Another repeat while I’m in the States. This was written years ago. Just re-reading it sets me to remembering all of those first impressions I had when I first moved to France. I try to keep reminding myself to keep my eyes open now and to be as charmed as I was then.

Posh-Less in France

I don’t live in a posh area of Paris. I can’t look out my window and see the Eiffel Tower or the Luxembourg Gardens. I don’t walk out the door and head up the street to Sacre Cour or turn a corner and find myself in Place des Vosges. I wish I could as these are wonderful areas to be in.

I live in the 12th arrondissement, one of the lesser known areas of Paris and when I look out my window I see the apartment building across the street, not a well known monument. You can learn a lot about people just by looking in their windows. I’m not a peeping Tom, honest. Sometimes I look out the window to check the sky for clouds or open it to water my pot of geraniums and I glimpse life across the street—or across the inner courtyard if I am looking out my kitchen window. I haven’t seen any scenes such as those in Rear Window or any amorous clutches.

Across the street I see a lady sitting in front of a computer most of the day. I don’t know if she has a small business going or is, perhaps, a writer. One day, she smiled and waved at me as I was working out on my stairmaster in front of the window. One apartment over from her is an older woman I often observe hanging up clothing to dry or ironing. I can also, unintentionally glimpse her dressing or undressing as she never closes her curtains. The lady above her, grows masses of bright red geraniums and picks off dead flower heads every morning and throws them down to the sidewalk, and when she waters, a few unsuspecting pedestrians below get a sudden shower.

If I look across our courtyard which is surrounded on all sides by apartment buildings, I usually see two young men with dark hair looking back at me. I assume they are students as I sometimes see one of them reading a book as the sun streams into their apartment. Of course, for all I know, they could be reading Playboy, which may explain their interest in checking out the view on my side of the courtyard. Maybe a lady above me undresses in front of her window. Because they always seem to be on the look out for any interesting views, I am very careful to always be fully dressed, especially in my kitchen if I have my curtains open. I’m sure they would be shocked if they could see me up close.

There is one apartment that has me worried. The windows are never opened and I thought for a while that they were covered in some sort of plastic sheeting but I have come to the conclusion that the windows have just never been washed. I’ve never seen the windows opened, either. Ragged looking curtains hang down and at night, when the interior lights are on, I can see someone come close to the window and it is either the husband or wife looking like they must be in their 80’s, if you can guess a thing from such a distance. As long as I can see them moving every day or so I have to assume they are all right.

When it is sunny, and usually on the weekends, windows are thrown open and women can be seen shaking out dust clothes or dust mops and shining their windows. They also take duvets from their beds and place them half way out on the window ledge, I assume to air them out. I would try this, but my window ledges are too dirty to drape my good linens on. Duvets are a whole new thing to me, a type of comforter with a pillowcase like cover. They make it really easy to make the bed and are nice and toasty in the winter.

The 12th arrondissement has a large area called Nation. This is a so-called square with a huge roundabout where nine streets converge. The center boasts two tall towers, one mounted with a statue of Saint Louis and the other with a statue of King Phillip August. Centuries ago, tolls were taken here as people entered Paris. It was called Throne Place at one time since a throne was placed here in honor of Louis IV and his bride. For a short time it was called The Place of the Overturned Throne during the turbulent days of the French Revolution.

Also, during this time, over 1000 people were executed at this square after those at the Place de Bastille tired of the crowds, blood and smell. A tiny cemetery, Picpus Cemetery, holds the bodies of those poor souls. LaFayette and his wife are also buried here because some of his wife’s relatives died during the revolution. Every July 4th, a ceremony is held at Lafayette’s grave and soil from the United States is sprinkled on his grave. When he died, he requested that American soil be put on his grave, so the tradition continues.

We are also near Bois de Vincennes, a huge lush park where my husband likes to jog. It has several lakes, an immense floral park, a chateau, and miles of jogging and biking trails. I had no idea, when I first moved to Paris, that it was so close to our apartment. On my first week we started off on our bikes and soon we passed a lake with a little island in the middle, then a little restaurant, and suddenly there was the Chateau de Vincennes. It has a lot of French history associated with it but seems rather modest to me if compared to such places as Versailles. The first Sunday of every month there is a meeting of a car club and all sorts of models of cars, mostly very old, are collected here and shown by their proud owners.

Parc Floral, right across the way from the chateau, has great jazz concerts every weekend in the summer months and is full of gigantic bushes of camellias and other flowering plants. There is an enormous playground for children full of interesting play equipment that even has me thinking about taking a ride or climbing. I was surprised at some things such as a climbing tower of ropes about 75 feet in the air. It has some rubber matting under it but I don’t think it would help much if a child should happen to fall. Americans would never allow something like this in a park. I can only imagine the lawsuits that would result.

Back towards our apartment, at Nation Square, we are lucky to have a huge street market every Wednesday and Saturday. Maurice and I go to buy fresh fruit and vegetables, fish, meat, chicken, seafood, olives, butter, and eggs. We almost always overbuy as everything looks so good. It’s really fun to shop here and we plan our menus for the next few days as we walk along and see what looks good. My favorite thing during June and July are the huge mounds of cherries in every stall. The ones I like best are large and heart shaped and come from Provence. They can be very expensive so we look around and try to find the best price. Maurice likes strawberries, but not just any strawberry. The first ones to appear look great to me—enormous as strawberries go, and red—but Maurice says no, they are from Spain and he says that they usually aren’t grown in soil. He will wait for those from France. He was right, of course. They were smaller but incredibly sweet.

Maurice is a good cook and loves to try new recipes. I like some of his tried and true ones best. His beef burgundy is wonderful and ratatouille is something I have really come to love. We often get fresh fish or scallops and Maurice will get snails if they look good. They come already covered in butter and garlic—ready to cook. I will try one or two but I don’t love them like he does. He buys oysters, too, when in season, and opens them himself with a lot of prying and pressure. He eats them with a mixture of vinegar and shallots. I eat an occasional oyster which gives you a taste of the ocean but that’s about it.

We return home on a street called rue du Rendezvous lined with boucheries, boulangeries, grocery stores, fromageries, a fruit and vegetable place, and patisseries. One place sells what are surely the best macaroon cookies and chocolate desserts in Paris. I love this shop.

There is also a little store that has food prepared and ready to go. Everything always looks so good but, unfortunately, it isn’t cheap. The first time we walked passed I saw a pan heaped with fried potatoes with added pieces of duck, onions, ham and parsley. I’m sure they also had goose fat in them. It looked so fabulous I talked Maurice into buying some. It was in the days when francs where still used in France and I didn’t really figure out how much we were paying. When we got home Maurice said, “Do you know how much these potatoes cost?” I didn’t have a clue. It turned out that we had paid the equivalent of almost ten dollars for potatoes for two people. I must say, however, that these were the best potatoes I have ever had in my life. Every once in a while, as we walk by, I will see a pan of them in the window again and try to talk Maurice into some more ten dollar potatoes. I just can’t duplicate them at home-never have goose fat or duck in my refrigerator.

Finally, before we head up the stairs to our apartment, we must get a baguette. France has the best bread in the world; I don’t know what they do to make it taste so good. You can cross the border and be 30 minutes into Italy and the taste and texture of their bread is entirely different. I’m sure a really hot oven makes the outside so crusty, leaving the inside soft and chewy. I’ve heard the oven must be used for years to make the bread the right consistency. Maurice is very picky about his bread. Once, when our usual bakery was closed, I bought a baguette that looked good to me being brown on the outside and the right shape. Maurice took one bite and said, “This was mass produced.” Just one bite and he was bothered by the texture of the bread inside which seemed to have too many air bubbles or something. I thought it was all nonsense, but I don’t any more. When our favorite boulangerie is closed and we are forced to buy our bread at a place across the street I can really taste a difference not only in taste but in consistency. As with many places in Paris, our boulangerie is closed for the whole of August. I can’t tell you how distressing this is to me.

The boulangerie is no more than a couple of dozen steps from our apartment. One day I saw a white truck parked in front with a hose coming from it down into the basement of the boulangerie. At first I thought it might be delivering fuel but as I got closer I saw a white cloud in the air and I smelled the unmistakable odor of flour. I had no idea flour could be delivered in this way. The bakery across the street gets their flour delivered in sacks carried into the kitchen by delivery men.

Bread was the first thing I bought by myself when I moved to Paris. A couple owns our neighborhood boulangerie and the husband is down in the basement toiling in front of the ovens while his wife mans the counter upstairs. I have only seen the baker twice. He had come up the stairs to bring a tray of desserts and he wore shorts with a long white apron over the top that reached his ankles. His wife used to tell me the price of what I was buying and I didn’t have a clue what she was saying so I would just hold out a hand full of change and let her take what she needed. As time went on she wouldn’t do it but would repeat the price until I understood what she was saying and figured out for myself what to give her. We have never exchanged any more than “bonjour” and “au revoir.” When I walk in the door she reaches back behind her to the forest of bread sticking up in holding racks and pulls out the type of baguette we always eat. I now have the exact change ready as I walk in. This is one time I would love to speak French so I could learn her name and a little about her.

There are some grocery stores in our neighborhood that we go to for staples such as toilet paper, drinks and the like. The least expensive store is called Franprix. I get upset when I shop there because I am accustomed to American efficiency and customer service. There can be 50 people in line, stretched back into the aisles blocking access to products—it is a very small building and everything is crammed together making it hard to even pass people in the aisles. In front of the 4 cash registers will be 3 or 4 women who work there but invariably two of them are involved in some sort of busy work that doesn’t involve waiting on customers.

Another curiosity is that all of the people checking out customers get to sit down. I’ve done my share of retail work and remember how my feet ached at the end of the day. What I wouldn’t have given for a chair back then. And when you buy groceries, you have to bag them yourself. The check-out person will grudgingly dole out one plastic bag at a time, as if they cost a fortune. At a discount grocery store called Ed you have to pay for each bag. The bags in Paris are always plastic—no paper bags here.

On Saturday morning, the busiest morning of the week, two or three Franprix employees will have huge carts of canned goods or cleaning supplies blocking the aisles while they stock the shelves. Occasionally, there will be a man sweeping the floors at the same time. It makes me want to pull my hair out but I know the French would be totally mystified at my attitude. It’s just how it is; they’re used to it. I asked Maurice why they couldn’t clean the floors and stock the shelves when the stores were closed, but they don’t want to pay the extra wages to do this. How does America do it? I remember with fondness the 10-15 open check-out lines. The floors gleamed, the shelves were fully stocked. I do miss that.

It is different here. I miss the comfortableness of America some of the time and being able to find a store open late at night or on Sundays. But there are tradeoffs. I have found more charm here and I enjoy the “event” of shopping the markets. Now, if I could just get the recipe for those ten dollar potatoes.

Another repeat while I am in the States.

Frost-Less In France

The only time I have been cold in Paris is in the winter out on the streets. The rest of the time, I roast. I had never been hot blooded before. I spent most of my youth cold, always sneaking around and turning down the air-conditioner or turning up the heat. As I got older I noticed that I wasn’t as cold as often–except when I lived in Dallas. I learned to never go to the grocery store or a movie in shorts when living there. I also learned to never forget to take a sweater for the movies. We are talking glacial. I would be in front of a screen sitting on my hands to warm them up or putting my hand over my nose to prevent frost bite.

I worked in the operating room for many years in the States. Because the doctors and scrub nurses are wearing double gowns, masks and caps and standing under the hot operating room lights they often requested the temperature in the room be turned down to Arctic levels. I had to wear a special jacket as I was outside in the periphery of the room and special efforts had to be made to keep the patient warm as well.

Then I moved to Paris. We went to a movie and the temperature outside was in the 30’s. I had on boots, jeans, a sweater over my shirt, a coat, hat and gloves. On the metro I started sweating but we were soon sitting in front of the screen where I slowly began removing layers. I even eventually removed my boots to cool my hot feet on the cooler floor. That place was like an oven. When I went outside I was immediately chilled in the cold air. I came to find that this was the norm for Paris. You may be dressed up for winter outside, but enter a store and you feel like you are in Arizona and spend the time in the store carrying your coat.

The French are very big at wearing scarves. I once saw a jaunty little dog one cold winter day wearing not only a leapard sking jacket, but a little scarf tied around his neck-even the dogs are stylish here. Of course, the women look fabulous in scarves and have all sorts of intricate ways to tie them that are works of art. I don’t see as many in the summer as even a Parisian can get a little hot. In the winter everyone has one, usually a wool scarf. My husband won’t leave the apartment without one if it is cold outside. I think he feels he will become deathly ill if his neck should become exposed to the cold. The scarves do look very nifty tied and tucked into a coat. I bought one to fit in with the crowd and tried to get used to tying it around my neck but got horribly uncomfortable with it on when I got on a bus or subway and it wasn’t long before I untied it and lost it. I do have a beret that I will pull down over my ears for warmth. The wind can really make your ears feel cold.

Then there are the summers. Ask any Frenchmen if it gets hot in Paris in the summer and he or she will say no, it is only uncomfortable at the most for 10 days in the entire season. In addition, you will be assured, all of the old buildings in Paris are built with very thick walls that keeps the heat out and the rooms cool. Shutters can be closed when the temperatures rise and opened when the sun goes down keeping the room at a comfortable level. At the most, all that is needed is a fan that won’t ever really be used.

What a load of bull. I am here to tell you that it is hot a lot more than 10 days in the summer. I have staggered home with a heavy load of groceries, stumbled into our apartment and plopped myself directly in front of our electric fan waiting to start feeling cool. The windows are wide open on either side of the apartment and I wait with anticipation for a cross breeze that never occurs. I think in any large city with all of the asphalt and cement it feels even hotter than the temperature actually is. And the nights can be agony with the little fan working its heart out to cool the temperature of the room down, and sheets pushed down to the foot of the bed. Around 3 or 4 AM the room finally starts cooling down. You also hope you don’t have to close the window because a party is going on across the courtyard leading to a really difficult night.

We were over for dinner at a relative’s of Maurice one summer night. It was in the 90’s and that is really hot in Paris. The room where we were eating dinner was was extremely hot. The windows were open and it helped some, but not a lot. The husband couldn’t stand the noise from the streets and closed the windows. I couldn’t believe it. My hair started frizzing, my neck became hot. I surreptitiously dipped my napkin in my water to try and cool my neck and forehead. Finally, the wife insisted he open the windows. I couldn’t wait to get home and take a cold shower.

Before I married Maurice I only half jokingly told him that I would only marry him if he bought an air-conditioner for our apartment. He didn’t do it right away. We went through one summer without one. I survived but I was crabby about it. No metro trains or buses were air-conditioned by anything more than opened windows and the French class I was taking at the time was oven-like. I came home dying for a cool room. Finally, the second summer we were in Paris we bought a little unit. What a difference! It doesn’t sit half in and half out the window like the units I was used to in Texas. There is a little box, which I assume is a compressor that goes outside. A hose goes through a hole in the window to the unit shaped like R2D2 from Star Wars inside which moves around on wheels. It makes such a difference. I haven’t kept track of the number of times we have used it but I am going to next summer. I want to prove that the heat lasts more than 10 days.

There are no screens on the windows in Paris, or the rest of France, or even Europe, that I can see. It is just not the custom to use screens. If it is cool or warm enough you open the windows and let the air circulate. I’ve gotten used to doing that and was surprised that, in Paris anyway, “bug strainers” weren’t needed. Very seldom does a fly or mosquito make it into our apartment. I don’t know if it’s because the streets are kept so clean or if they put some sort of insecticide in the water. I thought that maybe all of the flies went to Sweden for milder temperatures but discovered most of them in Provence when I got there.

Of course, the summers in Provence where we often go are much worse. When you go out exploring for the day you come back totally wiped out by the heat. All you want to do is float around on a raft in some swimming pool like a frog on a lily pad. You think when you return to Paris that the heat won’t seem so bad, but it never proves to be true.

I am slowly getting used to the heat in Paris. I was amused when the temperature this June “plummeted” to the 70’s and it rained so all of the cafes with places to eat outside fired up their gas heaters. God forbid, that we should get chilled. I was seated in a nonsmoking area of a restaurant not long ago and the room had an air-conditioner. It felt wonderful. It wasn’t long, however, until the French people in the room were cold and had the owner turn the temperature up - just as I was feeling comfortable. I don’t turn on our air-conditioner unless it gets above 80 degrees as I am now comfortable with just the fan going. Paris may make a Parisian of me yet.

The summer after I wrote the above, Paris, as well as the rest of Europe had the hottest summer on record. Over 10,000 people in France died from the heat which reached as high as 106 several days. I started using our air condtioner in May and didn’t stop until the middle of August, thanking God the entire time that Maurice had indulged me in my wish for one. Many angry postings were made by people on various Internet boards in the States about their trips to France and how they suffered without air conditioning in the rooms they had stayed in. When the owners of these places were questioned about buying units for the rooms, they would just shrug their shoulders and say the heat wasn’t normal, which is probably true but I also think they are cheap. I realize, of course, that an air conditioner will raise the electricity bill to high amounts, but this could be paid for by increasing the room rates. I have no doubt that not one B&B or Gite owner bought an air conditioner anywhere in France. I heard on the news that none of the French hospitals have them. Can you imagine being ill, having had surgery, and being in a bed in a room which is probably 100 degrees? Or, working in an operating room for that matter.

Many photos were taken of poor hot tourists with their feet in various fountains all over Paris. I imagined what their rooms were like at night. I met a couple who were lucky enough to have an air conditioned room but were awakened at three in the morning when the automatic timer turned it off. They never were able to get the manager to disconnect the timer. People on the Internet boards were posting messages saying France was uncivilized. It needed to follow the example of America and air condition everything, especially places where tourists were staying. Then the black out came on the East coast of America, that civilized country. It just seemed rather interesting how everything came to a stand still in the States when this happened. Of course, in France, the metros and trains would stop running, but most of France would continue on just as it does on a day to day basis, in their normal way. Maybe the old ways are still the best. I don’t know. I do know that I always pack an electric fan when Maurice and I go out of town if we are taking our car. He may be embarrassed to carry it into our room but he sure doesn’t complain at night when it is blowing on us, cooling off the room.

I wrote this years ago for a book I never was able to get published called, Frenchless in France. All of the chapters had the title of something “less” in France. I know this has been posted before. I am in the States visiting family and having an American Thanksgiving among other things so there will be a few repeats.

Elevator-Less in France

Because Paris is such an ancient city, and because so many of the buildings here are ancient as well, most people walk up stairs to their apartments. I am one of those. We live on the 3rd floor (4th if you are an American as I am when huffing up those stairs) in a building erected probably around 200 years ago. There is no elevator, needless to say. One can be added if all of the owners of apartments in the building agree to pay for it. It would either be put in the middle of the stairs or going up outside where some rather charming stained glass windows now are. It would, by necessity, be very small holding two people at most. When I am carrying bags of groceries or heavy suitcases up the stairs I want one so badly. I get a little irritated when walking around the neighborhood with Maurice and he points out an apartment that he looked at before buying the one we live in. It always has a cute little balcony that I would kill for and, most importantly, an elevator. He didn’t make an offer quickly enough to get it. So near and yet so far.

I don’t have it as bad as the lady I see struggling up the stairs to the 6th floor above us holding a big baby in one arm with a diaper bag dangling from her fingers while she holds the hand of a toddler fighting her efforts to get him up the stairs. Or the young man, the owner of a big bull dog, on the fifth floor who has to walk his dog several times a day. (God bless my cat!) I have a friend who lives here in Paris who has to walk up 8 (!!!) floors to her place. She is 30 years younger than I am, but still.

It took me a while to figure out the numbering system for floors in France, as well as the rest of Europe. I vaguely remembered some mystery where a mistake was made by a detective when he, an American, thought a murder occurred on the 2 floor and didn’t realize the European system was being used. I realized, after using an elevator at a department store, that the 1st floor was not at street level, but one flight up. The initials RC are often on a button in the elevator which is some Latin phrase for ground level, (not RC Cola, if you are from Texas). I remember seeing an American man shaking his head on the elevator at Printemps once at the lack of logic in daring to have something different from the States. I try not to have that attitude. When I got to thinking about it, it made a lot of sense - sort of like deciding, as a country, to drive on the left side of the road instead of the right. It took me several weeks of seeing “eme” after numbers to realize that it was the same as “th” or “st” after a number in America. Little things like this make me realize what a different culture I have ended up in.

I had an American friend named Nancy come visit. We arrived from the airport with her well-filled luggage and started up the stairs. “You mean you have to go up these everyday? You must be getting into really good shape.” At the end of a long day of walking around Paris we would come back to our apartment and she would pause at the bottom and look up cursing, I’m sure, the chance she passed up to stay at a hotel with an elevator. Every time we would come to a metro stop and start on our way out, which always involves lots of stair climbing, I would say, “Look, Nancy! More stairs!”

When I am buying groceries, filling up my little red cart, I sometimes won’t buy something that will make my groceries heavy because I know at the end of my walk back to my apartment building I will have to carry the whole load up those stairs. I curse my cat then as I lug up the heavy kitty litter or a bag of cat food. I want to buy a large container of soap or softener, but do I really want to face that cardiac workout later?

Sometimes I will be on the stairs and I catch the aroma of a wonderful meal being cooked. It can be a roast, or some onions frying. When I smell something that probably is being cooked using red wine I have to fight an urge to knock on the door and ask for an invitation to lunch, if not the recipe. I love dishes, such as beef burgundy or coq au vin, that involve long hours of the meat simmering in wine. The best aromas usually occur on Sundays when many people go visiting relatives or friends. Flower shops stay open on Sundays and people can be seen walking down streets with freshly purchased flowers wrapped in cellophane as they head for a meal at someone’s house.

We had our apartment renovated, an experience I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, and I was wondering how in the world they were going to get these huge bags of debris down from our apartment. I had seen chutes going down from apartment windows taking rubble to waiting dump trucks below. As the room we were doing faced an inside courtyard, I knew this wouldn’t be the case for us. It turned out that a skinny little man, who had single handedly knocked down a wall in our place, carried 20 huge bags of concrete chunks down those stairs on his back. I hope he was paid well. When all of the new cabinets, wood for an island in the kitchen, refrigerator, stove, dishwasher, etc. arrived it was carried up the stairs by two young guys that put straps around each heavy load and carried it on their backs. Pianos are even lugged up the same way! I guess they are used to it in Paris.

I do see moving trucks below apartments with a machine that moves furniture and boxes up or down to and from high up apartments. Sometimes you can see little wheels that jut out over a window where ropes can be fitted over and a load of whatever brought up with the little wheel turning as a rope is pulled from below. That’s how they did it years ago, and, I have seen it used sometimes myself even today.

One day I may get my wish for an elevator. For now I try to make the best use of the climb. I think of the calories I am burning or I practice counting in French. I’m still waiting for the day when I climb those stairs and don’t even realize I am doing it.

A few signs I’ve seen recently.

I saw this one in Provence at a store selling lights and lamps.

This was in the metro station advertising the coming movie, W. I still haven’t seen it but I liked how they had Bush dressed up as Napoleon did when he made himself Emperor of France.

A sign at a local cafe advertising live music. Thought it was the Rolling Stones for a minute there.

There are going to be some gray days ahead in Paris. That’s usually the way it is in Paris starting in November. So when the sun is out I try and get some photos.

Rod iron decoration on a door. I’m starting to find more and more of this now that it has been brought to my attention.

Sunlight on leaves on top of a tomb in Pere Lachase.

Even more rod iron in the Luxembourg Gardens.

Leaves caught on the edge of the Medicis fountain.

A few shots around Paris.

Red geraniums are very common in windows in Paris. Can you see the little bird there?

The red and white checked curtain, the font-how could this not be in Paris?

I love round windows.

A graceful balcony above Cine 13 up in Montmartre.