Hanging out with de Beauvoir, Hemingway, and other Dead Literary Figures

Hello again from a grey and rainy Paris! Apparently this is what it will be like for the next few months. I'll probably have to buy some Vitamin D. I've already gotten into the habit of bringing an umbrella wherever I go. Case in point. The other day I went to Berthillon, an amazing gelato place on St. Louis Island in the Seine (the Honey Nougat is delicious, by the way). From my departure point, the Latin Quarter, it was warm and sunny (which was why I decided to get ice cream). But when I exited the Metro 15 minutes letter by Hotel de Ville/Notre Dame, it was cold and drizzling. Ah, Paris. So fickle. A small example of the importance of flexibility in the study abroad process. More to follow.

Anyway, thought I'd do a "quick" recap of the week. 

Monday, September 24th

Since I don't have classes on Monday (score!), I went to go see a French film that came out at Cannes, called "Camille Redouble'' (Camille goes back). Below is the trailer in French, for those who are interested. It's a lot like the American Film "13 Going on 30", but a little more melancholy and without an ending where everything works out nicely, as the French are prone to do. I was proud of myself for seeing something without subtitles though, and even more proud that I could understand almost everything!

Tuesday September 25th and Wednesday September 26th

On Tuesday I visited the Montparnasse Cemetery, and Wednesday (since this week I also didn't have class on Wednesday) I did the walking tour (which I found in my Lonely Planet city guide to Paris). I put all the pictures together though, as a) it's my blog, and b) all the graves I saw were literary figures anyway. Enjoy!

52 rue Jacob

The fashionable residence where Hemingway once stood watching James Joyce and his family dine.

Cafe de Flore

Favorite hangout of post-war intellectuals Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.

70bis Notre Dame des Champs

Former residence of poet Ezra Pound

27 rue de Fleurus

Former residence of writer Gertrude Stein, where she entertained other ex-pats and members of the Lost Generation such as Matisse, Picasso, Braque Gauguin and Pound.

Hotel d'Angleterre, 44 rue Jacob

The hotel where Hemingway spent his first night in Paris

La Closerie des Lilas

Hemingway's favorite place to drink.

Les Deux Magots 

Another favorite hangout of de Beauvoir and Sartre. Actually very close to Cafe de Flore.

Montparnasse Cemetery

The grave of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, longtime lovers and companions who are buried together. Their grave is right near the main entrance, and as you can see many fans and admirers leave them notes and flowers each day.

Some interesting graves I saw while meandering through the cemetery. 

Montparnasse Cemetery

The grave of author Marguerite Duras. Coincidentally, I will be taking a literature class on her works starting next Wednesday at the University of Paris III. 

Montparnasse Cemetery

The grave of author Guy de Maupassant (one of my personal favorites). The inscription on his tombstone reads: La vie, voyez-vous, n'est jamais si bon ni si mauvais qu'on croit. (Life, you see, is never as good or as bad as one thinks). 

St. Sulpice

View towards the back of the church. Above the back door is the gigantic organ.This church was on my literary walking tour of the Latin Quarter because it is featured in the Da Vinci Code.... 

St. Sulpice and the square in front of it. 

The front of St. Sulpice

Near St. Sulpice

This is the Parisian equivalent of a public water fountain. I believe they date back to the 19th century. 

12 rue de l'Odéon

The original Shakespeare and Company. This is where bookstore founder Sylvia Beach lent books to Hemingway, and edited, retyped and published Ulysses for James Joyce in 1922. The bookshop was closed   during the Occupation when Beach refused to sell her last copy of Joyce's Finnegan's Wake  to a Nazi officer. There is now another bookshop called Shakespeare and Company near the Place St. Michel, but it is in no way related to the original.

13 rue des Beaux-Arts

Now called L'Hotel but former known as Hotel d'Alsace, this is where Oscar Wilde died of meningitis in 1900. There is a plaque above the door to commemorate this event. 

7 rue des Grands Augustins

This is where Pablo Picasso lived from 1936 to 1955, and where he completed his masterpiece Guernica in 1937. 

56 rue Jacob

This is where Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, John Hay, and George the III's representative David Hartley met on September 3rd, 1783 to sign the treaty recognizing American Independence. I believe it is now a clothing shop.

Thursday, September 27th

And now back to the present. Just finished dinner, salmon and zucchini, salad and tomatoes from the garden. Discussed the legalization of marijuana, political feuds within families, the U.S. election (again), and stories of people losing their wedding rings (?). Then host father tried to teach me some plumbing (and plumbing vocabulary), as I have gotten the cap to my toothpaste wedged in the sink drain, and every morning at six the pipes start whistling, so he showed me how to shut off the water valve. Now I will attempt to read and retrain some medieval French literature. Bonsoir!

Talloires and Annecy!

Hello again! I won't spend too much time talking about this week, as I got sick with a pretty nasty cold and spend a lot of the time in bed (18 hours on Wednesday, as a matter of fact). However, this week I did attend my first classes in the French university system. I tried one on contemporary Arab history and one on the contemporary history of sub-Saharan Africa, and have decided to go with the latter. (Part of the reason being that I don't have to wake up at 5:45 on a Wednesday morning to get there). The structure of the class is very different from what I'm used to, though. It meets for 3 hours straight once a week, and for about half that time you just sit there and copy what the professor says. Most French professors don't entertain questions or general interaction with students, but my professor seems one of the more engaged ones. In addition, modern technology hasn't really entered the French classroom yet. From what I can tell, all my class has is one of those projector things that uses those transparent papers. Not the one that hooks up to a computer. In addition, there are no reading assignments, you pretty much decide what to read on your own based on the syllabus. I'm not the only foreign student in the class though, which is nice, and I think this subject will be great to learn from the French perspective as they have had such a long and complicated history in Africa. I also had my first art history class this week, which is through the Tufts program and held at the Tufts offices. I'm really looking forward to this one because each week we meet at a different museum. First stop is the Louvre to look at medieval art! 

Let's see, this week we also went on a tour of the Bercy quarter, which is on the edge of Paris and where the shipments of wine from all around France used to come in on barges on the Seine and be stored in huge warehouses. This area is also home to the French equivalents of the Federal Reserve Bank and the Library of Congress. On Thursday I got to meet up with Claire and Marine, who were French exchange students living with me at the Maison Francaise at Tufts last year and are now my very good friends. We went to a creperie and chatted for about 3 hours. It was great to see them again and I can't wait for them to show me more of the "real" Paris. That night the Tufts group also went to the Theatre des Bouffes Parisiens to see a play, Le Quatuor. The theatre is a great little gem hidden in some back alleys, and was once the frequent hangout of the famous French film director Jean Cocteau. He's most famous for directing La Belle et la Bete (Beauty and the Beasty) (1946). It's hard to describe the play, but I guess you could say it was a musical comedy played by four guys with violins, who preceded to mock other cultures while playing different genres of music ranging from classical to traditional French, to American southwest to the Spice Girls. I didn't understand all of it, but I laughed so hard I cried. 

Now, what you've all been waiting for. This weekend we traveled to two towns in the southeastern department of Haute-Savoie, Talloires and Annecy, which are right next to the borders of Switzerland and Italy. The Savoie only became part of France about 150 years ago, and has still maintained it's distinct cultural identity to a large extent. It takes about four hours by TGV train to get there, and it's really a whole other wold compared to Paris.

On Saturday we went on a six hour hike into the mountains, which I'll call the Alps but are technically the pre-Alps. This was lead by Bernard, a resident of the Savoie region (or Savoyard), and his sheepdog Gypsy. Our first stop was something called the Devil's Bridge. Legend has it that a long time ago, a guy and girl fell in love with each other, and came every day to a spot near here to meet. Somehow, the Devil also fell in love with the girl, and asked her to marry him. She refused, and the Devil got so angry that he punched a huge hole in the ground between the girl and guy's houses (this abyss you see in the picture) so that they could no longer reach each other. Undeterred, the couple built this bridge stone by stone so that they could be reunited. 

Here's just a great view of the mountains in the morning.

And here you can see a bit of the village below. This weekend was the Festival of St. Maurice in the village, as he is the patron saint of this town. Apparently, every town in France has a patron saint due to the Catholic heritage here. Paris's patron saint is St. Genevieve.

This is a cross situated at a fork in the path leading up to the mountains. It was put there in the 19th century, probably by the Jesuits on one of their faith missions. However, it became useful as a landmark for those traveling in the area. 

There are several houses/barns like this scattered throughout the valley and higher up in the mountains. They all follow this basic structure. The tree to the left is an ash tree, one of the most common trees up there along with pine and maple. A lot of the houses are situated next to an ash tree, as local legend has it that they bring good luck.

This is me posing near where we stopped to have lunch. We also learned that this area played a very important part in the French Resistance during World War II. Apparently, a small band of about 300-400 French people fended off some Germans that were coming over the mountains through Switzerland to invade France.

There are a lot of these flowers in the Savoie. When the government was building the railways through the region, women would pick huge bundles of these flowers and give them to the conductors, who on returning to Paris would give them to flower merchants who would then sell them to fashionable ladies going to the Opera to pin onto their dresses. 

This rock formation is called the Three Towers. Each has a name. The big one is Saint-Jacques, the middle one is Saint-Philippe, and the small one is Tour Fine. Apparently they are situated on a mountain that has a fair bit of gold in it, and was used by the Templars upon their return from the Crusades as they transported the treasure around France for the King. They say that the Templars hid the treasure they had collected in a cave in the mountain, and that if you go into the cave at midnight on Christmas, the rock wall will open and you'll be able to take all the gold you want. However, upon exiting you'll start to hear all these whispery voices and strange sounds, and if you turn around to look all the gold you gathered will disappear.

This is the cute little hotel we stayed at. There were a lot of British people there too. Apparently it's a popular thing for posh Brits to go to the Alps on the weekend. Some of them even had campers. 

This was the view from our hotel balcony. Behind the houses is Lake Annecy.

This is just an example of the architecture of the region, and what I thought was a really cute house.

This is the graveyard of the village of Talloires.

A lot of people come to the region to go hangliding. If I had had the time I would've. I'll have to come back another weekend.

This is just a pretty view of the village in the evening.

A view of the mountains from the street our hotel was on at sunset.

The fondue we had for dinner, made with the regional cheese Reblochon. With this type of fondue you only dip the bread in it, but we also had a little plate of some ham and salami, and a salad. 

This is the blueberry tart we had for dessert. 

This is me by the lake on Sunday morning. A couple minutes after this photo was taken a swan came up and tried to bite my toes.

 A view of the mountains across the lake from the dock.

This is the castle on Lake Annecy, which is now a private residence. 

This is a view of the town of Annecy from the ferry. In the background is a different castle, which was used by the Duke of Savoie and is now a museum. 

This is me with some funky cow in Annecy.

We went to Annecy on Sunday, so the farmer's market was in full swing. Here are some of the fresh cheeses that were on display.

And here are the sausages. 

A view of the canal dividing the city of Annecy and the mountains in the background.

This is the former prison of Annecy, built on a tiny island in the canal. It's pretty grim in there, and I think during WWII it was used to house arrested resistors/Jews. 

More of the town of Annecy.

A view of the rooftops of Annecy from the road leading to the castle, which is on a hill.

Part of the castle as seen from the inner courtyard. The town of Annecy bought the castle from the French government for an equivalent of about 1.50 euros. Seriously.

Well, as it is raining in Paris today I think I will go see a movie, perhaps "Camille Redouble". I'll post again next weekend! Or maybe sooner is something super exciting happens. A bientôt!

First Weekend in Paris

Well, I have successfully survived a week in Paris. Major pat on the back. I’m now getting better at saying hello and goodbye to people in the elevator, avoiding eye contact on the Métro and getting hit by scooters and bikes on the street, eating dinner at 8pm, figuring out what arrondissement I’m in, and dressing appropriately for the  ever-confusing weather (it’s harder than you’d think, the weather man is never right and I also don’t know Celsius yet).  But besides all the little things, this week has been pretty great. Classes haven’t started yet, my first will be this coming Wednesday, so I’ve had a lot of time to explore the city and get to know all the other Tufts students. In fact, I think I’ve only spent about 5 hours a day at the apartment, not including when I sleep (which is constituting less and less time, I might add). Lately I’ve been waking up, eating breakfast (which here consists mostly of liquid and for me about 15 slices of baguette because they’re so tiny), then leaving for the day until about 8 o’clock at night. Then after a dinner that usually lasts about an hour and a half, I watch the news with my host parents and then go to my room to read the Tintin and Asterix and Obelix comic books I’m borrowing from the little library usually reserved for their grand-children.

Thursday, September 13^th

This was the day we had a test to see at what level our French is at. It was kind of a rough awakening, after not having been in a French class since May, but it should be ok. Then we had more orientation sessions about health and safety, student life in Paris, and cultural opportunities. There are several magazines that publish huge lists of everything that’s going on in Paris that week, from festivals to movies to museum exhibitions. And there’s even a free magazine published just for Anglophones, called the FUSAC.  For lunch we went to a really popular café in the area that has a “formule”, like a lot of cafés, where for a fixed price, usually about 7 euros, you get a choice of sandwich, drink and dessert. I chose “pain au chocolat” (a chocolate croissant) for my dessert, and somehow got two! Best day ever. When our orientation sessions were over, I went on a walk with two other French students from the Tour de Montparnasse down the Rue de Rennes towards the Seine. At the end of the road is the Louvre, the Tuileries garden, and just a really pretty district in general. That night my host family had invited over another family that was also hosting an exchange student. They told me she was American, but actually she was from Zimbabwe and studying at Amherst. It was really nice to meet another exchange student outside of Tufts and see how her experience has been. She’s only staying the semester, but hopefully our families will have dinner together again. It’s nice to not be the only young person sometimes, as my host family’s children have all moved up. For dinner that night we had a salad with vinaigrette and chicken gizzard (which is delicious), rabbit with mustard sauce, cheese and baguette, and tarte aux Mirabelles, which are a sort of small plum. After the other family left, I went out to an Anglophone pub with two other Tufts students that also live in Neuilly. A lot of the people there were businesspeople that work at La Défense, but I don’t think we were the only English speakers there. After leaving I tried to take the Métro because I was really tired, but after waiting  on the platform for several minutes, I realized I had missed the last train as the last one leaves at 1am. Luckily I was only a 20 minute walk from my street, but in the future I’ll have to learn how to use the night buses.

Another view of the bridge I mentioned earlier that has all the padlocks on it.

A view of the Louvre from across the Seine.

Me on a bridge. The Louvre is to my right.

Some guys in the Tuileries playing petanque (boccie ball) which is like playing horseshoes or chess in the park in the U.S.

Friday, September 14^th

Today I went on a tour of the Marais with the Tufts group. The Marais is a district in Paris that is known as the Jewish and also Gay district. It’s a pretty neat area. There was one really creative memorial to the children that died in the Holocaust. The Holocaust museum was right next to a school, and in between was a small alleyway. Using some acoustic something or other, the artist amplified the sound of children’s voices coming from the windows, which echoed in a weird way in the alley and sounded very ethereal and kind of creepy. For lunch we went to one of the many falafel stands in the area on the rue des Rosiers. In the afternoon we went back to the Tufts office to choose our classes. In France this process is even more complicated than in the United States, especially for exchange students. This is because French students choose their career track when their about 15, and thus follow a set schedule of classes throughout their college career and don’t really have to choose anything. What’s more, almost nothing is actually posted on the internet, such as course descriptions, schedules, and locations, until the last minute, if ever. You have to go to the department at the school and get brochures with all this information if you want it in a timely manner. Thankfully Tufts will do most of the registration stuff for us, otherwise this would be a nightmare. For me, the main issues are finding classes that fit the requirements for my IR major, and that meet at least 3 hours per week so they count as a full credit. After several hours of deliberation and cross-referencing like 5 different brochures, as there are three different universities we can take classes in (and nothing is systematized), I finally decided that I will take the three classes offered by Tufts, a history class at Paris I on the history of contemporary Arab societies, and a class on French literature at Paris III. Hopefully I’ll stay with this schedule, though I don’t yet know at what time my literature class meets, as of course this schedule hasn’t come out yet. When we were done with that, we decided to have dinner together and join the Erasmus/Internationals Club for their activities that night. At 8 we met up with the Erasmus group (which is an exchange student program for EU citizens). The other students were German, Italian, Spanish, possibly some Brits, and one Australian that I chatted with. That evening the activity was going up to the Tour de Montparnasse, which offers an amazing view of the city. For dinner we Tufts students broke off from the group to eat at a restaurant specializing in food from Toulouse, a city in the southwest of France. I had onion soup, a cassoulet traditional, and a crème caramel. For an appetizer, they also gave us some really thin slices of sausage. After dinner we were going to join the others at a night club in Neuilly-sur-Seine called Palais M, but after seeing the line I just decided to walk home, which was a good call as I really needed to sleep, and some French people told me that it’s not a good one anyway.

my falafel sandwich

this is called a "religieux". It's delicious.

Cassoulet Traditional

Creme Caramel

Saturday, September 15th

Today was the start of the Journées Européennes du Patrimoine, which is when all the EU countries open up government buildings, museums, and historical sites for free to the public. As I love all things historical and free, this was really excited and I took full advantage of the opportunity. I met up with some other Tufts students, and we first tried to get into the Elysée, which is equivalent to the White House but much grander. We realized that the wait in the line was at least four hours, though, so we decided to forego it. After wandering around for a bit near the Place de la Concorde, we decided to go into the Ministry of the Interior, as the line was short. This ended up being really cool though, as we got to me the Minister of the Interior (Manuel Vallis), and we saw the prison cells where the Gestapo detained, questioned, and tortured members of the Resistance during WWII. Next we went to the Embassy of Great Britain, which was an amazing palace. They even set out the dinner service that they use for state dinners, and I saw the place setting and namecard used for the Queen of England! After that we went to the Jardin du Luxembourg and had some gelato, then went to see the Palais du Luxembourg which also functions as the Senate building. Normally this is never open to the public. Among other amazing, historically significant rooms and such, we saw the bedroom that Marie de Medicis slept in. After wandering around the Jardin some more, we met up with some more Tufts students and went grocery shopping to make dinner at my apartment. In my opinion, we cooked a very French meal even though we have zero experience. We made salad with vinaigrette, bacon-wrapped dates (in the microwave, as I don’t know how to use the oven), Brie and baguette, and had chocolate ice cream for dessert. Not too shabby. We then watched the television show “Nikita” dubbed into French, then went to another Tufts students apartment for a party his host brother was throwing. It was great fun, as I got to make some French friends, and discuss French and U.S. politics with them. Hopefully I’ll get to see more of them, as most of them lived within walking distance of my apartment.

me in the Senate chambers at the Luxembourg Palace

The Senate Library

The Senate Chambers

Me on a vintage motorcycle in the courtyard of the Ministry of the Interior

this is the place setting for the Queen of England at the British Embassy

These are some goats that live in the Tuileries gardens. Don't ask me why

Sunday, September 16^th

This was the second and last day of the Journées Européennes du Patrimoine. Again the Tufts group met at the obelisk at the Place de la Concorde, and proceeded to tackle Paris. We still didn’t get to see the Elysée, as that day President François Hollande was greeting people, and the wait time was about 8 hours. Instead, we went to the Hotel de Talleyrand, which was a mansion built by the Rothschild family, that was then purchased by the U.S. government and used to draft, sign, and implement the Marshall Plan. After that we saw the Observatoire du Louvre, then crossed the Seine to go down into the sewers. That might sound kind of weird, but it was actually fascinating, though smelly. These were the same sewers described by Victor Hugo in Les Misérables, and I’m pretty sure lots of shady stuff has gone on down there. For the tour, they even had some actors down there pretending to be Poseidon to stress the importance of water conservation, and two women from the 19^th century explaining stuff about the history of access to potable water in Paris. After re-ascending and taking in the fresh air, we then went to see the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Like all French government buildings, it is super grand and imposing, and used to be a palace/mansion. Among other things, I got to see the room and table where the G20 meets. After this I went back to the apartment to see my host parents as they had just arrived back from their weekend trip to Chartres, and for dinner we had a really delicious quiche Lorraine which like a pie made with eggs, cream and bacon. After watching the news, I called it an early night. Running around all over Paris is really tiring!

a secret door in the Hotel Talleyrand, used by the Rosthschild children to return to their bedroom

weapons found in the sewers of Paris. The fact that someone threw them in the sewer probably means they weren't used for good.

a mural of Jean Valjean (Les Mis) in the sewers of Paris

Inside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the room where the G20 gathers

The United States' place at the table. To our left is India.