How to Bastille Day

Yesterday was, of course, France's national holiday, which Americans call "Bastille Day" and the French just call "le 14 juillet."

Kind of scary that FB knows where I am and what I'm up to.

Last year I went big on Bastille Day morning: got out early and went to the parade. This year we kept it relaxed in the morning, but I still wanted to see the flyover, which is my favorite part of the day. We got over to the Louvre (the courtyard is a great place to see the planes) with about 5 minutes to spare before the first planes flew over with their bleu-blanc-rouge smoke trails. Hooray!

Did I take a picture? Never you mind. We did get these goofy shots of ourselves with the glass pyramid.

We stayed a while longer to watch some more planes go by, then made our way to Les Halles, the Pompidou Center, and the Niki de St. Phalle fountain--which Dr. Kirk says is properly called the Stravinsky fountain. Live and learn! A lot more shops and restaurants were open than usual so we checked out some stores; Daniel got some sunglasses and I bought a dress and a pair of jeans. It doesn't sound like much but with a sandwich at Pomme de Pain and some sitting around and general flânerie, we had a nice, relaxed afternoon and then went back to our room for some dinner and a disco nap.

That night I finally got to do something I have wanted to do for years: we went to a bal de pompiers. It's a tradition for fire stations (casernes de pompiers) to host public dances on Bastille Day--and sometimes the night before and the night after as well. I had never been to one because I'm always in Paris alone, and I didn't want to go alone.* Of course, this year I have Daniel and he LOVES a party, so off we went to the Caserne de Port-Royal in the 13th. It proved to be an excellent choice. Fun dance music, a good atmosphere, and the caserne itself was cool to see: 4-story buildings surrounding an open courtyard which was the dance floor. The pompiers had hired a good DJ with an extensive light show and built several bars with different names/themes around the dance floor--it was cute and just much more elaborate than I expected. There was also a food truck selling sausages and fries (or some such).

Banner outside the fire station

The dance floor and bar setup inside the caserne--

before it got so crowded that you could barely move around.

Daniel was pretty taken with these glowing tables.

Delirious/sweaty dancefloor selfie.

Shortly before we left--dance floor was getting packed. 

Finally, I just need to say this for the record: French firefighters are astonishingly attractive. I don't know how they do it. Is there an audition? They all look ready for the cover of a fitness magazine.

Yep, that's me surrounded by the 13th Arrondissement's finest.

All the firefighters we talked to were very polite and friendly, which was nice. Daniel and I both noticed that it was a very welcoming atmosphere. We danced for close to 2 hours without very many breaks, and left around 11:15 when the dance floor was getting so packed that it was impossible to move. People were obviously having a great time and although there may have been some drunken shenanigans and bad behavior later in the night, we had an excellent experience. A+ work, 3eme Companie de Caserne Port-Royal. (call me!)

And so to bed after watching the fireworks show on live stream from France 2. I have yet to decide whether it's worth going to the Champ de Mars to see the fireworks in person. Last night seemed perfect: go dancing early and don't stay too long, see fireworks on television, get to bed before 4 a.m.

Tomorrow: Italy! I don't think I will take my computer so expect radio silence till we get back Sunday afternoon. It will be my first time in Italy and I am so excited!

*N.B. I believe that Paris is a safe city, and during the day I go places alone all the time. But to go dancing alone at night on the night of a holiday when everyone is out and lots of people are drinking has never seemed like a smart idea to me. YMMV.

One of my favorite shows goes to one of my favorite places

I've been binge-watching the current season of Covert Affairs for the past two days and just watched the episodes that take place in . . . Paris! It is hard to concentrate on the plot when you are looking at the background of every shot to see if you can figure out where the scenes were filmed. Here is the behind-the-scenes video. I recognized all the "big" locations (Hôtel de Ville, Conciergerie, Pont Alexandre III, etc.) easily but could not place that street market. Is it the one near Place de la Bastille? Chris Gorham's photographs are very cool too.

This was just what I needed to ease my post-Paris withdrawal symptoms!

Wednesday, July 30 and Thursday, July 31: Last class days

Today was final exams, marking the official end of the program. We have taken all the calendars, schedules, and maps off the office walls, and I left my key with Dr. Kirk. No more Institut Protestant de Théologie till next year. It's hard to believe how fast the time has gone. Tomorrow we go to Giverny & Val d'Oise, Saturday is a free day, and Sunday we go home. I am really eager to get home and yet I will miss Paris so much.

Last night I had a great dinner with a colleague at a restaurant in the 14th called La Cagouille. If you like seafood, this is your place. I had mussels as a starter (very good) followed by grilled mackerel (strong-tasting; either you will like it or you won't; I liked it) followed by a clafoutis (bread pudding-ish thing that frankly I did not care for). Desserts are obviously a bit of an afterthought so you can save yourself a few € by getting the 2-course set menu rather than the 3-course one. We also had champagne, which I always like. I think Mireille Giuliano is right: Champagne goes with everything!

After a French dinner (starts late, lasts a while) it was a little hard to get up for classes this morning but fortunately I got to leave the office early and come back to Cité U. for a nap. Minou (the cat I know as Jambon) was in the courtyard when I left this afternoon so I got to give him a farewell petting.

In the evening we celebrated the end of the program with snacks and photos at the Eiffel Tower.

My illustrious colleague, Dr. Kirk

Is there a more iconic symbol of a city?

I was guarding the bags and snacks during the group photo.

Prof. Pukis took the photo.

3 of the 5 MGSC students with Dr. Wengier and me

Time for bed. We leave for Giverny at 9 tomorrow.

Tuesday, July 29: Returning to the Musée Carnavalet

Some of my students in World Lit. expressed interest in the Musée Carnavalet, so today we went there as our last field trip for the course. It was my second time there (first visit, last summer, reported here) but the museum is extensive enough that I know I saw some things I had not seen before. The only downside of today's visit was that a good bit of the museum was closed for renovation. I was more disappointed for my students' sake than for my own, but they all enjoyed it regardless and reported that they had learned a lot. Tomorrow I am going to ask each person to share something specific that he or she learned. I also have my own interesting fact in reserve--but I'm saving it for tomorrow!

So the Carnavalet is in the Marais district, which has evolved over the centuries from an aristocratic neighborhood of hôtels particuliers to a Jewish quarter to a gay neighborhood. The first time I visited Paris (ten years ago!), the Marais was thought of as not being very touristy, but nowadays it sees its share of tourist traffic. In fact, the Marais itself represents a phenomenon that the Carnavalet illustrates: the ways in which Paris has changed and continues to change. Because Hausmann so radically reinvented the city starting in the mid-19th-century, it's easy to believe that Paris has always looked the way it looks now. Very little of medieval and Renaissance Paris remains. A lot of what one sees at the Carnavalet is paintings of the city in its earlier incarnations, restored rooms from various hôtels particuliers of the 18th century, and even archaeological findings from the days when the Romans lived here and called it "Lutetia." All in all it is a great education. I don't know whether I want to read a book on Parisian history to understand the Carnavalet better or just keep going to the Carnavalet until I understand the history of Paris better. Maybe both.

In addition to the Carnavalet, which is the museum of the history of Paris, it offers a lot of good shopping and a lot of good falafel. The famous L'As du Falafel restaurant is there; I like to be iconoclastic and hit the falafel stand across from L'As because the line is shorter. After the Carnavalet I enjoyed my falafel and went for a gelato at Amorino next to the Place de Vosges--gotta eat enough this week to give me good culinary memories to last a year, after all.

Meanwhile, I did take some pictures at the Carnavalet. Click through!

Tour de France > Bastille Day

In the competition (which exists only in my mind) between major national events that happen on the Champs-Elysées, the Tour de France has won a decisive victory over the Bastille Day parade. Bastille Day was wonderful; don't get me wrong. But the Tour is less crowded and offers more of a relaxed, afternoon-party atmosphere. It's a lot easier to get there and get back because presidential-level security is not required. It is also a great cure for FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) because after the racers go by, you wait a few minutes, and they go by again. It was really fun! You can listen to the commentary on loudspeakers along the route, there's music playing from vans trying to sell you t-shirts, and everyone just walks around checking everything out until the first few cars show up on the route and it's time to get in place to cheer and take pictures. As a bonus they kicked off the first run up toward the Arc de Triomphe with a tricolo fly-over like they do on Bastille Day. Was not expecting that so it was some nice extra excitement!

So I watched the race some; I walked around some; I ate a crèpe (beurre & sucre); I looked at souvenirs. After it was over, I walked up to visit the Arc de Triomphe and took the rare opportunity to get a couple of photos of it with no people or cars in them. I also worked out how to photograph a bike race with (moderate and occasional) success:
1. Set the camera to take 3 pictures in a row each time you hit the shutter.
2. Frame your shot between the heads of people in front of you.
3. When they start cheering, hit the shutter as many times as you can as if it is the Jeopardy! buzzer.
4. Feel grateful for digital photography freeing you from the worry of "wasting film."

Here come the photos . . . How did I do?

Wednesday, July 23: . . .

Don't worry; Wednesday was perfectly fine. But, all things considered, let's just move on, shall we?

Sunday, July 13: Un dimanche à Paris

The idea that there isn't much going on in Paris on Sundays is only partially true. A lot of stores are closed but a lot of museums are open, the metro runs, and some big businesses or popular locations open their doors (although I think they pay some kind of tax penalty for this privilege). For instance, I was surprised to discover that the Orange (mobile phone) store on the Champs-Elysées is open on Sunday afternoon. But they are clearly making money via people who need some kind of service at that time. I happened to be there right at the opening time (1:00 p.m.) and there were at least a dozen people waiting, with more coming in once the doors opened. I like the idea that not everything has to be open 24/7--it makes you plan your life better and act more patient. There may be some truth to the idea that the French embrace their downtime a little too enthusiastically, but I can attest firsthand to Americans' culpability in not taking downtime seriously enough. We get less vacation time than most other developed nations and then when we get it, we don't take it! At minimum it makes for an interesting clash of cultures when the 24/7 Americans meet the 35-hour-work-week French.

Since I was in the neighborhood (sort of) I took the recommendation of an esteemed friend and went to the Musée Jacquemart-André this afternoon. This museum seems much less well known than the others I've been to--on a rainy Sunday afternoon, the day before Bastille Day, there was no line and it was not bustling with tourists. It is a 19th-century mansion built by a wealthy banker's son, Edouard André, to house and display his and his wife's (Nélie Jacquemart--she was a painter herself) art collection. When he died, the house and its collections were left to the Institut de France and it opened as a museum in 1913. It is a beautiful space: elaborate but not overwhelming. And as an 18th-century specialist, I was in heaven. A lot of the art dates to the 18th century and the styling of the house itself--as it is presented now--recalls that era. The special exhibition on display was focused on the fêtes galantes paintings of Watteau, Fragonard, and other artists who participated in that style: a sort of dressed-up version of the pastoral in which elegant people in beautiful clothes have a lovely (and sometimes slightly risqué) time in a fantastical woodland setting. The more paintings I'm exposed to, the more I enjoy looking at paintings because I often encounter familiar themes or people I recognize  Two of the paintings by Nicolas Lancret that I saw today incorporated La Camargo, a celebrity at the time Lancret was painting. Most of the fête galante paintings don't depict actual people but the idea of an idyllic party in the country, possibly featuring some shenanigans, certainly reflects things I'm familiar with from eighteenth-century culture. And like many places I've been recently, it's worth going just to see the building. The tour includes 3-4 rooms from the Andrés' private apartments. I always love seeing how people lived "back then," though I still can't quite imagine living in such an elaborate space every day--and with corsets on, at that.

At the end of my tour through the museum I decided to have a coffee in the café and read my roman polar for a while (have learned the difference between a polar, which is more like a noir thriller, and a policier, which is just a regular detective novel). It was only a little more expensive than at a regular café and I got to enjoy being seated next to a gentleman of a certain age and his young Swedish girlfriend, speaking English to each other because that was the language they had in common, and him holding her hand the entire time. To his credit he seemed unable to believe his luck, as well he should have been. Across from me were 2 women, one of whom was wearing several thousand dollars' worth of accessories (Gucci loafers, Birkin bag, and a watch I couldn't identify because I'm not fancy enough) and who wouldn't stop being rude to the server. She was like a caricature brought to life; I didn't think those types existed. Between the coffee (which was very good), the book, and the other patrons I got my money's worth out of that museum café.

Got a little lost coming out of the museum and walked too far through the 8th arrondissement in search of a metro. I don't know what it is about the 8th--maybe just lack of exposure--but I usually get turned around when I go there. Finally I found Gare St. Lazare and made my way back in time for dinner and laundry. Tomorrow is Bastille Day; I'm thinking of going out for the parade but it will all depend on the weather. A little blue sky is peeking through right now, but what will tomorrow bring?

We Talk Pretty

When I read David Sedaris's Me Talk Pretty One Day, I laughed until I cried on multiple occasions. Listening to this segment from This American Life is even better: still funny, but also profound. Ultimately he gives a good answer to the question of why we take the risk of entering a foreign culture: the slight strangeness of everything and the need for heightened observation are exciting (albeit occasionally defeating). It is probably preferable to experience gaffes in foreign countries as adventures rather than as humiliations--unless one is David Sedaris and can make such fantastic material out of the humiliations.

Also, frankly, I love the way he transliterates his hardware-store French. "And now I have come to find a table that might work with my iron."
Him Talk Pretty Three Days