Road rage III

Big news: I passed the written portion of the French driving exam! Champagne!!! I’m so relieved to be done; it was very anxiety-inducing, and who needs that? Not me; I have a toddler and a business and that’s all the anxiety I need, thank you very much.

Oh, but wait—the written exam is not an end in itself, but rather, a means to an end (quite possibly my own). Thus, for the past month, I have been putting my officially solid grasp of driving theory into practice behind the wheel of my very own test car, a Citroën C3, which I have so far not crashed and have only stalled 50 times or so.

Now, as I have mentioned before, despite my owning a California driver’s license, there are basically two factors that have deterred my ever bothering to attain a French one: 1.) the stick shift 2.) la priorité à droite (priority to the right). Why? Read on.

The stick shift

Remember that scene from Big, where Tom Hanks keeps putting his hand in the air during a board meeting and saying, “I don’t get it”? That’s like me with the whole clutch thing. Try as they might, no one has ever managed to get that particular notion through my otherwise fairly well-screwed-on head. The bicycle gear metaphor is no use. YouTube videos of mechanics presenting a real clutch are no use, either (they actually make things worse by adding all kinds of insane vocabulary—flywheel? Pressure plate? Whaaa?). I don’t get it. I also don’t get why everyone keeps going on about how automatic is so boooring, while manual is so exciting! Personally, I think the “excitement” factor is simply adrenaline rushing into the bloodstream at the possibility of imminent death.

La priorité à droite

I’ve been bitching and moaning for eons about France’s priorité à droite. But now, having finally experienced its heinousness from the driver’s seat, I realize I haven’t been bitching or moaning nearly loudly enough. Just look:

I actually made this. It’s a slow day, OK?

See the orange car arriving from the right? Logic would say that he should stop instead of just careening onto the main road. That may be, but this is driving in Europe, land of roundabouts and sidewalk parking; logic has no place here. Because he is arriving from the right, the orange guy can just GO. No pause, no yield, no stop; nothing. Just go. The blue guy, on the other hand, who was driving along on the main road minding his own business, has to slam on the brakes and let that jerk gentleman on the right get through. Imagine the consequences if the blue guy’s view of the intersection were to be obstructed by foliage or who knows what. Just put up a damn stop sign, people! Stupefying.

Do you know what la priorité a droite really is? Think about it. The cars driving on the bigger, wider, faster, obviously superior road have to yield to the cars arriving from the smaller, narrower, slower, obviously crappier road ... why, it’s a microcosm of Socialism! Making life difficult for the big guys so that the little guys, however undeserving, can get ahead. It’s like formalized cutting in line. No wonder it doesn’t exist in the US.

Other than that, my lessons are going fairly well. So far, I’ve driven with two instructors: the first one is an economics fan who talks a kilometer a minute (does that expression even exist?) and is convinced that France’s economy is going to implode at any moment, that Russia, China and the US are headed for war with one another, and that those paranoid survivalists whom everyone takes for crazy are actually the only ones with any sense; the second one is a laid-back musician-looking type with a diamond-studded double piercing who keeps telling me that I seem tense.

I am supposed to take the practical portion of the driving exam after 20 hours of lessons, which seems pretty optimistic considering I still don’t actually understand what I’m doing. But no matter! I don’t have to understand something to do it right. Take parallel parking. I went to “the Google,” typed in “parallel parking,” and came across a perfectly wonderful explanation of how to do it. No theory, no opinions, just clear, concise steps to follow. As the author says, “You do not need to practice, you just need to fucking follow the directions.” Very refreshing. Now if only that kind of pragmatism could get me through the exam!

Pass the feta

OK I’m back. Spring has STILL to show up in Paris, but I can’t hibernate forever; there’s too much opinion-spouting to do! Let’s get right to it, shall we? France has just replaced charismatic President Nicolas Sarkozy by an insipid mass of vanilla pudding and far be it from me to not point and laugh.

So here’s the thing. I realize that a lot of people out there love to hate Sarkozy; bizarrely, the fact that he has a taste for luxury goods—even French ones—seems to stand out more in the minds of many than how he dealt with Libya or managed to keep France afloat during four years of economic upheaval. Who cares if he single-handedly reshaped the presidency? Who cares if he brought gutsy and much-needed structural reforms? The big jerk dared celebrate his 2007 election at a swanky restaurant! Quelle indécence! 

I personally LIKE(D) Sarkozy; his dynamism, while not always well-directed, was a breath of fresh air after 12 years of Chiracian inertia. I loved how he challenged the whiners instead of caving into them; I appreciated his iconoclasm, his courage, his leadership, his willingness to take an ax to the bloated French state. My only wish is that he had hewed wider and faster, though, because with the election of socialist François Hollande, France is nearly certain to do an about-face and march straight into the mire Sarkozy had so deftly avoided.

François Hollande has no experience in high office. No one—not even his supporters—seems capable of explaining exactly why he would make a good president. I’m not sure even he knows why he would make a good president. His campaign platform seems to rest entirely on pointing out that he isn’t Sarkozy. All we’ve heard from him for months on end are self-aggrandizing comparisons with former President François Mitterrand accompanied by platitude upon platitude such as, “What’s at stake in this campaign goes beyond all of us on the Left. What’s at stake ... is France itself” or “I’ll let you in on a secret ... I like people, while others are fascinated by money.” This kind of crapola would be laughable if it didn’t draw emphatic nods from so many.

Whereas Sarkozy brought with him a feistiness and pragmatism sorely lacking from the French presidency, Hollande brings precisely the opposite. The man is in way over his head; he’s like a lost deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming semi. His proponents may cheer him for being “normal” or “calm,” but these are daft, profoundly irritating attempts to sidestep the glaringly obvious fact that the guy belongs behind a desk at the post office, not at the helm of a G8 nation. It matters not whether a president is “normal” (name me ONE “normal” dude who has wound up as president—and no citing Kevin Kline); it matters whether he is capable of successfully leading a world power. And Hollande most definitely is not.

To put it another way, when I looked at Sarkozy over the past five years, I saw this:

It's not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me.

And now, when I look at Hollande, I see this:

The Traveler has come! Choose and perish!

I don’t know about you, but in the middle of a worldwide economic crisis, when it really does matter who the president is, I know damn well who I want in charge of the country in which I live … and it sure ain’t a French spin on the Stay Puft marshmallow man.

I'll miss Sarkozy. His disappearance from the French political scene will be a tremendous loss, and I’m tempted to say “too bad for France” except that I live here myself and am therefore personally affected by the embarrassing results of an election I unfortunately didn’t have the legal right to participate in. I’m definitely not looking forward to five years of Hollande’s “assuaging” gibberish, especially while he “calmly” transforms France into the new Greece. But, I will not lose all faith in the ultimate utility of universal suffrage, for the United States’ own elections are on the horizon and I cannot wait to get out there and reelect my Obama!

 Now THAT is a world leader! 

Les Misérables

Last weekend, I skipped the country and discovered Luxembourg City: close enough to Paris for a weekend, yet far enough away to feel exotic. Most of my entourage raised an eyebrow when I announced my weekend plans, as apparently the going rap on Luxembourg is that it’s a) small b) boring and c) unsexy. Whatever. For those of you contemplating a visit to Luxembourg, it is none of those things. In addition to being gorgeous, G. and I found it to be plenty big (it’s the damn capital, people! 50 square kilometers—get with it!), plenty interesting, and ... well, it may not be sexy per se, but what do you want? It’s wedged between Germany, eastern France and Belgium; it can’t have everything. What it DOES have is money. Lots of money. And an entire army of invisible street sweepers who keep the place impeccably groomed. That, my friends, is one clean city. Even the fallen leaves look somehow artfully fallen. There is no “5-second rule” in Luxembourg; if you should let any food fall to the ground, you could probably pick it up whenever you felt like it and keep eating. No worries.

They also have really big cheese.

Oh sure, there is poverty in Luxembourg. We learned all about it at the city museum, currently featuring a temporary exhibit cleverly entitled “Poor Luxembourg.” Over the course of a really quite elaborate series of displays and installations, including full-scale models of a homeless camp and a “social” grocery store, we learned that “poverty” in the Grand Duchy is not so much a question of true financial insecurity, but rather of coping with limited access to social pleasures (fewer extracurricular activities for one’s children, for example). We also learned that the gross minimum wage is roughly €1,800 per month—by far the most generous of the EU. In other words, indigence is such an oddity in Luxembourg that it’s worthy of an entire museum exhibit.

France is not Luxembourg. France has plenty of poverty—as well as a fairly conspicuous homeless population. I would know; I was sat upon this week by one particularly conspicuous specimen. Sat. Upon. I was taking the métro home from work with a friend, when an extremely alcoolisé gentleman sporting rags and a half-consumed bottle of whiskey staggered onto our train, screaming what can only be translated as, “You bunch of #@*$!! I #$$& this &$*@ piece of #$$& world of @$#!! Go @#$% yourselves!” Everyone in the wagon stopped talking and stared at him, at which point the doors closed and the train took off. The sudden movement was obviously too much; in slow motion, he toppled backward ... right onto my friend and me, strategically seated as though we had intended to serve as a human safety net. It was nice.

Enter at your own risk.

Like the subway of your average metropolis, the Paris métro has quite a population of “residents.” Some drink themselves into oblivion; some peddle illicit merchandise; still others beg. Of the beggars, I count three categories: the passive, the proactive and the performing. The passive find a spot somewhere in the labyrinth of tunnels and stations and just camp there, with or without a puppy/child by their side, silently admonishing you to spare a dime. There is one such woman who hangs out at the station Opéra, at the foot of the stairway leading to the line 3 platform, just glaring at each and every person who walks by, her eyes boring right into you as you attempt to breeze past nonchalantly. I once fearfully offered her a few lunch vouchers—the fabulous tickets restaurant—and she actually turned out to be way nicer than I had imagined. I almost wanted to give her some marketing advice about the whole catching more flies with honey than with vinegar thing, but thought better of it. If I were homeless, would I take advice off some random commuter? Probably not.

The proactive métro dwellers go ahead and climb aboard the trains themselves, passing from wagon to wagon, shouting over the din about who they are and why they need your contribution. Some are polite; others are frighteningly belligerent. Consider this: back at home, my parents are harassed day and night by phone calls from perfect strangers soliciting money, but here in Paris, you can get the same treatment face à face! Who says urban living is impersonal?

Finally, there are the performers. Some dance; some sing; some play musical instruments. Some are quite good; others are so ear-splittingly bad I would pay them to just STOP ALREADY. And while I’m at it, I would also happily, happily pay them to cease and desist massacring such cherished oldies as “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Hotel California,” anything by the Beatles, and the perennial favorite, “El Cóndor Pasa” (yes, I realize the tune predates Paul Simon. That’s no excuse to screw it up). There are also plenty of métro gypsies, but they enter more into the “nasty pickpocket” category than the “unfortunate homeless” one.

For the record, I do not have a heart of stone (plus I’m a Democrat; I’m like obligated to at least feign sympathy). Although, with the price of Paris’s monthly métro pass likely to increase to a whopping €78 over the next year, there comes a point when those of us who do use the public transportation system for ... transportation ... are perfectly justified in demanding, I don’t know, the right to not be sat upon by drunken homeless guys for example. I’m just saying.

A case of the Mondays

Today is once again that much-dreaded, much-detested first day of the week: Monday. In America, it’s technically the second day of the week, but here in France, Monday comes first and Sunday comes last. Why? Because it’s a country of heathens. I’m kidding (kind of). No—there is undoubtedly a long, fascinating explanation for why the US follows the Judeo-Christian tradition of beginning the week with Sunday whereas Europe does not, but that isn’t the point of this blog. I’ll look it up later and write about it if it’s interesting enough (it probably isn’t).

But let’s get back to Monday, which we can all agree is at least the first day of the work week on both sides of the Atlantic. Personally, I find that Monday has gotten a bad rap. Why, as I’ve grown older, I’ve found that Monday actually tends to go fairly well for me: I’m rested from the weekend, so when my alarm goes off at 6:40 am, it’s not nearly as painful as it is on Friday; work usually goes well, since the mistakes and irritations of the previous week have been forgotten, plus my colleagues are mentally absent and thus unable to effectively defend themselves from my usual barrage of witty insults; and before I know it the day is over and I’m on my way home.

C’mon guys! Monday is just a question of attitude! Am I right? I said, am I right?

However, my favorite part of Monday is hands down cocktail hour: G. and I have begun a family tradition—now that we are an official (2-person) family—of leisurely sipping one cocktail each on the balcony on Monday nights, as a means to kick off the week and shake off any pesky negativity that may have followed us home from the office. I come from a long line of dynamite cocktail makers, a talent that I feel it my duty to share with my husband—which I do, every week. And every week we end up perfectly hammered because a) we’re both lightweights and b) we eat dinner at 9:30 pm like good Europeans, which means that those cocktails are the first thing to hit our stomachs since lunch. Effect guaranteed! As such, any attempts at constructive adult discussion are quickly abandoned in favor of pointing and laughing at passers by, insulting the sushi delivery guy who keeps double parking his scooter across the street, complaining about the insane noise of all those damn vehicles barreling by, and critiquing the interior design of the apartments en face. Sometimes we launch a few peanuts at unsuspecting tourists and the occasional old lady walking her dog. See? Mondays are fun!

So about those cocktails. A native southern Californian, I love margaritas. But ordering them in French bars has never felt right. One, the (small, sad) rendition I’m served often reminds me of postmodern art (i.e. it sucks); two, Mexico and France just don’t mesh well. As proof, consider the French “Mexican” restaurant. Oh, there are a few that get it done right, but they still come in a distant second to basically any hole-in-the-wall Mexican joint I’ve ever tried in SoCal. (Sorry for the taco snobbism; I’ve gotta call a spade a spade. French guacamole—fear it.) So imagine my surprise to find myself nose-to-nose with a tequila bottle calling my name from the shelves of our local grocery store a few days ago. “Hmmmm,” I responded, with typically razor-sharp acumen. In the end, I bought it, along with a bottle of Cointreau and a handful of limes because hell—I may be physically closer to Beijing than I am to Mexico City, but far be it from me to ignore a clear message from the liquor gods.

An hour later, G. and I had assumed the position and were ready to toast to international relations. I had to substitute jumbo wine glasses and fleur de sel for margarita glasses and rock salt, but who cares? Those puppies were muy bueno. And muy fuerte! Even if my Monday had been bad, that margarita would have erased any memory of it. Come to think of it, cocktail hour and its mind-altering effects may be precisely why I have the impression that Mondays are cool. I wonder if that could work for the rest of the week....

Road rage I

I haven’t driven a car in over a decade. In Paris, you really don’t need one. The public transportation system, while far from perfect, is efficient enough to allow the city’s inhabitants to get around with relative ease. If you ask me, owning a car here is more a liability than a necessity; the streets are overcrowded, the parking cher et rare, and the security highly dubious (unless your car is made of some kind of un-keyable, un-bashable, un-burnable space material). So why bother?

Well, because cars are quite handy when one wants to travel beyond the city without having to rely on the train. And they’re good for professional purposes. And for those with young children, public transportation is not so convenient. I’m well aware of all these things. Truth be told, I’d have obtained a French driver’s license years ago if I could have. But alas, one of the (many) things that no one tells you when you move to France is that you have exactly one year from the issuing of your first residence permit in which to freely exchange your foreign driver's license for a French one. After that, it’s all over; you have to go through French driving school, complete with coursework, road lessons and a final driving test that is notoriously difficult to pass or even schedule, all for the peccadillo of €1,300 or so.

But that’s not all. You have to learn standard shift. In France, automatics are considered wimpy cars created for wimpy people who don’t know how to handle the road (Americans, in other words). Granted, plenty of my countrymen (my parents included) thumb their noses at such vicious stereotypes and embrace the stick shift. Not me. All through high school I happily zipped about in my late grandfather’s 2-door hatchback, an automatic that really hadn’t been conceived for the twisting, narrow roads of my native mountain town and thus struggled quite a bit with the steeper inclines. That didn’t matter; I was—and remain—incapable of maneuvering a stick shift. My dad courageously tried to teach me once.... I’ll leave it at that. Three pedals, three mirrors and five gears are just too many things to deal with simultaneously, even for a multi-tasker such as myself. In all honesty, I do tend to go through life with my head in the clouds—ask my 10th grade driver’s ed teacher—and one simply cannot have one’s head in the clouds while trying to drive stick. That’s why God invented the automatic.

But again, the French don’t do automatics (taxi drivers notwithstanding), or at least they’ll never admit to it. And so, if I ever intend on once more embracing the freedom of the open road, leaning into the wind at the helm of my mighty steed ... er ... whatever, then I am just going to have to grin and bear the humiliation of French driving school. Sigh. I hate being made fun of, and I will DEFINITELY be made fun of when I show up to class, a 30-something American amidst a bunch of snickering French teenagers, and proceed to demonstrate precisely how clueless I am when faced with a stick shift. “Ha ha! The old lady with the funny accent stalled the car again! Ha ha!”

But let’s just entertain the impossible for a moment and imagine that I somehow master the stick. I’d still have to face the sadistic free for all that is French motor law. Coming to a dead stop in the middle of an intersection if there’s a series of dashes running through it, for example. And whatever sick fool dreamt up the whole priorité à droite thing should be given the same sentence as Edmond Dantès. But my least favorite of all is probably the roundabout. I began calling them “death circles” the minute I arrived here and have remained true to my prejudice ever since. Those things were not meant to be negotiated by people like me.

Place de l'Etoile: where mediocre drivers go to die.

Incidentally, I’ve lived outside the Motherland long enough to no longer detain a valid US license, either. That’s right; I lack what is essentially the ID card of the average American citizen, a fact that never fails to get me into trouble when I’m home for a visit. Whether it’s writing a check (contrary to popular belief, one’s passport is not a universally accepted form of ID) or trying to buy booze, having an expired driver’s license is just a recipe for disappointment, extreme irritation and uncontrolled outbursts of anti-American sentiment quite ill befitting my generally easy-going (American) nature. I should really look into renewal one of these days, but with all the administrative hoop-jumping I already have to do as a French resident, I simply cannot accept the notion of also having to stand in line at the DMV. I’ve paid at the proverbial office, non? They should just SEND me a new one as a token of goodwill between fellow Americans. But in the meantime, I cannot legally get behind the wheel of a car in America or France, or for that matter any country requiring a (valid) driver’s license.

Which brings me to my next point. I discovered a few years back that having a French permit is not necessarily the sine qua non of legal vehicular operation in France. As early as the 1970s, European lawmakers went and approved the circulation of 2-person, permit-free cars. That’s right, cars that any idiot can cruise around in without ever having set foot in driver’s ed. Bizarrely, none of my French friends finds this blatantly criminal at all. “But the cars can only go 45 kilometers per hour!” they laugh. Right. Quick math quiz: A permit-free car traveling at 45 km per hour is heading south on la rue du Piéton mort. At the same time, another permit-free car moving at the same speed is heading north on the same road. A few seconds before the moment when the two cars meet, a small child goes running into the street between them, chasing after his ballon rouge.... What are the chances that anybody will walk away unharmed? I say, people without permits should limit their driving pleasure to Disneyland's Autopia and not go careening about on real roads, risking multiple lives behind the wheel of permit-free cars. I mean, just look at these things:

Just this side of a rickshaw.

I seem to recall having seen a similar contraption in a long-ago episode of Family Matters. And while at the time it appeared perfectly appropriate for the iconic nerd Steven Urkel to be driving one, today plenty of perfectly normal French men and women zip about in them without a second thought. On the other hand, in a country that fully embraces the Smart car as a credible—nay, even somewhat fashionable!—form of transportation, I suppose the permit-free car’s relative popularity should come as a shock to no one.

Thus, it appears that the only remaining option to my driving conundrum is to win the lottery and hire a personal chauffeur. I rather like this approach, which would offer the additional benefit of freeing me forever from early morning/late night dependence on Parisian taxis, whose dubious reputation is worthy of an entirely separate blog entry. A chauffeur it is, then. I shall leave driving school to the peons.

The Terminal

So you know that remark I made a few months back about how I thought that my heretofore bad luck in the travel department might be changing? I, um, take it back.

I’ve just returned from two lovely weeks of vacation in the US, and while the trip itself was everything I had hoped it would be, the travel to and from was anything but. Now, as I have stated in the past, I have this thing with horrific airport scenarios. I miss my flight, my luggage disappears for days on end, weather leaves me sleeping on a bench in a deserted terminal.... One would think that such nightmares would leave me stronger, wiser—much in the way of a seasoned war general. By all rights, I should be the General Patton of air travel.

Alas, no. Not only do I seem to attract highly regrettable travel mishaps, but my subconscious stubbornly refuses to learn from its mistakes, thus leading to multiple repeats of said travel mishaps. Let’s take the example of G. and my return flight from San Diego to Paris on August 21, which set a new record in my already outstanding history of trips that could best be summed up by an emphatic “Oh, fuuuuuuuuuuuu....”

Let me first say that in hindsight, we were kind of asking for it. Our two-week holiday was actually composed of two separate round-trip tickets: one from Paris to Boston, where we spent the first few days, and the other from Boston to San Diego, where we spent the rest. Both legs involved a layover: Reykjavik for the first, Houston for the second. And yes, I realize that I once said I would never go to Iceland, but can’t the occasional blatant lie be considered a péché mignon? Anyway, at least I now know that the cold, cratered surface of the moon is not limited to the moon itself.

Now, in the case of our return flight, we had to do all of that again, only in reverse and all in the same day. That is to say, San Diego to Dallas (no, not Houston this time, just for a wee bit of extra fun); Dallas to Boston; Boston to Reykjavik; Reykjavik to Paris. And as if that weren’t enough, the next morning G. was due back at the airport bright and early in order to fly to Crete for an additional week with his family. Got all that? Do you think we were already screwed even before heading to the airport?

Up at the crack (and I mean the CRACK) of dawn, we got to San Diego Lindbergh Field more or less on time, checked in, paid the $25 x 2 baggage fee (damn you, American Airlines!) and thought we were all set. No one was in the security line and we still had a good 30 minutes prior to boarding. Sensing the all-too-familiar lump of separation anxiety rising in my throat, I thought that a quick coffee with my parents before flying back to my home halfway around the world would be perfectly reasonable. *Wry smile*

Coffee consumed, we returned to the security line, which now had the equivalent of three airplanes worth of people waiting in it. And by the time that my foggy brain realized just how much trouble we were in, it was too late. Why? Because as I always manage to forget, major US airlines aren’t nice. They don’t want to hear your excuses; it’s not their problem. Either you are at the gate RIGHT when it opens, or you’re up that well-known creek without a paddle. And as we were at the gate 10 minutes after it opened, that was the end for us. (Little matter that there was a good quarter of an hour remaining before the indicated departure time and the plane was parked. Right. There.)

And here is where I clamber onto my pro-European soap box and say that with all due respect, this policy is bullsh*t. In all of my travels, which are never any better organized in Europe than they are in the US, not once have I been faced with a closed gate 15 minutes early and a smug airline rep telling me that she has been paging me repeatedly for the last half hour (riiiiiight) and that now it is just too damn bad. Never. And don’t you dare go citing tight schedules and TSA regulations because I’m not buying it. Iceland Air lets people still board freaking 10 minutes after its official departure time and do you know what comes of it? Nothing, nothing at all (score one for Iceland).

But this wasn’t Iceland Air we were dealing with, but American f-ing Airlines. And from that moment, G. and I were faced with two possibilities:

• Worst case scenario: we remain “stuck” in the US, unable to find room on any other flights because everything is booked, pay an absolute fortune in new ticket fees, hotels, absent days from work, etc., and G. misses out on a week of vacation with his family in Crete, to which he had been looking forward for months and months. And I bear the guilt of it forever.

• Best case scenario: we catch a magical string of standby flights and make it to Boston just in time to catch the original flight to Paris as planned; G. goes to Crete; I am cleared of all charges.

So there we were, standing white-faced and panic-stricken before a closed gate. In AA’s defense, the representative did take pity on me once she had accepted the fact that I had not intentionally caused us to “miss” the flight (or maybe she was just embarrassed by my sobbing like a little girl). As such, she was willing to give the two of us stand-by tickets for the next one to Dallas and from there to Boston, which if all went well, would theoretically still allow us to make the connecting Paris flight by the skin of our collective Franco-American teeth. But that depended on there being enough room on both standby flights and on both flights being totally on time. Meanwhile, our bags had left without us (remind me again about those TSA regulations...?). As to where they would land, no one knew for sure. Boston if we were lucky, Dallas if we weren’t (just ask JFK).

As it turned out, the first standby to Dallas was full, so we had to wait for the second. The second one let us on, but the Boston leg announced forty-five minutes of delay, thus immediately killing any and all chances of making the Paris connection. We did all we could to avoid despair: called Iceland Air (closed), tried to buy new tickets (sold out), interrogated various airline reps (95% unhelpful), prayed. A LOT.

And you know what? While the first three strategies yielded nothing, that last one did. In the end, we made it onto the Boston standby; the pilot somehow got us to the gate only 8 minutes late and not 45; our bags really had arrived on an earlier flight and were simply waiting for us to grab them in the baggage claim area; we caught an airport shuttle to the international terminal almost immediately, and by racing down the hallway we made it to the Paris check-in just minutes before it closed, where the rep at the counter murmured under her breath, “Just in time.” We gave her our bags, ran through security and MADE THE FLIGHT. Sinking into our seats and breathing the biggest sigh of relief of our lives, we immediately bought two glasses of wine and toasted to real-life miracles. Now if that wasn’t a personal intervention by God Himself, I’ll eat my hat. I’ll eat everyone’s hats. It was actually quite humbling, because as holy priorities go, I’m sure we weren’t anywhere near the top.

Lesson learned: when in the US, NEVER %#@! AROUND WITH BOARDING TIMES. G. was so traumatized by the experience that he actually took a taxi to the airport the next morning for his Crete flight just to play it safe (G. never takes taxis)! He texted me later to say that he was in fact early for the flight and didn’t know how to deal with it. And I am back to my Paris life, so thankful to even be here that I will say nothing about next week’s scheduled public sector strikes. I mean, I could be sleeping on a bench in the Dallas/Boston/Lunar airport right now, waiting for a miracle. But the miracle came right when we needed it the most, as miracles tend to do. No air travel for this girl until December, and even then I think I’ll show up to the airport a full day early. That is if I can even find an acceptable airline. Between AA’s shenanigans, Continental’s frequent last-minute cancellations and United’s well-known penchant for breaking guitars, what’s an expat to do?

Working 9 to 5

People often ask me about the differences between the French workplace and the American one. At this, I generally laugh and say that I have no idea, since my entire professional life thus far has been spent in Paris. I was reminded of this fact again yesterday, when a former university classmate of mine, who has recently taken a job in Paris, made the remark that “working in France is ... different.” I think she meant “different” in the same sense as, “Wow, your new hairstyle is ... different.” As in, she is less than enthusiastic about it. I find this interesting, as I have often wondered where I would be today had I never moved to Europe and instead gone to work for an American company (or more likely taken an underpaid but spiritually fulfilling position in an art museum. But who can say?).

I suppose the French workplace must be quite different from the American one, simply by virtue of the fact that there are so many differences in general between the two cultures. Prior to finding my current position in a design agency, I worked for an art gallery, a publishing house/medical conference organizer and a wine brand. Each experience left me thinking that I must have an insanity magnet hidden somewhere in my body, as the sheer quantity of absurdity that went on in each workplace was enough to warrant an entire book (note that). Of course, I never thought that said insanity could possibly have anything to do with the company’s origins, but after typing “mental health in France” into Google, I perhaps should have.

However, I am ill-placed to compare respective degrees of mental stability in the office, for like I said, I have acquired basically zero true professional experience in the US (notwithstanding various campus jobs, internships and summer gigs involving potpourri and dried fruit wreaths, which while fulfilling in their own way, do not count). What I am fairly sure of is that the working hours, the paid vacation and the whole sexual harassment thing are three major differences between the two countries that I can name without needing to have worked in both.

Working hours: depending on the contract, the average French person is supposed to work either 35 hours per week, or 35+ in return for paid overtime and/or extra holidays. Some of us somehow have neither, but it’s illegal and—actually, let’s not go there. Compare this with the 46 hours worked on average in the United States.

Paid vacation: the French get five weeks or more. That is a biiiiiiig plus about working here. Biiiiiig. I shant rub it in more than that.

As for sexual harassment, what an American would consider questionable to flat-out unacceptable remarks, language and physical contact are all perfectly normal to the French, as far as my experience is concerned. I’ve witnessed innumerable examples, in all kinds of companies and circumstances, and it never seems to shock anybody (not even me—I’ve been here too long). Moreover, disapproving remarks along the lines of, “You could go to prison for that in the States” only receive laughter and snide remarks involving the word “Puritans.” Trust me, I know.

So in conclusion, I don’t think the differences are significant. Salaries on average are lower in France than in the US, but French social benefits are so much higher that the difference in pay is pretty much accounted for (so when my heart stops beating after receiving my income tax, at least my stay at the hospital will be free!). The vacation is wonderful, the hours are decent and an admiring male eye isn’t systematically grounds for offense (is he hot?). Maybe I will one day discover what it is to work for an American company and see first-hand all the differences that I have thus far ignored. But considering my plans to become independently wealthy within the next 5 years and never work for anyone ever again, I think it’s a moot point.

The fruit of the vine

We have now covered two thirds of the holy gastronomical trinity. With bread and cheese accounted for, let us now turn our attention to the oh-so-pleasant final installment: wine.

Where to begin? French wine, how do I love thee! Nor am I alone in my fondness; these two have been working their charms on mankind for millennia (which is not to say that I’m unoriginal). Both have played pivotal roles in my life thus far: France by drawing me abroad, wine by taking over once I got here. I spent over three years working in the French wine industry and even found inspiration for my Master’s thesis therein. And while I am today a recovering former wine marketer, wine itself continues to be a personal interest. Heck, I’m a Californian living in Paris—loving wine comes with the territory.

Prior to finding gainful employment in the sector, French wine revealed itself to me purely by chance. As in, I would be invited to a dinner party, garden party, house party, birthday party, anniversary party, wedding party or any party in between and lo and behold! Opportunities to get up close and personal with French wine would abound. But as random sampling can only get one so far, I began a more intellectual pursuit of the charms of the vine and took to reading books on wine, touring vineyards, lingering in the wine aisle of my local supermarket, and even frequenting specialty wine shops just for the thrill of it. As such, I managed to acquire a fair degree of knowledge about French wine. And while I certainly cannot qualify myself as a true expert, I can on occasion manage to make myself sound enough like one to fool most people, which is kind of neat.

But enough about me; let’s talk vin.

France may have recently conceded its place as the world’s leading wine producer to Italy, but its vineyards still yield some 45 million hectoliters of wine per annum. This sea of crushed grapes represents over 400 appellations d’origine contrôlée (certification granted to wines produced in strict observance of predefined geographical and qualitative regulations), 150 vins de pays (one step down from the AOC crowd in terms of quality, theoretically in any case) and innumerable vins de table (unassuming table wine). And yet, despite this plethoric range of wines, with surely something to please taste buds from all walks of life, many are those who have fallen out of love with French wine or, worse, have never fallen in love with it to begin with. Perceived as overly complicated, over-priced or just plain snooty, French wine today suffers from a serious image problem. As someone who loves both France and its wine, I feel a sort of moral, vaguely self-righteous obligation to refute these misconceptions. Except, um, they’re not entirely false.

Overly complicated

With its thousands of wines, hundreds of appellations, countless domaines and largely archaic labels, it’s fairly accurate to say that French wine tends toward the complicated. Most French wine labels feature information that the uninitiated are highly unlikely to understand. Where are the varietals indicated? How exactly is one expected to pronounce the wine’s name? What’s a fût de chêne? The approach isn’t terribly friendly, the labels aren’t terribly attractive and the marketing effort is virtually nonexistent. That said, information in this day and age is easier and faster to come by than ever before. All it takes is a bit of curiosity combined with a bit of research and voilà, French labels become much less intimidating. Can’t tell the difference between a Bourgogne and a Côtes-du-Rhône? Pick up a book on French wine, or at least a quick guide, or at the very, very minimum, Google it! Be proactive in your wine purchasing. No need to blame the French and their “unfriendly” labels/classifications/difficult-to-articulate names. Italian producers don’t make the job any easier, by the way. Nor do the Spanish, but for some reason no one ever complains about them.

Over-priced

This one is all a matter of where you live and where you shop. I live and shop in Paris, which means that I can buy all manner of seriously inexpensive French wine with incredible ease. My parents, on the other hand, live in California, which means that they can only get moderately to officially expensive French wine, and with much greater difficulty than I. However, in all fairness, they can also procure themselves all the delicious Napa wines they want, when they want, whereas I have to make a pilgrimage to a specialty wine store and hunt around for the one lonely Californian reference they have—which to add insult to injury is often a Gallo. Sigh. Have I mentioned that less than 3% of France’s wine imports are American?

But let’s get back to pricing. Within French borders I’ve seen everything from wine sold in plastic jugs at €1.66 per liter to a 1961 Côtes-du-Rhône Hermitage magnum sold at a mind-blowing €40,000. Between us, I’d say that unless said magnum grants everlasting life, that cash could definitely be better spent elsewhere. In any case, there may be no French wine available in the States for the same price as, say, a bottle of Two-Buck Chuck, but let us not compare the incomparable.

Snooty in general

Actually I think the problem here is really just residual snootiness from centuries of justifiable French superiority in this domain. France once used to be the be all and end all of fine wine, a position it smugly enjoyed (as would you). Wine aficionados embraced France’s thousands of wines and fantastically complicated system of distinguishing them, while those who didn’t hold a Ph.D in oenology were intimidated by the perplexing variety and societal pressure to understand the predominantly French selection filling every restaurant’s fine wine list.

Then, along came New World wines, whose taste, variety and friendly labels changed everything. Delicious wines from such diverse lands as Chile, New Zealand, South Africa, Australia, and the United States literally poured into the market and met with roaring success, while France, Italy, Spain and other Old World countries suddenly found themselves reeling from the one-two punch of New World competition AND steadily decreasing consumption on the home front. To make matters worse, most European producers had been resting on their proverbial laurels for decades—nay, centuries—without ever having made the effort to render their wines attractive to modern consumers. Thus, the savvy sales approach of New World wines was able to out-maneuver European wines with surprising ease, leaving France and its fellow producer countries laden with excess bottles that no one seemed to want to buy anymore.

This, in essence, is the origin of the “French wine crisis,” a problem that I spent years working on while employed by a Paris-based wine company whose goal was to apply New World marketing techniques to French wine in order to sell more of it. It sounded like a good idea at the time. I would happily relate in minute detail the twists and turns of that little adventure into the surreal, but I don’t want to be sued for libel. Not immediately, anyway; I figure it will be much more fun to be sued later on, once I’ve written an entire book about it (I’ll keep you posted).

So are French wines still snooty? In large part, yes. But to their credit, this is much less the case today than it was even five years ago. Many French vintners have adopted sales and marketing techniques (oh misery! Oh damnation!) that have done a great deal for consumer comprehension among mid-range wines. As for la crème de la crème (not a real French expression, by the way), France’s finest will never need an ounce of marketing because its audience was born knowing the significance of Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru. And if we’re being honest, how consumer friendly should French wine really become? Would it still be French if it didn’t have at least a soupçon of snootiness to it? Moreover, isn’t that part of the fun? Doesn’t the wine drinking world have enough happy-go-lucky labels jockeying for attention on supermarket shelves the world over without the French having to jump aboard the bandwagon of flashy colors and animal emblems? Maybe those monochromatic Gallic labels and complicated names are exactly what they should be; maybe it’s up to the informed consumer to take enough interest in what he or she is drinking to go to the minimal effort of learning a few French wine basics. N’est-ce pas?

In closing, French wine is indeed surrounded by a great many preconceived notions. My advice is to set them aside and to go forth and taste, for only by tasting its unfathomable diversity can one get any idea of the myriad delights that France’s vineyards truly have to offer.

And now that I’m done singing the praises of French wine, I’ll let you in on a little secret: in matters of pure taste, my Californian palate remains steadfast and loyal to its homeland. In other words, I think the Judgment of Paris was pretty right on the money. There, I said it (duck, cringe). Now, taste by definition is totally and completely subjective, but this is my blog and I’m allowed to be as subjective as I like! I may deeply love France and its wines, and will continue to advocate their appreciation and enlightened consumption, but my wine drinker’s heart still belongs to Napa Valley. What can I say? The heart has its raisins, and the raisins know nothing about it.

War and Paris

I’m on a book kick right now. This is odd, really, since for ages I’ve merely accumulated books without ever bothering to actually sit down and read them (cookbooks and dictionaries aside). Be that as it may, I recently decided to stop looking at my book collection and instead start reading it. Maybe it’s my new job, whose distance with respect to my apartment provides me with a whopping 90 minutes of quality reading time every day, or maybe I’ve just awoken the sleeping book lover in me, but I’m racing through those pages so fast that if Hussein Bolt himself were to see me in action he would probably say, “Wow, now that’s fast.”

Having recently finished “Autobiography of a Yogi,” “Eat, Pray, Love,” “Mirror, Mirror,” “Les Yeux Jaunes des Crocodiles” and “Les Etoiles de Compostelle,” I’m currently about a third of the way through “Suite Française,” a World War II tale written by Irène Némirovsky, a Jewish woman who lived in German-occupied France until 1942, when she was arrested and ultimately sent to her death at Auschwitz. I’ve never been a huge fan of war history; that’s more my dad’s area of predilection. But this book is excellent, even if the subject matter is perfectly heart-wrenching (hence my dislike of war history).

While I’m on the topic of war, yesterday was the first Wednesday of the month, and like every first Wednesday of the month, air raid sirens all across France began wailing at 12 o’clock noon and lasted roughly 60 seconds (this is a monthly test of the alert system that ensures its proper functioning in case of real disaster). So, as I often do on first Wednesdays, I made the same oh-so-clever remark: “Ahhh! The Germans are back! The Germans are back!” which actually drew some laughter, since my new colleagues hadn’t heard that one yet.

All jokes aside, the sirens naturally made me think of the book I’m reading, which in turn made me think that not all that long ago the concept of air raids wasn’t funny at all. I actually wonder why on earth they waited until 1987 to start using them. Isn’t that closing the proverbial barn door some 50 years after the proverbial horse has gotten away? For argument’s sake, let’s imagine that another country (not necessarily Germany, which is enjoying quite close ties with France these days. More on that later) decided to bomb Paris. Would anyone react to hearing those sirens go off? I for one would not. I’d think to myself, “Hmmm, that’s odd. It’s not the first Wednesday of the mo…” BOOM! The end. So why bother? Even my French boyfriend, who knows everything about everything, has no answer to this one.

As for current Franco-German relations, the media on this side of the pond are constantly going on about how much respect and admiration Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy have for one another. This relatively newfound friendship between the two countries is unquestionably a great thing, but I must admit that it is truly amazing to me that France and Germany have come so far in what has actually been a very small amount of time. Only last week I was strolling near the Ecole Militaire, and for the first time in what must be hundreds of strolls along this same street, I noticed an entire length of it riddled with bullet holes. “From the war,” my boyfriend informed me. And these aren’t the only signs of unhappier times in Paris. In addition to multiple, albeit discreet, architectural wounds scattered about the city, the alert flâneur will notice all manner of withered bouquets, faded tricolor ribbons and marble plaques dedicated to patriots who were killed on the spot.

These are all subtle yet chilling reminders that not so long ago France and Germany were locked in a horrendous war that cost 600,000 French lives and over 6 million German ones. And yet, despite two world wars and over three centuries of open hostility, these same two countries seem to bear no ill will; today, Sarkozy and Merkel are the power couple driving the progress of the European Union. And if I may venture to say so, the strength of their alliance is not so much a tribute to diplomacy as it is a tribute to collective forgiveness.