Faux Pas Friday

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We discovered a new anglophone-in-Paris blog recently called "paris (im)perfect" and I hope its author (Sion Dayson) won't mind if I blatantly rip off one of her regular segments: Faux Pas Friday.

Yesterday, I had a rehearsal with Dominique, the pianist with whom I gave a concert last week. (Maggie and her mom came along to listen.) We got to talking about the recording I made and he complained about the "flatness" of the sound quality. I wanted to reply that any flatness must have been due to the poor quality of his (and most other) computer speakers. Here's where things went wrong.

Quick vocab lesson. Enceinte is a noun with three meanings:

1. The various walls encircling the city of Paris over its history were known as enceintes.

2. Enceinte is one way of saying "pregnant." (This is an ad the French government published recently in an attempt to promote their vision of France's future, which only succeeded in infuriating women and the political left - there's a good analysis of the scandal here.)

3. A Google search for "enceintes" (plural) shows the meaning I was going for - speakers. Even with the S, it's pronounced the same as the other two. But just to be clear, as I said the word I gestured as if I were picking up two little computer speakers.

Except I didn't actually say "enceintes," not even after a moment's hesitation when I weighed it against the other option, which is spelled slightly different, but which is pronounced the same as the middle syllable as enceintes. Instead of enceintes, as I reached for the two "computer speakers" in front of me, I said "seins." Which means breasts.

Me, the idiot: "Si l'enregistrement semble plat, c'est à cause de tes ... seins;" "If the recording sounds flat, it's due to your ... breasts."

Happily, in the context of this sentence, it must have sounded more like I dropped the "en" of "enceintes" in a lower register, making it inaudible, but still "heard." (The French do this all the time, especially in their frequent use of the word enfin, which resembles the ubiquitous "like" of American English.) Dominique certainly didn't notice. Maggie, on the other hand, noticed, and after I made eye contact with her (which was immediately) she could barely keep herself from cracking up.

Oops. Hopefully next time this situation comes up, I'll think of the three meanings of enceinte (as compared to the one meaning of sein) and choose correctly.

Random Exhibitions at the Hotel de Ville

Twice during Robert's visit, we walked by the Hotel de Ville on our way to the métro, only to be distracted by various events taking place in the adjacent square.

The second time (for which I have no pictures), there was an exhibition of what the French call "handisports," or what we might call paralympic events: wheelchair tennis, fencing, bowling, and racing were just some of the activities going on. I think the idea was to get handisport athletes to show off their stuff, and also to give non-handisport athletes the opportunity to try something new - and maybe gain some empathy (however useless that may be for US Supreme Court nominees... sorry.) for differently-abled people.

The first time we walked by, there was a show of electric vehicles for Paris's "mobility" week. We saw some crazy thingamabobs:

I really, really, really hope this stuff takes off, despite how awkward it all looks.

Bicycles!

You may or may not know that Maggie and I love bicycles. They're fun to ride, they're cheaper than most other forms of transportation, they're good for the environment, and they're good for our health. So it was with great pleasure that I saw a sign advertising a Critical Mass event a few weeks ago: http://22septembre.org/. (The message on the website reads, "Coincidence! We all just happen to meet while riding our bikes around the Arc de Triomphe on September 22nd, formerly "car-free day." Unannounced cyclist objective: insert yourself into and ride around the rotary without blocking traffic. If a traffic jam should occur, extricate yourself and leave.")

Last Tuesday, I went with Robert (he may have left Paris, but he hasn't left my heart) to the Arc de Triomphe to witness what can only be described as a flash-mob of cyclists. At 6:30 pm, at the height of l'heure de point (rush hour), hundreds of cyclists materialized in the rotary that surrounds the Arc de Triomphe and clumped together as they rode around and around, forcing automobile drivers to cede space and pay attention. It was glorious.

So Long, Farewell...

Panda will sorely miss Robert, who departed today after a two-week visit. (We'll miss him too, but you can see that Panda grew especially attached to him.)

Before he left, Robert treated Maggie and me to a delicious lunch at Bistrot Paul Bert, in the 11th. We enjoyed such delectable dishes as tuna tartar, porc pâté with salad and cèpe mushrooms, veal puff pastry with mushrooms and cream sauce (entrées), lamb shoulder with vegetables, cassoulet bréton with andouille sausage, white beans, and other sausage/ham, filet St. Pierre (fish) in a cream sauce (plats), fondant au chocolat (moist cake) in a basil crème anglaise, île flottant with crushed almond pralines, and roasted figs with honey and vanilla ice cream (dessert). So unbelievably rich. So, so good.

Thanks, Robert, for a lunch that captured the essence of your entire visit!

(Other than this brief nap, Robert slept on our brand new, double air mattress. Just in case you were worried.)

Journées Européenes du Patrimoine

I know it's normal for a blog to hype current or future events, but I'm having a hard time staying ahead of the curve, so you'll have to be satisfied with finding out about things you should have gone to after the fact. For example, last weekend you would have been granted access to various buildings, free of charge, in an event called "European Days of Cultural Heritage" (loose translation). I first heard about the event through Invisible Paris, but even if I hadn't known about it we couldn't have avoided the masses of people waiting in line just across the street from the David Lynch window displays last Sunday afternoon.

Or the line wrapping all around the Opéra Garnier, or the band taking advantage of the captive audience to promote themselves:

Instead of waiting at the Opéra for hours, we hopped into a much shorter line in front of a much less famous site: the headquarters of Société Générale, a French bank. We had no idea how awesome it would be.

The glass ceiling you see towards the beginning of the sideshow is 50 square meters (huge!) and is protected by another glass ceiling above it, which also helps to keep the heat in. The building was one of the first in France (or maybe the world?) to be constructed with reinforced concrete. There are five basements, the first four of which contain safe-deposit boxes, all secured by the massive double safe you see in the slideshow. The fifth basement produces heat which rises up through the rest of the building through grates in the floors of each level - another innovation in its time. These trivia items and more did we learn on the 30-minute tour we took through an officially-certified historic monument we never would have known to visit, if not for the Journées Européenes de Patrimoine!

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!!

The Lurrrrrvre

As I've mentioned before, various museums have special deals if you go at certain times. Last night, Robert and I took advantage of one such deal - and got into the Louvre for free! (This was possible because we're under 26; for everyone else, the price of admission is a paltry 6 euros, so it's a deal either way.)

Below, you can see what we saw. I admit that I took more pictures of the building than of the art, but that's because the Louvre doesn't have very much good art. (...)

David Lynch at Galeries Lafayette

Sunday afternoon we took a bus (!) to Galeries Lafayette, one of the huge department stores in Paris (and one of the first of its kind anywhere). Maggie wanted to do some shopping, and I had heard about a peculiar kind of exhibition. Apparently, the store commissioned David Lynch (filmmaker, photographer, musician, painter) to design 11 display windows at the store. Unfortunately for Maggie, the store is closed Sundays, but fortunately for all of us, the display windows were at street level on Boulevard Haussman.

Consistent with David Lynch's aesthetic, the displays ranged from gruesome to fantastical to sarcastic. Lynch's subject, "Machines, Abstraction and Women," lends itself to provocation. I can't really begin to describe what was actually going on in the windows (and besides, plenty of other blogs have already tried that), so I'll let the pictures do the talking.



The display windows are up through October 3rd.

FFF: "Floating" Food & Fun

On Saturday, Maggie, Robert, Panda and I headed down to Quai Montebello, just across the river from Notre Dame de Paris. There, we experienced a heightened version of traditional French food-shopping: Les Marchés Flottants du Sud-Ouest. Imagine a single row of 50 merchants selling cheese, wine, sausages, foie gras, preserves, chocolates, ice cream, dates, smoked duck breast and more - all products of three départements in the southwest of France.

(Tarn-et-Garonne, Lot-et-Garonne, and Gers are all located within the larger region called Midi-Pyrénées.)

We got to taste a number of items and beverages, we listened to a rag-tag marching band seemingly composed of merchants (which reminded us of the Hobo Band), we people-watched on the Quai, which justified the "floating" part of the market's name, since it sits right on the Seine. Robert bought a bottle of red wine and I invested in some duck rillettes. So delicious! So unhealthy! 

Afterwards, we treated ourselves to Berthillon Glace (only the best ice cream in the world), walked around the Centre Georges Pompidou to see an exhibit celebrating 60 years of the RATP (Parisian public transport, see pictures from the exhibit here), then eventually sat down at a bar in the Marais for a drink. Quite a full afternoon, and quite a fun one!

Weekend Update

My bank account is fully open and fully functional!

I opened an account with EDF (Électricité de France), which means we won't get our electricity shut off!

I re-visited the Musée Marmottan-Claude Monet, in part to re-see a bunch of Monet's Nymphéas (Waterlillies) with Robert, but more to see two exhibitions: one of incredible aerial shots/footage of Paris by Yann Arthus-Bertrand, the other a 50-year sample of the photography of Lucien Clergue (thanks to Just Another American in Paris for shamelessly plugging these exhibitions).

Yann Arthus-Bertrand did a whole video/book of shots like this one.

Lucien Clergue's photography focuses on the most elemental aspects of nature - textures, forms, color contrasts. He's also known for his focus on the human figure in its most elemental state.

This evening, Robert and I just barely managed to make it to services on time, because when you get off the Métro at Porte Maillot and enter the Palais des Congrés, you first enter a really swank mall, and there were no signs pointing to services. We finally asked some police officers, who pointed us to the Grand Amphitheatre. All we had to do was go through metal detectors and not get lost in the huge, 3,723-seat hall. The service was nice, albeit in French (Robert tuned out everything that wasn't in Hebrew).

Back at home tonight, on our late-evening walk to the Parc de Belleville, Panda and I stumbled on a cinéma en plein air (open-air film). Apparently there's a whole series in September - exciting!

Finally, L'Shana Tovah, Happy New Year!

If You're Craving Crêpes . . .

In the middle of an epic jaunt through Paris today, we stumbled upon a crêperie that more than deserves a blog post (and probably a medal).

The Crêperie de Josselin (14th arr., Métro Edgar Quinet), a wood-paneled, intimate, Breton-inspired restaurant, serves only crêpes (salé (savory) and sucré (sweet)). They have a 10-euro lunch menu that includes a crêpe complète (egg, cheese, ham), choice of dessert crêpe, and a drink (get the cider). This would be a deal even ignoring the fact that the cook - who is also the woman who has owned the place for 15 years - doubles over the already huge crêpe, which means you get twice as much food as you probably need. She was so friendly, and so skilled, I had to take her picture.

I could spend a lot of time describing the ambience and the food, but luckily someone else has already done the work for me. Suffice it to say, you should go here.

Seeking a Synagogue

This weekend is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and that means it's time to find a synagogue in Paris. As it turns out, the 19th arrondissement, where we live, has a large Jewish population. But as far as I can tell, it's entirely Orthodox and Sephardic, which isn't what I'm used to. There are a few conservative Ashkenazi synagogues in the city, and I think I've found most of them. There's the Synagogue Charles Liché (formerly Synagogue de Place des Vosges), which probably has the best real estate (the Place des Vosges is gorgeous and very swank); there's Kehilat Gesher, a bilingual congregation that holds services both in Paris and in St. Germain-en-Laye; and there's the Union Libérale Israélite de France, which (along with Kehilat Gesher) has a synagogue in the 16th arrondissement.


This last congregation welcomes so many people for the High Holidays that they have to hold two services: one in their regular synagogue, and one at the Palais des Congrès at Porte Maillot, which is basically a convention center/performance venue. And that is where I will be attending services. I'll let you know how it goes, and whether I can see the Rabbi from the nosebleed seats.

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Update - I got the tickets for Rosh Hashanah/Yom Kippur services in the mail. I asked for two, and they sent two. But they made a major assumption when they printed the tickets, namely:

And "Mme. Epstein?" Here she is:

Robert's in town! Hooray! Here, he's napping off his jet lag (he just got in today) in the Parc de Buttes Chaumont. Hopefully they won't object when he walks in with the "Mme. Epstein" ticket.