Value For L'Argent?
In different ways, I find I'm wondering if I'm getting value for these French lessons. Coming home this afternoon, a girl in the hallway of our building asked me if I was taking the elevator (she had a scooter, but was offering to make way for me). I was taken by surprise, as I usually am when someone addresses me in French outside of well-rehearsed and limited contexts such as a grocery checkout, and responded "
No, je marche up" Er, um, never mind.
I had just come from my French school, where immediately following the class I had dropped into the office in order to sign up for another week. for over $200 per week I get three afternoons of instruction in a small group. Before the woman in the office registered me for next week, she mentioned that there was no class on Wednesday, because it's a holiday (
Toussaint). But it still costs the same? Well, yes. I may not speak the language, but I can do the math. I'm taking next week off.
Back In Class
French classes went much better this week. The teacher is efficient and organized, and seems to have things pitched at the right level for everyone. The class is six students in total, all pretty close to my level. There is a Spanish fellow with whose accent I have some difficulty, and a Finnish girl who may be a little behind the rest of us but could also simply be shy. The classes are constituted week by week, so it's a little hard to follow a program that suits everyone. That means we do mostly conversation and vocabulary and not a lot of grammar, or homework. I could use some more nose-to-the-grindstone rigour, but it's still a big improvement over the 15-20+ classes at the Alliance Francaise. I've signed up for another week, and we'll see how that goes.
Tripping Over History
I spent this morning in
Saint-Germain-en-Laye, meeting with a gentleman, NT, who my inestimable cousin ME connected me with. NT is a venture capitalist so has some considerable insight into the area where I'm looking for work.
Coming up out of the train station I found myself confronted, not by the usual next-to-the-train-station grungy little businesses, but a magnificent 600-year-old chateau. Walking into the front entrance (after my meeting - it's now a museum) I learned a little of its
history. It turns out I tripped over what was one of the grandest estates of the royal family for centuries, in which Louis XIV held court until he moved to Versailles.
It even has a moat
Dining with the Bohemians
AL leaves today, so yesterday evening we went out for dinner. We started at
Le Dôme, for oysters. There we admired the 1920's era lamps, stained glass and murals - although I believe during that period
Le Dôme was a much humbler restaurant (
Gayot backhandedly remarks that the decor is "neo-Art Deco"). There was one odd-looking couple who might have been "literary and leftish" (which is what one is told to expect by
The Economist), but if it had been in Sartre's day as it is now he wouldn't have been able to afford to eat there; and Trotsky would have sniffed "bourgeois" and departed at speed.
AL has developed a fondness for crêpes during her visit, so we had the rest of our dinner at a nearby
crêperie where one could more readily imagine Sartre tucking in.
North, South, East and Left
Yesterday AL and I climbed Montmartre to poke around the old Bohemian neighbourhood to the West. It took less time than I expected, because it's really quite compact - and the area didn't offer the galleries and antiquarian book stores I had imagined, but was mostly residential. Businesses were rather pedestrian and touristy shops. But it is quaint in the best possible sense, and it has a charming sense of age and individuality.
AL at the Lapin AgileWith time to kill before dinner, we found a movie just off the Boulevard St. Germain. Called
Bye Bye Blackbird, it was a British/German/Luxembourg production. The story was set behind the scenes of a turn of the (previous) century circus, revolving around two trapeze artists. It was a small film in a way, and because of that and its spare poetic tone, it's not the kind of film that gets released in North American theatres; but I would nonetheless recommend it for those who enjoy films that leave a little to the audience's imagination.
Janet and her colleague, MM, met us for dinner on Rue Oberkampf, a lively neighbourhood that we've visited before. On the
last occasion, we had drinks at a bar whose name I couldn't remember afterwards, and then went across the street to a terrific restaurant called Chez Justine. We had something of the same thing in mind this time, but didn't make it across the street, opting instead to eat at what we now know to be the
Café Charbon. MM, a native Parisian, advised us that the two establishments are the most renowned in the area. It's nice to know that my years spent on The Search For the Perfect Restaurant have left me with finely-honed instincts for a night out.
Free Chocolate
Yesterday
Lindt left a free chocolate bar in our mailbox - and it was no Kit-Kat either: 100g of 70% cocoa dark chocolate. It's part of a
special Paris-wide promotion they're doing. I don't remember that ever happening in Toronto.
Strike One
Today's French lesson did not go well. When I arrived at the school, the designated classroom was empty (and I was not too early), so I had to go back to the office and flag somebody down to seek an explanation. No one was sure where I was supposed to be, but the consensus seemed to be a classroom in another building a block away. In that classroom I found a teacher and one other student, but I was not expected. The teacher concluded that I was probably in the right place; but I have no idea why since my card said intermediate and his other student was a raw beginner. He tried gamely to juggle us both, but the result favoured no one. My fellow student, a middle-aged Latvian real estate agent, plainly couldn't follow when the teacher and I were speaking, and I had to sit patiently while he struggled to understand why if you live in a house it's not "chez la maison".
At the end of the afternoon, I went back to the office to change classes. Fortunately, for once, the one person who knew what was going on and could help me, was actually there. I elected to start fresh next week with a new class.
The Biggest Turkey in Paris
A few weeks ago I looked into ordering a free-range turkey ("
dinde fermier") for Thanksgiving. My usual poultry stall in the market was happy to arrange it, but advised that the largest one could hope for was four kilograms. This didn't seem like a very large turkey to me, but they explained that the
fermier birds aren't as large as others. I got the same story elsewhere, so I went ahead and ordered one last Sunday, explaining that it was for a Canadian Thanksgiving dinner. They called on Friday to confirm that the bird would be available and Sunday I went with AL to pick it up. Well, I guess I had managed to make it clear that I'd like as large a bird as they could manage, because what was waiting for me was 6.8 kg (I had to weigh it on the bathroom scale because our kitchen scale isn't large enough). The poultry vendor seemed as surprised about it as we were, and handed it over with cautions about cooking it slowly, and advice that we could freeze the leftovers.
I wasn't able to muster enough ingredients for stuffing to properly fill the animal, but with a little filler it didn't look empty (I almost threw in the leftover rice; if we hadn't been having guests I'd have given it a whirl). They had cleaned it nicely - even too nicely, since there wasn't a lot of skin left to sew up the cavity. The bird fit in our Paris-sized convection oven, but only barely. The vegetables had to sit in a pan on the bottom, which wouldn't have been possible if there had been an element. But it came out golden and moist.
Our second guest was a Canadian co-worker of Janet's, T, whose fiancée is back in Ottawa for a couple of weeks, making us four in all. The rest of the meal was fairly typical for the occasion: potatoes and roast veg, green beans, salad, and apple and rhubarb pies for dessert (furnished by T, who couldn't choose so brought both). We made an appetizer from figs, having found a recipe in one of our new French cookbooks that we wanted to try out. It must be the season for figs because they've recently appeared in the market. Dried, they're not my favorite fruit, but fresh is another story. The recipe - for figs stuffed with chevre and pistachios - was challenging, since there was some specialized vocabulary that we had to guess at from the context, but it did seem to work out.
The four of us gorged ourselves, but didn't manage to eat much more than half of one side of the turkey. It's currently taking up about most of the top shelf of our Paris-sized fridge.
Now there's nothing left to do but - *gulp* - wash the dishes.
Les Nuits Blanches
Since AL was jet-lagged anyway, and getting a good night's sleep was scarcely an issue, we went off to explore
Nuit Blanche last night. I gather this all night artistic event (I don't know quite what else to call it) has spread to many other cities, including Toronto, so may be familiar to most of you. We started off on the
Champs Elysées because we'd read someone had sculpted a herd of sheep out of ice, and we wanted to see that. We had a little trouble finding it because it wasn't as obvious as the thronged creations across the street at the
Grand Palais and the
Petit Palais, whose line-ups were too daunting for us.
Chicks dig sheepWe strolled with the crowds down to the Place de la Concorde, where the obelisk and statues were all lit up in blue lights. The artist, Yves Klein, had purportedly done it in "Klein Blue", but I noted at least two distinct shades. Anyway, when you put it that way it sounds more like a branding than artistry to me.
Once we'd finally found the sheep we headed off to the
Marais. Again, lots of crowds, but that would be normal for a Saturday night here. We poked through venues where the line wasn't too long. Mostly we just enjoyed the lively scene.
This lady sat continuously winding up her dolls
When we'd had enough we took the
Batobus, a boat that plies the Seine on a regular route like a bus, from the Hotel de Ville to the end of the line and then found a cab home by the civilized hour (for la Nuit Blanche) of 2:30.
First Guest of the Fall
A friend of Janet's, AL, has arrived and is working on sorting out her jet lag. We took her shopping down in the left bank this afternoon.
It was a successful shopping trip for many reasons; but chiefly for me, because Janet and I bought our first anniversary present. We had decided that for our first anniversary (
traditionally, paper) we would buy a work of art and have been looking around for something we both liked since the spring. We found, in a gallery selling chiefly vintage posters, a
gouache design for a café window from the '20s or '30s. It was a little more expensive that we'd have liked, but on this return visit we negotiated a better price, and walked away art collectors.
My snapshot is a very poor reproduction of our new piece
Back to School
I'm going to try out a new French course. I went to the
Ecole France Langue and signed up for several hours of intensives classes next week. It seems expensive to me, although Janet assures me that it's reasonable, given the much smaller class size of four to six. We'll see if I like it before I ssign up for further weeks.
The school is in the sixteenth, a block away from the Place Victor Hugo (above), which means that it's close enough to walk home from if I've time and the weather is nice.
I've also started studying for the
CFA, so life could get very academic.
The Tekfen Phil
Last night Janet and I attended a concert of the
Tekfen Philharmonic, to which Janet had been invited by virtue of the work she's been doing regarding Turkey. It's an ensemble that claims to have members from 23 different nations around the Black, Caspian and Eastern Mediterranean seas, with a mission to promote peace and understanding among nations. But mostly it's a professional orchestra that plays music.
Most of the pieces were from the region, and most of them featured a soloist playing an instrument I'd never known the name of, although the sounds were familiar:
ney,
oud,
zarb,
kanun,
kemençe, and
tulum. I think my favourite was the ney, which was a flute with a haunting voice. But the tulum, middle-eastern bagpipes, were a bit of a surprise. The music was excellent, and different enough to intrigue.
The concert was held in the
Eglise Saint Roch, which gave us something to look at - despite Janet's excellent connections, our seats did not permit us to see the musicians very well.
(I was a little surprised by the constant photography that took place during the concert. Since everyone has a camera in their phone now, everyone is out there snapping away, myself included obviously, to document our lives; but surely it's still common courtesy to refrain from taking pictures, with or without a flash - and there were many with - while the musicians are actually playing.)
