Letter From Paris
Paris Kiosque - May 1998 - Volume 5, Number 5
Copyright (c) 1998 Harriet Welty-Rochefort - Used with permission.
After all these years in Paris (27 to be exact)
I never cease to be amazed at the infinite variety
of experiences the City of Light has to offer. I
can't help but compare my life here with what it
would have been had I stayed in Shenandoah, Iowa... but then
one should never compare the incomparable, n'est-ce pas? And places
like Shenandoah, Iowa, are great places to grow up in!
What's great about living in a city like Paris is
that there is literally never a dull moment. You may
have turned into a total bourgeois living in a comfortable
but not particularly interesting neighborhood such as Neuilly or the
16th arrondissement of Paris but that doesn't keep you from
getting on a bus or metro or hopping into your
car to go to a different part of town which
is more colorful and livelier.
Take Good Friday, for example. My day started out in
Neuilly at the wonderful Marché des Sablons (I recommend it
not just for the food but the clothes and shoes)
where I purchased various fruits, vegetables, and the all-important leg
of lamb for the Easter Sunday lunch. By the time
I finished, it was almost one o'clock and I decided
to have a bite at the local café which is
frequented by many of the market's vendors. The special of
the day, Good Friday oblige , was the traditional brandade,
a codfish-potato dish - in this case laced with so
much parsley and garlic that when I walked out of
there I could have frightened off a flock of vampires.
The overdose of garlic was only the beginning of this
very strange and wonderful day. A couple of hours later,
I went to get my hair cut in a rather
chic salon, also in Neuilly.
"I kind of like this natural grey streak", I confided
to Franck, who cuts my hair. "What would it look
like if we streaked the rest of it grey so
it would all blend in?" "Great idea," concurred my normally
sensible coiffeur, who must have been smoking dope that day.
He directed me to a young colorist who proceeded to
toy around with my short strands and drive me nuts
for a couple of hours which could have been used
for a much better purpose, such as reading Virgil's The
Aeneid, for example.
Finally, I was ready. I took one look and screamed.
I looked like a combination between a punk and someone
who had been hit with a bucket of white paint.
Even Franck recoiled. "Madame," he archly announced to the colorist,
"is not walking out of this place looking like that.
Get her back to her natural color - vite!"
When I finally walked out of there, I did in
fact look pretty much the way I had when I
had walked in. The whole process had taken so long,
however, that I was late for a date with my
son who had invited me to a debate on the
media organized by a group of anarchists in the northern
working district of Paris.
Off we sped in my trusty little Citroën to our
destination on a small street in the 20th arrondissement. Through
an iron gate we could see people milling about in
a narrow courtyard. The complex of buildings was painted pink
with green around the windows. Different doors led to different
offices in which mysterious conversations seemed to be going on.
Dressed as he was in black jeans and a black
leather jacket, my bearded 17-year-old blended right in with the
crowd. I on the other hand felt a bit awkward:
what was an American living in Neuilly doing in a
crowd of anarchists in the 20th arrondissement? If I opened
my mouth and they heard my accent, would they shoot
me?! Should I have left my hair punky style? Au
contraire. Nobody really seemed all that interested in the existence
of this particular "American in Paris". I ordered a sandwich
and a glass of red wine at the bar from
a very courteous fellow and then glanced at some of
the books laid out on a couple of tables. Most
were philosophical tracts on anarchism. Nobody seemed to be buying
them.
The fellow who was to project the movie (on the
collusion of journalists and people in power) finally arrived; the
sound was terrible but the crowd listened intently, even raptly.
The gist of the movie and the ensuing debate was
that journalists are thick with the people they cover and
that both journalists and politicians are manipulated by the big
mean capitalists. My private reaction to all of this was:
what else is new? However, being an American journalist twice
on foreign land (once in France, once in anarchist territory),
I didn't really feel it prudent to expose my views!
The evening ended with a downpour as my son and
I drove back to Neuilly. "What do you think the
anarchists would think of where we live?" my son asked
me, as I locked the car and we ran to
our door amid giant raindrops. I glanced down the silent
street graced by many a tree but nary a cosy
bar-café and laughed. "I think that they'd be bored out
of their minds!"
One thing is sure, though: I won't, as long as
I can change worlds by just crossing town.
Eco-Warriors in Le Monde, France's most respected daily, reported in a
front page article on April 15 that a group of
"Eco-guerriers" had kidnapped statues of Ronald McDonalds in front of
McDonald's restaurants in two different localities in France. The motive:
a protest against fast food and the imperialism of the
U.S. firm. So far the prank seems harmless - and
rumor hath it that the kidnapped Ronalds can even be
contacted on an Internet site.
Le Français Moyen
Curious about the "average" Frenchman/woman? A recent article in the
French newsmagazine L'Express reported that: the average Frenchman's name is
not Dupont, but Martin or Bernard. He is 38 years
old, 1.73 meters tall, and weighs 74 kilos. He wears
glasses, takes a shower four times a week and throws
away 1.14 kilos of garbage a day. He and his
wife (1.61 meters, 62 kilos) own a house near Paris;
their "demi-enfant" is named Manon or Quentin. (The average French
family is composed of 2.6 children). They make love in
18 minutes, 151 times a year, i.e. approximately every three
days (or so they say). There's much more but we'll
leave the particulars on television-watching habits, money-spending and eating habits
for next month's column. However, here's one last statistic to
ponder: the average Frenchman smokes four cigarettes a day. I
don't know about you, but I have the feeling that
I run into this average Frenchman everytime I go to
a café, bar, or restaurant and that he (and all
his friends) is smoking those four the whole time I'm
there! Does the smoking at least alleviate his stress?
Bien
sûr que non! Our average Frenchman holds the record in
Europe for pill popping and tranquilizers!
Until next time.
A bientot.
Harriet Welty-Rochefort, a bona fide Midwesterner from
Iowa, visited Paris for the first time while in
college. She became so completely enamored of
France that she stayed - and has been there ever since.
Married to a Frenchman and the mother of two
Franco-American boys, Harriet Welty-Rochefort writes
on business, lifestyle and travel for major U.S.
publications. Her book - French Toast - is a lighthearted look at
French manners and mores.
Writes Leslie Caron: French Toast includes the most delightful barbs at France's
subtle but deep-rooted codes of behaviour...I read the book on the EuroStar between
Paris and London and wished the train had not reached its top speed of 300 kph!
Reviewed in the Los Angeles Times on January 2, 1998, French Toast
will be published in the U.S. in December.
For information on ordering the book,
Harriet can be contacted at
101676.467@compuserve.com.
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