Coucou!
I have so many things to share, so this might seem kind of jumbled...just go with me here...
To John: A Croque-monsieur is an amazingly cheesy, greasy, deliciously oozy sandwich that makes the American version of a grilled cheese look incredibly pathetic. You see, the Croque-monsieur includes two things normal grilled cheese sandwiches don't generally have: ham in the middle and cheese on BOTH the inside and the outside. It's also the easiest way to consume a normal week's worth of butter in one sitting. Also, if ordered in a restaurant, you are generally expected to eat the sandwich with a fork and knife - perhaps putting cheese on top of the sandwich encouraged people back in the day to have manners and use silverware. I still stand by the butter theory - nothing beats it. And if you're feeling especially adventurous, you can get a Croque-madame, which is the same sandwich with an egg on top! The boulangerie near my house makes the best Croque-monsieurs...although it's sometimes more fun to day dream about them than eat them every day!
Two Friday's ago, I went to Montmartre. Not for the first time, but for the second time, in order to do several important things: see the famous Basilique du Sacré-Coeur, see the Moulin Rouge, and sit at the café Les Deux Moulins, which was featured in the movie Amélie. (If you haven't seen this movie, you should...it's stereotypical that I love it, but that's not going to change the fact that I do!...also, it takes place in Paris, which makes it all worthwhile)... Montmartre is known for several things: the bohemian artists who lived there, the moulins (windmills) that formerly dominated the area, and the red-light district's many sex shops. Yes, I'm being serious - Toulouse-Lautrec + Moulin Rouge Can-Can dancers = his career and most of his artwork. Other notable people who spent quite a bit of time there are van Gogh, Matisse, Degas, Renoir, and Picasso. So nowadays it's an incredibly touristy area. But like the Tour Eiffel...Je l'adore! On our informal walking tour with Rebecca and Kelsy (IES people), we visited a famous chocolate shop, walked around Sacré-Coeur, and of course, had a beer at Les Deux Moulins, where four of us played an intense game of Quiddler that Rebecca had smartly brought with her. C'était magnifique! Sacré-Coeur is located at the highest point in the city of Paris, which means there is a wonderful view from the top once you climb all the stairs. Montmartre, at the top of the hill behind the basilica, is also very touristy but still maintains its artistic spirit with vendors selling their various paintings and textiles, as well as men who walk around with giant easels offering to draw portraits of unaware tourists... All the same, Montmartre is vibrant and beautiful and will never get old.
Last Thursday a former student who stayed with my host family last spring was visiting the city and came for dinner. It was nice to see that it's possible to stay in touch once no longer living in Paris. We played at least seven games of UNO, which is Victor, my host brother's favorite game. He's also incredibly hard to beat! Somehow, I managed to win two games...I'm sure it was luck, because Victor loves when people have to draw cards, and we all had plenty after being passed the "+4" wild card a number of times. It was a really fun night and I hope next year or the year after, I'll get to come back and visit too!
Rebecca from IES started a "club de lecture" (book club) a few weeks ago, and so naturally I signed up. We just read a very sad but very good book called "Oscar et la dame rose," in which a ten-year-old boy with cancer writes letters to God at the insistence of his mentor and friend, Mamie-Rose. So sad! We are having a potluck dinner next week and will watch the movie-version with tissues at the ready, I'm sure.
Speaking of books, there is something I have completely forgotten to mention in all the hubbub of sharing my experiences. The most wonderful, straight out of Beauty and the Beast, English-language bookshop named, perhaps as expected, Shakespeare and Company, is located near Place Saint-Michel, across the street from Notre Dame de Paris. There is no way you could not fall in love with this floor-to-ceiling book store where books are in every nook and cranny, they have those awesome ladders for hard-to-reach books, there are old and new books alike (I saw a first edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales), they have a piano upstairs, and couches and chairs placed at odd intervals for people to sit and read in, and the store is run primarily by English people. William himself would die to hang out there.
I had to buy a book there, of course, not just for the pleasure of reading but also for the more superficial reason of getting the book stamped with the Shakespeare and Company logo. I tried years ago to read some of Hemingway's books but could not get acclimated to his writing style. However, A Moveable Feast is an all too appropriate book for an American to read while in Paris. It was one of the last books he wrote, and serves as a memoir of the time he lived in Paris before he was actually a famous writer. It's so fun to read because I know so many of the places he mentions, and the sections are rather short, so it's the perfect thing for a morning metro ride.
In addition to all of this, my painter-admirer has a real name: Florian. If that's not French, I don't know what is. But naturally, the first thing I thought of was Florian Fortescue, the man with the ice cream parlor in Diagon Alley. Figures. If I don't reference Harry Potter at least once, I've done something wrong. Also, I swear by my life that Bathilda Bagshot lives on my floor. This tiny, crazy old lady with an incredibly hollow face and who never smiles, spends her day shuffling down the hall at the most inopportune times (i.e. when I am also in the hallway). I prefer to avoid any interaction with her, but sometimes that is simply impossible. Other oddities of my apartment building besides the painters, M. Richard, and old Batty, are the dog that barks twice at exactly 7:15am every morning and no other time during the day or night, and the couple who live down the hall from me who always sound like they are yelling, when in reality they are probably just unable to hear properly. It's incredibly interesting to live where I do in Neuilly, if not for the characters, for the fact that there's never a dull moment.
On that note, thank you for reading all of that despite the lack of continuity! Pretend it's a feast of movable entries...start off with a Croque-monsieur, followed by a show that is borderline raunchy but artistic, have a sit in a café, play a few hands of whatever game you have available, and end up at home with some ice cream and the comfort that you will never need an alarm clock as long as the dog down the hall continues to bark.
Bisous,
Laura
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Reims, printemps, et les peintres
Bonjour!
It's finally spring in Paris! In fact, it's been so warm that the metro occasionally feels more like a sauna than a rickety, underground car ride (i.e. Gringotts). Yes, I swear that goblins control the metro, or at least, they had a very big hand in creating the system (especially my line, line 1!)
Last week was also the beginning of our IES "excursions" of which we can go on two out of four. Friday, we went to Reims - the city known for it's cathedral that was designed after Notre Dame de Paris (think of it as the Hunchback of Notre Dame - the remake), where all the kings of France were crowned, as well as a city within spitting distance of Champagne (yes, the area itself and the fun bubbly stuff).
So, we took a tour of the cathedral in which we learned how to "read" the statues on the outside of the church, and interpret the stained glass and architectural style of the interior. We had a very thorough tour guide. In fact, she was so thorough, I was sure we would never see the inside of the church. And though we were fascinated with comparing the statues to determine which artists designed them, we were all a bit chilly - that is, until we entered the cathedral. It was at least ten degrees colder inside! My favorite part of this tour was when our guide asked us to observe the statue of Clovis (the first official King of France) in the center of all the other statues and determine how he differed from the rest - most everyone pointed out that he was nude, but this was not the response she had been hoping for. The real answer: he is the only king depicted not wearing a crown. I would love to know how many people usually answer that he's not wearing clothing before noticing that he's crown-less. Perhaps it was because we were freezing that we overlooked the latter...
Anyway, my REAL favorite part of this tour: the Marc Chagall stained glass windows in the very back of the church behind the alter. Marc Chagall more recently became one of my favorite artists. He was a Russian Jew who came to Paris to broaden his artistic palate, but was later forced to escape a tainted Vichy France in WWII to reach safety in America...needless to say, his story is amazing, and more astonishingly, he is well-known for many works taken from stories in the Bible - so maybe it's not so surprising that a Jewish artist fashioned stained glass windows depicting Christian stories in a Catholic church in Reims, the city of French kings. (If you can see my past facebook profile pictures, the one "Paris par la fenêtre" is a painting of his that I fell in love with after I saw it at the Guggenheim Museum in NYC last fall)...
The second half of our day consisted of a tour of the Pommery Champagne caves - oh la la! The 127 stairs down to the depths of the caves are not the creepy part - it was the bizarre menagerie of modern art and the ancient walls and bottles of Champagne that created the bizarre ambiance. When I say "modern art" I mean sleek sculptures resembling blobs with huge peach-pit type things sticking out of them. One was full of coconuts. There were also life-size clay hippos (I realized that they were made of clay when I curiously touched the surface to see what kind of smooth, non-shiny stone they were made of...oops)...Also, large video screens projected "fashion" photo slideshows. I suppose this is how gritty caves and dusty green bottles of Champagne age - in the pits, surrounded by fashionable and incomprehensible things. To tie up the loose ends from our tour, there was a "dégustation" or Champagne tasting afterward, in which one could then feel informed about the artistically-influenced pre-life of the beverage. It was a great day and a very interesting and diverse trip.
In other news, "strange men" have been in my building every day for the past two weeks. They are preparing to paint all of the hallway walls and doors, and fixtures, and pipes, and basically everything but the tiled floor. This is quite a process. Cutting to the chase, I have made friends (sort of) with a few of these fellows who are, all in all, very nice and very middle-aged. This might seem like a bland topic, but I promise it has a point...
They really bothered me at first because I felt like I was in the way, and because I dislike coming home during the day to hear hammers shake the building, and boards clanking as they prime and do repair work to the in-need-of-TLC walls. My favorite part of this is that the staircase from my floor to the floor below me is completely blocked...which means I have to take the elevator from floor 7 to 6 in order to get to my host family's apartment. (It just makes a person feel lazy...haha)...
Every time I run into this one guy - we'll call him Luke (like from the show Gilmore Girls - he's always wearing flannel, and has a strikingly similar scruffy look about him; also, I don't know his real name) - he always says something about how I'm "charmante" (charming) and that he hopes they paint the walls blue like my eyes. Yes, kind of creepy. But he's harmless, and let's be honest, it's kind of flattering. Then there's Toothy, who must have the worst orthodontia I've seen in a while. I chatted with him today about how I play the flute, which must mean I don't smoke because it would be hard to play the flute if I smoked (as he puffs on a cigarette in the hallway). He also shared that he is a self-taught guitarist, as the Jackson Five's "back to your heart" song played from the radio behind the ladder. There are two other painters who are the strong, silent types, and then there's Monsieur Richard, the "doorman" (as explained to me by my host mom - and of course they would have doormen in French apartment buildings...).
The reason I am explaining all of this is because Monsieur Richard has seen me before (obviously when I'm exiting and entering the building during daylight hours - his general friendliness and tendency to greet people make so much more sense now that I know what it is that he does). And when he sees me, he's always like, "Oh you're the one that plays the flute! It's always so wonderful to hear!"
Today I was practicing in preparation for a rehearsal with Mme de Buchy and Diego, when who knocks on my door but Monsieur Richard. He was really excited to see me with my actual flute, and though it sounds bizarre, he asked if I wanted to practice in a bigger room (i.e. his flat on the 7th floor) because I honestly don't have much space in my room. So, he led me down the hall and I practiced for about an hour, feeling like I was giving a concert to the whole city (the windows were open). The best part was that he pointed out that you can see the Arc de Triomphe, the Sacre Coeur, AND the Tour Eiffel out of his two windows. So, essentially, I saw my own version of "Paris par la fenêtre" today in the most literal sense possible. And it was simply "charmant."
à bientôt!
-Laura :)
P.S. Thank you SO MUCH for all of the wonderful letters! I love getting mail and hearing about how everyone is doing! :) Also, I plan on sharing other cultural/gastronomic discoveries VERY SOON! I have not forgotten your requests! :)
It's finally spring in Paris! In fact, it's been so warm that the metro occasionally feels more like a sauna than a rickety, underground car ride (i.e. Gringotts). Yes, I swear that goblins control the metro, or at least, they had a very big hand in creating the system (especially my line, line 1!)
Last week was also the beginning of our IES "excursions" of which we can go on two out of four. Friday, we went to Reims - the city known for it's cathedral that was designed after Notre Dame de Paris (think of it as the Hunchback of Notre Dame - the remake), where all the kings of France were crowned, as well as a city within spitting distance of Champagne (yes, the area itself and the fun bubbly stuff).
So, we took a tour of the cathedral in which we learned how to "read" the statues on the outside of the church, and interpret the stained glass and architectural style of the interior. We had a very thorough tour guide. In fact, she was so thorough, I was sure we would never see the inside of the church. And though we were fascinated with comparing the statues to determine which artists designed them, we were all a bit chilly - that is, until we entered the cathedral. It was at least ten degrees colder inside! My favorite part of this tour was when our guide asked us to observe the statue of Clovis (the first official King of France) in the center of all the other statues and determine how he differed from the rest - most everyone pointed out that he was nude, but this was not the response she had been hoping for. The real answer: he is the only king depicted not wearing a crown. I would love to know how many people usually answer that he's not wearing clothing before noticing that he's crown-less. Perhaps it was because we were freezing that we overlooked the latter...
Anyway, my REAL favorite part of this tour: the Marc Chagall stained glass windows in the very back of the church behind the alter. Marc Chagall more recently became one of my favorite artists. He was a Russian Jew who came to Paris to broaden his artistic palate, but was later forced to escape a tainted Vichy France in WWII to reach safety in America...needless to say, his story is amazing, and more astonishingly, he is well-known for many works taken from stories in the Bible - so maybe it's not so surprising that a Jewish artist fashioned stained glass windows depicting Christian stories in a Catholic church in Reims, the city of French kings. (If you can see my past facebook profile pictures, the one "Paris par la fenêtre" is a painting of his that I fell in love with after I saw it at the Guggenheim Museum in NYC last fall)...
The second half of our day consisted of a tour of the Pommery Champagne caves - oh la la! The 127 stairs down to the depths of the caves are not the creepy part - it was the bizarre menagerie of modern art and the ancient walls and bottles of Champagne that created the bizarre ambiance. When I say "modern art" I mean sleek sculptures resembling blobs with huge peach-pit type things sticking out of them. One was full of coconuts. There were also life-size clay hippos (I realized that they were made of clay when I curiously touched the surface to see what kind of smooth, non-shiny stone they were made of...oops)...Also, large video screens projected "fashion" photo slideshows. I suppose this is how gritty caves and dusty green bottles of Champagne age - in the pits, surrounded by fashionable and incomprehensible things. To tie up the loose ends from our tour, there was a "dégustation" or Champagne tasting afterward, in which one could then feel informed about the artistically-influenced pre-life of the beverage. It was a great day and a very interesting and diverse trip.
In other news, "strange men" have been in my building every day for the past two weeks. They are preparing to paint all of the hallway walls and doors, and fixtures, and pipes, and basically everything but the tiled floor. This is quite a process. Cutting to the chase, I have made friends (sort of) with a few of these fellows who are, all in all, very nice and very middle-aged. This might seem like a bland topic, but I promise it has a point...
They really bothered me at first because I felt like I was in the way, and because I dislike coming home during the day to hear hammers shake the building, and boards clanking as they prime and do repair work to the in-need-of-TLC walls. My favorite part of this is that the staircase from my floor to the floor below me is completely blocked...which means I have to take the elevator from floor 7 to 6 in order to get to my host family's apartment. (It just makes a person feel lazy...haha)...
Every time I run into this one guy - we'll call him Luke (like from the show Gilmore Girls - he's always wearing flannel, and has a strikingly similar scruffy look about him; also, I don't know his real name) - he always says something about how I'm "charmante" (charming) and that he hopes they paint the walls blue like my eyes. Yes, kind of creepy. But he's harmless, and let's be honest, it's kind of flattering. Then there's Toothy, who must have the worst orthodontia I've seen in a while. I chatted with him today about how I play the flute, which must mean I don't smoke because it would be hard to play the flute if I smoked (as he puffs on a cigarette in the hallway). He also shared that he is a self-taught guitarist, as the Jackson Five's "back to your heart" song played from the radio behind the ladder. There are two other painters who are the strong, silent types, and then there's Monsieur Richard, the "doorman" (as explained to me by my host mom - and of course they would have doormen in French apartment buildings...).
The reason I am explaining all of this is because Monsieur Richard has seen me before (obviously when I'm exiting and entering the building during daylight hours - his general friendliness and tendency to greet people make so much more sense now that I know what it is that he does). And when he sees me, he's always like, "Oh you're the one that plays the flute! It's always so wonderful to hear!"
Today I was practicing in preparation for a rehearsal with Mme de Buchy and Diego, when who knocks on my door but Monsieur Richard. He was really excited to see me with my actual flute, and though it sounds bizarre, he asked if I wanted to practice in a bigger room (i.e. his flat on the 7th floor) because I honestly don't have much space in my room. So, he led me down the hall and I practiced for about an hour, feeling like I was giving a concert to the whole city (the windows were open). The best part was that he pointed out that you can see the Arc de Triomphe, the Sacre Coeur, AND the Tour Eiffel out of his two windows. So, essentially, I saw my own version of "Paris par la fenêtre" today in the most literal sense possible. And it was simply "charmant."
à bientôt!
-Laura :)
P.S. Thank you SO MUCH for all of the wonderful letters! I love getting mail and hearing about how everyone is doing! :) Also, I plan on sharing other cultural/gastronomic discoveries VERY SOON! I have not forgotten your requests! :)
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Bonjour Paris!
I plan on writing a whole lot more soon...but I just HAD to post this link...it's fantastic!! :)
Funny Face
fantastique!!
Funny Face
fantastique!!
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