Paris and memories

Today is the day after the attacks on Paris. When I wake up I usually skip my promise to meditate as a start to a good day and go straight to my computer to check out what is going on in the world and among my friends. This morning I did the same. It was not a happy good morning. I found on FB link to Marseillaise from Casablanca. One of my blogging friends reminded us of it, I watched and cried. At times it is easy to bring me to tears with moving scenes. This was definitely one of the times. The world is shocked and many deep comments have been made on the subject. I do not feel up to it, but I feel with France and French people. My thoughts went to happy times I spent in Paris – Le Gai Paris – that is far from joyful today. I still want to remember it the way I experienced it. It is my way to protest against something that I can not comprehend and cannot agree with. I feel so helpless, my little manifestation of putting French colours across my FB picture seems pathetic and inadequate but what can I do? What we, people who are against such horrific, heartless violence can do? Resist being afraid is one thing that comes to mind. Another is to remember happy times in this town. Here are my memories:

http://acobserves.blogspot.com.au/2015/05/french-are-amazing.html

http://acobserves.blogspot.com.au/2015/04/more-on-french-films-festival.html

http://acobserves.blogspot.com.au/2015/03/sydney-french-films-festival.html

http://acobserves.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/under-french-spell.html

http://acobserves.blogspot.com.au/2014/04/story-of-mussels.html

French are amazing!

This s my long promised and long postponed an almost X-rated post. I am not a frivolous person, some would call me even prude, but my sense of humour does not allow me to keep such am amazing story untold. You may find the story unbelievable and even I have difficulties to believe myself and my memory. All of it is true though and my memory serves me right. I have even a witness of the events. So here it goes…

One Sunday afternoon, my partner and I were coming home after a golf game and to our surprise there was a police van parked in front of this respectable building we thought we lived in. There must have been about ten policemen in front of the gate to Rue Tronchet 27. Some were walking around the van, some were sitting inside. I felt really worried and scared.. The building did not seem to be safe to enter. However the policemen looked happy and even amused. Maybe the danger was not that great after all so we decided to try to sneak into safety of our apartment. As we entered the gate, we met a very angry man shouting and gesturing angrily. Alas, in French! Walking along the man there was a policeman, judging from his very elegant uniform, of a high rank who tried to settle the man down. It did not seem to help and the man was still shouting while leaving the parameters of the building. Things were really not to his liking.

It is difficult to blame us for being curious what the story was all about. Through the windows we could observe the policemen. They seemed really amused. There was a lot of laughter and shrugging shoulders French way. The high ranked policeman went back through the gate and walked into one of the courtyard staircases. In the past it must have been a kitchen staircase of the house. Our kitchen door opened to this staircase but at the time of the events, I was not aware of who might have lived there and why our apartment had a second staircase at all.

The police van was still in the street and the men seemed to have a really good time. After some time the commandant appeared in the street again in the company of a young woman I often thought in the courtyard before. She looked like a schoolgirl. White, starched blouse, black pants and a pony tail of long black hair. Very neat. 

She looked a little like this. You must agree that it was something schoolgirlish about her.

Now everybody was smiling and looked friendly. The girl gave the whole squad a friendly wave and walked away down the street. All policemen got into the van and the street looked normal again. Hardly anybody there, till Monday morning.

We were very puzzled by the whole event and could not even start guessing what it was all about.

Next morning I met in the courtyard our concierge who was Polish and we had a common language. I was still curious about what the Sunday afternoon story was all about. I asked her. She looked a bit embarrassed, waved her hand dismissively saying “Ah… it was nothing. The girl apparently promised the client deux fois pour 200 Franks and did not quite delivered as per agreement”.

Modesty does not allow me to translate it to English. I thought that it was a strange and rather minor offence. If it was an offence at all. That the client called the police is difficult to comprehend, at least to me, I am not French after all. What he really expected? 100 Franks back? Or delivering the service as promised?

Another point is that my observation made me believe that Parisian police typically ignores calls. Opposite our building was a Cacharel shop with either many bakes in or a faulty alarm system. We were woken up many times in the middle of the night with a very loud alarm system that was set off. I never saw any police coming to check up what was the matter.

Isn’t France wonderful? Aren’t values a bit different to the rest of the world?

 I am not sure what the readers may be reading into the story but just for the less experienced in life, the shy school girl was actually a person working in the oldest profession. 

Parisian memories

I have been flaneuring through my memories. For some reason my thoughts often went to Paris. Maybe it was a result of the French Films Festival?  Or maybe it is because they were really good times, that I spent in Paris. It was so much to discover and absorb and I was so young. Hmmm….Whatever the reason, my Parisian memories suddenly became vivid and I enjoy recollecting the times. Sometimes, I stop and think about something I experienced there, the details flood my memory. It seems to be a little like flaneuring. I look around the pictures that pop up to my mind and then go a bit further in the recollection process. New pictures and new memories... It is quite fun, I want to capture my thoughts. At one stage I thought of writing about a very French event, almost X-rated and quite unbelievable.  I know it was true and I also know that not many will believe me. This post is to set the scene; the next one will be a juicy one. How about that for building up expectations? I wonder if it will work.

I lived in Paris only one year. It was going to be a three year assignment of my husband who worked for IBM. My first foreign country, I moved to a completely different life style from that I was used to. In Poland I had a very interesting job that I loved, friends, family and familiar surroundings. I had a good life in Warsaw even if my Western friends did not quite believe me.

At that time, I loved France and all French things. My love became more realistic with time, like one may experience in a good long lasting relationships. With time illusions fade, one is not infatuated any more, we see imperfections and get sometimes irritated with the object of our affection but the fondness is there even if the eyes are wide open. This is how I now feel about France; love it but not blindly.

So, some years ago I landed up in Paris without knowing the language, no friends and husband working IMB hours. These mean very, very long hours. I had a lot of time on my hands. Even if I had qualifications and a will to work as a programmer, I was not granted a French work permit.  It was my first disappointment with French ways. But it was not all bad, far from it. Paris is Paris. It has Louvre, parks, rue St Honore, Monmartre, many museums and streets to flaneur along. I was very lucky which I forgot to appreciate at times and sometimes let myself feel miserable in this foreign country that was interesting but sooo foreign after all.

This is Rue Tronchet in the XIX century, a busy street even then. La Madeleine in its full splendor at the end of the street. We lived in one of the buildings on the right side of the street.

                         

 We lived at rue Tronchet 27. Not exactly a place people live in Paris but since the assignment was only one year my wise husband thought that living in a very centre of Paris would be a good thing for us. And it was. The place was next to the big department stores Printemps and Galeries Lafayette. I could see La  Madeleine church if I leaned out of the window a bit. It was about 5 minutes walk to the Opera. Boulevard Haussmann about 100 meters from the gate of our building. The Louvre and Tuileries Gardens in a walking distance. It was a fantastic shopping and cultural location.

Window shopping started just when I left the gate of the building.

Being so centrally located, the place was noisy! To open the windows was almost out of the question. Even when the windows were closed it was difficult to hear sound of television in business hours. It became quiet when shops and offices closed. Then the place was deserted.

Sundays were quiet days, hardly any traffic or people walking the street. Spooky.

My next story is about a Sunday afternoon at Rue Trochet 27.

Memories of Christmas

Christmas went by in a way that it was not too exuberant for me. Nice and homely though.  There were no Polish excesses of 12 dishes on my Christmas Eve table this year but my Aussie favourites – oysters, prawns and a blue swimmer crab. Even if I do not follow the lessons of my original catholic upbringing, I still follow the tradition of fasting on Christmas Eve. Fasting in the sense that no meat should be present on the table this special day. In this case, I am more catholic than the Pope. The Christmas Eve fast has been actually abolished some time ago by Vatican. But at my family home there was never any meat this evennig and for some reason it is important to me to keep the tradition.

Even if it was a non event Christmas, I got two presents that I enjoy very much and that have left a mark of Christmas 2014. I am a tea drinker and all accessories related to tea are very important to me. I have many tea pots and special tea cups but I still stop at tea shops and examine any possibilities to add to my collection. My friend recognising the weakness of mine, gave me for Christmas a lovely tea pot and matching mugs. I am enjoying my tea in the new mug while I am writing this post.

Another special gift from another dear friend was a book by John Baxter – The Most Beautiful Walk in the World. John Baxter is an Australian writer who lives in Paris. As it turns out we, John Baxter and I, have at least one thing in common. Love for Paris is the thing. For many years I have been fascinated by France and French and especially Paris. A promise of three years of life in Paris many years ago, made me leave my home country. It turned out to be only eleven moths and the Paris assignment continued, to my chagrin, in Dusseldorf but I had great time in this wonderful city even if at that time I was home sick crazy.

The book about Paris woke up my love and fascination with Paris. It also reminded me of flaneur-ing. I heard first the word flaneur from another friend of mine, who likes the word so much that he is going to camino flaneur-ing in Spain. This is taking the word flaneur to its extreme. So many kilometres of flaneur-ing! I think that this is a great plan, Hans, and I envy you.

So what does it mean to flaneur? It is to wonder the streets without an intent to get somewhere but just to observe what’s around. Diane Johnson, in her book Le Divorce, defines it as "mess[ing] around with no guilty sense of being unoccupied." So maybe Hans will  not  exactly flaneur in Spain as his intention is to get to Santiago de Compostela is clear.

Rain should not stop a real flaneur

After reading the book and under its influence, I took into flaneur-ing in Mosman. My observations include inspecting the neighbouring properties. Checking the architecture, gardens, size of the houses, local pets.... I am wondering if being a flaneur in Mosman does not carry a bit of danger of being misunderstood for a Peepping Tom. Paris is definitely the ideal place to flaneur, but for now Sydney suburbs will have to do for me.

Curiosity and need for detail in observations are important to a flaneur

Flaneur-ing in Mosman made me notice that gardens of the properties are shrinking and the houses expend their living space. This is not a happy observation. Green spaces are shrinking. Mosman Council pay attention!