Faire La Grève

Faire la grève /gʀɛv/ feminine noun*: 1. to be on strike (the official translation), 2. to be French (my own translation)

La grève quickly becomes a common phenomenon once you’ve been in Paris for more than 1 month. You can see how often the French go on strike. Last week the whole country went on strike against the proposed retirement reforms. The government is threatening to increase the retirement age from the current 60 years to 62 years. 2 extra years of work while for the rest of the word retirement still stands at 65. Furthermore, they stopped over half of the traffic. In order to show the Man the French are serious, the Parisian transport system, RATP, stopped a huge number of metros and RERs making it difficult to go to most places. So what is there left to do…well join la grève [actually, technically what we joined is la manifestion – which are the demonstrations where people go out and have a big carnival and parade. la grève are the strikes – where people don’t go to work and disturb the functioning of everyday life]. And that is exactly what S and I decided to do (though I heard somewhere this is not allowed/illegal – so we didn’t join in the protest, merely just followed the people…from a “distance”).

It all starts from République to Bastille and ends in Nation. We caught the human train from la Bastille, appropriate considering the significance of the site played during the French Revolution. In fact, most demonstrations from the left (French politics) all follow this very traditional route.

Clearly you can tell we belong and fit in.

Mleh, I’m not even going to pretend

That’s S showing her passion for the injustice against old people, who refuse to retire 3 years before all other old people in developed nations. Well, at least the Frenchman behind her looks impressed by her enthusiasm. OMG I love the juxtaposition and irony of this photo. Plus the creepy dude in the back with a surgeon mask and hat on.

Did I mention, a bunch of the protesters were young people my age? Either they really care about retirement, or they’re just getting out of school/work. Don’t blame them, the grève experience is a lot of fun. People are dancing and singing down the street like a big parade. It was a great time.

This was hilarious!

Longest line out of a bakery I’ve ever seen in my life. No kidding.

While people protest for their rights, businesses gotta be making money. That’s just life. Plus, a good protest makes the people hungry.

As if the whole experience wasn’t enough, the highlight of my day…seeing this picture. It’s a bunch of kids, and adults who should know better, with a sign saying “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité“. This is the official French motto, meaning Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. But the best part, it’s a bunch of kids protesting at a retirement demonstration in front of a statue of a woman who represents Liberty? with a red and yellow flag that looks like the former Soviet Union’s flag with the hammer and sickle.

Needless to say, I was laughing the whole way home.

There’s is another grève predicted for next Thursday. Again. That’s the 2nd in 3 weeks. Makes sense, La Grève in France is like a bloody carnival & the French get the day off work. I would throw a protest too  if it allowed me to get so much time off work every week so I could to have fun with the people, singing and dancing down the street. Retirement, salary, health care, French body odour and chaffing from overly tight jeans. Seriously, I’d protest it all.

* Thanks WordReference! You’re always there for me during last minute cram sessions before midterms!

Le Fabuleux Destin de Montmartre

Spent the morning with our wonderful guide M in Montmartre. M is amazing. He is so knowledgeable and conducts the tours all in French. As this is difficult for us to understand, he somehow uses just the right vocabulary so it feels almost effortless to understand everything he says. And the best part is, all the commentary is very interesting so I want to listen. Because whenever I start to tune out, I understand nothing because at this point my french is at the level where if I don’t concentrate hard to understand, I block everything out.

Anyway let’s get  on to the highlights of Montmartre.

Those of who you have watched the film Amélie will know a lot of it was shot in Montmartre. This little market/dairy is in the beginning when you see Amélie sink her hand into a bag of grain (one of her favourite things to do). Everybody’s (mine, and maybe J’s) stomach went a flutter with butterflies when we first saw the shop and recognized it from the movie.

We passed by 2 interesting statues.

The first, was the statue of Dalida, well her bust actually, quite fittingly. She was a famous French popstar, a real DIVA apparently. She was Italian and Egyptian, maybe even had some gypsy blood in her. Very wild and had an interesting voice. Sadly came to a tragic end.The second statue is of the “man in the wall” from the famous short story by Marcel Aymé, called Le Passe-Muraill (The Walker-Through-Walls). It’s about a man who finds a hidden talent one day; he discovers he can walk through walls. Sadly, like mainly other French stories, the end is not happy. But I’ll leave you to find out what happens. Quite interesting actually.

Cute little Montmartre house.

Passed by le Sacre Coeur but didn’t have time to go in. Obvious, due to the fact that somehow I had only taken a photo of half the church (insanely dumb, but whatever). Next time I’ll try to give a bit more detail about this magnificent church.

Ended the tour with lunch at the café Amélie works in. It’s called, le Café des deux Moulins, which translates to, the Two Windmill Café.

Interesting fact. The reason there are so many “moulins” mentioned in Montmartre, such as the cafe and Moulin Rouge (Red Windmill) is because Montmartre is a high and steep hill. So the whole hill before it became urbanised and a suburb, used to have windmills to grind flour and all those helpful things that windmills do (provide electricity? I doubt it there though). So that’s why there are so many mentions, moulin this moulin that. Funnily enough Moulin Rouge was never a real windmill that was turned into a cabaret bar. The windmill build there is fake and just used for decoration.

Now I’m going to be honest, it was amazing because I recognized so much of it. But also creepy. You’ll see what I mean…

This have this creepy looking shrine dedicated to the film in the bathrooms. Such a weird place to put it. And unexpected. So you know when I’m going to the bathroom, it’s right there and I think…um interesting. Nice to know.

And of course the famous sign. How could I not get a photo?? For those of you who have seen the movie, you know what I’m talking about!

The façade of the café.

The profile side of the café where there isn’t a big, obnoxious white van blocking the view.

And of course, finished off by Mr. Gnome.

Paris, Je t’aime!

Ok cheesy title. Sorry. But everything in Paris is borderline cheesy. Partly due to the many stereotypes floating around about Parisian, but really also because Paris plays such a large role in culture and well life is actually kind of like those stereotypes.

So long day today. And forgive me for skipping straight to the point. But let’s be honest, everybody wants to hear about my Paris adventures, right? Switzerland and the rest of Italy, while gorgeous will wait for another day.

Let’s start early this morning. Our small USC group of 10 girls (perfectly sized) made it to the Cité stop and met with our guide M for a quick tour of the oldest part of Paris, the Île de la Cité and later Île de St. Louis.

We walked around and check out sights like Notre Dame:

These are the side and back views. I’ll post up some front and inside views later in the semester when I have more time to explore. However, needless to say the sides are breath-taking and reveal the extremely intricate Gothic architecture that local Parisians built themselves, usually for free.

These are people with no experience in construction but wanted a beautiful cathedral to devote to the Virgin Mary and to give their children a grand church to adorn the city. Consequently it took 2 centuries to build and the craftsmanship is very evident.

We went to take a boat cruise on the Vedettes du Pont Neuf (ironically called the New Bridge, this bridge is the oldest in Paris). Here are some of the highlights:

My favourite bridge is Paris is called the Pont Alexandre III. It is one of 37 bridges, but considered the most ornate and beautiful.

Clearly you can see the detailed sculptures and decorations like the lamps and columns.

Even the face of the bridge, extremely beautiful with a mermaid like creature welcoming us while we were floating under the bridge.

La Tour Eiffel (Eiffel Tower) - eternally beautiful even in the distance on a cloudy day

Supposedly this is one of the buildings after which the White House in DC is modeled.

The smallest house in all of Paris.

After lunch at some dingy restaurant in the Église St. Séverin (food was not good even though this place has some decent restaurants that offer un menu fixe), we hopped on the first bus that arrived at the closest bus stop to us. This is a great past time and a way to explore Paris through the public transportation which we already paid for with our passe navigo. We got off at Opéra, where (one of) the big Paris Opera building is. Absolutely goregous and many expensive clothing stores and department stores were nearby. So we visited…

Les Galleries Lafayette!

This is if you can believe it, the roof of the department store building. Gorgeous right?

We also stopped by Picard, a supermarket. But this one was special; it only sold surgelés (frozen) meals. It was so funny to see Americans in there, curious about a supermarket that only had frozen goods, when they probably eat more frozen meals than the French. There was everything including veggies, meat, desserts and even guacamole frozen.

Funny story 1: My friend T was absentmindedly walking toward the exit. She pushes open a door with a green sign and sets of the fire alarm. EVERYBODY stares at her in the store including the check out guy. Everybody cracks up laughing and the check out dude tells her to close the door. Even the strangers on the street laughed. Luckily T has a great sense of humour and laughed a long too. So lesson learned, not every green sign means go (in S’s words).

Turns out the street we were on is also a market street with tons of cute little shops that sell all types of food. There was fresh produce…

cheeses…

more cheese (it is France after all)…

et encore plus de fromage (you get the idea)…

Luckily I finally landed in a candy store…The candyland dream…

Yum yum. Reminds me of all the delicious candy I had as a kid. On the opposite note, below is boudin. And we’re not talking delicious San Francisco sour dough I blogged about a few months ago. This is something I never ate as a kid. It’s bloody sausage (also called black pudding, it’s a sausage made with blood that’s cooked until it congeals).

My friend S who looks beautifully French, and confused.

Hilariously juxtaposed with D who looks bored in a sex shop. At this point we stopped by the red light district after a delicious and cheap dinner at New Locomotive (a lovely Vietnamese resto I discovered thanks to my uncle).

Funny story 2: We got off the métro at Marx Dormoy to go to the restaurant. And unfortunately for D, we were a bit slow off the bat (you gotta race like those Parisians). So D got trapped as the doors were closing. She couldn’t pry them open and they closed. S ran up to help and D just took at her with the funniest look on her face – partially frantic to open the doors, partially concerned about where she would be sent off to in the train, and partially resigned to her fate. She just put her hands up and shrugged her shoulders. I think we were more concerned than she! Haha we finally got her out in the end. But it was HILARIOUS.

Just for Tommy, I’ll add a caption to this photo. I took this picture while we were exploring a HUGE sex shop in the red light district. No photos are allowed so I don’t know how I managed to get away with this one. But I couldn’t let this hilarious moment pass. The juxtaposition between D, sitting next to two female mannequins getting it on, with the most mundane and bored expression on her face, is roll-on-the-floor-laughing material. That and all the vibrators in the background.

This is a beautiful poem I really enjoyed in a book store. Yes I sneakily took photographed it. But I give due credit. It’s called Couvre feu poême (1942) by Paul Éluard.

We ended the night appropriate at Le Moulin Rouge

The red windmill was beautiful and seductively glittering with light. Much more enticing than the way it looks during the day (look for picture at the beginning of the post).

We took a “Marilyn Monroe” photo above a drain thing where the wind was blowing up our skirts (and pants). Ahhh Paris, so much fun. Je t’aime. Je t’aime.

Bâteau Mouche FAIL on La Seine

OK this was unnecessary, but I just had to post this.

Today, I saw one of the biggest fails on the Seine River (La Seine). We were walking down the portion of the river where all the boats are anchored. These boats, such as the famous Bâteau Mouche, Bâteau Parisien, Vedettes de Paris give you tour ride down the Seine where you can see big monuments from the water. It’s well worth it if you are interested in sightseeing such as the Louvre illuminated at night and the Eiffel Tower flashing its lights. People were lining up to buy tickets. Suddenly we chanced on a huge crowd of people that were standing around staring at the water.

This is what we were all looking at:

What is happening here?

What are all the police doing?
We direct our attention to some police and life guard people on the Seine…

Still after 5 minutes, had no idea what was happening. After asking a guard nearby, turns out the story is there was a ship that had sunk in the Seine. Take a closer look at the last photo.

There’s a just the very top of the boat visible above water. The boat literally sunk entirely in the river. It was carrying sand. Probably to refresh the supply at the Paris Plage (a fake beach the Parisians create every summer on the Seine). Unfortunately, the boat was carrying too much sand and ended up sinking. The police and ambulance arrived trying to fish and tow the ship out of the water. Nobody was hurt. There was only the captain on board and he swam to safety. Unfortunately all the boats were unable to sail that day. So we drove all the way to Paris for no reason!

The only 2 good things that came from it was I got a decent view of the Eiffel Tower. And it was a hilarious story.

More to come on Paris. Promise next time it will actually be an adventure.