En train de...

Right now I am in a train on my (I guess) last excursion outside of town. I took the cheaper non-TGV line to Toulouse, and now have about 3 hours left of Limoges and Brive La Gaillard and other places I have never stopped. But it is nine o’clock in May and the sun is setting and the train moves slowly enough for the towns to be visible in the sunset and it is charming. I have only vague ideas about when trains went out of style in the US (ripped apart by the automotive and oil industries is my favorite story) but in any case it was a truly sad thing for romanticism. Frankly, I don’t understand why anyone would take a plane within France.

About six years ago I went on an Eastern European trip with a girlfriend and we took a train from Riga to Moscow whose dark exhaust hinted at coal. We were packed in with a hundred Russians who kept getting up and thudding to the back of the train with glass mugs and teabags to access a water tap heated by the engines. I rented a glass that looked something like the brilliant rendering below and tried to follow suit. Julia made a friend in the smoker’s compartment and they bonded over linguistically incompatible conversation. Their absurdist repartee was so pleasingly fluid that the woman dropped by regularly, unlit cigarette in hand, to pick up my friend on her way back to nicotineland and continue their chat. This kind of thing just doesn’t happen on planes.

brilliant rendering of russian tea glasses

On planes I end up trying to sleep folded onto the tray table or wedged up against the wall while some seatmate probes: “gee, it must be so neat to live in PARis”. I stand in line for the restroom and hover above the metallic seat while trying not to wonder where the speeding vortex goes. On this Latvia-Russia train it was obvious. You could see the tracks through the hole in the ground. Mystery solved, thankfully in sensible shoes.

When we got to the border between the two countries, we caused a half hour delay. We were interrogated in two languages we didn’t speak about our luggage (I think). We looked at each other and tried to neither laugh nor cry, waving our red passports and pointing to our tickets while the other passengers watched. Stone-faced does not do their gaze justice. I was especially paranoid, as my friend had insisted on hiding a piece of clandestine hash in a tampon applicator in her toiletries bag. All the ads I’ve ever seen for those movies where people are kept in sketchy prisons for crimes they didn’t commit raced through my head until the customs people just gave up and the train got moving again.

It was awesome.

On the way back from Amsterdam a couple of years ago, a trip taken with a group of my closest friends from Paris and one from California in part to celebrate the defense of my Masters thesis, we spent the entire time in the bar car. It was one of the best parts of the trip. We cleaned them out, and laughed so hard we cleared out the car itself. Although, not completely it would seem the next day when I received a text message from some guy I didn’t remember, asking to hang out with Dre before she went back to the US. Needless to say, it went unanswered.

I remember my first train trip in France, when I was fourteen going with my grandmother from Nice to Toulouse. She knitted, and kept pestering me to stop reading and look out the window. I didn’t want to look out the window. I wanted everyone to think I was refined and European and not with this high-pitched dyed-hair old lady who kept trying to lovingly feed me fabulous egg and salad sandwiches. I was, obviously, totally wrong to not take advantage of the images of cows and sunflower fields rolling past, but what are you going to do. There would be time to catch up on the pastoral eye-candy. Roughly six hours per, if you are counting from Paris to Toulouse.

The last time my mother visited, she and her boyfriend took a train from Paris to Rome. There was some bizarre condition with her US reservation that meant they had to (surprise!) stand in line and confirm their travel before boarding the train. In the end, they arrived, running, just as the train was leaving. I had a heated argument with the guy on the quai and he shrugged his shoulders. “Désolé.” But as we were turning around to go home and drink more wine to forget, he called to me. The train had stopped. Something about a door being jammed open. He helped them onto the train and they made it to Rome, reservations intact and (I’d like to think) souls invigorated by their near-miss.

With planes there are no near-misses. When you have an early flight you have to sleep at the frickin airport. JFK, Athens, Stockholm. I have done it MANY MANY TIMES. AND IT SUCKS. There are no last-minute door delays. You have to sit in the plane for hours on the runway, waiting for them to figure it out. Not drinking water. Not walking around.  Just sitting, waiting so that you can sit some more a thousand more feet up. The plane is not the friend of those of us who sometimes (always) arrive a teensy bit (half hour) late.

sleep-train goody bag

In a few days I will take the night train back to Paris, and slip into my mid-level compartment, complete with blanket-satchel and plastic-wrapped hygienic and surprisingly comfortable pillow, as well as a goody-bag sleep assortment and bottle of water, all provided by the train company. I will arrive back in town probably an hour behind schedule and have the option of paying too much for a café allongé or taking a two euro shower in surprisingly clean facilities provided for the night-trainers. Then I will calmly take the metro to my teaching gig. No ridiculously long trip into town, no waiting forever for the spinny baggage cart to spit out my mangled bag. No annoying standing in line while tourists try to figure out the ticket-into-town system. All hail rail.

I love trains so much that when the SNCF (train people) bought up teaser ad space in the metro I fell for their ruse immediately. “Coming soon, direct tunnel from Paris to New York!” I was gleeful, imagining the ease of slipping into Gare Du Nord 30m before departure, rolly-bag in hand, going through security measures where I wouldn’t have to take off my shoes. I didn’t care about the physics of the 5851 km underwater tunnel. My fantasy was finally coming true. I felt cheated when the follow-up ad told me I was dreaming, it would never happen, but that you can now reserve flights through their website. Jerks.

I am considering wearing a conductor’s hat on my flight back to San Francisco in mourning and silent protest for my dreams of continued rail travel. 

Gare d'Austerlitz at 815 (i took the coffee, thank you)

Voyage, voyage...

Parisians are, famously and incontestably, snobs, and they will tell any adorer of the city of lights that the best part of living in Paris is leaving Paris.

  

If you are an expat, this becomes true after about a year and a half. Though am not convinced that this is any different from living anywhere else. We’re like toddlers testing the world. We wander away from Mommy only to run back to make sure she’s still there before heading further out. It is helpful, of course, when Mommy is somewhere close to other places we want to see.

view from Chrystal Palace Park, Porto, awesome napping spot

I have recently been bingeing on travel. Last week I went to Porto with friends, eleven of us wandering groggily through the sloping, cobblestone streets, eating grilled seafood and drinking vinho verde and Superbock (one of my favorite beer names ever). Created instant parties in empty dance clubs, ate at absurdly long tables, took group naps in parks and crowded photographs in front of supposedly famous buildings...

I had known absolutely nothing about Porto before going, and was surprised at how lovely it is. But even more interesting was the fact that we were there together, two couples and seven singles, before the advent of children and prohibitive financial responsibility, spending five full days of in-between in some random foreign city, together. A shared vacation in blissful limbo.

Pretty places are nice, but I have always been fascinated by those with visible layers of history. Russia, where I was about 6 years ago, is this way. Stalinist apartment buildings rising in front of Orthodox onion-dome churches with Cyrillic-lettered MacDonalds signs in between them. Crazy.

Berliners, lounging between flea market and amphitheater karaoke

Berlin, where I was two weeks before Porto, is the same. Not with the Cyrillic symbols of global capitalism, but with the history, and for some reason I didn’t expect it as much. We went to a flea market on former killing fields and a complex of bars and studios and clubs in what used to be an industrial park, just about everywhere we went seemed to be a converted something else. My friends live next to what up to two years ago was the Tegel airport, and I went jogging on the runways. The overgrown spaces between airplane-sized lanes are now marked off as bird sanctuaries, and people were rollerblading and kite-boarding and lounging and sitting around having tea in a makeshift furniture swap-meet.

There is a feeling in the air of Berlin that I hadn’t experienced before, not just because I went on the first hot weekend of the year in a country that gets COLD, and the entire city descended into the streets to party. I think that there is something to the idea that chaos leads to potential. Thirteen years since the Wall went down, and the graffiti has only gotten better.

It is tempting to make this post interminable with anecdotes from neat adventures. Drinking Guinness to a Celtic jam session with the presiding priest from St Patrick’s Cathedral, who rode to and from the Dublin pub on his bicycle. In Malta, being told during a tour of the capital city that they stopped building opera houses because they were just easy targets for bombings. Getting stuck in Naples on a quiet Christmas eve because the Italians can’t handle snow on their train tracks- the only time I saw the city not vibrating with vespas and language and gestures and clotheslines. I spent one New Year’s swimming in Hyde Park in London, cheered on by old ladies and chased by swans, and another stuffing twelve grapes in my mouth at midnight in Barcelona, laughing in four languages. Memories, doobedoobedoobedoo.

Gellert mineral baths, Budapest

Many of these ventures have been with people who were cruising through Europe, the nice part of the double-edged sword that is living in a desirable destination. I crashed part of Pete’s honeymoon a year or so ago, slept on the floor of the bridal suite and bonded with his wifey in the topless women’s area of the tiled mineral baths in Budapest. For Renzo’s thirtieth birthday, I was invited to the family village near Sorrento. We wandered through town with his brothers and people popped out of windows and doorways, storagerooms and alcoves, to say:  “You’re a Staiano? Ima Staiano! He’s a Staiano, She’s a Staiano.” It was like a Disney movie.

Amalfi Coast, Italy. Or theatrical backdrop. Not sure. 

For me, a lot of Europe seems like a Disney movie. It’s surprising how much things can live up to your expectations, but in a more surround-sound way. It’s A Small World in Virtual Reality. Fondue in Switzerland, herring in Sweden, waffles in Belgium, joints in the Netherlands, and metal bands in Latvia. Can a place be real if it is an exact manifestation of your expectations?

Maybe this is why I so like sticking around in one spot for so long. I feel pulled to the exciting new places, but it’s the living in them that is really interesting. The difference in mundanity. It’s exciting to be alien and yet entirely comfortable, where returning from a trip is still going somewhere kind of new. If the best thing about living in Paris is leaving Paris, the second best is quite possibly coming back.

C'est les petits gestes qui comptent.

I really wanted to say something about gestures, about those little bits of integral communication that go above and beyond phrasal expression. Culturally-specific, non-linguistic communication. This is going to be a little tough, as I can't get my camera phone to take pictures remotely, and I have no idea how to post sound, but I'm going to try.

My good friend Helen told me this story, and I'm stealing it:

"Our hippie Australian colleague came into work the other day and said 'I had heard that Parisians were rude, but i wasn't prepared. I was in the supermarket today looking for baking soda to brush my teeth with, and the cashier just looked at me and did this awful thing. She leaned over and farted in my face! Farted in my Face!' "

Hippie Aussie was talking about a quintessentially French move. One necessary for all would-be fluent speakers (and gesticulators). Correctly done, it signifies "I have no idea", "them's the breaks", or "what you are saying does not interest me enough for actual comment". It should be performed by pursing your lips and shrugging your shoulders, whilst simultaneously expelling air out of your mouth. 

This does make a "fart" noise, but I feel the sound and action is actually very self-explanatory. Try it, you will be that much more French.

Another of my favorites is the "I'm out of here" move. I like this one because it can replace saying "let's blow this pop stand", one of my favorite expressions, and can be used in situations in which you need to be subtle, or just have food in your mouth and can't enunciate properly. It's a two-hander. Extend all the fingers of your right hand out, thumb glued to the palm of your hand, like a plastic-molded doll, or sticking out at a 45 degree angle. Cup your left hand slightly and hold it out in front of you, not too far, and keep it relatively limp and loose. Your flat, plastic-molded hand should be brought up from below to briskly contact the crook where your thumb meets your palm, twice. A soft slapping sound is made when your forefinger hits your inner palm, as if to say "let's go" or "I'm out".

There are others. The finger tap to your temple that instead of saying "think about it", as it would in the US, says "you're/she's/he's/they're nuts". The succession of  sucking tongue clicks that can be used on children, dogs, or peers to signify "don't do that". The series of expressions and micro-expressions that mainly seem to show disdain, but are recognized all over the country, and especially in Paris. I love these. I may not be able to pull off cigarette pants with striped shirts and a scarf (actually a thing), but I can definitely make a farting noise. It makes me feel like one of them. One of us.

Some are more universal. The eye-roll. The eyebrow raise. The "comme si comme ça" or "almost" frontal jazz hand. The "you're taking up too much of my valuable time with your nonsense" purse-and-pucker. These are examples that would seem relevant to most anglophones and francophones, but are actually just as culturally tagged as language itself. Unfortunately, this stuff is rarely taught in classrooms. (I think. I have never taken French as a foreign language, but I've certainly never designed an English class on the "rock on" hand-sign).

I've been told that in Japan shaking your head horizontally means "yes", which must lead to much hilarious misunderstanding in the board room. A student of mine told me recently that in middle-eastern countries a tongue-click and sharp, upward motion of your head from the jaw signifies "hello" and is not aggressive at all, and if in a market in Morocco someone answers your question about the price of mint tea by holding out his forefinger and thumb in a circle while he speaks to someone else, he isn't trying to ignore you or play a punching game, but is asking you to hold on a moment. It's like we're all living in physical code.

One time, on my way to teach a class, I was riding across northern Paris when a giant truck rolled past the pedestrian crossing and stopped, blocking my path on my green light. I tapped his window and he rolled it down. I pointed out that he was in my way, and when he wouldn't move I continued to insist, sweeping my arms with increasing grandeur to indicate the light and my bike. The light changed, and a honking line of cars gathered behind him, but our interaction was important. I was careful to vousvoie him while insulting his driving skills. Mostly, however, I was gesticulating wildly, sharply, implying he was a crazy idiot for continuing to inconvenience me. As he drove away, he called me a "conasse de bourgeoise parisienne". This is not a polite thing to say, "conasse" basically means "stupid bitch", but something about it invigorated me. 

I reknotted the scarf around my neck and thought to myself, that's right, drive on, this is MY town. 

Allons enfants

A few nights ago, after the election of François Hollande, the first socialist president in 17 years, his supporters took the Bastille. I had gone bowling on rue Mouffetard, as I always do on the first Sunday of the month (the Half-Assed Bowling League has garnered quite a following) but this time I abandoned my playmates to their cheersing and smack-talking to head out and see the throngs. And oh, there were throngs.

Gyrating lefties on every available surface, scaling lampposts and signposts and bus stops. Newsstands’ rooftops miraculously withstanding the weight of a dozen full-grown adults. People breaking into song- improvised tunes about getting rid of Sarkozy, and the well-practiced Socialist Party anthems I had heard for years at the concert series the newspaper l’Humanité puts on (hint: always the cheapest beer in Paris). There were children and teenagers and someone’s dog on his shoulder. People apologizing for pushing into each other and strangers striking up conversations.

Now, I’m not the wildest fan of Hollande for a few reasons, and I’m a little wary of what he will be able to do with the economy, but the waves of excitement were truly amazing. Because Paris is THE capital of the country, and because France is small enough for travel to be reasonable, it becomes an obvious rallying point and a real center for culture and movement. Toulouse, Lyon, Lille, all lovely places, but it’s tough for me to understand why people would choose to live away from this city. 

Usually the Bastille is, like most monuments in Paris, just the center for an enormous roundabout. I ride through it all the time on my bike, it’s not as bad as the Arc de Triomphe, but you do have to keep on your toes or you could get clipped by a Smarte car. On foot, when trying to decide which café has the cheapest happy hour (it’s the Indiana), you get stopped regularly by tourists holding out maps, looking for the prison. It was torn down in 1789. You know, after the revolution. I read once that they sold off pieces of it as souvenirs, like the Berlin wall. The more things change… Now the only way to see vestiges of the prison is to go down to the line 5 metro platform. The bit of the wall there used to be covered in beer cans and candy wrappers, but I think they put up some kind of glass barrier recently. Too bad, I kind of liked it as this quiet affirmation: “Yeah, we had a king once, now we have public transportation.”

I was in France when Obama was elected, and that is a scene I regret missing. I still have some telephone messages from friends saved, you can barely hear them above the cheers and music and catcalls from the streets of San Francisco, but they all say “he won! You can come home now!” Seeing the Bastille overrun with people, the column invaded by supporters with signs, with flags from all over the world, it seemed like elections should be triumphant, maddening, rallying. A hope for change, for me at the very least a vote against apathy. Party for politics.

 

And it was really not a bad party. I was on my way out when I stopped to hear a brass band play, and the little French motorcade drove Hollande by, back towards the Bastille to make his address. I followed, along with the band and its audience. I could see him on the screen from my spot between rue de la Roquette and the opera house, but heard nothing over the cries of foghorns, the whistles of fireworks and flares, and the chanting of support slogans. The tall dude to my left kindly read the speech to me from the subtitles (well, maybe it was for his nuzzling sans-culottes girlfriend). People kept excusing themselves for pushing me around in the crowd, and everyone chimed in with the new French president to sing the Marseillaise.

Et voici.

It has been eight and a half years of living in Paris. 9 apartments in 6 arrondissements on 13 metro lines. 5 bands, 1 long relationship and a handful of good friends. In 1 month I’ll travel the 5566 miles (or 8958 km) back to San Francisco, 2/3 reticent and 98% nostalgic.

I moved to Paris with the intention of staying a year or so, getting in touch with my paternal French roots (from the South, spanning from the mountains behind Nice to the Southwest city of Tarbes where my father spent most of his youth), and seeing what the country, and the city, had to offer. I had never been to Paris before moving here in 2003. I really had no idea what I was getting in for.

Paris is a wonderful city. Full of history and architecture and art and berets and baguettes and croissants and people gesturing and whistling and scoffing and loving and snorting. They call it a Museum City, not for the Louvre, but for the slowness to change. "Things have been good since we got rid of the king and worked out that indoor plumbing thing, why shake them up?" This is the stuff of frustration, but also something that holds genuine appeal for a girl from the Far West, where a building gets a plaque for being older than the 1920s.

So, I’ve lived here a while. I’ve eaten a lot of crèpes and snails. I’ve sunburned in the Luxembourg gardens and fantasized about jumping into the Seine to fill my ears and nose and pores with Paris. I’ve jogged the canal and the Tuileries gardens and speed-ridden my bike through the heat, the rain, and the streetlamped night, sometimes fuzzy with wine, sometimes just late to teach a class. I’ve poured beers in jazz bars and sung with Big Bands, fought in public and made out (mostly) in private. I’ve been up the tower and down the catacombs, taken planes from all the airports and trains from almost all the stations (except Bercy, I mean, who ever leaves from Bercy?).

I’ve been transient forever here. Just around the corner from moving home. Now that I am heading back, it seems a shock. I have a few things to say. Here we go.