A stroll down rue Daguerre

Well, my master's exam is finally over (yay!) and my summer has passed with it (wah!). My feeling was that the exam went pretty well, but I'm still waiting on the results. In the meantime, I'm back at work at the study abroad company full-time until we get through new student orientation, when I will scale back to part-time to accommodate a couple of classes and some tutoring on the side.

As always, I'm struck by how tiring it can be to just sit at a desk for 8 hours. It's also a little annoying, after a year as a carefree student, to not be in control of my own schedule--to no longer have the ability to eat at odd hours or to take mid-afternoon naps. However, one thing that IS nice about a "real" job is knowing that when I leave the office, I'm done--no speed-reading novels, no 3am essays, no studying for exams. Throughout my years in university, the time I've spent on work outside of class has always far exceeded the time spent in class, and very few of those hours fell within the window of a regular workday.

Another benefit of my job is that it's located on the cutesy rue Daguerre, which is about a 15 minute walk from my front door and a microcosm of all shops/businesses that could be considered typically French. In celebration of my (relatively) new job and neighborhood, I thought I would treat you to a virtual "promenade" around the "quartier".

Here's the Tour Montparnasse, looking over the Montparnasse cemetery, just a block away from my work:

Rue Daguerre itself begins with a series of markets. First up are foie gras and cheese markets, as well as a handful of bakeries and pastry stores not shown. Next is a fish market:

(we actually bought a pair of those giant crabs, or rather Tom did, to try and cure my hankering for Chesapeake blue crab. Conclusion: tasty, but MUCH harder to open than my thin-shelled bluies, especially considering our lack of proper crab-cracking equipment. I had planned to impress Tom with my know-how of lifting the tab, popping the back off and cracking the body in two, but apparently that doesn't work so well with monster crustaceans. It took a good hour of butter-knife and rolling-pin chiseling to pick those suckers, which made a mess of the kitchen--and of me! Good thing they were delicious.)

Next is fruit and veggie markets:
And then Amorino's, my favorite gelatto chain, which does good business in the summertime (also, rollerblading is still popular in a big way in Europe):
This menu marks a cute crêperie that I've probably taken you to/will take you to if you visit(ed) me in Paris. At lunch time you can bask in the sunshine on the terasse (just visible at the end of the alley) and enjoy a "menu" of a meal crêpe, a dessert crêpe, and a ceramic bowl of Breton cidre, all for 10 euros:
Florists shops:
Epic stacks of ancient-smelling tomes in a used book store:
Rotisserie chickens, for sale to-go in front of kebab stores or quick-stop cafés:
My favorite little tea store, where you're invited to smell (and sometimes taste!) before you buy. I've been slowly tasting my way through their collection of (surprisingly inexpensive) loose teas. Current favorites are a grapefruit green and a chocolate and blood orange dessert black:
One of several wine stores, with bottles starting around 2.50 euros, staffed with wine enthusiasts who are only too willing to provide recommendations based on extensive personal experience:
A cute toy store, called "Alice's Cousins", whose decoration is based on characters from the popular Lewis Carrol books. It's one of those toy stores that sells eclectic little treasures. My favorite was a book called "Pablo le spermatazoïde" (Pablo the sperm) that was in their front window for several weeks, featuring the adventures of a little anthropomorphized sperm and his eventual victory in the big swimming contest...
A man smoking in one of the street's many brasseries (it's been illegal to smoke indoors for several years now in France, although as you can see, sometimes people barely make it past the threshold). If you look carefully you can also spy one of the graffiti Space Invaders, who has fallen victim to a street sign:
The shop across from our office, which is--I kid you not--an accordion store:

Its musical wares:
And finally, the two sets of iconic, ubiquitous yellow arches that mark the end of the street.

The Métro:
And the Macdo':

Strike!

With the RER on strike (yet again) today, I opted to walk home from Denfert Rochereau. I started hearing Michael Jackson about half way along Rue Daguerre. I decided to investigate, and this is what I found:


Not far away, I ran into an awkward white dance party, rocking out to tracks from Grease:
(that's for you, Laura)


Block party? Festival? No, of course not. It's a strike!

Confused? So was I. It took a group of excited, costumed French workers and a few sheets of propaganda to explain it to me. Apparently the strikes are nationwide, against a new proposed law that would push the age of retirement back from where it is currently set at 60 years old. Their posters made me laugh: "6o isn't early enough, 40 years of working is already too much!"--not because I disagree with the idea, necessarily, but because starting work at 20 is pretty old by American standards, not to mention totally unrepresentative of French youth, who seem to linger around the house and mooch off their parents until their mid 20's.

Sticker of plebeian rage were everywhere:
As were banners and huge helium balloons strapped to cars:


There were a range of different career fields represented at the strike, from street cleaners, to industrial chemical workers, to nurses. This nurse was wearing a lab coat and a jester hat with syringes dangling from its points: Grève-ing starts young. Here, we see that even the students are invested in the age of retirement:
The magic words, it seemed, were "salariés respectés" (respected workers). For the French, retirement seems to be not so much a matter of resources (or lack thereof) so much as it is an issue of respect--or at least that's the way it is being framed in the reactionary rhetoric.
The parade started to move, and I moved with it, cheering and drinking in the excited atmosphere:
Many of the vans were equipped with loudspeakers and blasted music, motivational, anti-Sarkozy speeches or, most commonly, simple chants: (in this one, she's leading the paraders in a cry of "tous ensemble, tous ensemble--Grève! Grève!" or "all together, all together--Strike! Strike!" which is catchy, I suppose, if rather uninspired)



The MJ performance wasn't the only aspect of the strike that felt bizarrely party-like, as the drink menu on the ubiquitous food vans showed:
Ah. The abandoned, lime-filled cups and jolly strikers suddenly made sense.

This particular food van made me smile, because it seemed like the majority of its protest signage was general, revolutionary stuff (note the Che Guevera flag), which I assume means that it has been adapted for frequent use at this type of event. And you know what? That's probably a smart business move, because even if the economy plummets, France will still continue to strike (probably moreso) and those strikers will still want their 2 euro beers and baguette sandwiches. Even the French term "en grève" (on a strike) sounds to me like a habitual action, almost happy: "on vacation", or even comical: "gone fishing".
But maybe that's just because I've grown accustomed to hearing it with a casual attitude and a frequency that I never hear associated with its English equivalent. The French are often mocked for their eagerness to strike, but the American taboo on strikes reflects a cold, capitalist approach that values efficiency over workers' rights, and leaves the overworked and mistreated with little recourse. Striking in France makes these workers more visible, and as a result, more respected and more accommodated.

And even if the strike doesn't accomplish anything--if Sarko insists on dragging his 35-hr work week, early retiring country kicking and screaming into the modern world--well, at least the French got a good party out of it.

Here comes the sun...

Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting
Little darling, it seems like years since it's been clear...

Yes, folks, the sun has returned to Paris. It has been just a little under 50 degrees F (6 degrees C) for the last few days, and the clouds are finally clearing. My skin is soaking up the vitamin D like that's its job (oh wait...)

The weather was so nice that I couldn't resist the opportunity to get a late afternoon coffee in in a street-side terrasse after class. I met up with Clare at a little cafe in Alèsia for an impromptu café crème and some macarons, a traditional French cookie. I got a rich burgundy mûre (blackberry) and a gold-dusted tiramisu, and Clare got violette and cherry-pistachio. Delicious.

Dorm Inform

So first off, I’ve added a picture to my last post of me with all of my crap in front of the super classy sign of the Super Hotel that I stayed in for two nights. The photo comes courtesy of my friend the Super front desk man, and doesn’t really do justice to my huge backpack, which you can hardly see. It doesn’t really do justice to my face, come to think of it. I was going for a tough woman look and it came off more like pissed off chipmunk. Alas. It’s a good thing it’s my brother who’s the actor and not me.

Housing update: I am now a resident of the Fondation des Etas-Unis at Cité Universitaire at the south end of the 14è arrondissement, for those who know their Parisian geography. My address, school land line and new swanky French cell phone are all now listed on my Facebook page should anyone feel the need to send me some lovin’ (ie drunk text message…yes, you can still text me, although I have no idea if that’s covered under Verizon unlimited). Since my last post, I actually had a last minute opportunity to move into my choice of two apartments in the upscale 15th/16th arrondissments; however, due to price relative to size and merits and some really positive feedback about Cité’s dorms from a former grad student, I opted to schlep on over here.

The deal I have here is really a bargain. For 425 euros/month, I have a pretty big room to myself with a big closet, a bed, a desk and chair, a sink (!), some lamps, and more shelves than I will probably be able to fill (says the literature student who hasn’t even started buying anything from her five page long reading list yet). Shared toilets, showers and a kitchen are right down the hall. I’m up on the 4th floor, which in France actually means 5th (they start at zero) so I have a fair amount of stairs to climb (there is an elevator, it’s just slow and French) but luckily they’re pretty spiral stairs. Being this high means that I have sun in my room for almost all of the afternoon/evening, so I can enjoy my garden and ivy-wall view, as well as a nice amount of wind. After answering ads on bulletin boards right after I got here, I have already managed to score a used, medium-sized fridge for 70 euros, which was hand-delivered to me by the Benin(ese?) man who used to own it after I finally found his apartment, as well as a big red section of carpet (from a departing student) for 6 euros. I still need a few more things, like a shower caddy, floor lamps, posters, etc (admittedly, it’s a little bizarre to be repeating my pre-freshman year shopping trips) but so far I’m pretty happy. More good news: I can receive guests here willing to share my small space if I declare them in advance—4 euros a night if you want to crash on my carpet, and 8 euros if you want to use one of their loaner fold-a-beds. Pretty sweet, right?

The campus is designed as an affordable community for (about 60%) international students to live. There are houses representing each country, varying in size and quality by what seems to me to be based on how much France likes that particular country. The US, German, Spanish and British houses are all pretty nice, while Morocco is shunted to the very edge and housed in a decrepit, institutional building, Tunisia is shut indefinitely for renovations (it needs it) and Algeria…well…doesn’t exist (while other more obscure countries with less of a “history” are represented, Armenia, Cambodia, Liban). (I actually stayed on this campus for a week during a heat wave four years ago and I was housed in the French engineering house, which was utterly miserable. Logical conclusion: Moroccans > engineers > Algerians). The campus is pretty, with a lot of grassy quad areas and trees, and a big campus center with a bank, a café, a cafeteria, a theater and a pool. (The cafeteria is no Great Room, but dinner is only 2.90, so I guess I can’t complain). It’s not real centrally-located, although it’s pretty well connected—there are bus, tramway and RER (part of the métro system) stops within a five minute walk from my building.

The building itself is pretty old and cool, with black-and-white spiral staircases, a computer labstudy rooms, lounges and a lecture hall that remind me of my dorm in Oxford. My only real complaint is the thinness of the walls. My neighbor seems to be a party-er, so fingers crossed it doesn’t continue too long into the semester. I’ve only met a few people so far (the Parisian semester doesn’t start until late Sept/early Oct, so we’re still fairly empty), but most people seem pretty cool. There’s an intentional 50/50 split of American and “other” to encourage comfort and exchange. Most of us are grad students, although there are a few undergrads as well as a few adult professionals, who are here on a short-term basis as researchers and living in the fully furnished suites with their families. The floor above mine is the artist’s floor, which houses musicians on the main hallway and visual artists in the four loft-style “studios” in the wings. I love the idea, although coupled with the lack of sound-proofing it can be a little annoying—I’ve already discovered that there’s a pretty prolific bassoonist/pianist in the room above mine (on the bright side, he’s really good! I recognized Gershwin today…).

Spent today enjoying random French conversations with strangers around campus and buying as much as I could comfortably carry home in reusable bags at Monoprix (in other words, not much). I think I need to get me one of them old man wheeley grocery stroller things.