It's not quite light yet and I'm struggling to make sense of the grey shapes surrounding me. The unfamiliar contours of walls and furniture seem oppressive in the gloom, as if they are closing in on me from all sides. The alarm goes off and my husband stirs beside me, reaching slowly out from under the duvet to silence the noise, but something is wrong. I can't hear church bells. Where is the loud, insistent call to mass that marks the usual start to my day? Silence now. I don't think we're in Paris any more.
We left our rented apartment in the Marais reluctantly, heavy rucksacks and cases containing the remnants of three months worth of life in the City of Light. They were digging up the Rue Rambuteau as we left, an honour guard of diggers and cable layers to provide a parting salute as we trudged to the métro station, sand and cement caking to the wheels of our cases. Where once I had walked with a light step down the narrow staircase leading to line eleven, my gateway to discovering the city, now I slowly and painfully manoeuvred my luggage into the corridors and through the turnstiles to wait for a train that would take me away from there. Through twists and turns and changes we passed through the public transport system and out into the confused glory of the Gare du Nord, melancholy point of departure for us and thousands of others.
The previous day we had queued in the cold outside the Hôtel de Ville, trying to squeeze the last drops of cultural stimulation out of our adopted city by going to see the Sempé exhibition that had just opened. Slowly we filed past cartoons from every point in the long career of the man, examples from books and magazines interspersed with biographical information. I was taken with the idea of Sempé rushing around Paris on his scooter, sketchpad under his arm, recording the minutiae of life, before meeting his intellectual friends for coffee in a St. Germain café. A black and white shot of him at his drawing board provoked a pang of jealousy even, his complete absorption in a loved activity in the unmistakeable setting of a high-windowed Parisian apartment being something that I deeply envied. I thought that a nearby display of books, Petit Nicolas and his friends all lined up, heralded the end of the exhibition, but no. The turn of a corner revealed a vast room filled with original drawings, the distinctive ink and watercolour pieces depicting Paris and beyond, seen through the eyes of a master artist.
The views of the Luxembourg Gardens were achingly recognisable. The broad avenues of trees and the high metal gates, with the smooth pale stone of the Sénat in the background, where I had walked so many times. All of this was just across the river. We could have walked there right away, or taken the RER. It wouldn't have taken long and we could have been in our own little Sempé scene... except that we had to buy a new case and pack and clean every last detail of ourselves out of our apartment, erase ourselves from these streets and these scenes for good. We will remember the city, but will it remember us? The signature Sempé Parisian picture shows an elderly lady in the midst of giant, towering Haussmanian buildings, a tiny speck of a person taking up an insignificant amount of space on a big canvas. It's a big city indeed and people can feel overwhelmed by it, but no matter how tiny they are they are still interesting to Sempé. They are still characters worth drawing in the fascinating setting of the cityscape. They are part of Paris, as we were, once.
It turns out that Sempé travelled a fair bit, turning his keen eye onto people and places from St. Tropez to New York. He seems to have been perpetually bubbling over with ideas, forming several high profile creative partnerships and maintaining a prolific level of output through the years. There was a sense that wherever he went he saw pictures worth immortalising. He noticed the details that told unfolding stories, from the precise blue-green paint hue of a Parisian bus to the overheard snatches of conversation effervescing amidst the tables and chairs of a corner café. Thrown into the midst of the city I made similar observations, each day presenting me with something fresh and new, another aspect of the local colour to muse upon, fall in love with and write about. The long walks by the Seine and afternoons spent stirring hot chocolate and watching the world go by have come to an end, but the narratives will go on. The city will carry on living without me in it. Other people will experience it and make their own memories as they stumble on the cobbles, trying to avoid the cyclists and the mopeds. Other people will become a part of it and live the Parisian way of life in all its intensity. They will be inspired by it. It's an amazing place and I loved being there. I recall it now under the dull cloud of an English November day and as I struggle to rouse myself amidst the drizzle, I smile.
Thursday, 24 November 2011
Podcast: The Métro
My little homage to the Paris métro system, complete with sound effects recorded on Line 1 as we travelled to Concorde to stock up on Heinz beans at the WHSmith!
Tuesday, 1 November 2011
Rue Mouffetard
Our first introduction to Parisian life took place on the Rue Mouffetard, nearly five years ago. We had visited Paris before, staying in a hotel and being entertained by raucous Bastille Day celebrations, doing all sorts of touristy things and loving them. Almost a decade later we decided to take a different kind of break in the city, renting a tiny apartment at the top of a tall, old building for ten days. There we started to fall in love with Paris properly and now we make the trip from the Right Bank to the Left Bank regularly to revisit our old haunts.
The Rue Mouffetard is an extremely lively street, set on a hill running down from the Place de la Contrescarpe to the Place Monge. In places it has tacky souvenir shops, créperies and bars, but there are also the many little essential outlets that remind you that locals live here too. We stayed at number 106, directly opposite a dry cleaners where we could see the clean clothes spinning round on a carousel, bagged and fresh, ready to be reunited with their owners in a swoosh and a sweep. Just a short walk from our front door was a bakery that sold the lightest, fluffiest brioche au raisin, swollen to perfection with a rich, vanilla-infused créme patisserie filling. My husband got into the very French habit of going there early every day for pastries and bread. He also started to eat vast quantities of fresh fruit. It was spring and the combination of greengrocers on the street and the twice weekly market on the Place Monge provided us with an abundance of produce.
The weather was just starting to warm up after the winter and on Sunday morning we flung open the high French windows to find the street below even more alive with activity than usual. A band was playing and soon the street was covered in confetti as a parade passed through. Children from the local nursery school emerged wearing home made hats and masks, and there was a general festive atmosphere in the bright spring light. It turned out that it was Palm Sunday and a procession had been organised, wending its way from the church of St. Etienne du Mont, just behind the Panthéon, round the 5th Arrondissement and down the hill to the church of St. Medard, just at the end of the street where we were staying. We had ended up with a front row seat at a big local celebration, the music and sunshine streaming into the apartment and making us feel part of the whole thing.
In the years that followed we began to stay elsewhere in the city, but returning to the Rue Mouffetard retained that pleasant feeling of familiarity. We happened to watch the film “Three Colours: Blue” and discovered that the street and the surrounding area play quite an important role in the plot. The central character goes there to effectively start a new life, and the cafés and alleyways that become home to her over time were recognisable to us. When we go back now we quite often stop for coffee in the bar featured in the film. The chairs there are rickety and the staff often possess a harassed, almost surly air, but perhaps we love it all the more for that. It's certainly a good place to sit for a while and watch the busy street, where there is always something going on. Good humoured loudness abounds into the early hours, when people are out buying crépes and kebabs amongst the closed up shop fronts of the grocers and the fishmongers, their voices echoing off the graffiti covered walls.
Living in the Marais is great, but the character of the place is noticeably different. People seem more polished. There are designer boutiques aplenty and you notice well-groomed individuals stepping out with looks that have definitely been “put together”. Across the river there are more students, who are content to wear worn-in clothes for years until they fall apart. I remember my first adventures out and about on the Left Bank, seeing ladies wearing battered old Converse trainers and flat, sturdy brogues with skirts and dresses, their hair waving free of the tyranny of straighteners. I felt instantly at home, which is probably what continues to draw myself and my husband back there. In what we think used to be an old bookshop, innocent at the front but getting progressively more “adult” as you ventured further into it, there is now a lovely Salon de Thé. Where once an old man sat behind a grubby counter in the half-light, there are now racks of tea caddies, all neatly arranged against freshly painted, pistachio green hues. You can sit and sip tea on light coloured, overstuffed sofas, admiring the limed-oak floor and looking out at people passing by the window. They walk down the street that we know so well, that unforgettable place where we first lodged properly in the city, the place where the chain reaction that brought us back here first started. Satisfied, we cross the bridge and go back again to the place that we now call home, seeing all the names on the doorbells as we pass and wondering who they belong to, what brought them here and which special places they know in Paris that bring the comfort of the familiar to them.
The Rue Mouffetard is an extremely lively street, set on a hill running down from the Place de la Contrescarpe to the Place Monge. In places it has tacky souvenir shops, créperies and bars, but there are also the many little essential outlets that remind you that locals live here too. We stayed at number 106, directly opposite a dry cleaners where we could see the clean clothes spinning round on a carousel, bagged and fresh, ready to be reunited with their owners in a swoosh and a sweep. Just a short walk from our front door was a bakery that sold the lightest, fluffiest brioche au raisin, swollen to perfection with a rich, vanilla-infused créme patisserie filling. My husband got into the very French habit of going there early every day for pastries and bread. He also started to eat vast quantities of fresh fruit. It was spring and the combination of greengrocers on the street and the twice weekly market on the Place Monge provided us with an abundance of produce.
The weather was just starting to warm up after the winter and on Sunday morning we flung open the high French windows to find the street below even more alive with activity than usual. A band was playing and soon the street was covered in confetti as a parade passed through. Children from the local nursery school emerged wearing home made hats and masks, and there was a general festive atmosphere in the bright spring light. It turned out that it was Palm Sunday and a procession had been organised, wending its way from the church of St. Etienne du Mont, just behind the Panthéon, round the 5th Arrondissement and down the hill to the church of St. Medard, just at the end of the street where we were staying. We had ended up with a front row seat at a big local celebration, the music and sunshine streaming into the apartment and making us feel part of the whole thing.
In the years that followed we began to stay elsewhere in the city, but returning to the Rue Mouffetard retained that pleasant feeling of familiarity. We happened to watch the film “Three Colours: Blue” and discovered that the street and the surrounding area play quite an important role in the plot. The central character goes there to effectively start a new life, and the cafés and alleyways that become home to her over time were recognisable to us. When we go back now we quite often stop for coffee in the bar featured in the film. The chairs there are rickety and the staff often possess a harassed, almost surly air, but perhaps we love it all the more for that. It's certainly a good place to sit for a while and watch the busy street, where there is always something going on. Good humoured loudness abounds into the early hours, when people are out buying crépes and kebabs amongst the closed up shop fronts of the grocers and the fishmongers, their voices echoing off the graffiti covered walls.
Living in the Marais is great, but the character of the place is noticeably different. People seem more polished. There are designer boutiques aplenty and you notice well-groomed individuals stepping out with looks that have definitely been “put together”. Across the river there are more students, who are content to wear worn-in clothes for years until they fall apart. I remember my first adventures out and about on the Left Bank, seeing ladies wearing battered old Converse trainers and flat, sturdy brogues with skirts and dresses, their hair waving free of the tyranny of straighteners. I felt instantly at home, which is probably what continues to draw myself and my husband back there. In what we think used to be an old bookshop, innocent at the front but getting progressively more “adult” as you ventured further into it, there is now a lovely Salon de Thé. Where once an old man sat behind a grubby counter in the half-light, there are now racks of tea caddies, all neatly arranged against freshly painted, pistachio green hues. You can sit and sip tea on light coloured, overstuffed sofas, admiring the limed-oak floor and looking out at people passing by the window. They walk down the street that we know so well, that unforgettable place where we first lodged properly in the city, the place where the chain reaction that brought us back here first started. Satisfied, we cross the bridge and go back again to the place that we now call home, seeing all the names on the doorbells as we pass and wondering who they belong to, what brought them here and which special places they know in Paris that bring the comfort of the familiar to them.
Square du Temple
The Square du Temple is not one of the city's grand, expansive parks. It is a green space squeezed into the Marais in the shadow of the old covered market, the Carreau du Temple. The market, a former haunt of second-hand clothes merchants, is in the process of being turned into a “space for all”, including a Judo hall. Whether the area actually needs such a facility remains to be seen, but for now the curling, exposed iron ribs of the partly demolished structure provide a useful landmark for orientation. If I see them, I know I'm on the right track for the park.
The first time I passed through the little green swing gate, my husband turned to me and said: “You'll like this place, it has ducks.” Ducks there were indeed, with their own charming pond, island and duckhouse, prime real estate in the heart of the 3rd Arrondissement, pleasantly shaded with trees and bushes. There were also people. The overburdened confines of the buildings surrounding the square had overflowed out into park, and the benches were crowded. The well-provisioned play area was filled with excited children and harassed parents. It was a warm summer evening and the few remaining Parisians left working in the city in August seemed to have all paused there too, on their way home, ties loosened, sandals kicked off, sweating gently, leaning on the bandstand or reposing peacefully on the lush grass.
At lunchtimes the park can be packed with teenagers from the local schools, jostling for position on the bandstand as they eat their burgers and frites. Prim office girls and shop assistants juggle sandwiches and mobile phones, their hair starting to tumble out of that morning's hastily formed topknot or ponytail. Elderly Chinese couples walk the paths slowly, continuing their daily constitutional from the Place de la Republique and pausing occasionally to rest in the warmth of the sun, watching the pigeons strut from bench to bin in search of food, and lost somewhere in the midst of a thousand memories with faraway looks in their tired, clouded eyes.
One afternoon I sat there in the blazing heat on the only free bench I could find, one that was in direct sunlight. In front of me were sunbathers, bronzed and content to sleep the rest of the day away as they slowly cooked in the city's summer oven, while I barely glanced up from my Kindle. Just me and the collected short stories of Guy de Maupassant, absorbed for half an hour or so in my local park. As I read stories set in a Paris long past, today's Paris was happening all around me. Toddlers made their unsteady way towards the slides and the climbing frames while cyclists wheeled their bikes across the square, cutting off awkward corners and traffic clogged junctions with a peaceful saunter through the calm greenness. Getting up to start the short walk back to the apartment, I exited the park via the farthest away gate, near to the offices of the Mayor of the 3rd Arrondissement. At the bottom of the steps there stood a young couple, just married and smiling. The bride looked relaxed in a simple white dress and with tiny white flowers entwined in her loose, curly hair. Along with her new husband she was surrounded by a small group of well wishers, dressed in their best, laughing and taking photographs. The sun shone brilliantly down on all of them from a huge, cloudless sky. It was a beautiful day to be married in Paris. The park gate clanged shut behind me and I headed back through the Marais streets, smiling as I took each sandalled step. Now boots are the most appropriate footwear and the park benches are often soaked with rain. When venturing to the park on drier days I have to wear a scarf and the ducks on the pond are now fluffed up against the approaching winter, but hopefully that young couple are still enjoying matrimonial bliss as I am still enjoying the Square du Temple, that tiny square of nature so close to the tiny square of Paris that is my home.
The first time I passed through the little green swing gate, my husband turned to me and said: “You'll like this place, it has ducks.” Ducks there were indeed, with their own charming pond, island and duckhouse, prime real estate in the heart of the 3rd Arrondissement, pleasantly shaded with trees and bushes. There were also people. The overburdened confines of the buildings surrounding the square had overflowed out into park, and the benches were crowded. The well-provisioned play area was filled with excited children and harassed parents. It was a warm summer evening and the few remaining Parisians left working in the city in August seemed to have all paused there too, on their way home, ties loosened, sandals kicked off, sweating gently, leaning on the bandstand or reposing peacefully on the lush grass.
At lunchtimes the park can be packed with teenagers from the local schools, jostling for position on the bandstand as they eat their burgers and frites. Prim office girls and shop assistants juggle sandwiches and mobile phones, their hair starting to tumble out of that morning's hastily formed topknot or ponytail. Elderly Chinese couples walk the paths slowly, continuing their daily constitutional from the Place de la Republique and pausing occasionally to rest in the warmth of the sun, watching the pigeons strut from bench to bin in search of food, and lost somewhere in the midst of a thousand memories with faraway looks in their tired, clouded eyes.
One afternoon I sat there in the blazing heat on the only free bench I could find, one that was in direct sunlight. In front of me were sunbathers, bronzed and content to sleep the rest of the day away as they slowly cooked in the city's summer oven, while I barely glanced up from my Kindle. Just me and the collected short stories of Guy de Maupassant, absorbed for half an hour or so in my local park. As I read stories set in a Paris long past, today's Paris was happening all around me. Toddlers made their unsteady way towards the slides and the climbing frames while cyclists wheeled their bikes across the square, cutting off awkward corners and traffic clogged junctions with a peaceful saunter through the calm greenness. Getting up to start the short walk back to the apartment, I exited the park via the farthest away gate, near to the offices of the Mayor of the 3rd Arrondissement. At the bottom of the steps there stood a young couple, just married and smiling. The bride looked relaxed in a simple white dress and with tiny white flowers entwined in her loose, curly hair. Along with her new husband she was surrounded by a small group of well wishers, dressed in their best, laughing and taking photographs. The sun shone brilliantly down on all of them from a huge, cloudless sky. It was a beautiful day to be married in Paris. The park gate clanged shut behind me and I headed back through the Marais streets, smiling as I took each sandalled step. Now boots are the most appropriate footwear and the park benches are often soaked with rain. When venturing to the park on drier days I have to wear a scarf and the ducks on the pond are now fluffed up against the approaching winter, but hopefully that young couple are still enjoying matrimonial bliss as I am still enjoying the Square du Temple, that tiny square of nature so close to the tiny square of Paris that is my home.
Monday, 31 October 2011
A Breath of Fresh Air
On Sundays they close many of the streets in the Marais, including the one where we live. They have a whole city-wide programme of closures called “Paris Respire”, literally meaning “Paris Breathes”. On certain streets cars are banned and pedestrians, cyclists and roller skaters are given free reign. In practice near us this generally means that the roads become blocked with people milling about, having leisurely Sunday conversations in great giggling groups, whilst the car drivers who have managed to persuade the police manning the barriers that they have a genuine need to drive through the blockade edge slowly past, scared and frustrated expressions fixed on their faces. It is possible to pick up a Vélib and potter about the local streets, past the National Archives and round the narrow lanes with alarmingly crooked overhanging buildings, taking in the neat courtyards and little garden squares as you pass. You don't pick up any degree of momentum, though, or get anywhere particularly fast. You stop and start, ringing your bell and trying to be polite but firm with your “excusez moi” and “pardon” as you try to weave your heavy mount through the crowds.
If you want sheer cycling romance then nothing really beats crossing one of the old, cobbled bridges across the river to the islands. You can pause briefly at the bridge's curved summit and look down at the sunlight dancing on the water, before bouncing down the gentle slope to the steeply banked waterside roads of the Île St. Louis. Here there is some traffic to contend with, mainly taxis on a Sunday morning, but the roads are not wide enough to be driven along at speed, so the pace remains relaxed and you don't generally feel intimidated. I like to think that I become something of a curiosity to the rich, luggage-laden tourists in the backs of the cabs, me riding the sturdy Vélib with my mass of thick, wavy hair struggling to break free of my cycle helmet.
The ultimate Sunday Vélib treat, however, is to go right down by the Seine onto the smooth, fast tarmac usually reserved for cars speeding across the city. The busy quayside highway that takes up the lower part of the riverbank near to the Hôtel de Ville and the Place du Châtelet is reserved for non-motorised traffic from the morning until five in the afternoon. A substantial chunk of road is available for people-powered transport, joggers and promenaders. It is a popular spot, with everyone from kids on wobbly trikes to roller bladers dressed in head to toe, aerodynamic lycra taking advantage of this opportunity to just play by the riverside. The cordoned off sliproads down to the quays are steep, so you can freewheel down and let yourself loose onto the road with a flying start, racing under the bridges and easily outrunning the gently meandering boats that are your neighbours. Keeping a careful eye out for your fellow road revellers doesn't preclude the chance to absorb the more grand sights around you – the Pont Neuf up ahead or the Conciergerie, with its current cloak of scaffolding, across the gentle swell and bubble of the Seine's waves, so close beside you as you cycle along.
This Sunday we had friends staying with us and introducing them to the Vélibs was a wonderful way of showing them this place that has become our city. Paris, in all her glory, opening up one of the main thoroughfares of her bustling centre to enable it to be more fully admired, as well as providing original transport to augment the experience. Like schoolchildren we jostled to overtake each other, laughing as we got to grips with the eccentricities of Vélib steering, out in the sunshine by the Seine. As we parked the bikes the sun had disappeared behind a cloud and we returned to the more sedate pace of walking. Whether we're on two wheels or on two feet, though, these are our streets now. Filled with cars or filled with people, these are the cobbles that pave our home town. Paris and the spirit of freedom, so encompassed in the Vélib and the whole programme of “Paris Respire” Sunday street closures, has taken hold of my husband and I, and I don't think that it will ever let us go.
If you want sheer cycling romance then nothing really beats crossing one of the old, cobbled bridges across the river to the islands. You can pause briefly at the bridge's curved summit and look down at the sunlight dancing on the water, before bouncing down the gentle slope to the steeply banked waterside roads of the Île St. Louis. Here there is some traffic to contend with, mainly taxis on a Sunday morning, but the roads are not wide enough to be driven along at speed, so the pace remains relaxed and you don't generally feel intimidated. I like to think that I become something of a curiosity to the rich, luggage-laden tourists in the backs of the cabs, me riding the sturdy Vélib with my mass of thick, wavy hair struggling to break free of my cycle helmet.
The ultimate Sunday Vélib treat, however, is to go right down by the Seine onto the smooth, fast tarmac usually reserved for cars speeding across the city. The busy quayside highway that takes up the lower part of the riverbank near to the Hôtel de Ville and the Place du Châtelet is reserved for non-motorised traffic from the morning until five in the afternoon. A substantial chunk of road is available for people-powered transport, joggers and promenaders. It is a popular spot, with everyone from kids on wobbly trikes to roller bladers dressed in head to toe, aerodynamic lycra taking advantage of this opportunity to just play by the riverside. The cordoned off sliproads down to the quays are steep, so you can freewheel down and let yourself loose onto the road with a flying start, racing under the bridges and easily outrunning the gently meandering boats that are your neighbours. Keeping a careful eye out for your fellow road revellers doesn't preclude the chance to absorb the more grand sights around you – the Pont Neuf up ahead or the Conciergerie, with its current cloak of scaffolding, across the gentle swell and bubble of the Seine's waves, so close beside you as you cycle along.
This Sunday we had friends staying with us and introducing them to the Vélibs was a wonderful way of showing them this place that has become our city. Paris, in all her glory, opening up one of the main thoroughfares of her bustling centre to enable it to be more fully admired, as well as providing original transport to augment the experience. Like schoolchildren we jostled to overtake each other, laughing as we got to grips with the eccentricities of Vélib steering, out in the sunshine by the Seine. As we parked the bikes the sun had disappeared behind a cloud and we returned to the more sedate pace of walking. Whether we're on two wheels or on two feet, though, these are our streets now. Filled with cars or filled with people, these are the cobbles that pave our home town. Paris and the spirit of freedom, so encompassed in the Vélib and the whole programme of “Paris Respire” Sunday street closures, has taken hold of my husband and I, and I don't think that it will ever let us go.
Head in the Clouds
So many of the things that tourists are encouraged to do in Paris involve exhilarating climbs and panoramic views. The Eiffel Tower, of course, is the most famous. A trip to the top is an exercise in patience as much as anything else, with long and slow-moving queues for the cash desks and the lifts followed by the undignified scrum for the best viewpoints on each level. It is worth it, though, to see far out to the city's boundaries and appreciate the unique architecture and spread of the place – all elegant domes and spires, broad avenues and the graceful spans of the bridges, populated with tiny people, cars and métro trains.
One chilly morning, years ago, my husband and I were near the front of the line for the first climb of the day up the bell tower of Notre Dame. Up and up into the frosty air we climbed, steadying ourselves with brief clutches at the cold stone walls. At the top the wind was bitter and cutting, but the resigned faces of the gargoyles and grotesques still looked out over the rooftops. Encountering them up close revealed how detailed the carvings were. Turning a corner brought us face to face with an enormous bell, encased in its own wooden frame and mercifully not in full chime, not even swinging gently as the stiff breeze blew, but taller than us and at least twice as broad. The scale of things out of the ordinary is what makes these ascents so memorable – life size statues and gigantic bells contrasted with the minute, toy-town city streets below, then the whole mass distorted perceptions reversed as you make your way down again.
A visit to Montmartre offers up a whole new series of elevated sensations. This part of Paris clings to the hillside, the buildings like barnacles on a ship's hull. You walk through a warren of narrow, steep paths, uneven cobbles ready to trip you, stairways leading to café terraces, front doors or simply just new streets and alleyways. At the highest point in the city sits the Sacre Coeur, the pure white basilica that teases you with glimpses of its huge dome and pinnacles from behind walls and chimney pots for miles around. You can walk around under the painted vastness of the turrets or descend into the still, dark quiet of the crypt, but the thing to do really is to go up onto the roof. The tiny staircases and narrow walkways make you feel as if you are tripping, cat-like, across the church eaves. Up there, where the pigeons make their home amongst the marble, you are up above the city smog and closer to the sun that makes this great, white, shining pearl place almost glow against blue skies. You forget the crowds below and the jostling of tired bodies in the cramped streets. Up here you can soar over the city, from the train tracks of the Gare du Nord and out over all the zinc, lead and stones falling away from you into the distance.
To get to Montmartre you might have taken métro line 2, which has a few raised portions of track. The trains snake their way up out of their underground tunnels and over iron viaducts, following the lines of the streets below with often sharp twists and turns. As you look into the windows of the apartments and offices clustered at eye level around the track, you can sometimes glimpse the rear train coaches bending back towards those at the head, performing astonishing feats of flexibility to negotiate the bends. For more spectacular sights line 6 is recommended, this being a public transport artery so endowed with good views that it once featured in an episode of the American series “ER”. If you ignore the crush in the carriage and look out, you are treated at one point to the sight of the Eiffel Tower as the train crosses the Seine. There is water below and buildings close in on you from each bank, but as you make landfall and cruise above the cars stuck in the traffic jams beneath you can still see the giant majesty of the Tower's iron frame. On some days they hold markets on a few streets under the line, stalls with all their fresh goods and vibrant chatter sheltering in the shadows of the tracks, with animation of some kind going on at every level.
Paris at ground level can be hectic, so it is no surprise that viewing it from up on high is so often recommended. To climb up is to inhale the whole city in one huge breath, then release a sigh as the vast beauty of it gradually becomes apparent in the panorama spread out before you. You grasp the essence of the place, so compact and intense on terra firma but expanded somehow from up on high, with every angle revealing a sight to behold, everywhere something to see. Time slows down as you go up. You don't have to worry about weaving through the crowds or negotiating the streets – it's all there in front of you and you can properly appreciate it. Your own particular place in it all, whatever that may be, ceases to matter. You can see the city functioning as a big, beautiful whole, a teeming mass underneath the serene calm of an enormous sky, with clouds so close you could reach out and touch them.
One chilly morning, years ago, my husband and I were near the front of the line for the first climb of the day up the bell tower of Notre Dame. Up and up into the frosty air we climbed, steadying ourselves with brief clutches at the cold stone walls. At the top the wind was bitter and cutting, but the resigned faces of the gargoyles and grotesques still looked out over the rooftops. Encountering them up close revealed how detailed the carvings were. Turning a corner brought us face to face with an enormous bell, encased in its own wooden frame and mercifully not in full chime, not even swinging gently as the stiff breeze blew, but taller than us and at least twice as broad. The scale of things out of the ordinary is what makes these ascents so memorable – life size statues and gigantic bells contrasted with the minute, toy-town city streets below, then the whole mass distorted perceptions reversed as you make your way down again.
A visit to Montmartre offers up a whole new series of elevated sensations. This part of Paris clings to the hillside, the buildings like barnacles on a ship's hull. You walk through a warren of narrow, steep paths, uneven cobbles ready to trip you, stairways leading to café terraces, front doors or simply just new streets and alleyways. At the highest point in the city sits the Sacre Coeur, the pure white basilica that teases you with glimpses of its huge dome and pinnacles from behind walls and chimney pots for miles around. You can walk around under the painted vastness of the turrets or descend into the still, dark quiet of the crypt, but the thing to do really is to go up onto the roof. The tiny staircases and narrow walkways make you feel as if you are tripping, cat-like, across the church eaves. Up there, where the pigeons make their home amongst the marble, you are up above the city smog and closer to the sun that makes this great, white, shining pearl place almost glow against blue skies. You forget the crowds below and the jostling of tired bodies in the cramped streets. Up here you can soar over the city, from the train tracks of the Gare du Nord and out over all the zinc, lead and stones falling away from you into the distance.
To get to Montmartre you might have taken métro line 2, which has a few raised portions of track. The trains snake their way up out of their underground tunnels and over iron viaducts, following the lines of the streets below with often sharp twists and turns. As you look into the windows of the apartments and offices clustered at eye level around the track, you can sometimes glimpse the rear train coaches bending back towards those at the head, performing astonishing feats of flexibility to negotiate the bends. For more spectacular sights line 6 is recommended, this being a public transport artery so endowed with good views that it once featured in an episode of the American series “ER”. If you ignore the crush in the carriage and look out, you are treated at one point to the sight of the Eiffel Tower as the train crosses the Seine. There is water below and buildings close in on you from each bank, but as you make landfall and cruise above the cars stuck in the traffic jams beneath you can still see the giant majesty of the Tower's iron frame. On some days they hold markets on a few streets under the line, stalls with all their fresh goods and vibrant chatter sheltering in the shadows of the tracks, with animation of some kind going on at every level.
Paris at ground level can be hectic, so it is no surprise that viewing it from up on high is so often recommended. To climb up is to inhale the whole city in one huge breath, then release a sigh as the vast beauty of it gradually becomes apparent in the panorama spread out before you. You grasp the essence of the place, so compact and intense on terra firma but expanded somehow from up on high, with every angle revealing a sight to behold, everywhere something to see. Time slows down as you go up. You don't have to worry about weaving through the crowds or negotiating the streets – it's all there in front of you and you can properly appreciate it. Your own particular place in it all, whatever that may be, ceases to matter. You can see the city functioning as a big, beautiful whole, a teeming mass underneath the serene calm of an enormous sky, with clouds so close you could reach out and touch them.
Saturday, 29 October 2011
Islands in the Seine
It is just a short walk from our apartment to the Île de la Cité, going past the Hôtel de Ville and across the Pont d'Arcole. The vast proportions of Notre Dame quickly come into sight and you soon find yourself consumed by the mass of people gathered by its entrance. There are those queuing to enter the knave and those attempting to take the perfect cathedral snapshot. They stand on benches, low walls and bollards, directing their friends into the frame with frantic hand gestures, or alternatively they crouch low to the ground, brows furrowed with concentration, as they struggle to accommodate the massive height of the cathedral towers in their viewfinders. It is a wonder that the island doesn't sink into the murky depths of the Seine or shake free of its foundations and float away, given the weight and activity of the thronging hoards. In the early evening the island's streets are burdened still further with battalions of police and processions of prison vans, taking the miscreants who have been dealt with at the Palais de Justice that day onward to whatever future has been handed down to them. All the while the ambulances come and go around the Hôtel Dieu, creeping their way through the crowds and the traffic with their sirens wailing.
The Île St. Louis is quieter. Skirting the back of the Hôtel de Ville we can cross the river using the Pont Louis Philippe and find ourselves amongst the smaller island's narrow streets. There are crowds here too, but they are walking around in the most part, stopping to admire the occasional shop window maybe, or queueing to buy the famous Berthillon ice cream, but not really congregating anywhere in particular. Sometimes the roar of a moped or the chime of a bike bell causes them to scatter, or a car might send them scurrying for the pavements, but overall the mood is relaxed. One hot and humid summer evening, when the nights were still light and warm enough for strolling, we heard the sound of Fauré's Requiem drifting out from the church of St. Louis en l'Ile, contemplative tones bathing the island in pleasant tranquillity.
If you take up the right position at a corner café, you might be lucky enough to get a view of the Panthéon, its sheer size and majesty capable of being properly appreciated from here, looming as it does from its distant but elevated position on the Left Bank. Adjust your gaze slightly and you can see, just across the water, the shimmering glass of the Institut du Monde Arabe, a modern building in stark contrast to the ancient stone edifices all around it, but not at all incongruous. Looking out at these vistas one August night we saw black clouds gathering. As we waited to be served with ice cream, bright flashes illuminated the ink-black sky behind the Panthéon's dome. The approaching thunder began with a low rumble, but by the time our order was being scooped up it was repeating in loud, atmosphere-splitting cracks that seemed to be directly above our heads. The trees dotted along the quayside were now being shaken by an ominous wind that had blown up with alarming rapidity. We knew what was coming and tried to outrun the storm in a mad dash back to the mainland, but just before we crossed the Rue de Rivoli the heavens opened. Soaked with the heavy, warm droplets of rain, we kept on running and clutching our ice cream cones all the way back to the safety of our front door.
Amidst their surrounding waters the two central Seine islands rest, quietly at home. All of Paris is at the mercy of the great river that flows through it, topped up regularly by the deluges from above, but the islands are at the heart of the churning waves and more vulnerable still. The motto of the city translates as something like: “She is buffeted by the waves, but she does not sink,” and walking on the Île de la Cité and the Île St. Louis you feel the sense of defiance against the elements that these words encapsulate even more keenly. Perhaps these islands are concentrated microcosms of Paris as a whole. The contrast between the busy, brash Île de la Cité and the more calm, intimate Île St. Louis reflects the different faces of the city at large, the ways in which Paris can be so diverse and yet maintain that whole identity as somewhere unique, somewhere clearly Parisian amidst a mass of contradictions. Or perhaps they are just fine places to go out walking, with the river on either side of you, the comings and goings of the boats and the people, the flow of the water and the currents of the city swirling all around.
The Île St. Louis is quieter. Skirting the back of the Hôtel de Ville we can cross the river using the Pont Louis Philippe and find ourselves amongst the smaller island's narrow streets. There are crowds here too, but they are walking around in the most part, stopping to admire the occasional shop window maybe, or queueing to buy the famous Berthillon ice cream, but not really congregating anywhere in particular. Sometimes the roar of a moped or the chime of a bike bell causes them to scatter, or a car might send them scurrying for the pavements, but overall the mood is relaxed. One hot and humid summer evening, when the nights were still light and warm enough for strolling, we heard the sound of Fauré's Requiem drifting out from the church of St. Louis en l'Ile, contemplative tones bathing the island in pleasant tranquillity.
If you take up the right position at a corner café, you might be lucky enough to get a view of the Panthéon, its sheer size and majesty capable of being properly appreciated from here, looming as it does from its distant but elevated position on the Left Bank. Adjust your gaze slightly and you can see, just across the water, the shimmering glass of the Institut du Monde Arabe, a modern building in stark contrast to the ancient stone edifices all around it, but not at all incongruous. Looking out at these vistas one August night we saw black clouds gathering. As we waited to be served with ice cream, bright flashes illuminated the ink-black sky behind the Panthéon's dome. The approaching thunder began with a low rumble, but by the time our order was being scooped up it was repeating in loud, atmosphere-splitting cracks that seemed to be directly above our heads. The trees dotted along the quayside were now being shaken by an ominous wind that had blown up with alarming rapidity. We knew what was coming and tried to outrun the storm in a mad dash back to the mainland, but just before we crossed the Rue de Rivoli the heavens opened. Soaked with the heavy, warm droplets of rain, we kept on running and clutching our ice cream cones all the way back to the safety of our front door.
Amidst their surrounding waters the two central Seine islands rest, quietly at home. All of Paris is at the mercy of the great river that flows through it, topped up regularly by the deluges from above, but the islands are at the heart of the churning waves and more vulnerable still. The motto of the city translates as something like: “She is buffeted by the waves, but she does not sink,” and walking on the Île de la Cité and the Île St. Louis you feel the sense of defiance against the elements that these words encapsulate even more keenly. Perhaps these islands are concentrated microcosms of Paris as a whole. The contrast between the busy, brash Île de la Cité and the more calm, intimate Île St. Louis reflects the different faces of the city at large, the ways in which Paris can be so diverse and yet maintain that whole identity as somewhere unique, somewhere clearly Parisian amidst a mass of contradictions. Or perhaps they are just fine places to go out walking, with the river on either side of you, the comings and goings of the boats and the people, the flow of the water and the currents of the city swirling all around.
Friday, 28 October 2011
Paris Match
Perhaps living on the Right Bank has made us more image conscious. We certainly gave some thought to our outfits when we were about to set off to meet a friend at the Gare du Nord. We drew the line at the full-on, beret-topped, archetypal French look, foregoing a quick trip to the greengrocer for a string of onions to sling about our necks, but clad in black macs we surely had a whiff of garlic about us anyway. Maybe some of that peculiarly continental style had seeped into the fashions of my husband and I. Still, I felt as if my own ensemble was lacking something as I stood on the chilly station concourse. Spying a newsagents across the rows of platforms and waiting trains, I realised what I was missing: a copy of “Paris Match”.
I comprehend only a small amount of French, but for some reason I find the task of slowly translating “Paris Match”, inch by ponderous column inch, a complete joy. It has just the right mixture of politics and gossip to sustain my interest and make me want to grapple with the unfamiliar words and grammar. If I find that my poor, overloaded brain is flagging, I can always turn to the Sempé cartoon for a little mind balm. I adore Sempé, that gifted cartoonist who can evoke a Parisian street, all tall buildings and tiny, bewildered inhabitants, with just a few scribbled ink lines. The very first holiday apartment that we rented here, many years ago, must have been owned by a fan of his work and provided an introduction into his world for me. The shelves were filled with the Petit Nicolas books that he illustrated, tales of a schoolboy rather more philosophical and refined than Dennis the Menace, but no less mischievous, and the walls had framed posters advertising Sempé exhibitions. His wry take on Parisian life never ceases to raise a smile and one of the reasons I started to embrace “Paris Match” so enthusiastically was that it had his artwork in it.
It was in the unstylish, bleach-scented confines of a budget hotel room that I encountered the fabled magazine for the first time, passing through Paris after a visit to Provence last year. The workers of the nation were discontented, as they so frequently are in France, only this time matters were becoming serious. Uncollected rubbish was piling up on the streets and at the port of Marseilles oil tankers were being prevented from docking. On the journey back to the capital, the TGV had been noticeably lacking in “V”. Sempé illustrated the grievance by depicting roadsweepers massing on a picket line, and the magazine pages were full of political discussions, claim and counter-claim about who was doing what to try and solve the current problems. The policies of the city mayor were outlined in one section, whilst the presence of tennis player Amélie Mauresmo in an evening dress at a particular social event was pictured in another. The latest handbag and seasonal fashion trends sat alongside the story of a countrywide crisis. News and shoes. I was quickly hooked.
The blending of the insightful with the inane makes for a powerful potion. There are lots of small articles, simple question and answer interviews or photomontages of elegant society balls, all of which still require an effort to translate but which ultimately offer quite simple, straightforward pleasures. Then there are the longer pieces, like the interview with George Clooney, the Steve Jobs obituary and the article about Dominique Strauss-Khan and Tristane Banon that appeared in the issue last week. They could take me days to pore over, but the ensuing satisfaction lies partly in understanding them and partly in seeing the world from a French point of view. To look at Hollywood and how it is perceived through a different lens and interpreted in another language is incredibly refreshing. Seeing how global corporations and news stories with a worldwide impact are understood outside of an instantly familiar frame of reference is fascinating. It is entertaining, but if feels as if it is contributing to my broader understanding of French culture too. There is gossip and fluff, but it still nourishes and expands the mind.
So in our black macs we took the RER D back to Châtelet - Les Halles, me with “Paris Match” tucked under my arm. George Clooney's cover shot peeked out from behind the folds of black polyester, casting a smiling eye over our fellow travellers. I like to think that we looked stylish, my husband and I, he with his carefully chosen stripy top, me with my carefully tied scarf, both with purple trainers as a nod to continental eccentricity. The train was crowded, but I'm sure that at least some of the jaded commuters looked up at me with my “Paris Match” and thought I was a sophisticated Frenchwoman. Little did they know that my mac was from Marks and Spencer. You can take the girl out of England, but you can't take England out of the girl!
I comprehend only a small amount of French, but for some reason I find the task of slowly translating “Paris Match”, inch by ponderous column inch, a complete joy. It has just the right mixture of politics and gossip to sustain my interest and make me want to grapple with the unfamiliar words and grammar. If I find that my poor, overloaded brain is flagging, I can always turn to the Sempé cartoon for a little mind balm. I adore Sempé, that gifted cartoonist who can evoke a Parisian street, all tall buildings and tiny, bewildered inhabitants, with just a few scribbled ink lines. The very first holiday apartment that we rented here, many years ago, must have been owned by a fan of his work and provided an introduction into his world for me. The shelves were filled with the Petit Nicolas books that he illustrated, tales of a schoolboy rather more philosophical and refined than Dennis the Menace, but no less mischievous, and the walls had framed posters advertising Sempé exhibitions. His wry take on Parisian life never ceases to raise a smile and one of the reasons I started to embrace “Paris Match” so enthusiastically was that it had his artwork in it.
It was in the unstylish, bleach-scented confines of a budget hotel room that I encountered the fabled magazine for the first time, passing through Paris after a visit to Provence last year. The workers of the nation were discontented, as they so frequently are in France, only this time matters were becoming serious. Uncollected rubbish was piling up on the streets and at the port of Marseilles oil tankers were being prevented from docking. On the journey back to the capital, the TGV had been noticeably lacking in “V”. Sempé illustrated the grievance by depicting roadsweepers massing on a picket line, and the magazine pages were full of political discussions, claim and counter-claim about who was doing what to try and solve the current problems. The policies of the city mayor were outlined in one section, whilst the presence of tennis player Amélie Mauresmo in an evening dress at a particular social event was pictured in another. The latest handbag and seasonal fashion trends sat alongside the story of a countrywide crisis. News and shoes. I was quickly hooked.
The blending of the insightful with the inane makes for a powerful potion. There are lots of small articles, simple question and answer interviews or photomontages of elegant society balls, all of which still require an effort to translate but which ultimately offer quite simple, straightforward pleasures. Then there are the longer pieces, like the interview with George Clooney, the Steve Jobs obituary and the article about Dominique Strauss-Khan and Tristane Banon that appeared in the issue last week. They could take me days to pore over, but the ensuing satisfaction lies partly in understanding them and partly in seeing the world from a French point of view. To look at Hollywood and how it is perceived through a different lens and interpreted in another language is incredibly refreshing. Seeing how global corporations and news stories with a worldwide impact are understood outside of an instantly familiar frame of reference is fascinating. It is entertaining, but if feels as if it is contributing to my broader understanding of French culture too. There is gossip and fluff, but it still nourishes and expands the mind.
So in our black macs we took the RER D back to Châtelet - Les Halles, me with “Paris Match” tucked under my arm. George Clooney's cover shot peeked out from behind the folds of black polyester, casting a smiling eye over our fellow travellers. I like to think that we looked stylish, my husband and I, he with his carefully chosen stripy top, me with my carefully tied scarf, both with purple trainers as a nod to continental eccentricity. The train was crowded, but I'm sure that at least some of the jaded commuters looked up at me with my “Paris Match” and thought I was a sophisticated Frenchwoman. Little did they know that my mac was from Marks and Spencer. You can take the girl out of England, but you can't take England out of the girl!
Thursday, 27 October 2011
Characters in Search of an Author
They were on a ventilation grille in the street, probably taking advantage of the hot updrafts from passing métro trains below or some sort of radiated warmth from underground cables. The sun was shining and the street was full of people, all talking and laughing. Nobody was paying the slightest bit of attention to the full set of underwear that somebody had left to dry outside of the Bains Douches. Pants, socks and vest, worn and discoloured with use, were stretched out and gently steaming, right in the middle of the footpath. I wondered who they belonged to as I carefully stepped around them. Whose dignified Sunday ritual was this? A visit to the public baths and a small bit of laundry probably equated to a grasp at retaining a sense of being human to someone, a soul adrift somewhere, on the streets or in a bedsit, but still a part of this city. Paris still has quite a few public baths and this one, in the warren of streets between the Jardin de Plantes and the Rue Mouffetard, was clearly busy. It is easy to take something as basic as private washing facilities for granted, but for so many the practice of cleansing oneself was clearly not straightforward or something that could be easily accomplished in the home. What brought them to this place? What were their stories?
You don't need to absorb yourself in Parisian life for very long to see the characters of the city emerging all around you. A short time spent on the terrace of a street café, walking in the park or even gazing out across the zinc rooftops from your apartment window reveals little aspects of the lives of others to you, things that make you wonder. I hadn't been here long when I noticed the elderly gentlemen across the courtyard opening his windows and with great effort lifting his leg up onto the bottom of the frame. Was he going to jump? I was a little concerned. Thankfully it turned out that all he wanted to do was cut his toenails. Laboriously he applied the clippers, and with each audible snip a tiny remnant of nail floated down onto the cobbles below. A small pile must have built up, just in front of the big blue gate through which mopeds, bikes, cars and people passed without thinking throughout the day and night. It must have built up and been blown away into the ether by the breeze, the old man's very personal contribution to the detritus on the city streets. Why did he choose to cut his toenails this way, such an odd and clearly difficult thing to do? What was so wrong with his clippings that he could not bear to have them in his flat? What was so right with them that he wanted to share them with the world? All questions that will never be answered, but an eccentricity observed, noted and pondered nonetheless.
In search of something typically and classically French to read, I stumbled upon the short stories of Guy de Maupassant. He was an acute observer of people and one to whom the characters of Paris and beyond were a subject of fascination. He drew me in by mentioning places that I know – a tortured individual in one story wandered from the Madeleine to the Faubourg Poissonierie and I recognised those streets, imagining the places where he might have stopped and taken shelter as the rain fell, the poor man being too scared of an imagined spectre to return home. I kept on reading because the characters were so well drawn that I could see parallels with the individuals who have crossed my path in the Paris and France that I have come to know. Quite often, though, Maupassant writes about unpleasant people who do unpleasant things. He does not shy away from the seedier side of life, which lends his work a sense of honesty and realism. The stories are peppered with bored, rich wives who use their idle hours to take lovers or make unreasonable demands on their long-suffering husbands, but also with maids and farm girls who unfortunately find themselves “in the family way” and circus performers living brutal lives amongst the sawdust. He writes about lonely people who are unhappy, about people on long train journeys, about prostitutes, street urchins and soldiers. It is just a short step from these people, created with a few lines of prose all those years ago, to the people living out their lives in Paris today. If you look around you it is obvious that their descendants are still out there, living out their own stories in this more modern world. The problems and peccadilloes that Maupassant wrote about are still there, too.
I walk around this city and see a million characters, perhaps in search of an author but more likely just content to tell their own stories by living them everyday. I reckon that Maupassant probably took a room in Paris and walked out every day, seeing the same people, starting to become familiar with certain faces, with particular ways of being, and wove stories around the framework of city life that was existing all around him. A cast for his tales was always there before his eyes. He just had to answer the questions that every observer of city life asks, similar questions undoubtedly to the ones that I ask everyday. Who is the blind lady with the dog who plants herself outside churches or in busy thoroughfares, singing along loudly to Edith Piaf songs, hoping that somebody will give her a few coins? Why does that cyclist ride down my street in the evening, attempting to clear the traffic ahead of him by bleating like a goat? Does the “poete publique” with his portable typewriter, sitting outside the Pompidou Centre, ever write anything that gets published? Does anyone ever commission any work from him at all? From the weather beaten accordionist on the quayside to the kids who hang around outside Notre Dame breakdancing on a Friday night, from the security guards struggling to keep warm outside the Hotel de Ville to the owner of those pants left out to dry on the street, I can't help but think about who they are and why they do what they do. What paths led them to this amazing place, to be here and just be living out their lives? Of course I shall never know, not really, but I shall spend many an hour trying to guess.
You don't need to absorb yourself in Parisian life for very long to see the characters of the city emerging all around you. A short time spent on the terrace of a street café, walking in the park or even gazing out across the zinc rooftops from your apartment window reveals little aspects of the lives of others to you, things that make you wonder. I hadn't been here long when I noticed the elderly gentlemen across the courtyard opening his windows and with great effort lifting his leg up onto the bottom of the frame. Was he going to jump? I was a little concerned. Thankfully it turned out that all he wanted to do was cut his toenails. Laboriously he applied the clippers, and with each audible snip a tiny remnant of nail floated down onto the cobbles below. A small pile must have built up, just in front of the big blue gate through which mopeds, bikes, cars and people passed without thinking throughout the day and night. It must have built up and been blown away into the ether by the breeze, the old man's very personal contribution to the detritus on the city streets. Why did he choose to cut his toenails this way, such an odd and clearly difficult thing to do? What was so wrong with his clippings that he could not bear to have them in his flat? What was so right with them that he wanted to share them with the world? All questions that will never be answered, but an eccentricity observed, noted and pondered nonetheless.
In search of something typically and classically French to read, I stumbled upon the short stories of Guy de Maupassant. He was an acute observer of people and one to whom the characters of Paris and beyond were a subject of fascination. He drew me in by mentioning places that I know – a tortured individual in one story wandered from the Madeleine to the Faubourg Poissonierie and I recognised those streets, imagining the places where he might have stopped and taken shelter as the rain fell, the poor man being too scared of an imagined spectre to return home. I kept on reading because the characters were so well drawn that I could see parallels with the individuals who have crossed my path in the Paris and France that I have come to know. Quite often, though, Maupassant writes about unpleasant people who do unpleasant things. He does not shy away from the seedier side of life, which lends his work a sense of honesty and realism. The stories are peppered with bored, rich wives who use their idle hours to take lovers or make unreasonable demands on their long-suffering husbands, but also with maids and farm girls who unfortunately find themselves “in the family way” and circus performers living brutal lives amongst the sawdust. He writes about lonely people who are unhappy, about people on long train journeys, about prostitutes, street urchins and soldiers. It is just a short step from these people, created with a few lines of prose all those years ago, to the people living out their lives in Paris today. If you look around you it is obvious that their descendants are still out there, living out their own stories in this more modern world. The problems and peccadilloes that Maupassant wrote about are still there, too.
I walk around this city and see a million characters, perhaps in search of an author but more likely just content to tell their own stories by living them everyday. I reckon that Maupassant probably took a room in Paris and walked out every day, seeing the same people, starting to become familiar with certain faces, with particular ways of being, and wove stories around the framework of city life that was existing all around him. A cast for his tales was always there before his eyes. He just had to answer the questions that every observer of city life asks, similar questions undoubtedly to the ones that I ask everyday. Who is the blind lady with the dog who plants herself outside churches or in busy thoroughfares, singing along loudly to Edith Piaf songs, hoping that somebody will give her a few coins? Why does that cyclist ride down my street in the evening, attempting to clear the traffic ahead of him by bleating like a goat? Does the “poete publique” with his portable typewriter, sitting outside the Pompidou Centre, ever write anything that gets published? Does anyone ever commission any work from him at all? From the weather beaten accordionist on the quayside to the kids who hang around outside Notre Dame breakdancing on a Friday night, from the security guards struggling to keep warm outside the Hotel de Ville to the owner of those pants left out to dry on the street, I can't help but think about who they are and why they do what they do. What paths led them to this amazing place, to be here and just be living out their lives? Of course I shall never know, not really, but I shall spend many an hour trying to guess.
Wednesday, 26 October 2011
The BHV
The Bazar de l'Hotel de Ville is a living, breathing entity. It is not simply a department store, lovingly known to all Parisians as simply the BHV, key commercial landmark of the right bank. It reaches out with its tentacles and tries to pull you in. The small stalls and kiosks on the ground floor level fight to clasp you firmly in their grip. Scarves, belts, watches, ties - come and buy them! Need a key cut or a heel repaired? No problem. You don't even have to set foot inside the actual store, but if you want to, why not? There's plenty to see. Let the BHV draw you into its warm, womb-like retail space and give you a big hug. The BHV will make it all better.
Once it swallowed me whole. I made the mistake of following the crowd at the Hotel de Ville mÈtro station on a Saturday afternoon. The confines of the Line 1 platform didn't leave much room for manoeuvre and the general flow of people swept me along as part of a huge, bustling mass into the BHV basement. Tightly packed shelves rose from floor to ceiling, creating a labyrinth through which shoppers scurried with the purposefulness of hoarding rodents. Every available space was filled with stock, hooks on every surface festooned with bags of nails, screws and other essentials of everyday care and repair for the home. I had heard whispered tales about this place, but now I was actually there, in the inner sanctum of cement bags and reels of chains to be sold by the metre. This was the mythic BHV DIY department.
Down in the bowels of the smart and rather fashionable department store, the temple of home improvement might seem a little incongruous. Up above you can buy Dior perfume and Armani slacks, down there you can have a piece of MDF cut to size - only in Paris! Home improvement in the city, you see, requires a little imagination. It is not uncommon to see furniture, industrial sized tins of paint and even bricks being lugged around by tired but determined individuals, keen to make their small but perfectly formed apartments feel like home. Tapping into these desires is part of the BHV's plan for domination. Thus there are staff aplenty down in basement, as in the old hardware stores that are now so hard to find back in England. They help customers to shop and fulfil all of their desires, carefully wrapping goods that are probably not going to be taken home swiftly in the boot of a car. The curtain poles are going to be heading out into the city traffic balanced precariously between shoulder and bicycle frame, the plank of wood will be clasped between knees riding a moped and the box of tiles will be strapped to a handcart.
The BHV has a powerful brain. It knows Parisians. The nature of the city is such that it is a crowded place, filled to the brim with millions of souls seeking different kinds of satisfaction. Bearing this in mind, the BHV has decided to stock everything that anybody could ever possibly want. If you can dream it, the chances are that it will be there. I managed to escape the basement eventually, but on another occasion I got drawn into the Papeterie, with its shelves filled with notebooks, pens, greetings cards and such. An innocent, aimless wander through here brings you into the arts and crafts section, complete with a smock-wearing mannequin doing a credible impression of a tortured artist. I resisted temptation, but departed with the feeling that I needed a two metres square canvas, brushes, paints and of course an easel, not to mention a lampshade making kit and a large papier mache letter "X".
Beyond the main body of the BHV there are parasitic annexes dedicated to particular social groups and enthusiasms. In the imposing "BHV Homme" store, men are comprehensively catered for. Every type of hat and hoodie, brief and boxer, tie and cravat can be tried on, touched and caressed before being neatly folded into a carrier bag for purchase. There is another shop for pet accessories and even a bike emporium, which proudly displays the latest in electric bicycle technology in the window. Presumably the BHV shopper should not even have to pedal. Even that inconvenient need can be taken care of by the all loving, all giving, benevolent department store.
The BHV thrusts itself out from behind the City Hall, proud to be the saviour of the busy consumer. As the traffic creeps its way past, horns honking, mopeds darting in and out, laden bikes weaving, all of Paris is going there to buy, to browse, to get things done. It's not just a purveyor of middle class ambition, like John Lewis, or of accessible branded fashion, like Debenhams. It is a soother, a counsellor, a magician in a theatre of dreams performing for all who can afford to buy its wares as their ticket, but it is rooted in everyday life too. Its heart beats for that particular kind of everyday life that is creative, hurried and yet philosophical - that particular kind of everyday life that is concentrated, manic, occasionally very extravagant and always unique. In other words that particular kind of everyday life that is Parisian.
Once it swallowed me whole. I made the mistake of following the crowd at the Hotel de Ville mÈtro station on a Saturday afternoon. The confines of the Line 1 platform didn't leave much room for manoeuvre and the general flow of people swept me along as part of a huge, bustling mass into the BHV basement. Tightly packed shelves rose from floor to ceiling, creating a labyrinth through which shoppers scurried with the purposefulness of hoarding rodents. Every available space was filled with stock, hooks on every surface festooned with bags of nails, screws and other essentials of everyday care and repair for the home. I had heard whispered tales about this place, but now I was actually there, in the inner sanctum of cement bags and reels of chains to be sold by the metre. This was the mythic BHV DIY department.
Down in the bowels of the smart and rather fashionable department store, the temple of home improvement might seem a little incongruous. Up above you can buy Dior perfume and Armani slacks, down there you can have a piece of MDF cut to size - only in Paris! Home improvement in the city, you see, requires a little imagination. It is not uncommon to see furniture, industrial sized tins of paint and even bricks being lugged around by tired but determined individuals, keen to make their small but perfectly formed apartments feel like home. Tapping into these desires is part of the BHV's plan for domination. Thus there are staff aplenty down in basement, as in the old hardware stores that are now so hard to find back in England. They help customers to shop and fulfil all of their desires, carefully wrapping goods that are probably not going to be taken home swiftly in the boot of a car. The curtain poles are going to be heading out into the city traffic balanced precariously between shoulder and bicycle frame, the plank of wood will be clasped between knees riding a moped and the box of tiles will be strapped to a handcart.
The BHV has a powerful brain. It knows Parisians. The nature of the city is such that it is a crowded place, filled to the brim with millions of souls seeking different kinds of satisfaction. Bearing this in mind, the BHV has decided to stock everything that anybody could ever possibly want. If you can dream it, the chances are that it will be there. I managed to escape the basement eventually, but on another occasion I got drawn into the Papeterie, with its shelves filled with notebooks, pens, greetings cards and such. An innocent, aimless wander through here brings you into the arts and crafts section, complete with a smock-wearing mannequin doing a credible impression of a tortured artist. I resisted temptation, but departed with the feeling that I needed a two metres square canvas, brushes, paints and of course an easel, not to mention a lampshade making kit and a large papier mache letter "X".
Beyond the main body of the BHV there are parasitic annexes dedicated to particular social groups and enthusiasms. In the imposing "BHV Homme" store, men are comprehensively catered for. Every type of hat and hoodie, brief and boxer, tie and cravat can be tried on, touched and caressed before being neatly folded into a carrier bag for purchase. There is another shop for pet accessories and even a bike emporium, which proudly displays the latest in electric bicycle technology in the window. Presumably the BHV shopper should not even have to pedal. Even that inconvenient need can be taken care of by the all loving, all giving, benevolent department store.
The BHV thrusts itself out from behind the City Hall, proud to be the saviour of the busy consumer. As the traffic creeps its way past, horns honking, mopeds darting in and out, laden bikes weaving, all of Paris is going there to buy, to browse, to get things done. It's not just a purveyor of middle class ambition, like John Lewis, or of accessible branded fashion, like Debenhams. It is a soother, a counsellor, a magician in a theatre of dreams performing for all who can afford to buy its wares as their ticket, but it is rooted in everyday life too. Its heart beats for that particular kind of everyday life that is creative, hurried and yet philosophical - that particular kind of everyday life that is concentrated, manic, occasionally very extravagant and always unique. In other words that particular kind of everyday life that is Parisian.
Tuesday, 25 October 2011
The Pompidou Centre
Who are you, you tiny people down there, who I can cover just by raising my thumb to the window pane? Do you know, you there, down on the cobbles, with your lunch, your talk and your embraces, that Paris stretches out behind you in all its glory? Somewhere behind the shops and cafés there are golden domes that catch the sun, tall archways and massive churches, all being revealed to me now as I go up and up. But not for you. You sitting on the cold stones, you have made your own world in barely a square foot of space, your Paris, small amongst the greatness.
Inside the cocoon of the Pompidou Centre there is another world, too. A world of culture, of art and of discovery and yet a world never far removed from the rest of the city. Turn a corner and you find a window, a view, light from the “City of Light” seeping in to split your focus. Inside or outside? Which beauty shall I feed on at this moment? There is little room for disengagement here. Decisions must be made. A full appreciation of the present, of where you are and the art all around, is never lost.
The collection held there is vast and diverse, attracting a wide range of people: the young, the old, the Parisian and the faraway wanderer. The wealth of available space lends itself to the exhibition of works executed on a grand scale, things that might struggle to find a home in more averagely proportioned galleries. Thus there are whole rooms given over to installations, like the one lined with thick folds of felt that dulled every sound, even the gentle sighs of respiration. Another space was painted and carpeted in psychedelic hues, swirling about in mind bending patterns, while a third was rendered in monochrome but had disconcertingly uneven, rock-like flooring. On one central gallery wall hung a gigantic painting by Julian Schnabel, with wide, confident brush sweeps in muted browns and pinks reminding me of why I loved his film adaptation of “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” so much. I marvelled at the achievement of the artist turned director, seeing echoes of each identity in the work before me.
The temporary exhibitions had been curated with care, showcasing very different aspects of the creative life. The detailed models made by the designer Martin Szekely as part of the process of realising objects that solved practical problems were fascinating. He didn't want to draw his ideas in pen and ink, eschewing the abstract in favour of actually manufacturing “things” in three dimensions. So we were presented with furniture, television equipment and even a shoe measuring device in perspex cases or on plinths, real world objects elevated to the level of purely aesthetic sculptures. In a final, witty touch (perhaps coincidental) they were displayed next to that most practical and necessary object of all, the public lavatory. Their presence in full view of the queue for the facilities would have no doubt pleased their creator.
Upstairs, dark and enclosed to protect it from the glare of the very best top floor panoramic views, was an exhibition about Edvard Munch. There was no “Scream” here – his most famous work was not at the centre of this retrospective. Instead the curators showed Munch's work process and how he often revisited specific subjects as well as themes. The presence of exceptionally dark undertones in his output was brought to the fore. He liked to paint murders, fights and robberies, as well as having something of an obsession with himself when sick. He created many self-portraits in hospitals and clinics, and in his old age tried to chronicle his troubled eyesight and in particular his haemorrhage-induced, disturbing visions with painstaking accuracy.
Munch was a familiar artist to me, but I had never heard of Christian Dotremont before. His simple, black and white pieces were revelatory. He was a writer and a poet, but one who saw the power of words everywhere, not just in some clichéd way as if speaking of “the poetry of nature”, but in a very visual manner. The shape and curve of letter forms spoke to him from seemingly every object or surface. He made art at times by simply writing with a twig in snow and ice, but his ink-on-paper calligraphy works or “logograms” are the most beautiful. They are beautiful in themselves before they transcend the pictorial element to become poems, sentences to be read and interpreted as literature. Dotremont could create little written worlds or stories and make them aesthetically pleasing pictures. He had a unique way of seeing the world and an extraordinary talent, but one that exists in a small way in all of us. We find ourselves planted in places, adrift in huge cities that make us feel very small and insignificant, but we go on being. Every day we make our own stories in our own little safe spaces that contribute to the great, big whole. We get up, we walk about, move, speak, converse, shove our hands into our pockets or into the hand of another. That's life. That's art. It's a visual story and a verbal one.
Look at the Pompidou Centre, inside and out. The whole place is a book, not just a paragraph or a sentence. It shouts with its red and blue heating ducts; it whispers through the soft glide of its escalators. In its glass it reflects the city around it from the outside and invites it in through the windows to its cavernous internal spaces. So, you there, you people sitting on its concourse, doing what you do, being watched by me on the escalator. I know who you are. You are art. You are poetry. We all are.
Inside the cocoon of the Pompidou Centre there is another world, too. A world of culture, of art and of discovery and yet a world never far removed from the rest of the city. Turn a corner and you find a window, a view, light from the “City of Light” seeping in to split your focus. Inside or outside? Which beauty shall I feed on at this moment? There is little room for disengagement here. Decisions must be made. A full appreciation of the present, of where you are and the art all around, is never lost.
The collection held there is vast and diverse, attracting a wide range of people: the young, the old, the Parisian and the faraway wanderer. The wealth of available space lends itself to the exhibition of works executed on a grand scale, things that might struggle to find a home in more averagely proportioned galleries. Thus there are whole rooms given over to installations, like the one lined with thick folds of felt that dulled every sound, even the gentle sighs of respiration. Another space was painted and carpeted in psychedelic hues, swirling about in mind bending patterns, while a third was rendered in monochrome but had disconcertingly uneven, rock-like flooring. On one central gallery wall hung a gigantic painting by Julian Schnabel, with wide, confident brush sweeps in muted browns and pinks reminding me of why I loved his film adaptation of “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” so much. I marvelled at the achievement of the artist turned director, seeing echoes of each identity in the work before me.
The temporary exhibitions had been curated with care, showcasing very different aspects of the creative life. The detailed models made by the designer Martin Szekely as part of the process of realising objects that solved practical problems were fascinating. He didn't want to draw his ideas in pen and ink, eschewing the abstract in favour of actually manufacturing “things” in three dimensions. So we were presented with furniture, television equipment and even a shoe measuring device in perspex cases or on plinths, real world objects elevated to the level of purely aesthetic sculptures. In a final, witty touch (perhaps coincidental) they were displayed next to that most practical and necessary object of all, the public lavatory. Their presence in full view of the queue for the facilities would have no doubt pleased their creator.
Upstairs, dark and enclosed to protect it from the glare of the very best top floor panoramic views, was an exhibition about Edvard Munch. There was no “Scream” here – his most famous work was not at the centre of this retrospective. Instead the curators showed Munch's work process and how he often revisited specific subjects as well as themes. The presence of exceptionally dark undertones in his output was brought to the fore. He liked to paint murders, fights and robberies, as well as having something of an obsession with himself when sick. He created many self-portraits in hospitals and clinics, and in his old age tried to chronicle his troubled eyesight and in particular his haemorrhage-induced, disturbing visions with painstaking accuracy.
Munch was a familiar artist to me, but I had never heard of Christian Dotremont before. His simple, black and white pieces were revelatory. He was a writer and a poet, but one who saw the power of words everywhere, not just in some clichéd way as if speaking of “the poetry of nature”, but in a very visual manner. The shape and curve of letter forms spoke to him from seemingly every object or surface. He made art at times by simply writing with a twig in snow and ice, but his ink-on-paper calligraphy works or “logograms” are the most beautiful. They are beautiful in themselves before they transcend the pictorial element to become poems, sentences to be read and interpreted as literature. Dotremont could create little written worlds or stories and make them aesthetically pleasing pictures. He had a unique way of seeing the world and an extraordinary talent, but one that exists in a small way in all of us. We find ourselves planted in places, adrift in huge cities that make us feel very small and insignificant, but we go on being. Every day we make our own stories in our own little safe spaces that contribute to the great, big whole. We get up, we walk about, move, speak, converse, shove our hands into our pockets or into the hand of another. That's life. That's art. It's a visual story and a verbal one.
Look at the Pompidou Centre, inside and out. The whole place is a book, not just a paragraph or a sentence. It shouts with its red and blue heating ducts; it whispers through the soft glide of its escalators. In its glass it reflects the city around it from the outside and invites it in through the windows to its cavernous internal spaces. So, you there, you people sitting on its concourse, doing what you do, being watched by me on the escalator. I know who you are. You are art. You are poetry. We all are.
Wednesday, 19 October 2011
Versailles
I didn't want to give it back, the hired Gitane with the unpredictable gears and the plastic chain guard that rubbed dangerously at the battered old hem of my jeans. The bike enabled me to dodge past ambling tour groups and speed out of the way of excited, barking dogs. It wasn't a particularly comfortable or smooth ride, over dusty tracks and cobbles, held back sharply at times by the pull of the harsh brake, but it felt good to see the fields around Versailles, with the quietly grazing cattle looking down at the lakes and the chateau in the distance. We had done this many years ago, too, as an antidote to the crowds encountered here. Then we were on holiday and it was a weekday, the chateau concourse filled with Spanish teenagers from a school party, intent on facing each other down in the muzak-playing golf buggies available to hire as an aid to mobility on the vast estate. Quite by chance we had discovered that access to the gardens was free and in this tranquil haven we found sunshine, statues, bikes and a really good restaurant, all distant from the thronging masses.
We had turned up hoping to relive this experience on Sunday, rather stupidly not realising that the weekend crowds would be larger than before, particularly under the bright gleam of clear autumn skies. To compound our sense of disquiet we found that there was a fee to pay for entry to the gardens due to the “Grands Eaux Musicales” - a co-ordinated series of watery jets played out to the sounds of baroque music, but currently restricted a little in scope due to there being a drought. We saw some of these musical fountains. It may have been a great spectacle to some, but we were rather underwhelmed by it, sadly, preferring other pursuits instead.
We hired the bikes to counteract the half hour wait for a table in the busy Petite Venise restaurant, electing to be active rather than just standing and waiting in hope by the door. Last time the hire kiosk had been staffed by a short man with a moustache who wore a boiler suit and had a slight whiff of bike oil about him. This time it was teeming with fresh looking young employees who had computers and barcode zappers. There was not a hint of romance or a sound of guttural French anywhere, just the beep and whirr of high-tech, clean business transactions. The bike itself, though, brought a sense of freedom from the moment its kickstand was flipped up and it was set loose. We were escaping from the touristy hoards, off along the paths taken by native French families to get the best views of the chateau's grand proportions from afar, surveying it in the full glory of its own lavish parkland. A mere flick of the bell and those walking ahead would part to allow us to cruise through. Yes, this is what it must have been like to be royal, to be a king and queen in charge of a palace built in your honour, riding through grounds constructed for your enjoyment. Except that the royalty didn't have to pay four Euros for half an hour of such a privilege.
Returning exhilarated to the restaurant we now had more patience, but thankfully the wait to eat was not long. Famished by physical exertion and heads still spinning slightly from the fun of the cycle trip, we enjoyed a large, long and convivial repast. As the lunchtime crowds departed the staff became visibly more relaxed and friendly. As we drank more wine our confidence at speaking French sentences increased dangerously. The food was of the same high quality as it had been all those years before, except that then it had been spring and we had sat on the terrace outside in warm sunshine. On Sunday it was bright but quite cool and the terrace tables were empty, save for a rapidly deepening carpet of fallen leaves. Over delicious fish blanketed in piquant black olive tapenade we reminisced about our previous visit, laughing and talking through the chocolate desserts until the tiny, delicate glasses of coffee arrived to signify the end of the meal.
We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering by the enormous, clear lake and gradually making our way back to the chateau through the neatly clipped hedges of the formal walks. We passed the odd person sitting on a bench or walking along munching a sandwich or an ice cream cone – ha! What fools! They should go and sit down, sip prosecco and linger over the three full courses of a proper dinner. They would feel so much better for it... and poorer too, it has to be said, so we decided that perhaps for the sake of their wallets we ought to just “let them eat snacks”. For us, though, with full bellies and significantly lighter purses, there was nothing to do but sit on the steps in front of the chateau and watch the sun go down. It was a beautiful sunset that day – not red and spectacular, but with lovely diffuse, yellow light reflecting off the lakes and pools and bathing the pale honey-coloured stone of the buildings and terraces in a soft glow. We waited for a bit, hoping that the fountains would spring into life and dance to the piped music that was reverberating all around, but they remained dry and still. It didn't matter. The slowly descending dusk provided a better show anyway, and they hadn't worked out a way to charge us for that yet.
We had turned up hoping to relive this experience on Sunday, rather stupidly not realising that the weekend crowds would be larger than before, particularly under the bright gleam of clear autumn skies. To compound our sense of disquiet we found that there was a fee to pay for entry to the gardens due to the “Grands Eaux Musicales” - a co-ordinated series of watery jets played out to the sounds of baroque music, but currently restricted a little in scope due to there being a drought. We saw some of these musical fountains. It may have been a great spectacle to some, but we were rather underwhelmed by it, sadly, preferring other pursuits instead.
We hired the bikes to counteract the half hour wait for a table in the busy Petite Venise restaurant, electing to be active rather than just standing and waiting in hope by the door. Last time the hire kiosk had been staffed by a short man with a moustache who wore a boiler suit and had a slight whiff of bike oil about him. This time it was teeming with fresh looking young employees who had computers and barcode zappers. There was not a hint of romance or a sound of guttural French anywhere, just the beep and whirr of high-tech, clean business transactions. The bike itself, though, brought a sense of freedom from the moment its kickstand was flipped up and it was set loose. We were escaping from the touristy hoards, off along the paths taken by native French families to get the best views of the chateau's grand proportions from afar, surveying it in the full glory of its own lavish parkland. A mere flick of the bell and those walking ahead would part to allow us to cruise through. Yes, this is what it must have been like to be royal, to be a king and queen in charge of a palace built in your honour, riding through grounds constructed for your enjoyment. Except that the royalty didn't have to pay four Euros for half an hour of such a privilege.
Returning exhilarated to the restaurant we now had more patience, but thankfully the wait to eat was not long. Famished by physical exertion and heads still spinning slightly from the fun of the cycle trip, we enjoyed a large, long and convivial repast. As the lunchtime crowds departed the staff became visibly more relaxed and friendly. As we drank more wine our confidence at speaking French sentences increased dangerously. The food was of the same high quality as it had been all those years before, except that then it had been spring and we had sat on the terrace outside in warm sunshine. On Sunday it was bright but quite cool and the terrace tables were empty, save for a rapidly deepening carpet of fallen leaves. Over delicious fish blanketed in piquant black olive tapenade we reminisced about our previous visit, laughing and talking through the chocolate desserts until the tiny, delicate glasses of coffee arrived to signify the end of the meal.
We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering by the enormous, clear lake and gradually making our way back to the chateau through the neatly clipped hedges of the formal walks. We passed the odd person sitting on a bench or walking along munching a sandwich or an ice cream cone – ha! What fools! They should go and sit down, sip prosecco and linger over the three full courses of a proper dinner. They would feel so much better for it... and poorer too, it has to be said, so we decided that perhaps for the sake of their wallets we ought to just “let them eat snacks”. For us, though, with full bellies and significantly lighter purses, there was nothing to do but sit on the steps in front of the chateau and watch the sun go down. It was a beautiful sunset that day – not red and spectacular, but with lovely diffuse, yellow light reflecting off the lakes and pools and bathing the pale honey-coloured stone of the buildings and terraces in a soft glow. We waited for a bit, hoping that the fountains would spring into life and dance to the piped music that was reverberating all around, but they remained dry and still. It didn't matter. The slowly descending dusk provided a better show anyway, and they hadn't worked out a way to charge us for that yet.
Tuesday, 18 October 2011
Parc Montsouris
RER line B is always busy. Even around 6a.m. you find yourself squeezed in, the sheer volume of people being the only thing keeping you upright as the train lurches its way through the tunnels towards the Gare du Nord and Charles de Gaulle Airport. Serving these crossroads of arrival and departure no doubt contributes to the crush, with gigantic wheeled suitcases and holdalls sometimes taking up more carriage space than their owners. Boarding the train at St. Michel-Notre Dame or Châtelet Les Halles – the latter apparently Europe's largest underground station – usually means walking a long way to find the correct platform, crossing streams of people moving in all directions and negotiating countless sets of ticket barriers and turnstiles, meaning that a degree of confused numbness has set in even before you have to deal with entering the carriage and the fine art of darting through the automatic doors just as the horn announcing their imminent closure starts to sound.
Travelling in the opposite direction can be quieter. As the train tends to shed its passengers passing through the centre it is usually quite uncrowded by the time you reach Luxembourg station, which is conveniently situated for exploring the gardens. A few stops further on, at the limit of the central Parisian travel zone, sits Cité Universitaire. Here the Parc Montsouris wraps itself around the train tracks. Walking along its hilly paths you find yourself above the trains at one moment, then somehow passing underneath them a little further on, admiring the majesty of the viaduct ironwork and the industrial tapestry of the network of overhead power lines. Beyond the park railings you can see trams, their shining bright, light newness and chiming bells contrasting with the carbon dust coated RER trains and their gruff, metallic grinding noises. Rising up across the street is the arched gateway to the Cité Internationale Universitaire, a complex of student halls of residence. The sense of youthful hope in the air is almost palpable.
The park seems to be a popular weekend destination and every path, lawn and bench was alive with animation on Saturday. Kids climbed up on empty statue plinths to eat their snacks like living works of art whilst other junior beings shouted and laughed constantly, their cries ringing out from the swings, tiny train and other amusements laid on for their benefit. An elderly couple strolled arm-in-arm, bickering as they went, and an independent-looking cat sauntered nonchalantly between groups of picnickers and lawn loungers, in search of any spare morsels of food or fleeting moments of affection that would induce a purr. The hills brought out the daredevil in many of the scooter wheeling or bike riding children, parents struggling to keep up as their offspring rapidly disappeared from sight. For joggers the gradients proved more problematic, with many a brow beaded with sweat and wrinkling with effort underneath the plastic halo of sturdy workout headphones. Everywhere there were balls – footballs, rugby balls, basketballs, thrown, kicked, bounced and chased in an unceasing barrage that required great vigilance on the part of the ordinary walker.
Nestled in the gentle curve of a grass covered slope sat a low, square building made from that peculiar kind of grey concrete that betrayed its 1960s construction. Half hidden by the mound, a small sign identified this as an outpost of “France Météo”, the national weather service. Nearby were associated instruments, fenced off in a small paddock to keep them safe as they collected raindrops and logged sunlight by the hour. There was also a tall concrete tower, standing in the park like a lost, marooned lighthouse, no doubt contributing to the study of the increasingly brisk October breezes, or perhaps probing stray low clouds at close quarters.
Taking one of the narrow paths back to the RER station we could see something dazzling in the distance, the unmistakeable glint of sun on gold leaf. The statue of a man slowly became visible, and what a man! He was posed in a louche manner, hand on hip and head cocked as if to suggest a happy-go-lucky attitude. Dressed in what seemed to be plus fours, buckled shoes and tights, he had a slim, nipped in waist and a cheerful countenance. Who could this fine fellow, this absolute dandy, be? Upon closer inspection he turned out to be Thomas Paine, author of “The Rights of Man” and subject of many undergraduate seminar discussions in Politics, History and Philosophy. I don't know why, but I'd always imagined him to be more serious looking, dour even, not one who would end up immortalised in gold, resplendent and looking, it has to be said, rather camp. “I bet that surprised a few residents of the Cité Universitaire too,” I chuckled to myself, clasping my husband's hand and walking back into the station to catch the train.
Travelling in the opposite direction can be quieter. As the train tends to shed its passengers passing through the centre it is usually quite uncrowded by the time you reach Luxembourg station, which is conveniently situated for exploring the gardens. A few stops further on, at the limit of the central Parisian travel zone, sits Cité Universitaire. Here the Parc Montsouris wraps itself around the train tracks. Walking along its hilly paths you find yourself above the trains at one moment, then somehow passing underneath them a little further on, admiring the majesty of the viaduct ironwork and the industrial tapestry of the network of overhead power lines. Beyond the park railings you can see trams, their shining bright, light newness and chiming bells contrasting with the carbon dust coated RER trains and their gruff, metallic grinding noises. Rising up across the street is the arched gateway to the Cité Internationale Universitaire, a complex of student halls of residence. The sense of youthful hope in the air is almost palpable.
The park seems to be a popular weekend destination and every path, lawn and bench was alive with animation on Saturday. Kids climbed up on empty statue plinths to eat their snacks like living works of art whilst other junior beings shouted and laughed constantly, their cries ringing out from the swings, tiny train and other amusements laid on for their benefit. An elderly couple strolled arm-in-arm, bickering as they went, and an independent-looking cat sauntered nonchalantly between groups of picnickers and lawn loungers, in search of any spare morsels of food or fleeting moments of affection that would induce a purr. The hills brought out the daredevil in many of the scooter wheeling or bike riding children, parents struggling to keep up as their offspring rapidly disappeared from sight. For joggers the gradients proved more problematic, with many a brow beaded with sweat and wrinkling with effort underneath the plastic halo of sturdy workout headphones. Everywhere there were balls – footballs, rugby balls, basketballs, thrown, kicked, bounced and chased in an unceasing barrage that required great vigilance on the part of the ordinary walker.
Nestled in the gentle curve of a grass covered slope sat a low, square building made from that peculiar kind of grey concrete that betrayed its 1960s construction. Half hidden by the mound, a small sign identified this as an outpost of “France Météo”, the national weather service. Nearby were associated instruments, fenced off in a small paddock to keep them safe as they collected raindrops and logged sunlight by the hour. There was also a tall concrete tower, standing in the park like a lost, marooned lighthouse, no doubt contributing to the study of the increasingly brisk October breezes, or perhaps probing stray low clouds at close quarters.
Taking one of the narrow paths back to the RER station we could see something dazzling in the distance, the unmistakeable glint of sun on gold leaf. The statue of a man slowly became visible, and what a man! He was posed in a louche manner, hand on hip and head cocked as if to suggest a happy-go-lucky attitude. Dressed in what seemed to be plus fours, buckled shoes and tights, he had a slim, nipped in waist and a cheerful countenance. Who could this fine fellow, this absolute dandy, be? Upon closer inspection he turned out to be Thomas Paine, author of “The Rights of Man” and subject of many undergraduate seminar discussions in Politics, History and Philosophy. I don't know why, but I'd always imagined him to be more serious looking, dour even, not one who would end up immortalised in gold, resplendent and looking, it has to be said, rather camp. “I bet that surprised a few residents of the Cité Universitaire too,” I chuckled to myself, clasping my husband's hand and walking back into the station to catch the train.
Monday, 17 October 2011
The Joy of Food
Where do you go when you've just watched France scrape a narrow win over Wales in a rugby match? What is the correct response to your adopted country's progress into the rugby world cup final? After taking a moment to realise that it was market day on the Place Baudoyer, we decided to celebrate by communing with the cheese lady.
My husband was confident enough in his language skills to have a discussion with an elderly French stallholder about goats cheese a couple of weeks ago. Deftly she steered him away from the appetising pyramids of fresh, young cheese, proffering instead an extremely blue and furry morsel which she assured him was not too strong. Despite its putrid appearance we took the plunge and it was actually a delicious cheese, when shorn of its coat, so we went back. A different but equally firm and forthright lady was manning the ramparts of fromage this time. Directly after saying our bonjours we found a slice of hot baguette spread with something creamy thrust into our hands for us to try. It was thus that this time we left with a tub of mild yet pleasingly smooth goats cheese mixed with chopped red grapes. We rushed home to consume it in its entirety, accompanied by fresh bread and farm cider.
Here in France fresh food is for life, not just for high days, holidays and controversial rugby victories. In the dark chill of the early mornings people now take refuge in warm boulangeries, queueing for bread and those unique, buttery French start-the-day pastries. The baguette shelves are restocked frequently throughout the day, some loaves being sliced in two and filled with creative combinations for the lunchtime rush. I am working my way through the cheese-based offerings of our local bakery, enjoying rich, palate-caressing morbier and fig jam one day and tangy brebis with red cherries the next. Late afternoon sees the biscuit and cake trade begin in earnest, with serious faced schoolchildren asking very politely for eclairs whilst their parents treat themselves to slices of extravagantly decorated gateaux, glistening with sugar syrup, fruit or chocolate pieces, alongside their second helping of fresh daily bread to take home as an accompaniment to dinner.
In the greengrocers the grapes lie artfully draped across tree branches and the avocados are lined up neatly, like a phalanx of knobbly green soldiers, all standing to attention and facing the same way. Bunches of fragrant herbs scent the air, along with the sweet but slightly acidic tang of berries by the punnet load, grapefruit swollen with juice and piles of oranges. The potatoes sit, well scrubbed and classified carefully by variety and size, cardboard signs proclaiming their names and country of origin. A great deal of the fresh produce is actually from France - if it can be grown or produced here it usually is, for this is a country big enough and diverse enough in climate to provide a wide variety of foodstuffs. Visiting in late spring we have sampled the first wild strawberries coming up from the south whilst now in autumn we are savouring the last, late crops of heavy, flavoursome vine tomatoes.
The homegrown product of which France is most justifiably proud is, of course, its wine. In the wine shops the space reserved for wines from elsewhere is usually small. My husband's eyes light up at the sight of a lonely wineseller behind the counter and he moves in to practice his French in style. He relishes the chance to try talking about the soil and the varied qualities of the grapes from different regions, starting with his favourite, carefully accented and translated, opening gambit: "I like Bordeaux, but I'm looking to try something new..."
The trusted supermarket is always there when you need it, of course, as is the little epicerie located on the first floor of the WHSmith English Bookshop on the Rue de Rivoli. As well as stocking the meat-free Parisian's friend Quorn, strangely elusive throughout France but available here in sausage form, it sells a wide range of English treats. Most prized amongst its offerings for me are Marmite and Heinz beans. Having experimented with a tin of "haricots blancs" in a "sauce tomate" from the local corner shop, I can confirm that these are not the same as English baked beans. I did not enjoy these salty, almost bitter things masquerading as beans on toast and have been forced to admit that, in this case, beans really do mean Heinz. On the whole, though, it is just as convenient for us to wander along the Rue Rambuteau and buy fresh food as it is to get so called "convenience food" bought during a big, weekly supermarket shop. Places are open fairly late, so as to catch weary workers on their way home to apartments with stunning views but often minimal kitchen space. It's just easier and nicer to buy what you need when you need it.
Most nights the long climb up to the fifth floor is fragranced with the smell of a different culinary work in progress coming from every landing. Fridays are usually the best, with the large Jewish family downstairs cooking an enormous Shabbat meal that takes all day to reach its deliciously tempting sundown peak. This emphasises, in fact, the deep rooted link between culture and food that is so apparent here in France. Along the Rue des Rosiers the very French traditions of artisan foodshops owned by highly skilled butchers, bakers and purveyors of freshly cooked street food combine with specifically Jewish notions of gastronomy to create distinctive taste experiences. Likewise the presence of a vibrant gay community in the Marais means that we also have close by us an out and proud baker/chocolatier/pattissier, who produces moreish tartes, bread and biscuits in both conservative and more risque shapes. He is very proud of having created a chocolate bottom for a BBC programme on the Marquis de Sade. Buying food here is not simply about satisfying a basic need. It is about participating in the joy of living with verve and gusto.
My husband was confident enough in his language skills to have a discussion with an elderly French stallholder about goats cheese a couple of weeks ago. Deftly she steered him away from the appetising pyramids of fresh, young cheese, proffering instead an extremely blue and furry morsel which she assured him was not too strong. Despite its putrid appearance we took the plunge and it was actually a delicious cheese, when shorn of its coat, so we went back. A different but equally firm and forthright lady was manning the ramparts of fromage this time. Directly after saying our bonjours we found a slice of hot baguette spread with something creamy thrust into our hands for us to try. It was thus that this time we left with a tub of mild yet pleasingly smooth goats cheese mixed with chopped red grapes. We rushed home to consume it in its entirety, accompanied by fresh bread and farm cider.
Here in France fresh food is for life, not just for high days, holidays and controversial rugby victories. In the dark chill of the early mornings people now take refuge in warm boulangeries, queueing for bread and those unique, buttery French start-the-day pastries. The baguette shelves are restocked frequently throughout the day, some loaves being sliced in two and filled with creative combinations for the lunchtime rush. I am working my way through the cheese-based offerings of our local bakery, enjoying rich, palate-caressing morbier and fig jam one day and tangy brebis with red cherries the next. Late afternoon sees the biscuit and cake trade begin in earnest, with serious faced schoolchildren asking very politely for eclairs whilst their parents treat themselves to slices of extravagantly decorated gateaux, glistening with sugar syrup, fruit or chocolate pieces, alongside their second helping of fresh daily bread to take home as an accompaniment to dinner.
In the greengrocers the grapes lie artfully draped across tree branches and the avocados are lined up neatly, like a phalanx of knobbly green soldiers, all standing to attention and facing the same way. Bunches of fragrant herbs scent the air, along with the sweet but slightly acidic tang of berries by the punnet load, grapefruit swollen with juice and piles of oranges. The potatoes sit, well scrubbed and classified carefully by variety and size, cardboard signs proclaiming their names and country of origin. A great deal of the fresh produce is actually from France - if it can be grown or produced here it usually is, for this is a country big enough and diverse enough in climate to provide a wide variety of foodstuffs. Visiting in late spring we have sampled the first wild strawberries coming up from the south whilst now in autumn we are savouring the last, late crops of heavy, flavoursome vine tomatoes.
The homegrown product of which France is most justifiably proud is, of course, its wine. In the wine shops the space reserved for wines from elsewhere is usually small. My husband's eyes light up at the sight of a lonely wineseller behind the counter and he moves in to practice his French in style. He relishes the chance to try talking about the soil and the varied qualities of the grapes from different regions, starting with his favourite, carefully accented and translated, opening gambit: "I like Bordeaux, but I'm looking to try something new..."
The trusted supermarket is always there when you need it, of course, as is the little epicerie located on the first floor of the WHSmith English Bookshop on the Rue de Rivoli. As well as stocking the meat-free Parisian's friend Quorn, strangely elusive throughout France but available here in sausage form, it sells a wide range of English treats. Most prized amongst its offerings for me are Marmite and Heinz beans. Having experimented with a tin of "haricots blancs" in a "sauce tomate" from the local corner shop, I can confirm that these are not the same as English baked beans. I did not enjoy these salty, almost bitter things masquerading as beans on toast and have been forced to admit that, in this case, beans really do mean Heinz. On the whole, though, it is just as convenient for us to wander along the Rue Rambuteau and buy fresh food as it is to get so called "convenience food" bought during a big, weekly supermarket shop. Places are open fairly late, so as to catch weary workers on their way home to apartments with stunning views but often minimal kitchen space. It's just easier and nicer to buy what you need when you need it.
Most nights the long climb up to the fifth floor is fragranced with the smell of a different culinary work in progress coming from every landing. Fridays are usually the best, with the large Jewish family downstairs cooking an enormous Shabbat meal that takes all day to reach its deliciously tempting sundown peak. This emphasises, in fact, the deep rooted link between culture and food that is so apparent here in France. Along the Rue des Rosiers the very French traditions of artisan foodshops owned by highly skilled butchers, bakers and purveyors of freshly cooked street food combine with specifically Jewish notions of gastronomy to create distinctive taste experiences. Likewise the presence of a vibrant gay community in the Marais means that we also have close by us an out and proud baker/chocolatier/pattissier, who produces moreish tartes, bread and biscuits in both conservative and more risque shapes. He is very proud of having created a chocolate bottom for a BBC programme on the Marquis de Sade. Buying food here is not simply about satisfying a basic need. It is about participating in the joy of living with verve and gusto.
Saturday, 15 October 2011
The Changing Season
It is amazing how much earlier it gets dark now than when I first arrived here. When we roused ourselves from the comfortable chairs in the Jardin de Luxembourg yesterday it was almost sunset. We were looking out across the lawns in front of the Senat, where a deep ring of vibrant flowers encased the grass over the summer. Now the fading plants were being dug up and the soil turned in time for its winter slumber. It was getting cold, too cold to carry on sitting under the gathering night clouds, and in any case the police were starting to gather at the park gates in preparation for closing time.
Falling temperatures have not emptied the parks during the day as perhaps they might have done. Parisians are made of sterner stuff and it is not uncommon to see ladies sitting, book in gloved hand, with carefully draped pashminas around their shoulders, keeping them snug. In the Square du Temple, people have started to seek out the warmer, sunnier benches, where before they had sat and watched the ducks from the longed-for coolness of the shadier spots. Subtle wardrobe changes help protect against the elements, too, with fleece-lined boots and attractively knotted scarves now ubiquitous amongst both sexes. From the narrow pavements of the Marais to the broad paths of the Tuileries, the little dogs are now going for walkies in little coats.
Many trees have already lost all of their leaves, providing a soft carpet over the sandy gravel pathways in the parks, but some are just starting to assume the copper hued mantle of the advancing season. Looking out towards the Pantheon, the browns and oranges at the margins of the tree-lined Luxembourg avenues frame the view perfectly. In the beehives the insects sleep now more than they forage for nectar, while on the balconies overlooking the Jardin retirees don't stop to linger over their afternoon tea, preferring to have their shutters closed before dusk.
A cold wind often sweeps the quaysides of the Seine, catching the unwary skirt wearer and buffeting the unstable cyclist as they cross the famous bridges. At corner cafes on the Ile St. Louis tiny trays with neat little clips are required to stop the bills from blowing away into the river. The queues for ice cream no longer stretch across the island, but people still flock to the cafe terraces to enjoy hot chocolate. My own particular favourite (and I have been conducting thorough research into this across Paris) is the "chocolat chaud a l'ancienne", a foaming jug of hot milk and its diminutive yet otherwise identical counterpart filled with thick, dark, syrupy chocolate, to be combined according to the taste of the consumer. A good one will produce at least two cups full of sweet, comforting goodness to keep you company as you watch the world go by. The street life unfolds before you as you sit and stir with your tiny spoon.
The boutiques on the streets surrounding our apartment are now filled with heavy coats and knitwear, their windows lit up when we return home in the evening. The ticking of the clock and the turning of the earth cannot be stopped. The courtyard must now be swept of leaves and the mopeds carefully covered to resist the rain, the thick morning dew and the frosts that will soon threaten. As the year continues its slow but unrelenting journey to its close, the Parisians refuse to ease the pace of their own progress onward through each day. The skies may darken early and the artfully lit monuments stand out stark for longer against the night, but the streets still heave with endless bustling activity and are never truly silent.
Falling temperatures have not emptied the parks during the day as perhaps they might have done. Parisians are made of sterner stuff and it is not uncommon to see ladies sitting, book in gloved hand, with carefully draped pashminas around their shoulders, keeping them snug. In the Square du Temple, people have started to seek out the warmer, sunnier benches, where before they had sat and watched the ducks from the longed-for coolness of the shadier spots. Subtle wardrobe changes help protect against the elements, too, with fleece-lined boots and attractively knotted scarves now ubiquitous amongst both sexes. From the narrow pavements of the Marais to the broad paths of the Tuileries, the little dogs are now going for walkies in little coats.
Many trees have already lost all of their leaves, providing a soft carpet over the sandy gravel pathways in the parks, but some are just starting to assume the copper hued mantle of the advancing season. Looking out towards the Pantheon, the browns and oranges at the margins of the tree-lined Luxembourg avenues frame the view perfectly. In the beehives the insects sleep now more than they forage for nectar, while on the balconies overlooking the Jardin retirees don't stop to linger over their afternoon tea, preferring to have their shutters closed before dusk.
A cold wind often sweeps the quaysides of the Seine, catching the unwary skirt wearer and buffeting the unstable cyclist as they cross the famous bridges. At corner cafes on the Ile St. Louis tiny trays with neat little clips are required to stop the bills from blowing away into the river. The queues for ice cream no longer stretch across the island, but people still flock to the cafe terraces to enjoy hot chocolate. My own particular favourite (and I have been conducting thorough research into this across Paris) is the "chocolat chaud a l'ancienne", a foaming jug of hot milk and its diminutive yet otherwise identical counterpart filled with thick, dark, syrupy chocolate, to be combined according to the taste of the consumer. A good one will produce at least two cups full of sweet, comforting goodness to keep you company as you watch the world go by. The street life unfolds before you as you sit and stir with your tiny spoon.
The boutiques on the streets surrounding our apartment are now filled with heavy coats and knitwear, their windows lit up when we return home in the evening. The ticking of the clock and the turning of the earth cannot be stopped. The courtyard must now be swept of leaves and the mopeds carefully covered to resist the rain, the thick morning dew and the frosts that will soon threaten. As the year continues its slow but unrelenting journey to its close, the Parisians refuse to ease the pace of their own progress onward through each day. The skies may darken early and the artfully lit monuments stand out stark for longer against the night, but the streets still heave with endless bustling activity and are never truly silent.
Friday, 14 October 2011
Inspiration at the Grand Palais
The Grand Palais once again enticed us with copious posters on the métro. Large type screamed out “Cézanne” and “Matisse”. How could we possibly resist? Fond memories of the epic Monet retrospective that we had visited back in January were still fresh in our minds, so we were eager to see the latest thing that was pulling the crowds to the Champs Élyseés. The same musician as before was playing by the entrance, a stoic clarinettist working his way through popular classics and light opera to entertain the queue dwellers outside. The exhibition inside, however, was very different.
There were paintings on the walls and sculptures in cabinets, that was true, but the purpose of the event was not to detail the careers of particular artists or even to shed light on a particular artistic style or movement. The exhibition focussed instead on the relationships which various painters, sculptors, writers and architects had with the Stein family, most specifically Gertrude, her brothers Leo and Michael and her sister-in-law Sarah. Making use of their fortune, the Steins decided to cross the Atlantic from America to Europe and immerse themselves in the ways of art. Setting up home in two central Parisian apartments they hung their walls with the early works of such greats as Picasso and Matisse, simultaneously becoming enthusiastic patrons of the arts and close friends with many of the people whose careers they launched and incomes they augmented.
The practice of artistic patronage was a fascinating business. Financial and practical considerations often influenced purchasing decisions. For example, sketched studies for large scale works by Picasso were bought, but not the full sized, finished paintings. Matisse benefited from their custom in the early part of his career, but later on his work became too popular and thus too expensive for them to buy. When wall space in their apartments became limited, they obviously had to stop buying pieces at the same pace. Although studying artistic processes and the theory of aesthetics was important to him, letters written by Leo reveal him admitting that a lot of his collecting was down to personal taste. Quite often he simply bought what he liked.
Beyond the basic practicalities of building up an art collection, the life led by the Steins in Paris was something amazing and instantly attractive to my husband and I. Their Saturday night soirees were legendary. They entertained the great and the good of the burgeoning Parisian creative scene. People wanted to be invited into their circle, not just to view their impressive private gallery but to feed on the intellectual energy that surrounded them. We envied that conjunction of wealth and a particular point in history, a time when Paris was alive with new artistic ideas, that enabled the Steins to become the hub of such an exciting, enriching wheel. What if our little rented apartment in the Marais could become something similarly effervescent? What if we could become known throughout the city as the supports over which artistic bridges crossed? Ah, what if, what if?
Though the age has passed where Le Corbusier could write letters to his mother telling her how intelligent his clients (the Steins) were and how well they understood his vision, there remains something about Paris that can tweak the cultural sensibilities of any human soul. On late summer evenings the sunsets over the Seine went through a period of particular beauty. My husband was gripped with a sudden desire to capture them, so for several nights in a row he left work as early as he could and we ran, cameras in hand, down to the Pont Neuf. As the orange rays from the sinking sun splayed out behind the distant Eiffel Tower we were not the only ones watching. People came with huge cameras on tripods or just with their mobile phones, capturing images and making their own little bits of history in Paris, the city of a million artists.
So as I contemplated the bronze statue of Gertrude Stein, seated Buddha-like and imposing at the end of one of the exhibition rooms, I realised that I am unlikely to achieve the triptych of writer, patron and muse that found a oneness in this great lady. I can, though, take the creative spark that Paris so graciously gives to all and see what fires I can start with it. Creativity itself is free, you see, and I believe more prevalent in this wonderful city that most other places.
"L'Aventure des Stein" exhibition website.
There were paintings on the walls and sculptures in cabinets, that was true, but the purpose of the event was not to detail the careers of particular artists or even to shed light on a particular artistic style or movement. The exhibition focussed instead on the relationships which various painters, sculptors, writers and architects had with the Stein family, most specifically Gertrude, her brothers Leo and Michael and her sister-in-law Sarah. Making use of their fortune, the Steins decided to cross the Atlantic from America to Europe and immerse themselves in the ways of art. Setting up home in two central Parisian apartments they hung their walls with the early works of such greats as Picasso and Matisse, simultaneously becoming enthusiastic patrons of the arts and close friends with many of the people whose careers they launched and incomes they augmented.
The practice of artistic patronage was a fascinating business. Financial and practical considerations often influenced purchasing decisions. For example, sketched studies for large scale works by Picasso were bought, but not the full sized, finished paintings. Matisse benefited from their custom in the early part of his career, but later on his work became too popular and thus too expensive for them to buy. When wall space in their apartments became limited, they obviously had to stop buying pieces at the same pace. Although studying artistic processes and the theory of aesthetics was important to him, letters written by Leo reveal him admitting that a lot of his collecting was down to personal taste. Quite often he simply bought what he liked.
Beyond the basic practicalities of building up an art collection, the life led by the Steins in Paris was something amazing and instantly attractive to my husband and I. Their Saturday night soirees were legendary. They entertained the great and the good of the burgeoning Parisian creative scene. People wanted to be invited into their circle, not just to view their impressive private gallery but to feed on the intellectual energy that surrounded them. We envied that conjunction of wealth and a particular point in history, a time when Paris was alive with new artistic ideas, that enabled the Steins to become the hub of such an exciting, enriching wheel. What if our little rented apartment in the Marais could become something similarly effervescent? What if we could become known throughout the city as the supports over which artistic bridges crossed? Ah, what if, what if?
Though the age has passed where Le Corbusier could write letters to his mother telling her how intelligent his clients (the Steins) were and how well they understood his vision, there remains something about Paris that can tweak the cultural sensibilities of any human soul. On late summer evenings the sunsets over the Seine went through a period of particular beauty. My husband was gripped with a sudden desire to capture them, so for several nights in a row he left work as early as he could and we ran, cameras in hand, down to the Pont Neuf. As the orange rays from the sinking sun splayed out behind the distant Eiffel Tower we were not the only ones watching. People came with huge cameras on tripods or just with their mobile phones, capturing images and making their own little bits of history in Paris, the city of a million artists.
So as I contemplated the bronze statue of Gertrude Stein, seated Buddha-like and imposing at the end of one of the exhibition rooms, I realised that I am unlikely to achieve the triptych of writer, patron and muse that found a oneness in this great lady. I can, though, take the creative spark that Paris so graciously gives to all and see what fires I can start with it. Creativity itself is free, you see, and I believe more prevalent in this wonderful city that most other places.
"L'Aventure des Stein" exhibition website.
Thursday, 13 October 2011
Audio: An Air Raid Siren Test in Paris
This is a recording demonstrating the audible beauty of civil contingencies! On the first Wednesday of every month at midday the air raid warning system is tested in Paris. It sounds incredibly eerie as you can hear it echoing around the streets, the sirens in one part of the city not quite synchronised with those somewhere else across town and the whole ghostly wailing intermingled with the sound of church bells ringing for the lunchtime mass. For me the most sobering thing is that they don't sound much like World War Two relics. They sound familiar yet quite modern and new, a warning for now rather than being something confined to the past.
Air Raid Sirens in Paris
I apologise for the fact that the sound quality might be deemed to be a bit poor. I recorded the sirens using the built in mic on my laptop, it being perched on my knees as I sat by an open window on the staircase leading to the loo. It's still an evocative sound though, especially when you remember that it's playing out against the backdrop of a bustling European metropolis.
Air Raid Sirens in Paris
I apologise for the fact that the sound quality might be deemed to be a bit poor. I recorded the sirens using the built in mic on my laptop, it being perched on my knees as I sat by an open window on the staircase leading to the loo. It's still an evocative sound though, especially when you remember that it's playing out against the backdrop of a bustling European metropolis.
Wednesday, 12 October 2011
A Day Trip to Chartres
The Tour Montparnasse looks surprisingly attractive when viewed close up. From a distance it rises up dull and dark, to preside over the city in sombre rigidity. Seen from an escalator in the neighbouring railway station its lines are cleaner, neat and smart rather than harsh and unforgiving as you glide upwards to search for your train. The Gare Montparnasse itself is grey, vast and humming with the electricity of a hundred railway engines. Across the cold concrete floor feet scurry and the wheels of suitcases scrape, their owners keen to make their escapes out into the countryside.
Double-decker trains are still a phenomena that fascinates my little English brain. The top level provides the ideal vantage point for watching the station greyness subside into the distance before giving way to light brightness and vivid colours. At first you see the kaleidoscope of graffiti bursting out from the walls in every imaginable hue. Then, under the ever deepening blueness of fineday skies, the trees start to appear, sometimes thickly arranged in lush forests, at other times more sparse, punctuating meandering river bends and vast agricultural plains. Just beyond the station of Versailles Chantiers there was an unexpected treat – a view of the chateau, elegant and imposing in its wooded parkland off to the left of the train tracks.
Our ultimate destination was Chartres, a very still place in the already warm morning sun, with the cathedral towers telling us clearly which way we need to head upon exiting the station. Sculptures and neatly tended parks alternated with narrow cobbled streets as we approached the great building, the reason why pilgrims and ordinary tourist folk alike make their way to this town. Even scaffolding, bedecked with the lunch bags and tool-filled buckets of busily toiling masons, could not detract from the majesty of the place.
There was peace all around – no Parisian car horns, bike bells, shouts or buskers. Inside the dim, close, incense-infused confines of the knave and the side chapels, sunlight penetrated the famous stained glass windows in pinpoint rays, whilst elsewhere statues, shrines and confessionals were lit by the soft, red glow of candles. Behind the cathedral, a little avenue of trees provided a shady spot for a lunch passed contemplatively, quietly gazing down at a maze on the terrace below and up at birds and light aircraft soaring into the clear skies above faraway houses.
A climb up the cathedral bell tower presented even more far-reaching views, made all the more expansive by the tightly wound spiral staircase that had to be negotiated in order to reach them. It was narrow and dark, with a rope for hands to cling to when the footing was unsure. Moving upwards towards the faint glimmer of daylight we suddenly emerged looking out over the cathedral roof, the cruciform shape of the building clearly visible. On a level with the gargoyles and squeezing along slim walkways we surveyed the whole of Chartres spread out below.
The river flowing gently through the town was a pleasant place to stroll, with small footbridges traversing its breadth and vocal groups of ducks swimming about, patrolling their territories. Now and again we stopped, sometimes to rest on a well-placed bench, sometimes to admire ancient, half-timbered buildings delicately reflected in the stillness of the water. There was a thoroughly relaxed charm about the town, a soothing balm to protect against an overload of fast-paced city living.
Returning on the lower deck of the train this time, the afternoon heat and humidity could not be relieved even by an open window and a drawn, flapping SNCF curtain. The countryside retreated in favour of tower blocks tightly clustered around the myriad of tracks making up the straight, grey roads of iron into the capital, and soon we were back in the heart of Paris. Through the harsh white electric strip lights of the Gare Montparnasse tunnels we walked, and then down into the packed métro station. Bodies were crammed in together in the hot carriage, so many stations passing by with nobody leaving the train and no respite from the crush. Exiting at Châtelet we found that the air on the streets was marginally fresher, but it was still crowded on the narrow pavements and amongst the traffic. The strollable streets of Chartres, watched over by her quiet cathedral, seemed but a distant, pleasant contrasting memory.
Double-decker trains are still a phenomena that fascinates my little English brain. The top level provides the ideal vantage point for watching the station greyness subside into the distance before giving way to light brightness and vivid colours. At first you see the kaleidoscope of graffiti bursting out from the walls in every imaginable hue. Then, under the ever deepening blueness of fineday skies, the trees start to appear, sometimes thickly arranged in lush forests, at other times more sparse, punctuating meandering river bends and vast agricultural plains. Just beyond the station of Versailles Chantiers there was an unexpected treat – a view of the chateau, elegant and imposing in its wooded parkland off to the left of the train tracks.
Our ultimate destination was Chartres, a very still place in the already warm morning sun, with the cathedral towers telling us clearly which way we need to head upon exiting the station. Sculptures and neatly tended parks alternated with narrow cobbled streets as we approached the great building, the reason why pilgrims and ordinary tourist folk alike make their way to this town. Even scaffolding, bedecked with the lunch bags and tool-filled buckets of busily toiling masons, could not detract from the majesty of the place.
There was peace all around – no Parisian car horns, bike bells, shouts or buskers. Inside the dim, close, incense-infused confines of the knave and the side chapels, sunlight penetrated the famous stained glass windows in pinpoint rays, whilst elsewhere statues, shrines and confessionals were lit by the soft, red glow of candles. Behind the cathedral, a little avenue of trees provided a shady spot for a lunch passed contemplatively, quietly gazing down at a maze on the terrace below and up at birds and light aircraft soaring into the clear skies above faraway houses.
A climb up the cathedral bell tower presented even more far-reaching views, made all the more expansive by the tightly wound spiral staircase that had to be negotiated in order to reach them. It was narrow and dark, with a rope for hands to cling to when the footing was unsure. Moving upwards towards the faint glimmer of daylight we suddenly emerged looking out over the cathedral roof, the cruciform shape of the building clearly visible. On a level with the gargoyles and squeezing along slim walkways we surveyed the whole of Chartres spread out below.
The river flowing gently through the town was a pleasant place to stroll, with small footbridges traversing its breadth and vocal groups of ducks swimming about, patrolling their territories. Now and again we stopped, sometimes to rest on a well-placed bench, sometimes to admire ancient, half-timbered buildings delicately reflected in the stillness of the water. There was a thoroughly relaxed charm about the town, a soothing balm to protect against an overload of fast-paced city living.
Returning on the lower deck of the train this time, the afternoon heat and humidity could not be relieved even by an open window and a drawn, flapping SNCF curtain. The countryside retreated in favour of tower blocks tightly clustered around the myriad of tracks making up the straight, grey roads of iron into the capital, and soon we were back in the heart of Paris. Through the harsh white electric strip lights of the Gare Montparnasse tunnels we walked, and then down into the packed métro station. Bodies were crammed in together in the hot carriage, so many stations passing by with nobody leaving the train and no respite from the crush. Exiting at Châtelet we found that the air on the streets was marginally fresher, but it was still crowded on the narrow pavements and amongst the traffic. The strollable streets of Chartres, watched over by her quiet cathedral, seemed but a distant, pleasant contrasting memory.
Tuesday, 11 October 2011
Building History at the Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine
On the first Sunday of every month, entry to national museums in France is free. It costs nothing to access such temples of culture as the Louvre or the Orangery and certainly in Paris people take advantage of this in their droves. The human snakes outside the biggest museums are usually long and winding, but on free Sundays they swell to even greater proportions, becoming populated particularly with families and especially with young children. Parisian parents seem to view this as a risk-free opportunity to initiate cultural beginners into the rich world of marble exhibition halls.
A leisurely Sunday museum stroll can be the perfect antidote to Saturday night revelry. I joined the queues the day after my thirtieth birthday to walk the halls of the Musee d'Orsay, bleary-eyed and drinking in the creativity all around. Any frustration at the waiting time to get in to such a big museum was tempered by a feeling of bewildered gladness, brought on by marvelling at the fact that so many people would get up at the weekend to do something so worthy and fulfilling. To have the chance to view such an impressive collection with no financial outlay was a delight, but having taken up temporary residence in Paris I developed the desire to tread beyond the beaten cultural track. Trying to avoid the crowds led my husband and I to one of the lesser known museums.
The imposing shell of the Palais de Chaillot, wings gaping in a giant stone embrace and stepped concourse looking out across the Seine to the graceful girders of the Eiffel Tower on the facing bank, houses a number of worthy institutions, including the Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine. With tall windows elegantly framing the cross-river vista it might be easy for the visitor to become distracted from the contents of the museum, but for the fascinating nature of the exhibits. Underneath the vast, curving ironwork of the roof beams are detailed architectural models, plans and plaster mouldings of French churches, cathedrals and sundry other public buildings. On nearby computer terminals you can view these representations in their original forms, using buttons and joysticks to pan cameras around the real building façades and interiors, paying them a virtual visit alongside viewing copies of their finest features close up.
The striking effect of the place is twofold. First you wonder at the skill and patience of the modelmakers, working to record the most minute details of key buildings for posterity. The tiny, doll-house sized Sainte Chapelle, complete with internal lighting to show the fineness of the reproduced stained glass windows to its best effect, must have been a life's work for somebody. Then you move on to appreciate the sheer majesty of the original pieces of stonework from which copies were made. Hung in chiselled whiteness against deep red walls, the beauty of each carefully carved hand or the expression on the face of each apostle can clearly be seen. Saints loom over you from every wall and around each corner there are ornate columns and gateways, captured here out of time and location as copies of another place worthy of attention and note.
Each exhibit is carefully catalogued and displayed alongside a map showing where in France the original is located. As you grapple with the detailed French architectural discourse, struggling often to translate the terms used, you slowly get drawn into the history of the art. The geographical progress of architectural styles across the country becomes apparent, along with the techniques and features that developed in unique ways in specific locations. You start to appreciate the size of the country beyond the capital city and the distinctive building methods of its regions.
Climbing a flight of stairs and silently skirting an impressive, light-filled library space, brings you into a gallery of ecclesiastical murals. In rounded nooks set into the modern, square plasterboard walls little mock chapels had been created to display the art. It was possible to sit and ponder the curved painted ceilings, viewing them just as churchgoers would have through the years. These, too, were reproductions, each brushstroke carefully recreated after many hours of studying the originals, the pictures now preserved for posterity and seeming quite at home in the large, quiet gallery space.
In between the painted recesses was woven an interesting temporary exhibition about the building of the Palais de Chaillot itself. The decision to demolish the Trocadero Palace and build something new on top of its grand footprint was, understandably, controversial and the story of the whole process, undertaken in the name of modernity, was recounted here through a range of photographs and original documents. There wasn't anything wrong with the Trocadero. Planners just made a bold choice to knock it down and put up something different. Seeing this seemed to put all of the models and reproductions in the museum neatly into context. The march of progress cannot be stopped. All over France there are great buildings displaying great beauty, but who knows when someone may deem them to be obsolete? When will they simply become incongruous and too out of step with the prevailing aesthetic? Taking the time to record their features preserves them for years to come. It may also go some way towards assuaging the guilt felt in the wake of the constant search for the new and the painfully jarring move towards creating the beautiful buildings of tomorrow.
Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine website.
A leisurely Sunday museum stroll can be the perfect antidote to Saturday night revelry. I joined the queues the day after my thirtieth birthday to walk the halls of the Musee d'Orsay, bleary-eyed and drinking in the creativity all around. Any frustration at the waiting time to get in to such a big museum was tempered by a feeling of bewildered gladness, brought on by marvelling at the fact that so many people would get up at the weekend to do something so worthy and fulfilling. To have the chance to view such an impressive collection with no financial outlay was a delight, but having taken up temporary residence in Paris I developed the desire to tread beyond the beaten cultural track. Trying to avoid the crowds led my husband and I to one of the lesser known museums.
The imposing shell of the Palais de Chaillot, wings gaping in a giant stone embrace and stepped concourse looking out across the Seine to the graceful girders of the Eiffel Tower on the facing bank, houses a number of worthy institutions, including the Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine. With tall windows elegantly framing the cross-river vista it might be easy for the visitor to become distracted from the contents of the museum, but for the fascinating nature of the exhibits. Underneath the vast, curving ironwork of the roof beams are detailed architectural models, plans and plaster mouldings of French churches, cathedrals and sundry other public buildings. On nearby computer terminals you can view these representations in their original forms, using buttons and joysticks to pan cameras around the real building façades and interiors, paying them a virtual visit alongside viewing copies of their finest features close up.
The striking effect of the place is twofold. First you wonder at the skill and patience of the modelmakers, working to record the most minute details of key buildings for posterity. The tiny, doll-house sized Sainte Chapelle, complete with internal lighting to show the fineness of the reproduced stained glass windows to its best effect, must have been a life's work for somebody. Then you move on to appreciate the sheer majesty of the original pieces of stonework from which copies were made. Hung in chiselled whiteness against deep red walls, the beauty of each carefully carved hand or the expression on the face of each apostle can clearly be seen. Saints loom over you from every wall and around each corner there are ornate columns and gateways, captured here out of time and location as copies of another place worthy of attention and note.
Each exhibit is carefully catalogued and displayed alongside a map showing where in France the original is located. As you grapple with the detailed French architectural discourse, struggling often to translate the terms used, you slowly get drawn into the history of the art. The geographical progress of architectural styles across the country becomes apparent, along with the techniques and features that developed in unique ways in specific locations. You start to appreciate the size of the country beyond the capital city and the distinctive building methods of its regions.
Climbing a flight of stairs and silently skirting an impressive, light-filled library space, brings you into a gallery of ecclesiastical murals. In rounded nooks set into the modern, square plasterboard walls little mock chapels had been created to display the art. It was possible to sit and ponder the curved painted ceilings, viewing them just as churchgoers would have through the years. These, too, were reproductions, each brushstroke carefully recreated after many hours of studying the originals, the pictures now preserved for posterity and seeming quite at home in the large, quiet gallery space.
In between the painted recesses was woven an interesting temporary exhibition about the building of the Palais de Chaillot itself. The decision to demolish the Trocadero Palace and build something new on top of its grand footprint was, understandably, controversial and the story of the whole process, undertaken in the name of modernity, was recounted here through a range of photographs and original documents. There wasn't anything wrong with the Trocadero. Planners just made a bold choice to knock it down and put up something different. Seeing this seemed to put all of the models and reproductions in the museum neatly into context. The march of progress cannot be stopped. All over France there are great buildings displaying great beauty, but who knows when someone may deem them to be obsolete? When will they simply become incongruous and too out of step with the prevailing aesthetic? Taking the time to record their features preserves them for years to come. It may also go some way towards assuaging the guilt felt in the wake of the constant search for the new and the painfully jarring move towards creating the beautiful buildings of tomorrow.
Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine website.
Monday, 10 October 2011
Nuit Blanche
There are times when Paris grabs you by the throat and forces you to acknowledge what an amazing place it is. Living here you can become a little complacent about the tourist sites. I walk past Notre Dame most days and all I can think about is how to negotiate the crowd. I rarely even look up at the gargoyles any more. There are times, however, when the city opens itself up to you and you realise that it is somewhere really special, with something resonating beyond the iconic monuments, and suddenly you receive a fresh reminder of just how lucky you are to be a part of it.
It was a hot night, not even humid, just one of those nights where the pavement seems to radiate heat. The temperature was incongruous at the start of October, with the dusk falling increasingly early, so there was already a kind of restlessness in the air, a perceptible lack of peaceful quiet. Stepping outside of our courtyard we were instantly met by a stream of people walking in the opposite direction. Struggling against the tide we walked in the street, ducking around cyclists and scooters stalled in the mass of pedestrians. There were all kinds of people: youths swigging from wine bottles, parents pushing sleeping kids in strollers and couples like us, arm-in-arm, trying not to lose each other in the throng. From the church opposite we could hear a choir singing and around the corner at its main entrance the steps were filled with onlookers, all straining to get a view of what was going on inside.
It took a long time to walk the short distance to the Hotel de Ville. The pavement cafés, usually full anyway at this time of night, were spilling their crowds further than ever out across the busy intersection near the BHV department store. It wasn't the night to be driving. Car horns and the practice of gradually creeping forward were proving to be ineffective at clearing the crush. The only thing for drivers to do was sit and wait. All around us in snatched bits of overheard French conversation we could hear people saying constantly “C'est Nuit Blanche!”. Nuit Blanche was the explanation for everything here, the full streets, the buzzing cafés and the effervescent atmosphere. Nuit Blanche, or sleepless night, a series of art installations in disparate buildings clustered about the city, free to enter and open from around eight in the evening until the early hours.
At the Hotel de Ville people were kissing and embracing as if it was New Year's Eve. We picked up a booklet with details of all the local exhibits in it and joined the queue to see a film. So there we were, standing among hundreds of others, hearing many different languages spoken all around us, in the central courtyard of the Paris town hall watching a film projected on the wall. Over the centuries old stones flowed images of writhing dancers, seascapes, drownings and a tall, stately woman walking serenely through richly decorated halls and staircases. We were all transfixed by this art entitled “The Leopard” by Isaac Julien, apparently shot primarily on location in Sicily but displayed here in the most unlikely of places at the most unlikely of times.
Location added so much to the pieces of art on display. The sheer bizarreness of being in some of the buildings so late at night gave everything an added veneer of immediacy, maybe even of participatory wholeness. Just by being there in the present we were actively engaging with the art, something that we probably wouldn't have felt we were doing if we were in white, clean gallery spaces during regular opening hours. Often the queues were long and the size of the crowds never really relented, so viewing the installations required a degree of commitment, but on into the early hours of Sunday morning we wandered, mainly in our local Marais neighbourhood, feeling like we were sharing our streets with a heaving band of artistic treasure hunters.
We saw looming concrete sculpture arches in the courtyard of the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris, whilst in the Museum of Jewish Art and History Miroslaw Balka's installation “Heaven” glinted in the darkness, thousands of shimmering and twisting plastic icicles imperceptibly hung from the ceiling at varying heights to catch the light from all the camera phones struggling to record them for posterity. The Cloître des Billetes played host to a bearded saxophonist and an energetic female dancer who interpreted his music enthusiastically whilst interacting with a large metal wheel, blue plastic tubes and some turf. The giant, hairy, illuminated red Yeti against his blue glowing background made our local church hall look like the location for a rave. Meanwhile, at the tranquil church of St. Louis en L'Ile, we paused to enjoy a welcome, soothing oasis of calm amongst the madness of the full streets by listening to a tiny portion of an all-night organ recital. Returning home via the market place on Place Baudoyer we were able to view the light and sound installation “The Ghost Market” by Francesco Girardi. This was somewhat spoilt for me by the fact that I'd seen people setting it up earlier in the afternoon, being artists with the aid of large bagfuls of supplies from Leroy Merlin, the local DIY store. Sadly it would always be just a load of lampshades and two black curtains to me after that, but perhaps I appreciated a certain kind of honesty in the art, having viewed the creative process.
The truth is that Paris pulsates with creativity and diversity every day. Events like Nuit Blanche simply bring it into focus and allow ordinary Parisians, along with countless visitors, to join in on a large scale. In amongst the historic buildings and in the shadow of the grand edifices that draw people from all over the world to this city, people are constantly renewing the artistic currents that have flowed here since centuries ago. More than that, people are living out their day to day lives against this energetic backdrop and these people, these ordinary people, are prepared to spend an entire sleepless night wandering around the city in search of art. I am proud to have been one of them.
It was a hot night, not even humid, just one of those nights where the pavement seems to radiate heat. The temperature was incongruous at the start of October, with the dusk falling increasingly early, so there was already a kind of restlessness in the air, a perceptible lack of peaceful quiet. Stepping outside of our courtyard we were instantly met by a stream of people walking in the opposite direction. Struggling against the tide we walked in the street, ducking around cyclists and scooters stalled in the mass of pedestrians. There were all kinds of people: youths swigging from wine bottles, parents pushing sleeping kids in strollers and couples like us, arm-in-arm, trying not to lose each other in the throng. From the church opposite we could hear a choir singing and around the corner at its main entrance the steps were filled with onlookers, all straining to get a view of what was going on inside.
It took a long time to walk the short distance to the Hotel de Ville. The pavement cafés, usually full anyway at this time of night, were spilling their crowds further than ever out across the busy intersection near the BHV department store. It wasn't the night to be driving. Car horns and the practice of gradually creeping forward were proving to be ineffective at clearing the crush. The only thing for drivers to do was sit and wait. All around us in snatched bits of overheard French conversation we could hear people saying constantly “C'est Nuit Blanche!”. Nuit Blanche was the explanation for everything here, the full streets, the buzzing cafés and the effervescent atmosphere. Nuit Blanche, or sleepless night, a series of art installations in disparate buildings clustered about the city, free to enter and open from around eight in the evening until the early hours.
At the Hotel de Ville people were kissing and embracing as if it was New Year's Eve. We picked up a booklet with details of all the local exhibits in it and joined the queue to see a film. So there we were, standing among hundreds of others, hearing many different languages spoken all around us, in the central courtyard of the Paris town hall watching a film projected on the wall. Over the centuries old stones flowed images of writhing dancers, seascapes, drownings and a tall, stately woman walking serenely through richly decorated halls and staircases. We were all transfixed by this art entitled “The Leopard” by Isaac Julien, apparently shot primarily on location in Sicily but displayed here in the most unlikely of places at the most unlikely of times.
Location added so much to the pieces of art on display. The sheer bizarreness of being in some of the buildings so late at night gave everything an added veneer of immediacy, maybe even of participatory wholeness. Just by being there in the present we were actively engaging with the art, something that we probably wouldn't have felt we were doing if we were in white, clean gallery spaces during regular opening hours. Often the queues were long and the size of the crowds never really relented, so viewing the installations required a degree of commitment, but on into the early hours of Sunday morning we wandered, mainly in our local Marais neighbourhood, feeling like we were sharing our streets with a heaving band of artistic treasure hunters.
We saw looming concrete sculpture arches in the courtyard of the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris, whilst in the Museum of Jewish Art and History Miroslaw Balka's installation “Heaven” glinted in the darkness, thousands of shimmering and twisting plastic icicles imperceptibly hung from the ceiling at varying heights to catch the light from all the camera phones struggling to record them for posterity. The Cloître des Billetes played host to a bearded saxophonist and an energetic female dancer who interpreted his music enthusiastically whilst interacting with a large metal wheel, blue plastic tubes and some turf. The giant, hairy, illuminated red Yeti against his blue glowing background made our local church hall look like the location for a rave. Meanwhile, at the tranquil church of St. Louis en L'Ile, we paused to enjoy a welcome, soothing oasis of calm amongst the madness of the full streets by listening to a tiny portion of an all-night organ recital. Returning home via the market place on Place Baudoyer we were able to view the light and sound installation “The Ghost Market” by Francesco Girardi. This was somewhat spoilt for me by the fact that I'd seen people setting it up earlier in the afternoon, being artists with the aid of large bagfuls of supplies from Leroy Merlin, the local DIY store. Sadly it would always be just a load of lampshades and two black curtains to me after that, but perhaps I appreciated a certain kind of honesty in the art, having viewed the creative process.
The truth is that Paris pulsates with creativity and diversity every day. Events like Nuit Blanche simply bring it into focus and allow ordinary Parisians, along with countless visitors, to join in on a large scale. In amongst the historic buildings and in the shadow of the grand edifices that draw people from all over the world to this city, people are constantly renewing the artistic currents that have flowed here since centuries ago. More than that, people are living out their day to day lives against this energetic backdrop and these people, these ordinary people, are prepared to spend an entire sleepless night wandering around the city in search of art. I am proud to have been one of them.
Saturday, 8 October 2011
Parc des Buttes Chaumont
I have black sandals. Many other women in Paris have black sandals, but a casual survey of feet on the streets at the end of the day usually reveals my sandals as the only ones that are covered with white dust. During the recent warm spell, when summer footwear still prevailed, I found myself wondering even more than ever how everybody else managed to keep their shoes so clean. The answer turned out to lie in the fact that my tourist habits still persist, despite my living in Paris for a while now.
When looking for a place to sit and eat lunch or to spend half an hour absorbed in a book, I tend to head for the popular parks. The Place des Vosges is just a short walk from our apartment, with its neat, well ordered square and fountains. Likewise the Tuileries can be reached in just a few metro stops, or for wanderings further afield there's always my favourite Jardin de Luxembourg. These are all high-profile parks renowned for their beauty, close to the city centre and filled with postcard-worthy vistas aplenty. They are all also filled with sandy paths. Once you set foot in any of them you're committing yourself to a comprehensive foot dusting and the mad dance of those whose tootsies are being tickled by incessant bits of gravel. A little bit of dust on the toes is worth it, of course, to see the triumphs of formal landscaping, but for a cleaner foot and something a little different you need to head out to the nineteenth arrondissement.
The Parc des Buttes Chaumont lacks sand and gravel, being constructed instead around a series of dramatic escarpments and rock formations. It has a steeply-cliffed island topped by a grecian temple folly, from which you can survey the lush green hill slopes and the lake below, whilst simultaneously being on eye-level with the high rise housing and office tower blocks all around. If you gaze into the distance you can see, nestling between tall buildings, the Sacre Coeur, bone white and shining from behind the hazy clouds of city smog. There is the odd flower bed here, neatly laid out, with an information card to detail the plants held within, but the avenues are not broad and they are often enclosed by long tunnels of overhanging mature trees. In the heat of the day it is easy to find shade. In one cool, damp corner a mighty cascade of water roars down a rock face. Elsewhere walkers pick blackberries or stop at one of the restaurants, some of which seem to open late into the night.
The Buttes Chaumont is a park of the imagination with distinctive touches. The dramatic lines of the suspension bridge linking the folly-crowned island to the shore contrast with the quaint cliffside fencing. Knotted and carved with graffiti, the fences appeared to be twisted, curving tree branches cast from concrete, clinging to the cliffs amidst the sharp shadows of the taughtly stretched bridge cables. Everywhere you can see steep pathways and steps cut out of the hills, leading you up and down through the trees as you traverse the park, making it seem like a real escape from the city, a haven of somewhere different even though the traffic noise from the bounding streets is never really far away.
No fancy metalised lounging chairs here, and no wooden boats to sail on the lake. There are sturdy green wooden benches and tables on terraces for tapas and beer. So you can sit in the shade and contemplate the city spread out below you, in the distance and rising up all around you. You can listen to birdsong and the occasional car horn whilst watching the planes and feeling quite close to the sky that they inhabit. Yes, you can do all this at the Parc des Buttes Chaumont and still return home with clean shoes.
When looking for a place to sit and eat lunch or to spend half an hour absorbed in a book, I tend to head for the popular parks. The Place des Vosges is just a short walk from our apartment, with its neat, well ordered square and fountains. Likewise the Tuileries can be reached in just a few metro stops, or for wanderings further afield there's always my favourite Jardin de Luxembourg. These are all high-profile parks renowned for their beauty, close to the city centre and filled with postcard-worthy vistas aplenty. They are all also filled with sandy paths. Once you set foot in any of them you're committing yourself to a comprehensive foot dusting and the mad dance of those whose tootsies are being tickled by incessant bits of gravel. A little bit of dust on the toes is worth it, of course, to see the triumphs of formal landscaping, but for a cleaner foot and something a little different you need to head out to the nineteenth arrondissement.
The Parc des Buttes Chaumont lacks sand and gravel, being constructed instead around a series of dramatic escarpments and rock formations. It has a steeply-cliffed island topped by a grecian temple folly, from which you can survey the lush green hill slopes and the lake below, whilst simultaneously being on eye-level with the high rise housing and office tower blocks all around. If you gaze into the distance you can see, nestling between tall buildings, the Sacre Coeur, bone white and shining from behind the hazy clouds of city smog. There is the odd flower bed here, neatly laid out, with an information card to detail the plants held within, but the avenues are not broad and they are often enclosed by long tunnels of overhanging mature trees. In the heat of the day it is easy to find shade. In one cool, damp corner a mighty cascade of water roars down a rock face. Elsewhere walkers pick blackberries or stop at one of the restaurants, some of which seem to open late into the night.
The Buttes Chaumont is a park of the imagination with distinctive touches. The dramatic lines of the suspension bridge linking the folly-crowned island to the shore contrast with the quaint cliffside fencing. Knotted and carved with graffiti, the fences appeared to be twisted, curving tree branches cast from concrete, clinging to the cliffs amidst the sharp shadows of the taughtly stretched bridge cables. Everywhere you can see steep pathways and steps cut out of the hills, leading you up and down through the trees as you traverse the park, making it seem like a real escape from the city, a haven of somewhere different even though the traffic noise from the bounding streets is never really far away.
No fancy metalised lounging chairs here, and no wooden boats to sail on the lake. There are sturdy green wooden benches and tables on terraces for tapas and beer. So you can sit in the shade and contemplate the city spread out below you, in the distance and rising up all around you. You can listen to birdsong and the occasional car horn whilst watching the planes and feeling quite close to the sky that they inhabit. Yes, you can do all this at the Parc des Buttes Chaumont and still return home with clean shoes.
Friday, 7 October 2011
Audio: Walking in the Bois de Vincennes
This is a little recording that my husband made with his iPhone as we walked in the Bois de Vincennes, close to the Centre Boudhique.
Walking in the Bois de Vincennes
The sun was high in the sky, glistening on the Lac Daumesnil. It was very hot, but there was a slight breeze that made the string of prayer flags hanging from a nearby tree dance gently above the heads of the cyclists and joggers who joined us on the gravel paths. On the lawns all around people were meditating, reading, eating their lunch or just sunbathing, enjoying the peaceful atmosphere of the Bois in the fine weather.
Walking in the Bois de Vincennes
The sun was high in the sky, glistening on the Lac Daumesnil. It was very hot, but there was a slight breeze that made the string of prayer flags hanging from a nearby tree dance gently above the heads of the cyclists and joggers who joined us on the gravel paths. On the lawns all around people were meditating, reading, eating their lunch or just sunbathing, enjoying the peaceful atmosphere of the Bois in the fine weather.
Short Ride on a Two Wheeled Machine
I cannot believe even now that I managed it. I actually cycled on a Parisian street, a real one, where cars go, with incomprehensible foreign road signs on it. Negotiating the traffic as a pedestrian here can be a scary business. The combination of cars, buses and scooters vying for your attention is enough to make your head spin. Add to this the Parisian tendency for people to hurry about and pay no attention to crossing signals and you have a recipe for calamity. In the midst of all this, however, are bicycles. An awful lot of tempting bicycles.
Vélibs are robust yet curvaceously beautiful, somewhat like an army tank wearing a basque. They are city bikes for hire, like the Boris Bikes in London but predating them by several years. You can register with your credit card to use them for a day, week, month or year, pick one up at one of the abundant roadside bike stations and cycle off into the wide blue yonder. Signing up for a day costs the same as a single bus or metro journey, and if you return your bike to a station within thirty minutes, there's no additional charge. The idea is that you make your way around the city in little half hour bursts, picking up and dropping off different bikes along the way, but if you can't be bothered with that the charge for additional time is fairly modest. The whole idea has been intriguing me for some time but I hadn't quite been able to envisage myself actually sharing the road with everybody else. Little me felt rather vulnerable on the city streets, but time, perseverance, maps and an enthusiastic husband led to the discovery of a wonder of wonders – a traffic free Parisian cycle route!
Like the Vélib, the Promenade Plantée combines a practical aesthetic with something more conventionally attractive. Created along the viaducts of a disused railway line, it is a space resplendent with flower beds and graceful arches of climbing plants that winds its way between tower blocks and over bustling streets from behind the Opéra Bastille to the Bois de Vincennes. Reserved for pedestrians at its start, it is very popular with joggers and families. Just beyond the lush, well-tended lawns of the Jardin de Reuilly the route returns to street level and it is a little way on from here that the cycle path begins. Getting my hands on a Vélib for the first time at this point was a little nerve-wracking. It was a sturdy beast in the extreme, heavy and difficult to heft around when not being ridden. The notice on the handlebars warning of “Danger de Mort” when overtaking vans did nothing to instil confidence either. As my husband cycled off into the sparse but intimidating traffic of a one-way street, I tried desperately to look Parisian, slinging my handbag into the front basket and wheeling my machine purposefully along the pavement. Only when we were properly off the street did I have the courage to mount up, wobbling my way into the dark coolness of the cave-like tunnel beneath the road, past the waterfall and on to the dedicated cycle path beyond.
There is a particular style of Parisian cycling that I completely understand now. The legs move with an almost exaggerated degree of effort, pumping with great gusto to maintain maximum forward movement. The posture must be upright and dignified, no Tour de France style sloping back and smooth racing lines, and the face must express determination alongside the faint hint of a smile at the feeling of liberation and enjoyment that cycling on a city bike brings. Travelling like this in the fresh air and the sunshine is such a contrast to being down in the métro tunnels amongst the clammy heat. Gradually I mastered the gears, easy to change with a twist of the handlebar grip, but I must admit that turning gracefully was not easy. At one point I received a very gentlemanly “thank you” in French as I gave way to an old chap coming towards me. Little did he know that I was not being polite, I just knew that I needed the full width of the lanes in both directions in order to negotiate the corner. By the time we reached the edge of the Bois de Vincennes I certainly felt more confident on the bike, but I grew somewhat nervous when the track passed close to the road and signs declaring “Carrefour Dangereux” began to crop up. I needn't have worried, though, as there was a dedicated cycle crossing protected by traffic lights which let us cruise gracefully straight into the park. We thumbed through the useful Michelin “Paris par Arrondissement” guide to find the nearest Vélib station and parked the bikes, sliding them back into their metal stands with a satisfying clang.
After a pleasant stroll and lunch in the park I was looking forward to the ride back home again. I was no longer a Vélib debutante. I set off in high spirits, my skirt flapping in the breeze, handbag and map in the basket and sun at my back. Approaching the end of the cycle path proper held no fears for me now. Out onto the street and over the speed humps I went, recalling my student days when a bike was my only form of transport. But on approaching the Vélib station – quelle horreur! No free spaces for bike parking! I could feel the beads of terror sweat pricking the back of my neck. There was nothing for it. I was going to have to set forth upon the wider boulevards, amongst the lanes of buses and cars, in search of another station at which to park. I set off, following my gung-ho husband with trepidation and gradually realised that it wasn't actually that bad. We didn't have to go far. I'm not suggesting that I careered onto the Place de la Bastille and faced down bus drivers with a glare. Far from it, but I did manage to go out into the traffic with relative ease. Once you're out there, the cycle route is clearly marked and quite often protected from motorised vehicles by a kerb. As long as you're sensible and remain aware of what's going on around you, it feels safe. There are, somewhat surprisingly, streets in Paris that have light traffic, and for those that don't there is usually the option of dismounting and wheeling your bike carefully across pedestrian crossings. Best of all, Vélib stations are everywhere. You're never really far from one, so finding somewhere to park within the free half hour is not difficult. And so it was that little me managed to cycle in the big city. It was a quick, highly enjoyable way to get out to the Bois de Vincennes and I definitely look forward to doing it again.
Vélibs are robust yet curvaceously beautiful, somewhat like an army tank wearing a basque. They are city bikes for hire, like the Boris Bikes in London but predating them by several years. You can register with your credit card to use them for a day, week, month or year, pick one up at one of the abundant roadside bike stations and cycle off into the wide blue yonder. Signing up for a day costs the same as a single bus or metro journey, and if you return your bike to a station within thirty minutes, there's no additional charge. The idea is that you make your way around the city in little half hour bursts, picking up and dropping off different bikes along the way, but if you can't be bothered with that the charge for additional time is fairly modest. The whole idea has been intriguing me for some time but I hadn't quite been able to envisage myself actually sharing the road with everybody else. Little me felt rather vulnerable on the city streets, but time, perseverance, maps and an enthusiastic husband led to the discovery of a wonder of wonders – a traffic free Parisian cycle route!
Like the Vélib, the Promenade Plantée combines a practical aesthetic with something more conventionally attractive. Created along the viaducts of a disused railway line, it is a space resplendent with flower beds and graceful arches of climbing plants that winds its way between tower blocks and over bustling streets from behind the Opéra Bastille to the Bois de Vincennes. Reserved for pedestrians at its start, it is very popular with joggers and families. Just beyond the lush, well-tended lawns of the Jardin de Reuilly the route returns to street level and it is a little way on from here that the cycle path begins. Getting my hands on a Vélib for the first time at this point was a little nerve-wracking. It was a sturdy beast in the extreme, heavy and difficult to heft around when not being ridden. The notice on the handlebars warning of “Danger de Mort” when overtaking vans did nothing to instil confidence either. As my husband cycled off into the sparse but intimidating traffic of a one-way street, I tried desperately to look Parisian, slinging my handbag into the front basket and wheeling my machine purposefully along the pavement. Only when we were properly off the street did I have the courage to mount up, wobbling my way into the dark coolness of the cave-like tunnel beneath the road, past the waterfall and on to the dedicated cycle path beyond.
There is a particular style of Parisian cycling that I completely understand now. The legs move with an almost exaggerated degree of effort, pumping with great gusto to maintain maximum forward movement. The posture must be upright and dignified, no Tour de France style sloping back and smooth racing lines, and the face must express determination alongside the faint hint of a smile at the feeling of liberation and enjoyment that cycling on a city bike brings. Travelling like this in the fresh air and the sunshine is such a contrast to being down in the métro tunnels amongst the clammy heat. Gradually I mastered the gears, easy to change with a twist of the handlebar grip, but I must admit that turning gracefully was not easy. At one point I received a very gentlemanly “thank you” in French as I gave way to an old chap coming towards me. Little did he know that I was not being polite, I just knew that I needed the full width of the lanes in both directions in order to negotiate the corner. By the time we reached the edge of the Bois de Vincennes I certainly felt more confident on the bike, but I grew somewhat nervous when the track passed close to the road and signs declaring “Carrefour Dangereux” began to crop up. I needn't have worried, though, as there was a dedicated cycle crossing protected by traffic lights which let us cruise gracefully straight into the park. We thumbed through the useful Michelin “Paris par Arrondissement” guide to find the nearest Vélib station and parked the bikes, sliding them back into their metal stands with a satisfying clang.
After a pleasant stroll and lunch in the park I was looking forward to the ride back home again. I was no longer a Vélib debutante. I set off in high spirits, my skirt flapping in the breeze, handbag and map in the basket and sun at my back. Approaching the end of the cycle path proper held no fears for me now. Out onto the street and over the speed humps I went, recalling my student days when a bike was my only form of transport. But on approaching the Vélib station – quelle horreur! No free spaces for bike parking! I could feel the beads of terror sweat pricking the back of my neck. There was nothing for it. I was going to have to set forth upon the wider boulevards, amongst the lanes of buses and cars, in search of another station at which to park. I set off, following my gung-ho husband with trepidation and gradually realised that it wasn't actually that bad. We didn't have to go far. I'm not suggesting that I careered onto the Place de la Bastille and faced down bus drivers with a glare. Far from it, but I did manage to go out into the traffic with relative ease. Once you're out there, the cycle route is clearly marked and quite often protected from motorised vehicles by a kerb. As long as you're sensible and remain aware of what's going on around you, it feels safe. There are, somewhat surprisingly, streets in Paris that have light traffic, and for those that don't there is usually the option of dismounting and wheeling your bike carefully across pedestrian crossings. Best of all, Vélib stations are everywhere. You're never really far from one, so finding somewhere to park within the free half hour is not difficult. And so it was that little me managed to cycle in the big city. It was a quick, highly enjoyable way to get out to the Bois de Vincennes and I definitely look forward to doing it again.
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