supplemented by tablets inscribed with philosophical quotes on death. For those of you who are so inclined, here's a link to a picture on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DJJ_1_Catacombes_de_Paris.jpg
So, I'm back in the world of the living. My classes (which I'm taking in French and English) are a bit hit-or-miss, but I am taking one class, The Origins of American Identity, in which Benjamin Franklin's "Advice to a Young Man on the Choice of a Mistress" is assigned reading. Ben suggests that young men look for older women because, unlike young women, "they are so grateful!!" Politics, architecture, science, agriculture, and illicit relationships -- The Founding Fathers really were experts on everything. Gotta love history.
A bientot!
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