Free Events in Paris

I wrote a post last night and came back today to edit before posting but had not saved so it's all lost! Oh hum, I'll try again...

Paris, being a huge city, has tons of events to offer visitors and residents, some of which are free. We  decided over the past couple of weeks to check out some of the free events to see if they were worth the time spent. First, I registered on a website that offers free events in all categories from cinema and theater to sports and clubbing. I was surprised to see all the opportunities there were so tried to get tickets to a couple of movies to no avail. Then I tried the play section and scored tickets for 3 theater performances however there was only one that I would have paid the price to see. The first, Cabaret Les Chiche Capo at the  La Pépinière opéra, 7, rue Louis Le Grand, 75002 Paris, was a wacky male four-some, 3 actors plus a guitarist, who did an hour slap-stick routine. There was a female plant in the audience who created such laughter that she was almost better than those on stage. It was fun and even though I couldn't understand much of the spoken part, I enjoyed it. The second, Francisco E Cuhna at La Comédie des Boulevards, was a one-man show where he pretended to be in a therapy group with the audience members. There were a few funny moments but on the whole it was not really as funny as it could have been, according to the two French speakers who accompanied me. The third was the best, Amour et Chipolatas at La comédie Caumartin, 25, rue Caumartin, 75009 Paris, was about a young woman who was going to get married so she had a BBQ to introduce her fiancé to three of her ex-lovers. None of the men knew each other nor did they know what she had planned to announce. Two of the ex-lovers were still in love with her, the other was now gay, and her fiancé was completely jealous of the others, especially the non-gay ones. As one would imagine it was full of laughs and ridiculous male posturing. Again, my limited French was challenged but I understood most of it from the antics on stage.

 Then on Thursday I bought Parischope, a weekly publication Wed to Wed, that gives information on all the cultural events in the city and beyond. Here one finds schedules for all the movies, exhibits, performances, etc. Since we had been to 3 recent plays we found two free performances of music that sounded interesting. On Friday night we went to hear a quartet (2 violins, cello and piano) at the Auditorium St. Germaine des Prés at 8pm. It was Hommage à René Herbin but the first half was the music of Gabriel Fauré whose music I really loved. Although I wasn't familiar with either of these French composers, I was immediately drawn in to their elegant, mesmerizing compositions. I must also add that the auditorium was warm, comfortable (both surprising as we had expected it to be in a church which usually means no heat) and the musicians were all very accomplished. This was also the first time, I think, I've ever heard an all female quartet! It was exquisite!

Then on Saturday we decided to get into the spirit of the upcoming holidays and chose Ensemble Vocal Bergamasque, a concert of world Christmas music by Britten, Poulenc, Kvemo, Nystedt and others. The event was held in an ancient church, Eglise des Billetes, on the famous rue des Archives near Hôtel de Ville. The female director would hit a pitch fork against the side of her hand, move it quickly to her ear, hum out several notes for the 24-member vocal ensemble to grasp before singing each song a-cappella. Crystal clear soprano notes blended in perfect harmonies with the altos, ténors and basses filling the stone structure. For one piece the singers spread throughout the church directing their voices to the center of the room where they met and danced to the top of the dome before descending as soft as snow flakes to the ears of the pensive audience. I was brought to tears during this piece and left the concert feeling as uplifted as the angelic voices with which I had been graced.

Cirque de Soliel

One of our neighbors is giving pilates classes to the artists of Cirque de Soliel that is currently in Paris. (I had actually thought that the troop was from France but evidently they are Canadian.) Anyway, she was able to get us complimentary tickets to attend yesterday afternoon's performance of the show called Corteo. We had to take the subway to the end of the line 9, Pont de Sévre, a 45 minute trip and then we walked another 15 minutes. After exiting the subway we were confused as to where to go with nothing but freeway signs evident until we asked three different people how to get to the island where the circus tents were set up. Luckily, there was a stream of people that we followed across a 4 lane street, along a freeway, up a set of stairs, across a pedestrian bridge, through a park and finally to the entrance to the complex of big tops; to say the least it is located in a very difficult-to-reach, out-of-the-way place!

We met our neighbor in front of the box office, got our tickets and went inside to our seats. This was the third Cirque de Soleil performance I have seen and I enjoyed it as much as I had the others. Corteo follows the story of a man dying and getting his angel wings. With lots of acrobatics, fabulous costumes, the right mix of theatrics, traditional circus acts, and artistic creativity, the show was a delight to watch. Unfortunately, fewer than half the seats were filled but understandable with the exorbitantly priced tickets and hard-to-reach location. Too bad because it's a wonderful show.

Thanksgiving in Paris

I'm way overdue for writing here and I apologize for the long absence but life jumped up and grabbed me into doing other things. So, with that said, I will jump back in here and hopefully be better about posting. Thanks to those who keep hanging in there with me.

Thanksgiving just passed and in France, as elsewhere around the world outside the US, it's just another normal Thursday. Several years ago we decided to start our own tradition here in Paris so I could get the feeling of family and well being that I always associated with the holiday. Now I prepare the Thanksgiving meal for friends on the Saturday following Thanksgiving Day to accommodate all those who work the regular weekdays, I hear lots of Americans do that as well. This year we prepared herb dressing, mash potatoes, mushroom gravy, green beans, candied yams, carrots, fruit salad and pumpkin pies. In past years, we had been able to bring things from the States but this year I did everything from scratch, including the pie crust and dressing! My first time ever for that!! We did find canned cranberry sauce, my favorite, at the La Grande Epicerie across the street from, and part of, the world famous le Bon Marché. Here one can find foods from around the world and I scored 2 of the last 4 cans of cranberry sauce for the whopping price of 3,95E per can! At those prices I must pick up some cans next time I'm in the States. The turkey was cooked two floors above us at some neighbors' apartment so I wouldn't have to smell it cooking (I'm a vegetarian in case you don't know). I also gave all the meat leftovers away so I wouldn't have to put them in the refrigerator. That night we had 13 guests (1 Salvadorian, 1 Mexican, 4 French, 2 Canadians, 2 Italians and 3 Americans including myself) who drank almost an equal number of bottles of champagne and wine! and we just finished our leftovers yesterday!

You might like to check out la grande epicerie online: http://www.lagrandeepicerie.fr/#en-GB/home and
from there you can click on Le Bon Marché, enjoy Paris window shopping and bon appétit!

Square l'Oiseau Lunaire

I worked under contract for UNESCO during the month of May. After the first couple of days eating in the building’s cafeteria, I decided to either bring or buy my lunch and sit outside somewhere to eat. So, the first day I bought a sandwich at the nearby Monoprix (large grocery chain) and started wandering the neighborhood looking for a small park where I could lunch. Paris is a great place for parks and one can always find at least a small one hidden among buildings on side streets. It only took me a matter of a few minutes to find one that looked super but the entrances were all locked as it was closed for repairs. Just my luck, I thought, as I continued my wanderings, always cognizant of how I could get back to my workplace without getting lost (in Paris one shouldn’t leave home without a map of the city as it developed over the centuries without any sense of logical circulation patterns.) Back and forth across streets I went in search of a green space, almost giving up hope of finding one when I happened upon a tiny park tucked back between two buildings, Square l’Oiseu Lunaire. It had lush vegetation planted around the entrance, including huge artichoke plants ripe with fruit. And, even though the gardener had the watering system going to soak the plants, the pathways for human visitors were extremely dry and very dusty. Since I was worried about getting back to work quickly, I immediately found a bench upon which to sit in the spring sunshine to eat, watching as children ran through ahead of the grandparents who shuffled by thoughtfully. After eating I took a stroll to the park’s interior to explore the rest of the space, which I discovered has the ground surface of about the size of two large apartment buildings. It was, however, very well arranged with plenty of shade trees, a children’s play area, and lots of beautiful plants. But the most wonderful surprise was a piece of sculpture positioned at the end of the dusty walk-way, one I thought I recognized as being by the artist Miró. Low and behold, I was thrilled to be right but I wondered why it was installed at this particular unpretentious location. On the way out, I found the plaque that explained that on this site Miró and a group of other illustrious artists had worked. Wow, I thought, what an exciting city to live in where one just bumps into a Miró at a local park. At that moment, I decided this seemed like a very fine place to spend my lunch hours during May.

cont...carte de sejour

So, this morning my French friend Monique came by and we took off for the office where I was instructed I could get the extension for my carte de sejour. We reached the place by subway in about 20 minutes and entered through the security check in. We felt lucky because there were only about 4 people waiting and a couple of employees taking care of us. When my number was called we went up to a desk where a woman looked at my card. Immediately, she pulled out a piece of paper and highlighted several numbers, my arrondissement and the actual place where I was to go for the extension...this wasn't it! So, off we went across the river to the 14th arrondissement. By then it was just after noon and guessing that most of the employees at the office would be at lunch we decided to have a bite to eat ourselves before going to the office. We chose an Italian place nearby since I could easily find something to eat vegetarian. I picked eggplant Parmesan after asking the waiter to verify there was no meat on it. After my salad the eggplant arrive and I lifted the cheese layer to discover a layer of ham...back to the kitchen it went and I ended up with a pizza margarita, no meat in sight! Monique and I got to the Prefecture's office around 1:45pm to find a mob of people waiting inside and only one attendant at a desk. I convinced Monique that I could manage on my own and to go home since it would likely be a long wait, as it indeed was. The reader board announcing the number of the next person to be served wasn't working so I had to really tune up my ears to understand who was getting called next. For those who don't know any French, the language doesn't have a particular word for numbers after 69 so they begin using a combination of numbers that add up to 70 (60+10=70, 60+11=71, 60+12=72, etc.). However, when you get to 80 it's even tougher because it becomes 4-20 (80), 4-20-10 (90), 4-20-15 (95), etc. Anyway, after 2 hours I finally got to see a person behind a desk who promptly informed me that because my carte de sejour was good through 25 May and I am not traveling outside the country until the 2 June I needed to come back after the 25 May!!! I asked, "I have to come back here and sit another couple of hours to get the paper I need?" Her responds was "mais oui" but of course....ah another day of French bureaucracy!

Carte de Sejour

This is the residence card that I have to go and renew every darn year. It takes forever to get the first one, which starts with an application for a visitors visa that has to be made in the US before coming here. For me, that meant a trip to Chicago, the office covering the midwestern region. Luckily my friend Neal drove me up since I had to carry a packet full of documents, including French translations of everything, that was about 5 inches thick. I received the visa about a month later, just in time for my flight to Paris. Once here I had to start the whole process over again on this side of the Atlantic, that was May 2008. Now, every May I have to get out all the documents again, update a few things, get a recent photo taken and head off to the Prefecture de Police, the government agency in charge of immigrants like myself. The appointments for these meetings have to be made months in advance so like a good little resident, I got online in February and went through the online registration for a meeting. After clicking the button to confirm my time/date I was taken to a blank page so I clicked the back button to see what happened. Again, I clicked the date but the time I had clicked before was not available so naturally I thought it was done. In the past I have received a confirmation in the mail so I waited about 3 weeks but got nothing so I phoned directly to the Prefecture's office. After a long wait with an annoying repeating message, I finally got a hold of a real person who informed me that if I registered online that I would not receive anything in the mail. I told her that I also had not received a confirmation on the website so wasn't sure if I had an appointment on May 17th or not. She kindly asked me all the info to check and found out I was not, in fact, registered. Rats! Fortunately, she gave me a date and time to go in but it's not until August so I asked her what I was supposed to do since my carte de sejour runs out in May and I need to leave the country in June. She told me, no problem, just go to the Prefecture's office in the 9th arrondissement, districts within Paris, and they will give me the paperwork I need to continue my residency in the meantime. Now this whole conversation was in French so my end of the phone was struggling at times but I did get all the info I needed. Today, I decided to go and get my extension taken care of and asked a French friend to go with me. When I got to her apartment she thought we should call just to make sure...and low and behold, we found out that it isn't in the 9th that I have to go to but in the 18th! And, I don't just need my passport, carte de sejour and paper stating my appointment date and time but I also need a photo, confirmation of where I live (document like a gas bill) and some other thing. Ah, you gotta love the French for their inventive powers when it comes to bureaucracy!

Le Vieux Belleville

There's a little bar/restaurant about a 10 minute walk from our apartment called Le Vieux Belleville, the old Belleville, the name of the neighborhood. The place is typical of a lot of small unknown places around Paris. The menu was pretty typical with lots of meat and potato dishes and daily plats de jours. They also regularly have musicians playing traditional French tunes so we had been wanting to go for quite a while. Finally, last Saturday night we called two friends to join us and we all walked up for dinner. I was pleasantly surprised to find a vegetarian main dish, unusual even in upscale restaurants! More surprising was how much fun we had singing along to the accordion music, well at least trying to sing along. The musician passed out sheet music for each song she played and we sang in between bits of food! For more about the place check out their website: http://www.le-vieux-belleville.com/fr/bar-restaurant-musette-le-vieux-belleville.html