Fête de Départ/Nos Voisins Formidables

Plus qu'un coucher de soleil sur la Seine, plus que le parfum des potagers dans le Parc des Buttes Chaumont, plus que tout autre aspect de la vie quotidienne à Paris, si une chose nous manquera lorsqu'on revient aux Etats-Unis, ce sera le chaleureux amitié de nos voisins, dont quelques sont devenus des plus proches amis.

Comme si nos voisins voulaient nous faire repenser notre décision à rentrer, hier après-midi ils nous ont fait une grande fête de départ. La fête, qui prenait la forme d'un pot géant (d'après les apéros géants qui agaçent tellement les gouvernements des villes françaises), convenait parfaitement à la symmetrie de notre séjour, Maggie et moi ayant fait la connaissance de nos voisins à un premier pot en septembre.

Comme vous voyez, il y avait beaucoup à manger, et les invités en ont apporté même plus après que cette photo a été prise. Une quiche, une tarte salée, des chips, du vin, du cidre, du coca, des cookies americains, de la bruschetta, des hors d'oeuvres, nous n'en avons pas arreté de manger pendant cinq heures. Nos voisins et amis sont arrivés et partis en vagues, et finalement le pot a compté vers une vigntaine de personnes, dont plusieurs que nous n'avions jamais rencontrées, et dont plusieurs autres que nous connaissons depuis le troisième jour de notre séjour.


Fantômette ne voulait pas laisser passer une opportunité de dire au revoir à Panda (son enemie mortelle), et non plus presque tous les enfants des batîments B et C.


Pour nous convaincre de revenir bientôt et souvent, nos voisins nous ont donné deux grands cadeaux: ils vont planter et cultiver un chêne à notre honneur, et pendant que nous attendons qu'il grandisse assez pour nous abriter quand il fait chaud, Maggie et moi dégusterons un panier plein de mets raffinés et friandises de Fauchon.

Ça va sans dire que ces cadeaux nous ont vivement touché et même éblouit tant que nous trouvions à peine les mots pour remercier tout le monde.

Et c'est pourquoi nous avons écrit ce post en français - pour mieux remercier nos voisins. En fin de compte, vous nous avez donné un cadeau plus précieux qu'on ne s'attendait: une année pleine de nouvelles expériences, de joie, de sympathie et de camaraderie. Vous serez tous les bienvenus chez nous, et nous espèrons vous revoir aussi bientôt que possible.

Portraits of Belleville: Juan, Sofìa, and Emma

Belleville would be much a lonelier place were it not for our incredibly warm neighbors. Originally from Spain, Juan and Sofia have been in Paris for more than a decade, and their daughter Emma will turn four in early May. (Happy Birthday, Emma!) We're honored that Juan and Sofia entrusted us with being the first non-family members to babysit Emma, and we've tried to repay the distinction by entrusting Emma with the secret to baking excellent chocolate-peanut butter cookies.

Emma and Panda don't get along as well as we'd like, mostly since Panda hasn't done a great job of exercising self-restraint around Emma. Still, Emma's favorite animal is Panda (the "bear," not the dog), and Panda's favorite animal is anyone she can snuggle with, so there's at least a chance that these two little girls can put aside their differences and become as friendly as their respective parents.

Portraits of Belleville: Mo, Hélo & Co.

We've taken turns babysitting the kids, we've had the whole family over for a goûter, and we've been over there for coffee and for dinner: Mohamed (père), Héloise (mère), Nahel, Tilal, and Mehdi (kids, left to right) are the Bellevillois we've gotten to know best over the last 7 months. The family shares a beautiful (and spacious) apartment directly across the courtyard from ours, and we run into each other almost every day in the courtyard or at the Parc des Buttes Chaumont. 

Left to right: Nahel (3), Mo, Tilal (1), Mehdi (7), Héloise

Mo wins the award for most prolific commenter at Panda-à-Paris, and Héloise wins for putting us in touch with various people looking for clarinetists and English teachers. The boys win because, according to Mo, they recently asked their parents, "When are Maggie and Louis coming over to babysit again?"

Book Report #2

You may remember that we had our neighbors over for an afternoon goûter (snack) in the middle of January. In return, they invited us for dinner in the middle of February, and a lovely time was had by all. At the dinner, they surprised me with a birthday present: three books, all recommended highly by Mo and Héloise. (I'm sure their three boys will like these books too, but for now they're too young to read them.) Having just finished the third one, and never having gotten into the whole goodreads.com thing, I thought I'd mention them here.

I'm not sure why these two plays by Sartre were published together (maybe because they were published in 1944 and 1943, respectively), but I am sure that I enjoyed reading them much more than I expected. (Doesn't "Sartre" conjure up anxiety about heavy, difficult-to-understand reading? It did for me. But no more.) Huis clos (translated in English as No Exit) puts three guilty people in a recognizable (albeit reimagined) place and lets us watch their inevitable conflict. Les mouches (The Flies) is a retelling of the Electra myth (previously treated by Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides, and Richard Staruss) through a (you guessed it) existentialist lens. If that doesn't get you all excited, read the play anyway, its energy and power merit a much more breathless description.

With its deceptively simple title (A French Novel), the second book proved more difficult but, at the same time, was also lighter reading than the Sartre. Frédéric Beigbeder won the 2009 Prix Renaudot for this almost painfully autobiographical work that starts with his arrest for sniffing cocaine off the hood of a car. The author uses the incident - and his ensuing two-night imprisonment - to explore the reasons for his inability to remember anything about his admittedly privileged childhood. His narrative mixes idyllic flashbacks with harsh critiques of the French criminal justice system, his prose is completely contemporary, and his sarcasm reminds me of Chuck Palahniuk (who, now that I think about it, also structures books so that the end comes right at the beginning). One of the great things about this book is its short (3-4 page) chapters, which make it easy for a non-native-French speaker to sustain interest. In this respect Beigbeder does not equal Victor Hugo, and I am grateful for that.

As an aside: one of our favorite American-in-Paris bloggers noticed that the covers of French books tend to be extremely simple, and Un roman français is a great example.

Finally, I read this novella on my way to and from a single rehearsal, it's that short. Originally published in English in 1938 (funny that I should read it in French translation), Inconnu à cette adresse (Address unknown) constitutes an exchange of letters between German business partners originally living in San Francisco. The exchange begins when Martin, who is not Jewish, returns to Germany with his family in 1932, while Max, who is Jewish, stays behind to run the business. Over the next two years, their close friendship breaks down under the strain of the sinister changes German society experiences under National Socialism and Adolph Hitler. The author, Katherine Kressman Taylor, based parts of the book on actual letters sent by Americans in Germany during the 1930s. We don't often hear about the extent to which Americans knew what was going on in Germany during the buildup to the Holocaust, and it's moving to get a contemporary glimpse from someone who had no personal stake in the violence, but who clearly felt its effects.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Mo & Co. (which is a decent band name, should the boys ever decide to take up guitar and drums) for their generosity and thoughtfulness. And to anyone who's looking for good reads in French or English, I highly recommend these three books!

Voisins/Amis

Just a quick shoutout to Mohamed and Héloise, neighbors from the next building over, and their kids Mehdi (7), Nahel (3), and Tilal (10 months) who just left after a delightful mid-afternoon goûter (snack). We first met at the pot in the courtyard in September; since then Maggie has done a bit of babysitting for Mohamed and Héloise, and they've generously lent us DVDs from their impressive collection. In an exciting development, Mohamed and Mehdi (avid gamers both) have promised to help me improve my French video-game vocab by playing Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty on their new Alienware computer.

For the first course of our goûter, we enjoyed galette des rois (#4 for us since Christmas Eve). Enfin (at long last) I found the fève (plastic figurine, in this case Asterix), thanks in part to a new tradition we learned about. Apparently it's the job of the youngest person present to get under the table and determine the order in which slices of galette are handed out. Tilal was too young (speech is an important part of the tradition) so Nahel did the honors.

The second course was another quince apple tart that we made fresh this morning (pictures forthcoming on flickr). The amuse-bouche (wordreference.com translates it as appetizer, but I think of it as anything that comes between courses) was chocolate-peanut-butter cookies (thanks to Eden and JP for bringing the peanut butter chips!).

The boys were a little scared of Panda at first, but eventually warmed to her. Tilal spit up a little on the rug, but it was no biggie. Mehdi and Nahel ate about 30 cookies, but weren't interested in taking a doggie bag home. They probably figured that since we live just across the courtyard from the them (literally), there's plenty more where that came from. And they're right.

Tomorrow: Matt arrives!

To Spit, Or Not To Spit

The day we arrived in Paris, one of the things about our apartment building that surprised me most was the printed sign on the right, posted at the bottom of our stairwell:

It reads, "Forbidden to smoke and to spit in the stairs." I can only assume it's translated into Chinese underneath. (Can anyone confirm?)

The handwritten note on the left is related to an incident Maggie had yesterday afternoon. A neighbor rang the doorbell (the doorbell is becoming a real problem) and when Maggie opened the door to the middle-aged woman, she accused Maggie of having let Panda run around in the stairwell off-leash, and then accused Panda of peeing in the 4th-floor hallway. Maggie protested as best she could, but nothing she could say would convince the woman. Panda, surprised and offended, said nothing. (Becky, who was on the phone with Maggie at the time, is our witness.)

On her way to babysit later in the day, Maggie noticed that someone had posted this note, which reads, "The owner of the dog that peed on the 4th floor is invited to clean up the mess." So delightfully passive. And apparently the French love underlining things in their chastisements/complaints/directions!

This morning, in protest of the woman's groundless accusation and in the spirit of cheeky helpfulness, I added "or cat or child" to the note, since we should suspect dogs, cats, and children equally in the mystery of the 4th-floor pee-spot.

Technical Difficulties

No water in our building right now. I say this just in case anyone with the ability to do something about it is reading this. Please? Pretty please?

***UPDATE***

Word on the street is that someone had a plumbing problem and had the water to the whole building shut off as a result. What the . . . !?!?

Week in Review

It's been tough to post the last few days because we're just so gosh-darn busy. Here's a sampling of this week's fun:

- Louis went to the library every day like the good little grad student dissertation researcher he is;

- Monday night, Louis and Robert got falafel in the Marais (but not at L'As du Falafel, like everyone recommends, because there was an equally good place a few doors down for a few euros less);

- Maggie babysat every day but Thursday, worked on grad school applications, and studied for the GRE;

- Louis, Maggie, and Robert went to see Inglourious Basterds Thursday night at MK2 Quai de Seine, which (as you see below) is on the Canal d'Ourcq and which looks glorious at night (IB: the parts in French had no subtitles; the parts in German and English had French subtitles; Robert was not amused);

- The neighbors called twice to let us know that Panda was crying (Monday night and Thursday night). Looks like we need to up her medication again . . .

- Friday, Maggie came down with a cold, and is still feeling under the weather. Get well soon, Maggie-face!

- Tomorrow: pre-Yom Kippur dinner, featuring chicken soup with matzoh balls (made with real matzoh, since we can't find Manischewitz Matzoh Meal here), brisket-style basse côte (lower rib marinated and slow-cooked in a secret sauce), salad, wine, and chocolate cake. Yum!!

Pot

Today, while heading out to brunch at Charlie Birdy, a hip restaurant in the 15th arrondissement, Louis and I noticed a handwritten note taped to the wall at the entrance to our building. It said, briefly, "Come enjoy drinks and snacks in the garden today at 5:00." Actually, I have no idea what it said exactly - and at first, I thought it said something about drinks with Delphine at 4:30.... My first thought was that some nice, lonely neighbor wanted to meet people and so put up the note. We returned from brunch around 4:45, and I sent Louis out to go meet the lonely neighbor (hey, he could use the conversation practice - and it would be good for neighborly relations if other people knew we were not simply howling dog-owners).

Ten minutes later, Louis called me because it turned out our next-door neighbor was in the garden and he wanted me to officially meet her (and further mend relations). I joined them in the garden (by the time I made it down, two others had also joined the group.)

I don't recall everyone's name, but by the time we left the garden, two hours later, nearly twenty neighbors had joined the fête. In fact, it turns out the note said something about a pot, or, a "drinks party" or "block party." Not altogether uncommon in Paris, apparently, this is something that our neighbors do more often than most! There are four buildings at our address (with a central courtyard and garden) and it appeared that there was representation from every building.

This is a picture taken from our living room window after we left the party - look closely and you can see the colored shirts of our neighbors and maybe even the tables filled with chocolate, tarts, pâté, fresh-picked figs, wine, tea, champagne, and more!

What's more, I may have picked up more babysitting jobs - many of our neighbors have children (cute, French children!) so when they found out I was a potential babysitter, they asked for my "06" - my cell phone - and I was only too happy to oblige.

Cry, Baby, Cry

I know what you've been thinking. "When is Louis going to post better audio of that baby crying in the next room?" Well think no more - here it is.

And another.

There's lots of noise around here, so please don't accuse me of picking on a little girl and her harried parents. Also, I've been practicing clarinet every afternoon for 30-45 minutes right before her bedtime, so now we're really even. (Who knows, maybe it's soothing?)

Panda Update

Maybe she isn't quite settled in her new environment, but she sure looks comfortable!

Meanwhile, I've now had pleasant conversations with both of our next-door neighbors (voisins) and their three-year-old daughter (we didn't really talk, I just put my hand out to shake hers, realized her hands were covered in chocolate, and said "Le chocolat, c'est plus important." I think I won her over.).

We've had no further incidents since Thursday, mostly because we haven't left Panda alone for more than about 15 minutes, and even then we've been within earshot. She's making progress - a little whine here and there, but mostly she just lays by the door.

Nowadays, all the noise comes from next door. That three-year-old is loud! (We took this video just in case someone tries to argue that Panda is the only annoying noisemaker on our floor. You may need to turn the volume up, the flipvideo didn't capture the sound real well.)