Weekly World News

A quick comment about last weekend: If ever a lame marching band smiled slyly just before a performance, the one that played “Get Lucky” in front of Trump and Macron at the Bastille Day parade did.

This modern art project is perhaps a comment on the city's motto: "Tossed but never sunk"?

And now back to food news.  It’s hard to believe, but the past seven days included a ham-cheese-béchamel pastry, duck kababs, unlimited pastis (one of those licorice-flavored alcohols), some eggs I flipped with technical precision, and real hot chocolate (a mug of cream + three chocolate bars).  Fear not—these delicacies did not distract from fermented and aged milk products: the rucksack was graced by six kinds of cheese before they slipped down my gullet.

breaking grammar news: I guess it’s not really any different than in English (“to make happy/sad/etc.”), but the operative word of expression in French is rendre, “to render.”  Perhaps the association in my mind is with rendering fat into soap, or some other very tangible, physical process.  Things got much sillier when our professor asked where he would party this weekend.  He was horrified by the outdated suggestion of la discothèque.  But none of us knew the amazing phrase the French use for “nightclub,” the term created either by forthright lesbians or thirteen year-old boys clumsily employing double entendre.  La boîte de nuit is literally “the box of night,” or colloquially “night-box,” and the cool kids just say they’ll meet up at la boîte.  Maybe our minds were in the gutter, but this all-too-apt name set off quite a bit of laughter.

Allow Me to Introduce Pierre

This week’s mini-journey was to the conjoined towns of Fontainebleau-Avon, to visit the Chateau de Fontainebleau, a royal palace for kings from the 1100s on through Napoleon Bonaparte.  I crossed one of Paris’s least-charming bridges to get to the proper train station, whereupon I was stymied by the variety of ticket machines.  (Thank you for psychologically preparing me for this day, NY Penn Station, with your three hostilely separate train lines.  Oh, you thought New Jersey Transit would take you to a destination in NJ?  Not if you’re between the Hudson and Mahwah…)  Eventually, ticket purchased and validated, we slowly creaked our way out of the city.

This is Dante, in Paris; I didn't take any good pictures at Fontainebleau

The chateau is decorated to the hilt: silk upholstery, 1,000-pound chandeliers, wall-sized tapestries of intricate weaving, and gilded curlicues abound.  I wondered how Louis VI* would feel about us plebeians in t-shirts and sandals shuffling past their magnificent acquisition of artisanship, pausing for five or so seconds when impressed by a sumptuous bedspread, and moving on rather indifferently.
*Louis the Fat, apparently.

In grammar news, I moved up to the A2 class and am once again proficient with the past tense.  The more wily imperfect (more delicious sounding in French: “l’imparfait”) is tough to pin down, though, as it is not only used for continuous past actions but also expressing emotions or states of mind.  As part of an exercise I didn’t realize was going to include explaining my deep inner motivations, I described to the nice Japanese woman behind me that I bring home rocks from places I visit.  A stone or rock is “une pierre.”  Now I will forever imagine all stones as small Frenchmen eagerly awaiting being picked up and carried in my pocket.

Les Kata

In ninth-grade French class, we each selected a typical French name, perhaps so that we would more likely stay within the confines of proper pronunciation, or to make the dreary task of learning such basic elements as the alphabet and how to say hello a bit more entertaining.  I chose Sabine because it sounded funny, not like a person’s name, more like a plant or mineral, and would allow for some disassociation/alternative personality.  I, Claire, was academically driven; Sabine was free to be mediocre, or formal, or whatever she may be.

I’m not nearly cool enough yet, but among those who frequently venture into the catacombs it is common to assume a name for the underground.  My second time down was less fraught and electrifying than the first (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQpz8kV3eZQ), but still enchanting.  We passed a memorial for a man that disappeared when retrieving wine from a basement, whose body wasn’t retrieved for 11 years; later, we explored a bunker built to protect civilians during the war that had poured walls and floors, finished with mosaic tile and had included plumbing.  We toasted each other with boxed rosé and cheap beer, and, because this is France, “junk food” included not only potato chips and M&Ms, but ham and cheese sandwiches, and a little jar of foie gras.

But most adventurously, we crawled, first on hand and knees, then pulled with arms and slid on bellies, through a narrow tunnel of earth adjoining our passage to the sidewalk grate (*note the backpack there for scale).  I was third in a line of six people.  Two more or less easily navigated that bit, and I would never be left for dead.  And yet I flushed with accomplishment—I hadn’t been afraid at all.

Les balcons

Things that happened in 48 hours in Paris:
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- Viewed approximately 8,000 charming balconies.

- Visited the doctor, almost effortlessly and at low cost, and got prescription face cream.

- Stumbled across a fancy Moroccan patisserie and devoured flatbread.

- The equivalent of an SATII aptly identified that my high school French of ten (oh shit) twenty years ago places me in the...beginner class.

- A brass band played outside Marta's apartment for an hour, including spirited renditions of Havanagela and Something to Talk About.

- Entertained a baby for nigh on forty minutes.  (*Well, was adjacent to baby while it entertained itself with wooden puzzle pieces and a book.)
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Don't worry, there's a whole month chock-full of grammar news coming your way.  Paris: Where Your Culinary Dreams and Scholarly Anxieties Come True.