E-mail du jour: Letters from a Year in France

E-MAIL

DU JOUR

Letters from a Year in France

Marjorie Vernelle

Copyright ©1999 by Marjorie Vernelle.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

PART ONE

Je suis arrivé

Paris 75002

The Abyss

Cultural Affairs

A Visit to Anne’s Land

Get the spirit!

Côte d’Azur Roundrobin Roundup

Letter from Antibes

A Day in Provence

Blame it on Picasso

Daytripping—I

Daytripping—Part II

Night at L’Arbuci

My Immigrant Life

Paris—Autumn Comes to Town

Le Beaujolais nouveau est arrivé

Round, round, get around . . .

Kissing the Eiffel Tower Goodnight

Christmas: Going Gothic, Going Nigerian

Paris, adieu!

PART TWO

New Day, New Year

Liquid Sunshine and Nice

Walking through a coffee table book

Pâté in the ‘hood

Manha da Carnaval

On the Beach

Style—as seen in Antibes

A Riviera Moment

In the Can(nes) for Another Year.

Horse Tales

Politics, French Style

Policies, Politics and La Poste

Heading for the Hills!

Paris, Rome, and Home (Antibes)

Les beaux jours

Language Attack

The End of Chez Moi

Postscript—Once Again, Paris!

I dedicate this book to the two women who influenced it most:

my mother, Marjorie Norwood,

who always encouraged me

to publish these letters and

Madame de Sévigné,

who would have loved e-mail.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

When I think about how this book came into being, it immediately calls to mind my own group of usual suspects: Lisa Blessing, Galen Hazelhofer, Lee Parker, Richard Strauss, Janet Baker, Thomas Graf, and Ana de Vedia. I thank them all for helping put my feet on the write path.

INTRODUCTION

In 1994, I revisited Paris. It was my first trip there since my initial one-week visit in 1985. It was just going to be a two-week vacation, something to reward myself after a hard school year. On the Wednesday evening before my plane was to leave to return me to the Seattle, Washington and my job as Site Coordinator of the school at the King County Juvenile Detention Facility (euphemistically called a Youth Service Center), I stood in the Louvre looking out of the windows. I looked out onto the Napoleon Court, wet with the residue of a gentle rain, and beyond to the Arc du Carrousel, the Tuileries Gardens, and the tip of the Obelisk that peeked out above the treetops down in the Place de la Concorde, and I knew that I didn’t want to go.

Although I did return to Seattle, to my wonderful friends, to my beautiful apartment overlooking Lake Washington, and to my work with my sometimes difficult but often amazing students, I knew I was not through with France. I didn’t even suspect that France was not yet through with me. After a one-month stay in Paris in August of 1995, I began to hatch the idea of moving to Paris to spend a year. And so I did in September of 1996. I didn’t know then that I’d wind up living in another part of France and deciding to change my profession. No, I just packed up and went to Paris. Carrying an electronic notebook with e-mail capabilities so I could keep in touch with friends and family, I took on France and reported my findings back to those at home.

I never suspected back in the autumn of 1996 that these email letters would do more than disappear into cyberspace once I hit the SEND button. First I was told that they were fun to read and that everyone liked getting them. Then I began to hear that the recipients were sharing the letters with other people. If there was a gap in the correspondence, I’d receive requests for the next «installment» of my adventures. Finally came the suggestion that I make a book out of them.

I tossed that idea around for quite a while. Since I had composed off-line, I was able to gather most of the letters and collect them on one disk. However, as I took a look at what I had, it became apparent that there were events and details missing. Sometimes it was because I had also communicated by postcards and conventional letters. Sometimes it was because I’d communicated by telephone. So I decided this book would consist of two sets of letters: the ones that I sent by e-mail during my stay in France, and replications, in e-mail format, of those experiences and bits of information that had been sent by post or told by telephone.

The e-mail addresses used are fabricated and some of the names have been altered to protect privacy. However, the information, the experiences, my reactions and perceptions are actual. Subsequent extended visits to my old haunts in France have yielded more detailed information and helped me gain greater insight into the French people and their culture, but what is written in this work is what I knew at the time of my first extended stay. I hope that the light and easy e-mail format has preserved the freshness of the experiences and captured the mood of the time.

As I wondered who might read a work like this, I thought back to the days in 1994 and 1995 when I was contemplating taking a year off and going to live in France. I was eager to have all the information I could get about the place, the people, and what it might be like to live there. For those who are entertaining the thought of doing something similar, this book should encourage you. If you are as I was when I started this adventure, decidedly middle-aged, maybe my story will encourage you to go do that one thing that you’ve always dreamed of doing. On the other hand, if you are an armchair traveler, after you’ve read this,hopefully you will feel that you’ve been in France. The letters can be read one or two at a time, as though they had just arrived on screen, or you can have the whole experience in a sitting. Whatever the case, I invite you to sit back and take a little trip with me.

PART ONE

Ah, Paris!

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Subject: Je suis arrivé

September 4

Well, I made it to Paris. What a trip! The flight was nice once I got on with what seemed like too much carry-on luggage. Some overly-conscientious passenger behind me whined, She’s got too many bags. I kept walking to the plane anyway but was stopped by the head stewardess. I gave a rapid-fire explanation of how the computer printer would rest on top of the paint case and the laptop would fit under the seat. She gave up and waved me through. It was only the first of the many baggage hassles over the next 22 hours.

Twenty-two hours. Yes, you heard that right. I started counting from the moment Lisa B. dropped me off at the airport in Seattle. Actually, bless her heart, she came in and sat with me for a while until the inevitable demands of her life pulled her back to Mercer Island, and this throw-of-the-dice, I’m-running-off-to-France adventure I’ve embarked on pulled me into the unknown outremer. I must admit a moment of terror after she left when I looked at my Paris guidebook, beautifully written, in a language I don’t speak. But I’d thrown the dice, taken a year’s travel leave, stored my belongings, except for the five bags of stuff I took with me and purchased that open-ended, roundtrip plane ticket to Paris.

«Well,» I thought, «I can always come back and teach delinquents again.» The specter of that thought sent me hurrying to the plane. Going to Paris for a year, all by myself, might be scary, but it’s not that scary.

In fact nine hours later when I arrived at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam, it was all that luggage that occupied my mind, not what my life might be like during the next year. Something about the immediacy of dealing with all that weight totally commandeered my mind. Though I am not a petite person, I am no match for 220 lbs. of stuff in five different bags (funny how one’s precious belongings become mere stuff when they prove to be burdensome.) Ah, but the Universe always provides. So now let me say a few kind words for all those angels who helped me with my luggage. Yes, angels, real ones, in the form of men. I think it was my portable easel/paint box that attracted them.

My biggest bag would have been left at the airport train station if a young Dutchman hadn’t seen that the doors were about to close and hefted that thing on to the train. An American man kept me from going head over heels down an escalator. Two Englishmen, one elder and one younger, came to my rescue in the Amsterdam Central Train Station. «We’ve got to help this poor lady,» they said. They helped me to the secure baggage check area and then told me how to find the city’s main tourist sites. Special thanks to Fuad who seemed to be the only official baggage handler in the whole of the Amsterdam train station. Even though he told me I tipped him too much, I was glad to do it.

To the French conductor on the Thalys train to Paris—bless you. Only heaven could have provided the ancient stubble-faced man in the Gare du Nord who knew I’d never get a taxi standing where I was standing and who lead me through the crowd to the real taxi stand. And finally thanks to Sylvan who not only carted me from my hotel to the apartment, but also brought those bags up three flights of an ancient, narrow, corkscrew staircase. Hugs and kisses to you all.

Now, Amsterdam. There’s a lot of water. The buildings are dark somewhat like those in Seattle. The weather is somewhat like Seattle’s too—rainy. They do have some wonderful architectural flourishes atop their buildings along with the hoists that allow them to move things in and out without dealing with those impossible narrow stairways (an idea the French don’t seem to have ever taken to, as I was to learn when I reached my place on rue Sainte Foy). Lots of big windows on the buildings in Amsterdam allow in the maximum amount of light. I’d love to see what it looks like from the inside looking out. It was all very interesting, though my seven hours there didn’t give me a lot of time to explore. I also had the vague feeling that Amsterdam just wasn’t my town.

So it was on to Paris and five hours on a train ride through the low countries. The landscape in Holland and Belgium is rather flat, green, farmland, dotted with solid-looking little towns and solid-looking black and white spotted cows. Things really look different though when you cross into France. The architecture is different, much lighter in feel. The farms have trees planted in attractive ways, as though someone took a larger view of what things look like, so that the whole of the landscape is a grand composition with all of its possibilities considered.

However, there are some things they may not have considered too well. Coming into Paris, you first pass through a northern suburb (banlieue), St. Denis, known for the first example of French Gothic architecture. I saw high rise housing projects there worthy of Cabrini Green in Chicago with grafitti (sp?) to match. It seems that in France, the «Inner City» is really the «Outer City,» that is, the suburbs are often the areas in the most distress.

The Gare du Nord on a Saturday evening would put Grand Central Station to shame. I mean EVERYBODY was there—probably even some of you who are reading this e-mail. As you now know, I made it through with the help of my unshaven savior. One last baggage story—after my own rescue in the Gare du Nord, I turned to see an elderly man being followed by two young French soldiers, in full combat gear—fatigues and machine guns—carrying the old gentleman’s luggage. That’s definitely not an American scene.

I managed to tell my cab driver (a Haitian) what address to take me to, and yes, I did say « Quatre-vingt-onze rue de Lille" so well that he thought I spoke French. Then he found out the truth. Anyway I was back in the Septième or Seventh Heaven as the locals call this elegant arrondissement. I phoned my various homes, then I was off down the Boulevard St. Germain de Près for a newspaper and some dinner—22 hours of travel time almost erased.

PS. I hope you noticed that being in La France has