The Inaccurate Tourist

23. Guest

These weeks started with the long-awaited Coupe de Site. This is a yearly event held on the work site, with sports, games, food and prizes for the kids. The departments are organized into teams, and the preceding weeks were all of the preliminary matches of football, volleyball and chess. Only the finals were held on the day of the Coupe de Site.

Our department's name was Rubis and I had signed up to play in the chess team and to run individually in the three kilometre cross-country. Unfortunately, as many of my friends can tell you, I don't know how to play chess, but since chess isn't as popular as petanque, the rest of the team encouraged me to participate. Similarly, I hadn't really prepared for the run either.

I'm pleased to report that, despite the fact that I hadn't won a single chess game during the preliminary rounds, I did my duty at the finals. We won three of our four matches in the finals -- and I wasn't the member that lost.

But the best part of the week was my first guest. Nancy is a long-time family friend, and since she was living in Merry Old England, we decided to work out an exchange. She arrived on the solstice, the longest day of the year and also the fête de la musique in France. In many cities, bands and musicians set up in all sorts of venues and all corners and the streets close for pedestrians. Unfortunately, the métro wasn't cooperating with us and we missed several hours, but we still had a decent walk, listening to the bands and watching the people.

At about midnight, we ended up at the Jardin de la Tuileries, which is a garden in front of the Louvre in the centre of the city. We were both famished, so we decided to eat at one of the carnival booths and then go up the Ferris wheel for a night view of the city. We skipped the first booth after watching the cook giving her dog water from her cupped hands before returning to the grill, but we grabbed a place in line at the second tent to get a merguez (spiced sausage) on a bun. I've really enjoyed the quality of the sausage in France, and even the carnival sausage was pretty impressive.

We missed the Ferris wheel, because the carnival closed while we were eating. The last métro had gone by as well, so we had to walk back to my place. Although Nancy and I are both power walkers, it took over an hour to return. It was a very pleasant and warm night.

We followed our late night with an early morning. We were going to get to the Eiffel tower at it's opening to beat the crowds, but I wanted to take a detour to show Nancy one of the nearby open-air markets close to my house. It's very small, with just a single cheese vendor and a couple of vegetable booths. We stopped at a little boulangerie for a chaussure aux pommes and a coffee, and chatted with some American tourists who were leaving that day.

At the end of the street was the gate into the Montparnasse cemetery, which we had been discussing earlier. I thought it would be good idea to duck in and visit Jean-Paul and Simone again, but we ended up doing a longer tour. On the other end of the cemetery was another, larger open-air market, so we strolled through it as well, looking at the fish and cheese, flowers and vegetables, olives and breads. Nancy bought some fresh raspberries for later, and we found a vendor selling the same tablecloths I picked up in Provence.

We had already covered a dozen kilometres by foot, and it was only noon on her first day in Paris. We took the métro again towards St. Michel so Nancy could buy a journal in the Latin Quarter and we walked towards the Seine to sit in another terrace and sip another coffee.

We went through the square in front of Notre Dame. Because this is such a high-traffic tourist area, there are usually signs warning the crowds about pickpockets. I've yet to see a pickpocket, but the american couple from the morning had two attempts made on their wallets. There are also people asking for spare change, typically asking if you speak English first.

This was the first time I had been inside Notre Dame. It was very crowded, and the visitors weren't very worshipful -- there was more loud chatting and flash picture-taking, which seemed to shrink the inside of the church. The lines to the towers were extremely long, so we decided to sit in the shade in a little park between Notre Dame and the Seine and eat the raspberries with a little Sugar Twin, watching little Italian children excavating a sandbox.

We continued along the Seine towards La Samaritaine, the grand magasin. They weren't going to get any business from us this week -- we just poked around a bit and went up to the panorama on the roof. I had discovered this view the week before. There's an elevator most of the way to the top, but you have to take a few staircases before reaching the tiny platform at the top. It's an incredible view.

If you check out this panorama, take a couple of seconds to check out the area around the elevators before going down. There's a series of creepy, dusty little dioramas telling the life story of the founder of La Samaritaine.

We continued along the Seine to the Tour St. Jacques, which has been shrouded in mystery... er... scaffolding for a number of years of restoration. The tower is actually the remains of a church (St. Jacques-la-Boucherie), and I go there frequently because it is a convenient métro stop, because I like the sphinx head fountain at the Place du Châtelet, and because I like the chocolate and banana crèpes there.

With our chocolate crèpes in hand (they were out of bananas), we went through La Marais (the section of town noted for it's Jewish and also it's gay population). Nancy pointed out to me that certain areas of Paris do smell distinctly of urine -- a fact that I had happily been unaware of (up to this point), thanks to my winterfresh arrival. I guess all major cities have their curses -- and despite the incredible beauty of Paris, some portion of the population seems to be determined to afflict it with urine, litter, graffiti and dog excrement.

We finally made it to the Louvre, where we stuck our sore feet into the fountain. Everybody else had the same idea -- it felt great, absolutely bohemian.

The long line outside the Louvre is a trick -- it's just a line to get down into the pyramid, and you can skip it entirely by finding the entrance to the stores underneath the Louvre. Once inside the pyramid, the line to buy the actual tickets are much shorter, and you can skip THEM entirely by buying your ticket using your credit card at the machine.

We bypassed all of this by deciding to pass on the Louvre entirely -- after a day of walking, a museum stroll would have reduced our knees to grit. We had already put off the Eiffel Tower for the next day. The Louvre would have to wait as well.

Outside the Louvre, Nancy was propositioned for a caricature -- we were approached several times by the artists and they always assumed we were married, probably because we weren't holding hands. They never asked me if I wanted a caricature; they were obviously afraid of the steely glint in my eye (or the interesting shape of my nose). On the other hand, Nancy wanted to have one done. The artist said he would do it for fifty euros (which is milk-coming-out-of-nose funny, and I hadn't even drank milk that day). It wasn't hard to bargain for much less, although she never made it to my proud two euro mark.

Afterwards, Nancy thought of a great trick if you want a caricature done. If they see you carrying a rolled-up piece of paper, they'll offer you significantly lower prices to have a second one done for comparison -- so you should be carrying a rolled up piece of paper in the first place.

We métroed to the Arc de Triomphe, where we were treated to a woman posing ridiculously for her friend.

You can see La Grande Arche of La Defense, the modern, skyscraper section of town here. The giant, square arch is one end of an alignment that includes La Grande Arche, the Arc de Triomphe, the obelisk in Place de la Concorde, the little Arc de Triomphe de Carrousel and the glass pyramid of the Louvre. We're frequently reminded that Notre Dame Cathedral can fit inside the arch.

We were also treated to the sight of Turkish fans cheering the win of their team in the World Cup quarter finals. The French were strangely indifferent.

We walked along the Champs-Elysée for a while, then took the métro back to my place for a quick rest, before the next big cultural experience -- the grocery store. We had a quick munch of some typically French things (the cheese, the terrine with foie gras, the bread, etc.) as well as some tasty little English things Nancy had brought me (the savoury egg, the chicken lattice and the celebrated cornish pasty).

The next day, we managed to make it to the Eiffel tower. This was my first time up the tower, but I unhappily forgot my camera. So I'll have to offer more details on the tower next time.

We had a lunch beside the Trocadero overlooking the Eiffel Tower, starting with a kir and ending with a café. I believe that chicken and pasta were involved in the middle of the dinner.

We returned home so Nancy could pack up her things and pick up her inline skates, and then headed to Les Invalides for a promenade (as is my Sunday habit). We went around Les Invalides a bit, as usual, then went up and down the road along the Seine, which is closed Sundays for pedestrian (and roller) traffic. Nancy gave us a few pointers, and we were feeling confident enough to try the roads a bit, crossing the Seine and continuing on the other side past the Louvre.

We left directly from the centre of the city to the airport, had a quick coffee, and exhausted, said our good-byes.

Alright, I admit. I never actually played in the chess finals -- I was a reserve player, so I was just there to cheer our team on. Silently. On the other hand, I came in fourth for the three kilometre cross, at 11 minutes 43 seconds.

Do you think you could be a guest as good as Nancy? We'll see.

22. Descent

For the last couple of weeks, I've been rollerblading down by Les Invalides, the cluster of monuments that was formerly a barracks, an armoury, and military hospital, and a church with a beautiful gilded dome (which was converted to The Temple to Mars during the revolution when churches weren't in fashion). Napoléon's Tomb is there now, with his russian-doll-like seven-layer coffin.

It's a really nice place to learn to rollerblade. At the back (from the perspective of the Seine), it's flat and long enough to build up plenty of speed, but wide enough to be able to turn -- well, nearly. You can see the Eiffel Tower, and when you get tired of aller-retour (back and forth, or round trips), you can go around the entire building complex and practice gentle ascents and descents. I'm pleased to say that I can rester equilibre (remain balanced), turn fairly sharply and effectively (la virage), but I need to work on my freinage -- the ability to stop.

There are always plenty of things to see on a Sunday around Les Invalides. Between the buildings and the Seine are four large lawns, very broad and green. There are little signs forbidding any games involving balls, so there are usually only seven or eight simultaneous football games. Off to the side, the older crowd are usually playing boules or petanque on the dirt surface -- a game similar to lawn bowling or curling with large silver balls.

For some reason, last week, we saw a severed arm lying on the sidewalk. It looked pretty real, but given the giggling car beside it, it might have been a prank.

The real event of the week, however, was the Descente de la Loire with the dive club. On Sunday, I got up at 06h00 so I could take the métro out to Massy with my borrowed wetsuit, palmes and a planche so I could meet up with the group. We drove out to Chateau Sully-sur-Loire, an hour and a half away from Paris.

During the drive, I saw the agriculture of France. We drove along tree-lined roads, through ancient villages and by vast fields of wheat. Even though I get out of the city every day, it was still pretty great to see outside the area covered by public transit.

Chateau de Sully-sur-Loire was initially constructed in the fifteenth century, with additional work in the seventeenth century. I was told that it was a smaller chateau, which was obviously a mistake -- it was immense, with large and impressive towers joined around a courtyard. The sunnier walls were covered with ivy (vignes vierges, or virgin vines, so called because they will never bear grapes). Since I've been putting off Versailles until I have guests, this is the first chateau I've ever seen, and I was suitably impressed.

While there is a distinct lack of chateaux in Canada, the Loire is renowned for its surplus. The extremely wealthy nobility built these homes for themselves (and typically for their lovers) to occasionally escape the city, and now the Chateaux of the Loire are a renowned tourist route.

We drove up-river from the Chateau, where we changed by the side of the road into our wetsuits and trudged through the brush in our wetsuits. Divers will immediately see the flaw in this plan -- wrapping yourself in neoprene on a sunny day and taking a hike is NOT a cool idea. Regardless, I managed to entertain myself by learning most of the French vocabulary for "thorny, prickly plant".

We immediately wet ourselves down at the river (causing the water to spit, hiss and steam) and then proceeded to the deeper part, walking backwards to avoid tripping over the rocks in our fins.

Unfortunately, the water wasn't nearly deep enough, and there wasn't really any current to speak of. Apparently, the nuclear reactor visible on the horizon controlled the water flow. Actually, I was assured that it was a coal- or oil-burning electric power plant, but it looked exactly like something out of a Simpson's episode.

Swimming in shallow water with a wet suit is very difficult. First of all, you need vertical space to effectively use your fins -- and mine were tiny cheap-o fins anyway. Since we weren't weighted down (as in a dive), the buoyancy of the neoprene causes your whole body to float on the surface of the water and you really have to kink up your neck to see. But the worst were the two-headed radioactive glow-fish coming from the "coal- or oil-burning electric power plant".

We only went down about four kilometres of the Loire, which really doesn't seem like far until you consider it's 160 trips across a 25m swimming pool (for the non-metric readers, that's pretty close to 160 imperial trips).

The Loire wasn't really helping us along, so we had to pretty much fin all the way, except where it was entirely too shallow and we walked. We arrived at the beach in front of the chateau dehydrated, hot, and completely broken from exhaustion. So we had some alcoholic beverages, notably Xavier's passionfruit-rum-cinnamon mix. We all changed back to street clothes in the street.

But of course, you ask, what did I eat that day? The restaurant had a menu for 16.50€ including wine (didn't drink any), an entrée (tomato and mozzarella salad), an escalope de volaille (in this case, turkey in cream sauce) and ice cream for dessert (vanilla/coffee) followed by real coffee.

After the meal, we sat on the lawn in front of the chateau in the shade. We peeked through the main door into the courtyard, but didn't have enough energy to do the tour of the chateau. It was a pleasant temperature underneath the trees, and you could feel the heat coming off the massive stones of the chateau from the afternoon. The fish in the water around the chateau were large and fat, and lazing at the surface of the water. Mindlessly green fuzzy trees sent their groping branch-fingers to invade the sky and leech the very sunlight from the air.

We attempted to chat on the way home, but we were all too fatigued. In Paris, I took the RER and then the métro to my place, where I stumbled into my apartment, carefully rinsed my gear in fresh water and crashed into the bed. I was asleep before my feet left the ground.

I can't take credit for any of the pictures, which were taken by a dozen people with a Nikon Coolpix 775 care of Marie Pierre. This is the model I'm interested in for my camera, although it's not going to be available much longer. I reduced all the pictures, so you can't judge the quality, and I adjusted the levels, so you can't judge the colour. Haha.

Would you like to float down the Loire? Carry glowfish home in a jar?

21. Foot

Of course you don't need me to tell you that this is World Cup time, unless you live in a tree or are American (although unlike Canada, they have a team this year). I was told early on that if I wanted to be able to socialize with the average français, I will have to be able to discuss the latest football or foot match, and know recent scores, major players, and what Zedine was up to.

When asked "did you see the game last night?", the only acceptable answer is "oui". In fact, I typically hadn't seen the game last night, and my French friends would challenge me -- what did I think of it then? "The French played admirably!" -- and if they lost -- "Well, we all learned something for next time."

Of course, when it came down to World Cup time, half-hearted fakery wouldn't cut it. However, since Japan/Korea is eight time zones away from France, all of the matches occur during the day. We spent the previous week thinking up half-brained television antennae/streaming media schemes. Fortunately, the company came to our rescue -- all of France's matches would be retransmitted en direct to the corporate amphitheatre. This building is generally used for large, impressive meetings and has very plush theatre seats, a theatre-sized screen and a pretty good quality sound system.

Before analysts rush to downgrade our stock because all of the engineers are off watching football, let me explain -- we are required to make up the hours. In fact, since we aren't taking vacation days (or worse, sick days), we are single-handedly turning the slumping telecommunications market around! Hooray for previously unnamed French employer ending in "tel"!

So, the first football game that I ever watched in its entirety was 2002 France versus Senegal. The major difference between hockey and football is that the fans yell Allez! Allez! when a player gets near the opposing teams goal for football, but in hockey we say Shoot! Shoot!. Of course, there are some other differences, such as the lack of ice, the clock that never stops (not even for commercial breaks!), and players that stay on the field for longer than fifteen seconds.

I have to admit that I've never been much of a team-sports fan. The kinds of sports I enjoy are hiking, swimming, canoeing. Man versus himself, as opposed to man versus man. I'm hardly watch any hockey, although I do wear a lot of Wayne Gretzky brand clothing. But, like watching my first NHL game just before leaving Vancouver, watching my first football game made me think I've been missing out.

Of course, much like my first NHL game, my team lost. Senegal won 1 to 0, but at least they speak French (I overheard this spurious reasoning on the métro). I saw a bit of celebrating on the Champs-Elysée, but it was apparently against the city ordinance forbidding public display of gloating in bad taste (without a license (and insurance)). The police came and ineffectually blew their whistles in the faces of bystanders.

The first part of the World Cup divides the thirty-two participating teams into eight groups. Every team in a group plays the other three groups once. Our group (A) has France, Senegal, Uruguay and Denmark. With the loss against Senegal, France needed to shine in the next two matches in order to qualify for the second part, which was why the results against Uruguay were disappointing (a nulle match, or draw).

Although the second game was zero - zero, it was a pretty intense game. It was much rougher than the first. In fact, we were robbed nearly immediately as Thierry Henry was red-carded for a "tackle". There are quite a few fouls in the game, and it was hard to determine exactly what made this one more foul than the others -- the typical rule is that somebody dives in front of somebody's feet, who performs a terrific tumble (to be repeated in slo-mo if opportune). The offender immediately puts his hands in the air, to indicate that he didn't do anything and all his fans say "well, the grass was slippery, it could have happened to anybody". The offended team all point indignantly and their fans say "red-card him! red-card him!" This occurs about thirty times during the game.

Of the four teams, every team has had a draw, two teams have won a game and two teams have lost a game. This means that any team can make it to the second part -- all France has to do is win the next game by two points. The next game is Tuesday morning in France.

But of course, the real question is what I've eaten. Well, I had the good fortune to sample real mozzarella (which makes Parisian mozzarella look old, tough and bitter... and Parisian mozzarella makes North American mozzarella look like cheddar). Real mozzarella must be eaten immediately. We ate ours less than thirty hours after it had been made in Naples, and our hosts were already apologizing that the taste had changed. Regardless, it had a subtle, slightly salty, lightly milky, deliciously pure mozzarella flavour that I will hope one day to taste again.

I also ate gésier on lettuce the other day. This is the muscle in the duck that acts to break up the food in preparation for digestion. That's right, it's the gizzard. It takes a flock to top a salad, but it's deliciously duckily tasty.

I went to see Attack of the Clones the other day. I like to watch foreign films in their native language instead of dubbed, so I went to a V.O. versus V.F. (version originale versus versus française). The best part of the movie was before it began -- I asked the cashier for a ticket to the movie and showing, and she warned me that it was in English. That made my day. (Unfortunately, even in the English version, the aliens were re-subtitled in French. Fortunately, I read French.)

The other proof that I'm adapting to the culture occurred at work. I was picking out the olives from my duck, and a co-worker asked me if I disliked olives. I replied that I disliked these olives. They were so proud, they had tears in their eyes. Speaking ill of the cafeteria food is a cherished French tradition.

Hockey, soccer or football? Which is more violent? more intense? requires more talent? more interesting to watch? more interesting to play? Tastier than gizzard? Did you know the French word for foosball is babyfoot?