Author Archives: Sylvia

About Sylvia

Vini, vidi, Paris... I look forward to sharing the fun, flavours and fashion of living in Paris with two teen Parisiennes and Mr French. A true Californian in search of that certain je ne sais quoi, I came to Paris an over weight, under-shod vegetarian. I've since learned to shave my legs, wear a bra, and act like a grown up. A lot of work, but I'm loving it, and my teens are oh so thankful now that I am infinitely less embarrassing.

La honte*

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a visual moment of silence

This week, I am ashamed to be French. This week, Marine Le Pen, the candidate of the Front National, a racist, anti-immigration, anti-Europe, far right political party received 18% of the popular vote in the presidential elections. This distressing news has captured the national headlines, with people decrying the fact that 1 in 5 French have racist tendencies. I estimate that it is probably worse than that, once you’ve removed the Jews, Muslims and immigrants from the calculations. You would remove these groups because that is what Le Pen would like to do, remove us from France, so it is very unlikely many of us actually voted for her. The party-who-must-not-be-named (I am avoiding using their name or initials for Google reasons) is the 3rd most important political party in France. Things were only slightly worse in 2002, when the party-who-must-not-be-named candidate was actually in the second round of voting, and was dangerously close to actually being elected the president of France.

For an interesting slice of life, we heard the result during dinner with E and two of her close friends. One whose father survived the Rwandan genocide, another whose mother educated herself out of the Marrakesh Medina. Both of these heros immigrated to France, both became doctors and both now have international careers, making this world a healthier place for the whole world.

I have to be honest, as a Jew, an immigrant and an incurable globe-trotter, I have never really followed this party’s program in great detail. It was enough for me to know that they would not be getting my vote. I could not quote any of their proposals or cite any of the changes they’d make. But not long ago, someone I know well mentioned that she and many of her friends were considering voting for Le Pen. At first, I was in shock. It is tragic, but I eventually understood why she’d been led astray. She is French, middle class and relatively young. None of the candidates are speaking to her, yet she represents a large percentage of the population. Then you read the party-who-must-not-be-named’s proposals and they talk about cutting budget costs and protecting France and it sounds reasonable. In fact, it sometimes sounds like they are the only party offering a solution. Tragically, it is the wrong solution, but it is easy to see how people get taken in. In order to convince her otherwise, I went into research mode.

I learned from their site that the party-who-must-not-be-named wants France out of the Euro zone, to re-enforce its borders, and install a zero-tolerance policy towards crime. One of its key proposals would reduce the titres de séjours for visitors wishing to stay more than 3 months from 200,000 per year to 20,000. That means less foreign students, less foreign workers and less ex-pats. In a time of globalization, this all sounds like a pretty bad idea and it hides some of the more sinister aspects of their plan, like turning out all illegal immigrants and denying them medical care. I then went to SOS Racisme to see what the other side, my side, had to say. The party-who-must-not-be-named was founded by the current candidates father, a man who has been to court and condemned countless times for his racism. A man who is President of the party. Which does not seem to bother nearly 1/5th of my countrymen, but it certainly bothers me.

*shame

SOS Racisme

 

Rooms with a view

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This is the view that greets me as I open my eyes each morning. My very own guardian angel. She is here because I live in an 18th century convent. A modern Jewish girl living out of wedlock in an 18th century convent. Irony…

The Bug no longer notices our angels, but our view has captured her attention recently. Wednesday, April 4, she was at home studying for her mid-term exams when she heard a rather loud clanging bell. Peeking her head into my studio she asked what was going on. I followed the sound back to her window and looking out, I saw that it was the rémouleur. I had forgotten that this neighborhood had its very own knife sharpener. He passes by the first Wednesday of every month, ringing a large brass bell in his left hand to tell us that it is time to affûte our blades.

photo courtesy of the Rémouleur blog

The profession has existed since the middle ages and they still have a guild mentality, with a French blog of their very own, featuring images of rémouleurs, past and present, from across the globe. The French singer, André Claveau even wrote a whimsical song about these men and their work in 1952.

I thought this was incredibly charming when I first moved to France. Admittedly, it took me several first Wednesdays of the month and a keen sense of voyeurism before I understood what all the commotion was about. But once I go it, I was IN, running downstairs with a handful of kitchen knives at the first clang that signaled his arrival. We agreed upon a price, then he set down his cart, and started pedaling, putting the whetstone into motion. 15 minutes and 20 euros later he had basically destroyed my entire collection of high-tech cooking knives. It took several years with a proper rémouleur at the Sunday Richard Lenoir market to set things straight. Despite my disappointment, it still thrills me that this man passes by my street each month, as another man once did when my home was first built, and as men have done for the past 300 years.

Marché Richard Lenoir

 

Flower power

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Fresh-cut garden flowers are a Parisian institution. Odd in a city with very few private gardens, but congruent with all the farmers’ markets throughout the town. I love watching the pages of the calendar turn as each month brings its very own blooms. This month is April which means overwhelmingly fragrant blossoms of French Lilac perfume the streets and my home.

When I am very lucky, one of les filles, back in the city after a weekend at the family’s country home, will call from her apartment which is overflowing with flowers that grandmère insisted she cart home. Would I be a chérie and take some of the buds off her hands? They are gorgeous, but the perfume is a bit too much. Being a generous, accommodating gal, I am happy to help out.

If no there are no Parisiennes needing to pawn off their unwanted blooms, I head to the local market, where people from nearby suburbs, looking to get rich off of us city saps, harvest buckets full of these precious purple flowers and hawk them from the street corners. 5€ for a generous handful that keeps my home smelling like a day in the country. Really, who needs Calgon?

Ah Vo Tay

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That is your French pronunciation lesson for today.  Ah Vo Tay is how to say a voté, I wanted you to hear this French expression from chez vous, because we voted in France today. And responsible citizens from across the country will hear this cry as they place their ballot in the voting urn and someone declares rather loudly, a voté”! It put shivers down my spine the first time I heard this when I was finally able to vote and it still thrills me to bits. Today was a particularly special day because I got to hear the official call twice; once for myself, and once as my 18 year daughter voted for the first time in her life.

In San Francisco, we’d vote from a neighbor’s garage, but every polling station I have been to in France has been inside of a public school. Despite the early Sunday morning desolation of Paris during the school holidays, there were lines at all three polling stations I visited (Mr French, my daughter and I were each assigned a different address) today. Upon arrival at the station, you present your Carte Electorale and an official ID. You are then handed an envelope (today’s was powdered blue)  and invited to collect the voting sheets. A voting sheet is an index card-sized document that bears one candidate’s name printed in large, bold letters. This year there were 10 candidates, but I only took 9 sheets, because I refuse to even touch Marine LePen’s ballot.

You are then invited into the isoloir. The isolation room. Sounds scary, but its just a simple voting booth with a wildly evocative name. Inside the isoloir, you pick your candidate’s ballot and slip it into your envelope. Outside the booth stands a large paper recycling bag for the rejects ballot, but I keep my voting chits because It feels more private. You then get back in line at the urn. When your turn arrives, they once again review your ID and confirm that you are on the list. The urn master then makes his declaration. Today he had a slight problem with my name and I stood there mutely as he announced;

Sylvia Jean Jeanne Jane Sabes a voté!

Bakkus

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Last night I was working, waiting for Mr French to get home from the office. The girls are on April holidays so just the adults are dining in this week. The children we live with are mine, so dinner responsibility is mine, as well, turning this week into a mini-holiday for moi. Only half the mouths to feed means only half the mouths to please.

20h30 the phone rings.
“I’m on my way home.” Mr French announces,  “What are we doing for dinner?”

It is late, I am starving and we’ve got another half an hour before Monsieur walks trough the door.

“Raviolis,” I improvise, “the truffle ones from the Maison de la Truffle that I got at Monoprix last week.”

“How about we go across the street to that wine bar they opened last week,” he proposes.

Now, I LOVE truffles. I go to great lengths every winter for my truffles, but I am faithful to my men, not my food. I start doing the happy dance… no kitchen duty for me tonight!!!

Bakkus, the new wine bar, (hey, that’s a pun… Bakkus, Bacchus, only took me three days to get it) reminds me of Semilla; exposed walls, lots of wine and a younger crown than we generally get in this part of Paris. One wall is lined with glass enclosed wine bottles, each bottle attached to some new-fangled digital contraption that serves the exact amount of wine requested by the server. Directly facing that wall is a large chalkboard listing the day’s offering, each dish divided into three; avocado/crab/green apple entrée, or cod/anchovy/green sauce main. Ordering made easy.

Keeping in sync with the über modern serving devices, the wine menu is on an iPad that has information for each wine offered. Which is not a bad idea, because Bakkus offers some heavy hitters and it is probably good to know exactly what you’re ordering before investing in a Montrachet or St Julien. There are friendlier, more reasonable wines available, and there are three different serving sizes, so you can even create your own flight.

The food arrived and it was lovely. Served on slate or white porcelain, the presentation is original without being fussy. The flavours are pure and textures play an important role. The meal was not perfect, the house-made artichoke purée had an unintentional, yet distinctly burnt taste and I think a few of the sides would do well with a bit more seasoning. My favorite dish of the evening was dessert. A thick, perfectly carmalised slice of pineapple clad in a yogurt sorbet beret and a sash of verbena syrup. Light, with a palette pleasing balance of sweet and acid. Mr French nearly applauded for his alarmingly green pear that had been poach in a mint syrup. Secretly, I am afraid that he was thrilled to have found an easy, local joint for those moments when he just can not take another night of my “cooking”.

Bakkus – 97 rue du Cherche Midi, no website, yet.

Man-y Pedi

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A letter home, just weeks after moving to Paris…

Email Subject: Sex with strangers.

Well girls, I have finally found the Parisian woman’s secret to sexual satisfaction (didn’t take me long, did it?).

Lisa (yes, you, princesse) asked me to ship home some Darphin products, so I made it a special errand to walk the half block from our flat to their spa and discovered that this would be an ok place for a much needed pedicure to tame those funky alien callouses you all saw at the beach. Darphin is nothing like any of the 700 vietnamese owned and operated mani-pedi salons in Noe Valley. No risk of vainly trying to drown into the foot bath as a handful of hard working women laugh at my monster feet in a language I can’t understand. I’d be a tough horned rhino in an elegant spa, but I was desperate and made an appointment.

I have had a pedicure in Paris once before, and it was at a training school. The experience taught me that pedicures over here are generally given in a private room and that it is predominantly a clinical event involving a series of scalpels and a really cool power tool.  No nail polish.

I showed up at my appointment and was immediately greeted by one of the better looking members of the French male genre, my new podiatrist. You know, the shaggy, intellectual looking kind that so melts my butter. He welcomed me with a warm handshake, a smile in his chocolate eyes. Something was clearly wrong; Parisian men do not smile broadly at strangers, it is not in the culture. I must have had spinach between my teeth…

(c) Maurice Sendak My feet pre-pedi

We proceeded upstairs to a cosy little chamber which was decorated in prissy rose-bud and aqua tones and smelled of something floral. Relaxing music could be heard and I started to unwind just as humiliation struck. I was asked to remove my shoes and show my very ugly feet to this very male presence. He wanted to know  exactly what is wrong with my paws. As if it isn’t obvious. I change shoe sizes after a proper pedicure! The torture ended and the treatment began.

Imagine; you are lying down, completely relaxed in a plush spa recliner. Your surroundings are pleasant, very private and intimate as someone gently tends to your feet with large, warm hands, treating each toe and the spaces between with their undivided attention.  MMMMMmm delicious.

The treatment was finally over, when Monsieur Foot warned that my skin was quite dry and advised a regular application of lotion and would I mind if he applied some immediately.  That was fine with me, and so began one of the more innocently erotic foot messages of my life.  MMMMMmmm sinful.  I melted on the spot.

This, of course, would not be considered sex in the strictly Clintonian view of the act, but I came out of that room trembling.  I then had to descend the stairs and pay for services rendered which added a surreal validation to my feelings of having just hired a gigolo. I paid quickly, unable to make eye contact with the next patient and scuttled out of the store to brace myself against the sturdy coolness of a nearby wall before being able to walk home. Ok, I am exaggerating slightly. I stayed in the shop long enough to make an appointment for the podiatrist’s next visit to the spa in two weeks time before scuttling anywhere. Sinful pleasures.

Cheers to you all and much love, S

Darphin

Save the Parisiennes

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Metro Poster

I am in a fantastic gym class doing the ab exercises, in a packed room full of grunting women and our coach, Eugene, when an English speaking mom starts talking to me. We know each other from the girls’ school and she is a very nice lady, but talking in gym class is not the done thing and I think she has a hearing problem, because she SPEAKS VERY LOUDLY. Eugene is my favorite teacher at Fitness First (now Health City), he takes our workouts very seriously and can be fairly strict; ridiculing students seems to be his second favorite sport, which is why I am not really listening to The Mom as she babbles on. Suddenly, the music cuts out and the room is filled with her voice screeching, “…so I told my husband, that’s why Parisiennes are all a bunch of bitches, they’re starving. These women need to eat someth…” The music mercifully returned. After class I bolted out the door, not stopping to see if she made it out before being eaten alive.

Kermit the FrogBut my gym mate does have a point. In the French guidebook, “Comment devenir une vraie Parisienne”* they note that the highest suicide rate in France is among single women in Paris and even the most oblivious tourist will note that very few women in the metro seem to be smiling. Kermit sang that its not easy being green. Its not easy being a frog(ette), either.

Like the woman at the gym, when searching for answers, I’d blame it on hunger, or the painful shoes, or the fact that working women in France still do 80% of the domestic chores and are grossly underpaid compared to their male counterparts. But I like My Parisiennes and I had to believe that there is more to it than just the framework of their lives. If their heels make them that miserable, they’re smart enough to change shoes and surely they must be getting some pleasure out of feeding the family, or they’d just stop. Like I did last month.

While on dinner strike I had time to visit the doctor. My GP is a nice man and incredibly intelligent, but I only use him for the most basic of needs because I consider him to be something of a nut ball, in the absent minded professor kind of way. I was not at all surprised during my last visit when he went off on a 20 minute diatribe about vitamin D deficiency, only half listening as he claimed that the percentage of Parisiennes with a vitamin D deficiency was greater than among women in the refugee camps of Sudan. I don’t want to sound like an idiot by stating the obvious, but Sudanese are dark skinned, which is a natural inhibitor of vitamin D AND they are malnourished, yet doing better than the locals for this one nutrient.

Two days later my blood test results came back. The nut ball wasn’t so nutty after all and I, a native sun drenched Californian, had virtually no vitamin D left in my system. The Sudanese women had me beat by a long shot. The cure is easy, Cod Liver Oil. Cold liver oil is nasty stuff that comes up on you throughout the morning, even if taken in a self contained gel cap. Which explains the mystery of the unhappy Parisiennes. Vitamin D deficiency causes Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), and with 88% of us affected, the next time you see a grumpy looking woman confronting the aisles at Monoprix, it is very likely that she is either depressed or has just downed her daily dose of Cod Liver Oil. All that’s missing is a kiss from Kermit!

*How to become a true Parisienne

Health City

Dating Mr French

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There is a scene in Pulp Fiction when John Travolta is in the car with Samuel Lee Jackson and he is discussing his recent stay in Amsterdam:
Vincent Vega: You know what the funniest thing about Europe is?
Jules Winnfield: What?
Vincent Vega: It’s the little differences. I mean they got the same sh** over there that they got here, but it’s just, just there it’s a little different.

Vincent then goes on to explain how the cheeseburger exists in the French McDonald’s, but it is called Le Royale. That is what made the movie great. Odd from the perspective of an incompetent gangster, but so true. Everything here is the same. We all eat, drink and sleep the same, but the French just do it with a certain je ne sais quoi.

I didn’t date very many Frenchmen before Mr French had earned my complete and undivided attention. There were more dinners and eventually, I let him pick me up at my front door.

This meant we arrived at the restaurant together, signaling my greatest “Le Royale” moment. Considering that the seven year old kid upstairs already insists on opening doors for me, and that my daughters’ boy friends make it a point of honor to be the last one through the door, its a safe bet that any Frenchman an adult woman would date expects to be the one opening the doors. This does not necessarily come as a reflex for independent girl from San Francisco, where men tended to be too busy flirting with her husband to even notice she was coming through the door. SLAM!

There is an entire choreography to entering a restaurant with a French man in Paris. You arrive together, then mademoiselle takes a half-step back as he opens the door, inviting you to enter. She steps in, the number of steps necessary to let him in the door, but then she must immediately step back to let him pass and be the first one to greet the maitre d’. Kind of like a back step, forward, forward, back, cha cha cha. It has taken me years to get the choreography down.

Once you’re in the door, you’re on your own, ladies. I’ve heard that French men say “je t’aime” immediately and then continue to shower you with the phrase, Mr French prefers to shower me with flowers. I’ve heard reports of men who grab you by the wrist and rush you home to meet Maman, while other men wait until after you’ve said yes to his proposal. I can’t generalize. I only know my own happily ever after, and I hope you find yours…

Friday@Flore

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Le méteo predicted rain to day, so I prepared a collection of umbrella shots for my very first Friday at Flore. It didn’t rain. Happy Friday the 13th!!!

Spring had sprung, and this week, the crowds brought out their brightest, cheeriest umbrellas, to banish away the rainy gloom.

Every Friday, I’ll be sharing images taken near the Cafe de Flore, where tourists from across the globe mingle with chic Parisennes and the international jetset.

Café de Flore

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