Real Life? Booooooooring!

A good friend of mine (thanks, Colin) suggested that I should make a movie about my regular life, such as grad school, instead of just my free time. Well, I started making that documentary and realized that in order to do it correctly and have it be interesting at all, it would have to be long. Not only that, but I don't feel I can give an accurate account of my grad school experience when I'm only 4 weeks into it. So far it has consisted of lots and lots of reading. I'm reading about a book a week. So, rest assured that I'm working on telling you about my day-to-day life as a student via documentary... you just may not see it until next year after I graduate.

So, in addition to all the reading I've been doing and all the Cordon Bleu food I have been eating, there hasn't been too much going on. Last weekend some classmates and I went to see the Algerian singer Khaled in concert. He is like the Michael Jackson of Algeria and I was as excited to see him as I was about New Kids on the Block when I was 10 years old. It was a good night.

The girls and their pre-show falafels.

Cheb Khaled

Joy!

The only other fun I have managed to have in the last couple of weeks was another outing to a park with Charlie, this time to Parc des Buttes-Chaumont in the 19th Arrondissement (east of where we live).

Tomorrow we're hosting our first get-together at our apartment. Should be interesting trying to squeeze a dozen or so people into that little space. I'll tell you all about it next time.

A Bon Week-End Indeed!

I just realized, thanks to a savvy classmate, that I have been freaking out since yesterday about being behind on some readings that I thought were due today. Turns out, they aren't due until next week, so I have a rare treat this afternoon: free time! That means I get to spend it catching you up on our recent happenings here in fair Pareee. Currently, I'm sitting in quiet green garden behind a tiny church that is somehow crammed in next to one of my school buildings. I have my back against an accommodating tree, a falling leaf just hit me in the head and then a butterfly landed on my leg. There's no reason I shouldn't be able to produce some decent writing under these circumstances.

So beginning with some exciting news, Charlie had his first chef gig on Saturday. He worked as part of a team of chefs in conjunction with the French Slow Foods Movement to provide lunch for a local film festival. I didn't think I'd actually get to see Charlie working, but I went anyway. As I was standing in line for food wondering where the hell, if anywhere, I was supposed to pay for this meal, I saw my chef emerge from a building nearby fully decked out in his Cordon Bleu regalia. I managed to capture his attention and went to ask how I was supposed to go about actually tasting the food. He asked one of the Slow Food people about it, who replied in some French I didn't understand. One of Charlie's schoolmates interpreted for her: We're gonna hook you up. She asked me what I wanted to eat and I said, "beef," so she brought me a slice of beef terrine (like meatloaf, only better) and some potato salad. 'Twas divine, of course.

The chefs trying to decipher the non-functioning deep-fryer.

Le chef and his beignets

The culinary artists line up for their ovation.

After the meal, the chefs were introduced to the patrons and received a generous applause. I stood by beaming with pride as people shouted "Bravo!" and approached Charlie and the other chefs to thank them personally. 

During the luncheon, I took the opportunity to explore the neighborhood of Place d'Aligre. There was a large produce market in the area at the tail end of its work day. While I walked between the food stalls the walls literally fell down around me as vendors hurriedly dismantled their mobile storefronts. From all sides there were shouts of "Un euro!" as they tried desperately to sell off the remainder of their products before all was said and done. You could even get TWO melons for UN euro!

Although I was tempted, I declined to do any shopping because I would soon have to go meet my class for a museum tour and didn't really want to be carrying around a bunch of fruits and veggies. Instead I picked out a lively cafe in which to sit for a while, facing the street, and ordered a delicious coffee. As I sat there I watched what was left of the market disintegrate into stacks of crates and organic detritus on the ground. I also watched a large male pigeon court a female by ruffling up his purple neck feathers and fanning his tail out, dragging it along the pavement behind him. She wasn't interested so he gave up. Later, the woman at the table next to me instructed her daughter to politely thank the waiter. She approached him and said, "Merci," to which he replied, "De rien, princesse!"

Well-caffeinated and full of beignets, courtesy of Charlie, I headed for the metro to meet my class at the Musée de l'histoire et des cultures de l'immigration. It was a little bit melancholy and confusing and I think we were all secretly looking forward to visiting the aquarium in the building's basement afterward. We barely made it to the first tank of small fish and crustaceans before we regressed into ten year-olds, oohing and ahhing at all of the colorful and unusual aquatic creatures. After the aquarium my classmate and I discussed how it could only be better if we also had balloons and ice cream in hand.

My feet were killing me by this point (when aren't they?), but I decided to tough it out and head to a nearby wine store that supposedly carried non-alcoholic French wine. Most people have never heard of such a thing and I have already endured plenty of strange looks when asking for it at cellars. I entered the small boutique, looked around for a few minutes and then eventually worked up the nerve to ask. The man happily obliged, asking which kind I wanted (red, white, etc). "All of them," I said and walked out of the shop triumphantly, burdened down by a five-bottle assortment. When I finally got home, I found the chef dead asleep, recovering from his busy day. We opted not to cook and instead went to a street-corner kebab shop a couple blocks away. When we got home we devoured our sandwiches grec and pommes frites with some of the newly-acquired red wine. It was perfect.

On Sunday I slept in and awoke to our chef preparing some fried potatoes, eggs and bacon - American breakfast! He had also stopped at the boulangerie to pick up some pain au chocolat for me and a butter croissant for him. What a sweetheart! After breakfast we decided to head out to Montmarte Cemetery, just northwest of our neighborhood. We were looking for a quiet place to smoke (Charlie) and read (Me).

I'm not sure if I have ever mentioned this to anyone back home, but we live just a stone's throw from the red light district, home of the Moulin Rouge. Here you will see the usual red light attractions: strip clubs, sex shops, live sex shows, etc. Although I have never experienced it, Charlie reports that when he has ventured through this area alone he is often invited inside certain establishments by hookers and their pimps. Despite what you might expect, the area is not actually that bad... at least in the day time. There are certainly just as many wandering tourists looking for the Moulin Rouge or heading toward or from Montmarte and Sacre Coeur as there are perverts looking for a good time.

For our more adventurous visitors, we found this quaint little hotel nestled between Pussy's and Souvenirs Sexy. Just say the word and I'll book you a room. ;)

Le Moulin Rouge: We have not been to any shows here and probably never will. I checked out their website and they just look a lot like large-production Vegas shows (with boobies). They also cost about $100, which is way out of our budget. I'm sure there are cheaper boobies in the neighborhood.

After a short walk we arrived a Montmarte Cemetery. 

I was surprised to find that a road had been built right over the top of it.

There was no portable map available, so we quickly consulted the map at the entrance and made a list of the folks we wanted to see (they are in the video below). As usual, there was a great mix of old and new, simple and lavish all crammed in next to and on top of one another.

I think this might say "Sepulchre Delamare Bichsel"

A view from above

If you lie there long enough, a giant tree will grow through you.

From what I understand, the folks at the top of this headstone survived the holocaust. The people in the photograph at the bottom did not.

Spider webs and dried flowers inside a tomb.

One thing I loved about this cemetery was that there were a bunch of resident cats wandering around. I saw one drinking out of the sink in the public bathroom and a few more throughout. There was one large striped one that I saw several times, moving furtively between the stones as if it was hunting. I called to it and it ignored me, obviously concentrating.

Turns out he was looking for this guy: "Oh shit, he found me!"

The name is carved diagonally across the nearest stone.

Looking up the hill.

Vaslav Nijinsky, a Russian ballet dancer and choreographer.

Charlie commiserates.

Tired of boring headstones? Build your own personal tiny cathedral!

We did eventually smoke and read.

After a couple of hours in the cemetery, our tummies were starting to talk to us, so we found our way to rue Abbesses to seek out a yummy lunch. I had been down this street before with my class during a neighborhood tour and had noticed that there were many decent-looking restaurants. We decided on one that was packed with French people, taking it as a good sign. We both ordered steak, Charlie's came with Béarnaise sauce and mine with Roquefort. They both tasted great, but my steak was so tough I could hardly cut into it.

I consoled myself later with some creme caramel gelato just a few storefronts down the street. After that, we went home so that I could get my ass to work on the never-ending reading that seems to be defining my graduate school life.

Wanderlust

Charlie and I used our one free day this week (which wasn't completely free, thanks to homework) to wander around and see some new areas in Paris. We started out trying to get into Saint-Chapelle. Unfortunately, I have a cold this week and slept in late because of it, so we didn't get there until about 11:30. By then there was at least an hour-long wait to get in so we decided to can that idea for the day. Instead we walked across the large plaza that faces the entrance of the church and into the flower market at Place Louis-Lépine. We had visited this particular market before when I was in search of a pet chipmunk, but there were no animals that particular day. Today, however, there were plenty... still no chipmunks though. Mostly we saw birds and a variety of other rodents including rabbits, hamsters, guinea pigs and mice. I didn't feel inspired enough by any of these animals to adopt a new pet, for which I'm sure Charlie is thankful.

After Louis-Lépine we walked around the block and found ourselves in front of Notre Dame. We crossed the Seine and made our way into the tight streets of the Latin Quarter. As far as we could tell, the Latin Quarter was just full of cool souvenir and art shops and potentially good restaurants offering a world of cuisines, but mainly Mediterranean and French. 

An unusual sculpture on the side of a building. Looks like a flea to me. Charlie was amused by it but I just thought it was gross.

As we explored the zig-zagging streets we happened upon Église Saint-Séverin, a small but impressive work of gothic architecture somehow squished into its own little corner of the quarter. We noticed a large tourist group coming out of the church and a few individuals going in, so we didn't think twice about barging into God's house on a Sunday. As soon as we walked in the sound of the organ poured into the vast dark space and a man began singing Kyrie Eleison. I cried.

Realizing we had just interrupted Mass, we quietly kept to the perimeter and didn't take any pictures. At one point, rather than just standing around like idiots, we scooted into a row of seats and stood with the congregation so that I could listen to the chanting. After our brief religious interference, we quietly slipped back out, enjoying the colorful and sometimes surprisingly modern works of stained glass as we found our way to the exit.

Having had our fill of the Holy Spirit, we found that there was still plenty of room left for lunch. We sought out a street that we had meandered down a little while before and stood facing a tempting French restaurant with a moderately priced lunch menu or an ultra-cheap kebab joint. There were two men standing at the door of the kebab joint bonjouring passersby -especially the young female sort- and attempting to usher people in. We opted for the kebabs and, although it cost a third of what a proper restaurant would have, I regretted it dearly as I reluctantly swallowed the most flavorless falafel pita I have ever encountered. In the meantime, Charlie happily scarfed down his roast lamb dish.

After lunch we resumed our trek and headed toward a greenish colored dome on a building off in the distance. We had no idea what it was but figured that it might be interesting or that at least getting there would be. Charlie had been looking for a place to smoke a cigar and, about halfway to our destination, we found what looked like the entrance to a park. We intruded through the gate and found ourselves en route to the National Medieval Museum, also known as the Cluny Museum. We didn't actually get to the museum, however, and looking at their website now I wish we had. We stopped when we found ourselves in the gardens behind the building that houses the museum (Cluny Abbey). 

Cluny Abbey overlooking the ménagier

A spiral (locked) staircase leads up to the steeple.

We walked through the lush enclosure, gloating to ourselves as we were able to identify several plants that we have had in our own garden the last few years. Charlie also found this to be the perfect place for a cigar.

Once I had had ample time to coo at the mice, we moved on and, after having forgotten all about it, eventually ran into the green-domed building that we had originally set out to see. Turns out it was the Sorbonne.

Brainiac central

For some unnatural reason we began walking uphill where we were attracted by what looked like small, quiet streets without anything in particular to be attracted to. We just wanted to see ordinary old Paris. Well, we failed. We turned a corner and there, at the apex of the hill, was the Panthéon, looking much like most of the State capital buildings in the U.S. Feeling obliged at this point, we schlepped the rest of the way up the hill to have a closer look.

Oh, and on the way up to it, we also passed by the magnificent looking Église Saint-Étienne-du-Mont.

We opted not to go in, having already interrupted the process of worship once today.

See what I meant about turning corners and being greeted by important monuments? This happens all the time in Paris and adds to the holyshitwe'reinparis effect constantly. We often find ourselves chanting the fact that we are in Paris as we move around and carry out our daily tasks, trying to somehow get our heads around it. It's still unbelievable for some reason. Maybe it's that we're not really integrated yet and still feel like tourists since I, for one, hardly speak the language, and neither of us know many French people. We are still discovering this city and I feel like we'll never see it all no matter how hard we try. It's saturated with opportunities for sightseeing and new experiences. Hopefully the fact that it seems infinitely interesting means that we'll never take it for granted.

Old Crumbly People

After a long sight-seeing hiatus, thanks to the demands of our respective educational endeavors, we were finally able to have a stupendous outing, this time to the Catacombs! I had only found out about this place a few days before and was very excited about seeing it. The Catacombs are an underground ossuary in old mining tunnels under Paris and are said to house upwards of 6 million skeletons that were disinterred from crowded Paris cemeteries over the centuries. What we saw is only a small portion of the underground system of Paris, much of which is unaccessible to the public.

At the entrance we were met with the warning, "The ossuary tour could make a strong impression on children and people of a nervous disposition." We weren't scared because we love this sort of thing, but we understood why it could be upsetting to some. To enter this section of the catacombs one must descend down a long spiral staircase, about as wide as the one we used to go up and down the dome at Sacre Coeur. By the time we got to the bottom I was so dizzy I was having to lean against the wall so that I didn't fall down the stairs.

Then we found ourselves in a long, very dark corridor only about 6x6 feet in width and height that seemed to go on forever. The whole trek is supposed to be 2.7 kilometers long. We wondered aloud how many claustrophobic people completely lose their shit down there. There were lamps on the wall at regular intervals but even with those it was difficult to see and even harder to take pictures.

As we neared the ossuary, we found that people had carved commemorative sculptures out of the rock.

Continuing on, we passed by a gated-off spiral staircase leading down to a blue well. We saw a few more along the way, and later on in the journey water also began to drip from the ceiling. We were just hoping it wasn't sewage.

Suddenly, the narrow tunnel opened into a large arched hall. Charlie did two handstands here, both of which I failed to capture on video or film. Alas.

Finally, we found ourselves at the entrance to the ossuary. 

A sign over the door read, "Stop, this is the empire of Death."

Beyond the door lay the bone-lined walls that the ossuary is famous for. You won't find any wholly composed skeletons here, but rather stacks of carefully patterned body parts.

Skulls peek out from a mosaic of leg bones.

Atop the orderly stacks were scatterings of other parts, namely stray skull caps and other un-stackable elements such as pelvis bones.

Here a skull is nestled among another's skull cap and a couple of scapulae.

Not all of the skulls in the patterned areas were facing out. Some of them faced inward, down or up. 

There were a variety of patterns too. Most of the time the skulls just formed a horizontal line midway through the stack of leg bones. In other places (which were all too dark to photograph well), one could also see crosses, squares, and other formations.

Charlie provides us with with a reference as to the height of the bone stacks.

Marie makes friends.

Along the way there were several stone placards and other decorations or commemorations, some resembling head stones, while others took the form of stone altars, small and large.

"Pallida mors æquo pulsat pede Pauperum tabernas Regumque turres"

Roughy, "Pale death knocks indiscriminately at the doors of the cottages of paupers and the palaces of kings."

Keg o' bones

Other faves:

At the exit a sign reads, "Non metuit mortem qui scit contemnere vitam."

"He who has learnt to despise life fears not death."

On the way out there was a wall with a bunch of graffiti on it. I don't care if people have been doing it since the 18th century; it's pure jackassery. Also, as we went through the catacombs we noticed several recesses where skulls had obviously been removed by thieves.

We also caught a glimpse of the old mining excavation:

This is on the ceiling.

Then we had to climb "83" steps out of the catacombs. These steps, however, were twice the size of normal ones, so it was more like taking 166 steps two at a time. When we got to the top, I noticed there was a defibrillator on the wall and was thankful to still be breathing.

There was also a skull sitting on a countertop, an obvious confiscation from a recent looter.  Sigh...

The end of the catacombs spits you out into a different area that we were unfamiliar with so we just meandered until we found what looked like a main thoroughfare. We also found a kebab joint and had a  flavorful, cheap and filling lunch (It was only €8.80 for two sandwiches with French fries).

Pre-kebab

After lunch Charlie impressed me with his French skills as he chatted with the friendly man at the counter about cuisine. That man had a spectacular mustache.

Well, folks, I honestly don't know when I'll be able to update again. Grad school is in full swing and I am already loaded down with work and reading. It's great though. I have the sense that I am in the right place at the right time. It feels great to have taken such a large risk and have the certainty that it is exactly what I should have done. My classes are challenging and the subject matter is perfect for me. My opportunities to learn and grow professionally seem to be in a state of constant multiplication. I feel like my vocabulary and my world view expand every day. There is also the added benefit of living in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Every walk around the block or trip to the grocery store is something to marvel at. I discover new things all the time. Sometimes it feels like I live in the center of the universe, where all the world (or at least all of Europe) is converging. I'm even unsure of what to take pictures of anymore because the whole city feels like a monument.

This is a great place to do great things and you all should come visit.