Passover à Paris

Passover - a holiday centered around food if there ever was one - is pretty easy to celebrate almost everywhere. Sure, it's a little more challenging to observe the various dietary requirements in Paris, where delectable baked goods are available on every corner. But as long as you have access to lots of veggies and beans and meat and matzoh, you're set.

Not that we should take any of that for granted, especially not matzoh. I stopped in three supermarkets before I finally found this critically-important cracker (Monoprix to the rescue!). At first this surprised me, since there's a large Orthodox Jewish population in our neighborhood. I ultimately realized that the Orthodox Jews probably shop in places where all the food is kosher by default, rather than just 4 shelves at the end of an aisle.

The matzoh here is nothing like the matzoh we're used to. (I never realized what a strangle-hold Manischewitz and Streit's had on Ashkenazic Jewish cuisine until those brands were no longer available.) This matzoh - from the Sephardic tradition - is thicker, less crunchy, and strangest of all, it's round!


Round matzoh, a complete lack of Haggadot (the prayer books used for the Passover service), tiny chairs on which pillows don't fit well - these are all minor inconveniences. The Seder goes on.

Thanks to all who shared our food and our traditions, and thanks for helping us create new ones: reading the Haggadah off computer screens and ending the service with "Next Year in Jerusalem - or Paris, whichever works out."

Bippers and Zébras

On our way up the stairs to our apartment last week, we noticed this announcement, taped to the wall:


Without going through the trouble of translating the whole thing, it's basically about automating the heavy wooden doors (porte cochère) that allow entry into the apartment complex from the street. It used to be you had to pull your car up, get out, open the doors, get back in your car, drive through, then close the doors behind you. Now, all you'll have to do is press a button to open and close the doors from the comfort of your own vehicle.

There were two things we learned from this announcement. The first was that in French, a garage-door opener is called a "bipper."

Bipper is one of those French words that comes from an English word but that adopts a French phonetic spelling based on the English pronunciation. Bipper pronounced à la française is pronounced the same as "Beeper" in English. It's just that "bipper" looks a lot funnier, no matter which language is your native one. (I can't think of any other words in French that look even remotely like it.)

The other thing we learned from the announcement is a second meaning of the word, "zébre."

Yup - it means stripes, whether they're on the eponymous animal or marking a spot where you might get clobbered by automatic doors if you're not paying attention. The word is also used to describe crosswalks, which makes sense.

Too bad we don't have a car, otherwise we could use our bipper to open doors that swing gently open over black-and-yellow zébras. Maybe next time.

Exciting Times

Thanks to the marvels of modern technology, we were able to continue posting about Paris without even being here. Where were we, you wonder? Why, we were visiting Warsaw, way yonder!

Top Left: Frederick Chopin Airport; Top Right: Maggie with Kielbasa; Bottom Left: Warsaw Uprising Memorial; Bottom Right: Hliarious tiny communist-era car

Top Left: Palace of Science and Culture; Top Right: Chopin Monument; Bottom Left: Andrea - colleague, host, future argyle model?; Bottom Right: Warsaw Uprising Museum, "We Hate Communism" room

More reportage to come on this fantastic trip very soon. For now, we must focus on the task at hand: transitioning from Panda-à-Paris-Crashes-Warsaw to Panda-à-Paris-Celebrates-Passover. Tonight was the first time I can ever remember not getting together with tons of people to celebrate the first night of Passover, and this was mostly because we don't know anyone else celebrating here, but also partly because we just got home from Warsaw. But we still made do.

Tomorrow night we're going to throw a for-real Seder for some Paris friends, and we'll have more on that soon. For now, though, Happy Passover to everyone back home!

Guignol

On Wednesdays, weekends, and holidays, a particularly French form of entertainment sends ripples of laughter across the Parc des Buttes Chaumont. It's the Guignol, a kind of puppet show invented in the late 18th-century by a silkweaver/sometimes dentist named Laurent Mourget. The puppet show started out as a way to entice customers to sit for teeth-pulling, and the fact that it succeeded suggests that Polichinelle (Punch in English), Guignol (after whom the artform was named), and the other stock characters created over the years were just what the dentist ordered. (Unlike Guignol, I am not funny.)

The poster below shows some of those stock characters (extra points to anyone who can name each one) and to the right you'll see the guignol we know best, near the entrance to the Parc des Buttes Chaumont at  Avenue Simon Bolivar and Rue Botzaris.


We still haven't gotten around to going inside (we're too embarrassed to enter without small children in tow) but from the sound of it, fun is had by all who attend, adult and child alike. So much fun, in fact, that I couldn't resist the temptation of recording a few minutes of the show. Yes, I was that creepy guy you saw standing by the entrance with an audio recorder. In my defense, I was technically walking Panda, and checking out ticket prices . . . yeah.

Maybe one of our intrepid native French-speaking readers can translate the jokes and wordplay that caused all the laughing and audience participation. And maybe one of the same readers would be willing to loan us some children so we can experience the guignol from inside the theater for once!

Outside the Opéra

Way back in September, during the Journées Européennes du Patrimoine, Maggie, Robert, and I happened upon a ragtag group of young musicians blasting pop and folk tunes from the steps of the Opéra Garnier.

Who were these musicians, we wondered, and what was their deal? We never found out.

Fast forward to last week, when I saw, in the same place, a strikingly similar group of young musicians blasting similarly pop- and folk-oriented tunes. Were they the same group? Answering this question requires a close-up comparison:

At first the orange and green threw me off - did they just change clothes? Then I realized that the line-up is slightly different, with clarinets in the second group, and a euphonium in the first group. This is the stuff that musicology is made of - doing that newspaper puzzle that asks "what are the 5 differences between these two images," just, you know, music-related.

Anyway, now that we've established they're probably not the same groups, we can pose further questions (this is also something musicologists love to do): just how many groups do play on the steps of the Opéra Garnier? Do you need a permit for that? When's the next time either of these groups will play, so I can be sure to bring my trusty audio recorder?

And finally, does either group need another clarinetist? I'd totally do it, if only to be able to say that I played at the Paris Opera . . .

Looking Forward

Ever since we bought our tickets for the trip home, our thoughts have increasingly turned to life in Somerville, to summertime activities, to seeing old friends and - most importantly - to the joy we will experience at being reunited with our kitchen and all the kitchen-related conveniences we left behind. (For all our friends reading this: we're only excited about the kitchen because it'll provide the venue for reuniting with all of you! So, we're cool, right?)

One summertime activity we've been thinking about pretty intensely in recent days is cultivating our garden. (And I don't mean that metaphorically.) Ever since spring started sneaking into Paris, blowing away the oppressive winter grisaille, we've started coordinating with our downstairs neighbors back in S-ville to plan this year's garden. Last year's was pretty epic, so we have a legacy to perpetuate:

Planning for this year's garden started with a call for blueprints for vegetable/fruit/flower arrangements in the limited space of our front yard. I sent around a blank schematic, then filled it in with this xkcd-inspired proposal:

Tell me that's not an awesome drawing of our front yard. Who knew I had such talent? Maggie knew - that's why she has decided to take our garden planning to the next level, drafting her proposal with actual garden-planning software.

Maggie's also taking a cue from French garden design, attempting to balance aesthetic and utilitarian elements in what's known as a "potager" garden. This basically means organizing everything - vegetables and/or flowers - in an aesthetically pleasing arrangement which is often symmetrical. Potager gardens are not microcosms of what we imagine to be the "old family farm," with everything in straight lines, and every vegetable in its own section (also see: my proposal above). Example of the French potager garden:

You can find this potager garden behind the Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris, in the 4th arrondissement. Notice how it combines a winter lettuce with silver tongue and something else (I'm no horticulturalist), all bound by a hedge.

What do you think - should we go with the French-style potager? Or do you prefer my American-heartland-inspired design?

Lost and Found

Paris is full of little surprises, some of which you step in and curse, some of which you see and smile. Call me a history nerd, but stumbling upon the last vestiges of the late-12th/early-13th century wall that encircled Paris is one of those things that makes me smile.

These are all parts of the enceinte (fortified wall) built by Philippe-Auguste to defend Paris while he was away during the Crusades. That they exist when most of the succeeding city walls have been completely destroyed, buried, or hidden strikes me as unlikely and slightly magical.

I'd tell you where they are, but that would ruin all the fun.

*****UPDATE*****

Since Mo already gave away the secret, here's more of it revealed: a Swedish blogger living in Paris is making it his mission to find all remnants of Philippe-Auguste's enceinte, and is posting pictures and annotated maps on his blog. Fascinating stuff!

Panda's Other Nemesis

If Maggie and I have learned one thing from blogging, it's that the internet people like cats. With that in mind, meet Maya.


Along with Fantômette, Maya stalks the courtyards of our apartment complex, tempting Panda with her scent and, once every long while, drawing Panda into a terrifying stand-off that could only end in violence and tragedy:

I like Fantômette just fine, but Maya freaks me out a little. Also I'm not sure whether "Maya" is the correct spelling, since it could also be "Maïa" or "Maja", depending on the native language and orthographic training of the people who named her. What I am sure about is that Maya is a cat with a plan, and that plan probably involves Panda's demise, followed shortly by that of her owners . . .

Galerie Fréhel

The Louvre has two rooms of monumental, large-format French paintings from the early 19th century. But those rooms can't compare with the only monumental, large-format, outdoor street art gallery in Paris. Which happens to be right across the street from where we live.

I'm calling it "Galerie Fréhel" after the square that provides the vantage point - and the wall space - for the art. Place Fréhel is also home to Culture Rapide, which gets in on the street art action with its security shutter. You have to wake up pretty early in the morning to see this, since Culture Rapide is open around 18 hours a day.

The main event - Galerie Fréhel in all its glory - is best appreciated from the north side of the Rue de Belleville.

Sorry for the terrible picture, but you get the idea, and what's important is that we haven't seen anything like this anywhere else in Paris. The crazy thing is, it keeps getting better. Originally there were four artworks, all in the right half of the picture above: 1) the "Il faut se méfier des mots" trompe-l'oeil by Ben[jamin Vautier]; 2)  the horizontal bands that form a quadrilateral if you're standing in exactly the right spot, which I am in this picture, by Jean-Luc Albert; 3) the architectural cone in the corner, by Marie Bourget; 4) the "detective" mural by Jean Le Gac. Now there are five artworks, thanks to the newest one on the left, which was painted two days ago (Sunday, March 21) by ZOO project, an anonymous artist whose work we've admired elsewhere. Here's a close-up of the new piece:

I managed to catch the artist in action, and in the picture above you see him taking down his ladder. The wall on which he painted may eventually be covered by whatever building is going up on that lot (construction has been slow and it's unclear what they're planning) but in the meantime we get to enjoy this provocative art. The caption is taken from a song by Renaud: "I yelled for months, I shouted from all the rooftops, Society, you won't have me."

We saw this second ZOO project work from Rue Oberkampf way back in the fall. It's since been painted over, but the artwork and message ("be statistically correct, have 1.5 children") stuck with us, so it was easy to make the connection between the two works. If you're into the artist's style, there's a Flickr group dedicated to the artist, and great shots on individual blogs.

Even if the new ZOO project work gets covered up, Place (or should I say Galerie) Fréhel will still be the Louvre of contemporary street art, at least in Paris. And who knows - maybe some day, we'll think of the Louvre as the Galerie Fréhel of pre-20th-century art.

Moving Day

Maybe it's just that we're out and about more now that the weather is improving, or maybe it has something to do with the Parisian rental calendar, but we've recently started seeing lots of people moving in to apartments, all around the city. Apparently, when it comes to moving into some of the older buildings, carrying your furniture and other possessions up narrow stairwells and in claustrophobic elevators isn't the ideal option, not for you and not for the moving company. Instead, there's this:


Now, having had trouble moving a fridge and a boxspring into our place back home, I can appreciate the necessity of bringing things through the window. Especially if you're moving to the 8th floor of a walk-up. For our legions of readers in NYC, is this sight also familiar to you?

We can't decide whether moving in-by-conveyor-belt-ladder-thingy is popular because elevators and stairwells are tiny, or because it saves on manpower, or just because it looks really cool. Whatever the reason, as long as they keep doing it that way, we'll keep watching from across the street, holding our breaths while we wait for something to fall.

Sounds of the City: Boulangerie

The boulangerie just around the corner from the BN's Département de la musique happens to have a few stools at which one can sit when the weather is bad, and throughout a long winter of bad weather, I did a lot of sitting in there. This gave me lots of time to listen to the boulangère (female baker) do her thing.

There's a kind of musicality to the back-and-forth between baker and customers. Add in the percussive nature of rustling paper, the ch-ching! of the cash register, and the opening and closing of doors, et voilà! It's a perfect environment for another documentation of the sounds of the city.

In this clip you'll hear a common refrain, "Avec ceci, Monsieur?" which translates to "Anything else, sir?" and which used to really throw me off. Late in the clip you'll hear the proper response: "Ce sera tout"- that'll be all.

This second recording focuses on the conversation between one somewhat talkative patron and the boulangère, who ends with a sprightly, "Bon weekend!"

If you're ever in the neighborhood, I recommend this boulangerie not only as a great place to get a bite to eat, but also a great spot to sit for a minute - and listen.

Meat Me in Belleville Part Deux

In the second installment in our Meat Me in Belleville series, we get down to basics and confront our own squeamishness over what has become a familiar sight:


I mean, yeah, obviously, someone has to deliver the meat to the boucherie. And I guess I'm glad to see that it comes in entire legs and sides and whatnot, instead of prepackaged morsels. I'm not so excited about the lack of sanitary precautions, like gloves or anything separating the meat from, you know, everything else. But that's just the OCD/over-sanitized American part of me talking.

The crazy thing is, I see deliveries like this almost every day, all along the Rue du Faubourg du Temple. I'm curious about whether deliveries to butchers are as public as this elsewhere in Paris. Can anyone living in the 16th or 8th tell me if they've ever observed raw meat traversing the sidewalk? Maybe deliveries are made to the ritzy parts of town in the wee hours of the morning and to the less ritzy parts in plain daylight.

Most times I just see half-empty trucks sitting on the side of the road, but on the day I saw this truck, I actually got to watch them offload the meat from the trucks and transport it to the boucherie.


First, using an automatic conveyor, they bring a row of meat (hanging on hooks) from the depths of the truck to the back, then lower it towards the street level. One of the guys then shoulders a side of beef, lifts it off the hook, and starts walking/shuffling. . .

. . . across the sidewalk, in front of the unsuspecting mother and daughter . . .

. . . and into the front door of the boucherie. Brilliant. I wish this mode of beef delivery would come back into fashion in the US, since it would be helpful for people to have a better idea of how meat is transported and delivered. Food industry transparency! They're way ahead of us on that here in France, or at least, here in Belleville.