Weekend in Paris

I had my first free weekend in Paris!

Saturday I spent some much-needed time alone. I wandered around my neighborhood and strolled down the market by Rue De Passy, right next to my place, which I’m told is one of the best markets in Paris. I bought figs, peaches, rosemary and mint. I also stopped in a lovely little flower shop. I asked the woman working there at least twice if the price tags were correct – plants and flowers are so cheap here! I bought a whole bouquet of red roses for just seven euros! I also bought a fern, a little tree, an African violet, and a tiny pot of English ivy, and I barely spent thirty euros. Granted, the roses were about to wilt, but I was bringing them home to dry as decoration, anyway, and the plants weren’t in perfect health, but I have a bit of a green thumb, so I know with some nutrients, repotting for root room, trimming, and lots of love they’ll be lush and adding beautiful Earth energy to my new home.

At night, I climbed onto my roof and drank chamomile tea and painted my toenails while looking at the tower. It was a perfect relaxing Saturday in Paris, even though I didn’t leave my neighborhood.

The next day I ventured a little further, though. I took the metro to meet Maia and Matthieu. Maia let me go through her bags of old clothes she’s getting rid of, and then the three of us went for a quick lunch just up the street where they have fresh vegetable juices. I got a carrot, apple, ginger juice and warm pita with melted chevre, which is goat cheese, and vegetables. The food was phenomenal; the service ridiculous.

Unlike in the U.S., wait staff in France get paid fully, so they aren’t living off of your tips. This means they are much more free to act how they’re feeling – stressed, peeved, hating everyone – because their means of living don’t depend on smiling through a six hour shift of serving needy, hungry people. Needless to say, friendly waitresses and waiters aren’t common in Paris. If you need anything, you better remember it all at once, because you’ll only see your waiter maybe three times during your whole dinner – when they take your order (after you’ve waited twenty minutes), when they throw your food in front of you, and when you track them down for your check. Ours went above and beyond, though, and just barely stopped while flying by to pick up the glass bottle of water and clank it against our glasses while re-“pouring” our water. I put “pouring” in parentheses because it was more like spilling. “I would rather she just not do anything at all,” Maia laughed after. “I feel affronted by her pouring water for me.” Matthieu commented on how even after living in France his whole life, it’s still shocking sometimes how waiters treat their customers. At the end, when the waitress brought our check, she used buttery words and was suddenly super friendly, a trick to make people who were born yesterday forget all the terrible service of the previous hour and leave a gracious tip. We weren’t born yesterday.

Matthieu had to go home to continue working on his memoir, so Maia and I spent the rest of Sunday together riding around the city on her scooter. We were goddamn glamorous.

First we went to two “kilo shops.” A kilo shop is a thrift store, except instead of having fixed prices on everything, you put the clothes you want in a basket on a scale and the item’s weight determines how much it costs. For example, there was this rad jacket I wanted, so I found one of the scales around the store and stuck it in the basket. The jacket had a green tag, which indicates the price per kilo for that item, so I pressed the green button, and it weighed it and told me the price was thirty-one euros. Voila! Such a cool idea.

After that we hopped back on the scooter toward the 5^th arrondissement. I interrupted us singing our own rendition of Joan Jett’s “Bad Reputation” to say we should pull over and look at the art at the stands along the river because I needed art for my apartment; I immediately found exactly what I was looking for. Paintings of pressed flowers on thick, rose-pink paper, five euros a piece.

Maia maneuvered the scooter through rows of traffic until we arrived at La Mosquee de Paris, or The Grand Mosque of Paris. It’s a beautiful mosque with a 33-meter high minaret, and apparently it served “as a secret refuge for Algerian and European Jews … they were provided shelter, safe passage, and fake Muslim birth certificates to protect them from German persecution.”

Everything about this place is decadent. I’ve always loved Middle-Eastern architecture, with its arches and pillars, intricate mosaics, and generous use of golds, reds, and blues. We sat at a tiny table in the bright courtyard under fig trees and surrounded by mosaics and drank mint tea in glasses and ate flaky honey pastries.

We spent the rest of the afternoon browsing the shops in the 5^th, including a book shop and a store with a thousand scarves and dangly jewelry, and getting coffee.

I got back to my apartment just as the sun was setting, ending a perfect weekend.

Monday was the kids’ first day of school! It was Gabi’s first day of “real” school, and Josy’s first day of our equivalent of pre-school. I met Gael, Laetitia, and the kids in the morning at a café by their school, about a ten minute walk from my place. They had already ordered me a café allonge because they’re awesome.

At ten thirty, a crowd of parents and youngsters dressed in navy blue and wearing backpacks the size of their bodies crammed into courtyard at the center of the school, and a woman read the children’s names in a microphone, announcing what class they’d be in. I thought that was too much for the first day, especially for a bunch of kindergartners who are already either really nervous or extremely hyped up. I was cripplingly shy at that age, and I know I would have died if I had to have my name called in a microphone my first day of kindergarten and then walk in front of a whole crowd and stand in a line while people clapped. Poor Gabi suffers shyness like I did at his age, and so his morning was a little rough. He cried as he was hustled off in a line through a classroom door, looking back desperately with tear-stained cheeks at his mom. When we picked him in the afternoon, though, there was no hint of that nervous shyness, though, just as I suspected. He was back to his happy self, holding his best friend’s hand and flashing smiles to show off the new hole in his mouth where his tooth used to be.

I also had a first school experience today. After leaving Gabi at school, Laetitia, Josy, and I spent the late morning figuring out the bus system to my school; Laetitia found out for me that I could show up at any time that day after 1 p.m. to do my oral exam and sign up for my courses, so I took the bus back to Place Victor Hugo after having lunch with them at their house.

It was pretty uneventful – I just had to speak in French with a woman who helped me sign up for classes, and I met a really nice girl from Belgium who I’m probably going to hang out with. School doesn’t start for me until September 29, right around when Maia leaves for school in Lille, so I’m going to try to do as much daytime and nighttime exploring as I can until then.