Paris Journal 2008

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Sorry to miss you all yesterday – we have been a little distracted by a real estate transaction back in Florida. And I went out yesterday to meet our friend Barbara C., one of the owners of the apartment in the 15^th where we stay in July and August. We had a good time over drinks at a café on the boulevard Saint Germain, talking about politics, and Sarah Palin in particular. It is so nice to have someone to rant with. That reminds me, because this café was across from an HSBC bank: While making ATM withdrawals this month, I’ve discovered that when we use our Wachovia ATM card in an HSBC machine here in Paris, not only do we get a better exchange rate, but we also are not charged an ATM fee. That might be useful information for those of you who are planning to visit France anytime soon. Last night, we went walking through the Luxemburg Gardens and the Garden of the Observatory again, then on to the boulevard Montparnasse. We checked out a number of restaurants there, finally deciding to try Chez Clement because it looked so cute. It is now a chain of 15 restaurants, but I think this one on the boulevard Montparnasse may be the original one, or one of the first, judging by the age of the place and its décor. About the food, I don’t know what to say. Tom’s food was really very good (tender pork ribs and puréed potatoes), and mine was not so good (way overcooked duck breast and bland pasta with cheap swiss cheese melted on top). We’ll probably try it one more time. Tom’s puréed potatoes were divine. They are served in a little ceramic pot with a lid. Very cute. I had a ravioli in lobster sauce starter course which was quite good, and it arrived piping hot at the table. Tom had a moelleaux au chocolat (chocolate fondant) for dessert, and that was good. The total bill was €55.50. I just sent Chez Clement an e-mail about our dinner. I wonder if I will get a response. One of the streets that I routinely have to cross going to and from the market and grocery is the rue Saint Sulpice. The cars, buses and trucks just race down this street, and they do not want to stop for pedestrians in crosswalks. In order to be able to cross, one has to step off the curb, just onto the street, and stare down the drivers until one of them feels responsible enough to stop. I have become selective about who I will stare down. I reason that the bus drivers and the taxi drivers could lose their licenses and maybe even their jobs for not yielding to pedestrians in crosswalks, so I choose them. I only select a bus driver if the traffic is slow enough that I am sure he is going to be able to stop. Usually, the traffic is not that slow. So generally, I pick on the taxi drivers. I have to do this, or else I and my fellow pedestrians would never get to cross. I’ve seen Parisians do this all the time. This can be a very aggressive city. I do feel sorry for the taxi drivers sometimes. As if they don’t have enough problems with rising gasoline prices and hellish traffic, there is also the problem if the faux taxis, the ones that don’t have taxi driver licenses at all. The enforcement against illegal taxis has been stepped up since the horrible murder of Sussanna Zetterberg, a Swedish student found burned to death in a forest of Chantilly, outside of Paris in the Oise department on April 19. A faux taxi driver named Cholet has been arrested for the crime. Sussanna had unwittingly climbed into an illegal taxi after leaving a club on the rue de Rivoli, long after the buses and metro had shut down for the night. The type of police who enforce the law against illegal taxis are the Boers. In the aftermath of the April murder, Michele Alliot-Marie, the minister of the Interior in France, has announced that the number of Boers will be increased. These cops have a big job. They have to oversee 40,000 vehicles in the city, including limousines, moto-taxis, shuttlebuses. But their most important mission is to track down the clandestine taxis hidden amongst the 15,900 licensed taxi drivers in Paris. The number of arrests of faux taxi driver has been increasing. In 2005, there were 43. The number went up to 63 in 2006, and 73 in 2007. Already in 2008, 89 have been arrested. The latest one was on the 25^th of August, when a faux taxi was stopped at Pigalle, without any driver’s license and with a stolen vehicle. He was sentenced to six months at the prison farm. There were only 18 Boers at the beginning of September. They say that there are about 200 to 250 clandestine taxis now. But the taxi drivers say there are about 1000. Last week, 15 Boers were added. In October, there will be another 15 added. The total number is expected to be about 70. They’ve been given more authority, too. Before, the Boers could only stop people inside the Paris city limits. Now, they are allowed to intervene in all 86 communities that surround Paris, as well as in the airports at Roissy, which is called “the black spot in the matter of faux taxis.” A night brigade of Boers is also being created. It is when the metro stops running at night that the illegal taxi drivers “leave the shadow,” according to an article in Le Parisien (September 5, 2008). The big train station, Gare du Nord, is especially plagued with the clandestine taxis. Besides train stations and airports, the other targets are the hot tourist spots, cabarets, and night clubs. In the Gare du Nord, the clandestines work in pairs. One is outside in the vehicle, while the other is in the station looking for lost-looking tourists. They note the arrivals of the big trains like the Eurostar, and they pick their victims from the hordes of people leaving the trains. If the potential victim says no, she’ll go to the regular taxi queue instead, the con says “but my taxi is less expensive than those.” What to do? When you arrive at the airport or train station, look for the official place for catching a taxi. There will inevitably be a line to wait in, but it usually moves fairly quickly. When out and about in Paris, you can’t go wrong, it seems, if the taxi has an illuminated taxi light on top. The only time that doesn’t work, according to the Boers, is if the taxi is stolen. The profession card for the driver is supposed to be taped to the windshield, inside the vehicle. There is also supposed to be an official taxi sticker on the right rear passenger window. And of course, there should be a meter in the taxi. This year, the Boers of Paris are celebrating their 70^th anniversary. That’s an interesting word, “Boer,” isn’t it? Le Parisien claims that it is a deformation of the word “bourre,” an early twentieth-century word for “cop.” Evidently, the “white Russians” who had immigrated to Paris in large numbers were prone to mispronouncing “bourre,” and it came out more like “boer,” when they talked about the cops who were responsible for controlling the carriages in the streets. Speaking of Russians, the other night Tom and I were walking up the boulevard St. Michel and a funny looking guy came up to us, saying something that was unintelligible at first. He was short, stocky, and wore a foreign-looking cap on his head. I think he had red suspenders. His left cheek was bulging out, as if he had a huge abscess in one of his teeth. The syllables he spoke were not French. He didn’t say hello or anything like that first. He just came right up to us and grunted out these four syllables. Tom started to reach into his pocket to get some coins to give to this funny looking guy. But the guy protested, shaking his head “no” and motioning with his hands that he wanted nothing. Then he grunted his four syllables again. Aha! He was saying “sue purr marr cat.” It WAS English, sort of. “Supermarket!” Tom and I said in response. Then Tom asked him, in Russian, if he was Russian. Yes, the man acknowledged enthusiastically. But that is the extent of Tom’s Russian, just about. The problem was, we were not quite in our own neighborhood, and we didn’t know where the nearby supermarket would be. It was also a bit late for most supermarkets to be open. We stood there, saying in French where the closest market that we use would be, but that it was really too far and besides it would be closed. We finally had to shrug our shoulders and give up. The funny guy wandered away, back down the boulevard St. Michel. We went on in the other direction, toward the Seine. A few blocks later, we spotted a Monoprix that was still open on the other side of the street. We looked back for the odd little Russian, but he was nowhere in sight.

Thursday, September 11, 2008 Lion statue in the Luxembourg Gardens. Statue in the Gardens of the Observatory. St. Etienne du Mont church. Cute restaurant on the rue St. Jacques. I especially like the oyster shell sign in the upper right corner – easy to understand in any language. View of the Ile de la Cité from the left bank of the Seine. Very nasty looking deterents to keep one from sitting on the window ledge of the Library of Sainte Genevieve. The Luxemburg Gardens. Firefighters’ boat on the Seine has a porpoise sculpture and potted flowers. Sign my guestbook. View my guestbook.

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