Heather and Bob's Paris Newsletter #2 - 2 July 2005Bonjour mes amis, It's hard to believe that I have been in Paris for 4 months and Bob for 8. Since our last major newsletter (April 25) a lot has happened. Some of you did get my "newsflash" email about becoming a grandmother. The short version is that Alexis was born in Orlando, Saturday, May 7th at 1:20 a.m. weighing in at 6 lbs. 6 ozs. and 20 inches long (see the pictures at http://www.web.ca/~bthomson/paris_photos/grandmama_heather.html). Every thing is going well for them, I even got a call from James (2:30 a.m. his time) a few days ago as he was up at that time feeding the baby. I am tentatively planning to go to Canada for 2 weeks in early October and hope to spend a few days in Florida. I have already sent off a few Parisian clothes for Alexis and with the Paris sales in full swing, I bet I can find a few more things.
The French Open at Roland Garros was great. I had tickets for some of the qualifying matches, and even saw a few Canadians play. I was able to get tickets for the outside courts for the main draw, but ended up seeing at least one game on each of the main courts. It was really exciting. Maybe next year I will qualify for main stadium tickets. I have a few leads on getting a tennis partner, but it is a slow process,
My volunteer work at the Une Chorba pour Tous, an Algerian food bank, has ended until the fall. There was an end of the year get together and I was invited to it. I am continuing with my other volunteer work with the Resto du Coeur food bank which continues this week but will close for the Summer then. I even checked out the American Cathedral, they have a Friday soup kitchen, but I prefer to do my volunteer work in my own arrondissement (district).
I have joined an organization of expats called WICE, an non profit cultural and educational association. They offer all kinds of activities such as art history lectures, walking tours, hikes, living and working in Paris, history and culture etc. I have taken full advantage of what they have to offer as well as meeting new people in Paris. Most of the women, and a few men are from the US but there are a lot of Brits as well, and many have been living in Paris for a number of years. My first walking hike was outside Paris near a quaint small village called Saint Cheron. It was also the first time I took the local train by myself. I got to the train station early, but almost missed it because I was on the wrong track I found other women on the train who were going on the hike too so I felt much better after a bit of a meltdown right in front of them. I was so relieved to see them, that I started to cry. After I composed myself, I said Hi I'm Heather from Canada and that seemed to break the ice and everything went well after that. Another walk on another Wednesday was again outside Paris using the train and everything went smoothly. In addition here is a Saturday hiking group made up of mostly working Parisians that have invited WICE members to join them so they can practise their English. Bob and I joined them last Saturday (June 18) and we walked from Paris (Bois de Boulonge) to Versailles. We went through a part of Paris (Le Pen lives there), parklands, forests, a small town, had a picnic lunch a cote de la pond and got to Versailles in about 4 hours. Stopped for a beer, them some of us walked on to the Chateau. There we spent many more hours walking around the grounds with one of our hikers as a tour guide. We got home at 22:00 but it was a wonderful day. We did not tour inside the chateau, so that will be another trip. On Wednesday we hiked in a forest just outside Saint-Leu la Foret . I met a very interesting French woman who teaches English to high school students. I spoke a little french and she spoke english.
I had a rare opportunity to tour the Hotel de Ville (Paris city hall) and learned a lot about the history of the French Republic. Now on the cultural side, I have taken a number of art lectures and lecture walks organized by WICE. It doesn't hurt that our lecturer, Chris is Greek and very charming, as well as very knowledgeable. Our first museum lecture was at the Musee D'Orsay on neo-impressionism: Georges Seurat to Paul Klee. Another museum lecture was at the Louvre (I am now a member of the Louvre, so I get in free and avoid the line ups for a year) entitled Food and Drink in French Painting. We looked at celebrated French masters that focus on food and drink, their presentation, consumption, and symbolism. Chris took us on two architectural walking lectures on art nouveau, art deco, and industrial architecture in the 16th and 14th arrondissement. To test my skills as a tour guide, I brought Bob to the 14th to show him what I saw and learned. Another walking lecture was about Madame de Pompadour (official mistress of Louis XV) and her influence in Paris. Classes have ended until the fall. I can hardly wait to see what WICE will be offering then.
Other art exhibits I've been to include Matisse - une seconde vie; and Klint etchings (very sensual).I
I haven't been spent all my time out and about alone, Bob and & have spent weekends exploring and just enjoying Paris together. We did a free walking tour of the Saint Germaine de Pres area during their jazz festival in May. A bread exhibit called La fete du Pain showed us how baguettes are made, plus a lot of other types of bread. The parks here are amazing, with one of the best just 15 minutes away. Buttes Chaumont was once an old quarry and has been transformed into a beautiful park with a pond, waterfall, green grass and walking paths. It is a great place for a picnic. Another nice place to have a picnic is Parc Montsouris. On La Nuit des Musee most of the museums were open to the public for free on a Saturday night from 6 to midnight. We went to the Musee d'Orsay (a converted old train station). We decided to go for a beer nearby on an off street. 16 euros later, Bob was not amused. As everyone knows Paris is expensive. We try to take advantage of the free first Sunday of the month entry into the national Museums. There was a good exhibit on Roman France at the Louvre and my Louvre card got us in past the lineups which were at least an hour long. Bob has noted a few other things we have done together in his part of the newsletter.
We have also met a few new people in Paris. Bob's friend Pierre Leblanc headed back to Canada in May, but before he left his wife Judith came to Paris so we had them over for dinner. They are both really nice people too bad they have left. Our neighbour, Francoise Rochman invited us over for coffee one Sunday. A very pleasant women who filled us in on the history of the neighbourhood. She has invited us for dinner next week. There was an invitation to "a get together for new residences to the 19th arr." We misinterpreted the invitation and brought a picnic lunch for the two of us instead of a potluck dish to share. There were few people when we arrived (you know me, always on time) and when more people arrived some of them didn't have any food. We left and ate our dinner in the park. When we returned more people and food had arrived but the mood had been broken so we left. Maybe next time it will work out better. We had dinner with Michelle and Wally (met through a Canadian friend in Ottawa) at their beautiful home in the 8th arr. It was my first opportunity to be inside one of Paris's magnificent apartment buildings. Sunday's are great days for wandering around Paris and going to cafes, so what better to do than to do just that. We got together with a couple we met at our monthly "Canadian expat get together" at the famous Cafe Deux Maggots for panaches (blond beer and lemonade) and watched the world go by.
After a few appointments at the Police Prefecture and a march-past medical, I finally have my "carte de sejour" (residency card), although Bob has to wait until August 10th to get his!
We went to the Canadian Embassy for the Canada Day Fete on Friday. I lifted my glass of Blanche de Chambly beer and wished everyone a good Canada Day back home. Met people from Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, Montreal and Ottawa, said hello (very briefly) to the Ambassador and had a good time.
My final words are take care, lots of love and please write.
heather
==============================
From Bob
Paris is still as exciting as ever I guess. I seem to bounce around from feeling blasé about it at times and blown away by it all at others.
The market near our apartment over by Joinville and the canal is always a bit of an overwhelming experience. The African market at Chateau Rouge has to be seen to be believed and the Croix de Chaveaux market on Thursdays and Fridays beside my office is yet another trip outside the "developed" world. There's a constant stream of stories (at least in the press and internet lists that I frequent) about the activities of exile groups in Paris. We took some visiting Latin Americans around back in May and one of them was going off later in the day to meet some fellow Chileans who had been here since 1974 after the coup, and another was going to meet some Bolivians living here. The leader of the students who stood up against the tanks in Tiananmen Square lives in Paris and had an article in the International Herald Tribune on the 16th anniversary. A group of Togalese refugees were beaten up by the French police one morning as they peacefully held up signs outside the hotel where the President of Nigeria was hosting a €200 a plate breakfast with the French Chamber of Commerce. Combined with all the cultural events, there are more things going on in this city than one could ever hope to keep track of.
Aileen (our next door neighbour) turns out to work for the Paris Tourism Bureau, hence a steady stream of pamphlets in our mail box about street festivals in our quartier and events all over the city. In May there was an artists' open doors/studios weekend in Belleville, which it turns out is only a 20 minute walk from here. The week before we had discovered the Parc des Buttes de Chaumont in Belleville, which likewise is only a half hour away on foot.
I'm still riding my bike 7 km. to work and back. Haven't been hit again by cars or trucks for a while now, so I guess I'm getting more used to checking 5 lanes across at intersections for non-signalling right turners, and more accepting of red lights only being recommendations. I've had a couple of flat tires which really are a pain in the .... because there are so few places to go to get something fixed. I finally found someone who sells a simple tube patching kit. It's getting a lot warmer now so I've switched to shorts and carry a change of clothes to work in addition to the bloody heavy laptop. I can't leave the laptop at the office because of break-ins and now Heather has a growing dependence on a nightly internet/email "fix". My daily bicycle commute to work (and back) tells me that "liberté, egalité and fraternité" may well be the touchstones of the French revolution, but there's damn little "fraternité" out there on the free for all roads. "Egalité" and "liberté" have morphed into a free for all claim to individualism and the right to park, drive, swerve and otherwise completely ignore other cars and especially bicyclists and pedestrians. And to top it off, I got a €90 (ouch) fine last week for going through a red light on my bike. I was easier to stop than the 3 cars that went through the light with me.
On June 11th we spent the day at Auvers-sur-Oise, a small town about 30 km. north of Paris (about an hour from Gare du Nord) where Van Gogh, Cezanne, Renoir and a number of other Impressionist painters lived back in the late 1800's. There's a Chateau which they've gutted and installed a multimedia, 2 hour audio guide presentation of Impressionist paintings. It's very well done. It was nice to get out of the big dirty city, fascinating as it is, for the day. We went on a walk from the Bois de Boulogne to Versailles on June 18. There's a French group called "Isles de France Walks" that tries to get English speaking people to come with them so they can practice their English. So it was a nice day and an opportunity to meet the "ordinary" French in a social setting. But it was far too long - more than 20 km. - and we were wiped out the next day. I had been planning to go to the Paris Air Show at Bourget on Sunday to soak in (and document) the military atmosphere for a peace movement publication, but I was too tired to do it.
My job continues to be interesting, although it still has large elements of my being the carrot hired by 40 NGO sticks. Having decided to try an "insider" strategy at the OECD, we hadn't counted on the history of conflict and extreme secrecy that led to my only having my first meeting with OECD officials on June 1st - after being here 7 months! It's taken quite a while too to get on top of a new area for me, although I'm feeling a lot more comfortable now and able to carry my own in meetings, conference calls, etc.. It's very complex legally, politically, environmental issues wise, etc. For example, the OECD has just carried out a series of meetings that appear to be leading to approval of subsidies for large hydro projects with no conditions to protect communities affected by them. Big dams all over the world have displaced between 40 and 80 million people, seriously disrupting community economies dependent on the water and sediments of river systems for their agricultural and fisheries livelihoods; almost always without adequate compensation and often under forced conditions that involve widespread human rights violations. And some tropical reservoirs produce more greenhouse gas emissions (methane in this case) than equivalent natural gas generating plants. Some export credit agencies such as Belgium's Decroire support fossil fuel energy exports that will produce 20 times the greenhouse gases that Belgium has agreed to eliminate under the Kyoto Accord. On the other hand, their efforts to eliminate greenhouse gases through support for renewable energy technology exports are seriously flawed by these half-hearted measures on dams, which divert incentives for real renewable energy sources to corporate welfare for hydro-electric equipment sales which don't need subsidies to penetrate new markets. You'll hear a lot about climate change and greenhouse gas reductions during the G8 leaders' conference this week in Scotland, but believe me, they're doing next to nothing to even start to avert this major world crisis, despite the rhetoric.
On a more mundane level, Heather had a run-in with the little old lady with a cane who dumps her dog shit on our street the other day. "The street belongs to everyone you know." The next time I see her I will politely inform her in better French than Heather's that I intend to follow her home one day soon and make sure that a little brown part of my street becomes a little brown part of her street in keeping with the revolution's "egalite".
I'm off this afternoon on an outing to Burgundy for a "decroissance" rally in Nevers today and tomorrow. I going with one or two people from the office and it will be a 2 hour train ride down there, a 4 km walk to join up with a larger group of marchers, overnight in tents and then back on the train late Sunday. It should be an interesting chance to hear Jose Bove speak in person.
Rather than attach photos, I've put a bunch of new ones up on my web site at http://www.web.ca/~bthomson. Enjoy.
All for now.
Abrazos
Bob