Guest Post: Dimi

We invited all our guests to contribute guest posts to this blog, but so far only a few intrepid souls have taken advantage of our offer. Dimi chose to compose an epistolary post, and we've taken the liberty of selecting pictures to accompany her observations.

Here are notes I thought of and sent to Trina and Carole when I got back. If you want to use them, or not, you may, or not. ~d

Here's the first installment of the travelogue:

On a sociotal level, my comparative observation is that Parisians are austere in dress and manner, yet happy. Americans are not ashamed to talk incessantly and wear cheap, ill-fitting clothing, and lack peace.

Just sayin'

~d

Second Installment:

Non-verbal communication IS a form of communication and , as I observed this week, can be the most effective.

American shrinks will tell you that you have to talk and TAAALK it out! B.S. to that narrow thought.

The French, according to what I saw and heard, do just fine with a simple hand motion or eye contact and move on. And they use physical materials, such as paint, sculpture, fabric, and architecture expressively.

And few words, carefully chosen.
~d

(Remember this?)

Installment Three:

The French give new meaning to Beige!


My misguided mission had been to eliminate beige from the planet.
Now I've seen how breathtakingly the French artisans, commoners, and kings have texturized and qualitized the (non)color to nearly knock you over with its beigeful beauty.
~d

Guest Post: Andrea

After our weekend jaunt to Warsaw, we asked Andrea to take a stab at describing one of our favorite parts of the visit:

"Louis and I may have logged hours of silent and not-so-silent reading time in our shared offices and library corners over the course of our graduate careers, but Maggie and I share something more special. We are from Wisconsin. I won't speak for her, but I find it incredibly appropriate, then, that one of the establishments we had the most fun exploring together in Warsaw was a Polish culinary institution with a name to make our heartstrings sing: the milk bar (bar mleczny).

Before Wisconsinites get all teary-eyed thinking about a heaven with phosphates, frozen custard, cheese curds fresh and fried, and 400 year-old cheddar served to you by happy and generous bartenders in an alternate reality, I should make clear that the milk bar is about more than dairy. In fact, the "milk" in its name is there to distract us from what isn't there: meat.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, because the milk bar has a rich and complex history, like everything in the world. Milk bars are -- to my knowledge -- a Polish institution. (Honestly, I've heard tell that there's something in Australia with the same name. Different goods.) Milk bars serve warm food for very low prices, mostly around lunch time, which begins at 12 and extends to 6 pm. They are, no question, a Cold War product - one that the word on the street tells me had its origins in the early 60s, though I bet no one has done real research on that yet. A bit like a cafeteria or a fast food restaurant, the government set up milk bars to serve workers whose places of employment didn't have the notorious stołówka (cafeteria, for real this time). Ugh, more context, Andrea? Yes: stołówkas can be the pride of an institution. They serve home-cooked three course meals, often brought to your (sometimes linen-decked!) table by servers. And so, workers need not forgo the most substantial meal of the day just because of the demands of the 20th/21st century workday.

The milk bar is literally the poor-mans version of a stołówka. No service, no meat. These two features are, of course, linked, though in post-socialist transition, milk bars generally have added the various pork staples to their menus, since meat is no longer scarcer than cigarettes. Many staples from the meatless days remain fixtures: vats of mushrooom, tomato, and sorrel soup (poured over pasta or potatoes, sometimes with a hardboiled egg), and an assortment of starches that makes carbo-loading a must. Crepes! Pierogi! Potatoes! Cheese-filled croquettes!


Even more so than the offerings of the milk bar, the experience of eating there is unique. The three of us hit up two milk bars: the Family Milk Bar on Nowy Świat and the Barbican Milk Bar in the Old Town. The later is rumored to be the "oldest", though while we were loitering around being taken in by its extensive ceramics, an elderly Polish woman told me that this was the cheapest place -- with the exception of some other cheaper ones. It's clear that the superlative may not really mean much. Still, the proprietors of the charming Barbican place certainly cultivate a homey feel that lures in tourists. For what it's worth, it's also incredibly comforting in the winter when the bitter cold feels aggressive. On the other hand, the Family Milk Bar is one of the few reasonably priced eateries on one of Warsaw's poshest streets, so one eats among families out for the day, homeless, and many students. It's one of the few places in Warsaw where I can count on running into familiar faces. It's here to serve: lots of tables and no frills (also, when we were there: no napkins).

Family Milk Bar menu

What happens at a milk bar? You enter and spend 5 minutes reflecting on a giant menu, scoping today's availability, indicated by prices scrawled along the side of the items. Then begins the queuing. First, you wait to place your order, keeping in mind that they may run out of your preferred lunch options in the 3 minutes this takes. The cashier hands you a receipt with your order illegibly scrawled on it. Be proud that you've paid at most $5 for a soup + main dish + salad. Now stand in line again! This time you're waiting in front of a little window, through which you hand over your receipt to the kitchen managers. Some food you get the moment you pass off your order (soups, veggies, and salads just sit around in pots and pans). Other food (pierogi! sausage!) is freshly prepared.

Left: Barbican Milk Bar; Right: Family Milk Bar

All this time, you've been people watching in order to secure a table. Once you've juggled the many small plates of food to your little table, it's time to dig in! The grease washes over your tongue and you marvel at just how! delicious! potatoes can be."

Guest Post: Matt

Matt and I bet on Panda's poop schedule, and Matt lost. As punishment, he had to write a guest post.

Mugshot's Eiffel Tower Tips (re: Eiffel Tower Tips)

After reading Louis's cynical post about the Eiffel Tower experience, and as their last houseguest for a while (I hear they're not hosting anyone for some time — maybe even a week), I just had to offer a rebuttal based on first-hand experience. Get ready to take out your Paris scorecard and put about 50 checks in the "resident" box.

1. Steal a map from the apartment. If you stay with Louis and Maggie, note that they have several beautiful maps of Paris. Make sure it's rainy outside. Find the key to the living room cabinets, which is hidden in a Grand Theft Auto computer game box under their bed. Open the cabinet and take the most expensive-looking map you can find there. Down the half-bottle of Bordeaux they were saving for a special occasion. In your excitement, forget to lock their apartment door, and start your adventure toward the Eiffel Tower. (You will also need a bullhorn and around 10 Euros.)

2. Walk four hours in the rain in the general direction of the Eiffel Tower. I love walking, and there's nothing I like better than walking when my socks are extremely wet because of rain and puddles. If you pass all the sites marked on the map below, you will clearly be following the best route to the Eiffel Tower, which is important during bad weather. If you get lost, that's OK. Since it's very cloudy, you won't be able to see the Eiffel Tower and just go toward it. But you can consult your stolen map and watch as it disintegrates in the pouring rain, and then you can try to stumble toward the next waypoint on the map below.

3. Tell as many tourists as you can that the Eiffel Tower is closed. There won't be many out there since it's raining. But as Louis pointed out, people at tourists sites are to be avoided if you want a good experience. Therefore, in your best English, yell at anyone you encounter on your walk that they can't go up the Eiffel Tower during inclement weather, so they should really leave the area. (This includes people who you think might not be tourists — you never know.)

4. Spend some of your Euros on a ticket to go up the Eiffel Tower. This is a crucial step, as Louis also pointed out, because without a ticket to something like the Eiffel Tower, it is difficult if not impossible to go up it. The best way to get a ticket is to say to the ticket person, "Je aller Eiffel Tower," and then point up. This is an example of very good French, so he or she will know what you mean. You should definitely walk up, because nothing feels better than ascending 600 steps to the second floor after you've already walked 20 miles. When you get to the first floor, make a beeline for the gift shop and spend the rest of your Euros on a jambon crudité — you will need it in a minute.

5. Create a diversion. Most of the members of the Eiffel Tower staff are focusing on the elevators. I don't know why this is. But anyway, when you get to the second floor, you'll see that there are lots of barriers blocking access to the third-floor sairwell, as well as signs saying things like "accés interdit" (I don't know what this means!). But if you create a diversion by throwing that jambon crudité down the elevator shaft, you can easily go up the remaining steps to the third floor. When you reach the third floor, take out the bullhorn and declare to all of Paris that you fooled the city and that you can go up the Eiffel Tower in inclement weather. Then, enjoy the crystal clear view of the stunning iron latticework and of your hands. And oh, yeah, sure, that is definitely the Sacre-Coeur whose outline you're seeing in the distance.

In conclusion, I hope you enjoyed reading these Eiffel Tower Tips. I am confident that if you follow these simple steps, you will certainly make a trip to the Eiffel Tower. And probably to the Eiffel Tower Jail.