Paris Journal 2010 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com

Photos and thoughts about Paris

Sign my guestbook. View my guestbook. 2009 Paris Journal ← Previous Next → ← Go back to the beginning

We voted in the Florida primary yesterday, right here in Paris. I’d had the ballots sitting around on the dining table for weeks. In the meantime, I’d contacted people about who to vote for in the judge and school board races. The primary isn’t until August 24, but now it was about time to mail those ballots in. This means a trip to La Poste. We started off down our street to the closest Poste, and VOILA! It is closed for renovation and will not open until sometime next week. That’s August in Paris. Conveniently posted there was a large color map directing us to the next nearest Poste, at the corner of the rues Lourmel and Théâtre. So after picking up some essential groceries at Ed and depositing them back at the apartment, we went off to the intersection of Lourmel and Theatre. The Poste was what I expected, in that there were relatively new machines inside that one is supposed to use instead of bothering the single employee working there. The days of the big long counter with bulletproof glass and Poste workers sitting like tellers behind the glass and the counter are gone. The machines have a button to press for English. That makes it somewhat easier, but you still have to know the difference between “Sending overseas” and “Sending abroad.” “Overseas” evidently means the Dom Tom, the French territories that are not part of the Hexagon. “Abroad” means the rest of the world. Tom discovered the change machine. The stamp/postage machines require coins. The change machine allows you to put something even as large as a 20 euro bill in and receive lots of coins in return. We are going to remember this for non-postage purposes, because we are always needing more change for pour boire’s for servers and newspapers for us. I wonder if we will be scolded for going in just to use the change machine? On va voir. Having the absolutely correct postage now affixed to each ballot envelope, we looked around for the box or slot in which to mail them. There was nothing. So I thought perhaps it was on the outside of the building. We went out to look. Nothing. So we went back in, stood in line, and waited for the services of the lone employee. When it was our turn, I said, “bonjour, s’il vous plait, ou se trouve la boite?” holding up my two big envelopes, ready to mail. The lone employee answered by smiling and accepting the envelopes, putting them into a box (boite) next to her behind her podium. We thanked her, and she thanked us, wishing us a good day. Now that is very strange, if you ask me. Why go to the trouble of turning the jobs of the Poste workers over to machines if you’re still going to make the customers wait in line for the services of a person, just to put the darned envelopes in a box? Tom answered, “It is very French!” And so it is. You may have noticed I mentioned pour boire’s for the servers. This is not a tip. It is nothing like a 15 to 20 percent tip. You don’t tip in France because that service charge is built into the price of each menu item. You don’t have to leave anything at all. But you can, if you want to, leave a pour boire, consisting of just a euro or two or at the most three. Pour boire means, litereally, “for drinking.” Buy your server a beer, why not? Speaking of rendering service, I read a fun article in Le Parisien the other day about apartment “nounous.” A nounou is literally a “nurse,” and it comes from the word nourrice, which originally meant “wet nurse,” or “one who nourishes.” An apartment nounou is someone you pay to come in occasionally to take care of your apartment’s plants, pets, or whatever when you go on vacation. We are apartment nounous except that we’re here all the time and we are not paid. Tom has been slowly fixing the cranky old toilet, and I have been taking care of the plants. We’d love to have to take care of a cat, but that isn’t the case here. We do a fine job of being apartment nounous. It is good for everyone in the building that we are here all the time, because otherwise I think this building would be almost empty in August. We are good for security. We are very security minded people. We never use an ATM alone. Tom and I go together. He uses the machine to get cash, and I stand with my back to him, facing the street, looking into the middle distance so that I can see everything, using my peripheral vision, and I watch everything around us. Gypsies dare not try to rip us off at the ATM. This maneuver worked well one time a year or two ago when we were using an ATM on the boulevard Montparnasse. A young woman came up behind and beside Tom, pretending to be waiting to use the machine. But she had her cell phone out and was attempting to film Tom punching in his PIN code. I stepped sideways and blocked her phone’s view. Then, of course, I was somewhat in her face. She knew she’d been caught in the act and she left without using the ATM. I guess the plan was that she’d get the PIN code, and then a bit later Tom would be mugged so the culprits could get his ATM/debit card and drain our checking account. But it didn’t happen because of our two-person technique. We highly recommend, whenever you’re in any big city anywhere, using this two-person strategy when using the ATM. Another security measure we take is that I do not carry a purse. I am often carrying a little digital camera in a little zippered bag, but if that is stolen, it is no big deal. The camera was inexpensive, and it is a few years old. I’d even use it as a weapon if I have to. Clunk! I have a thin wallet on a long keychain that also has my two keys on it. The chain is attached by safety pin to the inside of a side zippered pocket in my Chico’s Zenergy pants. I keep wearing the same pants day after day because they have the best pockets for this. The repeated washings are going to wear them out. I must buy more when I get home. It is great to have my hands free, more or less, to walk and shoot photos. We kept walking, together, after going to La Poste, to go find newspapers (at the cheerful shop at Zola Color again) and then to visit our favorite urban grocery, Monop on the rue des Entrepreneurs, to buy Lavazza coffee and other niceties like Lindt 85% Dark Chocolate bars. Love that Italian coffee and Swiss chocolate! Tom bought beautiful little round French strawberries at the picturesque fruit and vegetable shop across from the church, to supplement the other fruits we’d purchased at Ed. In the evening, we did not walk far. We went to the big restaurant behind us, Le Café du Commerce, where the big sandwich-board menu on the sidewalk out front promised me that I could order pot au feu. You really want to be seated upstairs in this lovely restaurant, because of the open atrium. We entered, the hostess asked me “rez de chaussée?” and I said “non, s’il vous plait, en étage.” And so we got to sit upstairs. We had not dined there for several years. We were happy to see that the place had been cleaned and spiffed up. The servers are all very professional looking, in crisp white shirts, black vests and black pants, with shiny black shoes. But the pot au feu didn’t happen. I was disappointed that it wasn’t on the printed menu. I asked the server about it, all in French. He answered, all in French. The sandwich-board menu was out of date. No more pot au feu. Darn! However, Tom pointed out that one of the specials of the day was aile de raie, or skate, which I love. It was supposed to come with capers and steamed potatoes (pommes vapeur). One of the other specials was supposed to come with gnocchi. My skate arrived with the promised capers but without the steamed potatoes. Instead, there was gnocchi. I used my French to explain to the server that I have a wheat intolerance, and I thought the raie was to come with steamed potatoes, not gnocchi. He told me I was mistaken, that there were no steamed potatoes, only gnocchi. I did my best to look lost and confused, and asked to see the menu. He brought one to me, and he did take a moment to look at it himself. Then he saw that he was wrong, and that I “had reason” -- “vous avez raison,” he said. I have always puzzled over this phrase. Does it mean that I have reason to object, or that I have my sense of reasoning intact? Probably the former. Not only did this server never attempt to speak a word of English to us, and that’s good, but he then sped up his French. He let go this rapid-fire explanation of what he could and could not do to make it right. I think, but I’m not sure, he said he’d go look for some steamed potatoes. He came back later and in another rapid volley of French sentences he told me that there were no steamed potatoes to be found, but there were several other things, which he listed. When he said haricots verts I let my face brighten, losing the lost and confused look, and I smiled and said “s’il vous plait, les haricots verts” with enthusiasm. A bit later he returned with a lovely and generous dish of green beans, cooked absolutely perfectly. Just after this, we heard an exchange with the waiter at a table behind me. Same thing: a French customer was unfavorably surprised to get gnocchi instead of potatoes with his skate. Wheat intolerances are not uncommon among those of northern European descent. Ha ha ha. I hope he was given green beans, too. Tom had a nice steak with mustard cream sauce on the side, and fries. He said it was very good. We finished by sharing a crème brulée . When we left the restaurant, I was so pleased that we’d had so much verbal interaction and nobody ever tried to speak one word of English to us. And dinner turned out to be very good as well as reasonably priced. Hooray! I just wish the restaurant would do away with the out-of-date sandwich board out front, and substitute it with a blackboard that is updated daily . . . comme il faut. Sign my guestbook. View my guestbook. Note: For addresses & phone numbers of restaurants in this journal, click here.

Friday, August 6, 2010 Bust of José-Maria de Heredia, the master of the sonnet, in the Luxembourg gardens. Rue Notre Dame des Champs in the 6^th arrondissement, one of the places that Hemingway lived in Paris. Statue of lovers in the Luxembourg Gardens. Concert band from Wisconsin in the bandstand gazebo in the Luxembourg Gardens. Tom was happy to see that the drummer with the Wisconsin Ambassadors of Music has some years of experience. Approaching the gazebo bandstand in the Luxembourg Gardens and discovering a concert by the Wisconsin Ambassadors of Music. It sounds like an innocent name for a street, but to be échaudé is to be the victim of a misadventure. ← Previous Next →