Dawn?

It's official: I'm no longer a morning person.

But, it seems, neither is the rest of Paris.

While I once cherished the mornings as my most productive time and felt at ease "jumpstarting" the day, it took every once of willpower to drag my sorry self from bed at 7:30am. I need an early start; there are too many things I should've done yesterday but failed to do because of post-Nuit Blanche exhaustion. So Tequila and I took to the streets of Paris just as they were shutting the street lamps off.

And I was shocked to see so few people walking around, heading to work, buying breakfast, whatever. After all, 7:30 isn't really that early.

Nuit Blanche

Paris always has cool things going on.


Nuit Blanche--interpreted as 'Sleepless Night'--is an annual festival that keeps the city alive when it clearly should be resting. Many museums and public spaces are filled with art--videos, music, plays, etc--and the masses roam from one venue to another, soaking in French culture. This year the theme dictated that the best exhibits were housed in the major train stations throughout Paris... which meant I stayed as far away as possible. (Too many people too late at night.)

Instead a friend and I found ourselves in the trendy Marais district, drinking beer and talking. But you can't just ignore Nuit Blanche, so as the stars starting spitting raindrops, we wandered to one of the old charming museums and waited in line.


We waited expecting entry into the museum. We instead gained entry only to the courtyard, where we discovered a couple rows of folding chairs eerily illuminated by red lights. What followed can best be described as a failed attempt at brainwashing.

It failed, of course, because it was all in French. From what I could interpret, the "music" mixed recordings of famous French politicians and key moments in France's history with techno music. Towards the end, the stone courtyard was filled with a particularly powerful voice: "Yes. We. Can."

There is something special about being in this city and believing in Obama.

Afterward we found a quiet café and drank rosé from Ramatuelle, for old time's sake. (I love this life.) We watched the city pass us by. When the metro opened again for the day, we made our way home.

It was 7 a.m. and the sun was beginning to rise. Sleepless Night achieved.

Touristic Paris

Tony came to town. Which means I had to do things... touristy things. Ick.

I am, of course, kidding. It was a blast--and we saw so much. (By foot.)


We started at the Sacre Coeur...


...which we climbed...

...and climbed...

...and climbed...

300 steps to the top. (And 300 back down.)


Then we strolled around Montmartre...




Then we found ourselves walking through the bird markets to Notre Dame...


...and below...

We walked all over Paris, from the Louvre...


...through the artist's market and Montparnasse...



Other highlights included climbing the Eiffel Tower (mostly by stairs)...

(*Do you see the hot air balloon?!)

...and the walk through the Jardin du Luxembourg...





All in all, having walked from there...

(*The Sacre Coeur, taken from the Eiffel Tower*)

...past there...

(*The Eiffel Tower, taken from the Sacre Coeur*)

...I know my ass and feet are going to be really, really sore tomorrow.

Presidential Debates à Paris

I'm too exhausted to articulate how cool this really was. (Walking hope at 6am will do that, you know?) So just trust me--it was really cool.

A few friends of mine from school and I watched the debates last night. How, you may ask, did you manage that, seeing as though they didn't start until 3am Parisian time? I'll give you a hint: It required a lot of patience, activity, alcohol and coffee.

But it was awesome! Here were in a packed bar in the middle of Paris in the middle of the night. It was one of those traditional Parisian places, with old stone walls and thick arched beams supporting a dimly lit ceiling. Scattered around the place were huge LCD screens, and before each one were crowds of young Americans clad in their party's flair watching with pleasure and anxiety. It was freakin' cool.

Why not strike?

There’s apparently a strike on. Actually, there are two. This is France, after all.

The postal workers are striking because they don’t want to be privatized, but competition from the EU is forcing this change. They’ll lose. Maybe privatization will come differently than it’s currently proposed, but it will still come.

The metro workers are also striking. The metro still runs, however; it’s just slower and more crowded than usual. I didn’t know why they were striking, so I asked a Frenchman, “Why are they striking?”

“Because they must!”

“But why?”

He looked at me like I was crazy. “Because they’re French!”

Of course.

Fin: The Carte Bleu

This is the conclusion of a long and painful story: Today, I received my carte bleu.

To think, it only took three months.

Worth Reading

From Time Magazine’s top 10 most popular stories of the week: How We Became the United States of France

Walking in the Streets

The weather was so beautiful we went for a walk. He led me from Montemartre to the Louvre, around in circles and back again. It was beautiful.

As we headed home, we stumbled upon a particularly narrow street with a stunning perspective of the stock exchange and Sacre Coeur.

“Ah! You must walk in the street!” he said, beckoning me to join him in the middle of this windy road. All I could think about were the blind corners and the poor skills of French drivers. I burrowed my eyes but joined him none-the-less.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “If a car meets a person on the street, it’s the car’s fault—always. As a lawyer, trust me—I know.”

“As a person, trust me—if I car meets a person on the street, the person gets hurt even if the car pays for it. I’d rather live to see my pay out, you know?”

At this he laughed. Loudly. “Oh, that’s the thing with you Americans—you’re always so practical.”

I wasn’t sure if it was a compliment or not.

Stamps & Lessons

All I want is a French class.

Sure, I’m learning the language by exposing myself to it everyday, but I’m still far from fluent. Plus, I can’t read or write for shit. I need professional help.

I thought my school was going to do that for me, but it turns out my school is a big fat liar on this and many other things. So I sought outside sources: Alliance Français is too expensive; free “language exchanges” are too informal; I need something in between. The Mairie de Paris offers adult learning courses for 50€ a year. It’s perfect.

To enroll, you have to mail in an application that took me at least an hour to fill out. (It’s all in French. Explain to me why they make the application to learn French in French. Please.) I searched the internet for the address, gathered up the money, and went looking for a stamp.

My first stop was a Tabac, where I shyly asked the owner for a stamp.

“A WHAT?!” he asked.

“Um, a stamp?” Maybe my vocabulary word for stamp was wrong, so I tried to explain it another way. “The thing you put on an envelope to mail a letter.”

“We don’t have,” he replied. C’est tout.

The post office must have stamps, right? It’s a bit far from my house, but I was desperate. I trudged through the chilly, wet air to the nearest one…only to find it inexplicably closed.

Feeling slightly defeated, I crawled into my favorite café and went to work. I was e-mailing a French friend about dinner plans, and I figured I’d also ask about stamps. Can you buy them at a Tabac? If so, what’s the word for them?

I will copy and paste the response here:

You can buy stamps at a Tabac, but they all haven't it and those which are supposed to have it can't provide all the time. I know France is complicated! But I like it, sometimes.

That was the final straw. I gathered my application and made the long haul to the application processing center: I was going to deliver this bad boy in person, today.

I burst through the bureaucratic doors and explained my purpose. The lady at the front desk directed me to a small office on her left, where I found a woman sitting, doing nothing. I presented my application.

“I’m sorry, but all the classes are full. Try again in January.”

At least I have four month to figure out how to buy stamps.

Footsie Bar

“Buy!!! Buy now!!!” I shouted to my friends. “Look how quickly the price is dropping!”

No, we weren’t carefully following the terrifying news on Wall Street late on a Saturday night; we were huddled around the large wooden bar of Footsie in the 2nd. Footsie (a play on FTSE, the London Stock Exchange) is a narrow venue off a windy street with four huge flat screen TVs behind the bar. These TVs, which are refreshed every four minutes, show the changing prices of beverages—from tap beer to top-shelf liquors. It certainly gives you an excuse to buy, buy, buy; think of how powerful it feels to watch your purchase of a bottled beer affect the market so much another brand of bottled beer drops to almost nothing! Then, of course, you must buy the cheaper beer… and so on and so forth, until you can’t see straight anymore.

Apparently the market crashes at some point. Apparently the price of booze can fall below the price of water. We saw none of that. But we still had a great time at a bar with an incredibly unique scheme.