Home for the Holidays

I'm home for the holidays. While New York doesn't feel like a strange or foreign place, a couple of things have caught my eye after being away for so long:

Elevators here are really, really big.

There are more SUVs, and they are bigger, than I remembered from before. (This, even after the year's oil shocks.)

New York streets are wide, ugly and noisy. Parisian drivers and traffic are about as bad as New York's, but they don't honk their horns the way New Yorkers do. There is also little to no audio pollution of public spaces from Christmas carols there.

I love the extended shopping hours of most stores here.

I didn't realize how used to kissing on both cheeks I had become until everyone at the party I went to last night got confused when I tried it.

I really, really missed reading the New York Times on paper. But it looks quite small in comparison to some of the European papers I've been reading this fall.

And it's bloody cold here. But at least the buildings are overheated.

This is probably my last post till I get back to Paris, so please check back after Jan. 7. Have a great holiday yourself, wherever you are.

Architecture, part deux

When you think of Parisian architecture, you probably think of something like this:


Well, OK, not the Gap store at street level, but you know what I mean: the grand stone buildings with the wrought-iron railings overlooking wide boulevards.

This is a relatively recent development in the city's history. In the Middle Ages, Paris looked more like this:


These buildings in my neighborhood -- which you'd imagine come from England or Germany -- date from the 1500s. A historical plaque on one of them says this style of building was outlawed shortly after 1600 by one of the King Louises because of the fear of fire (a real fear; a half-century later London, still full of these buildings, burned to the ground).

Even older is this building, in one of Paris's mini-Chinatowns, which dates to the late 1200s:


If you want your very own part of history, that green sign on the building advertises an apartment for sale. I went by the realtor and there it was in the window, a three-room apartment with separate kitchen, fireplace, half-timbered walls: yours for just 320,000 euros.

The posting notes one flaw to the building. There is no elevator.

Random thoughts

Two random thoughts from a shopping trip at lunchtime today:

Not only haven't I seen any creches or Santa Clauses this year, I haven't heard any Christmas carols. Until now, when a French translation of "Jingle Bells" was playing in the big supermarket near my office. And you know what? I haven't missed them.

Also, the French are rather proud of their different approach to the whole subject of liability law. Unlike in America, you don't have to plan everything you do with one eye on the lawyers. Which probably explains why the outside entrance to the supermarket is a smooth marble tile that gets extremely slippery in the rain. I hate to think of how many old ladies have slipped and fallen on it. Lawyers or the fear of them would have put a stop to that in America long ago.

Bomb Scare

A package of dynamite was found today at one of Paris's ritziest department stores. It did not contain a detonator and no one was hurt. I don't live, work or shop in that area, so no danger there.

This sort of thing shouldn't be a surprise, I suppose; Britain, Spain and Germany have all been targets of Middle Eastern terrorism, so (assuming the package was in fact placed, as claimed, by someone linked to Afghanistan) why not France?

In general, though, this city seems far less on edge about security than London or New York. It's extremely rare to see armed security guards or even uniformed police officers walking a beat. They make very occasional announcements about not leaving belongings unattended in the Metro, but far less frequently there than in other cities.

My office building is a bit more secure than my company's office in the U.S.; you need an electronic tag to get through not only the street-level door but to enter the offices on each floor. I don't know how that compares to other French office buildings because I haven't needed to go to any others.

Residential buildings do generally have an extra layer of protection that you don't see in the U.S., however. Most buildings have a locked door that you have to get through before you can even buzz an individual apartment; this door is opened by a numeric code that the host has to give you before you can come in. It's quite common to see these "door codes" on invitations.

But whether this arrangement is for security purposes, or just to maintain people's privacy, I'm not sure.

EDITED 5:15p Paris time to reflect that it was a package of dynamite without a detonator, ergo not really a bomb ...

1,000 Bottles of Wine On the Wall

Before too much time has passed, I did want to tell you about France's largest wine show, which Joey and I attended a few weeks ago. It is held in the Paris convention center, a complex of 7 or 8 buildings on the southwestern edge of town. Each of these buildings is as big as the Javits Center in New York, so the whole thing is just mindblowing.

The wine show used only one of the buildings, but even that was enough. It is a show for independent vintners -- no corporate wineries, like Lafite-Rothschild or Louis Jadot, are allowed -- and they filled the entire thing with about 1,000 different wineries, each offering tastes to the public. Admission to the whole thing costs just 6 euros:


Each white cardboard circle that you see in this picture represents a winery. The bottom part of the sign is color-coded for the region of France the wine comes from. Typically each of these booths offers tastes of between 4 and 8 wines.

Even if you spit them all out, you can't taste more than a small fraction of the wines on offer -- you'll get drunk just from the fumes you absorb through your tongue! So you have to have a plan, which in our case was to mainly to search out wines from the most prestigious parts of Burgundy.

Unfortunately, our plan didn't allow for either writing down the names of the ones we liked or buying any on the spot (we were heading from here directly to the train for our weekend trip to Burgundy). Most of the French people at the show had brought folding hand trucks so they could buy these wines by the case to restock their cellar. We will be kicking ourselves -- and the Homeland Security department; even if we could buy them, how would we get them home? -- for years that we were unable to do the same.

Obama, the Source of All Good in the World

Today at the cafe, I saw a story in a newspaper, Le Journal du Dimanche, that began: "France will not watch the Obama train pass without reacting."

The article was about President Sarkozy's effort to increase diversity in France's top public colleges. This effort is a French effort to solve a French problem (society here is rife with racial and class prejudice, particularly against Africans and Muslims). It has absolutely nothing to do with Obama, and probably would have happened in exactly the same way had Obama never been born.

But he's going to get the credit, just like George Bush took all the blame ...

Voulez-vous doucher avec moi?

Seen in a shop window: the latest in French bathtub design ...

Holiday Treats (UPDATED)

Buches de Noel -- "Yule Logs," rolled-up cakes filled with cream and elaborately decorated -- are a big thing here. Le Bon Marche, one of the best food stores in France, had a nice selection today:


I've even seen "buchettes" -- single-serving versions. Haven't tried one yet but probably will soon.

UPDATED TO ADD:

A couple hours after I wrote this, I did go out -- in the cold rain, all in the service of you, my dear readers -- to get a "buchette." It is a miniature Yule Log in every way (by contrast, the full-size ones are about 10 inches long and 3 in diameter):


Inside this cake, which is only about an inch tall, are three miniature cake layers:


And that green thing on the top, behind the mini-macaroon, is a little plastic model of a two-handled lumberjack saw.

It's an exquisite piece of art, French food at its finest. Yours for just 3.50 euros ($4.30).

Thumbs Up?

If you enter a restaurant in France by yourself, the maitre d' will often flash you a thumbs-up. It doesn't necessarily mean he's happy to see you.

French people who count on their fingers start with the thumb, so he's merely indicating that you want a table for one. Two would be the thumb and forefinger; three would be the thumb, forefinger and middle finger; etc.

It could be worse, though; elsewhere in the world, such a gesture with the thumb is equivalent to the American gesture with the middle finger ...

Why I love the French

Regular readers of this blog may remember the public service announcement I saw on World AIDS Day showing a straight couple using condoms until they got an HIV test.

Today I saw the same announcement, but this time depicting a gay couple. In bed using condoms.

On Eurosport, the local equivalent to ESPN.

Can you imagine that in the United States?

Why I hate the French

The Metro has gotten better in the last couple of days, but the French work ethic showed itself anew at the gym today.

All of the elliptical machines were out -- obviously a plug had fallen out, or a fuse had blown, or something simple like that. But of course none of the three employees present thought it was their job to fix it. The best response was from the manager, a lady in her 50s. Now, this gym has a small reception area at street level but the bulk of the facility is downstairs, on two levels in the basement. But its manager is apparently unable to descend the stairs.

(By the way, and contrary to the myth in the United States, it's not impossible to fire French workers. It's just very expensive. Even if you fire them for cause, you owe them severance pay, which can amount to something like 15 months' salary.)

The Chalkboard Test

William Least Heat Moon's book about rural America, "Blue Highways," posited the "calendar test" for roadside cafes. The number of calendars hanging on the wall was supposed to be directly related to the quality of the food. A five-calendar cafe was exquisite; a six-calendar cafe was the Holy Grail, in the sense that it had been searched for but never actually found.

In Paris bistros, there's the chalkboard test. It's not quite a guarantee, but your odds of getting good food increase if the menu's on a chalkboard rather than printed, like this:


Or this:


Cutesiness doesn't seem to matter; this one looks tacky, but is actually from a very good restaurant:


And the number of chalkboards doesn't make a difference, though some places do overdo it:


The point is simply that a bistro with chalkboard menus probably changes them frequently, depending on what's fresh and good in the market. (This rule applies only to bistros; fancier restaurants reprint their menu on paper each night with updates or specials.)

And if you're in a bistro that has both a paper menu and a chalkboard with specials on it, my advice is to always, always order the special. While specials elsewhere can be dodgy -- sometimes they seem like a way to use up about-to-expire food -- here they're almost always the dishes that a kitchen has put the most thought and effort into.

The Joys of Commuting

If you were ever inclined to think of Europe as a mass-transit paradise, you wouldn't be after enduring my commute for the last week.

I take the Metro's 1 line, which is the most crowded line even at the best of times -- it's the only Metro line serving the huge office development at La Defense, on the western edge of Paris. It runs at capacity at rush hour, and unlike in New York there are no express tracks or alternate routes here. Each of the 14 Metro lines has exactly one set of tracks going in each direction, so if a train breaks down, every train behind it has to wait.

On average, I've been delayed 10-15 minutes each day, each way for about the last week -- and when the train is delayed, of course it only gets more crowded, as more people arrive in the station and try to pile on. If you're claustrophobic or need your personal space, the Metro at rush hour is not for you.

They make announcements when these things happen, sometimes, but as in New York the announcements aren't terribly informative. Probably the train driver doesn't know what's going on any more than we do.

The Parisians seem to take this all in stride, with much less overt complaining than you'd hear in New York. I guess they're used to it -- at least I haven't had to suffer any of the strikes that France is famous for, except for a couple days last month when I didn't get my newspaper at home because the deliverers were on strike.

I do note that the French have invented a new verb since I was here in '96: "patienter," which means "to be patient."

French Architecture Lesson #1

Beautifully tiled roofs like these are characteristic of Burgundy (these pictures were taken in Beaune and Dijon). You never see them in Paris:





And now you know.

Le Poisson Cru

There are an insane number of sushi restaurants in Paris these days:


I've tried it once. I like the stuff you get in New York better.

It's Christmas Time in the Ville

Just as in New York, they are selling Christmas trees on the street in my neighborhood:


But unlike New York, these trees come with stands, of a sort:


I guess they don't water their trees here.

Public displays of Christmas decorations are all over the place as well:




As I've noted before, however, it is basically trees, stars, snowflakes and other innocuous symbols. No Santa Clauses, which isn't a surprise, and no Nativity scenes or mangers, which is. Although it may be that the latter are banned under France's separation-of-church-and-state law, which is far stronger than the United States'.

Dogs, and their Traces

One of the things I remember most vividly from previous trips to Paris was the "merdemobile." It was a street cleaning truck with a huge hose coming out of the top. From his seat in the truck in the street, the driver could manipulate the hose to vacuum dog merde off the sidewalk.

Since the French are all about letting the government take care of them, it was perfect.

I haven't seen any merdemobiles since I got here, though. Presumably they're no longer used. Instead, there has been a campaign to get the French to clean up their own messes. These signs, which read "I love my neighborhood/I pick up," can be found all over Paris:


And in the provinces, they've taken it a step further; the city of Dijon provides bags for people to use in cleaning up:


What effect this all has had, it's hard to say. Certainly there is still dog merde to be found on the sidewalks, but my impression is that the problem isn't much worse here than in New York. Whether it's as bad as it was 20 years ago, I don't remember. Perhaps I don't want to.

The Winter Darkness Arrives

We're heading into the shortest days of the year and it's becoming very, very obvious how short they are.

While sunset these days is not that different from New York, you really see it in the morning. Here is my neighborhood at 8 a.m. today:


And the same block, at about 8:45 (15 minutes after sunrise):


As you can see, the omnipresent winter clouds don't help.

It's noticeably better than in London, which is at about the same longitude as Paris but keeps its clocks an hour earlier. When I was there a couple of weeks ago, not only did it get dark by 4 p.m. but the sun was at such a low angle in the sky it felt like late afternoon the whole day.

Paris is farther north than Montreal, and almost as far north as Vancouver, but it is a couple hundred miles south of London, enough that the sun (when it is out) doesn't feel like a refugee from another world here.

Still, every visitor I've had thus far has remarked on how late-rising the Parisians are; at this time of year, they have a pretty good excuse for it.

The Mysteries of Burgundy

Every decent French restaurant has at least six to eight red wines by the glass, most of which cost between 4 and 5 euros ($5 to $6, cheaper than in New York). There will always be a Bordeaux or two, a high-end Beaujolais, one or two Loire wines and a few from the Rhone or elsewhere in the south.

I have never seen a red Burgundy for sale by the glass. And the only white Burgundies have been the cheap kinds from the Maconnais. (Better wines, both red and white, are usually available by the bottle.)

I asked a Frenchman about this; he said the French consider Burgundy to be overpriced.

I've personally always considered it frustrating -- seven of every 10 Burgundies I've tried in the United States have been thin, light and unsatisfying. But the other three have been stunning, with haunting, sublime aromas of flowers, mushrooms, and autumn leaves. The problem is that even at $50 a bottle or so, you really don't know what you're going to get.

Joey and I set off for Burgundy this past weekend to try to solve the mystery.

We saw plenty of typical wine-country scenes like this:


And this:


But one thing was unexpected:


This shows a "grand cru" vineyard in the Corton-Charlemagne area, one of the best in Burgundy (alas, on a foggy morning). Anywhere else in the world, a vineyard like this would be owned by a single winery, which would bottle and sell the wines, and you'd be able to know exactly what you were getting.

Here, because the vineyards are so old and because French inheritance laws require estates to be divided equally among all the heirs, the vineyards have been drastically subdivided over the years. That strip in the center that looks more brown than the green strips to either side? Each strip is owned by a different person, and each owner has different ideas about when to plow, when to prune, when to fertilize. So the wine from each strip can be completely different.

How do you know which are the good ones? It's the same as anywhere else: you have to drink them to find out. How can you do this affordably? Go to Burgundy -- the wines can be had there for about half the price in the United States.

And drink up -- sante!

World AIDS Day, a la francaise

It's World AIDS Day today, and in France they actually notice: one of the local newspapers had it as the lead story (it helps that today is Monday and there isn't a lot of local news to compete with it). Most U.S. newspapers, by contrast, don't even consider it news.

On the French equivalent of MTV there was a public service announcement -- at 8 in the morning, no less -- that went as follows: A straight couple tumbles amorously into bed. A condom wrapper is discarded on the floor, and shown in closeup. You don't get to see the condom itself or the exact place where it is positioned (ahem), but it is clear how they are using it.

Then, the couple goes for an HIV test, which comes back negative, and leaves the doctor's office with the apparent intention of heading right back to bed. At the end, this tagline is shown: "Before stopping the condoms, have an AIDS test."

Couples who haven't been tested yet certainly have no excuse for not using condoms: they are sold in vending machines like this in public places (Metro stops, etc.) throughout the city:


They aren't given away free in gay bars here (that I've noticed, at least) but then that practice has largely ceased in America as well. I did pick up some free ones in both London and Hong Kong, however. Why there and not here? I have no idea.