Every night, after host parents Jacques and Jacqueline and I finish our dinner, we eat cheeses in a particular order: mellower first, sharper after. After all, the tangy chèvre can’t be allowed to overpower the creamier Caprice des Dieux (quel horreur!). You must slowly adjust to the sharper things and allow the flavor to build.
Paris and I are getting acquainted in the same way: very gradually. Apart from a few minor burps—10 minutes wandering lost in Montparnasse, electricity and internet issues, and overpriced everything—it’s been pretty smooth sailing. Three days in the city, and I find myself acting more like a Parisian, even if I can’t dress or scoff like one. Still, no eye contact on the subway, always address store clerks as “Madame” or “Monsieur”, try not to walk too slowly down the street with nose in map.
I gotta say, though: the food and I have needed no get-to-know-you period. Oh, we dove straight into that affair. It’s good Paris is a walking city, because everything has butter and has thus far proven irresistible. Keeping with the idea that taste is connected to memory, I’ve taken to recording what I eat. That way, when I look back, I’ll remember not just the meal but the context surrounding it. Bread bread bread, wine wine wine, spinach and crème fraiche gallette (like a savory crêpe), salade aux tomates, brioche with butter and jelly, veal and potatoes, haricots verts, stinky Camembert, more bread, more wine, pistachio and hazelnut gelato, dining hall salmon and ratatouille, tea in a bowl. Not in that order.
Because it’s late and creative juices are on par with my hydration (meaning low after a night of salsa and bachata dancing), I’ll include a few excerpts from the journal I’m keeping. Field notes.
Mercredi, le 9 septembre
Lunch with Jacques-
I suppose that this is how the French eat lunch – slowly, conversationally. We sat in the terrace, table and chairs surrounded by brilliant pink and red geraniums, petunias. Over salade de bell peppers and tomatoes, boulangerie-fresh baguette, ham and cheese crêpes, and wine that caught me off guard and made me cough, I listened to Jacques, concentrating hard on his words to make sure I didn’t miss a thing. 90 minutes in, I started to feel that hazy drifting I felt just before the IV put me under when my dents de sagesse were taken out. At that moment, I realized I’d been awake for exactly twenty-four hours; then I cracked and napped for three.
Observations-
- I’m figuring out why French women stay so fit (a topic that American magazines seem so obsessed with). Jacqueline drinks her red wine watered down, because it has so much sugar in it.
- You can buy sandwiches here that are only big, long baguettes filled with butter and cheese.
Jeudi, 10 Septembre 2009.
Toddlers throw temper tantrums because they can’t express they want in a way that adults will understand them. I’m starting to learn the feeling.
It’s not just my current computer problems (which on their own make me want to strangle a mime). My grasp of French is good, but apparently, not great. Because in school, who learns the word for “prong” or “pepper mill”? [note: I’ve since learned that these are ongle and moulin de poivre, thanks very much].
Poor communication skills notwithstanding, I had a pretty good day. Took the metro like a champ, at least until we stopped at Edgar Quinet and the doors didn’t open. Nobody got in or out of the car, so it trundled along to the next stop, where I hopped off and then backtracked. I also learned that you need to open the latch yourself if it doesn’t open automatically.
A girl on our trip turned 21 today, and everybody brought food to share for a picnic on the lawn of the Eiffel Tower. Even though I see the tower from my neighborhood, I hadn’t seen it up close until today. What really struck me was how huge it was! Just standing under it gave me vertigo.
Afterward, a few of us went salsa dancing. Incredibly overpriced, but we had fun dancing in an enormous club. Salsa music and bendy dancers filled one room, bachata music and sweaty French people danced in the second room, and club music and public displays of affection happened in the third. Twelfth arondissement. I probably won’t go back there, though – far too expensive, and I know that cheaper dancing abounds in this city.
Tomorrow, we have a guided walking tour of Montmartre, and then Dieu-knows-what. But it is nearly two in the morning, and I am le tired.
Je vous aime tous.
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