simply Paris

Yesterday, on my train from St Malo to Paris, I was given a seat in something resembling a compartment (only it was more open, so that air circulated and you weren't quite shut off from the world). Had I had any choice, I would have gone with a totally open car, but again, I took what was available.

There were four of us in my "compartment" (additionally, there were seats outside, on the other side of an aisle). Four young-ish French people and me. A Black woman, a man I would guess to be a Jewish, and a man of mixed race.

Here's a thought I've had ever since I decided to come and live in New York with a family, acting as an au paire to their kid (more than 50 years ago): Poland suffered in many many ways during World War II, and the effects are long lasting and some are permanent. One calamity -- Warsaw lost its Jewish population. One third Jewish prior to the war. All gone. Before the war, Jews and non-Jews came to adopt cultural icons and food traditions and just about everything else from one another. After the war, Warsaw and Poland in general, became completely homogeneous, with almost no racial, ethnic or religious diversity. When I was in New York, regardless of the simmering racism, it was so obvious that people sharing space would learn from one another. There was an openness that I came to love, because I knew that only in living with others who didn't look or act like you, can you be fully yourself (I write about this at the end of my book). There is that normalization of diversity. People of different skin colors, people with tatoos, Jews with sidelocks, men with long hair or no hair. They worked together, they rode subways together. It wasn't perfect, but it was a start. At least in big cities, you shared geography and culture and you developed tolerance. Seeing someone who had their own style of dress, or whose tight pants were too tight, or too low, or just not like yours, hearing Spanish next to you, working with someone whose hair was in box braids, eating a meal with a person who loved piercings -- I really doubt that most would notice or care.

Paris is the same only even more so. They have a less fraught history of disenfranchising people of color.  I know that there are horribly segregated communities where immigrants live in some degree of poverty. I know that the Arondissiment I always stay in, has more white faces than non-white faces. But here I am, in a train compartment where we are completely indifferent to the fact that we are different. And believe me, from talking to people in Warsaw, I know that in my city of birth, there is that hesitancy. That waffling. That total conviction that what is yours is correct. I know (because I asked!) that too often, a difference raises eyebrows, even though no one feels any hostility to those who are not like them. It's  masked in the words of "concern," and "protection." That may change over time, but I knew fifty-five years ago and I know it still today -- it wont change in my lifetime. Certainly not among people my age.

 

This morning, I woke without hurry. I ate breakfast without hurry.

I took a walk without hurry. I feel I walked a ton -- in Norway, in Poland, in Paris, in St Malo. I have no ambition to do that today, on my last full day in Paris. I just want to walk lightly, look, observe, learn.

There's a lot of people watching you can do in this city. I am, of course, tempted to photograph that, which I find to be a statement of sorts. It's always complimentary, because I tend to photograph (and write about on Ocean) things that strike me as positives. Nevertheless, street photography here is hard (and harder still in Poland), because people in Europe extend their privacy protections to public spaces. (That is not the case in the U.S. where if you step out, you're fair game, so long as you aren't photographed with commercial intent.) If someone notices or cares, I put my camera away, or even delete. But of course, mostly I take pictures quietly and without fuss. I carry a very small camera. All people who do street photos have their tricks. I have mine. Every few years though, I take a picture of someone who is smarter than me and today was such a day. Excuse me, the gentleman said. You took a picture of me. Can I see it? At once I offer to delete, but it turns out that this person, too, does street photography, and was simply curious and a little proud that I had been caught me in the act. No, don't erase it -- my photographed person tells me. I'll let you guess which photo is the one that got me in "trouble!"

 

 

I do have some minor goals that are floating in my head for today. It is getting warm again, but not intolerably so. (For how warm it may get in Paris in the next few decades, and what Paris is doing about it, read the gifted NYTimes article from this morning here. At least I think it's gifted. The rules in France are such that I may be precluded from using my gift allotment when I'm here. I cant tell.) So my goals are to walk over to the Left Bank's big department store  -- Bon Marche. I don't need to go inside, I just like the walk and all that I can visit along the way.

First stop -- that same jewelry store that I already popped into on Saturday. I had bought a small, not very expensive necklace from them and they have a way of making the chain longer. I ask the person to do it for me. She does it. For free. And while she's at it, she looks at my earrings and tells me I'm wearing the wrong backs for them, making the earrings sag a little. Here, let me replace them for you. For free. This, too, is Paris.

 

 

 

Next, I want to stop at the bookstore along the way. I love love love French bookstores, even though I haven't dared read a full French text in years. But I can glance at sentences and a few pages, and there are so many, and it all reminds me of days when we, too, had wonderful bookstores before the Internet closed them down. But, my store of choice is closed for a vacation break. I am amused how stores announce their closures. They do it very informally (which is why Google often doesn't catch on), usually with nothing more than a scribbled piece of paper taped to the glass door from the inside. I did take a photo of one such sign -- the company actually went to the trouble of typing it out (most do not), but I photographed it anyway, because I thought it was very illustrative of how important summer vacation is for Parisians. Note how long the time off from work: six weeks!

Onward. I pop into a few kids clothing stores...

(each transaction takes forever; the packaging, the conversation!) 

 

 

... and then I am at Bon Marche, the department store I used to love, until it priced itself out of my reach completely (as opposed to only for 90% of items sold there). And much as I like to see what foods people are buying and eating here, I haven't the same interest in clothes. I am not proud of this -- of my casual sloppiness back home, and especially now that I am getting older. I happen to be reading a novel right now that I put on my Kindle because it's very light reading and set in France -- exactly the type of stuff that I like for filling airplane hours. It's called Murder Takes a Vacation (by Lippman) and it's about a woman who describes herself as quite old (at 68!), who tries to unleash a more adventurous side of herself as she travels to Paris and takes a cruise along a French river. There is a murder. I assume she eventually will solve it. As many critics have noted, although it's light reading, it has undertones of something a tad more serious: the way older people become invisible to the world as they age. And so often they feed into it. "Who cares anymore what I wear" and "I just want to be comfortable" are some of the reasons offered by the gray haired among us. And since we, the older ones, don't care, we permit others to do the same. 

 

 

 

When I travel, I do care. I actually sent a pair of pants to the hotel laundry (in Poland because it's cheaper there!). The pants were linen and in need of both a wash and an iron. No regrets. I felt great wearing them after. But at home, I get sloppy. I wear and rewear favorites. It's so rare that I introduce something new to my wardrobe, that when I do appear in a new shirt, even Ed comments! I vow to do better, but in the end, I need to watch my budget if I want to travel to Europe again next year, so I shrug and keep on recycling. So, no stop at the Bon Marche, but yes to a stop at the Food Halls across the street. I want to see what foodies are eating here these days.

 

(Oh! They have an ice cream stand just outside! Rhubarb strawberry on a hot day? Yes!)

And what to my wondering  eyes should appear, but a display, right before you as you enter La Grande Epicerie (the Food Halls)!

Oh the cheek of it! The irony! None of the restaurants I have eaten in in France this time around have had non-alcoholic wine (nor beer). And indeed, in my samplings elsewhere, I have disliked all such wines with the one exception in Copenhagen. That one was great. All others -- meh. So much so that I have switched to 0% beer, because they at least do it well!

They are also selling a book on French producers of non-alcoholic wines and aperitifs. I leaf through it and it is good enough for me to buy it. My pre-dinner drink could be more interesting if I followed some of their tips. (Truthfully, it will likely be like clothes: I have good intentions here, but I slack off when I get back home. Still, it's worth a try.)

The book describes one wine and one aperitif (that you drink with soda water) that they claim will convert a non-alcoholic wine doubter (me) to an enthusiastic 0% drinker. I pick up those two bottles, because Bon Marche Epicerie sells them and I doubt that I will find them in the US.

And I think -- wow, how times have changed! I used to wrap carefully, in dirty laundry, a special bottle of real wine to bring back home from France. A silly habit. There's plenty of good stuff around where I live. Still, I did it for years. And of course, until my birthday this past spring, I was an enthusiastic wine person. Loved the stuff in the evenings! And now look at me -- lugging home French zero percenters! Am I getting old or what! 

 

(buying some more MIrabelles, which apparently cannot be sold in the US: it's the law!)

 

 

Actually, the incontrovertible fact is, I am.

Some time ago, I used to travel fairly regularly to Gargnano in Italy. I found a small hotel I liked by the lake (called, of all things, Hotel du Lac), and for a while, I returned to it every year. You know how in life, a small incident, seemingly of no consequence, strikes you as meaningful, so much so that it stays with you for the rest of your life? Well there was one that took place at this hotel, and since I wrote about it on Ocean, I know that it happened on April 5, 2012. An old man, a German, was visiting with his wife. Like me, they were repeat guests. The hotel owner knew them well -- for one thing, they shared an interest in piano music. My hotel owner's father was a piano repairman, the guest was an experienced musician. I used to love watching this aging German with white hair and stooped shoulders work lovingly with the keys of the piano in the small hotel lobby. But his wife was already disabled and he himself moved with some effort. When I would ask him how his day was going (it was that kind of a hotel -- familiar guests often spoke to each other), he would shrug and tell me that things were slowly on the decline. And at the end, when I wished him well and told him "see you next year," he laughed and said that that wasn't a given. 

In the end, I was the one who stopped coming. Gargnano is too hard for me to get to. I'd arrive after a sleepless flight in Milan, I'd take a bus to the city center, then a train to Brescia, where I would have to pack into a crowded bus, with my suitcase and all, for the winding drive up the coast to Gargnano, the last stop on its route. That used to be a "no big deal" a dozen years ago (my last trip there). It isn't worth it to me now.

The point is that my travels have changed in this short period of time and I expect they will continue to change over the next few years. There will come a year where even the trip across the ocean will seem impossibly difficult. There is a deep sadness in that thought. Not a tragic one, but a "moving from summer to fall" kind of sadness. Remember the song by Chad and Jeremy (called Summer Song)? About how Autumn leaves must fall? Like that. And so each walk in Paris for me is precious because, well, I can still walk! 

Or can I? With books, bottles, kid clothes filling three bags, I do not want to walk back to the hotel. I hop on the bus. I have taken the bus fewer than a dozen times since I've been coming to Paris, that's how much I love to walk here! But, the bags are heavy. I catch the bus.

 

 

As I get off just blocks from my hotel, I pass Les Editeurs -- the eatery I most often take the kids to for a serious French meal, the place I used to eat breakfast in before the Baume took over that job for me, the restaurant I somehow always manage to stop in at, for one reason or another. Wouldn't it be a good idea to eat a lunch? None of this sweet stuff in the room anymore! I miss veggies and salads. So I order a Poke bowl with salmon and a whole host of veggies, along with a Zero beer. I know they have that at least. Peroni, from Italy.

This is followed by a stop at the neighborhood coffee shop for coffee, because theirs is way better than that found in eateries (it always surprises me how bad French coffee can get in restaurants, given how fussy these people are about their foods and beverages).

 

 

 

And then I am back in my room, thinking I sure have a lot to stuff into my medium sized suitcase!

 

In the evening, I reach for a few mirabelles. 

Fortified, I set out, in the direction of the Luxembourg Gardens. They offer a short cut to the restaurant that I chose because David Lebovitz (another cookbook author whose newsletter I read) recommended it and he rarely breaks out of his more hip neighborhood to eat in my more staid one. It's an eighteen minute walk, so it doesn't pass my fifteen minute test, but I promised myself all new dinner places and this one seemed worth the extra three.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's called La Gentiane and technically, Lebovitz wrote about Chez Marcel, which is across the street. But Chez Marcel is closed and when I spoke to the monsieur in charge there a couple of weeks ago (well, upon visiting, I think they may be non-binary), they swore the chef picked up his knives and moved (permanently? I do not know...) to La Gentiane.

In retrospect, it was a dumb decision on my part that worked out well anyway. The restaurant is known for it's pork dishes. Porcine decorations abound. 

 

 

 

 

 

The amuse bouche (which I dared to refuse, politely, but still...) is made up of thin sausage slices. I basically do not eat red meat. Yes, of course, they have a fish dish and before they ran out, they even had some non-meaty ravioli (I think it's non-meaty: there's always the odd ingredient that I cannot translate and as a rule, I leave my smart phone in my purse). But that's a nod to the one person in the group that doesn't want the pork and veal offerings. Their specialty is meat.

So I ordered duck. Duck is fowl, right? And I will eat fowl. Like everyone else in this world (it seems), I've become weird in my eating dos and donts. And it was very very good and of course, duck is nutritious, so it worked out well. And here's another great thing about the meal: they actually had chanterelles as special appetizer!

I waffled about dessert. They make their own "mille feuille" which did tempt me, but the meal thus far had filled me up. I asked the wait person if the dessert was big, because I'm just sooo not hungry and the response was -- we'll make it small! And they did! And it was lovely.

In the hour after opening, the diners were mostly English speaking. And I mean British English. Yes, I have noticed a very high drop in the number of Americans in Paris this summer. Small wonder: fear about border crossings, shame, costs, a horrible rate of exchange -- these are great disincentives. But as the next shift filtered in (the place was packed), I heard some French. So yes, a mixture. It's always the case here that if you want to be among the French, eating before 8 is not going to get you there.

I begin my 19 minute walk back at 9:30 (one minute added because the park, offering that shortcut, is now closed). It's just getting dark. 

 (La Gentiane)

 

The streets are quiet. There's little movement. 

 

 

 

I take out my phone and talk to Ed and it is as if I am talking from the quiet of my room. I like this about most side streets in the city. And especially now, in the summer, when the rentree hasn't yet fully clicked in.

It's my last evening in Paris. I'm traveling for two night outside the city tomorrow. We will see if that turns out to be a wise decision! For now, good night. With love...