Bones

Charlie and I had a wonderful outing today. We visited the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise in the 20th arrondissement on the east side of Paris. Many famous people are buried there and we wandered around to find them.

We went in the side entrance near the Père Lachaise metro station, entering the grounds through an opening in a tall stone wall. I was immediately struck by how beautiful the place was. There are more trees than I have seen anywhere in Paris so far, some of which were starting to turn fall colors. What impressed me the most was the number of gravestones nearly stacked on top of one another, many of them gigantic and wonderfully artistic compared to what you generally see in the States. Some of them were just stones or large horizontal slabs with the deceased person's name on them, while others were like small chapels (some even had stained glass windows!) where one could enter to light candles and leave flowers. Unless you are walking down one of the large paths that run through the grounds, you can't really see farther than the equivalent of a city block because of the sheer number of tall monuments.

We arrived soon after it opened so the light was beautiful, the ground was still damp and it smelled wonderful.

As you will see from the pictures that follow, Charlie and I wavered between awe and total irreverence.

Hahaha!

Frédéric Chopin

Jim Morrison, the man whose jackass fans are unfortunately responsible for a lot of vandalism in the cemetery. I only saw one instance of vandalism (a heart with "Jim" inside it drawn on someone else's mausoleum), but apparently it is rampant.

Just a lovely collection of monuments in a variety of sizes.

Georges Bizet

Honoré de Balzac

And thus, Proust was summarized.*

The only way Charlie could be more goth right now is if he was Trent Reznor himself.

I don't think this belonged to anyone famous, but their (or their family's) taste in sculpture is exquisite.

Some larger mausoleums.

Oscar Wilde's art deco headstone, covered in kisses and graffiti.

Even the sculpture's crotch had been kissed (and stolen). Someone wrote "Por quoi?" on it.

No relation, I'm sure. It's too modest a grave for such a man.

Les arbres

After the cemetery we set out in search of a place called Caféothèque, a specialty coffee shop that is one-of-a-kind in Paris. For some odd reason, and contrary to what most people believe, Paris sucks at making coffee. I did a web search on this phenomenon and found out that there was an article in the New York Times all about it.

Places like Caféothèque are normal in Seattle but unheard of here. When we told the barista that we were from Seattle he gasped as if we lived in coffee Mecca and started asking us about Vivace Espresso, which is apparently famous enough to be known about in Paris. We bought some nice whole bean Guatemalan coffee and had the barista grind it for us since grinders are also unheard of in Paris unless you want to spend €300. We bought about a pound of coffee and it cost about $25, whereas we could get something similar in the States for half of that. Once again, this is going to have to be a special occasion place.

We are still trying to work out how to live frugally in Paris. We have a very limited amount of money that is supposed to last us all year, and it is not always easy to tell how much things cost, especially considering our lack of French at the moment. We've managed only to make a couple of really frivolous purchases and are trying to be otherwise thrifty. As a result, we have been under-caffeinated and hungry pretty much since we left the States. We are still trying to learn how to shop and eat smarter so that our money will last, but I think the low blood sugar is taking it's toll as we have been a little snippy with one another the last couple of days.

I now understand what people were talking about when they said we were brave to just pick up and move to another country that speaks a different language. At least when I lived in Spain before I had the advantage of being able to communicate or having people who could help me when I couldn't. Here we are on our own. It can be stressful and frustrating. It takes balls just to walk into a store to buy something, especially if you have to actually tell someone what you want or ask any questions about it, because you are pretty much guaranteed to make an ass of yourself. I suppose it makes for a quick way to learn - we always remember the words we should have used after suffering humiliation at the hands of a local. Slowly but surely we will figure things out and integrate into French society. It will be much easier when we start school and have the support of our teachers and classmates.

That is all for tonight. We are settling in and trying to stay up a little later so that we can sleep in past 4:00 AM, unlike this morning, all the while attempting to ignore our hunger and listening to the opera music blaring out of a neighbor's window. Hey, at least it's not crappy French pop.

Bon nuit.

* All-England Summarize Proust Competition