I'm back

Well, it’s been nearly a year since my last post, which is admittedly pathetic, but as I nonchalantly mentioned a while back, a little bundle of joy has come our way, in addition to a new company (my own!) and a new town. In other words, the theme of 2013 around here has been BIG, BIG CHANGE. And as it turns out, these particular big, big changes, while fantastic, are really quite time consuming.

Where to pick up? I won’t bore you with the details of my pregnancy, because really, you probably don’t care. Plus I had it fairly easy until the last two months, when I magically transformed into a living water balloon. That might have been worth relating at the time, but at five months post partum I’m happy to say I pretty much recognize myself again, and with baby sleeping through the night I no longer have to face blunt observations from absolutely everybody about how tired I look. Not that I expect it to last, mind you, but I’ll take what I can get.

It’s really quite astounding how much my life has changed in so little time. A year ago I was living in the heart of Paris with a “9-5” (really 9:30-7:30 but who’s counting?) agency job, a killer commute and no sweet little dependent creature to take care of (my husband notwithstanding. Har-har). And now, a mere 12 months later, I’m a MOM, an entrepreneur, and a suburbanite! Two of those things I’d sworn never to become. Granted, I did said swearing when I was 12 and 24 respectively, neither of which is the most lucid of ages. Had I been wiser, I’d have kept the oath swearing to a minimum, because the truth is that I feel like I’ve walked smack into that last scene from Field of Dreams: “Hey, is this heaven?” “Maybe it is.” Awwwww.

OK, I’ll get back to my regular sarcastic observations next time around (which I promise will be soon). For now, it’s Christmas. Let’s just enjoy it.

Bonne année 2013!

After a long absence (I have no excuse), I am back at the keyboard, ready to turn my discerning gaze upon unsuspecting new subject matter. And subject matter there will be this year, for I am simultaneously embarking on two new Franco-American adventures: becoming my own Boss(!) and becoming a first-time Parent(!!!). So yes, 2013 will be no small year for me, and thus, no small year for Le Mot Juste!

In mental preparation for such formidable life changes, my first managerial decision was to give my star employee (myself) a nice long break to relax and gather her resources Stateside. Besides, one cannot seriously critique life as a pseudo expat without going home from time to time to re-immerse oneself in one’s own culture. So here I am, re-immersed. 

Fellow patriots.

There is a certain “honeymoon” period every time I return to the US, during which I marvel, newly-arrived-immigrant style, at what now seems so exotic about American life after 10+ years abroad. Eight-lane freeways, for example, or unlimited refills, or just about anything from Costco. Sometimes I just wander through Target, amazed at the availability of so much stuff, at such low prices. Good mascara for 5 bucks—oh! In France, I shell out so much more than that for the same damn thing.

Yesterday we stepped out (i.e. got in the car and drove for an hour “to the city”) to see the new Matt Damon flick, Promised Land. To my surprise, the theater offered IMAX, 3D and vibrating seats! When did this start? Anyway, the movie I liked. I also liked the big empty theater, which was a nice change from France, where I have long become maniacal about showing up early for fear of being left with a front-row seat, or worse, no seat at all.

Hurry up and wait.

Regardless of a few flops, I remain a big fan of Matt Damon, whom I prefer any day to both Leonardo, who for some reason bugs me, and especially to Brad, whom I flat-out cannot stand. Why the entire world seems to judge him a great actor is beyond me. I’m tempted to go to Google and type “Brad Pitt is a mediocre actor,” just to see if it will guess what I’m typing before I’m done typing it (thereby proving this has been typed many times before and I am not alone in my distaste), but I’m sure the second I type “Brad Pitt is...” Google will instead suggest one of its perennial favorites: “gay” or “dead.” A lot of people must be searching for these things if Google is spontaneously guessing them. It’s an interesting insight into our national hang-ups I suppose. Compare with Google France, which judging by its most frequent suggestions seems to suspect that everyone is Jewish (or gay or dead). So whereas American Internet surfers appear to be obsessed with sexual orientation, French ones appear to (still) be obsessed with who exactly has Hebrew ancestry. I shudder to imagine the consequences had Google existed during the Occupation.

The movie was quite good. Early reviews don’t seem to agree with me, but I like seeing an American film that dares to question the practice of fracking, however half-heartedly. The subject has been a big fat deal in France for some time, much as have GMOs, while both seem to be relatively new buzzwords on this side of the world. I was delighted to see a California measure on the ballot this November proposing the compulsory labeling of all GMO-containing foods, yet my “health conscious” home state voted it down! I see this as perfectly bizarre given the success of all those “they’re out to get us” diet books topping best seller lists and striking fear into the hearts of those who would dare consume sugar/carbs/meat/milk/soy/corn and now, wheat. That’s right, wheat is now what’s making America fat

The new face of evil.

I wonder whether the paranoia we seem to have in this country about what our food may be doing to us is at all related to the paranoia of those who harbor an obsessive fear of our government. I remember a day in my 12th grade AP Civics class, during which the teacher took out a long strip of paper and wrote the entire political spectrum on it, beginning with the extreme left (anarchy) and ending with the extreme right (fascism). When she was done, she joined the two ends together, forming one continuous circle. The point of course was that in the end, both forms of extremism stand shoulder to shoulder. I won’t go so far as suggesting that right-wing militia who arm themselves to the teeth with automatic weapons on the off chance that federal agents one day show up on their lawns in an attempt to seize their “freedom” are in the end not so different from left-wing activists who are convinced that the Department of Agriculture is purposefully trying to poison us all with genetically modified organisms, but it does give one pause for thought. “I love my country but fear my government” seems to have universal appeal in states both blue and red.

And there you have it.

This notion of fearing one’s democratically-elected government is among the most difficult to explain to the French, for whom the government has long lost its fear factor and could more aptly be likened to a doting mother nursing her hungry child. Fear the government? Whatever for? The government means health care, education, justice, jobs, transportation, vacation, retirement, and much more. As Adam Gopnik has observed in his own book of reflections on life in France, Paris to the Moon, “The American populist belief is that there is a secret multinational agency ready to swoop down from the skies and make everybody work for the government; the French populist belief is that there is a secret government agency that may yet swoop down from the skies and give everybody a larger pension.”

This government love fest of course comes at the price of exorbitant taxes on everything from how much you eat to how many televisions you own, yet doesn’t seem to bother anyone all that much. Consider current French President François Hollande’s attempt to hike income taxes on France’s wealthiest to a whopping 75% (that’ll teach THEM to be rich!), which very nearly became reality. Such a proposal in the US would not only be met with categorical refusal, while surely spelling the political demise of whoever was foolish enough to suggest it, but would doubtless be considered by many as irrefutable proof that government is evil.  

Just another reason why sharing my life between both shores provides so much to ponder. But that’s all the pondering I can muster for today. Thanks for hanging in there, and stay tuned for future rants and reflections at Le Mot Juste.

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! 

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.

Won't you be my neighbor? Part I

Parisian apartments have thin walls. In the case of older dwellings, this often stems from the division at some point over the last century of what were once large bourgeois family apartments into multiple smaller, separate ones, which Parisian landlords today rent out for a small fortune each. Sound insulation between the now separate residences was—and has remained—virtually nonexistent. Thus, what goes on in the apartments on either side of one’s own is generally perfectly audible, and more or less easy to live with depending on who the neighbors are, what kinds of noises they tend to make and what time they tend to make them.

But the walls aren’t all; Parisian apartments also have thin ceilings. Coupled with the frequent presence of hardwood floors, what goes on above one’s apartment is almost as difficult to ignore as what goes on on either side of it. This all adds up to the average apartment dweller being exceedingly well aware of the most intimate details of the personal lives and habits of those who live all around him, while not actually knowing any of them. A kind of box, if you will, of uninvited intimacy with people who are just this side of strangers.

In Paris, apartment neighbors tend to not know each other from Adam, which is perfectly fine by them. I mean, why bother? You will NEVER see a Parisian knocking on a neighbor’s door to request a spare egg or a cup of sugar, or to pop in for a spontaneous chat. Instead, it’s the opposite: they pretty much avoid each other like the plague. Stairwell encounters are particularly undesirable. Thus, if you are getting ready to go out, and you hear a neighbor’s door opening, you wait. Once the coast is clear, and the risk of having to make pesky, time-consuming small talk is gone, then you can venture out. Not before. 

G. and I live in just such an apartment. We don’t know many of the other people in the building, despite its relatively small size, but this is obviously normal. Besides, the lack of intimacy between ourselves and 85% of our neighbors is more than accounted for by the extreme intimacy we cannot help but share with the remaining 15%. Take the couple living above us, for example: their lives are an open book of sound that never fails to draw our attention because really, what choice is there?

At 7:00 am, they(?) are in the bathtub splashing water about and brushing their teeth. We can actually hear the brushing. At around 9:00 am, clomp clomp clomp! The perpetually high-heel-shod girlfriend comes tramping down the wooden stairwell. At 7:00 pm, she comes tramping home, jangles her keys into the door, opens and slams it shut behind her, tromps over to what I assume is the bed, removes her heels, which she lets drop—BAM! BAM!—to the floor, and then, all is relatively silent. Until after dinner, that is, when either she puts the latest Mika single on perpetual repeat, or she and her boyfriend get into a shouting match. They tend to intersperse their shouting with what sounds like rearranging their living room furniture.

Then there’s our next-door neighbor, whose noises are almost as bizarre. He is an elegant Japanese man in his late 40s, very well-dressed and polite. But once inside his apartment, things get very weird. He has this answering machine whose volume must be set on “hearing impaired” because when the thing picks up, we hear the entire message as though it were being screamed through our wall. Then, the machine starts beeping at 5-second intervals to notify our neighbor that he has a message. In the beginning, when we had just moved in and hadn’t grasped that beep = answering machine, he left on vacation for an entire week. Lots of people called him during that time: BEEP BEEP BEEP, all week long. I thought he had installed some kind of heavy-duty medical equipment or an industrial security alarm. This neighbor is also in a “complicated” relationship ... with a 20-something Brazilian male fashion model, who spends his days drinking and slamming the front door. Sometimes I run into him in the stairwell as he staggers down, hiccuping. I really need to work on my neighbor avoidance skills.

Anyway, not to JUDGE or anything, but this is the reality of Parisian apartment life. And yeah, we certainly contribute our share of noise as well. I’d even be willing to bet that we’ve irritated the hell out of our neighbors on countless occasions with our tromping around, vacuuming, vibrating laundry machine, long phone calls in English and noisy dinner parties. Plus I’m a bit clumsy and have been known to drop heavy objects on the floor, sometimes in the middle of the night. This is why there is never any open conflict in the building: we all accept that being auditory witnesses to each other’s daily goings-on is normal. And in the face of the cold anonymity of city life, maybe it does us all some good to be somewhat in touch with other people, however bizarrely.

In loving memory

I have recently suffered a loss in the family; I don’t know if I can technically call it a being, but I do tend to “bond” with my material possessions to such an extent that they almost seem to have a soul. I know there’s a term for this (other than “insanity”). Ah yes, anthropomorphism. What did people do before Google? Seriously?

So the family member in question is my late Samsung E840 Candy Pink telephone, which I purchased back in the foggy, innocent days of spring 2008. At the time, I was looking to change mobiles and fell in love with the sleek lines and sexy color of this little slider. The fact that it was quite similar to G.’s own maroon version added a certain extra touch of “buy me” seductiveness. So I bought it.

Having tested multiple phone brands in the past, trial and error had proven Nokia to be the most worthy of living in my purse. Nevertheless, I took a chance on this Samsung because, well, it was so preeeeetty. Sadly, what it boasted in physical beauty it sorely lacked in inner depth. For one, it offered but a shadow of the gadgety personalization options I’d come to so appreciate from Nokia, and two, its texting configuration was an absolute disaster. It steadfastly refused to be taught any new words, and for my franglais texting needs, this was unacceptable. But it had a nice built-in camera and worked just fine as an actual phone, so in the end I figured it could stay.

For years, the two of us built up a certain complicity: Katrin and her fuchsia phone! Despite our rocky beginnings, we came to become all but inseparable. The phone’s memory stored my friends’ numbers and G.’s loving text messages; the calculator function made dividing up the tab after group dinners a breeze; the camera function had my back whenever my real camera ran out of power; the alarm function gently woke me every morning with the song “Paul Simon” by the Russian Futurists. On a side note, I would have preferred a song called “Russian Futurists” by Paul Simon, but whaddya do?

So life was bliss … until, on a Friday night just a few weeks ago, G. proposed that we see the movie “Inception” at the UGC cinema near Opéra. We settled into our seats and as usual, I put my purse by my feet. Now, I’ve always had a little voice in my head that has whispered, “Watch out, someone behind you could just reach under your chair and nab that purse right out from under it!” but I have always brushed off said voice because hey, what kind of an evil person would do THAT?

I’ll tell you what kind. The kind that slips into a theater at 11:00 pm and pretends to watch the movie when really, they just want to take your stuff. So the long and the short of it is this: some punk kids behind us managed to get their greasy little hands into my purse and steal my cell phone right out of it without my noticing a thing until they were long gone. I know this because when we called the number later on—you know, just to be sure—they answered. Morons. I’m lucky they didn’t take my whole damn purse, but that’s beside the point.

I’ve had run-ins with the Dark Side of Paris before, and each time I’ve come away thinking that the city loves me a little less, which is truly sad. It’s an awful feeling knowing that some ne’er-do-well has a cherished belonging that only minutes before was sitting safely in your care, even when it’s something as insignificant as a phone. I liked this little phone of mine, all the more so for the years of saved texts from G., virtual messages having long replaced the written love letter among us Gen Y-ers.

But let’s put this into perspective: it’s not the end of the world. I suppose I should take it as a lesson on the need for greater general awareness, or even as an opportunity for spiritual growth! Are we not supposed to store up our treasures in heaven, where thieves cannot break in and steal? Well, yeah, but … I’m an incorrigible materialist! It’s MY phone and as such, should be in MY hot little hands and no one else’s! Grrrrrrr.

However, time heals all wounds, and one week of mourning was really all I could give. Try as I might, I simply cannot lead a balanced existence without a phone/alarm/camera/converter/calculator. So I HAD to go out and get a replacement. Not considering myself to be “cool” enough for an iPhone (yet), I settled on the next best thing: a smart phone—by Nokia—which even pays homage to my departed Samsung with a nice fuchsia exterior. So everyone’s happy: my service provider, for coercing me into another 24-month contract in exchange for the phone; G., for once again being able to reach me during the day; and of course myself, for having what is quite frankly an awesome piece of technology AND just so happens to be beautiful on the outside as well as on the inside. But if you think I’m letting it out of my sight for more than 2 seconds, think again! No you can’t hold it! It’s mine, I tell you, miiiiiiiiiine!

R.I.P. - May 15, 2008 - September 4, 2010

Gesundheit

While getting ready to go to work this morning, I tuned in as usual to my favorite radio station, Europe 1. And in so doing, I learned that the Icelandic volcano Fjfqkdfkmdfjdslkf has intensified its eruptions, ensuring continued air travel mayhem. Sorry, I mean volcano Eyjafjallajokull.

While millions of travelers are cursing angry mother nature, I for one am selfishly thankful that for once I am not caught in the midst of it. I have a horrendous record of travel mishaps, be they by air, land or sea, and I wonder whether, by this, my own luck might not be shifting in that department. I’ll get a chance to test my theory in about a month, although if this unpronounceable volcano continues to belch monstrous clouds of noxious ash into the air then maybe not.

Volcanoes have always scared the living hell out of me. When I was little, I remember watching a National Geographic special on the ancient city of Pompeii: its customs, its art, its people and especially, its horrific annihilation by Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. To this day, images of fossilized skeletons in the fetal position still pop into my mind whenever I hear about erupting volcanoes. As I grew up in the mountains, with a particularly large one visible right outside of my family’s living room window, the story of Pompeii’s tragic demise took roughly five seconds to convince my seven-year-old imagination that that juggernaut across the way—whose name just so happens to be Volcan—was a sleeping Vesuvius II and that it was only a matter of time before we all ended up like those poor wretches of antiquity. In reality, Volcan Mountain is not actually a volcano, but try explaining that nuance to a child who has just been subjected to this. Thank you, National Geographic.

I actually went to Naples last October, and despite being assured that there was no immediate reason to worry that Vesuvius would spontaneously awaken and kill everyone within a 12 km radius during my brief stay, I can’t say that I felt particularly at ease with its menacing silhouette bearing down on the city, either. Nor was I terribly disappointed to “not have the time” to visit Pompeii itself, and this despite my fascination with ancient history. What can I say? Mother nature will always have the last word, so maybe it’s best to just stay out of her way. Look at how this current eruption has taken the intricately choreographed ballet that is modern air traffic engineering and transformed it into thousands of grounded flights, legions of apoplectic travelers living out their own personal versions of The Terminal, and all manner of hand-wringing, finger-pointing and name-calling from governments, travel authorities and airline executives across the planet. It makes me think that all those disaster movies that I generally snub are probably fairly accurate in their depiction of the world’s reaction should anything TRULY serious happen (alien invasion, for example). It would probably be pure chaos.

But let’s look at the bright side. Aliens probably won’t attack us any time soon, and in a couple of weeks the international air space will probably be back to normal. And I bet trips to Iceland will be REALLY CHEAP for quite some time. Not that I’d go. Shudder.

 

Survivante

Well, I survived the ski trip. But I think I have only the brevity of my séjour to thank for that! For as I predicted, I proved beyond any possible doubt that when I say “I’m awful at skiing,” it is not what the French would dub “2nd degree” (tongue-in-cheek) humor. I have bruises in places I didn’t know could be bruised, muscle aches in muscles I didn’t know I had. Taking the stairs at this point is pure agony, but I did it. I skied the Alps. Or more accurately, I slid down the Alps on my face.

My introduction to le ski was brief but intense, all the more so for having gone with G.’s family—both nombreuse and particularly, how shall I say, exuberant. Being virtually the only girl in the pack, I had to make do with a decidedly masculine, “sink or swim” approach to a choice selection of activities: snow hiking, cross-country skiing and some bizarre form of postmodern sledding involving thin, plastic contraptions vaguely resembling over-sized shovel heads. Zooming down the snowy forest trails we went on these things, narrowly avoiding violent collision with tree trunks and terrified children. Whatever happened to good old-fashioned inner tubes?

And as for the cross-country, that too was lost in translation. Somewhere in my life I had managed to develop the obviously erroneous impression that this alternative form of skiing was “easy”—in the sense that it didn’t involve big gnarly descents—but oh ho ho! Whatever was I thinking? The uphill segments were just fine: no falling over, just a bit of slipping and sliding. But alas, what goes up must come down, and those segments were most assuredly not just fine. Thank God I sprained both of my ankles back in high school, because that endowed them with an elasticity that kept me from doing any serious harm to myself when I fell over … and over … and over … and over, on down the hill, twisting them in all directions because cross-country skis stay on no matter what. Who on earth invented this sadistic, ridiculously hard-to-learn sport? The jury is going to have to seriously deliberate before delivering a verdict on any hope for a possible Katrin Goes Skiing, the Sequel.

At least I was able to experience the singular beauty of the snow-adorned Alps and the extreme pleasure of returning to a Paris several degrees warmer than the one I had left. Rainy, of course, but definitely warmer. Dare we speculate that spring is somewhere nearby? I for one certainly want to. Not that spending my evenings cuddling with the radiator isn’t fun and all, but I have fond memories of days gone by when I could actually sit outside, on the balcony, and not even shiver! Ha ha! Or were those but the wild imaginings of my sun-deprived brain? Paris weather often brings back memories of reading Ray Bradbury’s short story “All Summer in a Day,” although the comparison is not entirely fair on my part; I should also point out that Parisian weather patterns are perfectly capable of swinging 180° in the other direction, resulting in record-breaking heat waves and extreme fan shortages such as that of 2003. Great year for French wine, incidentally. Rungis food market, on the other hand, will never be the same.

In any case, my skiing ordeal is over; here I am, back in Paris, snuggled up on the couch with a cocktail in hand, jazz in the background, and the extended edition DVD of Lord of the Rings to savor as I will. And I have to say, this beats any ski trip I can think of.

Say cheese!

This entry is the second installment in a 3-part series on the crown jewels of French cuisine. Last week, we covered the wide world of Parisian bread; next week, we seriously get into the vino. But today it’s all about the cheese.

As Meg Ryan’s character says to Kevin Kline’s character in French Kiss (one of my all-time favorite movies, even if it is a bit … cheesy. Har har), “Did you know that there are 452 official government cheeses in this country? Don't you think that's incredible? To come up with 452 ways of classifying what is basically a bacterial process?”

It is incredible, all this French cheese. Not to bash my motherland or anything, but let’s face it: American cheese is a joke. I mean, I like sharp cheddar as much as the next guy, but let’s be honest: our cheese comes in two colors—orange and off-white—and we turn it into such oddities as string cheese, cottage cheese, hamburger cheese, low-fat and non-fat cheese, soy cheese, spray cheese, Velveeta and my personal favorite, Cheez Whiz (at which point it is no longer appropriate to refer to the product as “cheese” per se, but rather “cheez,” just to truly express the extent of the denaturalization to which it has been subjected). Sad, I tell you; sad, sad, sad.

Some will point out that America also makes delicious farm cheeses and that I’m being too harsh because Wisconsin and Vermont and even my own California all make great American cheese. Just look:

I have never understood this ad campaign. California makes incredible wine, grows delicious avocados and citrus and also produces some really tasty almonds. But I’m sorry; never have I been wowed by the cheese selection at any of the many, many, many Californian grocery stores that I have frequented.

France, on the other hand, will never be beat when it comes to cheese. Mmmmm. Walk into any French grocery store, no matter how small, and you’ll be offered a range of cheeses that commands respect. And those are just the grocery stores! Fromageries are a whole other category! I can actually smell the cheese just thinking about it. Oh wait, that’s because my boyfriend just opened the refrigerator. (Side note: I think I’ll start referring to him in this blog as “G.” so as to semi-preserve his anonymity while avoiding overuse of the sophomoric term “my boyfriend.”)

Yes, it’s true: French cheese is stinky. Delicious, mind you, but stinky. G. and I keep our cheese selection in a Tupperware container in the refrigerator, next to an open box of baking soda (sold only in pharmacies here, incidentally; perhaps to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands?). But do you think that has any real effect on the odor? Not really, no. However, the alternative—cheese elimination—is unthinkable, and so we ignore the odor. Or rather, I ignore the odor. Being French, G. probably thinks that that’s just how cheese smells. And if we’re being technical, he’s right; that is how cheese smells … when you haven’t pasteurized the hell out of it (eh-hem FDA). What is so scary about raw-milk cheese? The French have been eating it for centuries, and the last I heard, raw-milk cheese consumption has yet to have any impact on French mortality rates. So what’s the deal? On the flip side, you can of course get pasteurized cheese in France, too (Pasteur was French after all), but it only serves as a bland—albeit less stinky—alternative to real cheese.

As we celebrated Thanksgiving this past week, I think the following cheese and Thanksgiving-related story is appropriate: in 1999, I was living with a French family just outside of Paris while participating in my university’s foreign exchange program. At the end of November, my brother flew out from California to spend a few weeks with me and celebrate Thanksgiving à la française. Over the course of his stay, he had many opportunities to sample a wide array of French cheeses, all of which he just LOVED but, sadly, none of which he could find in the US upon his return. 

So two years ago for Christmas I thought I would surprise him with a real raw milk camembert. I lovingly selected it at the airport boutiques at Charles de Gaulle airport, had it double wrapped in tinfoil and put into a little container that I had brought along with me to mask its odor. The flight went just fine; I even put the bag in the overhead compartment so as to avoid any telltale scents from escaping. However, as is often the case, my connecting flight was canceled due to poor weather (which the airline naturally classified as an “act of God,” as if God Himself had wanted to teach me a lesson about smuggling unpasteurized dairy products into America). The result was that I had to spend the night in a hotel near the airport and take the first available flight the next morning. Did the hotel room have a refrigerator in it? No. 

By the time my cheese and I finally touched down the following day, I was more than ready to hop into my brother’s truck and begin the 90-minute commute to our parents’ home in the mountains. However, after greetings and hugs, my brother’s first comment was something along the lines of, “WHAT is that smell?!” Terribly proud of myself, I answered, “I brought you a surprise!” His response: “You’re not putting that thing in my truck. I just cleaned it.” So we put the cheese in the truck bed with my suitcase and headed off. In the end, my family was touched that I had gone to such lengths to bring them this cheesy treat from across the Atlantic, but no one wanted to eat it. “It smells like sweaty feet!” was my mom’s first reaction. “Pheeeeew! Something's ripe in here!” was my dad’s (of course, by that time the cheese had been traveling for something like 42 hours. How would you smell?). Being the good sports that they are, though, they at least tried it. The verdict? The taste was great, but the odor was just too overpowering for their uninitiated noses. So in the end, we brought the cheese to the annual Christmas party thrown by some very dear friends of ours who know and celebrate France and its 452 glorious cheeses. They loved it.