Letter From Paris
Paris Kiosque - April 2005- Volume 12, Number 04
Copyright © 2005 Harriet Welty-Rochefort - Used with permission.
I never thought April in Paris would finally come and that I'd be
sitting here with my door open listening to the birds singing and
contemplating my green grass, my cherry tree, and the red, pink, and white
tulips which are timidly popping up. But yes, spring is indeed here after a
long and dreary winter and people are heading as fast as they can to their
favorite cafés
to soak up the first faint rays of sunlight.
Already in March we started getting a taste of good weather. On a
particularly beautiful Sunday, we strolled down the street to one of the
oldest churches in Paris, Saint Germain de Charonne, to check out an outdoor
Palm Sunday service led by the new Archbishop of Paris. Held jointly with
the Croatian community of Paris, the Mass was in French and Croatian. Not
being Catholic, I don't even know the Mass in English, let alone French or
any other language but I soaked up the spring air while admiring the
Archbishop's red robes and purple cassock and the gaily decorated
red-trimmed white dresses of the Croatian women. This being Paris, right
after the service many of the participants made a beeline for a nearby café
where they exchanged cigarette smoke for incense and rock and roll for
where they exchanged cigarette smoke for incense and rock and roll for
religious chants.
April in Paris means a lilt in the air, pastel hued shoes and clothes in
the boutiques - and, unfortunately - Tax Time. This year many French
people are discovering to their amazement that they are "rich" and have to
pay the ISF (impôt sur la fortune-tax on fortune). This is a tax one
normally associates with the high life: movie stars, industrialists,
entertainers. But with the real estate boom and property prices soaring,
many low to middle income French people, even people living on small
pensions, find they are literally sitting on gold mines - and the government
wants it share. Illogical? Since when were tax people logical?
Taxes are bad enough. How about some more bad news? It would seem - in
spite of Mireille Guiliano's bestselling book, "French Women Don't Get Fat",
the subject of my last column - that French people, especially French
children, DO get fat, with one child out of six becoming obese before the
age of ten. The French are so exercised about this that they are
measures such as obligatory gym every day in school and at least one water
fountain per school.
This, in the country Americans look at and say "How do they eat all that
food and not get fat?" In case you are rubbing your hands with joy thinking
"I told you so", slow down. The French weren't fat when they sat down to
the table to 3 regular meals. It's when they abandoned them that things got
bad. The result of fewer structured meals, lots of snacking, lots of salty
and sugary and fatty foods? A society that's getting plumper every day.
You are what you eat. As the French say: "Il n y a pas de mystère".
And now for some good news: the tourists have come back to Paris! After a
post September 11 lull, Chinese, Japanese, American and Italian visitors
just can't get enough of the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, Montmartre, the
Moulin Rouge and Versailles, the Top Five of the capital's hot spots. Their
favorite souvenir: the Eiffel Tower, bien sûr!
And their favorite
painting: Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, which has been moved to the
prestigious entirely refurbished 19th-century Salle des Etats in the Denon
wing of the Louvre. We can thank the Japanese for the painting's elegant
new setting: Nippon Television contributed the 6.2 million dollars required
to renovate the gallery.
If you've ever dined at the Brasserie Lipp or sipped coffee at Les Deux
Magots, you may have seen a little guy brandishing newspapers and yelling
things in French that make everyone around crack up. The fellow's name is
Ali Akbar and he's been pedalling papers in the Latin Quarter for the past
thirty years, entertaining all of Saint Germain with the egregious fake
titles he makes up every day. (One of the funniest: Charles Martel chases
the Arabs out of Poitiers which, although entirely factual, occurred in
732). Now Ali has written a book entitled "I Make the World Laugh... But
the World Makes Me Weep" recounting his life as a destitute political
refugee from Pakistan with more misery per mile than most of us have in a
lifetime. Writing in the International Herald Tribune, Mary Blume calls
Ali a "memoirist, vendor, humanist, lover - the new star of St. Germain des
Près"
Thank heavens there's still room for such a "star" in the Latin
Quarter, which lost most of its soul when bookstores and funky student cafés
gave way to designer boutiques.
The other day I was giving a lecture to a group of students from
Northwestern University and Bowling Green State University when one of them
raised a hand to ask how high the rate of mortality is in France.
"With all the smoking and fatty food they eat, it must be very high," she
surmised.
This is when I wish I were one of those people who walks around with
statistics in her head - but I'm not, and I didn't have any impressive
figures to throw her way. Then I went home to read an article that said
that France is the second country in the world (behind Japan) in terms of
longevity. Not only that, but life expectancy is getting longer and longer.
At present, 15,000 French people are older than 100.
What on earth are these French people doing to live so long? Maybe we should
all start eating foie gras - or light up!
More years ago than I'd like to own up to, I took the "France" to travel
back from France to the States. And even though my student finances only
allowed me a place in "cattle class", I remember the boat as simply
splendid. Splendid food, of course, splendid furnishings, splendid service.
Now, the liner, which is owned by Norwegian Cruise Line, is awaiting its
fate: will it end up in Singapore as a floating palace? Or, as many fans of
the ex-France hope, will it one day end up in France again, perhaps as a
luxury hotel? Is so, I'll be one of its first to take a walk down memory
lane!
Harriet Welty Rochefort is the author of
French Toast: An American in Paris Celebrates the Maddening Mysteries of the French and
French Fried: The Culinary Capers of an American in Paris.
French Toast was hailed by the Los Angeles Times as "wise and devastatingly
funny".
For world-famous chef Alain Ducasse, her second book French Fried
"in a lively and hilarious style ... gives an inside look at the world of
French cuisine and wine." Both books are published by St. Martin's Press.
"French Toast" will be published in French by Editions Ramsay in April 2005.
Harriet is currently working on her third book about the French.
For more information about Harriet and her ideas and reflections about France
click
here.
Editor's Note:
Dear Readers, while our writers are always
delighted to hear and to receive comments, both about their columns in the The Paris Kiosque,
as well as your experiences in Paris,
they are unable to answer requests for travel information.
Thank you for your understanding.
