Joys of Lingering in France
When daydreaming of France, people may think of the stars and glitter of the Cannes Film Festival, the haute couture of Parisian designers, famous architectural innovations and landmarks like the Eiffel Tower, the perfectly executed haute cuisine of expensive French restaurants, the centuries of cultural history on display at the Louvre, the opulence of Versailles, or the blasà nudity on the beaches of the French Riviera. Many such attractions draw millions to visit France every year.
I like those things, but what makes France a joy for me are the smaller things that I encounter in daily living here. I like turning on to my street, cresting a hill, and suddenly confronting a stunning view of the valley dotted with pink, coral and white houses with tile roofs, followed by more mountains and the Mediterranean Sea in the distance.
I like the delight of savoring truly fresh bread that I pick up every day at one of the five bakeries within a mile of our house. If my teenage son is with me, I order extra. He devours most of a baguette, breaking it off in warm chunks, in the five minutes before we get home. Baguettes are the 18-inch long tube-shaped rolls that Americans call AFrench bread, despite the fact that there are so many different types of fresh bread in France. We have all wondered out loud how we will survive without fresh bread every day when we get back to Houston. How can we go back to the tasteless, uniform, pre-sliced stuff in a plastic bag?
I like the numerous sidewalk cafes and the way people linger about in coffee shops and cafes. I bask in the sunshine and sip something while watching the world drift by, whether in July or November. I have never felt rushed by a waiter, even if I finished eating half an hour ago, or haven=t ordered but one cup of coffee, long since gone. One is so welcome to linger that it is inevitably necessary to flag the waiter down to get a check.
I like warm goat cheese. I never knew that, and would not have guessed it. I love it melted on toasted bread and served on a green leafy salad, a dish called Chevre Chaud (Ahot goat).
I like the colorful fruit and vegetable stands, visible from the street. In the summertime, most of the produce is locally grown, vine-ripened, just picked, and very flavorful.
I like the numerous small family-run shops, where most of the shopkeepers take time to chat with customers. Even as a foreigner I don’t feel anonymous. I almost expect to bump into Ozzie and Harriet or Beaver Cleaver reincarnated and speaking French.
I like making the acquaintance of people from all over Europe, most of whom speak some English and tell interesting stories about why they are living here now. Many of them still have businesses in other countries, but choose to live in La Belle France.
I like watching the human scenery on the beach, on a crowded boulevard or in the market. The great majority of French women of all ages have trim figures, and many, regardless of age, wear skin-tight clothing and very short skirts to prove it. At the grocery store I am amazed to find 65-year-old women in spandex body suits and high heels. Aristocratically dressed women in designer suits, topped off with the ever present artistically tied scarf, also adorn the aisles. The teenager in tight white pants so see-through that I can tell she is wearing a brown thong underneath bounces by. I wonder at the four-inch heels worn by mature women and the four-inch platform jogging shoes worn by teenagers. I say thanks for the American women who rebel against uncomfortable shoes.
I like watching old men playing pÃctanque or boules, the French version of bocci ball. A man in his seventies, wearing a beret, holds up before him a stainless steel ball the size of an orange. He crouches a little, eyes the opponent’s ball resting too close to the target, and lets loose with a great arcing toss, which narrowly misses the overhead court lights. Miraculously, his ball plops down directly on top of the offending opponent’s ball, sending it shooting out of range. The old man cavorts just a little before relinquishing the shooting line to his opponent.
I like the round points that substitute for intersections here. It is not necessary to stop unless a car bears down from the left. Once in the round point, if I question which way to turn, I can just keep circling until I figure it out. Round points, however, do take some getting used to.
I like the way so many homes have window boxes of blooming flowers, especially in the perched villages. I like the boulevard esplanades and the circles in the center of the round points that are transformed into miniature parks filled with colorful flowers year round.
I like seeing teenage girls walking arm in arm. And teenagers (boys and girls) walking with their arms locked with their mothers. My American teenager hasn’t picked up that habit.
I like the fact that from my home I can drive only a few minutes to visit separate museums with enough original works to be dedicated to only one world famous artist, such as Picasso, Matisse, and Chagall.
Perhaps what I like best is the French attitude about life. Having made a decision to slow down my life, and to make conscious choices about how to go forward, I am in the perfect place for me at this time. The French aversion to schedules that don’t personally benefit them requires one to relax, let go, and slow down…or go mad. In the French culture it remains important to take time to savor the morsels of life (as long as you aren’t behind the wheel of an automobile). I have wondered why little shops (always on the cusp between survival and ruin) shut down for two or three hours at lunch time, losing the opportunity to take my money. On reflection, I realize that the owners act in accordance with their priorities, and money does not top the list. Life does.
1998 Debra Bruce
This article was originally published by the Orlando Sentinel in 1998.
Post Date: November 10, 2007
Dining Out in France: Go with the Flow
It seems that a number of clients and readers like reading about my adventures in France. Over 8 years ago I took a sabbatical from practicing law from which I never actually returned. I segued into becoming a coach for lawyers, eventually. During that sabbatical in France I did some travel writing. The following article appeared in the Orlando Sentinel in 1999.
Successful dining in France requires one of two personal qualifications: (a) extensive training in French linguistics, etiquette and cuisine, or (b) a devil-may-care attitude. In my case, hunger and impatience mandate the latter. Forget etiquette. I cannot comply with the only rule I have learned. Here in France it is impolite to place your hand in your lap while dining. My mother would tell you I never did that anyway, but my hyper-conscious teenager has been repeatedly mortified by my infractions of this rule. Evidently the nudity on French beaches, billboards and television commercials subconsciously affects the French as much as the Americans, because the French wonder what you are doing with your hand if it is under the table.
All menus contain a number of indiscernible choices, even if I can literally understand the words (which I often can’t). A dictionary does not help. What kind of lunch item is a ”crunchy mister” or a “crunchy madam?” Or a “hot goat?” The answers: a croque monsieur is sort of a toasted ham sandwich with cheese melted on top, which populates every brasserie menu. A croque madame is more of the same, with a runny fried egg on top of the cheese. The French don’t eat fried eggs for breakfast. They prefer them on top of their pizza…or sandwich…or salad. Salads abound as a main course during the day. Chevre chaud (hot goat) is actually a green salad served with goat cheese slightly melted over small pieces of toast. Quite tasty and, again, found on every brasserie menu. In fact, I suspect some French regulation requires every brasserie to have the same ten menu items, after which they are permitted to add two items of individual preference.
A similar regulation applies to pizzas. A pizza with mushrooms and ham is La Reine. A pizza with cheese, tomato and olives is a Marguerite. There are ten such named varieties of pizza. There is no such thing as “the works”, and inventing your own pizza ingredient combination is Pas possible. Pas possible - literally “impossible” - is French shorthand for “That’s too much trouble unless you can come up with a convincingly sympathetic or amusing reason why I should bother.”
The mystery intensifies in a dinner menu. As a rule of thumb, I choose something that I have at least a chance of pronouncing. According to my best translation, I have ordered “pork with soy germs” and “filet of Pekinese.” The latter seems unlikely, however, because the French love their dogs so much that they even take them into restaurants. Maybe I had dog food… Maybe it said “filet for Pekinese.” If so, in France even germs and dog food taste delicious.
I have drawn the line at trying hamburger cheval, however. Cheval means horse. (I think I accidentally tried that menu item once in a Mexican border town.) My French neighbor assures me that hamburger cheval just means it has the ubiquitous fried egg on top. That’s strange enough, but I’m not taking any chances. French butcher shops and even grocery stores sell horse meat.
Emboldened by the safety of numbers, I participated in a group of four Texans trying out an expensive Parisian seafood restaurant recommended in the guide books. Don’t tell my teenage son, but I had both hands under the table as I surreptitiously consulted my pocket dictionary. It was easy enough to discern that the mixed seafood platter with huitres ouverts (”open oysters”) had raw oysters on the half shell, a Texas gulf coast staple. I knew that would work for me. I determined that the platter also had clams, mussels, langostino, shrimp, and some other yet unidentified items.
The waiter had already come by twice to take our orders, so fearing ejection, on his third pass we gave up on the translation and just did it. I at least tried to pronounce my choice. The others committed the faux pas of just pointing at the menu. We chose our wine by the only reliable criterion we knew: price.
Our waiter returned and meticulously rearranged my silverware. He spread the utensils out, reordered them, then changed his mind and rearranged them again. This was going to be an etiquette challenge, if even the waiter was having trouble. He then played a similar shell game with the next person’s setting.
Perhaps we should have requested a recommendation on our wine, because either it or the stress of ordering gave us the sillies. Whenever the waiter turned his back slightly, we moved our silverware back to the original position, or maybe to a completely new position, all the while snickering hysterically. Then he turned too quickly, and caught one of us in the act. He pointed a reproaching finger, and said his only English phrase: “No dessert.”
Soon we understood why he did so much rearranging. He was making room for all kinds of new items. A cocktail fork. A copper wire with a circle on the end. Other unfamiliar implements. Scented finger wipes. Little bowls of minced purple onion in a vinegar sauce. Then he got the last laugh. He brought out a huge tray of seafood on ice. Raw. Unknowingly, we had all ordered the same thing! The langostino and the large shrimp were cooked, but we had raw tiny shrimp, clams, mussels, conch, escargot, and who knows what those other things in sea shells were?
Maybe it was the wine, the atmosphere of being in a foreign country, or just hunger, but even our finickiest eater laughed and dug in. Some of it was delicious, though we found that it was pas possible to get red cocktail sauce. (How do you say “horse radish” in French?)
We really enjoyed our meal, partially because it was just so much fun. I probably won’t order the same thing again, however. It’s not as funny the second time around.
Post Date: June 16, 2007
Arrival in Paris
The following article continues the saga of my Leap of Faith, which turned out to be myjourney from lawyer to coach. This article was originally published in the Orlando Sentinel in 1999.
Arrival in Paris
A year in France sounded like a reasonable antidote for the forty-something mid-life crises of a couple from Houston. Because Jim and I had minimal travel experience in France and minimal French language skills, we made a trial move to Paris for one month. It started out well. When we landed at the airport, we breezed through customs and immigration so easily that we did not recognize the process had occurred until we found ourselves at the street exit. Then, unlike in New York, our cab driver spoke a little English. He took us straight to the furnished apartment we had rented for about $1800 a month, despite the fact that we could hardly pronounce the name of the small street, and could only tell him that it was in the 17th Arrondissement. Already life was so different from home.
We found our small one-bedroom apartment nicely decorated, and it even resembled its picture on the Internet. The kitchen and the bathroom were so tiny that they were cute. (We knew from talking to seasoned travelers and researching floor plans on the Internet, that apartments in Paris were small.) In France most major kitchen appliances are in miniature. Our dishwasher barely accommodated breakfast and lunch dishes. We had to stoop to peer into the refrigerator. We had an understanding that he who cooks doesn’t clean up, because there really wasn’t room for two people in the kitchen at the same time. We just bumped into each other a lot.
The bathroom had barely enough room for both me and my reflection in the mirror. When Jim shaved, he said he invaded his own personal space. I bumped my head and my backside the first time I brushed my teeth and bent over to spit. The toilet was installed at an angle, because otherwise one could not get past the toilet to the shower. The shower was so small that the curtain rubbed against my backside while I showered. Soap-on-a-Rope was a necessity, because a dropped bar was nearly irretrievable.
The apartment gave us something new to laugh about every day. We loved it. Living there for a year would probably be a challenge, but for a month it was great.
Eager to experience Paris, we quickly scouted out our neighborhood. Living in the 17th Arrondissment, we experienced a real Parisian residential neighborhood - not the hyped-up version filled with post cards, camera-toting tourists and waiters who know how to sneer in English. My French was not good that first jet-lagged day. Our apartment manager had what seems to be the universal response to my language difficulties: She spoke faster and louder and flapped her arms. My French didn’t recover from jet-lag, however, so now when asked if I speak French, I respond, “I thought I did until I moved to France.”
The triple whammy of an unfamiliar language, unfamiliar customs and unfamiliar products kept us in continual bewilderment. Fortunately those who stereotype the French as rude are wrong. Or maybe the French took pity on us. They tried hard to help us, and some actually apologized to us for not being able to speak better English. I struggled to communicate in the local tongue, often speaking “Spanglais.” Coming from Texas, where Spanish-speakers are abundant and French-speakers are almost non-existent, I found that unbidden Spanish interjected itself into my conversations when the stubborn French words would not rise to the surface. Sometimes it worked anyway. Mostly it resulted in a very puzzled look on the face of my listener.
Adventure and comedy spiced ordinary daily events like grocery shopping and dining out. If we didn’t look at our life in France that way, we would have been ever-agitated. Our first grocery shopping trip took an hour to buy the few things that we could easily carry home walking. We never did find any decaffeinated or herbal tea that day, but we did find some “light” tea and something mysterious called “infusion.” We didn’t find any skim milk, but we found “half-skim.” We found hundreds of cheeses, and things called bacon that weren’t bacon as we knew it.
We didn’t find facial tissue, but we found folded sheets of papier toilette. You have to go to the French version of Walgreens to buy facial tissues in Paris. There you will also find shampoo, lotion, and even clothes. But not sun screen. You get sun screen at the pharmacy, where you will also find the anti-cellulite cream and posters of thong-clad women advertising it.
At the grocery checkout stand we bit our nails as we tried to decipher the ominous warnings hung over some lanes. Timidly we ventured forth, hoping we didn’t have the wrong number of items, the wrong form of payment, or worse, the wrong passport, for that lane. Halfway through the checkout process, we were discovered: We hadn’t followed the proper procedure. After much pointing and arm-flapping, I understood that we were supposed to weigh our vegetables in the produce department. There I found the scale that spit out a label with the ultimate price on it after I pushed buttons to tell it what it was weighing.
I thought I had actually passed the vocabulary test on the scale (with the help of pictures), but it still tripped me up. I was not fooled by the fact that the French call grapes raisins and plums prunes. I found raisin noir for the luscious black grapes and raisin blanc for the juicy green grapes (which the French call white), but no raisin rouge or even raisin rose for my red grapes. Finally the exceedingly patient customer behind me just reached through and pushed the button for black grapes.
Meanwhile, Jim was still tying up the checkout line, apologizing in English and arm flapping to people in line behind him. Contrary to the French reputation, the waiting customers were very gracious, telling him “Pas de problème” (”No problemo” in Spanglais).
Post Date: November 25, 2006
A Little Thanksgiving Montage
On the day after Thanksgiving and I realized that I had the capability to make a little video montage of a few photos from Thanksgiving, complete with music, using software that comes with Windows XP. It was wonderful to have time to do something just because it was creative and fun.
The legal field is so left brain intensive. It is important to engage in right brain activity to help keep the communication flowing between the hemispheres, and to strengthen the right brain neural pathways. We need those right brain pathways for a lot of purposes, including when it’s time to do some “out of the box” problem solving.
If you want to view my little 2 minute Thanksgiving montage, click on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUlNHHf5O4Y.
Hoping you are enjoying the holiday!
-Debra
Post Date: November 25, 2006