Last week in Paris

The mood in Paris since the terrorist attacks on Friday has been both somber and defiant.

Last weekend many stores, public buildings, and monuments were closed and events, shows, and sporting events cancelled. For example, the weekly comedy show that Cyril and I always attend was cancelled last Sunday.

Monday I taught a grand total of 15 minutes of English because the teachers had to debrief the children. I teach in elementary schools in Velizy, a southwest suburb of Paris, so it wasn’t near the attacks at all, but of course this attack is a very serious deal for the French, and feels especially personal to the Parisians. Every time I entered a classroom, the teacher would come up to me and say apologetically, ‘In light of recent events, I don’t have time for English today, but feel free to sit in the back of the classroom as you wait for your next class.‘ The teachers spent time talking to their students about what they heard about the attacks, why it happened, answering their questions, and trying to correct hearsay and false information. Then they did activities with them about patriotism and solidarity. One class made a peace sign with words of comfort that they would like to tell the families of the victims, like amité, sourire, and liberté (friendship, smile, liberty).

Some of the teachers were concerned about the amount of violence that their students had been exposed to. ‘Some parents have no common sense at all, seriously what were they thinking??‘

This week there were numerous minutes of silence. On Monday at 10 am the elementary school gathered on the playground for a minute of silence. There was a city-wide minute of silence in Paris at noon on Monday which a large of part of France joined in, along with people around the world. People gathered in the squares and at the memorials for the victims, or stopped whatever they were doing. Even the metro stopped! I was in a book store, they made an announcement over the intercom, and we gathered in the aisles for the minute of silence. Last night before I played a volleyball match, our team and the opposing team gathered in a circle for a minute of silence. One of the fans of the opposing team ran out of the gym, crying. I wondered if she knew someone who had died.

I didn’t know any of the victims, but I know people who know people who knew the victims. Cyril’s boss’s daughter had a good friend who died in the attacks, and the daughter had been with her friend earlier that night. One of my friend’s friends had a colleague who died. Cyril went to high school with someone whose friend was killed.

Security has been a lot tighter around Paris lately. Whenever I went into a store this week they searched my bag. They also searched us when we went to the premier of the last Hunger Games movie on Tuesday. The series is dark in general, but the material seemed heavier because of what happened. I thought about the attacks several times during the movie. I think that we are exposed to violence so much in movies and other media that we are numbed to it after a while, but it is terrible stuff.

After the film, Cyril and I went to see the Eiffel tower. For a few nights, it was lighten up red, white, blue in commemoration. It was absolutely breathtaking. The pictures are nice, but they don’t capture the feeling of seeing it in person. Is it possible to feel patriotic for a country that isn’t your own? We stayed there for an hour talking and gazing at it. People were pulling their cars to the side of the road in from of the Iena bridge to get out and look at it. At the top of the red band is Paris’s motto ‘fluctuat nec mergitur’,  which means ‘she is tossed by the waves but does not sink’. Very fitting for a time like this.

 

Parisians are determined to not let the terrorists instill fear in them and keep them from living their lives so they are rallying. People are returning in force to cafes and restaurants with the rallying cry ‘Je suis en Terrace’ and ‘Tous au bistrot!’ ‘Everyone to the bistro!‘, and raising glasses of wine in celebration of a yearly wine festival that took place this past week.

It saddens me to see the backlash the attacks have created for refugees from the Middle East. If nothing else we should be more sympathetic to them now.  Friday night was terrible in Paris, but every day it is worse were they come from. It is too easy to forget that.

Peace.

 

Pray for Paris

I am deeply saddened by the events of last night in Paris and my heart breaks for the victims and their families. It was the deadliest terrorist attack in Europe since the Madrid train bombings of 2004.

The attacks rendered my first ever soccer game unforgettable. Our friends Elsa and Mickaël from Mulhouse are visiting us for the weekend and we went together to the Stade de France last night to cheer on the French national team, les Bleus, as they took on the German team. They have quite a rivalry so the atmosphere was great and the game itself was quite enjoyable. For the most part it was a game like any other. To top it off, France won 2-0.

The mad behind us was receiving some news about the attacks at this moment…

About 20 minutes into the match, there was a huge boom outside of the stadium. To me, it sounded like a cannon going off. It was loud even over the sound of the cheering and the fog horns and the chanting. The whole stadium stopped, gasped, and looked to the east, from whence the sound came but the game continued as usual. After a minute the crowd focused again on the game in the field. Three minutes after the first explosion, there was an identical boom. Again, everyone was distracted, even the players hesitated for a second but there was no announcement or anything, and the game continued as usual. After a few minutes, I was ready to forget the booms and enjoy the game, because I thought, ‘what are the chances that something bad is actually happening?’ But Cyril was unnerved. He has a sixth sense for when something is going wrong- I think it is because he worked as a firefighter for 9 years and has seen shit go down. Cyril called his brother Clement, ‘Can you please look on the news and the internet? We heard explosions outside the stadium, could you please try to figure out if something is happening and call us back?‘ We couldn’t look on the internet ourselves because with all the people in the stadium the network was overwhelmed. A few minutes later, Clement called back, ‘there was a shooting at a Parisian cafe, but in the 10th arrondissement, far from the stadium.‘ We didn’t find out until afterwards, but the French president, François Hollande, was evacuated from the stadium after the explosions, and the stadium was locked down from the outside so that no one could enter or leave. This was probably a good thing, because if they had immediately told us what was going on I think the stadium would have panicked. Towards the end of the game, we received news of a few more attacks and more people killed in Paris from Clement and other fans sitting around us that had received the news from their loved ones.

At the end of the game, like it wasn’t a big deal, they announced, ‘Due to an incident, the east gate is closed, please exit out of the northern, western, and southern gates.‘

We decided to stay in the stadium after the game for a few extra minutes to avoid the crowds. As we descended to leave out of the southern gate, and looked outside, we saw everyone in the streets in a panic, stampeding back into the stadium. That was a truly terrifying sight. That was the moment where I was really scared, I thought, ‘OMG is there a shooter outside?’ We turned around and ran back inside the stadium, up to our seats.  People came streaming back into the stadium and stormed the field and ran up the bleachers like us. Luckily it turned out to just be a false panic where the crowd mentality took over. We stayed in the stadium for 25 minutes until they made us leave. There were cops everywhere outside, the side roads were barricaded, and they herded everyone towards the RER train stop (most people came to the stadium by public transportation).

We waited around 45 minutes for the train to leave the station. During this time we sent reassuring messages to our friends and family and tried to figure out exactly what was going on in Paris by following Twitter feeds and reading articles online. It was surreal because there were so many rumors and false reports going around, and the death toll was rising and rising. The hostage situation at the Bataclan concert hall was still ongoing, and no one knew for sure how many people were still inside. That was when we found out the blasts outside the stadium had been suicide bombers. 4 people were killed outside of the stadium, and 3 of them were terrorists.

Of course, we wanted to get home as soon as possible and avoid the areas of attacks, but half the metro lines and tram lines were shut down.  We finally got home at 1:30 am but turned on the TV and watched the news until 3, we were too agitated to sleep. TF1, one of the main French channels, kind of like ABC in the US, had cancelled all of its regular programming and was streaming the news. The crazy thing is that Cyril and I watched the same kind of news stream with Elsa and Mickaël before because we were in Mulhouse visiting them last January when the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks happened. It is not a very pleasant kind of déjà vu.

François Hollande has called a national state of emergency and the country is on high alert. Today many things are closed in Paris: the monuments, the museums, and many stores, and restaurants. We had planned to spend the day in Paris with our guests but are hanging tight at home and chilling instead.

Today we found out that the suicide bombers at the Stade de France had made a mistake. It could have been much worse. They had meant to come before the game and set off the bombs in the lines of people waiting to enter the stadium on the east side. I am so very thankful that it didn’t happen. There are only 4 entrances to the stadium, and getting in isn’t very efficient, so there were huge crowds outside waiting to enter. We stood in a line ourselves for over a half an hour before entering from the south.

To end on a positive note, it has been incredible to see the solidarity of the French people and the world in the face of this terrible act. The french police, firefighters, EMTs, and other emergency personnel were admirable last night.  People were using the hashtag opendoor and porteouverte on twitter and giving their address if strangers needed a place to stay.

To wrap it up, it was a crazy night, and a horrible night, but we are safe.

Six week mark ramblings

I have already been in France for 6 weeks! I feel like I am adjusting pretty well so far; it helps that I have a support network here in France. Here is a little reflection about what I really enjoy and don’t enjoy about France, and what I miss about Minnesota.

Things France does well:

1. Bread! With a boulangerie (bakery) on every street corner, the only problem is trying to not eat too much of the fluffy stuff. It is usually only 1 euro for a whole baguette. In the same vein, great wine and cheese are relatively inexpensive here too.
2. Public transportation. It is possible to get almost anywhere without a car here, and the buses come often enough during the day that one doesn’t have to plan that hard to catch them. This past summer I lived in a suburb of Chicago and without a car, I would have been stranded. My poor roommate from Brazil had to depend on me if she wanted to go anywhere because the public transportation was so bad.  An equivalent Parisian suburb is much better connected. The only real complaint I have is about the public transportation trip planning application, RATP, which has led me astray on multiple occasions.
3. Cafes. All the street corners that are not home to boulongeries are housing little adorable cafes. Most have outside seating with seats facing the street, all the better for people watching. Even in the winter, they put out heating lamps so that people can still sit outside. Cyril and I often meet friends at cafes for a casual drink before comedy shows and movies or just because:)
4. Meals. French meals are long and luxurious at restaurants and when sharing with friends and family. They really take time to enjoy their food and company. First, before the meal, there is the aperitif, which is when everyone sits down in the living room and has a drink with a light snack like nuts or chips or charcuterie (cured meat). Then at the dinner table, there is usually a first course, followed by the main dish. After that, comes the bread with the smelly cheese, and then dessert (fruit is considered a dessert here, so it isn’t always a sweet). After dessert, people drink coffee. Somehow French people stay skinny though!

   

   Aperitif fare, photo credit: http://sf2.viepratique.fr/

5. Les bisous. When greeting and saying goodbye to a friend or a meeting a friend-of-a-friend it is common to faire des bisous, which is when you kiss each other on the cheeks. More accurately, you usually just touch cheeks and make a kissing noise. The number of kisses depends on the region of France.  In Paris, it is 2 (one on each cheek) and in the south it is 3. I think it is a very charming way to say hello and goodbye to someone!
6. Pizza. French pizza is awesome. One normal sized pizza serves one person, because the crust is very thin. Four cheese french pizza usually has goat, emmental, mozzarela, and blue cheese- how amazing is that? It is great because it combines the greatness of American and Italian pizza. It is complex like American pizza with the high quality, fresh ingredients of Italian pizza.  Italian pizza is too simple, with usually just 3 ingredients.

Things that I am having trouble accepting about France:

1. The smoking culture. It is unbelievable how many people smoke here! It seems like I am constantly breathing in second hand smoke in public places.

2. My next complaint is something that 95% of people wouldn’t even notice, but as a plant lover, it is my pet peeve. Pollarding, the way that they prune trees here, is horrendous. In pollarding, the tops of the trees are cut off, and then every year or two from then on, the sticks that grow out of the trees’ stumpy branches are also cut off. Many municipalities hire people to do it. It is so ugly and sad that it literally hurts me. And it is bad for the trees too. The Parisian municipality has stopped doing it to the new trees that they plant, but once something is pollarded, it needs to continue to be pruned that way. Of course, pollarding’s fiercest proponents are the people that do it for a living.

   

   WHY? photo credit: https://thebest5years.files.wordpress.com

   I am all for pruning trees when they need to be pruned and when it is done the correct way. But this is like surgeons going around giving unnecessary amputations, and even worse, doing a shitty job of it. As fall progresses, I notice it more and more because without their leaves, the trees’ twisted, unnatural architecture is exposed.
   Whew! I needed to get that off of my chest.
3. Bureaucracy. No wonder the word is French in origin. Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork! In my experience, everything has to be mailed by snail mail, and they ask for a confusing combination of original documents and photocopies, and then it takes a long time for them to process everything. Italy is also famous for its bureaucracy, but I was a little bit sheltered when I studied abroad in Florence, because my study abroad program helped us out a lot.

Things that I miss about Minnesota:

1. Fall. The leaves change color here too, but the culture of fall is stronger in the Midwest. Minnesotans milk it for all that it’s worth because we are forced to hunker down and hibernate for the winter afterwards. I miss football games outside, pumpkin carving, Halloween mania, gathering squash from the family garden, corn mazes, and apple pie. I even miss hearing people obsess about pumpkin spice! Halloween isn’t a french tradition at all, but it has become more popular in recent years. Cyril and I had a small Halloween get together and half the people dressed up- the half that had lived in the US for at least a semester of college:) Wrestling season is starting in Minnesota, and I wish I could be there to watch my brothers duke it out for the Gophers. But the worst is that I am going to miss Thanksgiving with my family:(
2. Dressing casually. I don’t wear sweatpants/ yoga pants/ t shirts in public. The French are dressier than Americans, and I am trying hard not to stand out, so goodbye yoga pants! But sometimes a girl just wants to be comfy!
3. Communicating easily. Doing simple things like going to the post office are harder here. I have to mentally prepare myself and plan what I am going to say. Then of course, they ask me a question that I wasn’t expecting and that throws me off! Talking on the phone is even worse. But it is all a learning experience, and my french is improving tremendously.
4. Most of all I miss my family and friends! So don’t hesitate to get in touch via facetime, skype, or google hangout!