One other funny thing about Bulgaria was that Bulgarian tastes in pop music tend toward raspy voices. Almost every singer on the radio sounded like a chain smoker, whether they were singing in Bulgarian or in English. I joked to Stefka, "I bet Bonnie Tyler would be really popular here." And Stefka responded in earnest, "Oh, yes. But she was popular in the 80s." Once I was paying attention I started hearing Bonnie Tyler ballads everywhere, more along the lines of "It's a Heartache" and "Straight from the Heart" than "Total Eclipse of the Heart" or "Holding out for a Hero."

They also played this one Celine Dion song in French in heavy rotation--"Pour que tu m'aimes encore." I know it well, because I own the CD, and because it's an especially useful song for teaching the subjunctive while reviewing the future tense, because half of the song is constructed as [future+"pour que"+subjunctive]. ("Je m'inventerai reine pour que tu me retiennes./ Je me ferai nouvelle pour que le feu reprenne...) My background in foreign language pedagogy tends to ruin French pop culture for me, because I'm always noticing how teachable it is. Oh, well.

The "Grand Tournoi de l'Histoire" was entertaining. They had four categories of entrants: high school students, students at the Grandes Ecoles (sort of the French Ivy League), telespectateurs (i.e., viewers), and Celebrities, which was a very inclusive category that happened to include a playwright and filmmaker named Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt. Schmitt wrote a play about Diderot called "Le Libertin," which was later turned into a film. The film is hilarious and delightful, but not easy to find. My advisor had us watch it in his class after we read Les Bijoux indiscrets, Diderot's novel about a magic ring that makes vaginas talk. He also thought it would be a good idea for us to read Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt's master's thesis on Diderot. I can't say I remember much of it. But I did like the movie a lot.

Anyway, there were video segments where the spokesmodel hostess gave voice-over while curators of various French cultural institutions discussed the historical relevance of, say, Marie-Antoinette at Versailles, which led to a series of questions about Marie-Antoinette. It was all very edutaining, as are most shows on France 3.

I am back from Bulgaria. I had a great time. Stefka’s family and friends took very good care of us. We did so much that I kind of feel like I need a vacation from my vacation.

Day 1: As in Poland, my arrival was hampered by fog. I had flown from Paris to Frankfurt, and was dutifully waiting there for seven hours until my flight to Sofia. I kept checking the board to see if the gate had been assigned yet, and eventually I saw a notice that said “Annulierien” or something that I inferred to be the German word for “cancelled.” So I marched up to the Lufthansa counter and said, “My flight to Sofia is cancelled.” And the woman said, “No, it just hasn’t been assigned yet.” And I said, “Are you sure?” And she said, “Oh…yes, it’s been cancelled.” So I said, “There’s another flight at 6:30. Can you get me on that one?” And she told me I had to go to a different counter. So I went there, and told the woman there was an earlier flight to Sofia, to which she responded, “Not on Lufthansa.” And I was like, “Duh.” But she got me on the Bulgaria Air flight. It was diverted to Plovdiv, which meant we had a two-hour bus ride to Sofia. Mind you, I had no idea this was going to happen until it happened, because they announced it in Bulgarian and German. On the bus they showed the film Little Man. I had avoided seeing this movie because it looked terrible. And in fact it was quite awful.

I eventually made it to Stefka’s parents’ apartment and drank lots of whisky with her father, who appreciated having a willing drinking partner.

Day 2: Jesse and Stefka and I went to the Archaeological Museum to see ancient gold artifacts and medieval icons and some Greek statues. We had a late lunch at a restaurant called “The Three-Legged Chicken.” In the evening we had tickets to a concert by an Italian ensemble specializing in medieval music. And after that, we went out for drinks with Martin. He talked me into having rakia, a Bulgarian liqueur made from grapes. Martin and Jesse had a big argument about some intellectual problem.

Day 3: We did some shopping in the morning, then met Stefka’s friend Elitza and had lunch at a restaurant called Mamma Mia. We all had soup, because we figured it would be fast. We were meeting Sophie, a religious art expert, to take tours of churches. Apparently Stefka had already shown some churches to Jesse, but was unable to answer all of Jesse’s questions about Eastern Orthodox iconography and so called in Sophie. It was interesting. When we went home, Stefka’s mother had made stuffed peppers for dinner. Bulgarians eat a lot of peppers. My father would either starve or have indigestion all the time. Emily would also have trouble eating, because there are nuts hidden in almost everything.

Day 4: We got up early on Sunday morning and went to Rila Monastery with Stefka’s parents. It was a very nice trip. The icon gallery had separate prices for Bulgarians and non-Bulgarians (or maybe Bulgarophones and non-Bulgarophones). Stefka told me and Jesse not to talk, so we could just pay the Bulgarian/Bulgarophone price. After seeing the monastery, we drove a little further up the mountain, from whence we could hike up to the cave of the hermit John of Rila (aka Ivan Rilsky). Once you go into the cave, you have to climb out through a tiny opening. Local legend has it that if you make it through the opening, you aren’t sinful. We all made it through. Apparently Bulgarians are particularly concerned with the sin of gluttony.
To celebrate our purity, we stopped for lunch at a cute restaurant. Stefka’s dad ordered buffalo yogurt with honey for dessert, and I tried a taste of it. It was a little too rich for me. In the evening we went to a restaurant called “Romance,” known for its cakes. I tried the “Éclair cake,” which was tasty.

Day 5: In the morning, Stefka had a dentist appointment, so Jesse and I stayed home and watched Star Wars with Bulgarian subtitles. In the afternoon we went ice skating. I am pretty sure I was doing that for the first time in my life. It was pretty fun, but I was worried about crashing into someone and not having any language to tell them to watch out. Fortunately, I only fell when there was no one nearby.

Kornelia had invited us to dinner, and that was lots of fun. We took a minibus to get there. The Bulgarian term apparently translates as “People’s Taxi,” because even though there are specific routes, you can ask the driver to stop anywhere along the route. So it’s a shared taxi. Very crowded. Kornelia also offered rakia for me to drink, which I was happy to accept. The highlight of the first course was quail eggs, but there were also several delicious salads and some nice mackerel canapés. For the main course, Kornelia had made delicious chicken with a kind of blue cheese sauce. And there was an ice cream cake for dessert.

Day 6: We got tickets to a performance at the Bulgarian National Theatre. It was in Bulgarian, but it wasn’t too difficult to follow. The play was an adaptation of the novel Couchove (“The Exiles”) by Ivan Vazov. It was the story of a group of 19th-century revolutionaries living in Romania and plotting to assassinate the Sultan. (Bulgaria was part of the Ottoman Empire until 1878.) It was very impressive visually, and many moments were very moving even without being able to understand the language. The adaptor/director is named Alexander Morfov. Keep an eye out for him. Mostly he directs classics in Bulgaria and Russia.

Day 7: We took a trip to Plovdiv, which I had seen briefly on the night of my arrival. It was a rainy day, but we were not deterred from our quest to see Plovdiv’s Ancient Theatre, a second-century Roman affair with stone benches and a few surviving statues in the scaenae frons. It’s interesting to see how the city has grown up around it. You can watch the traffic go by on the highway below. Apparently the Ancient Theatre is still used for operas in the summer, which would be cool to see.

Other highlights of Plovdiv included a lovely sculpture park and the Ethnographic Museum, which was fairly similar to the Ethnographic Museum in Krakow. I highly recommend these Ethnographic Museums in Europe. The first floor mostly displayed tools for weaving, locksmiths, and agriculture. The second floor had furniture and clothing, arranged to give a sense of how people lived in the mountains and in the cities. The one in Krakow had slightly larger collections on its first two floors, and it also had a third floor with contemporary folk art. The museum in Plovdiv was clearer about its narrative; you had to go through the more informational rooms to get to the more eye-catching stuff. The Krakow setup is more like, “Wow! Peasant costumes! Ooooh, look at that. What’s that? It’s so colorful! Oh, look at all these Easter eggs! Hmmmm, Polish Easter rituals. Oooh, what’s that over there? A Nativity scene? Oh, interesting…”

Day 8: On Thursday, Stefka hung out with Elitza in the morning while Jesse and I stayed home and watched The Lord of the Rings with Bulgarian subtitles. (This was not so helpful for the scenes in Elvish, though it was otherwise fun to read the name “Frodo” in Cyrillic letters.) We had lunch with Elitza, then we did more wandering around Sofia and had dinner with Viktor and Diana.

Day 9: It was my 30th birthday. We had the same tasty breakfast we had every day, bread with cheese and sausage. Then after breakfast Stefka and her Dad brought out this enormous cake and they all sang “Happy Birthday.” It was very nice. Then it was time to go out and meet the translators at Stefka’s old translation agency. They gave us wine and cake and lots of other food.

Stefka had spent much of the week planning an outing for her name-day, which is December 27 (the Feast of St. Stephen). Since she was heading back to Chicago on the 25th, she decided to have it on the 22nd. So my birthday coincided with Stefka’s big reunion with all her Bulgarian friends. And some of them brought me presents. Kornelia’s gift was particularly thoughtful. She gave me a book on French Theatre. I remarked that I was surprised, and Elitza explained that birthdays are very important in Bulgaria. She posited that this was because religious holidays were not allowed to be celebrated under communism. Martin bought all my drinks. It was a very nice birthday.

Day 10: Stefka had suggested we go hiking one day, and Saturday was to be the day. She had invited other people to join us, and Viktor had accepted. We took the ski lift part of the way up the mountain, but as we headed to the trail there was a guy who warned us that it was too icy. Apparently we looked a little too citified for the rugged mountain trails. He suggested we take the second half of the ski lift up to the easier trail. So we did, and it was very nice. We decided to hike to the chalet at the top of the mountain. It was going well for a while, but then the snow got really deep and the going got a little tougher. Jesse was blazing a trail with the serious hikers, and the rest of us were very far behind her. But we all finally made it to the top. We ordered some tripe soup, which was pretty good, especially with lots of red pepper. I don’t think I would order it anywhere else. We had to run back to catch the lift, which was supposed to close at 4:00. We made it.

After hiking, we were invited to Viki’s house, which had a nice warm fireplace. His mother had made a very good Romanian dish with cornmeal and cheese and some kind of hot sauce. And we drank red wine.

Day 10: Because we had not gotten through all the churches in Sofia on our first trip with Sophie, she met us on Sunday for the follow-up tour. We saw the Russian Church, the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, and Saint Sophia. We had coffee afterward, then went back to Stefka’s parents’ house for Christmas Eve dinner.

Christmas Eve in Bulgaria calls for a feast of seven vegan dishes. We had bread, beans, dolmas, fruit compote, sweet rice, and two other things I can’t remember right now. All were delicious. A coin is baked into the bread, but no one found it in the first go-round. Then Stefka and her mother suggested that I check my bread again, and I found it. So I’m supposed to have a good year fiscally. Sounds good to me.
After dinner, we were invited to Stefka’s cousins’ house. They were very amused to have to Americans over. They were even more amused that we had picked up Bulgarian phrases for “Thank you” and “Good-bye” during our stay.

We were supposed to go to bed early, because Jesse and Stefka had to leave very early in the morning. But Jesse and I stayed up pretty late talking.

Day 11: I got up at 5:00, when everyone else was leaving for the airport. My flight was not until 3:20, and Stefka’s dad was going to drop me off in the afternoon. So I went back to bed. I had a dream that Jesse woke me up and told me that their flight had been cancelled. Then I had another dream that Jesse and Stefka were both talking to me. Stefka was saying, “This is just a dream. Our flight wasn’t cancelled. Go back to sleep.” And Jesse was saying, “Our flight was really cancelled. Get up and socialize!” Anyway, I got up around 10:00, and Stefka was sitting at the dining room table. So the first dream was actually not a dream, but the second dream was. Lufthansa had just cancelled the flight because there weren’t enough passengers for it to be profitable. I guess Jesse and Stefka had to spend the night in Munich, because they missed their connection to Chicago. Apparently Lufthansa was going to pay for their hotel and offer some sort of compensation once they got back to Chicago.

My trip back to Paris went pretty smoothly. The Frankfurt airport was even more boring, because I was in Terminal A, which has fewer shops than Terminal B. And most of them closed early. That was the worst thing about traveling on Christmas Day. I mean it was a little sad to drink beer in the airport bar by myself, but it was really sad when the airport bar closed at 6:00 and I had to kill two more hours until my flight. But the flight from Frankfurt to Paris was fine, and I managed to catch the RER back to my apartment. I was glad I had bought a round-trip RER ticket when I left, so I could just get right on the train without dealing with buying a ticket.

And now I’m back in Paris. This is the first time I haven’t spent Christmas with my family, and I miss them very much. So today I did some laundry and cleaned the microwave and watched my favorite French game shows. There was a commercial on for the “Grand Concours de l’Histoire” (The Great History Competition), which is on tomorrow night.

I hope that everyone is enjoying the holidays.

I am heading to Bulgaria in the morning and will be there until December 25 (it was cheaper to travel on Christmas Day). There are lots more Poland stories to tell, and some Paris stories since my return from Poland. I hope to be able to catch up when I get back.

In the meanwhile, here is a Paris story. I went to the craziest event at the Sorbonne on Saturday. It was a professor's "habilitation" to become a "directeur d'etudes," which I understood as akin to being promoted from Associate Professor to Full Professor. A jury of six professors spent five hours publicly responding to his scholarly portfolio and then left the room to vote. Since all six of them had told him how great he was, it wasn't very suspenseful. But there was lots of pomp and circumstance.

While chatting with some people afterward I used my phrase that every French person seems to love: "On ne fait pas comme ca aux Etats-Unis." (We don't do this in the United States.) I'm no't sure if they appreciate the lesson in cultural exchange, or if they read me as a wide-eyed "We're not in Kansas anymore " type.

The thing that amused me the most was that in the Ascoli Library at the Sorbonne, above all the shelves of books, the words "Ne Pas Fumer" (No Smoking) are painted on the wall in a very neatly stenciled font that is vaguely suggestive of the 1970s. So when I got bored with professors telling this guy why he's so great, but that he should use more iconographic evidence, I kept looking up at the "Ne Pas Fumer" sign, because I just found it hilarious.

November 29-30: Because of the travel nonsense, I had missed the first day of the conference. Apparently a lot of people did. I had sent an email to the conference organizer. He had said only to call his cell phone if there was an emergency, and I didn’t really see my missing Wednesday afternoon’s sessions as an emergency. So I sent him an email, but I doubted he would get it. In any case, Jenn was there to tell everyone that I was on my way, taking the train through the Polish fog that was conspiring to keep sex researchers from reaching Krakow by plane.

When I got off the train into the waiting arms of the gypsy caravan (as Meghann dubbed our happy trio), I was very hungry. Meghann tried to take us to a basement-level restaurant, but we were denied, so we went to a similar restaurant that was not in a basement. We browsed the menu. I had decided on the variety bowl of pierogies when I saw the page of seasonal dishes and figured out that it was mushroom season. So Meghann and I ended up splitting the pierogies and a plate of mushrooms in a lovely sauce. And it came with lovely bread that had two spreads. And we drank beer. Afterward we went to Camelot for another beer. The bar in Krakow, as opposed to the congenial spot for happy-ever-aftering. Though it was rather a happily-ever-after occasion.

We took a cab back to Meghann’s digs in Polish student housing, and I was very sad when we got up to the room because I had forgotten my wonderful Monoprix gloves in the cab. It was very fun to stay in the dorm. Apparently Jenn and I were there illegally, which turned walking across the lobby past the registration desk into an adventure every night. My favorite part was walking down the long hallway once we got to Meghann’s floor, because there were makeshift ashtrays every ten feet or so. Sometimes we came across groups of students smoking and chatting in the hallway, but more often it was just the evidence of their having been there. As Meghann liked to say, “You can just feel the socialism.”

In the morning we took the tram to the Pugetow Hotel for the conference. Meghann facilitated that entire adventure, and she planned to pick us up at the end of the day. The conference was good. It was billed as an Interdisciplinary conference on Sex and Sexuality. Mostly the inter-disciplines were sociology and literary criticism. According to my participant-observation in this situation, sociologists and literary critics seem to have trouble talking to each other. Jenn’s paper was the highlight of the first day. She had enlisted me to help by unfurling a poster of an erotic painting at a strategic moment during her talk. Her presentation went over very well.

At 5:30, Meghann was waiting on the steps for us, doing her best street urchin impersonation. She took us to Wawel Castle and told us the story of the dragon whom no one could kill until some wily citizen filled a sheep with sulfur and set it out as a trap for the dragon. The dragon at the sheep, got a stomachache, drank some water, and exploded. Meghann tells the story much better, so I hope I haven’t ruined it for future visitors to Krakow. Then we walked through Rynek Glowny, the market square, which was all decorated for Christmas. There were a lot of angels. The angels that were facing left looked like Minnesota. Seriously, it was like someone had taken a cutout of Minnesota and stuck an angel head on the northwest corner, and the tips of the wings were the northeast and southeast corners.

Anyway, Meghann took us to this great bar, and she got a mischievous smile on her face as she went up to buy the first round of drinks. She came back with “tatanka”—buffalo grass vodka (zubrowka) and apple juice. They were tasty. We drank a lot of them during the course of our stay.

Thursday night was also our trip to “Cocks,” the Polish version of Hooters. There were leggy, voluptuous blond waitresses in skimpy outfits. Jenn claimed that she spied one brunette waitress. We had cheeseburgers. I had not had a cheeseburger in a long time, and I thoroughly enjoyed mine. There were a lot of televisions playing sports and Polish advertising.

And then back to Meghann’s. I think we were early enough for the tram that night.

I just got back from my whirlwind trip to Poland. It was a lot of fun, after an inauspicious beginning.

Last Tuesday, I got up to get on the Metro to Porte Maillot, where I was to take a bus to the Beauvais Airport to catch my flight from Paris to Katowice, followed by a bus from Katowice to Krakow. Well, I got on the Metro and there were huge backups on line 1, so I was almost late for my bus. But I made the bus and arrived at Beauvais in plenty of time to check in with Wizzair (cheapie airline based in Poland) and have a snack before going through security. Once you get through security, the Beauvais airport feels like purgatory. Everyone is waiting, and since a flight to Rome had been delayed, a lot of people had been waiting for a very long time. There is one waiting room, and they only load one plane at a time, so it is very frustrating to wait there.

After I had waited until after my flight was supposed to have taken off, there was an announcement that Wizzair’s flight was cancelled. I eventually learned that this was because of excessive fog in Poland. They told us to wait in line to have tickets reassigned or to get reimbursed. I was near the end of the line, behind a lot of angry Poles. One of the workers came out and said that if we just wanted to be reimbursed, she could take our tickets and start that process. I knew that there wasn’t another flight until Thursday, so I asked how long the train would take. She said, “At least seven or eight hours.” And I figured I had already been trying to get to Poland for five hours, so the train was the way to go. And I handed her my ticket.

I then attempted to pick up my bag, but it turned out the airport was in lockdown because someone had left a bag unattended and it had to be imploded. Security guards told us it would only be another twenty minutes, but they kept telling us that for three hours. So clearly they were lying. I tried to find a public telephone and learned that there was one “800 meters” away, across a field. So I went over there, but I didn’t have a phone card. I tried to use my French bank card, but it was rejected. I walked back to the airport and waited some more, then decided to walk past the cabine téléphonique to the town of Tillé. I was hoping to find a Tabac and buy a phone card. (In France, you go to the tobacconist to buy stamps, phone cards, lottery tickets, and all sorts of other things, in addition to tobacco products.) As I walked through the town, I noticed a butcher shop that was closed for lunch. Then I went by a Pharmacy that was closed for lunch. So when I got to the Tabac it was not surprising to find that they were closed for lunch.

So basically I was stranded in Beauvais with no way of communicating to anyone that I was not going to make it to Krakow that day. Eventually they did reopen the baggage claim, and I got on a bus back to Porte Maillot. When we got to Porte Maillot, the American woman sitting next to me said, “Parlez-vous anglais?” to which I responded, “Yep. I sure do.” And she asked me where the Metro was. We walked over to the Metro together. I had the brilliant idea of switching from the 1 to the 6 to the 4, rather than taking the 1 to Chatelet and switching to the 4 there. The 6 is above-ground and usually less crowded than the 1.

I got home, and Laura was surprised to see me. I tried to call Meghann and couldn’t get her, so I sent an email to tell her I wasn’t coming, but that I was going to try to catch a train. I did some online research and discovered that the fastest train to Krakow would get me there in 19 hours, but didn’t leave until 3:30 on Wednesday. But then I figured out that I could take an overnight train to Berlin and then transfer to Krakow, and it would take 22 hours. (In a way I’m glad the Wizzair lady stretched the truth to get me out of her line. I think if she had said “20 hours,” I still would have done the train, but the decision wouldn’t have been quite so instantaneous.)

So I drank three beers and had a quick bite to eat, and I headed up to the Gare du Nord to buy a train ticket. This was perhaps the best customer-service interaction I have had thus far in Paris. I said, “Je voudrais un aller pour Krakovie” (I would like a one-way ticket to Krakow). The response was, “C’est en Pologne?!!?” (That’s in Poland?!?!) He sounded a little suspicious. I said, “Oui, c’est en Pologne,” confirming his geographical knowledge and indicating that I actually wanted to go to Poland. He couldn’t find anything direct, so he said, “via Berlin, peut-être,” and I said that sounded like a good idea. He got me on a train that was leaving at 8:46 PM, which meant I only had to wait about twenty minutes. He also gave me great seats, which may or may not have been intentional.

On the way to Berlin, I read Le Diable s’habille en Prada (The Devil Wears Prada), which I had borrowed from Dominique. He was right, the book was a lot better than the movie. I got to Berlin at 8:15 and had an hour there before my train to Krakow. I was hungry, so I got some apple cake and a large coffee, which was exactly what I needed. I found an internet kiosk and emailed Meghann to tell her I was arriving at 7:15 PM. I bought a salami sandwich, which I meant to save for lunch. But I ended up eating it shortly after I got on the train to Krakow. After that, I slept most of the way there.

When I arrived in Krakow, ten people greeted me with “Are you looking for a place to stay?” and I kind of freaked out, so I left the train platform and went to the station. Then I realized that Meghann was probably waiting for me on the platform, so I went back. I couldn’t remember which platform had been mine, so I just picked one at random and walked up. And I saw Meghann and Jenn on a different platform and started waving at them. Jenn saw me first, and then we all ran downstairs and had a joyful reunion. Meghann’s reaction to my tale of traveling woe was something along the lines of, “Well, if getting to Poland isn’t an adventure, it really isn’t worth it.”

So that is the beginning of the trip to Poland. The rest of it went much better, but I think I will have to write about that later.

Thanksgiving was perfectly delightful. I ended up having two Thanksgiving dinners! Laura's parents are in town, but her Dad had some other dinner engagement last night, so I had a vegetarian Thanksgiving dinner with Laura and her Mom. We had lentils, beets, potatoes, green beans, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Laura was a little sad because she had really wanted pumpkin pie, but they had not been able to fine canned pumpkin. The store "Thanksgiving" in the Marais was sold out of it.

The first dinner was around 6:00. Then I was invited to K's, where we had "un Thanksgiving europeen" with her French roommates G. and N., along with P, and V-M. Katie had not been able to find a turkey, so we ate "pintade," which is apparently guinea-fowl. It was good. We also had sweet potatoes (with orange and ginger, which I really liked), wild rice with almonds (P's family recipe), cornbread, and brussels sprouts with lardons. And for dessert, pumpkin pie! K. and P. had found canned pumpkin at a store called "The Real McCoy." The pumpkin pie led to a lengthy discussion about the French word for pumpkin, and what was the difference between "citrouille" and "potiron." Nicolas consulted a French-English dictionary that translated both words as pumpkin, but the French dictionary insisted that a "potiron" is bigger than a "citrouille." So there you go. The rest of the dinner conversation was a lot about Thanksgiving memories. It reminded me of another nice memory of Thanksgiving with Jesse's family--waltzing with Stefka while Jesse's uncle played the piano. And that made me really excited for my trip to Bulgaria with Jesse and Stefka, which is now only three weeks away.

I asked K if I could bring some pie home to Laura, who had gone to bed early because she had to be up this morning at 6:00 for a trip to Belgium with her parents. When I got home, she was awake. I told her I had pumpkin pie, and she got right up and ate it. I think it was 11:30, so it was even on the holiday itself.

I went to Amsterdam for the weekend. I left on Saturday and got back yesterday. I had ordered my train tickets online and they were supposed to be delivered to my house, but they never arrived. So I called SNCF earlier in the week, and they said, “Well, the tickets were mailed the day you ordered them.” And I said, “OK, but they never got here.” So I was told to go to the train station with my reservation number and my credit card the day of. I was not told that I would have to re-purchase tickets and wait a month to be reimbursed until I got to the train station on Saturday morning. The man at the train station started out being all superior and said that I should have just come to the train station to buy the tickets, since I live in Paris. After I made a big fuss about how inane the SNCF reimbursement issue was, he wanted to be friends. I guess my performance of indignation was French enough for him.

The impetus for the trip was that my friend Rich was visiting Amsterdam, along with his friend Michael. They were staying at the Golden Bear Hotel. Rich had gotten an international cell phone for the trip, which was smart of him. (I still haven’t bought a French cell phone, but I think such a purchase is very likely in the near future, possibly after my December travels in Eastern Europe.) I had some trouble getting a hold of Rich on Saturday, so I wandered around the city on my own for a while. I managed to call him on Sunday morning at 10:00. As he did not quite sound ready for the day, I said that I would call him back in the afternoon.

While I was walking around on Sunday morning, I passed the Bible Museum (Bijbels Museum) and decided to go in. I was very glad I did. The collection was fascinating, primarily because it was so eclectic. Inspired by one of the former owners of the house who had been obsessed with building a model of Solomon’s Temple, the museum houses several models of Solomon’s Temple, plus a model of the Tabernacle in Jerusalem that housed the Ark of the Covenant. There are also Egyptian artifacts that the owner had collected, to elucidate the time the Israelites spent in Egypt. When I was there, the museum was hosting an exhibition called “Rembrandt and the Bible,” with some eighty etchings of biblical and quasi-biblical scenes by Rembrandt. There is a garden with biblical plants, and a room by the garden with biblical scents. The basement houses a multimedia exploration of Bible publishing. My favorite aspect of this was a set of bookshelves designed to depict the Bible as a library. You could open some of the books and see images inside. The Plague of Frogs from Exodus had a whole bunch of little rubber frogs inside it. The story of Joseph from Genesis had a bright swath of amazing technicolor fabric. And the book marked “Creation” had a mirror inside, which was just too cute. What makes the collection eclectic is that they have also opted to show some of the features of these two canal houses, including two seventeenth-century kitchens and a number of eighteenth-century ceiling paintings of mythological figures, by Jacob de Wit.

When I got out of the Bible Museum, I met up with Rich and Michael for stir-fry at “Wok and Walk.” We decided to make our way south to the Heineken Brewery, because I had heard that the tour there was good. But on the way we ran into a parade. Now, while I was walking around in the morning I had noticed an unusual number of children dressed in festive attire, so I had deduced that it was some kind of holiday. It struck me as early for Saint Nicholas, but it was indeed the “Sinterklaas” parade. The strangest thing about the Sinterklaas parade was that the majority of participants were done up in colorful Renaissance costumes and blackface, portraying Sinterklaas’s problematic sidekick, Zwarte Piet (Black Pete). Apparently Zwarte Piet does much of the gift wrapping before he and Sinterklaas travel by boat from Spain, or perhaps Turkey, to the Netherlands. Upon their arrival, Zwarte Piet gives candy to good little boys and girls, but stuffs bad children into a sack to bring them back to Spain, or perhaps Turkey. Later that night in a gay bar we saw a fascinating music video called “Sinterklaasboot,” which I managed to find on youtube.

The parade ended shortly after we got there. So we proceeded to the Heineken Experience, which was pretty great. Michael kept pointing out that it was basically a two-hour Heineken commercial. But for ten euros, we got three beers and a fun tour. The highlight of the tour was the seeing the bottling process “through the eyes of a bottle,” which meant standing on a platform that moved and viewing one of those films that is designed to make you feel like you’re on the roller coaster. Or conveyer belt, as the case may be.

On Monday, I met up with Rich and Michael around noon, and we went out for some very tasty pancakes, followed by a trip to the Anne Frank House. I had not been excited about the Anne Frank House, because I thought it would be depressing. And it was depressing, but it was possibly the best-designed museum I have ever experienced.

By contrast, the Sex Museum (Venustempel) was a total mess. It could be much better organized. A lot of the exhibits are kitschy, which sometimes works really well and sometimes doesn’t. The kitschy Marilyn Monroe exhibit is interesting, and there is a silly “Sex through the Ages” exhibit, which we thought was a lot of fun. But the kitschy prostitution exhibit was just bad. Obviously the collection is heavy on kitsch and photographs because it’s geared toward stoned frat boys. There are some really interesting objects. If they would label them correctly and display them more effectively, they could do a better job of engaging historians of sexuality…and maybe teach the horny frat boys a thing or two along the way. It was definitely worth a visit. For three euros, it’s worth a visit even if you aren’t studying history of sexuality. Possibly more so if you aren’t.

For dinner on Monday we had an Indonesian Rice Table, which was really, really good. My train left around 1:00 Tuesday afternoon, so we had time for brunch and some shopping before I headed back. By the way, across the aisle from me on the train was a guy with a very large bag of pot. He rolled a joint on his tray table all the way through Belgium. No conductor said a word to him, and Customs didn’t stop him.

I arrived back to learn that the money I wired on Friday has not yet arrived in my French bank account. My French bank told me today that if it isn’t there tomorrow I should contact my American bank. But since tomorrow is a holiday in the US, I decided to call today. They were so patient and helpful and pleasant on the phone. To be fair, my French bank teller today was also very patient and very sympathetic.

I gave my presentation on Chapter 3 of The Politics of Friendship in seminar today. I was saying to Laura that if I had known we were only going to get to Chapter 3, I probably would have signed up for a later chapter. But it was kind of fun.

And now I have to write my paper for this conference in Poland next week. I am supposed to email it to the conference organizer by Friday morning. I am not sure that will happen.

Well, I turned in my ACLS application, so I feel good about that. If nothing else, at least I have a chapter to show my advisor. Onward to writing the paper for the conference in Poland!

Today I got my residency permit. The last hurdle was the medical visit, which consisted of sitting in the outer waiting room before being called to the inner waiting room. Then they call you into a room where you take your shirt off and wait for them to call you for the chest X-Ray. Running the chest X-Ray today were one male doctor and one female doctor, and they were having a blast. (I think they were mostly laughing at people's names and how incapable they were of pronouncing them.) So then you go back into the inner waiting room and wait for one of the other two doctors to read your X-Ray results and take your blood pressure. The doctor I had said, "Everything is fine, but you have a weight problem. You need to see a nutritionist." And I guess my reaction was not sufficiently grateful or excited or something, because she then said "You're going to have back problems and knee problems. You'll see." So she gave me the chest X-Ray to keep, but I left it on the table, and she brought it out to the waiting room to give to me. (I didn't leave it on purpose, but really, what am I going to do with this chest X-Ray?) And then I went down the hall to stand in line to get my carte de sejour.

There were two people in front of me. The woman giving out the cards got really angry with the first person in line because she had said, "Check the front and the back of the card to make sure everything is right." And I guess the girl did not check carefully enough for her taste, because she yelled at her to check it, and said a couple of words in English to drive her point home. So when she gave me my card I looked at it for a very long time and read my address aloud undermy breath before I told her it was OK. She was pleased with me.

I called STA Travel in Evanston about my return flight to Chicago the other day, and the person I spoke to was so nice. It really made me miss American customer service.

Now I'm really tired and I'll probably actually go to bed at a reasonable hour tonight.

Everyone I know in Paris has a cold. Our household is drinking lots of tea. I'm really glad my mother made me buy cold medicine at Happy Harry's Discount Drugs. Happy Harry's was recently bought by Walgreen's, so the "Premier Value" line of generic products were selling at severely reduced prices when I was in Delaware this summer.

I have been working on fellowship applications for next year. The one that is due on Wednesday requires a chapter. I have eleven good pages and nine bad pages written. The maximum they want to see is 25 pages, so I feel good about the possibility of finishing.

I have also done a lot of procrastinating. Last night Laura and I watched The Name of the Rose. I had read the novel but I don't think I've ever watched the movie before, at least not in one sitting. It was long, and more violent than I thought it would be. I was a little disappointed that they didn't really explain how the library is organized, which was my favorite part of the book. But I guess that might have been boring for most viewers.

Youtube is fabulous for procrastinating. I found the Reading Rainbow "Teamwork" dance number. I sent it to my friend Sheila first, but now I am linking it here to share the joy. I first saw the Reading Rainbow "Teamwork" musical number when I lived in Northampton with Dottie. It must have been around Thanksgiving, because I went to Sheila's for Thanksgiving dinner and I just would not stop singing the Teamwork song. Because really, isn't Thanksgiving all about teamwork? Teamwork to baste the turkey, teamwork to set the table, teamwork to wash the dishes, teamwork to play 500, teamwork to unload the Alaskan crab from the dry ice. Oh, now I'm conflating my Thanksgivings.

I've been a free agent for Thanksgiving for twelve years now, because I've lived far enough from my family (and had little enough money) that they don't expect me to come home. It's nice to spend Thanksgiving with other people's families. I have gotten lots of different things to eat, things like Tofurkey, Jell-O Pretzel Salad, flourless chocolate cake, and the aforementioned Alaskan crab legs. And I've experienced lots of fun digestive activities. I have fond memories of reading David Sedaris stories aloud with Sheila's family, playing cards with Laura's family, and sneaking cigarettes in the garage at the lake house with Leanne's father. Last year I spent the entire weekend hanging out with Laurie and Dave and their family--we went bowling, we had tapas, we saw Rent at the movie theatre, we played Pictionary.

The French don't celebrate Thanksgiving (they have subtler ways of memorializing colonization) , so I will be a little sad when next Thursday rolls around. Maybe we will plan to have our own renegade version.

Last night I went out to a bar called Planète Mars with Laura, Josh, Katie, and Gabi. We randomly met two of Josh’s friends who are art dealers. (Josh lived in Paris three years ago and is back until the end of this month. He attends our seminar.) Josh kept trying to persuade me and Laura to drink more and stay out until after the Metro stopped running. Even though it’s very difficult to convince me and Laura to continue drinking, somehow he managed to do so. The three of us stopped for a sandwich at this place where the two proprietors knew an awful lot about the recent elections in the U.S. After we ate, Josh got on the night bus and Laura started trying to hail a cab. This woman who was standing on the corner making no effort to flag down a cab got all pissed at us and said (in French) “I was ahead of you.” And we were like, “OK. Whatever.”

Today I had a phone call from my advisor (codename: The Belgian Waffle). He is locked out of his Northwestern email account because he didn't change his password in a timely fashion, so he hasn’t received any of the three emails I have sent him in the past month. It is a very good thing that I looked up his number in the “pages blanches” and left him a message yesterday. He asked me how I was liking Paris and he invited me to have lunch with him in a couple of weeks. He started out trying to think of places that would allow us to meet in the middle, but he clearly did not want to sacrifice cultural capital for geographical convenience. I told him that it would be really nice for me to discover a new part of Paris and that I would be happy to take the Metro to Oberkampf. He seemed really relieved that he wouldn’t have to slum it with me in the Latin Quarter. Seriously, it sounded like he wouldn’t want be caught dead there.

I told him I’m working on grant applications, and the ACLS deadline is coming up. He offered to read my proposal, even though it really all depends who is on the selection committee, and did I know who was on the selection committee? Because that’s really what matters. And he applied for one external grant and didn’t get it, but then he applied for an internal grant and got that one. And then he asked me if I was in touch with his other advisee, and could I send him the other advisee’s email address if I have it, or email the other advisee and ask him to get in touch with the Belgian Waffle?

He also advised me not to try to bring pot back from Amsterdam, which may be the single best piece of advice he has ever given me. Because I was totally planning to transport marijuana in a train across two international borders. Then he said, “If you must have it, you would be better off trying to send it through the mail.” A fountain of wisdom, this man.

At tonight's rehearsal for An Ideal Husband, the director and two of the actors decided that it would be brilliant for the butler to speak the stage directions that describe each character upon their entrance. So now I don't just stand there doing nothing the whole time...I stand there doing nothing most of the time, except at the very beginning when I describe the decor. And then I walk up to actors frozen in tableau and describe their faces, bodies, clothing, and personalities. It's Oscar Wilde meets Thornton Wilder!

I'm the only person who thinks my Wilde/Wilder joke is funny, aren't I?

My old professors keep showing up in Paris. It’s nice that they all want to see me, even though my advisor, who currently lives in Paris, doesn’t seem particularly interested. Last night J.D. was visiting, before heading to Angers to check up on Notre Dame's study abroad program there. The President of the Notre Dame Club of Paris had sent an email inviting everyone to meet her. He and I were the only two people who showed up. So I hung out with my prof and her 15-year-old son Nicky and the ND Club president. Poor Nicky had to sit through our conversation about the libertine novel and pornographic performances in eighteenth-century France, when he was clearly tired and just wanted to go to bed. And J.D. was so excited to talk to me about my dissertation because she is an eighteenth century specialist, too. The Club president kept saying ridiculous things about "Pollacks" in Dublin, and how he voted in Virginia by absentee ballot but he didn't know who either the Republican or the Democrat was, so he just voted for the Independent. It was kind of hilarious. But J.D. referred to me as a "distinguished alumnus" of the French department, and she kept telling me she was proud of me. So it was a good ego boost. It’s also kind of funny that she remembers me as being on top of things when I was a student of hers, when in fact she was constantly calling me out for being a slacker. Except for that one time when I wrote a paper for her and she called me at home to tell me her reaction to it. That was a little scary, because I got this voicemail that went, “Hi, Dan, this is Professor D. I just finished reading your paper and…(pause, pause, pause)…I loved it.” Also, I was her research assistant one summer and I showed up in the middle of the afternoon one day and was just like, “Yeah, I drank a lot last night so I didn’t feel like getting up this morning. But I have a key to the office, so I’ll just work until 8:00 tonight.” She and her secretary made fun of me for a long time over that one.

This event was at Corcoran’s Irish Pub, on rue Saint-André des Arts. I went up to the bar and asked for “un Gueen-NESS, s’il vous plaît,” pronouncing it like I thought a French person would, and the bartender said, “Oh, un GUIN-ness.” I can’t win.

Tuesday night was my first rehearsal for An Ideal Husband. I am going to be playing Mason, the butler. P. was not able to come to rehearsal, so it was just me and the French students. The director had us all recite English tongue twisters individually. I was clearly the best at that exercise, since I was the only native speaker of English in the room. I had been sort of hoping to pick up some French theatre vocabulary, like “cross downstage,” but I haven’t yet. I think either French theatre people are more plain-spoken, or this particular group is not well-versed in rehearsal language. (I'm leaning toward the former, because the French were never big into raked stages, which is where we get upstage and downstage in English.) The weirdest thing about this production is that no one has any idea where or when the performances are going to happen. It’s going to be sometime in March or April, and probably somewhere at the Ecole Normale Supérieure. But I had fun, and I liked everyone.

I went shopping at Franprix this week. I shop at the Franprix often. It is my second favorite store in my neighborhood, after Picard les Surgelés, the frozen food store that has inexpensive frozen gourmet meals. Franprix is a really cheap supermarket, where things are marked “Prix Choc!” (Shocking Price!). Laura and I have been especially enjoying the flavored ice-cream cones that come in a package of four for 99 centimes. So far we have tried Tiramisu, Cappucino, and 3 Chocolats. We are probably going to get Crème Brulée next. Sometimes there are crazy people shopping at the Franprix, but they don’t seem to be dangerous.

Tonight I went to see Samuel Beckett’s Oh, les beaux jours! (Happy Days), starring Catherine Samie of the Comédie-Française as Winnie. Winnie is buried up to her waist in dirt during Act I and up to her neck in Act II. I went with VS, and we ran into P. and K. there. I really enjoyed the show. The actress was fabulous, and the staging did a good job showing how Beckett’s minimalist project could work. There was a moment in the first act when Winnie picked up an umbrella and opened it and swung it around. Because there was so little movement in general, that moment was spellbinding. I’m much more familiar with the English text, which includes a lot of citations of British poetry. I only noticed one joke about using the classics to pass the time, so I’m guessing Beckett didn’t translate most of those references. The one other quibble I had was that I didn’t feel like Willie was a threatening presence at the end, My vague recollection is that the stage directions say he’s reaching for the gun at the end, but in this production he was reaching for Winnie in a tender way. Regardless, it’s nice to have a good Beckett experience to take away the painful memories of two looooooong student productions of Waiting for Godot when I was in college. Well, one and a half, since I left the second one at intermission. Because really, if you didn’t enjoy the first half of that play you know you’re not going to enjoy the second half.

Shall we go? Yes, let’s go. But we can’t go. Why not? Because we’re waiting for Godot. Oh.

One other fun thing that happened this week was that Laura and I hosted seminar at our apartment because our professor was at a conference in Singapore. We had a guest speaker from Australia who talked about video games as industrial temporal objects. It was really nice to have enough space for everyone to be comfortable. Sam’s office gets far too crowded. He talks about the charm of the space, but almost everyone said we should just start having seminar at our place. I certainly wouldn’t mind. I really started to like everyone in seminar this week, because now I kind of know their personalities and how to expect them to behave in class. I was sitting between Josh and B, and they got into an impassioned discussion. B was making this point and he kept saying over and over, “It’s like the Beastmaster and the ferrets.” I had no idea what he was talking about, but it sounded important. So I wrote down “Beastmaster and ferrets,” which Josh clearly found amusing. Afterward I learned that ferrets are central to the plot of Beastmaster, but I have never seen that film. (Now that Rashida and Emily know that ferrets play a central role in it, I’m sure neither of them will be seeing Beastmaster anytime soon.)

On Sunday I went to Versailles with P. and K. We had heard that it was our last chance to see Marie-Antoinette’s private theatre before the end of the season on October 31. When we got to Versailles, the line for tickets was ghastly. Then this woman pointed us to a different entrance, so we waited in that line. While we were waiting in line we decided that we just wanted tickets for the “Domaine de Marie-Antoinette.” We finally got our tickets and figured out that we could have just walked across the grounds to the Petit Trianon and bought the Marie-Antoinette tickets there. But K. and I reasoned that if we had walked half an hour to get there and then weren’t able to buy tickets, we would have been annoyed.

Anyway, K. was reading Proust in line, because that’s how she rolls. (Clearly we were destined to be friends.) And I was explaining that my favorite thing about Proust is that always has these high expectations and no event ever lives up to them. So then we were joking about how we were just like Proust, because we had these high expectations of Versailles, and we were doomed to be disappointed. Fortunately, when we got to the little theatre of Marie-Antoinette, we were not disappointed at all. The building didn’t look like much from the outside, but the theatre inside was gorgeous. It was so great to get a sense of the scale of it. Except that I estimated that it would seat 60-80 people, and the website is telling me that it seated 200. The upholstery was all blue, and there was ostentatious gold detailing on the ceiling, with the queen’s monogram above the stage.

After seeing the theatre, we wandered some, and came across the “Queen’s Hamlet,” which one of my witty friends dubbed the Disney World of the Eighteenth Century. Marie-Antoinette had an architect named Richard Mique construct a peasant village for her entertainment. In Peasantland she could pretend to tend sheep by day and play cards with friends at night. Katie’s initial reaction was, “Is this real?” Clearly this is crying out for a historical performance studies analysis.

We took the RER back to Paris. P. likes to watch NFL football on Sundays at a bar called The Moose, which is of Canadian extraction. So we went there for post-Versailles drinking of beer and eating of chicken wings, mozzarella sticks, onion rings, and French fries. There was this crazy woman there wearing a Chicago Bears jersey and screaming her head off every time there was a big play. She recognized us as Americans and kept asking us where different cities were in the U.S., specifically Jacksonville and Baltimore. (I don’t think she knew where Philadelphia was either, because she was telling these other guys that she prefers the East Coast to the South, but she was rooting for Jacksonville over Philadelphia the entire time.) I’m fairly certain she was from somewhere in Europe. She made a comment about the bartender being a “French fag” (which she clearly meant as an insult). So if she was French there was some self-loathing going on about her Frenchness. Anyway, her performance of Americanness was fascinating to watch. I have to say that I found The Moose to be a little overwhelming. I’m glad to know it’s there, but I think it will be quite some time before I go back.

10/27/06: Laura and I went to the Pantheon this week. There was an installation by a Brazilian sculptor named Ernesto Neto. The piece is called “Leviathan-Thot” and it is supposed to be a visual representation of Hobbes’s Leviathan, combined with the Egyptian god Thoth. There was a video with the sculptor giving some explanation of it. He gave a very good performance of the sexy, misunderstood sculptor. I thought the installation was neat, but the explanation was kind of lame.

The Pantheon has all these remains of important French people: Rousseau, Voltaire, Marie Curie. There was a plaque commemorating Toussaint L’Ouverture, but his body was not there. There was also this kind of weird exhibit about Marie and Pierre Curie. Did you know Pierre Curie died when he was run over by a horse and carriage the day after the San Francisco earthquake of 1906? They had a print of the newspaper from the following day on the wall. The weirdest thing about the Curie exhibit was this natural-history-museum-esque replica of a donkey that was unable to choose between two perfectly equal bales of hay. This was intended to demonstrate some 14th-century philosopher’s principle of balance, which was somehow related to Pierre Curie’s work on radiation. And it was kind of weird that it was in the Pantheon at all.

Last night I had dinner with two professors emerita from UMASS. During my last year in Amherst, I lived in both of their houses while they were living in the south of France for five months and three months, respectively. I killed all of Virginia’s plants, and I broke Sara’s washing machine and flooded her basement. But both of them still thought I was a pretty good house-sitter. With Virginia I think I redeemed myself by cleaning her house better than her long-standing once-a-month housekeeper (whom she had told me to hire before she got back, and whose cleaning skills were singularly unimpressive). And when I spoke with Sara’s husband on the phone and explained about the washing machine, he said that they knew they needed a new washing machine and they were sorry it had died on my watch. He was also impressed with my problem-solving skills, because upon discovering the flooded basement I called a company that was listed under “Basement water damage cleanup” (or some such) in the yellow pages, and then called their homeowner’s insurance company. And when he kept congratulating me on being so calm and clever, all I could think was, “What did you expect me to do? Run down the street screaming ‘The basement is flooded! The basement is flooded!’?”

Anyway, V. retired after my first year at UMASS, so I had a few classes with her. (Including “Theatre in Society,” which featured one of my favorite memories. One of my colleagues did a presentation on Symbolism, in which he read Poe’s “The Bells” in its entirety, for the sole purpose of killing time because he wasn’t prepared. And as he kept turning pages we all figured out what was going on, and we just kind of supported him in his non-preparedness. And then we went to happy hour at Rafter’s. Or to lunch at the Newman Center. Now I’m just being nostalgic.) V. and S. are in Paris for a few weeks, mostly working in libraries. It was kind of weird to see Virginia in Paris, and to kill a whole bottle of wine with her before Sara got back, and then to go to dinner with them and drink a lot more wine with dinner. We gossiped a little about the Montpellier conference, especially this one professor who had told me my dissertation sounded boring. I explained my fellowship to them, and Sara was impressed that I get to be in this seminar with Sam, whereas Virginia viewed the seminar as my once-a-week three-hour obligation to show up somewhere. Anyway, we had a high old time, and Virginia told me that I must go to Versailles to see Marie Antoinette’s little theatre before October 31, and she is going to get tickets for us to see Beckett’s Happy Days at the Vieux-Colombier with a famous French actress, and I also just have to see a new play called Le Moliere imaginaire at some tiny theatre.

My trip to Montpellier was very fun. I took the TGV. There is this new division of cars if you book online, IDzen and IDzap. On the way there, I was booked for IDzen, the section for quiet working and sleeping. (IDzap is billed as the party train, which it totally is not. I rode in IDzap on the way back to Paris. There were a few crying children, but mostly people were sleeping and working.) The conductor was not pleased with the people who were sitting around me, because the one guy answered his cell phone, and the young couple had a baby. So there was a whole discussion about IDzen and respecting the silence, and how none of us really cared, but the couple with the baby should probably move to another car. So they did.

I had called ahead for a reservation at the one-star Hotel Central, passage Belugou, very close to the train station and the Place de la Comédie. The phone conversation had been a little weird…I spoke to an elderly woman who asked me a lot of questions about how I had found the hotel. (It was listed with some other cheap hotels online, and I had already tried one other place that didn’t have any rooms free.) I found the Hotel Central pretty easily. When I went in, there was a young woman who greeted me, and I said, “Bonjour, j’ai une réservation.” And she called her mother, clearly the elderly woman from the phone. So I say “Bonjour” to her mother, who replies “Bon SOIR,” which was totally unfair because it was 5:00 PM and clearly on the borderline between day and evening. But I’m game, so I say, “Ah, oui, bon soir.” And I gave my name, and she says (in French) “Are you sure you have a reservation?” And I said, “Yes, I called on Tuesday,” and she said, “I’m just teasing you.” And I didn’t get the joke, but then I figured out that I must have gone up in pitch when I told her daughter I had a reservation, because that’s what you do in English. But if you do that in French it makes it a question. I guess it’s a question in American English, too, but culturally it means “I have a reservation [Now you’re going to take care of that for me, right?].” Anyway, she asked me if I wanted to eat breakfast there for 4 euros a day, and I figured, “Why not?”

So she gave me the key to room 13, on the third floor. Oh, I forgot to mention, this woman looks exactly like the grandmother in The Triplets of Belleville, only she doesn’t have a limp. She couldn’t have been taller than 4’6”. Anyway, room 13, for 25 euros a night, has two nice comfortable beds, and a bathroom with toilet, sink, and shower attached to the room. So I’m thinking, “How is this a one-star hotel? Is it just the price? Is it because there’s no TV?” After exploring Montpellier some, I went to bed and slept pretty well. The breakfast was well worth the cost (coffee, orange juice, a warm croissant, and a big piece of bread with butter and jam). The weird thing about the hotel was that I never saw any other guests. Everyone seemed to be related to the owner and her daughter. And there were all these dogs. There was a big German Shepherd who sat on the front steps and sort of glared at me every time I came in. And there were two little white dogs who kept bothering me while I was eating breakfast on Saturday morning. The other “one-star” aspect of the hotel was that I had to pay in cash when I checked out, as there was no credit card machine. Overall it was a very good hotel experience. Any potential shady dealings didn't seem threatening at all.

The conference was interesting. It was not bad for my first European conference. I was very glad I went as an observer before trying to give a paper at a conference here. Here are my observations:

1) Every single person went over time. Significantly. When moderators tried to keep presenters to time, the presenters made a big show of being offended. And going over time wasn’t built into the schedule, so it ended up being a problem, especially on the second day when some people had trains to catch in the afternoon.
2) French academics do not speak as clearly as French newscasters and game show hosts. There was one speaker who spoke very fast and had a southern accent. I understood the name of the playwright she was working on, and the title of one play. Beyond that, I was pretty lost.
3) The Q&A period is not about drawing connections between the papers presented. I tried doing that twice, and it really freaked people out.
4) Academic culture is otherwise not so different in France than in the U.S. There was a really pointless disciplinary argument on the first day, with this one theatre historian complaining that another person was looking at plays and dramatic criticism as a literary critic. And I was like, yeah, that guy is a literary critic. That’s what he does. There’s a philosopher here too. Are you going to be mad at him for being trained as a philosopher?

I made a little faux pas on the first day. The conference organizer got up and said, “OK, we’re going to lunch now. Follow me to the restaurant.” And so I got up and followed everyone to the restaurant. When I got there, I realized that lunch was just for the people who were presenting. So I made sure that was the case, and then I went elsewhere and got a sandwich. This one professor came up to me when they all got back from lunch and said, “You disappeared at lunch. What happened?” And I had to explain that I wasn’t invited. Then on the second day both organizers made a point of inviting me to lunch. So that was nice. It was pretty obvious that the reason I got invited was that some people had left in the morning, but I was fine with taking the free lunch.

The discussion at lunch was mostly about departmental committee assignments. And there was lots of gossip about other professors. I wish I had known who they were.

The trip back to Paris was uneventful. But it was nice to get back and feel like Paris was familiar. I tend to feel that way about the first trip away from a new place. When you come back, it starts to feel like home.

“Crepurritos”

I made crepes tonight! It was surprisingly easy. It’s just flour, eggs, milk, water, butter, and salt. I was inspired to make them because yesterday I had fried eggs on the crepe pan. Laura saw the dirty crepe pan and asked me if I had made crepes, and I had to admit to my utter laziness…I had used the crepe pan because I didn’t feel like washing the frying pan she had used to make her eggs earlier. But then today I had crepes on my mind, so I looked up a recipe online. I went to the store to buy milk and flour, and then came back and started mixing ingredients. Then I let the batter sit for an hour before I started cooking the crepes. The recipe was supposed to make 8 crepes, but I only managed five, which was more like four and a half because I failed miserably at flipping the first one and ate most of the forlorn (but tasty) little pieces while I was cooking the others. Laura thought it would be nice if we each had one savory crepe and one sweet crepe. For the savory angle, I came up with “crepurritos”—red beans, cheese, tomatoes, and onions. They were very tasty. For our sweet crepes, Laura used store-brand Nutella (which tastes just the same) and I used peach jam. I have to say that I feel very proud of my crepe-making.

Clearly I need to learn to edit and stop feeling the need to write something about every day I’ve been here. Here are some highlights from the past week:

Tuesday afternoon I went to the BNF and got my reader card. My interview was with a laconic male librarian, tall and thin with red hair. I had printed out a brief description of my dissertation in French, as well as a bibliography. He gave me access to the Arsenal, the Opéra collection, and the Richelieu Arts du Spectacle collection. I started reading that afternoon in Salle V, the French Literature room. I quickly discovered that I really need to go to Salle Y, the Rare Book room. But there’s also plenty I can do in Salle V, so that’s good. That night I went to an audition for a student production of An Ideal Husband in English. P. had told me about it. I emailed the director, who scheduled me to audition with P. We had fun.

In seminar on Wednesday, we finished discussing the foreword of Politics of Friendship and started to talk about chapter one.

Thursday evening I went to a lecture on Diderot at the Collège International de Philosophie. It was excellent. I had trouble figuring out how to get into the building, but one of the security guards pointed me in the right direction. A scholar named Annie Ibrahim spoke on Diderot to a very collegial audience of about 15. It seemed like mostly everyone else knew her. I was one of the youngest people in the room; I would guess that there were three other grad students there and the rest were professors. The lecture was scheduled to last two hours, and she spoke almost the whole time, with about ten minutes at the end for questions. One interesting thing was that she discussed Diderot’s Letter to Madame Riccoboni as dripping with sarcasm. I’ve only read that letter through the eyes of Riccoboni scholars. When Diderot tells Madame Riccoboni that she is a bad actress because she is such a sensitive person, they place the emphasis on her being a sensitive person. Ibrahim was placing the emphasis on “bad actress.” She also called Mme Riccoboni a bad novelist, which I didn’t think was completely fair, especially given how much Diderot loves Richardson. Anyway, I had such a great time at this lecture. Afterward I figured out that the reason I enjoyed it so much was a question of language. In the past ten years, most of my opportunities to speak French have been in academic settings. So I’m really comfortable talking about literature, history, philosophy, theology, and eighteenth-century dirty words, but buying a stamp at the post office makes me feel like an idiot.

Saturday morning I intended to go to a conference at the Sorbonne, but it took longer to get there than I had anticipated. And I could see a bunch of stuffy old men in suits in the back row of a room on the main floor, but I couldn’t figure out how to get into the building. Then I thought that since this conference was not really my period, and I was so close to the Jardin du Luxembourg, I might as well skip it and read some Diderot in the Jardin du Luxembourg. Especially since I’ve taught French using French in Action, and Mireille is constantly reading in the Jardin du Luxembourg. Unfortunately, the Jardin du Luxembourg was crawling with schoolchildren because it was “La Fête de la Science” or something. So I didn’t get much reading done there. I wandered over to the Jardin des Plantes, near Rue Buffon. Buffon was a natural scientist who did lots of experiments during the eighteenth century. We read parts of his Histoire Naturelle in one of my graduate seminars. I was shocked and appalled by this one experiment where he tried to make newborn puppies amphibious by having them birthed into milk and then taking them out of the milk for awhile and then submerging them in the milk again. Of course all the puppies drowned. My professor was amused/annoyed that I was upset about the puppies when the French were doing such awful things to other human beings at the same time. Anyway, after the Jardin des Plantes I walked over to the BNF, where I resumed my reading in Salle V. I finished reading the erotic novel I had started on Tuesday. It was full of references to theatre, so it will be very useful for chapter one of my dissertation.

Katie’s party on Saturday night was a lot of fun. She has a French roommate, and most of the guests were his friends. I spent a lot of time talking to newlyweds Florian and Caroline, mainly about things I used to watch on French television in Angers that are no longer on the air.

On Sunday I booked a train ticket to Montpellier for a conference on Theatre Spectatorship in sevententh- and eighteenth-century France that is taking place this Friday and Saturday. I’m really lucky I found out about it in time to go. I don’t have a hotel reservation yet, but I’m sure I can work that out tomorrow, or even when I get there.

Saturday, October 7: Tonight was the Nuit Blanche in Paris, and I was very excited about it. It’s a big arts festival with installations in major Parisian buildings. Laura and I were planning to meet up with K. from our seminar, and P., my fellow eighteenth-century French theatre specialist who I met at ATHE this summer. We started our Nuit Blanche with some wine and conviviality at P’s apartment, and then headed over to the installation at the Bibliothèque Nationale. That was pretty cool, with fog surrounding the “trees of knowledge” and ethereal music playing. Then we got on the Metro and headed to the Archives Nationales, where there were ostensibly theatre performances. The Marais was insanely crowded, and when we finally got in to the Archives Nationales complex, all we saw were shrubs wrapped in plastic, a band playing, and people waiting in a line. So we got in line behind them and ended up in a building with some guy doing calligraphy and an audience leaving a staged reading that had clearly just ended. Since we had no idea when the next reading might start, and we were kind of done with the Nuit Blanche, we decided to get on the Metro and go home. I was a little disappointed, but Katie pointed out that waiting in line for something unimpressive is part and parcel of the French cultural experience. Well, she didn’t say that. She said, “We had our Nuit Blanche. It was an experience.” And she invited us to a party at her apartment the following Saturday.

Friday, October 6: Laura and I had Stefka’s friend Martin over for dinner. I haven’t met many Bulgarians, but it seems like they are all beautiful. Martin is a filmmaker, and he is currently working on a feature film that is shooting in Paris and in the suburbs. He had some very interesting things to say about being one of the few men in the Gender Studies program in Budapest. He was kind of alarmed by how much I knew about him, in particular about his short film, Le Cornet. The three of us had a very nice dinner, with fabulous French pastries for dessert (a choclate éclair, a religieuse au café, and an Opéra). Afterwards Martin drove us to the Bastille district in his luxurious studio car, an Alpha Romeo. We went to a bar, where I drank several “Long Islands,” which were not appreciably different from American Long Islands. All in all, it was a very fun evening. Laura and I are hoping to see Martin again soon.

Monday 10/2-Wednesday 10/4: On Friday afternoon I had gone to the Commissariat de Police for my carte de séjour, but they were closed. So I went back on Monday and waited in line to get into the Police station. Then I waited in line to see the person to whom I had to show my documents. When I got up to her, I announced that I was an American student, and she said, in a nutshell, “You don’t belong here. Go to the Cité Internationale Universitaire.” Well, even though I was interested in seeing Emily’s old stomping grounds, I was a little bit annoyed that I had to wait in line so long to be told I was in the wrong place.

So I walked through the Parc Montsouris and out the other end and down to the Cité Internationale Universitaire. It was much nicer than the campus of the university where I studied in Angers. I found my way to the building that housed the “Accueil” for the carte de séjour, and I went downstairs and stood in line some more. When I got to the front of the line, the woman behind the desk was fine with five of my six documents: passport, birth certificate, visa, the lease for my apartment, and a letter from the School of Communication that said I have a fellowship for the year. She was not willing to accept my letter from the School of Communication as both “inscription” and “resources,” and told me I needed a letter in French to prove “inscription.” So I left, figuring I would email Sam to ask for such a thing. (Which I did, and he gave it to me on Wednesday…on letterhead and with a big gold seal.)

The big accomplishment of Tuesday was getting the internet to work. Our landlord had gotten us a “Livebox” that gives us a wireless network in the apartment. But it was supposed to be up and running seven days after the order was placed, and it had been ten days, so Laura and I were stymied. Laura was nervous about negotiating a phone call to tech support in French. So I called. And I got this nice guy and I explained, “Notre Livebox ne marche pas. Les lumières clignotent.” (Our Livebox isn’t working. The lights are blinking.) So he asked me if it was plugged in, and I said yes. Then he asked me if we had put DSL filters on all the phone lines, and I said yes, except the one downstairs, but we had unplugged the phone. And he said that was fine. So then he asks about the wire connecting the Livebox to the phone jack, and if it is plugged in correctly in the white slot. And I said that, no, it was in the yellow slot, next to the pink slot, and I didn’t see the white slot. And as he said, “the white slot is on the bottom,” I found the white slot and vocalized my epiphany. He laughed at me, and I got off the phone. So we were #3 on his list of basic errors stupid people make when they don’t follow directions.

On Wednesday we had our second seminar meeting. Laura and I got on the Metro and when we were switching from the 4 to the 6, I noticed a sign that said there were delays on the 6. So Laura suggested walking from Denfert-Rochereau to Place d’Italie. Which sounded like a good idea, until we started walking and three trains went by. We walked for a very long time, and figured out we were going to be late. Laura said it felt like we were on The Amazing Race. Apparently she knows someone who was actually on The Amazing Race, but I didn’t recognize the name. It must have been a season I didn’t watch. If the challenges involved running to find an apartment near a large university and trying to catch your breath in order to say intelligent things about Derrida...well, that would probably make me less likely to watch it. Anyway, we finally got to Place d’Italie, and we got on the other Metro line and made it to Sam’s apartment at 10:05. Our guest speaker for the day was late, so it turned out we were sort of on time. Gail, who also lives in our neighborhood, told us that taking the Metro was dumb and we should walk with her. It’s a half-hour walk, but it takes 45 minutes on the Metro. So we walked home with Gail and planned to meet the next Wednesday morning to walk over together (which we did today, 10/11).

Wednesday evening I wandered around the city. I had been feeling very frustrated about getting lost every two seconds. And I had made a philosophical decision to stop being frustrated about being lost, and to enjoy being lost in a new city. Kind of like the Bonnie Tyler song, “Lost in France,” except she is in the country and there are birds singing in a field. So not really like that song at all, but of course I can sing that song to myself when I'm lost in France and maybe that will make me feel better. Naturally, I got lost again. And frustrated. And I totally forgot to sing "Lost in France." But then I started to discover things. I found a sign directing me toward the Opéra and I started walking in that direction. On the way I found the Opéra-Comique, on rue Marivaux, with a “Theatrical Bookstore” across the street. I walked into the Musée-Théâtre Grévin, which seemed interesting. And then I walked past one building and on my right was the Opéra Garnier, practically out of nowhere. It was very cool. And I had concrete proof that my philosophy of being lost worked, because who knows what exciting building I might find around the next corner?

So then I headed for home. I was walking along the street (I think it was rue Montmartre) and this guy walked out of a pizza place and started staring at me. He was wearing an apron, and had stepped outside for a cigarette. And he just kept staring at me, like I should say hello. So I said, “Bon soir.” And he said, “Ciao bello!....Americano?” And I was like, “Si. Oui. Yes.” Then he started getting all handsy and asking me where I was from and what I was doing in Paris. He spoke English with an American accent, but I think he was Italian. Anyway, I’m not sure when I became culturally intelligible to him as an American. Was it the second he saw me? Was it the way I was walking? Was it the fact that I greeted him once he had stared at me for a while? Was it my accent when I said “Bon soir”? Was it all of these things? Maybe I will have to go back and ask.

I was a little tired by then, and the next Metro I found was Etienne-Marcel. To my delight, I discovered that it was on line 4. My Metro line. Perfect.

Here is a cheesy picture of me in front of the sparkly Eiffel Tower. (Photo by Dave.) I priced digital cameras the other day, and I think I probably should have bought one in the U.S.

Saturday 9/30-Sunday 10/1: My first weekend in Paris was kind of a bust. On Saturday night I was supposed to go out with Laura to meet some other American grad students. She took a nap in the afternoon, and I decided to go exploring. We planned to meet at Place de l’Odéon at 7:00. Well, I wasn’t too far from Place de l’Odéon at 6:45, but all of sudden it started pouring rain, so I took refuge in a Metro station briefly. The rain let up, and I ventured out to try to find my way. It turned out that I walked in the wrong direction entirely. Then it started pouring again and I stood in a doorway for a while. I finally got to Place de l’Odéon around 7:45. There were a lot of people going into the theatre for a show that started at 8:00. (Side note: the streets near the bigger theatres are mostly named after playwrights. Rue Corneille and Rue Racine are near the Odéon. Rue Molière is by the Comédie-Française, and the Opéra-Comique is on Rue Marivaux.) I stood around there until everyone had gone inside, correctly figuring that I had missed Laura and company. When she got home later that night, we lamented our lack of cell phones. But I still haven’t gone to get one yet. I’m beginning to understand why Jacob doesn’t have one. It’s sort of nice to be able to disappear completely.

After the rain and the missed rendezvous, I wandered up to the Marais. I discovered the Centre Pompidou, which I enjoyed very much. I was hungry, so I went to a Kebab place and ordered a “sandwich Grec,” which is similar to gyros. It came with fries. I was full before I finished the sandwich, so I asked to have it wrapped “à emporter.” The waiter picked up the rest of my sandwich with his bare hands and took it over to the grill to wrap in foil. The owner, who had gone outside for a cigarette, came back in and said, “What, it wasn’t good?” And I said, “Oui,” it was very good, but I wanted to take the leftovers home for lunch tomorrow. I was a little bit annoyed with myself for saying “Oui” instead of “Si,” which would have been the correct affirmative response to his negative question.

Sunday evening Laura and I had a visit from a guy named Aurélien, who was hitting on Laura quite aggressively. He had interesting things to say about the upcoming French elections, and how Sarkozy won’t win because Chirac, and by extension the conservative party machinery, isn’t supporting him. He also thought Sarkozy’s anti-immigration stance wouldn’t play well because “Sarkozy” is very clearly not a French last name. Based on the right wing being split, and the fact that he thinks people will be excited to vote for a woman, Aurelien predicted an easy victory for Segolene Royal.

I haven’t been following the French news so much as I’ve been watching French game shows. There is a whole block of them from 5:00 PM to around 7:00 PM every weekday. The first one is called La Cible (The Target ...I vaguely remember an American gameshow called Bullseye and can't help but wonder if they are related). It involves people listing things that fit in a particular category. Like “adjectives that start with R.” In the second round the host lists three things and you have to figure out what the category is and then list more things that belong. Verb conjugations come up a lot. I can do pretty well with those. Teams get eliminated along the way until the final round, which involves bidding on a contract. The bonus round is complicated. My favorite thing about this show is that after each category they pan to an “expert” who is set up in a study like the narrator from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and he tells the contestants other things they could have listed. He also flirts with the host, and if the category was songs (songs by Vanessa Paradis, or songs that include the word “boat,” or whatever), he plays short clips of songs they missed, and the audience claps in unison and sings along.

Around 5:30, you can switch from channel 2 to channel 3 and watch Des Chiffres et des lettres ("Of Numbers and Letters"), which has terrible production values. There is a male host of impish grin and ambiguous sexual orientation, who looks vaguely like Dave Foley and serves very little purpose. This one also has experts, a female expert for letters and a male expert for numbers. In letter puzzles, the players take turns asking the letter expert for either a consonant or a vowel. Then they try to create the longest word from the series of letters they end up with. In number puzzles, they have to use arithmetic to manipulate several one and two-digit numbers to come up with a particular 3-digit number. Members of the studio audience all bring notebooks with them and work the puzzles along with the contestants. With the math problems, if the players don’t come up with the answer, the experts sometimes ask if anyone in the audience did. There is also a “Duel” segment, where the contestants try to be the first to solve puzzles sent in by viewers at home. The ending of the show is really anticlimactic. The host just kind of says, “OK. It’s over, and you have more points so you win.”

When I lived in Angers, the LeMénagers loved to watch Questions pour un Champion at 6:00. It’s still on. I think the graphics have changed a little bit. The host looks pretty much exactly the same as he did ten years ago. They start with 4 contestants, and the first three to get nine points move on to round two. They choose categories to try to answer four questions in a row. The two who do the best there move onto the head to head final, where questions start out being worth four points and gradually decrease in value as the host continues talking. The winner gets 500 Euros, or the chance to come back and try to win five times in a row, at which point they would get the big jackpot. They always decide to come back, and they almost always lose the next day. So they get an encyclopedia from Larousse for their trouble.

Finally is the French version of Deal or no Deal, which is called A Prendre ou à laisser (“Take it or Leave It” might be a better translation). I get the impression that it predates the American version. The American version is glossier, with the models and briefcases, but the French host, “Arthur” (one name, like Cher or Madonna) is prettier and more charismatic than Howie Mandel. The money amounts are in gift-wrapped boxes, and the people who open them were also potential contestants, one from each region of France. It is perhaps even more unwatchable than the American version, primarily because the contestant can run up and kiss the person who opened a box with a small amount. And they play upbeat music when the contestant is doing well, and sad music when the contestant is doing poorly. And Arthur is all sympathetic and rolls around on the floor in agony when the contestants inevitably piss away an offer from the bank.

I expect to spend less time watching game shows as my social life and my ability to write my dissertation improve. I don't think I will miss them very much.

Wednesday 9/27-Friday 9/29: We had our first Critical Theory seminar on Wednesday morning. Laura and I underestimated how much time it would take to get there on the Metro because we had to transfer twice. We also went in the wrong direction when we got out of the Metro. So we ended up being about 15 minutes late. There were twelve of us crowded into Sam’s study/exercise room. We went around the room and talked about our dissertation projects. And Sam talked a lot about Paris and space, and Parisians having a sixth sense about space and never bumping into each other. I don’t know where he’s been walking, but I want to walk around in that place. My impression is that Parisians just don’t give a shit where they’re going, or at what speed, or who they inconvenience on the way. But maybe that’s particular to the 14th, which is where I do most of my walking.

We had a very nice lunch at a restaurant across the street from Sam’s house. For my entrée (appetizer), I chose the “Terrine St. Jacques,” thinking it would be some kind of paté. It was actually the fish jell-o thing that I used to hate when they served it to us in Angers. But this one was very good. And then I had lamb with mashed potatoes for my “plat principal,” followed by flan with pears for dessert.

For the next three days, I did laundry. Someone had suggested to me before I left Chicago that I could save time by packing dirty clothes. And I was resistant to that idea, but I ended up doing it in the end, because I knew we would have laundry facilities in the apartment in Paris. Now, mind you, I only did two loads of laundry, but it took three days to do them. Well, the wash cycle only took about two hours for each load. But the dryer doesn’t dry the clothes at all. I ran the load with the jeans through the dryer three times, and everything was still soaked. So I ended up hanging things all over the house. There is a drying rack over the bathtub, and I also found a baby gate that worked well as a second drying rack.

On Friday, I decided it was time to try to get my carte de séjour, the residency permit I need to stay in France for the year. I had to make copies and stop by the post office before I could go to the Commissariat de Police to wait in line. The copies took forever because the copier didn’t like my American paper. (French paper is a little bit longer and possibly wider than 8.5” x 11”). It ended up printing them on legal size paper, and the guy who owned the copy shop/internet café totally made fun of me. Then I went to the post office, where the asshole post office dude pretended he didn’t understand me when I said I wanted one pre-stamped envelope and a book of stamps. He annoyed me. Then I got lost trying to find the Commissariat. By the time I got there it was 4:00, and the carte de séjour office was closed for the day. So I was to go back Monday morning.

In the afternoon, Laura asked me if I would want to go to the movies that night. She thought it would be fun to see Le Diable s’habille en Prada. And it was playing in English with subtitles at the theatre near our apartment. I enjoyed Meryl Streep, though sometimes her vocal tonality was uncomfortably TCD-esque, and I really didn’t want to go there with that comparison. Laura pointed out that the story continues the unproductive social narratives of “successful women are unhappy” and “following your boyfriend will make you happy.” I had trouble sleeping that night. I think I ate too much candy at the theatre.

Monday, 9/25-Tuesday 9/26: Our building has a little tiny elevator, which was helpful for getting my massive suitcases upstairs. But usually we come up the spiral staircase, because it’s only one floor, after all. When you come into the apartment, there’s a little foyer area with a coat rack, and double doors that lead into the spacious living room/dining room area. In one corner of the living room is a tiny wooden spiral staircase that leads to the master bedroom and a bathroom. (We aren’t renting the master bedroom, because the owner comes back about once a month for business. But she encouraged us to use the downstairs bathroom, because it has a “superior” shower.) Our bedrooms are at either end of a hallway that is behind you and to the left when you first come in the door. Laura’s is done in pink, and mine is done in blue. And we have matching desks, bookshelves, and wardrobes that are clearly from IKEA. In between the bedrooms, on the right side of the hallway are a “salle de bains” with a sink and bathtub, and a separate “WC” with a toilet and the washing machine. The kitchen is on the left and features lovely appliances. Anyway, the apartment is very nice.

Monday afternoon, Laura showed me around our quartier. There are several boulangeries where we can buy bread, a Monoprix supermarket, a fair number of neighborhood bars/brasseries, a fromagerie, a pharmacie, some tabacs, and a big church. There are also two MacDonald’s, a Pizza Hut, and a Domino’s. We are near the Alésia stop on the #4 line of the Metro.

I did some of my own wandering around the neighborhood on Tuesday. I got a little bit lost and I was hungry, so I decided to get a sandwich. I walked by a couple of sandwich places and spotted a bar with a sandwich menu. So I went in and looked at the sandwich menu. The bartender (it turned out she was the owner) asked me what kind of sandwich I wanted, and I asked for a sandwich au pâté, since they seemed inexpensive. And then I asked for a beer, and I did not understand the next thing she said at all. It sounded like “mm-Lef-womp-wa.” So this guy who was sitting at the bar pointed at his beer and said “une Leffe” and I was like, “Oh, sure, I’ll have one of those.” I had not heard of Leffe before, but it turned out to be quite good. The bartender then says to the guy, “Merci, Monsieur le professeur.” Then she went to get me a sandwich. She came back with this enormous long roll full of pâté, and she told me it was “pâté Grand-mère.” I assumed that was supposed to be evocative of having been made by a grandmother rather than being made of grandmothers. The sandwich was very good, but of course the minute I started eating, the bartender wanted to have a conversation. So she asked me if I was Canadian, and I said no, I was from the U.S. She asked where. I said Chicago. She told me she has a sister in Ohio and that her sister is coming to visit soon. Then she talked to the other guy some more, and when he left she decided to make a phone call to complain about her neighbors to their landlord. I wasn’t really clear what the issue with the neighbors was. It sounded like an extra person had moved in. She was definitely annoyed about it, and couched her annoyance as concern for her business.

I don’t really remember what else happened that day. I probably went to bed early because I knew I had to get up the next morning for our first seminar meeting.

I am a Ph.D. student spending the year in Paris to work on my dissertation. I set up this blog to communicate with the folks back home, so you can check in and read about what I'm doing without actually having to send me an email and ask me.

The first entry is about my flight to Paris:

Monday, September 25: Arrival in Paris at 8:30 AM, after a bumpy flight during which I got very little sleep. I was in the very last row, on the aisle, sitting next to another student who had purchased a ticket through STA Travel. The last row was good because we were close to the lavatory, but we had to listen to this one flight attendant’s constant complaining about how she was on probation. I never could figure out why she was on probation, but it sounded like the easiest way to land on probation was to be late for work. We also ended up having to wait for our meals. I chose the beef, but the pasta looked like a much better choice. My seatmate, a recent graduate of Truman State College in Missouri, was on his way to Strasbourg where he is going to spend the year teaching English. I hope he has fun. I told him my story about going to English class at a middle school in Brittany when I studied in Angers ten years ago. Maybe you don’t know this story. I was talking to this group of three 12-year-old French girls, and the first thing they asked me was, “Do you know any drag queens?” When I was 19, I did not know any drag queens. The girls were very disappointed, but they proceeded to show me what appeared to be drag queen trading cards. In telling the story to my seatmate, I theorized that the movie Priscilla, Queen of the Desert had probably come out just before I went to France in 1995-1996. According to imdb.com, my theory was correct. But it was still kind of bizarre, because why were 12-year-old French girls collecting drag queen trading cards? Were they even allowed to watch that movie? Later that day, I led the school assembly in singing “Imagine,” and my fellow Americans joined in for the Notre Dame Victory March. It was all very surreal. Anyway, my seatmate was a little bit freaked out by the story of the drag queen trading cards. While I expect there are some drag queens in Missouri, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know any of them.

I watched The Family Stone as my main in-flight movie. We had individual video screens and could choose from seven channels. For a while I watched the French language programming, which was about Senegal. There was a woman who talked about Senegalese identity being part French, part religious, and part something specifically Senegalese. It made me think of Emily and cultural intelligibility. Another in-flight movie option was Poseidon, which the woman in front of me chose to watch. I wasn’t really interested in watching a disaster movie about a boat while flying in a plane. (Of course, I did watch Speed on a moving bus once, which definitely made it much more exciting.) But when they restarted the movies, I watched a few minutes of the beginning of Poseidon. The dialogue was terrible, but not quite bad enough to be campy. And Stacy Ferguson (Fergie of the Black-Eyed Peas, formerly of Kids Incorporated and Wild Orchid) sang something that was not “The Morning After,” at which point I was done with Poseidon.

The rest of the flight was fairly uneventful. When we landed, I just waited for everyone else to leave, because I was in the last row. That was actually kind of nice, because I didn’t feel any rush to get off the plane. I showed my passport to a policeman, who stamped it and sent me on my way to baggage claim. I had so much luggage. And it was so heavy. But there are free carts in Charles de Gaulle, so that was cool. I paid an obscene amount of money for a taxi to my new apartment. The driver said that it was unusual for an American to speak French at all, let alone as well as I did. I’m sure he said it just so I would give him a nice tip. It worked.

When I got to the building there was a number keypad on the front door, and no buzzers. Laura had not warned me about this. So I waited outside for a few minutes and thought about just yelling “Laura.” But then some guy came out of the building and held the door for me. I dragged my luggage in and eventually got up to the “première étage,” which means first floor but really means second floor because the French start numbering the floors with 0. This is one fabulous apartment...

I think I will end there for now and try to post this. More later…