Once upon a time, I had a Russian boyfriend who used “democratic” as an adjective to describe cafes and bars. In his opinion, it seemed that “civil” was its antonym, and as the native English speaker, who was I to beg to differ?

It’s taken a number of years now, but Vanya – I’m finally on your rave-length, I finally understand what you were rabbiting on about for all that time. It only took a weekend in Portugal, away from Paris, to have your ir-rationale finally dawn on me, clear as mud. I guess it’s all about context…

Because Guillaume and I have just spent the weekend away in Lisbon, and after a lethargic few beers in the sunshine, I found myself waxing lyrical about the marvel of “democratic” cafes.

The revelation goes something like this: in a democratic cafe, you can get whatever you want, whenever you want, at a price accessible to everyone. It’s the unpretentious point-and-choose domain of snack bars and kiosks, and I was instantly won over by it in Lisbon.

On one hand, there’s the liberty and equality of Paris, where everyone is free to purchase alcohol or soft drinks at an equal price – yet rest assured the patron has taken liberties with the prices. Budget travellers in Paris are confronted with a veritable minefield of seating arrangements and drink options – do you want that coffee enough to sit down for it, or are you happy to settle for standing at the counter with the old men and other 1€ espresso aficionados? Paris is best for those working on their poker faces, for you get very adept at not raising an eyebrow to a 4.50€ slurp of beer…

Lisbon, on the other hand, is coffee and cake pick-me-ups, snacks and sandwiches galore, and well-endowed bowls of fruit. All in the same sitting, if you’re that way inclined – but with prolific snack bars you may as well wander and graze.

When I see a hot chocolate flavour list reading like an ice-cream parlour menu (classic, dark, white, orange, mint, hazelnut, toffee, coffee, fruits or white & fruits – I kid you not!) tucked away in some corner of a cafe in Paris, maybe I’ll come around.

But for the meantime, I’ll have my taste buds nostalgic for some Portuguese “democratic” cafe culture…

High on the list of Paris stereotypes is the one about the dog turd. My shoes (if they could talk oh the stories they would tell) are sad to say, there’s no fictive base to this one. Guillaume and I have even spent considerable amounts of time theorising as to the cause of this – but aside from fanciful theories about richer diets and increased bowel movements, I think it just comes down to more dogs in confined urban surrounds, inconsiderate owners (I mean the fact that they have huge handsome huskies better suited to Siberian snowdrifts and endless taiga rather than the Parisian concrete jungle should be evidence enough of this), and a reluctance to pooper-scoop. That’s it, plain and simple.

Like any other facets of French life, British author Stephen Clarke has also pondered this and notes it down amusingly as typical of the national pride in individualism.

He writes: ‘Why should I, dog owner, waste my precious time cleaning up after my dog or taking it to poo in a place where no one will be likely to tread in it? I don’t want it to poo in my living room or outside my front door, so I’ll walk it a few doors away, let it dump there and then go back home and get on with my life.

Some considerate Parisian dog owners do make an effort. They take their chiens to pretty pedestrian streets, where the dog won’t have its digestive system traumatised by the noise and vibrations of passing cars. The fact that street cleaners don’t clean up as often in the pedestrian streets isn’t the dog owner’s problem.’

You get the idea.

It reminds me of one evening at our local DVD store. Guillaume and I noticed a woman absorbed in a self-important bustle, dragging a ludicrously limping chihuahua who was trying desperately to stop for a leak. Don’t let anything get in the way of renting your DVDs, lady.

Not that we needed to advise her this, as she certainly wasn’t, and the pitiful pup was a sore reminder of this for any onlooker, being led by the neck and bounced along on three legs and one shoulder. Of course, when the insipid dog had a moment of rest – i.e. stationary inside the ‘video club’ – he let it all go in a moment of sheer relief. All over the floor, with a timid yet happy look on his face. This was nothing compared to the impatient tutting of the woman, and the exasperated look as the store clerk handed the cleaning product and paper towels to her with a: ‘This time, YOU clean it up.’

We killed ourselves laughing all the way home and tried to imagine how many times it had previously happened to the guy behind the counter to greet her as a serial-offender. Sheesh, why rent films when funny stuff like this happens in real life?

Do you think that I’d be suited in the world of culinary reviews? I’ve always dreamed of someone being interested in my convoluted film reviews, but maybe I’ll start with Paris café culture as a basis and work my way from there…

It’s just a little café that I want to get my teeth into, a stone’s throw from our place and a remarkable luxury in that it’s open on Sundays and until late at night, when the rest of the 16th sleeps and dreams of clouds with silver, gold and platinum credit card linings (exhausted by a day of frivolous spending and excessive promenading).

It goes by the name of Bo-Zinc, but we affectionately term it the ‘wanker café.’

(Excuse my language, Gran & Granddad, it’s just a new swanky French work I’ve picked up…)

This local café on the corner should be an absolute gem – with an interesting and reasonably innovative menu, affordable drinks, and a cosy and charming décor. In fact, we’ve theorised that this is the end product of when rebel-rebel youths of the 16th break from tradition and attend design school, instead of studying finance.

But… I find it an ordeal whenever I go there. Back in the heady, tobacco-smoke-clouded days of 2007, you could go to the café and watch on as the waiters leant back and smoked ciggies and practised looking like Orlando Bloom. There wasn’t much else to look at, no distraction in the form of a drink, as they weren’t likely to break from their posing to actually serve anyone. Now, in 2008 and strict anti-smoking laws, the new season’s fashion is for them to talk amongst themselves.

G & I were doing out laundry the other night, and wondered if we should stop by for a drink there to kill time. Until we realised that we probably wouldn’t get served before the half hour cycle of the washing machines was over, so we just brought a laptop and a DVD of The Office to convert the laundromat into our own personal lounge room…

… but not so good either!

The bad boys of the 16th have stuck. They’re not so bad* – they’re downright awful.

I feel a social responsibility to keep every Anglophone out there updated on the world of French novelty rap, so this instalment is devoted to the 2007 clip from the Dior Homme boys, Passy Mal, showing that even the gilded youth of the affluent Parisian 16th arrondissement can keep it real.

From Trocadéro to Passy, they’re the ones doing R’n’B…


The have some nerve though, going through the motions of a battle with the crowned sovereign of French “raparody”, Fatal Bazooka!

I guess the only reason this clip stirs a giggle from me is that they are from my ‘hood and some of the visual gags in the film clip are all too close to the truth. Their attempts at “hardcore” are pitiful though, as the only loaded weapons around here come in the form of stocks, bonds, trust funds and investments.

I’m here as an au pair, mind you. I’m not hereditarily stinking rich or shaking my stuff in finance. It’s eye-opening though and at times I have to concentrate on keeping a straight face when walking along Rue de Passy.

Guillaume and I saw some real, authentic basketball bad boys on 16th turf one night at a local supermarket though. But these Harlem Globetrotter hoodlums were buying a six pack of litre milk cartons and some cookies, so the cashier and queuing customers could only look on with doey glances from loving eyes and fond sighs at how it was just so adorable.

We hypothesised later that perhaps they were lining their stomachs before a heavy night of drinking, but the cookies were a little incongruous in that theory!

* The golden ghetto-wannabes Passy Mal play on the words pas si mal (not so bad) and their boutique-lined Rue de Passy origins.

The bureaucratic process in France still continues to amaze me. Maybe this is because I thought that I had experienced it all when trying to get a last-minute Russian student visa in Mongolia without the appropriate documentation (it ended with an strange grilling / interview by the Consular in between the highlights of a Moscow Spartak football match… and a visa for me).

But – in my naïve world view – that was almost to be expected with dealing with two post-Soviet states in the wilds of the steppes. Silly me. I should have known better. Of course it’s exactly the same wild goose chance in enlightened and rational France – long live equality for all in painful hassles and ingratiated fawning!

Why the angst? Well after living in Paris and working as an au pair for over six months, I’ve finally collected enough documentation to apply for health cover. I went proudly to the social security today with my collected treasure trove (birth certificate, passport, bank account statement, documents that I’ve needed my diploma to apply for, first toe nail clippings, the Golden Fleece… you know, just the norm) and after waiting for my number to eventually grace the neon display was duly ripped to shreds by the woman working there.

I should have known. I was once told by a friend to play your documents against bureaucracy like it was a hand of cards – ie. never show your trump card until absolutely necessary. But I just went and laid it all on the table…

She barked at me what was wrong with my documents (bugger! I had forgotten to write the name of my employer!) and then sighed a few times whilst looking through the other papers and expectantly at me.

I thought that meant I should show some initiative (she wasn’t offering a pen, that was for sure), so I took one out of my bag and demonstrated how simple it was to rectify the omitted detail.

She waited till I had finished and then scolded me for filling it out… ‘and you’ve done it with a red pen!’

A rapid fire tirade followed. She obviously wasn’t of the “speak slowly and the foreigner will understand” school. Turns out I had filled out the entire thing myself in error, including the signature at the bottom. I’m sure last time I was there I was told to fill it out, and I’d shown it to both French boss and boyfriend without them picking up that it wasn’t me who was to sign.

So after the fuss and the sighs, a little indignation on my part (which is very difficult when balancing diplomacy with a limited vocabulary), and then me sitting there thinking forlornly that I would have to return, she took my phone number, photocopied a page and filed my documents.

I sat there still, wondering what to make of it all… ‘and now…?’

‘Three weeks’ she replied.

I’m back in Paris, only to find out that I’ve brought the Swiss alpine weather with me. There’s recently been quite a bit of hail, and I’ve just received word that it’s snowing out near Paris Orly airport. Needless to say, I have one eye on my computer screen and one eye out the window, but it doesn’t look like we’re going to get any of the white stuff in our ‘hood.

Not that there was any shortage of it in Switzerland. Even though the first few days were warm (and the melting wasn’t just confined to the plethora of fondue pots in Crans-Montana), there was a steady stream of heavy snow for the last few days of my Valais vacation.

So I’ll just have to remember fondly all the natural beauty of the slopes and the surgically enhanced “beauty” of the skiers…

It was also fun to people-watch at après-ski leisure activities, because Crans-Montana seemed to draw all sorts. From the adherents of mountain glam to the wild-eyed, ruddy cheeked alpine types, it was like an exhibition entitled ‘Mountain Mode: Over the Ages’, as there were still a lot of lurid 1970s jumpsuits being proudly modelled. I fell into the latter dishevelled category of course… through preference as much as necessity.

My main regret on returning to Paris is that I have to resume brushing my hair. I love ski (and surf) holidays for just being able to hand-sculpt your hair flat!

I haven’t quite figured out the time management skills required to see an exhibition that isn’t in its final closing moments… so, true to form, I bustled through the Chaïm Soutine exhibition at the Pinacothèque de Paris with the rest of the last minute crowds.

Born in 1893 near Minsk, in the small Jewish settlement of Smilovichi, Soutine left the Russian Empire and Vilnius School of Fine Arts for Paris. Based around Montparnasse and living in the fabled artistic centre La Ruche (The Beehive), Soutine is a key figure in the Parisian cultural legacy of noble or artistic poverty, Eastern European émigrés and Expressionism.

The exhibition opened with the products of Soutine’s youth, predominantly from his wretchedly poor period in the 1910s. Using rich colours to give the works life, Soutine presents ultimately distorted visions of everyday life. It’s grotesque, yes (he even goes as far as entitling one of his works as such), but it’s no where near as horrific as the previous exhibition I’ve written about, that of 16th century Italian artist, Giuseppe Arcimboldo. Soutine treats his subjects warmly, and his depictions of the grotesque have not been undertaken with detachment.

Soutine left Paris in 1918 for Cagnes on the Côte d’Azur, and then settled in the Pyrenees town of Céret for three years. This was followed by a stint (1923-25) divided between Paris and the vicinity of Cagnes (the so-called ‘Cagnes period’). During this era, the works shift focus (reiterated by a descent into the Pinacothèque basement) and become muddled landscapes and muffled portraits. Soutine depicts villages all in a jumble, like hazy memories souvenired from Mediterranean towns, basked in a warm sunlight but lacking structure and foundation. It’s just like German Expressionism mixed with one too many beakers of pastis… with a bit of hanging meat and the odd suspended produce still-life thrown in for good measure.

A fascinatingly vivid exhibition in terms of content, but the layout and access to a logical flow of information maybe left a little to be desired…

When I first received news about my au pair job in Paris, I was a little puzzled about the way it was reported to family and friends in French. You see, in all the conversation there was one repeating motif that stuck out in my (in)comprehension – and that was regarding my employer. Every time my future boss was referred to in a conversation, it was always as “la bonne femme” which in my limited understanding of the situation, meant “the good woman” who was taking me under her wing.

‘Hey!’ I wanted to cry out, ‘I’m not such a charity case! Even though I don’t speak French, I’m otherwise very employable!’

Until I found out that bonne femme just means “the (random) woman” or “that woman”, no personal character slur against me was intended, it’s just that the French seem to be very polite about strangers (innocent until proven guilty?), which makes funny situations where say, a car crash can be jocularly reported amongst friends as “oh yeah, I ran up the good woman’s rear.” Ohhhh-la-la…

Bonhomme is also in common usage, and can be frequently heard in the winter months with the term bonhomme de neige (snowman) inciting cries of glee from young children.

I was also reading recently that “Jacques Bonhomme” was an insulting nickname for the average Parisian city-dweller from Sorbonne students in the thirteenth century…

So – good people of the world – there you go!

BEFORE: Other than going to the hairdresser, I’ve never felt such apprehension over such a seemingly small task. Pick up some keys and sit in a school children’s library for an hour and a half. To re-cap, I’m an au pair in Paris and I feel like my “mum” has thrown me in the deep end, because I’ll have to keep an army of mere babes quiet – and they’ll all be speaking French.

Plus – it’s pouring with rain, so there will be nothing else to do in the lunch break other than terrorise the petrified librarian – great, just great. Public speaking to vast crowds – not a problem; solo travel across Siberia – without blinking an eyelid (ok, maybe there was a little batting of damsel in distress eyelashes, but that was just to get across a linguistic divide)… but a room full of French infants…

“Just get your BD and get out of here!”

Gosh, how do I say that in French?

AFTER: Alright… I’ll update this post with the outcome – it wasn’t too bad at all. I was greeted on arrival by some dripping wet boys who announced that I was their saviour (so far, so good) and I said “Bonjour” more that I ever have in my entire time in France thus far. In return, I was greeted as “Madam” more than I ever care to be (gosh, for another decade at least!)

The biggest request I had to deal with was for a pencil or a pen, and in the end, I was guilty of being in league with the biggest noisemaker, a girl of eight-years-old who was determined to read me a story and tell me about all her classmates.

I was happy to see recently that Marion Cotillard took out the Oscar Award for her performance in the stunning film La Môme.

Homage to the turbulent life and times of iconic French chanteuse, Édith Piaf, the film is as visually spectacular as the content is fascinating.

Cotillard’s deservedly recognised performance tops it all off. I only saw the film recently, and for days after her vibrancy as the young Piaf and her convincingly cantankerous aged Piaf are all performances of which the memory remains clear in my mind – and the accent on the tip of my tongue, just waiting until I speak enough French to be able to pull off Piaf’s distinctive parigote accent myself… eh, eh… then my linguistic repertoire will surely be complete!

The film is as much a tribute and recognition of a place and era as much as lauding the remarkable figure of Piaf. It portrays a sensitive and essentially romantic vision of the artistic sentiments of Old Paris, as well as the drink, the poverty and the squalor. You get the feeling of possibility and chance even while looking down what can be nothing more than a grimy dead-end street.

Piaf’s life story encapsulates this – but the fairytale of her life still concludes at the same standstill of alcohol and destructive love affairs. Born in the heart of working class Belleville, under a street lantern or so the story is reported to run, she epitomised the rags to riches story of a street urchin making it in the big city. She painted pictures of the mythology of Old Paris – capturing visions of whores and accordion players on cobbled streets, stories from the people’s Paris. This is also what the film attempts, and it’s a rich celebration of life in spite of poverty. However there’s no life without death, and the film’s depictions of death are of charting slow and determined demises.

All in all… recommended entirely. Yeah, yeah, Cotillard was suitably gushing in her acceptance speech… but it goes with the Academy Award territory really (I’m sure “possibility for post-ridicule” is part of the Academy’s judging criteria…)