A Parisian's Paris

I have heard a number of different perspectives regarding Paris France. Some say it's overrated with too many people crowding the streets, peddlers trying to pawn off cheap replicas of monuments, and filled with overpriced restaurants and coffee shops. I have come to learn that’s just the superficial touristy version of a city that has much more to offer if you're lucky enough to see it through the eyes of a true Parisian. Yes, there were what seemed like millions of people rushing from one place to another, and an endless stream of tour buses dropping off gawkers at every street corner. The key is to try and see the big picture. These tourists are coming from all over the world. In the three days we spent traversing the city we could hear every language spoken from American and British English to Italian, Spanish, German, and a slew of Asian languages that I’m not even going to try and differentiate. Everyone is trying to capture the history and romanticism of such a magical city in their own way, and with my friend Yann and his girlfriend Marion, Kathryn and I got a taste of what it’s like to be a true Parisian for the weekend.


Getting through Friday was a bit of a challenge (and required more than a few cups of strong coffee), but before we knew it we were reclining in our first-class cabin seats on our way to Paris. The TGV got us there in exactly one hour, and Yann and Marion were waiting for us on the platform. After quick introductions, we boarded an inter-city train towards the suburbs to drop off our baggage. It was great to see my old friend again especially since my last trip in 2007 was mid-week, and he worked a majority of the time. The ride was quick, and highlighted by some drunk guy one car over yelling at the top of his lungs about nothing in particular.

Yann’s Mom was waiting up to greet us when we arrived. In true “Mom” fashion she had drinks and a little chocolate gateaux waiting for us (I was looking forward to the opportunity to talk with his parents because during my last trip my French was rather poor compared to now). We chatted for a bit while Yann changed from his work clothes, and then hopped in the car and drove to a little bar maybe 10 minutes from the house. We had a comfortable spot, but unfortunately ended up sitting just below the speakers that were blasting American dance hits from the late 1990’s/early 2000’s. We had a couple drinks while shouting back and forth across the table to each other in French. We left the bar just before closing time to get home and crash a bit “early” (~1:30am) so as to be prepared for the next day’s adventures.

Saturday we slept in until about 10am, and woke up to find Yann’s parents had gone to a patisserie, and gotten us a breakfast spread of croissants, pain-au-chocolates and some kind of brioche baked with chocolate chips. That plus a couple soup-bowl sized cups of coffee got the day started off right, but we were urged not to overindulge because we would be eating lunch about two hours later. Yann’s Mom cooked us up the best meal we have had in France so far, for our dejeuner. We started off with salad and creamy fois-gras spread over fresh baked bread which was picked up from the bakery just before the meal started. That was followed by a perfectly cooked tender roast beef in a sautéed mushroom sauce, accompanied by potatoes aux gratin, and of course a bottle of red wine. I had to stop myself after my second helping knowing that we had a long day of walking and sightseeing ahead of us, and I needed to be able to move after the meal (that ability came under serious jeopardy even without a third piece of meat). After the main course they brought out a dish with four or five different specialty cheeses on it and another loaf of bread. Finally to cap it all off was the chocolate gateaux covered with homemade crème-anglais. This was all to make sure we had enough energy for the day, but in actuality I think by the time we finished everyone at the table was ready for a mid-afternoon nap.

Having only the weekend for our trip there was no time to rest, and soon after we finished lunch we hurried over to the train station to catch the metro into the city. First up on our to-do list was visiting the Eiffel Tower, and the metro dropped us off about a block away. It was a great place to start our tour, but apparently that was the plan of every other traveler visiting Paris because there must have been ten thousand people waiting in the lines to go up to the top. Luckily both Kathryn and I have already visited the top of the tower so we took the opportunity to stroll around the park surrounding it, and get a couple of good pictures. The only downside to this stop (other than the enormous crowd) was that for five minutes or so there was the strongest odor of spoiled sardines wafting through the park as we were walking. That didn’t limit our stay, and when we had enough of the Tower we headed towards the Champs-Elysée.

The next hour or so was spent snapping pictures of the Arc-de-Triomphe, and weaving our way between the crowds down la plus belle avenue du monde. Our destination was the apartment of Marion who by amazing chance was able to secure a place not 100meters off the Champs-Elysée. It was just a single room studio apartment, but she had a small kitchen and a bathroom, the rent was reasonable and the location was unbeatable. We hung out there for a short while before venturing back out onto the street to see the lights of the Christmas market glowing in the fast approaching darkness of the night. Along our walk we met up with one of Yann’s friends whom I met on my last visit. The five of us walked through the market together before he had to catch a metro train to meet his girlfriend.

By this time we had about made it to the end of the Champs-Elysée so we turned off the main road and Yann and Marion took us on an impromptu tour of the luxurious district that surrounded us. I’m not sure of the name of the area, but around every corner there were Bentley’s, Maybach’s and displays of the most lavish diamond and precious stone jewelry I have ever seen. We also walked past the illuminated Opera house and finished our walk at the Galleries Lafayette where the entire building was lit up with color-changing lights.

Next we took the metro back to Marion’s apartment. This was easier said than done because there were so many people cramming onto the subway cars. We almost missed our stop since the exit was blocked by an almost immoveable wall of passengers. Once we arrived, Marion prepared some fantastic aperitif’s to subdue our appetites, and we opened a few bottles of wine to pass the time before meeting up with friends at le Bar n’importe de quoi. This was the French imitation of a dive bar, but in actuality it was a pretty nice place. By chance we got a couple tables together just after we arrived, and throughout the night a number of Yann and Marion’s friends showed up. The music wasn’t too loud either and this was a great forum for us to practice more of our French. There was a dance floor in the basement, but we mainly kept to the upstairs bar area. The bartenders were friendly and enjoyed showing off their skills by juggling bottles and other tricks of the sort. It was a really great night, but when it came time to leave we ran into a bit of a problem.

Paris has the pickiest taxi drivers I think I’ve ever encountered. Honestly they could use a few more driving around in the first place because at least 90% of them already had passengers. The real problem came when we finally got a few to pull over. Yann’s house is maybe 15-20min outside of the center of Paris, and for the cabbies that was unacceptable. The first four or five taxi’s we talked to just sped away when they heard where we needed to go. Our next idea was to find a good looking corner and call for a taxi to come pick us up, but that was impossible because each time we tried all we got was a message that all the taxi’s in the area were occupied. Finally around 3:45am we finally convinced a very talkative Haitian cabbie to give us a lift back. This guy had an opinion on just about everything, but partly because of the hour and partly because he didn’t pronounce any of his “R’s,” we had quite a difficult time understanding him for the first 10min or so before we picked up on his accent.

Again we crashed hard as soon as our heads hit the pillow, and unfortunately I was not able to drag myself out of bed at 8am to go watch Yann’s soccer match (I would feel worse, but when he was staying with us in Chicago he was never able to get up for one of my football practices at 6am either so I think we’re even). We slept until about noon, and Yann’s Mom was worried for me because I missed breakfast so she made up for it at lunchtime. She cooked us another massive lunch starting with salad and a quiche aux poireaux, followed by spaghetti with a homemade creamy Carbonara sauce, then the cheese plate and desert of chocolate gateaux and crème-anglais, washed down with another bottle of red wine. Everything was expectantly delicious, and when we had finished she packed us a little meal for the train home with the leftover quiche, and some specialty butter biscuits from Bretagne.

Next we packed up our things, said goodbye and thanked Yann’s parents for all the amazing things they did for us, and went with Yann to the train stop. He was going over to Marion’s to nap since he only got four hours of sleep the night before. We took the train to Gare de Nord together, and said our goodbyes, then parted ways. We had about two hours to kill before our train back to Lille left so we found a nice little café outside the station, ordered some drinks, and relaxed while watching the people passing by.

It was such an amazing petites vacances we are already beginning to plan our return trip (I left my sunglasses there so we’ll have an excuse). After the weekend of late nights, large meals and constant conversation in French we were exhausted in the best of ways. Even with the crowds of what seemed like a million people strewn all along the Champs-Elysée we never felt like tourists, just Parisians navigating through the sea of foreigners. One last observation that was very apparent to both Kathryn and I was our ability to understand everyone we spoke with in Paris. Compared to the northern accents of Lille the French spoken in Paris is clean, crisp and comprehendible. We were able to determine our language skills are much better than previously thought; it just depends on who we are speaking with.

Just two more weeks of classes back in Lille, then a quick couple hours in London before catching our plane home to Chicago for the holidays.

A bientôt,
 
Jordan and Kathryn

Giving Thanks in Dunkerque

Our weekend day-trip to Dunkerque started off with a pretty tough decision. Take the 8am train that arrives in under an hour, or sleep in and take a later train that weaves through the countryside stopping in Arras, and arriving in Dunkerque almost three hours later? When we bought our tickets the early train was the obvious choice. Come 6am Saturday morning; we were starting to second-guess. After finally dragging ourselves out of bed we were dressed and out the door to Gare Lille-Flandres with enough time to grab a café and a petit-déjeuner for the ride.

The one hour ride passed relatively quickly and gave us a great view of some interesting little villages along the way. Unfortunately due to the hour I was not in a totally coherent state of mind so I can’t remember the names of these towns, but one had a very cool, medieval-looking city wall around it. Hopefully we can find out the name and spend a day there exploring.

The train made only three or four stops and before we knew it we were descending onto the platform and meeting our “tour guide” Joel. He is actually one of the English Language Assistants placed in Dunkerque. Thanks to the wonders of social-networking and Facebook we “met” Joel over the summer, as I assume most other Lille assistants did (he’s quite a celebrity amongst us), and when we told him we would be in his neck of the woods he offered to show us around.

First up on our agenda (as we had previously discussed due to the hour of our arrival) was to find somewhere to grab a grand-café and energize for the day. Unfortunately the place Joel had in mind was closed so we settled for an untested café around the corner. The coffee tasted of “le jus des chaussettes” (the French expression for coffee lacking in strength). However, it was strong enough to get the job done, and we were soon heading towards one of the few things this town has that Lille does not…the Beach!

Dunkerque is a very nice village with old churches and weekly town markets, but we have all those things in Lille too. Our goal was to have plenty of face time with the sand and surf. Joel did not disappoint. He told us that Dunkerque is quite famous for its ruins of old Nazi war bunkers set up along the coast to prevent the Allies from invading (lot of good that did). They were a good distance down the “boardwalk” of the town so we started off in their general direction while enjoying the scenery, shops, brasseries and dunes that lined the coast. One thing particularly surprising/unusual about Dunkerque was that while walking along the coast there was no salty, ocean-air smell like I remember from the Pacific coast in Oregon or the Atlantic coast in Kiawah. Maybe it has something to do with its proximity to England?

Joel had mentioned that we were in for a bit of a walk to view these bunkers, but we weren’t exactly prepared for the hike ahead of us. Luckily, other than about 5-10min of dark overcast clouds, the weather was sunny and warm, and the coastline was quite beautiful so the hour-plus journey passed without much notice. As with many other unprotected structures in France, the bunkers were covered in graffiti and in a rather run-down state. This of course is to be expected after 60 or so years of dune erosion and little to no maintenance.

We hiked all around the bunkers; peering inside now and then trying to imagine what it was like back in WWI and WWII when they would have been crawling with Krauts on high alert from what they thought was an imminent threat of attack from Britain (Joel told us that in actuality the Allies quite were aware the Germans expected a Dunkerque invasion. They stationed mock-battalions and inflatable tanks across the channel to trick them, and attacked at the beaches in Normandy). It was a great adventure climbing all around the headquarters of the German military, but was a little uncomfortable seeing as I was wearing dress shoes in anticipation of our social gathering that evening.

The beach walk and bunker exploration took up a good chunk of our day. On the walk back we stopped at a beachside restaurant for refreshments and crêpe aux sucre. By the time we made it back around Joel’s apartment we had just enough time to pick-up some drinks for the dinner, meet the other assistants living at his school, and head out the door to a Lille-Assistant Pre-Thanksgiving dinner prepared by a couple girls also stationed in the city.

The apartment we met at was being renovated so it was a little messy, and we were confined to the kitchen/dining room area. Even with the crowd of assistants everyone was able to find adequate space to eat. The food was ready when we arrived, and we chowed down on rustic salad with strawberries and walnuts, two kinds of potatoes (roasted and mashed), baked turkey breasts, stuffing, and covered it all with what looked like country-style gravy minus the sausage. I’m guessing everyone was as hungry as Kathryn and I because once the food was served there was about ten minutes of silence in the room of close to 20 people before the wine started flowing, and conversations picked back up.

Kathryn and I had been asked to bring some bottles of wine for the dinner so we decided to go with some of Carrefour’s recommendations. We brought two bottles of red, a bottle of rose and a bottle of a specialty hard apple cider from the Northern regions of France. Now I know it’s not very exciting to read about what we brought to drink, but I mention this for a very important reason. The highlight of my night came at the expense of the hard cider. Apparently in the hustle and bustle of transporting these beverages from Lille to Dunkerque they sustained periods of turbulence. This went un-noticed, and halfway through the dinner when Kathryn asked me to get the cider out of the fridge and pour a couple glasses, I didn’t think twice.

The cider is bottled in the same fashion as champagne, and as I slowly twisted off the metal casing, I failed to realize how much stress the cork was putting on it. As the metal tie was removed the cork exploded out of the bottle with a loud pop, missed cracking me in the head by mere centimeters (I could feel it nick the hair on my forehead), slammed off the 15ft. ceiling and bounced back off the top of my head. All I can say is it scared the bejesus out of me. The force of the cork coming out of the bottle easily could have knocked out an eye, or possibly broken my nose if I had the bottle positioned differently. My heart was pounding for a good five minutes or so after that one. The rest of the evening was spent drinking wine and getting to know some of the other assistants. Come 8pm Joel took us back to the train station so we could catch our ride home. It was a great day mostly thanks to our gracious guide and hosts (thanks again Joel). Also, since we spent the majority of the day walking to and from the bunkers we missed out on a couple of sights in the city center itself so we may have to make another trip out there sometime in the future.

Sunday was half spent recovering, and half spent wandering around the beginnings of the Christmas Marche going up in the Centre-Ville of Lille. They are turning on the Christmas lights that decorate the main streets. Garlands are being strung up between the buildings, and in the Grand-Place and Place de Thêatre they have erected a giant Ferris wheel, and a Merry-Go-Round. We have also been told that there is an ice rink in one of the squares, but we haven’t been able to locate it just yet. As we get closer to La Fête de Noël the streets will become lined with all types of vendors, and we are looking forward to going up in the wheel. It’s higher than the tallest church spire by a good 4 stories, and supposedly offers an unparalleled view of the city we call home. Let’s just hope they don’t charge 20euros a person for a ride!

A bientôt,

-Jordan and Kathryn

P.S. - Paris next weekend!