Category: social skills
Clarence and the Cinquecento: La Canteen Merci
Today I met my lady love M for lunch at the Canteen at Merci (111 boulevard Beaumarchais, 75003 Paris, Métro Saint Sébastien-Froissart) a concept store in the Marais. The enormous, three-floor warehouse-style space sells clothes for men, women, and children, as well as housewares, furniture, used books, stationary, and a handful of other things that you absolutely don’t need in this or any other universe. I’ll officially lose all lefty street cred by admitting this (did I have any remaining?), but I really love this store. Or, better put, I would really love this store if everything didn’t cost as much as my rent. I understand that the idea behind a “concept store” is that it is a tightly-curated assemblage of objects from a variety of brands, usually in a beautiful or otherwise arty space. Everything at Merci is gorgeous or interesting. Everyone who shops and eats there is gorgeous and interesting. Going to Merci is like walking into a parallel universe where everyone is a hip Paris gallery owner or a necktie designer. Perhaps a testament to my own bobo pretensions, I actually say “concept store” now, so the prelude dialogue sounds something like this:
B: Where are you and M going to lunch today?
Me: La Canteen Merci.
B: Is it a restaurant?
Me: Um, sort of. It’s a lunch place inside of a concept store.
B: A concept store? Like things are only theoretically for sale? <smirk>
Later, after I had gotten dressed, I asked B how I looked. “Like you are having lunch in a concept store,” he responded. Honestly, I would hesitate to take him to Merci, or any of the men in my life to Merci, as it it takes “bobo affectation” to a whole new level. But, there is a handsome café near the street lined with used books for sale and inexpensive coffees, and a beautiful garden in the center of the complex, both of which the boys I hang out with would really like. But today was a ladies lunch and we did it up to the max. After browsing through the store, which amounted to little more than cooing as we stroked various handbags and wimpering as we fingered scarves, we headed to the basement where La Canteen Merci is housed. I didn’t take many pictures, because concept stores don’t like it when you take pictures, probably because they are afraid that other people will steal their concepts.
So you’ll just have to trust me when I say that La Canteen is a beautiful, whitewashed space with both small tables and long communal ones. The back wall is composed of floor-to-ceiling windows that look out on a courtyard garden, a space so sublime that whatever garden or green space you call your own will surely seem wanting. I don’t think you can actually go in the garden itself, though it is appointed with a perfectly rustic set of chairs, so I usually spend a few minutes fantasizing that the Merci courtyard is my own and I spend my long afternoons reading there. Clarence usually shakes me out of my reverie to examine the central table at Merci, where all of the salads, tartes, and desserts that have been prepared for the day sit in white ceramic bowls and terrines (all for sale at Merci, of course). There is usually a savory tart of the day, as well as seasonal soups, a meat dish, and some lovely cheeses (including a heavenly molten St. Marcellin, which you can make easily at home by putting a St. Marcellin in the oven for a few minutes before you serve it). For my money, however, the star attraction at La Canteen is the salads, the amazing, perfect, I-could-seriously-become-a-vegetarian-over-this salads. While I always contemplate ordering something else, I always end up getting the grande assiette des salades (14€, and a much better deal than the petite assiette, 9€). The big plate comes with a small serving of all of the salads of the day, which are always organic, local, and celebrate seasonal produce.
Today, it looked like this:
Let’s start at the carrots and move clockwise, shall we? First, the traditional French grated carrot salad, but instead of a lemon vinagrette, M figured out that they dress theirs with a sweet orange juice. So sweet and simple and familiar, but also totally unexpected. Next, we have fresh peas cooked al dente, served with thin slices of baby radishes and cilantro. This is followed by roasted fennel, dressed with an avocado vinagrette. In season, they sometimes put pomegranate seed in this one, which is a truly inspired salad combination if there ever was one. Next we have a mélange of green apples, red beets, pine nuts, and baby beet greens, all dyed an amazing fuschia from the beet juice. Following that (and slightly obscured by a beet green leaf) is La Canteen’s quinoa salad, out of which I discern fresh mint, parsley, and lime juice. I’ve tried to replicate it and it’s impossible. I have no earthly idea how they get their quinoa so light and fluffy, but if I could make this at home it would go a long way in putting quinoa in my diet in a more serious fashion. Lastly, we have a slightly spicy roasted broccoli. Everything is served with a fresh baguette.
Let’s be honest guys, I don’t really like vegetables. I’m not really a person that you’ll ever hear say, “Man, I’m really craving some GREENS!” In fact, I could probably subsist entirely on meats, cheeses, and breads without much complaint (pickles don’t count as a vegetable, right?) The fact that I actually get excited about Merci’s salad plate is a testament to how fantastically fresh and well-handled these salads are. Better yet, if you eat all your vegetables, you have a good excuse to order dessert:
While today they also had a tempting moelleux au chocolat and a fluffy carrot cake, M and I settled on their apple and red berry crumble, which is a house staple made with seasonal fruits. It’s always everything you’ve ever wanted a crumble to be, and ours had just been pulled out of the oven.
Lest you think that all I do is brag about yummy things I’ve eaten without the possibility of sharing them with you, let me now direct your attention to this La Toquéra video from Le Fooding. Here, the chefs at La Canteen Merci prepare their signature crumble with rhubarb and strawberries. The recipe is also included, so you can make it at home if the mood strikes you. We’ve been seeing some beautiful apples at the market lately that are just begging for a crumble, but alas, ovens are for only the very lucky in this town.
How are you today dear reader? I hope you are having a lovely autumn day.
Clarence Heads Outside the Schengen Zone: Turkish Delights in Paris
Our dinner at Al Taglio last weekend was a last minute decision, as we had originally planned to eat Turkish food with our new friend ME, who is originally from Turkey and determined to show us that there is more to Turkish food than döner kebab. This lesson in mind, we reconvened on Friday night at the charmingly cluttered Le Cheval de Troie (71 rue de Charenton, 75012 Paris, Métro Ledru-Rollin). I has dumbly asked B earlier in the night why on earth a Turkish restaurant would be called the Trojan Horse. He responded that Troy had been in Turkey, obviously. Like, why haven’t I been working on my ancient geography? It must be getting embarrassing to be with someone like me. All sound and fury and incapable of situating ancient city-states in modern-day nations. I’m drowning in shame.
Anyway, Troy was in modern day Turkey, dear reader. Did you know that? I suggest you get to your Iliad review pronto if you didn’t.
This whole thing was funny to me because B’s latest project involves mapping early Christian sites onto an enormous Google map, combining two of his most obsessive passions: 1) anything Biblical and 2) anything map. Most days he spends his time crouched over his laptop in what must be an excruciatingly painful position, surveying satellite images and making little whimpering noises of joy when he manages to find ruins of the original monastery run by St. Ambrose the Pallid, now gathering moss behind a gas station in rural Egypt. Or something like that.
Anyway, back to Turkish food.
We met up with ME and his daughter E, who has begun reading this blog and would like to be known as EON, the explanation for which I lost in a flurry of 14-year-old energy. Seriously, Friday night made me feel like I was about a hundred years old. EON was on fire, cracking jokes about everyone and sketching funny anthropomorphic cartoons of us in her notebook. As the night wore on and her energy level only increased, I was struck by one of those all-too-depressing realizations of aging: I don’t have the energy-level of a teenager anymore. Not even close. I suppose I should have realized this in one of the many classes full of teenagers that I teach, but those aren’t usually at 11 p.m. Even after a Turkish coffee, I was still yawning by the end of the meal, a fact that astounded EON. You just wait, kiddo. Give it a decade or two.
We were warmly greeted by the proprietor of Le Cheval de Troie, which I first assumed was because of ME’s Turkish banter, but later realized was just the in-house policy. As per usual with ME and B, we ordered waaay too much food, but everything was delicious and it was fun to try some new things. (Do I sound like a blithe orientalist yet? No? It’s coming.) I was particularly psyched about the large jugs of Ayran (sour yogurt drink) that we ordered, as I’m a fiend for yogurt products of all kinds. The Ayran at Le Cheval de Troie was a lot like buttermilk – tangy and totally refreshing. I could drink it every day.
Eager for us to try everything, ME ordered everyone a plate of Kiymali Lahmacun, a kind of flatbread spread with spiced ground beef. Really yummy, and quickly devoured by all.
B, M, and I all ordered menus, which were reasonably priced at about 20 euros for an entrée, plate, and dessert. My entrée was kizartma, roasted eggplant and bell peppers served with a spicy garlic and yogurt sauce:
B ordered sarma (which I know better as dolmas) heavily-spiced rice wrapped in grape leaves and served with garlic yogurt sauce:
M, brave little bird that she is, ordered arnavut cigeri, or lamb livers. Usually a big fan of organ meats of all kinds, I was out of my league with this one and had a tough time getting my bite down. But M was delighted by her entrée, which as usual made me wonder why someone as cool as her still deigns to keep company with me.
Among the many delicious main plates that we ordered, I especially liked my icli peynirli köfte, heavily spiced ground beef topped with melted Kachecaval cheese:
M’s adana kebap, a brochette of ground beef spiced with garlic and parsley, was particularly lovely (no picture). B had an amazing leg of lamb that was wrapped in roasted eggplant and falling off the bone tender:
They only serve it on Friday and Saturday nights, but it would definitely be worth the trip for on a weekend.
For dessert, we shared orders of baklava, sesame halva, dondurmali sütlac (Turkish rice pudding), and rosewater lokum (commonly known by idiots like me as Turkish Delight). All were really terrific, but the buttery-sweet baklava was something truly special. I could have eaten an entire tray of the stuff by myself, and only begrudgingly shared my portion with my friends. Sometimes I’m such an only child.
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Let’s say, for a moment, that you are one of these regressive Westerners who think that Turkish food means nothing but döner kebab, preferably eaten late at night while hammered. In that case, I will humbly recommend what I find to be the two best kebab places in all of Paris. I’m sure anyone who cares about these things will argue that this is not a particularly great town for kebab (you’ve got to head for Berlin for that). However, we’ve found two places that more than get the job done.
The first, Délice Dégustation (8 rue de Faubourg Saint-Denis, 75010 Paris, Métro Strausbourg Saint-Denis), is in B’s old neighborhood, the, uh, “atmospheric” Strausbourg Saint-Denis. B spent his first year in France living on rue Blondel, one of the oldest streets for prostitution in France. There have been brothels operating on this street since the Middle Ages, including the famous Aux Belles Poules (The Beautiful Chicks), a legendary Belle Époque whorehouse that counted Henry Miller among its regular patrons. Saint-Denis is still bustling hotspot for prostitutes, johns, and men who hang out in betting parlors all day. That said, rue Faubourg Saint-Denis is also a bustling, lively market street at all hours of the day. If you find yourself in the neighborhood, make sure to grab a cheap pint at Le Sully (13 rue de Faubourg Saint-Denis, 75010 Paris, Métro Strausbourg Saint-Denis), B’s favorite bar, before heading across the street to Délice Dégustation (disregard the large pizza signs that seem to trump the kebab, they don’t). Once there, grab a tray and order a veal or chicken kebab in a pita, which here is flatter and more tortilla-like bread that what I’m used to in the States. Make sure to ask for extra harissa, which is made in-house and one of the first genuinely spicy things I’ve eaten in Paris. You’ll get a giant tray of fresh-from-the-fryer fries and a döner kebab that you could easily make two meals from. Sit outside and gaze at the Porte Saint-Denis and watch the riff-raff go by. You might just see B, soaking up “the real Paris” before he scuttles back to his new digs in the Marais.
Or, should you find yourself in Belleville after a late-night concert at La Maroquinerie, La Bellevilloise, or Café de la Danse, may I recommend a stop at the inimitable Döner Burger (52 rue Ménilmontant, 75020 Paris, Métro Ménilmontant). This place takes fast food to a whole new level. Served sandwich-style in a fluffy bun, their signature döner burger is my bar-none favorite drunk food in Paris. Or, you can get a spicy, totally satisfying köfte burger. Either way, make sure and also order an ice-cold two-euro Efes beer, one of the best deals in town. The guys who run the place are really great and seem to be rather obsessed with watching episodes of Dawson’s Creek that have been dubbed into Turkish. I don’t need to tell you that this alone would seal the deal for someone like me.
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We saw the newest Woody Allen flick You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger this weekend. I really enjoyed it, but that of course is kind of a no-brainer for someone like me. B has recently noted that I have kind of a limited taste for genre and tend to gravitate only towards films about neurotic upper-class urbanites. In an effort to counteract this, he has been making me watch Battlestar Galactica, which I wanted to hate but am now entirely obsessed with. This is a big step for me, as I’ve always detested sci-fi or fantasy of any kind. I’ll admit that I still get pretty anxious about how quickly the narrative can spin out of control when you set your television series in “a possible universe,” rather than limiting the scope of the action to the island of Manhattan. But regardless, I’m hooked. B woke up in the middle of the night a few days ago to me yelling “Oh my god! The fence isn’t real! The fence isn’t real! The Cylons are coming!” When he woke me up and asked what I was dreaming about, I apparently eyed him suspiciously and declared that I was confused, but it was still possible that he was a Cylon. I have no recollection of this interchange, but still find it pretty funny. Before long I should be playing Dungeons and Dragons and reading the Wheel of Time. Or not. Maybe I’ll just stick with New Yorker-endorsed sci-fi series for now. Gotta take the long dark path into real-dorkdom nice and slow.
Booze or Lose: Le Baron Rouge
So school started for reals this week, or at least as “for reals” as it ever really is at the husk of a university where I teach. Part of the problem is this rather large strike that has been going on for the past five days with no signs of abating. This means that getting to work has been a veritable hell, with only one train in every three running on the major commuter transit lines. Upon arriving at campus, the buildings may or may not be barricaded by stern-looking policemen or angry students. If I am so lucky as to get in to one of the classrooms, I’m usually greeted by one or two confused students, whom I chat with for a while before letting them leave. On Thursday, the one day that I actually had dozens upon dozens of students show up for my classes, it became clear that a major registration faux-pas had taken place and that nobody (myself included) was in the right place. Unfortunately, all of the administrators and secretaries are also on strike, so I wasn’t able to do much besides take attendance, play half-hearted rounds of the cannibal game (my favorite ice-breaker in which students gradually cannibalize one another on a desert island), and send everyone on their way. Basically, I was a glorified attendance-taker this week. I’m so glad I’ve had 9 years of higher education. Livin’ the dream, baby. I’m livin’ the dream.
Add to that some other minor irritations and this was the kind of week that warranted one serious after-work happy hour. B and I fantasized all summer about organizing a kind of weekly get-together at one of our favorite wine bars, Le Baron Rouge (1 rue Théophile Roussell, 75012 Paris, Métro Ledru-Rollin). Think Thirsty Thursday all grown-up, complete with charcuterie plates and witty banter. We “discovered” this place (I’m like Christopher Columbus over here, discovering places that other bloggers have already written about ad nauseum) with BC and J last spring and quickly became devoted patrons. Le Baron Rouge is seriously awesome. They have an amazing selection of wines available by the (cheap!) glass, listed on large chalkboards. You can give yourself a rather comprehensive lesson in French wines just by gradually working your way down the chalkboard, as B has been methodically doing. Or, you can be a crusty old creature of habit like yours truly and just order a glass of the Pic Saint-Loup over and over again, because you like it, and because the true madness of modernity might just be forgetting what you actually like because you want to try everything. Or so us crusty old creatures of habit tell ourselves. Either way, the wines are lovely and the bartenders are both knowledgeable and generous in their pours. At between two and four euros a glass (and you are getting some pretty knockout wines at the top end of that spectrum), you can afford to have a few glasses to blow off some steam. And, if you really like something, you can take home a bottle for less than you’d spend at your local wine merchant.
Let’s say for a moment that you’re more serious drinker, or perhaps you like boozing at home, or feel a wide-eyed sense of wonder and value when you stroll the aisles of Costo. You might want to purchase a few liters of wine from one of the big barrels that line the walls of Le Baron Rouge. You pay a one-time fee for the plastic jugs, and then return whenever you want to refill for bargain-basement prices. I like it when my bulk drinking is green. Take that, Leonardo di Caprio. Have fun cruising around in your Prius, you know, the feel-good hybrid with the hideous environmental footprint? I only take public transportation and drink my wine out of reusable plastic jugs. Now who is feeling smug?
More importantly, and lest you think I actually do anything beneficial for the environment besides begrudgingly sort my recyclables and ride Vélibs when drunk, let me tell you about the charcuterie plates. Oh man, Le Baron Rouge is like cured meat nirvana. Their large charcuterie plate is one of the best parts of my week, with slices of spicy dry salami, tangy garlic sausage, and two of the biggest mounds of foie gras paté and creamy rabbit rillettes you could ever hope for in your life. Most charcuterie plates leave a group of four wild-eyed and lusting after those final cornichons. But the charcuterie plate at Le Baron Rouge is totally satisfying and perfect for a table of four. Party of six? Add a mixte, which pairs an amazingly smoky Tomme de Corse with more of that great salami. You also then get the pleasure that comes from the opening of the cheese fridge at Le Baron Rouge, a most glorious stink that wafts through the entire joint and causes the Americans to glare suspiciously at their companions. Don’t worry newbies! It’s just cheese stink, magnificent, tremendous, old cheese stink. If they bottled it in perfume form, I’d be the first girl in line at Sephora.
We gave our Thirsty Thursday plan a trial-spin a few weeks back with much success, with a half-dozen friends showing up to drink and chat around the enormous barrel in the center of the front room. This past Thursday was less successful, with B and I drinking alone until our table was gradually hijacked by the hoards of French workers that show up after 7 p.m. We left, disappointed that we weren’t living in our own version of Cheers and resolved to do better next week. So, Paris denizens, Le Baron Rouge next Thursday? I get done taking attendance at 4 p.m., so we’ll aim for a prompt 6 p.m. arrival time. How about it guys? The charcuterie plate is on me.
Clarence Will Go Your Way, Lenny: Al Taglio Pizza
First off, these kinds of things never fail to amuse the hell out of me:
Lordy, France. Get it together already. One minute you are deporting Gypsies, the next you are making racially-oriented gaffes that only a handful of people in the geriatric population in the United States make.
Luckily, for the win we have this:
Oh man, Pierre Hermé is my hot sometime-lover that my actual boyfriend doesn’t disapprove of me hooking up with. Or something like that. My fave new, alchemical, and hopefully not temporary flavor is the green tea with ginger and red bean. There’s an actual red bean buried the center of the macaroon. Holy smokes, Batman. Now that is a P’tit Oriental this fat kid can get behind.
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In other news, I have a bit of a new crew on account of various American friends accruing to teach this academic year in Paris. While they certainly can’t replace S, BC, and J, whom I miss terribly, this new batch of fresh, vaguely hipster blood from the States has been a lot of fun to hang out with lately. Especially after the long summer I spent virtually alone with B, in which we developed a private language of grunts and whines that we now exclusively use for communication at home.
One recent arrival is a good friend of mine from California, who we’ll call the Prairie Wolf, departing from our usual pseudo-anonymous naming system here at Keeping the Bear Garden in the Background. Prairie Wolf was the name bestowed upon my friend by our graduate department’s intermural softball team, a group whose very name is so deeply fraught with dorkdom and benchwarming that I’m tempted to reveal it to the internets at large for a laugh at the expense of some dear friends. Don’t worry, friends, your secret is safe with me. Anyway, of all the things that came out of my department’s brief foray into athleticism (including grown men going fisticuffs with various underage referees and long drunken nights listening to play by play recounts of the bloodbath), perhaps the best was the moniker of Prairie Wolf. He’s wily, quick, and has the coloring of the high plains. I’m pleased he’s moved to France.
Another great development is the arrival of M’s friend ME (system fail) from Pittsburg, a really lovely guy who has brought along his teenage daughter E. Oh man, I know I hang out with teenagers all day and am totally enchanted by a lot of them, but this one is really special. You know those teenagers that you meet that are so cool and self-possessed and sharp and funny that they cause you to shudder to think how much easier your life would have been if you had had your shit together like that when you were 14? Yeah, she’s one of those. She’s a fencer, which immediately charmed B, and a serious pop-culture critic, which made me want to invite her over for a sleepover so she could tell me all the best reality shows to watch this fall. Anyway, if I ever have a kid, I hope she turns out like this. It seems like a lot of the conversation in the zeitgeist lately is about how American teenagerdom is horrible and leveling. It’s great to meet a young woman who I can’t wait to hang out with again.
So anyway, these new folk along with B, M, and I (ha! system double fail!) all converged on Sunday night at Al Taglio (2 bis rue Neuve Popincourt, 75011 Paris, Métro Oberkampf), a pizza place that I had been lustily reading about in Le Fooding for months. By now you must realize, dear reader, that I am a pretty devoted pizza-eater, and my allegiances have been torn by the deep excellence of both La Briciola and Pink Flamingo Pizza, both of which are within walking distance of own apartment and make me quiver with desire. I hardly expected that Al Taglio (which means “by the slice”) could possibly compete with my already over-full dance card of Right Bank pizza joints.
Woah, ho ho, was I wrong. It’s fantastic. Instead of ordering of a menu, you go to the counter and pick from pizzas that are available, which are cut into squares and priced by weight. I’ll admit that part of my admiration for this system is that the pizza (in look and texture alone) vaguely resembles the Little Caesar’s Sicilian-style pizza of my childhood. Oh, how far this little foodie has come! I say “in look and texture alone” because the toppings at Al Taglio are slightly more chic than those of my dearly departed rural Colorado Little Caesars (Pizza Pizza!). Rather than make any decision, we simply ordered an assortment of different pizzas. And then we ordered some more. And some more after that. We, uh, somehow managed to eat 155 euros worth of pizza and red wine. I guess there were six of us, but still, it’s kind of ridiculous how much of this pizza we managed to eat.
But the toppings! The toppings! How about roasted zucchini, sun-dried tomatoes, and kalamata olives? Or carbonara-style pizza with crispy pancetta, shaved parmesean, and creamy egg yolks? Maybe you would rather have a slice with gorgonzola and pinenuts? Black trumpet mushrooms and fontina cheese? The table’s favorite was a pie with roasted asparagus and black truffle cream sauce. Yup, I said black truffle cream sauce, dear reader. I wish you could have been there, too. Come over later and we’ll go for a slice, my treat.
After our second tableful of quickly-devoured slices, B went inside to order another round of pizza and a third (or fourth?) carafe of the house red. He came back, shaking his head in amusement at a conversation between an American couple that he had inadvertently been eavesdropping on while he waited to order. The guy was apparently reassuring his beautiful lady-companion that he wasn’t actually cheating on her, but that having lots of other girls around was “part of the game.” As in, “don’t hate the player, hate the game.” Yucko. Anyway, it would have been a nothing kind of observation except that when we all went inside to pay for our epic pizza feast, M noticed that the gentleman player in question was none other than LENNY KRAVITZ, who does indeed keep an apartment somewhere in the Marais and whose picture and endorsement graces all L’As du Fallafel paraphernalia. I got a bit twitterpated, obviously, because it’s LENNY KRAVITZ, and uh, he looks pretty great for 46! I’m going to assume that his secret is a steady diet of falafel and Al Taglio pizza and work hard to follow this regimen.
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Finally, I know I’ve been a total loser lately when it comes to posting on a regular basis. I suck and totally don’t deserve you. I wish I could say it was because I’ve been hard at work writing my magnum academic opus, but it’s probably more likely because I’ve discovered the TLC shows Sister Wives and Hoarding: Buried Alive and spend most of my time watching slack-jawed and smug. I also admit that I got kind of discouraged about blogging (Where’s my travel-guide book deal already, Universe?), an endeavor that on my worst days seems to be just one more thing I’ve managed to contrive to avoid doing my “real” work, you know, that stuff that gathers dust on those days when I write thirty-thousand words about cheeses I want to put in my mouth. But I recently stumbled on a new blog by a friend of mine (who is apparently too cool to publicize these things), the charming Ducks and Turtles. It seems my dear friend AV has moved to Los Angeles and is spending some quality time photographing local ducks (awesome) and writing about things he eats (more awesome). You should definitely check his site out, especially if you are sick of old content here and want to read someone waaay smarter than I’ll ever write. He said something amazingly sweet about this here blog and it’s a compliment that I don’t deserve but I’ll take anyway, ’cause I’m not dumb. In response to that, I’ll note that my blog’s name is a rather obscure Wyndham Lewis reference that nobody would ever recognize in two million years, so don’t go underestimating your scope, dearest AV. I bet you don’t sit around all day fantasizing about punching some reality star polygamist repeatedly in the face. But thanks anyway for the compliment, you really made my day.
Redemption
On Monday B and I went to the Préfecture du Police in an attempt to renew our paperwork so that we can continue legally living and working in France. Because, uh, it’s kind of unclear as to whether or not we are currently legal, a state of affairs that is strikingly reminiscent of the first three hazy months I spent in France. It was a dark time. I didn’t have hot water or internet or a bank account with money in it or real friends just yet, so I spent most of my time eating falafel and shivering next to my radiator. I had been told that renewing my contract and my visa would be a snap compared to last year. I should have seen this headache coming, but somehow in the halcyon days of summer it didn’t seem like anything could possibly go wrong.
Somehow, however, papers managed to not get filed by my employer to reauthorize me to work in France. I’m not blaming anyone, though I do suspect that the bug-eyed woman at my university who is supposed to be handling our affairs with the office of immigration might have slacked off a bit this summer. This woman has made an art form out of plaintively blinking and stammering. She’s an expert in this peculiarly French office-drone trick of passing the buck, usually down the hall to her unsuspecting colleagues. I guess that person exists in every office, in every corner of the world, but somehow it never makes you feel any better to know that when someone drops the ball and suddenly phrases like “You’re not getting paid!” and “You might be deported!” start getting tossed about. So I’m waiting, nervously, for a renewal of my “authorisation du travail” (work visa), so that my “carte de sejour” (life visa?) might also be renewed, so nobody can use my name and “deported” in the same sentence for a while.
“Visa” is a problematic term here, as is “carte de sejour,” “titre de sejour,” and “authorisation du travail.” I apparently have anywhere between one and all four of those, though I don’t actually have in my possession anything that is actually titled as such. So it’s difficult to say what paperwork needs to be filled out for renewal. I have no idea what that paperwork is actually called, and neither do the French people. There were some reforms made sometime recently, reforms that were supposed to make the process easier for people like us. You know, people who are only here for a limited period of time and make the equivalent of six sesame seeds in wages ever month. Apparently not everyone in the Kafkaesque bureaucracy that deals with foreigners has been alerted to these reforms, however, so the process that one goes through for renewal is decidedly unclear.
There are many of expat blogs devoted to bitching about French bureaucracy, which is admittedly Byzantine. If I could write a novel about it and make a million bucks I totally would, but I think that has already been done six hundred times or so. It hasn’t been that bad, not by a long shot, and I feel guilty when I bitch about the number of hours I’ve logged at various offices around town and seemingly millions of copies I’ve made for various applications that seem to go nowhere. Obviously, most foreigners that find themselves trying to work in countries like France and the United States have a much more difficult time than I do, which is why you shouldn’t be interested in my kvetching (and also why you should give Stephen Colbert a big giant round of applause for his recent testimony before Congress, the final moments of which we watch on a near-hourly basis).
So anyway, we went to the Préfecture on Monday with everything from our electric bill to x-rays of our lungs, all in triplicate, so that we might have the opportunity to continue teaching the youth of France outdated American idioms for another year. Oh, yeah, and so that I can also continue going to restaurants and taking pictures of things I eat and sharing them with you here. Let me tell you what, going to the Préfecture sucks. It’s the place where Marie Antoinette crashed the night before she hit the guillotine, people. To say that it has a lousy vibe would be the understatement of the year. After being nearly strip-searched at the entrance, you go into the special area for renewals. The smell of nervous foreigner body odor hits you like a wall when you walk in. You take a number, hope for a chair, and then wait for what feels like sixteen years, only so you can be told that you don’t have all the paperwork you need (even though you’ve brought everything on all seven different lists from four different websites that you’ve managed to get your hands on). They’ll give you what’s called a “recipisse,” which is basically a document with a stamp on it that certifies that you are indeed jumping through all the hoops that are being set in front of you, and this is apparently enough to keep working and living in France, that is, until you get your mother’s cousin’s birth certificate and your dead dog’s immunization records and return for another round in two months. It’s awful.
Despite having strictly-worded appointment times, B and I had to wait three hours to speak with our immigration officer. B, his usual cool-as-a-cucumber self, quietly read poetry and examined the maps on the walls. I sweated through my shirt, agonized about how I had filled out my forms, tapped my foot, and picked the cuticles on my thumbs until they bled. I had to pee about an hour in to the wait, but I was terrified that my number would be called if I went to the bathroom and they would deport me for my transgression. After another hour of fantasizing that I would actually wet myself when I sat down with my application, I finally decided it was worth the risk and went to the ladies room.
The bathrooms were horribly bleak, with no toilet seats and crusty door locks. The sink was a long, trough-like apparatus, with cold water and soap that smelled of ammonia. As I was washing my hands, I glanced down at the drain and saw a trail of blood that led to a cream-colored object. Horrified, I examined it more closely and discovered that someone had left a bloody tooth in the sink at the Préfecture. And not just a baby tooth or a little chip of a filling either – a huge, ghastly-looking molar with long bloody roots still attached. I gasped and redirected the steam of water so that I could turn it over and get a better look at it. I was so aghast that I almost went to get B so that he could see it.
What the hell happened there? I could just imagine some poor woman pulling out her own tooth, abandoning it, and then returning to the waiting room so she wouldn’t be deported, perhaps with a wad of toilet paper stuffed in the oozing socket. Can I admit something to you? I have to say that tooth kind of made me feel better about my day. I mean, no matter how bad things got for me from that moment forward, I wasn’t having the worst day possible. Not even close. Not by a long shot. I was practically relieved when I was told by the immigration official that my file was incomplete and that I would have to return again in two months. Paperwork! Paperwork is easy compared to extracting your own tooth in a dirty public restroom!
Anyway, I haven’t felt like I’ve had much to write about lately, but I knew I’d have to tell you about that tooth. Man, I wish I’d had my camera, though there were enough complaints about the cyst-popping video thing that I suppose that the really abject stuff isn’t what you really go for, dear reader. On the off chance that you are the one person reading this blog that really does go for the gross stuff, I’d love to direct you to my newest obsession: ear-wax extraction videos. There are lots of different kinds, but I like the medical ones where you actually go inside the person’s ear canal with some kind of amazing little camera and watch as whole giant slabs of crud are pulled out with tweezers, revealing the shiny clean eardrum beneath. The best part is when the person with the earwax clod goes “OH WOW!” because they can suddenly hear for the first time in like six years. They do it every time. There’s something comforting about that.
The Bear-Garden 