Thoughts on Paris

Hoping to See a Few Old BuildingsAs an American, I am used to tourist spots that have a cluster of 1-12 old buildings somewhere that have passed the 100 year mark. You make your way to the parking lot, stand inside or in front of the building, maybe take a tour and then buy a postcard with that building on it. You marvel at how well the building matches the styling of its time. Naturally, travelling to Paris, I was hoping to see some old buildings. A figured I would get a couple dozen, here or there, to look at. I knew they would be older, and I knew there would be more.
What I didn't know is that every single building across almost the entire downtown area of Paris was going to be old. Everywhere, as far as I could see, everything thing was hundreds of years old. We started off in the Marais district (French for "Swamp" because that is what it was before one of the Louis's decided to build a palace there and had it drained). Up until a couple of decades a go it was apparently a bit seedy and low rent, but it has had an artsy SOHO transition and is quite an up and coming place. Further east, toward where the Bastille used to be located is where Louis placed his house, so all the other aristocrats decided that they were going to move there as well. Around that block specifically are aparently some insanely nice houses, although it is difficult to tell from the outside because for blocks in every direction the exteriors are using mostly the same motifs on the upper floors. The building we were staying in was probably six or seven blocks away in the progressively lower rent area, but when it was built several hundred years ago it was apparently quite the place to be. Looking out the window of the apartment I could see a great big puzzle set of stacks and rows of ancient French roofs.
The rows and rows of old apartment buildings, though, are nothing compared to the major architectural works, some of which date back to the 1100's. The Hotel De Ville (city administration office, where the Mayor resides) was built in 1357, and its inside was burned out completely post revolution during the public Commune riots (stone exterior remained intact), before being rebuilt. Notre Dame cathedral construction started in 1163. The Louvre had been the palace of various lords and kings since the 12th century. The Concierge (where Marie Antionette was imprisoned prior to her beheading) was one of the earliest palace of the Kings of France as early as the 10th century.

Fancy StuffI remember watching the first couple seasons of The Apprentice. One episode they filmed inside Donald Trump's Manhattan apartment. I am sure Donald thought it looked "very classy" (a phrase he uses a lot - when you have to tell people over and over that something is classy you know you are compensating for something that secretly you worry might not be). I thought it looked like a Greek whorehouse. Mirrors and glass and gold and pillars and statues everywhere. It appears that with all of Donald's money, all he really was capable of in terms of style was making tacky look very expensive. I couldn't understand what he thought he was trying to achieve. What could he possibly have been aspiring to that he thought would make other people believe he was "classy"?
Paris answered that question for me. Just looking at the major structures that adorn the exteriors of buildings like the Louvre or Hotel De Ville - or ten miles down the road in Versailles, or public squares I suddenly realized why Donald Trump thought he was accomplishing something by dumping tons of gaudy crap into his own apartment. It is because in his nouveau riche aspirations to be some sort of immortal icon of western culture, he is looking - like most of western culture has for centuries - to France as the model of what power and wealth looks like when manifest as conspicuous opulence. The problem is, Paris has somehow managed to do over the top, gaudy, audacious displays of ridiculous wealth and make it look good - impressive. The massive gold (I assumed it was gold...) fence bordering the front of Versaille, with all its filigrees and curls and details looks amazing. The gold statues that stand in the midst of Paris impress as they are meant to. The tangled mass of statues occupying the entire enormous front facade of Notre Dame make one marvel at the work and the time spent into creating it.
There is a ton of tacky that comes into play, even when the work amazes. In the Louvre, there is an entire massive room displaying about a dozen HUGE paintings commissioned by Maria Medici from Peter Paul Rubens to celebrate her marriage to King Louis of France. Every single one of the paintings allegorically depicts madame Medici at some point in her social and political life, using motifs of Greek gods and mythology. The theme, as best I could summarize it, is meant to be "Hey, this Medici woman is just the best dang thing that happened since clean water and sliced bread, and aren't we all just so much the better for having decided to be here with us?" On the one hand, that sort of self-aggrandizement just turns the stomach, but on the other hand, you have to wonder at Rubens' delivery of it and say... "Yeah, but just LOOK at it!"
I am wondering if maybe it requires one to be the "Ruler of just about everything that really matters right now for all the world that we know about, thank you very much" to pull off that kind of opulence. Maybe there is an extra necessary over the top boost in terms of expense and indifference to cost that can only come from the freedom of oppressing millions of starving surfs and peasants necessary to make such displays truly impressive and at the right scale. Maybe scale is all there is to it. Maybe tacky turns into "Oh My Dear God, will you look at that" when it dwarfs you. I don't know, but Paris sure does impress when it comes to fancy.

In Paris you EatMy only other trip to Europe was a three day work trip to Germany. Put simply, you do not go to Germany to experience the wonders of Bavarian food.
Paris, on the other hand, appears to be about eating as much as anything. There are multiple places to eat on every single block. The food seemed to be good almost everywhere we ate. The plates were pretty straightforward - steak and fries seemed to be one of the most pervasive offerings there. Salmon was very common as well - and served much better than I expected. Every corner had a cafe, every block has a deli (brasserie), a bakery (boulangerie), usually a butcher (trucaterie), or desert store (patisserie), periodically a cheese store (fromagerie). I discuss later this density of services, but as far as food goes, there was always a lot available.
Food prices are a bit deceptive. On the one hand, the equivalent meal in a typical restaurant in the United States would be twice as much or more. For example, a steak in even a medium range restaurant in the United states is going to run you 23+, and in a more expensive restaurant easily 35+. In a typical Paris cafe, the steak was about 15 euros - which comes to just under 20 dollars. And it is not as if the steak was bad - it was good. They don't do much with their steak. I noticed that at least in the cafes we ate, the food was prepared in a pretty minimalist fashion, and as far as I could tell the steak tasted as if they had just cooked it up with little or nothing on it. But it tasted really good anyway. Same went for the salmon. The plate cost about 15 euros, and was always very good.
At the same time, it was pretty difficult in a typical cafe in Paris to do dinner with five people without a bill of about 100 euros. While the price for the SAME THING in the United States would have been much more expensive, the menu options in the cafe were such that it was hard to spend less than about 15 euros for the plate. Add on that drinks, and... well, it is Paris... so the desserts, and you are right up at 100 euro territory. So, my take was, better value for what you get, but not as much option to go for less than what you are getting - in the cafes, anyway. The brasseries, with their walk-in, walk-out hot sandwich and pastry offerings were the far more economical choice - and also quite good.

No, I Will not be DrivingOne of the most frightening things to watch is the cyclists in Paris trying to negotiate their way through traffic. I am not certain, do they teach Newton's laws of physics in French schools? Are they aware of the relationship between mass, force and what happens to a human body when several tons of a fast moving metal omnibus squish a cyclist between it and the garbage disposal truck that the cyclist is trying to zoom in between? Everybody in Paris is threading a needle at high speeds. Perhaps this is seizing the moment, but I consider it seizing your LAST moment much earlier than it needed to come, if you get my point.
I have seen more aggressive driving elsewhere. Los Angeles does higher speeds. New York is all about casual indifference to actual lane markers or the actual meaning of traffic signals. Paris felt like something approaching New York. The drivers were all very opportunistic and extremely comfortable with tight spaces. There seemed to be only a casual relationship between a "Walk" signal being red or green and what pedestrians were doing. In a similar fashion, there was also a casual relationship between whether or not cars paid any attention to a walk signal being green - a pedestrian in the cross, with the green light on, seemed to have no impact on whether or not a car changed direction or speed. It wasn't exactly like New York - where as far as I could tell cars went at full speed with perfect timing toward the gap in the crowd of people jaywalking, nobody flinching as the careemed by inches from people's bodies. Instead, Paris seemed like the responsibility was on the pedestrian to mind the cars, who seemed to have no intent at all to accomodate.

The Street GameThe first person we met as we headed to Paris was on the train from Charles DeGaulle airport. The doors opened, and he looked out, saw us, and asked "Paris?", then nodded his head yes and ushered us to the doors. He stood in the door of the train, and helped load our bags. He was dressed casually, and I started scanning him for a uniform, or maybe a piece of equipment. Naively I thought that he might have been a transit employee... which seemed odd for a public train, but hotel shuttle drivers help people load their bags, so I was not sure. He appeared to be in his upper 30's, low 40's. Very strapping, healthy looking man.
Soon after everyone was on, this man went walking down the aisle of the train placing small cards on the bags. The text of the card was in French on one side, and English on the other. The card started off. "I am homeless..." and went on from there. After completing his distribution of cards, this man made his way back aggressively shaking has palm under people's faces. When someone didn't pay, he would challenge them - with a smile, but persistently. He picked up all his cards and got off at the next station. I presume he got the next train back to CDG and started all over.
There is a lot of this going on in Paris. At one point, I saw an old woman, bundled up heavily in clothes like some babushka, with a heavy scarf over her head. She was standing, leaned over perpendicular to her waist. She was leaning all her weight on a cane. She was holding a cup out from her hand, shaking it over and over. You could not see her face. She was so iconic old-world Europe looking in her clothes and appearance she could have been a cartoon. I found it interesting how such a character could have such a distinctive look. However, after two weeks in Paris, I saw that same "character" multiple times. Same type of clothing, exact same posture, exact same move with the cup. As sad and cynical as this conclusion was, I realized that this was a costume. It probably doesn't take away from the reality of the person's need for money, but the person is not wearing their actual every day clothing. You are not seeing a picture of their world as it really is. You are seeing their stage costume. Their work uniform.
A more charming version of this are the musical street buskers, who seem to do their work mostly in the subway. I will start by saying that the Parisian street buskers are very, very good. I am used to Seattle street buskers who have a very good, raw sound, but are technically weak and undisciplined. The Parisian musicians were much different. Their musical chops were very well honed. Some of them just put up shop in the hallways, hat or instrument case open for money, and played. But I also noticed that on the touristy legs of the subways (e.g. first one or two stations near Versaille, the leg from the Tracadero to Eiffel Tower, and the RER stop between Chatelet and the first station stop on the route to Disneyland) musician buskers would work the actual cars. They plan one, maybe two songs, and then just like the luggage loader at CDG they walk up and down the aisles with a hat or bag and shake it under people's faces.
I saw street con games play out several times. All the ones I saw were the shell game - one with little boxes, one with large round tiles (I am still trying to figure out the mechanism of how they cheat the switch on that) and of course 3 card monte. I got a chance, while waiting for a bus, to see the full game played out - even getting to observe the shills in action, accomplices of the performer pretending to win to sucker in the victim that promptly loses.

Parks and GardensParks and gardens in Paris are plentiful, quiet, formally trimmed, and just plain comfortable and relaxing. I get it. You go there as often as possible and you just sit. And sit. And then maybe sit some more.

Using EnglishUsing English in Paris is not much of a problem at all. I encountered a few places where people got impatient or frustrated, but for the most part people in Paris were very good at understanding and speaking English. I did observe something that seemed to indicate a predictor of how likely it was the person you were dealing with would speak English well. First were the places where the employer probably required fluent English anyway (museum staff, etc.) - in those places, speaking English with the staff was like speaking English at home. Next were places where the job required a bit of an intellectual challenge and entrepreneurism - like working in or operating a bakery, cafe or pharamacy. In these places, the people could at least understand the English you were speaking and use enough English to get by. Then there were places where the intellectual demands were not as high - taxi driver, metro ticket booth employee, etc. - in these cases, the chance the person would know any English seemed like a coin toss. Still, if you could point at a map, or write something down, or use a few words in French you can probably make it work.
I tried to use French words where needed. Everybody I met professionally always started the conversation with "Bon Jour", or "Bon Soir" (if evening), and closed with "Merci". So I would do likewise... but inevitably once they heard me say "Bon Jour", they immediately switch the the English equivalent as best they could. My accent and pronunciation gave me away immediately... and despite their reputation, the French to me seemed very politely accomodating.

Service is Politely... Not ServiceI exaggerate for humor sake, and truthfully the TRUE honor for lack of service probably goes to the Germans. What I noticed with French service is the following:
- formalities of "good day", "please", and "thank you" are always there
- the French want the transaction to happen as quickly as possible
- the French seem to want to appear as unsolicitous as possible... from an American sense of service this seems distant, but somehow I think I see how the French see it as more polite
- if you ask them for help, they will try very hard to help... but they will try to get you to help yourself first if it seems possible
For example, in America, if you need something from a waiter, you motion to them and they will usually visually make a very demonstative acknowlegement and then come right away to see what you want. I noticed that hosts in Paris would instead give you a quick, short head nod or glance - but they were ALWAYS in the middle of doing something else that they were going to finish first. However, they also ALWAYS came to check see what you needed. This is different than in America. In America, if that waiter doesn't come to you right away but does something else first, there is a high chance they are going to forget that you called them over. And the overt acknowlegement in America seems to be needed to establish some sort of friendly protocol - whereas in Paris, it is kind of a "yes, I saw you".
Another example... metro ticket booth employees. They want you to use the vending machines to buy tickets. If you go to the counter, they will point you to the machine. If you say what you want, they will tell you they cannot get it for you and point you to the machine. HOWEVER - if you try the machine and cannot figure it out, they will leave their booth and operate the machine for you. This is different in America because for America, service is kind of a binary state. Once a booth operator has told you they cannot help you, they just are not going to help you. If an American booth operator is going to help you, chances are on the first encounter they have already started gushing all over you - but when an American presents indifference, dammit, we mean it. The French presentation of indifference instead seems like a thin shell - make your case, and they seem pretty accomodating.

Big City, Little CityEvery block in Paris is a tiny little town. I never expected this because I have never lived in the urban center of a city before. When I first saw our apartment, I could not figure out with such a small refrigerator, and such little storage how one could keep around the various daily necessities. But after my first one minute walk down the stairs (almost all of Paris is six stories high or shorter) to the grocery store, bakery or pharmacy I suddenly realized that the only reason I need such a large refrigerator at home, with a large pantry, is because a trip to the grocery store is multiple hour ordeal. In our apartments in Paris, if we needed something, it was less than five minutes to walk downstairs and buy it.
I noticed that other than the small number of large streets (Rue du Rivoli - for example, runs the length of Paris and has all the big stores) every block face had the following: 1 bakery, 1 delicatessan, 1 pharamacy, 1 cafe, 1 grocery store, 1 produce store. Add to that the frequent other restaurants, cheese stores, fish stores, butchers, dessert stores and occassional clothing stores and you suddenly have a small town every 300 feet. Add to this that the business offices occupy the same buildings as residential apartments. Lawyers, doctors, dentitsts all work from the same buildings that people eat, sleep and watch TV in. We visited a doctor - we walked down the street two short blocks, and rang the bell on at a non-descript door. We were buzzed into a tiny hallway in an old building, and found ourselves sitting in a waiting room that must have been about 8 by 12 feet at the most... and it was stuffed with tons of personal affects. I suspect the facility served as both office and home to this doctor.
It was after a week of this that I realized living in an apartment in Paris presented more of the small town conveniences than a small town. These businesses service the same small group of people at the same times every day. They know each other. Everything they need for daily life is less than a 30 second walk away. Yet, in less than a minute, they can be on the Metro or a bus and be at the other end of town in ten minutes. Paris is built of thousands of tiny little towns, one street front at a time. It is modular.

Seattle Weather... Paris WeatherIf you are from Seattle, the weather in Paris is going to feel very, very, very familiar.

The Metro, oh Dear Lord The Metro
I am not going to romanticize the Metro, or subway system, in Paris. It is filthy and bustled and busy.
But it is also unbelievably convenient. Get a ticket, go anywhere in Paris. The stations open everywhere. There is a city under the city of tunnels, shops, conveyor belts, escalators - all for getting people on and off the trains that traverse underground Paris. The trains are fast and frequent. At first the maps are bewildering and confusing, but if you learn a few simple rules, you can get from anywhere to anywhere:
1. the trains are named based on where they start and end, and the labelling on signs use this to indicate direction
2. stops on the map with an open circle on them are junctions, and the map indicates which lines have stops at the junction
3. signs and arrows all through the underground direct you toward you train - signs with just a number mean you get to both directions by following it, signs with a number and an endpoint means following the arrow takes you to a train going a specific direction
4. you have 3 seconds after the beep before the doors close - this is a firm rule
5. keep your ticket until you get to the street - you need to use it when Metro lines cross areas that juncture with RER lines - there will be booths that require the ticket for you to get through

Holy Crap - PICKPOCKETS!!
What the hell is this, Oliver Twist? Really? Pickpockets? I mean, is Faggen really somewhere in the alley coaching a group of filthy urchins to watch the Artful Dodger pinch the wallet off some rich bloke (I apologize for mixing metaphors... wrong city and country, I know... but I couldn't recall any pickpockets from French literature)? Everywhere you go, there are warning signs to beware of pickpockets. Rick Steve's travel store employees in Washington state will preach you into a puddle if you leave the store without purchasing a money belt. Really?
Yep. We were on the Metro. The train was the type of crowded where you really cannot move because everybody is pressing in so close. While we were there, Tanya felt vibrations coming from her purse - the some sort that the zipper makes when it is moved. She was so pinched in that she couldn't move, wheel about or reach out. Instead, she just clutched her shoulders and arms in tighter, bringing the purse closer to her body. She managed to check the purse, and someone had it halfway open.
We think we escaped unharmed... but I don't know. Everything is expensive enough in Paris that the Euros seem to disappear faster than you expected. It is just as likely a 20 or two got unknowingly pinched from our pockets while on a train or looking at a statue or something.