A quaint November outing

Montparnasse, 1782. Deep down a narrow winding staircase leading halfway to hell, lie the bones of 6 million French people once buried in cemeteries that became too overcrowded to host them.



the well pictured above is not really accessible, but once upon a time, this is where tunnel workers bathed their feet.




Where is death? It is always in the past or the future. No sooner is it present than it is already gone.

Breakfast in Sweden

What is the best part about living in Paris? Why, its proximity to other European countries, of course! A week ago today, I went to Stockholm, and these photos still make my mouth water. There’s nothing like this in France! I guess I’ll just have to save my Euro pennies so that I may take more trips to more utopic lands that know how to serve comfort food and soy lattés in anarchist cafés…

The Berlin Ball

The Berlin Wall was erected in August of 1961 and destroyed in November of 1989, its total border once spanning 155 kilometres. Today, about 2 km of the wall remain, most of which is completely covered with the outdoor art gallery pictured above. Unfortunately, I was not able to part with any of my hard-earned euros for an east Berlin passport stamp. Bah, photos are better anyway!

All Hallows Eve, Paris Style

In honour of October 31st, I made my way to the Montparnasse cemetery in order to greet the dead. Père Lachaise? Schmère LaSchmaise! At Montparnasse, the underdog of Parisian dead people parks, I got to wink at Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, who each blew me a kiss. Serge Gainsbourg was a little bit tipsy, but Baudelaire wanted me to give you a message... Happy Halloween!

Panda Express

It took me a while to seek it out, but I finally made my way to the Chinatown of Paris. It has a really cool grocery store that is bountifully stocked with great ginger beer, inexpensive coconut milk, and fake meat in a can. And while none of the restaurants in the area seem to have any tofu on the menu, food market tofu is varied and abundant, and only a tiny bit too chewy. Chinatown yes, but clearly still France! But I digress, this post is not about tofu, but about the "exotic products" variety store next to the Chinese themed McDonald's of the neighbourhood! Behold, peanut butter in a can! Alcohol free Guiness! Christian-themed candles? You heard it here folks. Christian candles are almost as weird as peanut butter in a can... whatever meaning you'd like to attach to that!

Birthday 27

Although there were no candles and red wine isn't always the best chaser for chocolate mousse cake, 27 was celebrated in style, with EJ in the daytime and Katherine in the eve. Thanks to everyone who helped make this birthday celebrated so far from home, not so forlorn after all!

Paris, you don't even know how snooty you are

The other day, I had to drop a French literature class, so I went to the French UFR (i.e. ze Frrench department) to see if this was possible. “What? You want to drop a class?” They joked. “Mais pourquoi?”
“Il y a un conflit,” I responded. They laughed.
“A conflict of interest!” mocked the lady.
“Um, no, a scheduling conflict,” I replied.
“Conflict is English,” said the lady. “Here, we say chevauchement.” At this point I got angry. Why are the French so adamant about correcting everyone all the time? Admittedly, the conflict might have been caused by an overlap, but it remained a conflict. Must I change every single thing I would normally say just because the French like it better that way?
“Listen,” I said. “I come from a place where when we speak French we don’t use words like email and weekend, so don’t you tell me that my French sounds English. There are other countries in the world that speak French besides France, and not everyone talks like you!”
The skinny lady and the leprechaun-like man were stunned. Yes French UFR faculty, it is bad form to criticise the francophone exchange students about the words they use you might not otherwise employ.

misadventures in the third

Once upon a time, a 20 something québécoise student walked into the bistro next to her Parisian studio.

student: est-ce que je peux avoir un café our emporter?
waiter: oui. mais pour emporter où? où voulez vous l'emporter ce café?
student: euh... dans ma maison!
waiter (with a crooked smile): dans ta maison! mais elle est ou cette maison? elle n'est pas loin j'espère?
student: euh... non.
waiter: alors! un café pour emporter dans ta maison!
student: oui...
exit waiter. enter waiter number two.
waiter 2: alors, on fait quoi?
waiter 1 (from stage left): un café pour emporter, dans sa maison!

Good grief, thought the student. Might there be a moral to this story? Aye. Mock not the French waiter who is trying to mock you lest ye be forced to endure the flatness of French unhumour.


P.S. Rue des Francs Bourgeois (pictured above) is not a pedestrian street.

Laundry Day

When I asked my landlady if there were any “buanderies” nearby, she laughed and said: “On dit une laverie, ma chère!” If having to leave the house to do laundry last weekend wasn’t bad enough, I also had to go and lock myself out of my home with no phone, no ipod, no watch, no friendly neighbours to open the door for me… Damn you, Paris and your self-locking doors! Though it wasn’t funny at the time, I knew I’d eventually see the humour of it all, so I decided to take some photos of the Laundromat in commemoration of my conundrum. The bulk of our lives are made up of mundane moments, after all!

Enter, Sandman...

"(Ger. Das Unheimliche -- literally, "un-home-ly") is a Freudian concept of an instance where something can be familiar, yet foreign at the same time, resulting in a feeling of it being uncomfortably strange.

Because the uncanny is familiar, yet strange, it often creates cognitive dissonance within the experiencing subject due to the paradoxical nature of being attracted to, yet repulsed by an object at the same time. This cognitive dissonance often leads to an outright rejection of the object, as one would rather reject than rationalize." [1]

Happy Thanksgiving, Canadian friends!