Roissy-en-France is overrun.
It is a small town very near to Paris, but you wouldn't even know it was here, the population is so low.
Except, that is, for the rabbits.
This town is overrun with rabbits. Fuzzy, furry little guys who bounce along the ancient rues and alleys. I have no idea where they come from or how there came to be so many.
You almost never see one creamed on the side of the road, and no one talks about them. I thought maybe that they were old news or something, and that was why people never bring them up. But if you ask someone about them, all they do is smile.
I have never gotten an answer when I have asked about these fricking rabbits.
How did they all get here? How are there so many?
What are they doing here?
What in God's name are they all doing here?
***
"Check the bag again."
"I'm telling you, they're not in there."
"Just check the bag, ok?"
"Oh! You were right! They're in the bag. I pay too much for cigarettes to lose them like that."
A very balmy August night. I am on a train platform at Saint Denis Stade de France with a Spanish guy named Esteban. He was looking for an apartment in a town called Saint Denis, and we had gone out there to see what we could find.
As it turns out, Saint Denis is pretty skeezy. It has a beautiful old cathedral where all the kings of France are buried, but other than that, it is pretty gross.
We stopped for a Leffe beer (only 4€ in St. Denis) and a pizza with spiced oil, my favorite. Esteban bought cigarettes, and we headed back home.
We were late though and were hoping that we had not missed the last train.
It was on that platform, in the warm and humid August air (which seems like ages ago) that I decided that me and Esteban were not going to be friends for long. He didn't need a friend; he needed a personal assistant and a mother, rolled up into one. Not my thing, I will tell you that right now.
But deciding that even if I hung out with no one else, I was not going to waste my time with someone I didn't click with marked a change for me.
When I was 19 and in Athens, I made friends with anyone I could, just so I wouldn't be alone, even if I didn't like them.
I worried that my time in France might be the same. I was coming here alone, and I am a really social person.
Ditching Esteban meant that something had changed. I am good on my own, and it was the real start of my trip here.
It was good.
Oh, and we made the train.
***
I am wandering the streets of Reims, angry and drunk. Where the hell is that hotel?!
Les Bleus had just lost the Rugby World Cup, and I had been dousing my sorrows in heavy French ales.
Forty minutes later, I came across my hotel and got into bed.
The next day I woke up with a headache that would have killed a bear.
I stared at the ceiling and decided to stop breathing until I felt better or just died.
I was pissed that there were people in the hall calling after each other; I was angry that those French guys at the bar the night before had given me so much beer, even after I said no, and I didn't want to get up and get going because I felt like I had been run over.
Eventually pulling myself out of bed, I got to the window to squint at one of the most beautiful mornings I have ever seen.
The sky was drenched in blue and the breeze was cool and velvet.
I needed to shut up and get my butt in gear.
I don't know why I blamed so many people for things that I had done to myself.
It was like I was a victim of everything.
I decided to stop that, there and then.
It was after 11am in a hotel; why was I expecting people to be quiet for me?
Those French guys hadn't forced that beer on me.
I had chosen to come to Champagne.
I had to get over myself, and so I did. It made a huge difference in how I run my life.
And everyday has been better for it.
***
My legs ache, and my ankle hurts still. I had decided to take a walk in Paris. I didn't know where, but I went.
They say that the best way to get to know Paris is just to get lost wandering the streets.
I have done that more times than I care to mention. It doesn't matter if I have been to the area I am in a hundred times, I can still get lost and find something wonderful.
This particular day, there was a nip in the air as it was getting pretty late in the year and pretty cold.
I walked down the quai and along the river. At times, the sidewalk dipped so low that the river could have lapped over onto my shoes.
Some parts of the quai smell like piss. Some parts are really well kept up and well lit.
Sometimes there are groups of kids sitting around smoking and talking.
Sometimes it seems like there is no one around for miles.
I love Paris, but I have never felt more Parisian. Maybe it was because I wasn't chasing after anything. I was just there. I knew where I was, and I felt at home.
I just sat down and listened to the bells from the cathedrals and rested my legs.
I love it here; I just love it here.
***
I love grapes.
I don't eat fruit very much, but I love grapes.
I love how they can take on the flavor of everything around them. How does wine taste like chocolate and smoke with a hint of ceder and earth? How do those things get into grapes?
How does a half of a degree totally change the quality of a wine?
These are amazing little beings, grapes are.
So, to pick them off the vine and eat them by the hand full in the champagne fields was an amazing experience. I knew where these grapes would go, and I was overcome with a sense of history and pride. Champagne is part of something I do. I cook, and it is the holiest of holies in terms of celebratory drinks.
On that hill in the tiny town of Pierry, I felt a connection to the hundreds of years that these exact vines have been making the greatest champagne in the world.
I walked for a long time, uphill and downhill. It was getting warm, so I took off my pull over and let the wind ripple through my undershirt. It was cool on the sweat on my chest and it chased off the suns heat.
I sat down on top of one hill in particular and wrote a letter to my wife.
I don't remember the last time I actually put pen to paper and wrote to someone.
It felt right.
An hour later, I folded the letter, picked a leaf to put inside, kissed the ground, and walked back to town.
***
It had been an almost unendurable night at the restaurant. The ticket machine did not stop printing tickets. It just poured them out.
There was no way anyone could have handled all the orders we got.
We were swamped, and I don't even remember how we were doing things. The kitchen was a mess, and servers were running up to grab plates as we were setting them down.
It was madness and overwhelm.
In the middle of it all, an old man in the restaurant stood up and raised his glass. I remember seeing him do it. I don't know what pulled my attention.
He waited for quiet and started to sing the Marseillaise, the French national anthem.
Everyone in the restaurant started to sing along. People put down their food and drinks. Men stood up.
We cooks just stopped.
I have sang the American national anthem plenty of times. You put your hand on your chest and "the rockets red, bla bla bla..." play ball.
But this, I had no idea why he was singing.
But there was no other option that to sing along with him, as the guests and the servers, the cooks and even the busboys sang along.
It was riveting. Incredible national pride.
When it was over the man sat down, and slowly dinner resumed. I had not noticed that the ticket machine had stopped until it started printing again.
We returned to warp speed.
When the night was finished, I walked out to the hill that I go to for quiet sometimes. I could see my breath, it was so cold.
I dont know when I became a cook, because I know for damned sure it wasn't when I came here. I felt like screaming or crying or something just to shake off the stress from the night.
In the distance, the Eiffel Tower glittered.
That's why I came here.
***
"Can you make some onion frizzles?"
"Um, sure. Wait. No. What are onion frizzles?"
"Just move. I'll do it."
That is how my first day in the kitchen started.
Onion frizzles are onions sliced super thin, so you have tons of the little rings that make up an onion. You dredge them in flour, deep fry them and salt and pepper them.
Easy and quick.
I couldn't do it.
Can you make a chicken consommé that is so clear you can see a dime at the bottom of the soup, and then garnish it with a nutmeg custard cut in the shape of a fleur de lis? Yeah, no problem.
Can you fry an onion? No.
This kitchen busted my butt back down to basics. I don't even know why they kept me around, I was so inept. I didn't speak the language well; I couldn't make their dishes. I didn't know where anything was or who anyone was.
What good was I?
Five months later and I am instructing the new guys on where things are and who people are. My role has totally changed. People complain to me about how stupid the stagiares are, forgetting (I hope) that I am a stagiare.
I have a place here. I noticed the schedule for next week does not have my name on it, and my first instinct is to make sure the shift has adequate coverage.
They will be fine here, of course, but I cant imagine that this is not a school. That I am the only one leaving, and after all it took to really get here.
***
My wife is in my arms for the last time before she gets on her plane.
She will be back in two months, but I don't think I can wait that long.
At some point, I will have to let go, and so like a band aid, I let go, kiss her and walk away. No point in making it worse.
I sat outside of the airport, hoping she would make it home ok, and letting the new autumn mist wet my head.
I don't know how I am supposed to work that night. On the other hand, maybe it is better that I am at work to take my mind off of her leaving.
The hotel shuttle comes, and I am greeted as I always am: "Marc! Ca va? (How's it going?)"
"Oh, ca va (Oh, its going)."
***
I cant believe I am leaving this place.
I had a dream one night that I was home, and someone asked me how the trip was and I couldn't remember anything.
I am so glad that is not the case.
I have a million memories. I have lived a million little lives here.
I have a memory for every rabbit in Roissy, and so when I come back (as I surely will), those rabbits will be here as a reminder of everything I did when I was here.
Of every place I went when I was here.
Of the man I learned to be, when I was here.
It took so much for me to pull myself together and to be brave everyday to be here. I had to make a whole new life, and I am sad to let it go.
I don't know if you can understand what it takes to forget all of your old habits and customs and places you go and the language you use and your place in your world, and to learn a whole new life. Everyday I learned in the kitchen. Everyday I struggled with my French. Everyday I missed everyone I know.
From changing hotels weekly to being swamped in the kitchen by hungry Koreans to working on a twisted ankle to the friendships that I have made to places I will have to leave behind. It took so much, it is hard to let it all go.
Someone asked me if, before I leave, I did everything I wanted to do while I was in France, and of course the answer is no.
There are lifetimes of places to get lost here.
That's why people come back...
and that is why it is ok for me to go.
Thank you so much for reading.
Hippity, hippity hop.
27 December 2007
26 December 2007
Joyeux Noël, Everyone
Written December 25th, 2007...
Somewhere a cook is hurriedly wrapping up dishes and bowls, washing down counters, and putting away knives. Somewhere a cook is dropping his dirty apron and jacket in the dirty-linen bin and grabbing a fresh set. Somewhere he is stuffing his work clothes into his bag and running for the train.
Somewhere in Brittany his family is waiting for him around an old table- maybe there is a fireplace, maybe there is a goose. Somewhere their hearts are full with anticipation of the arrival of their son, brother, cousin, boyfriend.
Somewhere the cook is tapping his foot and rapping his fingers on the window of the train car, willing it to start chugging westward from Paris.
Somewhere a happy family, wrapped in heavy coats and scarves and hats and gloves are wrapping their arms around him as he steps down off of the train, and Christmas has come.
Somewhere a weary student is stepping off of a plane onto the hot and dry tarmac. He has been gone from home for over a year, and he has not seen his family or his friends in what seems like even longer.
Somewhere he is picking up his luggage and lugging it outside to wait for a cab. He probably rests under a palm tree for some shade, as it is so hot this time of year.
Somewhere his mother and father are anxiously preparing his favorite foods and organizing their son's room, excited for the return of their only child.
Somewhere in Agadir, a cab pulls up to a waiting house, and though the Moroccan dessert is full of Muslims, Christmas comes when the student steps out of the cab and into the waiting arms of his mom.
Somewhere a beautiful young woman is warming herself in her new apartment. She is in a new job and in a new life. Somewhere, she is revelling in the New England cold and enjoying her first Boston snow. It will be her first white Christmas in years, since it doesn't snow it Atlanta.
Somewhere this Christmas's best gifts will be the ones she gives herself; they are the best deserved.
Somewhere in Oak Park a young couple is spending their first Christmas with their new baby girl.
Maybe they are with his family today; maybe they are with her family. Either way, they are together, and now that little Reilly is with them, it doesn't really matter where they are, so long as they are together. It is Christmas for them, where ever they choose to be.
Somewhere in California a happy man is waiting to come home to his family and friends. It has been almost four months since he has seen any of them, and it will be seven more months once he is deployed to Iraq.
Somewhere "Doc" is taking care of his guys. Somewhere he is standing for what he believes.
He might be frightened of the future; he might not be. He might question himself, and he might not.
But when he comes home, everything that is going on in the world will stop, and his mother and father, his sisters and brother, his cousins and his girl will all put their arms around him. It will be Christmas then.
Somewhere there is no tree this year. Somewhere there are no gifts.
Somewhere her father's chair is empty for Christmas, and the Siberian winter will be somehow colder for it.
Somewhere a mother and her daughters will quietly pass the day, sipping his vodka, stroking his picture in its frame; sitting in his absence.
Somewhere a mother's only light of Christmas will be that her daugthers are there, and she is with them. And he is there too, and he is not.
And Christmas will not be the same.
Somewhere a daughter sits with her mother, grateful to have her home from the hospital and in recovery. A hospital can be a terrible place to spend a Christmas, so however worried she still is, she will be happy to be home with her healing mother and with her beloved dogs.
Somewhere Trixie and Norton's yelps and barks are the bells of Christmas, and it is Christmas, since mother and daughter are together.
Somewhere a daughter is making a decision: Chicago or San Fransisco? Somewhere she might be finding it hard to be pulled away from the family she is so recently home to.
Somewhere that daughter's laugh and smile will warm her family's heart.
And maybe she misses Brazil, and maybe she does not. It is with her, where ever she goes, though, just as she is with them where ever she is.
But it is Christmas for real now that she is home, and she can count on being hugged and held a little longer than usual this year. She was so dearly missed.
Somewhere spicy noodles in a beef broth are being served. It is his favorite.
Somewhere a mother is happy to take the time to prepare a dish that she might not care for, but that she knows her son loves.
It is a long time until the Spring Festival, and it is cold in China now, but somewhere a son is happy to be home: to speak Chinese, to eat Chinese, to be Chinese again.
Somewhere, he is happy to tell his stories from France, and somewhere, Christmas comes to a family happy to hear them and happy to have him home.
Somewhere a family is going through their rituals. They will get up, go to church, open gifts, go to dinner with their cousins, grandmother, brother and sister in law, mother, and nephews. Somewhere in Chicago wine is served, jokes are made, hands are held, and minds are elsewhere. Somewhere Christmas isnt the same this year.
Somewhere in Chicago, Christmas will come on the 28th of December, for the whole family.
Somewhere a sister is with her sister, just home from Brazil. Somewhere a daughter is with her mother and father. Somewhere a cousin is with her cousins, and somewhere in Crystal Lake, a wife is without her husband.
She calls him and thinks or speaks of him often, but their Christmas will have to wait a few more days. And when she and her husband and their dog and Lake Michigan are all back together again, it will be Christmas for days and days.
Somewhere in Paris, it is Christmas, and it is not. Somewhere the bells of Notre Dame are ringing, and the lights that light the Champs Elysees are blazing, and the choirs are ringing out their carols en Francais.
Somewhere in a hotel room, a son or brother or husband or friend is sitting, and counting the days and toasting them all.
Somehow they are all there: China, Chicago, Boston, Russia, California, Morocco, Brazil, and France are all within him.
Somewhere he is thinking of them.
Somewhere he is grateful for them.
Somewhere a plane is getting ready to bring Christmas home.
Somewhere a cook is hurriedly wrapping up dishes and bowls, washing down counters, and putting away knives. Somewhere a cook is dropping his dirty apron and jacket in the dirty-linen bin and grabbing a fresh set. Somewhere he is stuffing his work clothes into his bag and running for the train.
Somewhere in Brittany his family is waiting for him around an old table- maybe there is a fireplace, maybe there is a goose. Somewhere their hearts are full with anticipation of the arrival of their son, brother, cousin, boyfriend.
Somewhere the cook is tapping his foot and rapping his fingers on the window of the train car, willing it to start chugging westward from Paris.
Somewhere a happy family, wrapped in heavy coats and scarves and hats and gloves are wrapping their arms around him as he steps down off of the train, and Christmas has come.
Somewhere a weary student is stepping off of a plane onto the hot and dry tarmac. He has been gone from home for over a year, and he has not seen his family or his friends in what seems like even longer.
Somewhere he is picking up his luggage and lugging it outside to wait for a cab. He probably rests under a palm tree for some shade, as it is so hot this time of year.
Somewhere his mother and father are anxiously preparing his favorite foods and organizing their son's room, excited for the return of their only child.
Somewhere in Agadir, a cab pulls up to a waiting house, and though the Moroccan dessert is full of Muslims, Christmas comes when the student steps out of the cab and into the waiting arms of his mom.
Somewhere a beautiful young woman is warming herself in her new apartment. She is in a new job and in a new life. Somewhere, she is revelling in the New England cold and enjoying her first Boston snow. It will be her first white Christmas in years, since it doesn't snow it Atlanta.
Somewhere this Christmas's best gifts will be the ones she gives herself; they are the best deserved.
Somewhere in Oak Park a young couple is spending their first Christmas with their new baby girl.
Maybe they are with his family today; maybe they are with her family. Either way, they are together, and now that little Reilly is with them, it doesn't really matter where they are, so long as they are together. It is Christmas for them, where ever they choose to be.
Somewhere in California a happy man is waiting to come home to his family and friends. It has been almost four months since he has seen any of them, and it will be seven more months once he is deployed to Iraq.
Somewhere "Doc" is taking care of his guys. Somewhere he is standing for what he believes.
He might be frightened of the future; he might not be. He might question himself, and he might not.
But when he comes home, everything that is going on in the world will stop, and his mother and father, his sisters and brother, his cousins and his girl will all put their arms around him. It will be Christmas then.
Somewhere there is no tree this year. Somewhere there are no gifts.
Somewhere her father's chair is empty for Christmas, and the Siberian winter will be somehow colder for it.
Somewhere a mother and her daughters will quietly pass the day, sipping his vodka, stroking his picture in its frame; sitting in his absence.
Somewhere a mother's only light of Christmas will be that her daugthers are there, and she is with them. And he is there too, and he is not.
And Christmas will not be the same.
Somewhere a daughter sits with her mother, grateful to have her home from the hospital and in recovery. A hospital can be a terrible place to spend a Christmas, so however worried she still is, she will be happy to be home with her healing mother and with her beloved dogs.
Somewhere Trixie and Norton's yelps and barks are the bells of Christmas, and it is Christmas, since mother and daughter are together.
Somewhere a daughter is making a decision: Chicago or San Fransisco? Somewhere she might be finding it hard to be pulled away from the family she is so recently home to.
Somewhere that daughter's laugh and smile will warm her family's heart.
And maybe she misses Brazil, and maybe she does not. It is with her, where ever she goes, though, just as she is with them where ever she is.
But it is Christmas for real now that she is home, and she can count on being hugged and held a little longer than usual this year. She was so dearly missed.
Somewhere spicy noodles in a beef broth are being served. It is his favorite.
Somewhere a mother is happy to take the time to prepare a dish that she might not care for, but that she knows her son loves.
It is a long time until the Spring Festival, and it is cold in China now, but somewhere a son is happy to be home: to speak Chinese, to eat Chinese, to be Chinese again.
Somewhere, he is happy to tell his stories from France, and somewhere, Christmas comes to a family happy to hear them and happy to have him home.
Somewhere a family is going through their rituals. They will get up, go to church, open gifts, go to dinner with their cousins, grandmother, brother and sister in law, mother, and nephews. Somewhere in Chicago wine is served, jokes are made, hands are held, and minds are elsewhere. Somewhere Christmas isnt the same this year.
Somewhere in Chicago, Christmas will come on the 28th of December, for the whole family.
Somewhere a sister is with her sister, just home from Brazil. Somewhere a daughter is with her mother and father. Somewhere a cousin is with her cousins, and somewhere in Crystal Lake, a wife is without her husband.
She calls him and thinks or speaks of him often, but their Christmas will have to wait a few more days. And when she and her husband and their dog and Lake Michigan are all back together again, it will be Christmas for days and days.
Somewhere in Paris, it is Christmas, and it is not. Somewhere the bells of Notre Dame are ringing, and the lights that light the Champs Elysees are blazing, and the choirs are ringing out their carols en Francais.
Somewhere in a hotel room, a son or brother or husband or friend is sitting, and counting the days and toasting them all.
Somehow they are all there: China, Chicago, Boston, Russia, California, Morocco, Brazil, and France are all within him.
Somewhere he is thinking of them.
Somewhere he is grateful for them.
Somewhere a plane is getting ready to bring Christmas home.
23 December 2007
All the Way Up the Downward Spiral
Frenzy. Mayhem. Catastrophe.
Three words that might be well used to describe the events of the past few days.
OK, so that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but still, quiet is not a word that I think applies either.
Our story begins this Wednesday past. Myself and my Chinese roommate decided that after work, we would go out to celebrate before his departure for China the next day. However, we would need to do it on the cheap, so what does that mean for two interns low on cash and looking for a good time?
The airport, of course.
As foreigners living and working in France, we are able to raid the duty free section of the airport at any given time for whatever they have that we might like. Duty free usually means perfume, chocolate, cigarettes, booze and fancy pens. We had no need of any but one of these.
Will bought a tall bottle of fine (we presume) Scotch whiskey and a litre of Coca (what the locals call Coke).
After his purchase, we went out for our last supper as roommates. We chose a really nice place that I have only been twice before, and it is known throughout France for its quality cuisine: Pizza Hut.
A Heinekin and the four cheese personal pan later, we were outside of terminal 2C, waiting for the shuttle to go home.
It was then that we noticed a woman running to catch her flight. This woman, had….. There is no delicate way to put this: she had absolutely enormous breasts. Gigantic, mutant freak boobs that threatened to pull small objects in close proximity into their orbit.
Will’s eyes lit up; he pointed his finger right at her and yelled, “KING SIZE!”
I laughed so hard, I think I lost control of all bodily functions. I needed that. The stress level over here is really high, and I hadn’t laughed so hard in, literally, months. It was such a happy release, followed by an immediate sadness at the imminent loss of a friend.
Back at our room at the hotel, the scotch and cocas were a-flyin’. Drinking brings out, among other things, my emotional side. Will and I talked and talked, and I realized how much we connect on so many things. Despite his indiscretions in his previous relationship, I think he is a really good person, and he has changed so much since we have lived together. I guess I had forgotten how tumultuous your early twenties are.
We toasted and made plans to see each other again next October in China. I would love to make that happen.
He thanked me for helping him so much with his English, which is almost perfect now, save for his heavy accent. I thanked him for not smoking in the room, and for teaching me how to count to three in Mandarin (which I have already forgotten).
We passed out early, planning on having lunch the next day in the cafeteria, before he left.
We did, but it was very quiet. We just had nothing left to say. It was a really happy quiet though. He was a great roommate, and he is a good friend.
Later that day, while I was watching the Cartoon Network, he came in to the room, put on his coat, and announced that he was going. I hugged him goodbye, he left the room, and just like that, my Wang was gone. I was left standing there, kind of in shock.
I remember when I got a roommate, and I didn’t even want one. I hated that he smoked; I didn’t like his girlfriend, and I wanted my privacy.
Now that he was gone, the room felt empty. That night before bed, I kicked off my shoes and went to brush my teeth, but not before instinctually going back to put my shoes next to my bed, so Will wouldn’t trip over them when he got home. Its moments like that when you realize that you miss someone who inst coming home. When did he become such an important part of my life? When did this room become home?
I was really lonely, so I brushed my teeth and went to bed. I looked over at the digital clock, in the dark, to see what time it was and how many hours of sleep I would get, when I noticed a box blocking the face of the clock. I got up and opened it.
It was a nice bottle of red wine from the Loire valley in France. Written on the box was, “Merry Christmas, Mark. Thank you- Will.”
The next evening was the hotel staff Christmas Party, entitled, “B-White.” I had no interest in going, but the events of the day necessitated my attendance.
Earlier in the morning, while prepping more salmon for the Koreans to gorge on, sous chef Yan came to my little kitchen and announced that TG wanted to see me. TG is how the hotel staff refers to Monsieur Thierry Guillot, the General Manager of the whole hotel. I had run into TG earlier in the week to ask if he might be willing to give me ten minutes of his time, when he had a chance. It seemed that now was my chance.
I was taken up to the executive suite, a series of offices that only special key cards can get you into. I do not have one of these key cards. The door to the suite is at the end of a long and dark hallway, and it is kind of hard to find. Its very Hogwarts-esque.
Sous chef Yan let me in and took me to TG’s office, a very large room, whose southern wall is completely windows. Its decoration was spartan, and the sun was a bit too bright. I immediately felt nervous and overwhelmed; I think that is the point of how the room is set up. Regardless, TG sat me down and asked me what I needed.
I told him that I had really enjoyed my time at the hotel and that I had learned a great deal, more than had anticipated I could. I also found that Hyatt is a company that I have a good deal of respect for, and I said that I would like to work for them in the future. I ended my ass kissing session with a humble request for a letter of recommendation from him.
Let me take a step back here: I had gotten two pieces of bad news this week that made this letter more important and less likely to happen. First, Air France seems insistent that its employees take time to enjoy some “very important holiday” that falls on the 25th of this month. That said, many of their higher ups are taking vacation the week before this accursed holiday too, and so, their special lunch with us in the chef’s bistro was cancelled. That meant that I did not get to assist the chef. He apologized, but I was going to use the occasion as a chance to wow the chef into giving me a letter of recommendation too. Without this lunch happening, I would have to ask someone more important than the chef if I really wanted to come out of this experience with some good press for myself. That person would have to be TG.
TG is very fond of something called bichter museli; it is a combination of honey, yogurt and dried cereal. It is actually pretty good, but this guy probably goes home to bathtubs full of the stuff and eats his way out. He loves it.
So, when that morning I served TG his breakfast, and he found the bichter museli wanting, it wasn’t a good sign. He sent it back by way of the head waiter and ordered “some good museli this time.” It so happens that we were out, and TG had to order something else. Big deal, right? Well, nobody says “no” to this guy. He gets what he wants, whenever he wants it, so it was a problem that I had screwed up his morning routine.
Fast forward back to my meeting: asking for this letter that I really needed now that I couldn’t get one from the chef, from a guy whose day had been started badly because of me was a daunting task.
I asked, and TG smiled warmly. I thought he was going to turn me down, but it seemed that this man, whom I had been told from my first day was as mean as they come, was not so mean after all.
He asked how old I was, and on learning that I am 30, agreed that I would need every advantage I could get to outpace the younger graduates from my school. He happily told me that he would write me the letter, and then told me that he really appreciated all my hard work and dedication. He said he liked my attitude and thought that Hyatt could use people like me.
Then he said, “I will write your letter, but I will do you one better. Spin a globe: pick a place in the world where you would like to work, and I will have my friends at Hyatt HR in Zurich forward your resume to that place. We’ll try to recruit you right after school.”
I am still in shock. There are Hyatt’s on every continent in the world, except for Antarctica. I asked him, giddily, South America? “Sure.” Tokyo? “Why not?” Ummmmm, New Zealand? Africa? “Great places to work, either one.” Could I come back to Paris….. maybe? “We’d be happy to have you.”
I thanked him profusely and got the hell out of there before he could change his mind. He called after me though, “Hope to see you at the party tonight!”
I called Ruta later in the day, and pretty much told her to pack her bags for anywhere on the planet she would like to go.
I mean, think of the blog possibilities! Kiss My France would be peanuts.
Kiss My Cape Town!
Kiss My Melbourne!
Kiss My Dubai!
So, that night I got dressed in as much white as I have here, as the formal dress code for the party was, “smart whites” meaning “all white.” I didn’t think that I would be alone in wearing some khaki pants and a white shirt, but I was dead wrong. These people were covered in white: pants, shirts, belts, socks, shoes. You name it, they wore it.
The party was actually pretty cool. You had to enter Café Mirage (one of our restaurants) from the outside, through a long tent tunnel that had been set up with white candles along the ground and blue lights above it.
Once inside, the whole floor was covered in tiny white Styrofoam pellets to simulate snow, and fake igloos and stuffed polar bears where everywhere. There were blue and white lights all over the place, and the DJ was great. With everyone in white, it actually looked pretty cool.
I thought I was going to stand in the corner though, while the rest of the hotel got jiggy with it.
Not so, TG came by and said his, “Joyeux Noel’s, and the assistant GM, Monsieur Laurant said his “Au revoir”s to me. The chef stood in the corner, hitting on some woman who actually seemed pretty interested, and the rest of staff ran around throwing fake snowballs at each other.
I stayed at the bar with my friends Olivier and David and talked, while they plied me with 1664, France’s cheapest beer, though “Its better than that Miller crap you people drink. Oh la la!” remarked David.
David, you should know, was born in Paris and spent a year of his adult life living in Chicago, so we have a lot to talk about. My first day he told me, “In America, you have Mexicans doing the dirty work in your kitchens. In France, we have Americans.” That’s his sense of humor, but ever since, I am “that Mexican over there” to him. I actually think I will miss that.
Later, a guy named Microvin came over to the bar and started talking to us. He asked if this was my first time living outside of the States, and I told him about my time in Greece and the Philippines.
Microvin exclaimed, “The Philippines is my country! Where were you?”
I told him that it was a tiny town in the rain forest that no one has ever heard of.
“Try me” he said, so I told him it was called Majayjay.
“OH MY GOD! MAJAYJAY IS MY TOWN!”
My jaw dropped. This is a town of 300 in the rain forest on a little island in the South Pacific. How in the hell did I meet someone from there, ten years later, in Paris? I love how small the world can be, and it made me feel more adventurous about where I might like to go next, now that TG had offered up the world on a plate.
Further, Microvin asked me where I had traveled, and I told him all about the places I went to. He knew them all, and he had been there. It felt like I was talking about home. I talk about the Philippines to people, but no one can ever say, “Yeah, I really love the water there. Its sooo blue!” No one can ever relate. This guy could, and it made me miss the Philippines.
Later, someone started passing around vin chaud, or hot wine. It is basically glug, and that made me miss Andersonville, as it is glug time there. Glug, if you don’t know, is a hot spiced wine that is only made in the winter. The Swedish bars in Andersonville all have their own homemade brew, and it is something I do every year, to go and sample them. It signals that winter and Christmas have officially come, to me anyway.
So, I had a glass.
Vin chaud, it should be noted, does not mix well with beer. I got to bed late that night after a night spent dancing and laughing with people about subjects I do not recall.
The next day, my alarm went off at 4:45, and I got up, having gone to bed three hours earlier.
My head was pounding, and I felt like death. The good thing was that when I saw the chef, he was still wearing what he had on the night before, and he looked just like I did. In fact, everyone was in bad, bad shape. That made things a bit easier.
Service went smoothly, somehow, and by the end of breakfast, I was ready to go die quietly in my room. Then a strange smell came to me. I looked around the kitchen, but couldn’t find where it might be coming from, but it was definitely getting worse.
When my socks started to get cold and wet, I realized what it was: water was coming up from the drain in the floor, into the kitchen. I ran and got the chef, who called maintenance.
Maintenance called their crew, who began to route the drain, and that was when the cooks from the show kitchen came sloshing into the back kitchen where I was.
“What are you doing?! The drains in the floor of the show kitchen are over flowing!”
We all ran to the show kitchen, and after only three or four minutes, there was about two inches of water on the floor. Maintenance shut down the water supply and started sucking in all out, but it kept coming from God knows where. All the cooks grabbed mops and started to push the water out of the restaurant.
“Katrina, huh?” was everyone’s joke.
An hour later, we were all sopping with sweat, and squinting under the pain of our hung over heads, but the kitchens seemed to be dry, so maintenance turned the water flow back on. We all held our breath for a minute, waiting to see what would happen,
Nothing. We were fine.
Until the sous chefs came running into the kitchen to say that water was coming out of the floor drains in the banquet kitchens, so we all ran over there with out mops in hand.
And that is when the fire alarms went off….
It was a disaster of a day. It all ended finally by late lunch time. I had a gallon of water to drink and an aspirin. My head settled, and the chef sat me down to do my final review.
He gave me an A and thanked me. On my way out, he told me that he was taking Christmas week off to spend with his kids, so he had better give me this now.
In a little plastic sleeve was his letter of recommendation for me.
I was too tired to be ecstatic, so I thanked him, shook his hand, and wished him a great holiday season
He left for the day, and I will not see him again before I leave.
I went to my room, and stared into the mirror. What a couple of days.
Up or down, though, I’ll take it. At least life’s never dull….
Three words that might be well used to describe the events of the past few days.
OK, so that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but still, quiet is not a word that I think applies either.
Our story begins this Wednesday past. Myself and my Chinese roommate decided that after work, we would go out to celebrate before his departure for China the next day. However, we would need to do it on the cheap, so what does that mean for two interns low on cash and looking for a good time?
The airport, of course.
As foreigners living and working in France, we are able to raid the duty free section of the airport at any given time for whatever they have that we might like. Duty free usually means perfume, chocolate, cigarettes, booze and fancy pens. We had no need of any but one of these.
Will bought a tall bottle of fine (we presume) Scotch whiskey and a litre of Coca (what the locals call Coke).
After his purchase, we went out for our last supper as roommates. We chose a really nice place that I have only been twice before, and it is known throughout France for its quality cuisine: Pizza Hut.
A Heinekin and the four cheese personal pan later, we were outside of terminal 2C, waiting for the shuttle to go home.
It was then that we noticed a woman running to catch her flight. This woman, had….. There is no delicate way to put this: she had absolutely enormous breasts. Gigantic, mutant freak boobs that threatened to pull small objects in close proximity into their orbit.
Will’s eyes lit up; he pointed his finger right at her and yelled, “KING SIZE!”
I laughed so hard, I think I lost control of all bodily functions. I needed that. The stress level over here is really high, and I hadn’t laughed so hard in, literally, months. It was such a happy release, followed by an immediate sadness at the imminent loss of a friend.
Back at our room at the hotel, the scotch and cocas were a-flyin’. Drinking brings out, among other things, my emotional side. Will and I talked and talked, and I realized how much we connect on so many things. Despite his indiscretions in his previous relationship, I think he is a really good person, and he has changed so much since we have lived together. I guess I had forgotten how tumultuous your early twenties are.
We toasted and made plans to see each other again next October in China. I would love to make that happen.
He thanked me for helping him so much with his English, which is almost perfect now, save for his heavy accent. I thanked him for not smoking in the room, and for teaching me how to count to three in Mandarin (which I have already forgotten).
We passed out early, planning on having lunch the next day in the cafeteria, before he left.
We did, but it was very quiet. We just had nothing left to say. It was a really happy quiet though. He was a great roommate, and he is a good friend.
Later that day, while I was watching the Cartoon Network, he came in to the room, put on his coat, and announced that he was going. I hugged him goodbye, he left the room, and just like that, my Wang was gone. I was left standing there, kind of in shock.
I remember when I got a roommate, and I didn’t even want one. I hated that he smoked; I didn’t like his girlfriend, and I wanted my privacy.
Now that he was gone, the room felt empty. That night before bed, I kicked off my shoes and went to brush my teeth, but not before instinctually going back to put my shoes next to my bed, so Will wouldn’t trip over them when he got home. Its moments like that when you realize that you miss someone who inst coming home. When did he become such an important part of my life? When did this room become home?
I was really lonely, so I brushed my teeth and went to bed. I looked over at the digital clock, in the dark, to see what time it was and how many hours of sleep I would get, when I noticed a box blocking the face of the clock. I got up and opened it.
It was a nice bottle of red wine from the Loire valley in France. Written on the box was, “Merry Christmas, Mark. Thank you- Will.”
The next evening was the hotel staff Christmas Party, entitled, “B-White.” I had no interest in going, but the events of the day necessitated my attendance.
Earlier in the morning, while prepping more salmon for the Koreans to gorge on, sous chef Yan came to my little kitchen and announced that TG wanted to see me. TG is how the hotel staff refers to Monsieur Thierry Guillot, the General Manager of the whole hotel. I had run into TG earlier in the week to ask if he might be willing to give me ten minutes of his time, when he had a chance. It seemed that now was my chance.
I was taken up to the executive suite, a series of offices that only special key cards can get you into. I do not have one of these key cards. The door to the suite is at the end of a long and dark hallway, and it is kind of hard to find. Its very Hogwarts-esque.
Sous chef Yan let me in and took me to TG’s office, a very large room, whose southern wall is completely windows. Its decoration was spartan, and the sun was a bit too bright. I immediately felt nervous and overwhelmed; I think that is the point of how the room is set up. Regardless, TG sat me down and asked me what I needed.
I told him that I had really enjoyed my time at the hotel and that I had learned a great deal, more than had anticipated I could. I also found that Hyatt is a company that I have a good deal of respect for, and I said that I would like to work for them in the future. I ended my ass kissing session with a humble request for a letter of recommendation from him.
Let me take a step back here: I had gotten two pieces of bad news this week that made this letter more important and less likely to happen. First, Air France seems insistent that its employees take time to enjoy some “very important holiday” that falls on the 25th of this month. That said, many of their higher ups are taking vacation the week before this accursed holiday too, and so, their special lunch with us in the chef’s bistro was cancelled. That meant that I did not get to assist the chef. He apologized, but I was going to use the occasion as a chance to wow the chef into giving me a letter of recommendation too. Without this lunch happening, I would have to ask someone more important than the chef if I really wanted to come out of this experience with some good press for myself. That person would have to be TG.
TG is very fond of something called bichter museli; it is a combination of honey, yogurt and dried cereal. It is actually pretty good, but this guy probably goes home to bathtubs full of the stuff and eats his way out. He loves it.
So, when that morning I served TG his breakfast, and he found the bichter museli wanting, it wasn’t a good sign. He sent it back by way of the head waiter and ordered “some good museli this time.” It so happens that we were out, and TG had to order something else. Big deal, right? Well, nobody says “no” to this guy. He gets what he wants, whenever he wants it, so it was a problem that I had screwed up his morning routine.
Fast forward back to my meeting: asking for this letter that I really needed now that I couldn’t get one from the chef, from a guy whose day had been started badly because of me was a daunting task.
I asked, and TG smiled warmly. I thought he was going to turn me down, but it seemed that this man, whom I had been told from my first day was as mean as they come, was not so mean after all.
He asked how old I was, and on learning that I am 30, agreed that I would need every advantage I could get to outpace the younger graduates from my school. He happily told me that he would write me the letter, and then told me that he really appreciated all my hard work and dedication. He said he liked my attitude and thought that Hyatt could use people like me.
Then he said, “I will write your letter, but I will do you one better. Spin a globe: pick a place in the world where you would like to work, and I will have my friends at Hyatt HR in Zurich forward your resume to that place. We’ll try to recruit you right after school.”
I am still in shock. There are Hyatt’s on every continent in the world, except for Antarctica. I asked him, giddily, South America? “Sure.” Tokyo? “Why not?” Ummmmm, New Zealand? Africa? “Great places to work, either one.” Could I come back to Paris….. maybe? “We’d be happy to have you.”
I thanked him profusely and got the hell out of there before he could change his mind. He called after me though, “Hope to see you at the party tonight!”
I called Ruta later in the day, and pretty much told her to pack her bags for anywhere on the planet she would like to go.
I mean, think of the blog possibilities! Kiss My France would be peanuts.
Kiss My Cape Town!
Kiss My Melbourne!
Kiss My Dubai!
So, that night I got dressed in as much white as I have here, as the formal dress code for the party was, “smart whites” meaning “all white.” I didn’t think that I would be alone in wearing some khaki pants and a white shirt, but I was dead wrong. These people were covered in white: pants, shirts, belts, socks, shoes. You name it, they wore it.
The party was actually pretty cool. You had to enter Café Mirage (one of our restaurants) from the outside, through a long tent tunnel that had been set up with white candles along the ground and blue lights above it.
Once inside, the whole floor was covered in tiny white Styrofoam pellets to simulate snow, and fake igloos and stuffed polar bears where everywhere. There were blue and white lights all over the place, and the DJ was great. With everyone in white, it actually looked pretty cool.
I thought I was going to stand in the corner though, while the rest of the hotel got jiggy with it.
Not so, TG came by and said his, “Joyeux Noel’s, and the assistant GM, Monsieur Laurant said his “Au revoir”s to me. The chef stood in the corner, hitting on some woman who actually seemed pretty interested, and the rest of staff ran around throwing fake snowballs at each other.
I stayed at the bar with my friends Olivier and David and talked, while they plied me with 1664, France’s cheapest beer, though “Its better than that Miller crap you people drink. Oh la la!” remarked David.
David, you should know, was born in Paris and spent a year of his adult life living in Chicago, so we have a lot to talk about. My first day he told me, “In America, you have Mexicans doing the dirty work in your kitchens. In France, we have Americans.” That’s his sense of humor, but ever since, I am “that Mexican over there” to him. I actually think I will miss that.
Later, a guy named Microvin came over to the bar and started talking to us. He asked if this was my first time living outside of the States, and I told him about my time in Greece and the Philippines.
Microvin exclaimed, “The Philippines is my country! Where were you?”
I told him that it was a tiny town in the rain forest that no one has ever heard of.
“Try me” he said, so I told him it was called Majayjay.
“OH MY GOD! MAJAYJAY IS MY TOWN!”
My jaw dropped. This is a town of 300 in the rain forest on a little island in the South Pacific. How in the hell did I meet someone from there, ten years later, in Paris? I love how small the world can be, and it made me feel more adventurous about where I might like to go next, now that TG had offered up the world on a plate.
Further, Microvin asked me where I had traveled, and I told him all about the places I went to. He knew them all, and he had been there. It felt like I was talking about home. I talk about the Philippines to people, but no one can ever say, “Yeah, I really love the water there. Its sooo blue!” No one can ever relate. This guy could, and it made me miss the Philippines.
Later, someone started passing around vin chaud, or hot wine. It is basically glug, and that made me miss Andersonville, as it is glug time there. Glug, if you don’t know, is a hot spiced wine that is only made in the winter. The Swedish bars in Andersonville all have their own homemade brew, and it is something I do every year, to go and sample them. It signals that winter and Christmas have officially come, to me anyway.
So, I had a glass.
Vin chaud, it should be noted, does not mix well with beer. I got to bed late that night after a night spent dancing and laughing with people about subjects I do not recall.
The next day, my alarm went off at 4:45, and I got up, having gone to bed three hours earlier.
My head was pounding, and I felt like death. The good thing was that when I saw the chef, he was still wearing what he had on the night before, and he looked just like I did. In fact, everyone was in bad, bad shape. That made things a bit easier.
Service went smoothly, somehow, and by the end of breakfast, I was ready to go die quietly in my room. Then a strange smell came to me. I looked around the kitchen, but couldn’t find where it might be coming from, but it was definitely getting worse.
When my socks started to get cold and wet, I realized what it was: water was coming up from the drain in the floor, into the kitchen. I ran and got the chef, who called maintenance.
Maintenance called their crew, who began to route the drain, and that was when the cooks from the show kitchen came sloshing into the back kitchen where I was.
“What are you doing?! The drains in the floor of the show kitchen are over flowing!”
We all ran to the show kitchen, and after only three or four minutes, there was about two inches of water on the floor. Maintenance shut down the water supply and started sucking in all out, but it kept coming from God knows where. All the cooks grabbed mops and started to push the water out of the restaurant.
“Katrina, huh?” was everyone’s joke.
An hour later, we were all sopping with sweat, and squinting under the pain of our hung over heads, but the kitchens seemed to be dry, so maintenance turned the water flow back on. We all held our breath for a minute, waiting to see what would happen,
Nothing. We were fine.
Until the sous chefs came running into the kitchen to say that water was coming out of the floor drains in the banquet kitchens, so we all ran over there with out mops in hand.
And that is when the fire alarms went off….
It was a disaster of a day. It all ended finally by late lunch time. I had a gallon of water to drink and an aspirin. My head settled, and the chef sat me down to do my final review.
He gave me an A and thanked me. On my way out, he told me that he was taking Christmas week off to spend with his kids, so he had better give me this now.
In a little plastic sleeve was his letter of recommendation for me.
I was too tired to be ecstatic, so I thanked him, shook his hand, and wished him a great holiday season
He left for the day, and I will not see him again before I leave.
I went to my room, and stared into the mirror. What a couple of days.
Up or down, though, I’ll take it. At least life’s never dull….
19 December 2007
Les Ganaches
The story goes that a long time ago in France, a chef told his young apprentice to never, never, never put any hot liquid on the shelf above his workspace. Well, young apprentices being what they are: generally young and stupid, this particular apprentice one day broke this rule, and a whole bowl of hot milk fell into the bowl of solid chocolate below it. The chef freaked out on the kid. "Ganache! I told you never to do that!" Ganache, in French, translates to moron, idiot, hardhead. Soon after, though, the chef discovered that pouring hot cream over solid chocolate turns the whole concoction into a delicious treat. So, he promptly took credit for the invention and had the apprentice killed and eaten, so he could never speak the truth to the world. (I made that last part up).
I feel that kid's pain, though.
Generally speaking, when someone tells you that you are a moron, we dont increase our respect for them. In fact, men generally start aiming foot for groin, but in my case, things are a bit different.
Chef Thierry is one of those guys who is always smiling and happy and always has a nice thing to say to you.... if he doesnt know you, that is.
Before I worked with Chef Thierry in the patisserie, he was a boat load of fun. Funny, generous with his sugary creations, and a big help if you ever needed it.
He even does this thing where he pretends to be gay, and chases the dishwashers around the kitchen yelling "Kiss me!" They hate it. We hate the dishwashers, though, so it is a blast to watch. He is the type of guy who will always grab your ass when he walks by or make a somewhat sexual comment about how strong your hands must be, to be stirring that pot so well. That kind of thing. I cant say I was really into the whole ass grabbing thing from a fifty something Frenchman, but it was better than sous chef Yan's icy stares.
Anyway, on Friday last, I started work in the patisserie, and ever since, the jokes, treats and fondles have come to an abrupt halt.
Now, I am the fool from the States who cant even stir correctly (really, there are very precise stirring methods in this country, who knew?)
I am learning so much though. Today I made six huge bowls of white chocolate mousse, and it tasted just like Chef Thierry's (mainly because he watched every fricking thing I did). I couldnt do that yesterday, but now I can. This stuff is superb, and I cant wait to make a huge vat of it in my apartment, load it all into the bathtub, and eat my way out.
But when chef says, "No Mark! Oh la la, what is wrong with you? Do you understand anything?" I dont mind. He could say nothing at all; he could transfer me back to the savory side, but he doesnt. He takes the time to teach me, and he shows me everything he is doing. I appreciate that he makes the effort, and he is an amazing chef.
Other than that, things in France are good. I am all set for my classes for next term in Chicago, and the laundress has asked me when she can do my final load of laundry, so my frilly underthings will be nice and pressed (yes, she presses my frilly underthings) for the trip back to the States. Things are winding down.
So, what better time for Wang and his girlfriend to go into hysterical, emotional breakdown?
Seems that there was a fete in Paris about a month ago for a guy who was moving to Australia. I didnt go because it started at midnight, and I get up too early for that. Will went though, and while there, was plied with alcohol. While under the influence, a young French girl made a pass at Will. He promptly refused, but she persisted in her quest for Wang's wang, and succeed she did, at least in getting a kiss from him. A French kiss. Oh la la!
Well, Wang failed to mention this to Cecilia, his girlfriend. So, some time passes, and he thinks all is well, till a whole slew of people from the fete start joking about how much of a stud Will is, and Cecilia over hears. Sacre bleu!
Needless to say, Cecilia went a little apes*@&! and freaked out on Will. They didnt talk for a whole day (which is like a month in terms of a normal a relationship).
Yesterday, she approached me and said, "Mahk, you old, you know thing, you tell: can I fogive Will for kiss girl with tongue?"
Apart from not being sure if she meant that Will had tongue kissed a girl, or if "gril with tongue" was how Cecilia was choosing to describe Will's mistress, I was touched. I had never felt so trusted before, as this poor girl looked at me with tears in her eyes and waited for my answer. I told her if she felt she could trust him again one day, then she could forgive him and move on, but if she didnt trust him anymore, then their relationship had to change. She nodded, thanked me, and left the lounge I happened to be in when she asked me that question, in front of everyone I know. It was a bit awkward.... for everyone.
Anyway, that night, Will decided he needed to talk to someone "old" too. A reminder, he is 21. I am not that much older. Regardless, he said that he wasnt sure what he should do. Cecilia had broken up with him earlier in the day, and he was excited to be free of a relationship that wasnt working, but also, he loves her and didnt want to hurt her. (Maybe a little late for that?)
I asked him if he felt that while they are apart for two months in China (they leave tomorrow), that he would miss her. He said he didnt know, and that last year on their break from school, he had met someone while he was in China.
I asked what "met someone" met. He said, "You know, I liked someone else." Oh, well, that's ok. But maybe it points to that you only want to be with Cecilia because you are afraid of being in a new relationship. That's what I said. I felt pretty good about that psychoanalytical piece of mumbo jumbo.
Will smiled, and thanked me. He said that he didnt think that meeting the girl was a problem either, but Cecilia would. What? Why would meeting a girl (at a party, as it turns out they did) be a problem, unless "meeting a girl" or "liking somone" has a different meaning for Chinese youth.
I probed further; "What do you mean- exactly- that you met someone?"
"Oh, I have sex with her... and her friend.... and HER friend."
Oh.
So, Will and Cecilia are officially over now. I had no idea that Will was such a stud. Maybe that's why he needs to keep his underwear on the walls- to cool them off.
Anyway, between this ganache in the kitchen and the ganache I live with, I am just keeping my fingers crossed that these last few days arent quite as emotional as they have been for people around me.
One can only hope.
I feel that kid's pain, though.
Generally speaking, when someone tells you that you are a moron, we dont increase our respect for them. In fact, men generally start aiming foot for groin, but in my case, things are a bit different.
Chef Thierry is one of those guys who is always smiling and happy and always has a nice thing to say to you.... if he doesnt know you, that is.
Before I worked with Chef Thierry in the patisserie, he was a boat load of fun. Funny, generous with his sugary creations, and a big help if you ever needed it.
He even does this thing where he pretends to be gay, and chases the dishwashers around the kitchen yelling "Kiss me!" They hate it. We hate the dishwashers, though, so it is a blast to watch. He is the type of guy who will always grab your ass when he walks by or make a somewhat sexual comment about how strong your hands must be, to be stirring that pot so well. That kind of thing. I cant say I was really into the whole ass grabbing thing from a fifty something Frenchman, but it was better than sous chef Yan's icy stares.
Anyway, on Friday last, I started work in the patisserie, and ever since, the jokes, treats and fondles have come to an abrupt halt.
Now, I am the fool from the States who cant even stir correctly (really, there are very precise stirring methods in this country, who knew?)
I am learning so much though. Today I made six huge bowls of white chocolate mousse, and it tasted just like Chef Thierry's (mainly because he watched every fricking thing I did). I couldnt do that yesterday, but now I can. This stuff is superb, and I cant wait to make a huge vat of it in my apartment, load it all into the bathtub, and eat my way out.
But when chef says, "No Mark! Oh la la, what is wrong with you? Do you understand anything?" I dont mind. He could say nothing at all; he could transfer me back to the savory side, but he doesnt. He takes the time to teach me, and he shows me everything he is doing. I appreciate that he makes the effort, and he is an amazing chef.
Other than that, things in France are good. I am all set for my classes for next term in Chicago, and the laundress has asked me when she can do my final load of laundry, so my frilly underthings will be nice and pressed (yes, she presses my frilly underthings) for the trip back to the States. Things are winding down.
So, what better time for Wang and his girlfriend to go into hysterical, emotional breakdown?
Seems that there was a fete in Paris about a month ago for a guy who was moving to Australia. I didnt go because it started at midnight, and I get up too early for that. Will went though, and while there, was plied with alcohol. While under the influence, a young French girl made a pass at Will. He promptly refused, but she persisted in her quest for Wang's wang, and succeed she did, at least in getting a kiss from him. A French kiss. Oh la la!
Well, Wang failed to mention this to Cecilia, his girlfriend. So, some time passes, and he thinks all is well, till a whole slew of people from the fete start joking about how much of a stud Will is, and Cecilia over hears. Sacre bleu!
Needless to say, Cecilia went a little apes*@&! and freaked out on Will. They didnt talk for a whole day (which is like a month in terms of a normal a relationship).
Yesterday, she approached me and said, "Mahk, you old, you know thing, you tell: can I fogive Will for kiss girl with tongue?"
Apart from not being sure if she meant that Will had tongue kissed a girl, or if "gril with tongue" was how Cecilia was choosing to describe Will's mistress, I was touched. I had never felt so trusted before, as this poor girl looked at me with tears in her eyes and waited for my answer. I told her if she felt she could trust him again one day, then she could forgive him and move on, but if she didnt trust him anymore, then their relationship had to change. She nodded, thanked me, and left the lounge I happened to be in when she asked me that question, in front of everyone I know. It was a bit awkward.... for everyone.
Anyway, that night, Will decided he needed to talk to someone "old" too. A reminder, he is 21. I am not that much older. Regardless, he said that he wasnt sure what he should do. Cecilia had broken up with him earlier in the day, and he was excited to be free of a relationship that wasnt working, but also, he loves her and didnt want to hurt her. (Maybe a little late for that?)
I asked him if he felt that while they are apart for two months in China (they leave tomorrow), that he would miss her. He said he didnt know, and that last year on their break from school, he had met someone while he was in China.
I asked what "met someone" met. He said, "You know, I liked someone else." Oh, well, that's ok. But maybe it points to that you only want to be with Cecilia because you are afraid of being in a new relationship. That's what I said. I felt pretty good about that psychoanalytical piece of mumbo jumbo.
Will smiled, and thanked me. He said that he didnt think that meeting the girl was a problem either, but Cecilia would. What? Why would meeting a girl (at a party, as it turns out they did) be a problem, unless "meeting a girl" or "liking somone" has a different meaning for Chinese youth.
I probed further; "What do you mean- exactly- that you met someone?"
"Oh, I have sex with her... and her friend.... and HER friend."
Oh.
So, Will and Cecilia are officially over now. I had no idea that Will was such a stud. Maybe that's why he needs to keep his underwear on the walls- to cool them off.
Anyway, between this ganache in the kitchen and the ganache I live with, I am just keeping my fingers crossed that these last few days arent quite as emotional as they have been for people around me.
One can only hope.
15 December 2007
Pairing Bordeaux
This blog entry is one that I started a long time ago, and never really got around to finishing. There was just so much to cover, that I didn’t want to rush it. It is one of the most important times for me in this trip though, so after much delay, I have finally taken the time to finish it.
So, without further delay, Kiss My France, Ltd. proudly presents: “Pairing Bordeaux.”
This weekend, I took myself on one of the highlights of this trip. Before I left for France, I decided that one of the places that I most wanted to visit was Bordeaux, because I have such an interest in wines, and Bordeaux is one of the world’s best wine regions (it is a world heritage site, in fact). Also, it is nice to get away and relax from time to time.
So, I booked an evening train for after work. I planned this trip so well, I tell you. My train left at 6pm. I finished work at 2:30pm, so I had three and a half hours to get to my room, shower, and make my way over to Bienvenue Montparnasse (the departing station) at a leisurely pace.
Such was not the case.
The RER B is the train that connects where I live to the train line that goes to Bienvenue Montparnasse. Well, as you may have heard, Paris’s train system is just coming off of a “greve” or a strike. So the trains are still getting their acts together.
The train I took stopped at a station called Chatelet Les Halles for about half of an hour, for no discernable reason. We just sat there, the car packed to the gunnels. It also was dreadfully late arriving at the station where I live, so instead of having all the time in the world, I arrived at Bienvenue Montparnasse with about 20 minutes to spare. I thought, as I climbed the stairs to the ticket machines (you just put in your credit card, and it spits out your tickets), “Well, twenty minutes is ok. I’ll get my tickets and be on my way.” Again, not so. The ticket machines don’t take American credit cards. I have a European card, but I didn’t make my reservation on that card, so it was off to the teller for me. Except that the lines were super, super long, it now being a Friday after working hours, and people are trying to get home.
I was in luck though. There is a special “English Speakers Only” line that was very short, only about 5 people ahead of me. Great! I got into that line. It turns out that the sign should actually read, “Dullards Only” as these people argued with the tellers about all kinds of ridiculous things: what do you mean there isn’t another train today? Do I have to pay you now? I really would like a window seat; can you change someone so I can have a window seat?
By the time I got to the teller, I had resolved myself that I would have to take the next train to Bordeaux, which was in half of an hour, but stopped frequently between Paris and its destination, so a three hour trip becomes a five hour trip and puts me into Bordeaux at almost midnight.
I told the teller that, and he said, as he handed me my tickets, “Oh, I think you can make this train if you run. You do have SIX MINUTES.”
So, I ran. I mean, I totally ran, like you see in the movies. I was about to wave my hands in the air and start shouting, “Hold the train! Hold the train!” when I finally found my train, and my car, and got on. I collapsed into my seat, sweating, breathing hard, and with, literally, no time to spare. By the time I had gotten my jacket off, we were already on our way. It was divine intervention that I made that train.
The trip to Bordeaux was fine. I slept for the first hour and a half and listened to my iPod.
The train was full, and I was getting sick with a cold from lack of sleep, I think, so after I woke up to give the conductor my tickets, I just stared out the window at the countryside as it zipped past. The sun set behind the hills, and the sky took on a deep indigo, streaked with translucent grey/white clouds that looked like pulled cotton. The moon was full and bright and dipped in and out of view like a pearl bobbing in ink.
In culinary circles, it is said with conviction that no meal is complete without wine, so the continual challenge is to pair the right wines with the right foods. A bad match wont ruin a meal, but a good one can make a good meal into a fantastic one. I like to think of life that way, so I tried to find the perfect music to pair with these hours on the train, to make the roughly 300 miles southward a great experience.
Sometimes you want to be alone, you know? Sometimes you just need to be alone with you thoughts, and do as you want to do. That was really how I was feeling in Champagne, but for Bordeaux, I felt like having someone with me. As it happens, that someone turned out to be none other than Elton John.
If you have the means and the wherewithal, I truly suggest that you take an evening train from Paris to Bordeaux. Sit at a window seat and watch the moon and the hills race by as Elton croons “Your Song.” It was a beautiful trip to the south.
Arriving in Bordeaux is a bit different than arriving in Epernay or Reims. Those are both very small towns, and the gare (train station) is not too far from any thing. Bordeaux is one of France’s largest cities, with a population of over 500,000. So, when I called my hotel to ask if I could walk to them from the gare, the response, “Oh la la! Mais non!” was not unexpected. They recommended that I take the tram. This is a new, electrical kind of train that runs all over the city. Fare is 1,30 euros, so about two bucks. Small change considering that the thing cost just over a billion euros to build. A BILLION EUROS. The longer I live here, the less I think in terms of dollars, but still, a billion of anything is a ton (pun intended). To put that in perspective, right now that is almost two billion dollars spent on a tram for a city the size of, what? Peoria? Sorry, but who cares about Peoria? At least, who cares enough to spend two billion dollars on Peoria? I don’t, even if I had that much.
The great thing that the tram has done for Bordeaux is that it has reduced fossil fuel emissions by a great deal. The tram is so clean, and cheap and efficient, that people actually have stopped driving. Main boulevards have closed road traffic and are now only open to foot traffic. Amazing. Also, almost every street is lined with trees, big old ones, so you know they have been there for a while. I love that.
The one thing that I can say I don’t like about Paris is that it smells a bit. Bordeaux smells like fresh air. Incredible for a city this size, considering that Peoria smells like my dog.
So, I took the amazing tram and got to my hotel, a great place on le rue Hugerie. For the money I spent, I was hoping for a closet that was only infested by a small family of rats, but what I got was not even close.
My room was fricking huge. It had three large French windows, two beds, a full bathroom, a small coffee table, and a fire place. I paid 50 euros ($70) for this, for the weekend. In Paris, I cant get by on 50 euros in a day, but Bordeaux is not Paris.
I dropped my bag, and Elton and I went for a walk.
The first thing that I noticed was a huge carnival. Bordeaux often finds itself in the midst of fetes, I am told, so this was not a surprise. It was beautiful and huge. Its center piece was a giant Ferris wheel that juxtaposed nicely with the column of Liberty at the town square. I walked around a bit more, bought a cheese sandwich and took it back to my room. I had dinner in bed, and finally got some sleep before drifting off to the BBC.
The next day I woke up, feeling better, and got myself to the tourist office, which my friend Darrin recommended. Thanks Darrin! I booked a tour to the Medoc, which is one of the most famous of the wine regions around Bordeaux. It left at 1:30, and seeing as it was only about 10am, I took myself on a walk.
Saint Catherine in Bordeaux is roughly the equivalent as Las Ramblas in Barcelona, if you have ever been, or to Michigan Ave. in Chicago, if you have ever been there. I walked down this boulevard, closed to car traffic, and decided on Le Maison du Café as a nice stop to check my email and get a coffee. It was great people watching, and a really great morning. Not to mention that the coffee was the best I have had so far in France. Elton agreed, and we watched the young fashionistas shake their money makers up and down Saint Catherine while Benny and the Jets played on.
After that, I got back to the tourist office and headed out to the country to see the Medoc.
The bus that took us out there was comfortable. I cant complain anyway; the whole thing cost only 29 euros, so I was excited AND not broke, a winning combination.
The ride was about an hour, and the scenery was just as my Rough Guide described it, not notable. We first arrived at Chateau Reverdri, and small estate in the Lessiac region of the Medoc. This place is family owned and has been so for fifty years and three generations, so it is has a history. The guy that we met with was the current owner and couldn’t have been more than forty. A nice guy, and a total wealth of knowledge.
He showed us the fields and the aging vats. He answered our questions about what kinds of grapes he grows (merlot, cabernet sauvignon and some cabernet franc, just like everybody else in the Medoc). Then he took us to his aging cellar. There were rows on rows of oak barrels(a mix of French and American oaks, to be exact). He said that the law requires that all wine is aged at least six months, but he ages for about a year. I asked about global warming, and he gave me a look of total anxiety. He said that this year was really dry (unlike Champagne which was really wet), and the bloom didn’t come until late. He said he worried all summer.
Later, he opened one of the barrels for us to smell, and it was like you could taste the wine in the air. In fact, he said that about 3 to 10% of the wine evaporates in the barrels, and this is called the “Angel’s Share.” Isn’t that nice?
We moved on to the tasting, which our guide walked us through. Most of the group had no idea what they were doing, and so they were really attentive to what she had to say. I appreciated that. Anyway, the wines he had us taste were really fruity and had a real flavor of the oak. They were nice, so I bought a bottle of his 2005 for a friend in Paris, and we headed out to the bus.
Our next stop was in the Haut Medoc region of Bordeaux which is just south of the Medoc region. We would be stopping at what our tour guide told us was a real chateau, but I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant until we came to the area the chateau was in. We made a pit stop at what looked like the White House, and nobody really paid much attention to it outside of passing interest, until the tour guide mentioned that this was Chateau Margeaux, the most famous vineyard in Bordeaux. It is currently owned by a Greek family, who the guide assured us had French roots. The chateau is huge and gleaming white. It is a temple to all things wine, and these people can afford it. A bottle of Chateau Margeaux in a bad year can run in the hundreds, so a good year will be way more expensive, and an aged bottle of this stuff from a good year can be more than your mortgage… for a bottle of wine. It is no larger or more intoxicating than a bottle of Yellow Tail, but man, this stuff is the best there is.
Anyway, about twenty minutes later we arrived at Chateau Argasac, and this guide was not lying. This was a castle, in every way that people think about castles- from the towers at the corners of the building, to the moat and draw bridge. This was the total package. The chateau itself dates from the 11th century, so it has been around for a while. It was first owned by the English, when they ruled this area of France. It is obviously no longer English, but it is owned now by a large corporation who produces the wine and holds its meetings in the castle.
I got to taste some of their 04 and 05 reds, and they were really good. The Chateau Riverdri wines were what some people describe as “green” or too young. These were not. Oaky and juicy, but not as dry, they were ready to drink and very nice. I hadn’t eaten for a while though, and so with four glasses of wine in my empty stomach, I was really starting to enjoy myself. That’s when I decided that it was best to break from the group and wander the castle by alone. I ducked under the imposing velvet rope at the bottom of a staircase, and wound my way up the stone slab stairs. Who knew what treasures awaited… the throne room? The torture chamber? The Great Hall? What I did come upon was more startling than any of these, something I truly was not prepared to see. A large, heavy wooden door was bolted shut. It was obviously thick and very imposing. On the door was a small sign that had been written on:
“Salle du bain hors de service. SVP, descendez vous.”
I read it over and over, like I was about to divine the great mystery of the ancient Chateau Argasac, that I would know what great secret was held behind this door, and so I spoke the words on this sign aloud, as if to confirm them:
“Bathroom out of order. Please use the one on the lower level.”
Really? That’s what sneaking away from the group and up a flight of cordoned off stairs gets you in our modern, corporate age? Good bye yellow brick road, indeed.
So disappointing. That sign might as well have read, “Be sure to drink your Ovaltine”
I slouched back down to the group, only to come across two young American couples on their respective honeymoons. I was about to go up and say hello, when I noticed them all holding their wine glasses by the bowl instead of the stem, and the guys were trying to see who could chug their wine faster. So, maybe it was the snob in me or all the painstaking training I have gone through, but before I said word one, I turned on my heal and got back on the bus.
The ride home was nice and easy, a good thing for someone who has a belly full of wine and little else. On the way, a woman asked in French if she could sit next to me. I told her, “Sure” and we were on our way.
She was one of those people who sits next to you and starts up a conversation, not that you want one or anything. I was happy to just sit and enjoy the sun set, but she was a chatty one, so we talked.
The funny this was that after about thirty minutes of talk about our families, where we are from, what we were doing in Bordeaux, she had difficulty finding her words in French. I helped her, and suddenly, it dawned on me. “Holy cow! I have been speaking French to this woman for half of an hour! Holy cow! I speak French!”
Ever since that conversation, things have been much easier with my French. I have been speaking it almost exclusively and my confidence is through the roof.
Anyway, the woman, who’s name I never got, was from Mexico. She was in France with her mother and daughter, and was just tooling around the country seeing the sights for a month. She is a computer programmer, and she said that she saves up her money for a while, then quits her job and goes on a long trip. That is exactly what Ruta does, and I admired both of them for their passion for travel.
She told me later that she was going to cook a big Mexican meal that night for some friends. I told her that I was a cook, and I don’t think I realized until that conversation how much I missed Mexican food. It is just not something they do much of here. Oh well.
The bus ride ended, and we parted ways. It was really cool to meet another traveler who spoke no English, and seeing as I speak no Spanish, our common language had to be French. It was a great way to learn about someone else and to boost my confidence.
Elton and I got back to my hotel, rocking out to “Saturday Night‘s Alright for Fighting“, but not before stopping at a Paul. They’re all over the place; they’re like Corner Bakeries that have been around for 137 years. I got a cheese and tomato sandwich on olive bread and then took a nap.
Later, I went out for a walk around town. I had intended for it to be a chance to get some shots of Bordeaux and to just sight see, but not to make it a long trip, as France is really cooling off, and the dark is coming earlier and earlier. Despite all that, though, the walk seemed to go on forever. I walked for about two and a half hours, just going and going. I got pretty hungry along the way, but I couldn’t bring myself to go into any place. Bordeaux is, among other things, a college town, so there are tons of students hanging out just about everywhere. I just wasn’t in the mood to be talked to or to answer the same old questions about the States. “Where are you from?” “Do Americans like the French?” “Why did you start this war?” like it was me who personally dropped the first bomb (though technically speaking, the whole thing did start on my birthday, years ago). As proud as I am of my home country, it just gets really old answering the same questions over and over.
I wondered how Elton felt about all that, and turned on my iPod. As many questions as have been asked of me, I have even more about the world around me. I am just flustered at how old a place can be and how it still works. This city was built by the Romans, and yet, it is still here, spending billions of Euros to keep itself going. Chicago isn’t even two hundred years old yet, and I cant even think what life must have been like that far back. Or the fact that these people still plant roses at the end of their rows of vines to protect from vine pests. Somehow, the rose plants get attacked first, so they serve as a warning sign to the farmer that he needs to do something, as the pest is known to get from rose bush to grape vine in three days. That is pretty specific; how does someone who does not have today’s technology figure that out? How do they know it is a microscopic pest? How do they know how to stop it? And why after hundreds of years of planting roses, hasn’t someone come up with a newer, better way of doing things? In truth, science has, but the vine farmers in Bordeaux still plant roses, after hundreds of years. I just don’t get it.
But more than all of that though, I was forced to ask myself one question that had been bothering me. One thing that, try as I might, I could not figure out, and it was bugging the heck out of me: who the hell wrote “Rocket Man”? I mean, the lyric, “I miss the Earth so much; I miss my wife” is just ridiculous. Am I supposed to believe for one second that Elton John was ever in the closet enough to be married… to a woman…. And that given the chance to blast off into space with other men, all locked up in a confined, metal phallus, that Elton John was actually thinking about his wife? Unlikely.
In any event, I finally came across the old west gate of Bordeaux; built by the Romans, it now serves as a reminder of all that has transpired within this city’s walls. It was the outer most defensive gate for the Romans; it was the spot where three hundred Frenchmen lost their lives during the Revolution, and now, it is the site of a really cute little coffee bar. Hmmm, how things change….
Anyway, that night, just outside the gate was a reggae show, so I stayed and bopped along with the crowd. Really positive stuff, and the students and the people of Bordeaux all danced along together. It was really cool. How random, this whole reggae festival in the middle of a French city built on Roman ground that used to be run by the English. It is a small world, after all.
Later, I grabbed some falafel and a GINORMOUS baked potato, some Heineken, and went back to the room. As a treat to myself for how hard I work in Paris, I took my dinner in my big, fluffy bed, while watching the new Doctor Who on the BBC. After eating, I was sound asleep in moments, probably because of Doctor Who.
The next day my train was leaving Bordeaux for Paris, so I only really had time for lunch before the train took off.
I stopped at a place called Ragazzi da Peppone, a great little Italian place near the hotel. They serve the freshest pizza in the whole of the western world. I got the margarita pizza with salad. Curiously, the salad was served fresh on top of the pizza, and it was delicious. The cheese was not melted, so it became almost bread and salad with cheese and tomato. Super, super fresh, and totally delicious. I came to find out from the waitress that this is how pizza is served in Bordeaux, and it was a total change of pace for me, but a welcome one. Chicago is known for its pizza, but I am just not sure if I can take that much melted cheese on something anymore. That’s a lot of cheese! So this style was great. The cool thing about Ragazzi de Peppone is that, if you would like some wine, you don’t get a menu or anything. You just go down to their cellar, below the restaurant. It is actually a cave that the restaurant was built above, and it is filled with bottles from all over Italy. You pick what you want, and you bring it up to the restaurant with you. The server just scans it and adds it to your bill. It was really cool, and there are tons of bottles.
I sat outside and watched Sunday traffic whiz by. It was very relaxing.
Later, before I got on the train, I stopped into a wine store, just to see if there were any treasures that I could find to bring back to Paris with me. There was one, but it was way, way out of my price range. It was a syrah mix, but I had never heard of the other grape in the mix. The bottle was around 100 euros, so too much for me, but I really wanted to taste, as the grapes were grown and the wine made in Nazareth. I mean, these are the wine roots and land where Christ himself drank. I do understand that this is not a 2000 year old bottle of wine (that might used to have been water?) going for only 100 euros, but just to taste the wine of that land is like being at the last supper or something. I had never felt such a connection to history. I held the bottle for a while and then moved on. It still blows my mind. I didn’t even know you could get wine from there anymore.
So, with that thought in mind, I headed out to the tram and then to the train. The ride back was quick and uneventful.
I got back into Paris and into bed, so I could be up and ready for work the next day.
This trip was crazy: such a connection to history, all in grapes. I just cant fathom that way of life still being lived all these hundreds of years later, and yet the trip was over so fast, gone… like a candle in the wind.
God, that was cheesy.
So, without further delay, Kiss My France, Ltd. proudly presents: “Pairing Bordeaux.”
This weekend, I took myself on one of the highlights of this trip. Before I left for France, I decided that one of the places that I most wanted to visit was Bordeaux, because I have such an interest in wines, and Bordeaux is one of the world’s best wine regions (it is a world heritage site, in fact). Also, it is nice to get away and relax from time to time.
So, I booked an evening train for after work. I planned this trip so well, I tell you. My train left at 6pm. I finished work at 2:30pm, so I had three and a half hours to get to my room, shower, and make my way over to Bienvenue Montparnasse (the departing station) at a leisurely pace.
Such was not the case.
The RER B is the train that connects where I live to the train line that goes to Bienvenue Montparnasse. Well, as you may have heard, Paris’s train system is just coming off of a “greve” or a strike. So the trains are still getting their acts together.
The train I took stopped at a station called Chatelet Les Halles for about half of an hour, for no discernable reason. We just sat there, the car packed to the gunnels. It also was dreadfully late arriving at the station where I live, so instead of having all the time in the world, I arrived at Bienvenue Montparnasse with about 20 minutes to spare. I thought, as I climbed the stairs to the ticket machines (you just put in your credit card, and it spits out your tickets), “Well, twenty minutes is ok. I’ll get my tickets and be on my way.” Again, not so. The ticket machines don’t take American credit cards. I have a European card, but I didn’t make my reservation on that card, so it was off to the teller for me. Except that the lines were super, super long, it now being a Friday after working hours, and people are trying to get home.
I was in luck though. There is a special “English Speakers Only” line that was very short, only about 5 people ahead of me. Great! I got into that line. It turns out that the sign should actually read, “Dullards Only” as these people argued with the tellers about all kinds of ridiculous things: what do you mean there isn’t another train today? Do I have to pay you now? I really would like a window seat; can you change someone so I can have a window seat?
By the time I got to the teller, I had resolved myself that I would have to take the next train to Bordeaux, which was in half of an hour, but stopped frequently between Paris and its destination, so a three hour trip becomes a five hour trip and puts me into Bordeaux at almost midnight.
I told the teller that, and he said, as he handed me my tickets, “Oh, I think you can make this train if you run. You do have SIX MINUTES.”
So, I ran. I mean, I totally ran, like you see in the movies. I was about to wave my hands in the air and start shouting, “Hold the train! Hold the train!” when I finally found my train, and my car, and got on. I collapsed into my seat, sweating, breathing hard, and with, literally, no time to spare. By the time I had gotten my jacket off, we were already on our way. It was divine intervention that I made that train.
The trip to Bordeaux was fine. I slept for the first hour and a half and listened to my iPod.
The train was full, and I was getting sick with a cold from lack of sleep, I think, so after I woke up to give the conductor my tickets, I just stared out the window at the countryside as it zipped past. The sun set behind the hills, and the sky took on a deep indigo, streaked with translucent grey/white clouds that looked like pulled cotton. The moon was full and bright and dipped in and out of view like a pearl bobbing in ink.
In culinary circles, it is said with conviction that no meal is complete without wine, so the continual challenge is to pair the right wines with the right foods. A bad match wont ruin a meal, but a good one can make a good meal into a fantastic one. I like to think of life that way, so I tried to find the perfect music to pair with these hours on the train, to make the roughly 300 miles southward a great experience.
Sometimes you want to be alone, you know? Sometimes you just need to be alone with you thoughts, and do as you want to do. That was really how I was feeling in Champagne, but for Bordeaux, I felt like having someone with me. As it happens, that someone turned out to be none other than Elton John.
If you have the means and the wherewithal, I truly suggest that you take an evening train from Paris to Bordeaux. Sit at a window seat and watch the moon and the hills race by as Elton croons “Your Song.” It was a beautiful trip to the south.
Arriving in Bordeaux is a bit different than arriving in Epernay or Reims. Those are both very small towns, and the gare (train station) is not too far from any thing. Bordeaux is one of France’s largest cities, with a population of over 500,000. So, when I called my hotel to ask if I could walk to them from the gare, the response, “Oh la la! Mais non!” was not unexpected. They recommended that I take the tram. This is a new, electrical kind of train that runs all over the city. Fare is 1,30 euros, so about two bucks. Small change considering that the thing cost just over a billion euros to build. A BILLION EUROS. The longer I live here, the less I think in terms of dollars, but still, a billion of anything is a ton (pun intended). To put that in perspective, right now that is almost two billion dollars spent on a tram for a city the size of, what? Peoria? Sorry, but who cares about Peoria? At least, who cares enough to spend two billion dollars on Peoria? I don’t, even if I had that much.
The great thing that the tram has done for Bordeaux is that it has reduced fossil fuel emissions by a great deal. The tram is so clean, and cheap and efficient, that people actually have stopped driving. Main boulevards have closed road traffic and are now only open to foot traffic. Amazing. Also, almost every street is lined with trees, big old ones, so you know they have been there for a while. I love that.
The one thing that I can say I don’t like about Paris is that it smells a bit. Bordeaux smells like fresh air. Incredible for a city this size, considering that Peoria smells like my dog.
So, I took the amazing tram and got to my hotel, a great place on le rue Hugerie. For the money I spent, I was hoping for a closet that was only infested by a small family of rats, but what I got was not even close.
My room was fricking huge. It had three large French windows, two beds, a full bathroom, a small coffee table, and a fire place. I paid 50 euros ($70) for this, for the weekend. In Paris, I cant get by on 50 euros in a day, but Bordeaux is not Paris.
I dropped my bag, and Elton and I went for a walk.
The first thing that I noticed was a huge carnival. Bordeaux often finds itself in the midst of fetes, I am told, so this was not a surprise. It was beautiful and huge. Its center piece was a giant Ferris wheel that juxtaposed nicely with the column of Liberty at the town square. I walked around a bit more, bought a cheese sandwich and took it back to my room. I had dinner in bed, and finally got some sleep before drifting off to the BBC.
The next day I woke up, feeling better, and got myself to the tourist office, which my friend Darrin recommended. Thanks Darrin! I booked a tour to the Medoc, which is one of the most famous of the wine regions around Bordeaux. It left at 1:30, and seeing as it was only about 10am, I took myself on a walk.
Saint Catherine in Bordeaux is roughly the equivalent as Las Ramblas in Barcelona, if you have ever been, or to Michigan Ave. in Chicago, if you have ever been there. I walked down this boulevard, closed to car traffic, and decided on Le Maison du Café as a nice stop to check my email and get a coffee. It was great people watching, and a really great morning. Not to mention that the coffee was the best I have had so far in France. Elton agreed, and we watched the young fashionistas shake their money makers up and down Saint Catherine while Benny and the Jets played on.
After that, I got back to the tourist office and headed out to the country to see the Medoc.
The bus that took us out there was comfortable. I cant complain anyway; the whole thing cost only 29 euros, so I was excited AND not broke, a winning combination.
The ride was about an hour, and the scenery was just as my Rough Guide described it, not notable. We first arrived at Chateau Reverdri, and small estate in the Lessiac region of the Medoc. This place is family owned and has been so for fifty years and three generations, so it is has a history. The guy that we met with was the current owner and couldn’t have been more than forty. A nice guy, and a total wealth of knowledge.
He showed us the fields and the aging vats. He answered our questions about what kinds of grapes he grows (merlot, cabernet sauvignon and some cabernet franc, just like everybody else in the Medoc). Then he took us to his aging cellar. There were rows on rows of oak barrels(a mix of French and American oaks, to be exact). He said that the law requires that all wine is aged at least six months, but he ages for about a year. I asked about global warming, and he gave me a look of total anxiety. He said that this year was really dry (unlike Champagne which was really wet), and the bloom didn’t come until late. He said he worried all summer.
Later, he opened one of the barrels for us to smell, and it was like you could taste the wine in the air. In fact, he said that about 3 to 10% of the wine evaporates in the barrels, and this is called the “Angel’s Share.” Isn’t that nice?
We moved on to the tasting, which our guide walked us through. Most of the group had no idea what they were doing, and so they were really attentive to what she had to say. I appreciated that. Anyway, the wines he had us taste were really fruity and had a real flavor of the oak. They were nice, so I bought a bottle of his 2005 for a friend in Paris, and we headed out to the bus.
Our next stop was in the Haut Medoc region of Bordeaux which is just south of the Medoc region. We would be stopping at what our tour guide told us was a real chateau, but I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant until we came to the area the chateau was in. We made a pit stop at what looked like the White House, and nobody really paid much attention to it outside of passing interest, until the tour guide mentioned that this was Chateau Margeaux, the most famous vineyard in Bordeaux. It is currently owned by a Greek family, who the guide assured us had French roots. The chateau is huge and gleaming white. It is a temple to all things wine, and these people can afford it. A bottle of Chateau Margeaux in a bad year can run in the hundreds, so a good year will be way more expensive, and an aged bottle of this stuff from a good year can be more than your mortgage… for a bottle of wine. It is no larger or more intoxicating than a bottle of Yellow Tail, but man, this stuff is the best there is.
Anyway, about twenty minutes later we arrived at Chateau Argasac, and this guide was not lying. This was a castle, in every way that people think about castles- from the towers at the corners of the building, to the moat and draw bridge. This was the total package. The chateau itself dates from the 11th century, so it has been around for a while. It was first owned by the English, when they ruled this area of France. It is obviously no longer English, but it is owned now by a large corporation who produces the wine and holds its meetings in the castle.
I got to taste some of their 04 and 05 reds, and they were really good. The Chateau Riverdri wines were what some people describe as “green” or too young. These were not. Oaky and juicy, but not as dry, they were ready to drink and very nice. I hadn’t eaten for a while though, and so with four glasses of wine in my empty stomach, I was really starting to enjoy myself. That’s when I decided that it was best to break from the group and wander the castle by alone. I ducked under the imposing velvet rope at the bottom of a staircase, and wound my way up the stone slab stairs. Who knew what treasures awaited… the throne room? The torture chamber? The Great Hall? What I did come upon was more startling than any of these, something I truly was not prepared to see. A large, heavy wooden door was bolted shut. It was obviously thick and very imposing. On the door was a small sign that had been written on:
“Salle du bain hors de service. SVP, descendez vous.”
I read it over and over, like I was about to divine the great mystery of the ancient Chateau Argasac, that I would know what great secret was held behind this door, and so I spoke the words on this sign aloud, as if to confirm them:
“Bathroom out of order. Please use the one on the lower level.”
Really? That’s what sneaking away from the group and up a flight of cordoned off stairs gets you in our modern, corporate age? Good bye yellow brick road, indeed.
So disappointing. That sign might as well have read, “Be sure to drink your Ovaltine”
I slouched back down to the group, only to come across two young American couples on their respective honeymoons. I was about to go up and say hello, when I noticed them all holding their wine glasses by the bowl instead of the stem, and the guys were trying to see who could chug their wine faster. So, maybe it was the snob in me or all the painstaking training I have gone through, but before I said word one, I turned on my heal and got back on the bus.
The ride home was nice and easy, a good thing for someone who has a belly full of wine and little else. On the way, a woman asked in French if she could sit next to me. I told her, “Sure” and we were on our way.
She was one of those people who sits next to you and starts up a conversation, not that you want one or anything. I was happy to just sit and enjoy the sun set, but she was a chatty one, so we talked.
The funny this was that after about thirty minutes of talk about our families, where we are from, what we were doing in Bordeaux, she had difficulty finding her words in French. I helped her, and suddenly, it dawned on me. “Holy cow! I have been speaking French to this woman for half of an hour! Holy cow! I speak French!”
Ever since that conversation, things have been much easier with my French. I have been speaking it almost exclusively and my confidence is through the roof.
Anyway, the woman, who’s name I never got, was from Mexico. She was in France with her mother and daughter, and was just tooling around the country seeing the sights for a month. She is a computer programmer, and she said that she saves up her money for a while, then quits her job and goes on a long trip. That is exactly what Ruta does, and I admired both of them for their passion for travel.
She told me later that she was going to cook a big Mexican meal that night for some friends. I told her that I was a cook, and I don’t think I realized until that conversation how much I missed Mexican food. It is just not something they do much of here. Oh well.
The bus ride ended, and we parted ways. It was really cool to meet another traveler who spoke no English, and seeing as I speak no Spanish, our common language had to be French. It was a great way to learn about someone else and to boost my confidence.
Elton and I got back to my hotel, rocking out to “Saturday Night‘s Alright for Fighting“, but not before stopping at a Paul. They’re all over the place; they’re like Corner Bakeries that have been around for 137 years. I got a cheese and tomato sandwich on olive bread and then took a nap.
Later, I went out for a walk around town. I had intended for it to be a chance to get some shots of Bordeaux and to just sight see, but not to make it a long trip, as France is really cooling off, and the dark is coming earlier and earlier. Despite all that, though, the walk seemed to go on forever. I walked for about two and a half hours, just going and going. I got pretty hungry along the way, but I couldn’t bring myself to go into any place. Bordeaux is, among other things, a college town, so there are tons of students hanging out just about everywhere. I just wasn’t in the mood to be talked to or to answer the same old questions about the States. “Where are you from?” “Do Americans like the French?” “Why did you start this war?” like it was me who personally dropped the first bomb (though technically speaking, the whole thing did start on my birthday, years ago). As proud as I am of my home country, it just gets really old answering the same questions over and over.
I wondered how Elton felt about all that, and turned on my iPod. As many questions as have been asked of me, I have even more about the world around me. I am just flustered at how old a place can be and how it still works. This city was built by the Romans, and yet, it is still here, spending billions of Euros to keep itself going. Chicago isn’t even two hundred years old yet, and I cant even think what life must have been like that far back. Or the fact that these people still plant roses at the end of their rows of vines to protect from vine pests. Somehow, the rose plants get attacked first, so they serve as a warning sign to the farmer that he needs to do something, as the pest is known to get from rose bush to grape vine in three days. That is pretty specific; how does someone who does not have today’s technology figure that out? How do they know it is a microscopic pest? How do they know how to stop it? And why after hundreds of years of planting roses, hasn’t someone come up with a newer, better way of doing things? In truth, science has, but the vine farmers in Bordeaux still plant roses, after hundreds of years. I just don’t get it.
But more than all of that though, I was forced to ask myself one question that had been bothering me. One thing that, try as I might, I could not figure out, and it was bugging the heck out of me: who the hell wrote “Rocket Man”? I mean, the lyric, “I miss the Earth so much; I miss my wife” is just ridiculous. Am I supposed to believe for one second that Elton John was ever in the closet enough to be married… to a woman…. And that given the chance to blast off into space with other men, all locked up in a confined, metal phallus, that Elton John was actually thinking about his wife? Unlikely.
In any event, I finally came across the old west gate of Bordeaux; built by the Romans, it now serves as a reminder of all that has transpired within this city’s walls. It was the outer most defensive gate for the Romans; it was the spot where three hundred Frenchmen lost their lives during the Revolution, and now, it is the site of a really cute little coffee bar. Hmmm, how things change….
Anyway, that night, just outside the gate was a reggae show, so I stayed and bopped along with the crowd. Really positive stuff, and the students and the people of Bordeaux all danced along together. It was really cool. How random, this whole reggae festival in the middle of a French city built on Roman ground that used to be run by the English. It is a small world, after all.
Later, I grabbed some falafel and a GINORMOUS baked potato, some Heineken, and went back to the room. As a treat to myself for how hard I work in Paris, I took my dinner in my big, fluffy bed, while watching the new Doctor Who on the BBC. After eating, I was sound asleep in moments, probably because of Doctor Who.
The next day my train was leaving Bordeaux for Paris, so I only really had time for lunch before the train took off.
I stopped at a place called Ragazzi da Peppone, a great little Italian place near the hotel. They serve the freshest pizza in the whole of the western world. I got the margarita pizza with salad. Curiously, the salad was served fresh on top of the pizza, and it was delicious. The cheese was not melted, so it became almost bread and salad with cheese and tomato. Super, super fresh, and totally delicious. I came to find out from the waitress that this is how pizza is served in Bordeaux, and it was a total change of pace for me, but a welcome one. Chicago is known for its pizza, but I am just not sure if I can take that much melted cheese on something anymore. That’s a lot of cheese! So this style was great. The cool thing about Ragazzi de Peppone is that, if you would like some wine, you don’t get a menu or anything. You just go down to their cellar, below the restaurant. It is actually a cave that the restaurant was built above, and it is filled with bottles from all over Italy. You pick what you want, and you bring it up to the restaurant with you. The server just scans it and adds it to your bill. It was really cool, and there are tons of bottles.
I sat outside and watched Sunday traffic whiz by. It was very relaxing.
Later, before I got on the train, I stopped into a wine store, just to see if there were any treasures that I could find to bring back to Paris with me. There was one, but it was way, way out of my price range. It was a syrah mix, but I had never heard of the other grape in the mix. The bottle was around 100 euros, so too much for me, but I really wanted to taste, as the grapes were grown and the wine made in Nazareth. I mean, these are the wine roots and land where Christ himself drank. I do understand that this is not a 2000 year old bottle of wine (that might used to have been water?) going for only 100 euros, but just to taste the wine of that land is like being at the last supper or something. I had never felt such a connection to history. I held the bottle for a while and then moved on. It still blows my mind. I didn’t even know you could get wine from there anymore.
So, with that thought in mind, I headed out to the tram and then to the train. The ride back was quick and uneventful.
I got back into Paris and into bed, so I could be up and ready for work the next day.
This trip was crazy: such a connection to history, all in grapes. I just cant fathom that way of life still being lived all these hundreds of years later, and yet the trip was over so fast, gone… like a candle in the wind.
God, that was cheesy.
14 December 2007
Some good news, then some more good news, then a bit of bad news, then some great news... all in that order.
"Nice shirt."
"Thank you."
"You like that team?"
"Yes, I do. That's why I bought the shirt."
"It is a nice shirt."
"Yes, thank you."
"You're welcome."
"Uh, huh."
"Hmmm, did you see the final match?"
"Yeah, I did... do you think we can start the review now?"
"Sure, if you want."
"Yeah, it would be really nice."
"Ok then..."
This is how my second performance review with the chef started yesterday. Upon reading it aloud to myself, it sounds like the chef and I are a divorcee and a widow on our first date in thirty years, and it isnt going too well.
(I'm the widow, by the way, as I am sure thirty years of marriage to me will kill Ruta.)
Good news is that the review went really well. He gave me a 4.40 average out of 5, which is the highest possible B+ you can get without it being an A. Oh well.
He even put extra comments in the extra comments section of the review form. I mean, isnt that usually reserved for things like, "This employee needs to work harder on EVERYTHING" or "Employee's breath is offensive on at least nine levels, all of which I will list here..."
He said that I was a "detail oriented person" and that I "showed great improvement since the last review."
Detail oriented, huh?
Before I left for this trip, Ruta and I sat down and said, "OK, what do we want to get out of this time apart?" One of the things I said I wanted was to create success in my field. A while back, the head chef from Hyatt Vendome was in our kitchen helping out for three weeks. Hyatt Vendome is one of the premiere hotels in Europe, so this guy is a big deal. He even trained with Chef Guy Savoy, who is a confirmed really, really big deal. He is a master chef and totally famous in France. Any way, I made sure to make time to bend this chef's ear. One thing he said to me that really stuck was, "If you want to be great, really, really great, you have to pay attention to the details, because that is where greatness is."
When I worked at the cafe for Lord Vader, one of the dark lord's comments, over and over and over, was, "You are not a detail oriented person. You need to pay attention to the details. Now drop and give me six million."
I cant honestly say she was wrong, and I know the detail thing to be true in my own life outside of work. So, I really focused on it here, and it payed off. The chef said things like, "You wash and cut all the bananas from their stems, and you peel each sticker off. You arrange the salmon plates so that the presentation is appealing. You keep the buffet very clean." So, these are not big deals, but they are things that I do, because I think that they make a difference, and I was sure that no one noticed them. I did them for me though, because I need to. I have become something of an OCD type over here.
For example, the other day, I cleaned out the little kitchen I use to prepare everything for the breakfast buffet. I went out to the show kitchen to arrange a bunch of things, and when I came back, a dishwasher was sitting on my prep counter, ringing out a rag into the sink, and getting little flecks of brown water all over the place. I thought I was having an asthma attack; I got all choked up and really (not joking here) started to have a little panic attack. I shooed him out of the room, and set to cleaning the whole kitchen again. Only when it was done did I feel that I could relax.
I know that I am a person given to fits of hyperbole now and again, but I assure you, that story is totally true.
So, that said, I do all kinds of things like that, because that is how great chefs do them, but not because anyone is ever going to notice. When the chef did, I was bouncing off the walls happy.
The second bit of good news I got was that, seeing as we have hired a new guy, Simon, I will train him on breakfast next week. But today, finally and officially, was my first day in the pastry department.
So, in the interest of being concise, I will say this:
On September 30th, 2006, I professed my undying love and eternal commitment to Ruta.
On December 14th, 2007, I would like to say that if there is a second place in my life, it goes to pastry.
HOLY F-ING COW!!!!
The chef's name is Thierry (Terry), and he is amazing. The guy had me make a mousse off the bat, then a whole slew of these French crumble cakes, a rice pudding, the mix for about 30 creme brulees, and a boat load of pineapple, apple and beet chips. Fruit chips are exactly what they sound like, by the way. You slice fruit super thin, and then you dehydrate it. The effect is two fold: the fruit becomes crispy, and the sugar becomes very pronounced. This is especially true of the beets. I hate beets, and I count them as my archrivals, second only to Mel Gibson. But you dry them out, and I could eat them all day long.
The preceding list of stuff to do took my two hours. Chef Thierry had to go, so I was released for the day.
The good news about being a pastry chef? 1. All the glory, because dessert is last and everyone loves it. 2. Way more money; I dont know why. 3. Much less stress than the Executive chef, so you live longer.
The down side? You gain like, a million pounds. So, to counter that, I bought a really great French rugby jersey to run in, and that was the shirt that the chef liked so much. I think I am all set.
The bit of bad news is that tonight is my Friend Inna's last night in Paris. She leaves tomorrow morning.
A bit about Inna. She is really young- 19 years old. She is really mature for her age though, and she is an art school graduate with a focus on painting. Our conversations are those that I will remember for a long, long time. When she is sad, she paints; if she is happy, she paints. If she is angry, she writes.... or paints. I have never seen the stuff, though, as she is really shy about it.
Also, being Russian, she can drink like nobody's beeswax. I dont try to keep up. I just let her take gulp after gulp of vodka, hold it under her tongue (like they do in Russia), and swallow it down. After she has had three or four vodkas, neat, she will pick me up off the floor and walk me home. I will usually have had two beers; I just cant hold my liquor the way I used to, as I have lost a bit of weight.
Tonight is her going away party, and I am planning on it being a long night.
The thing is, it is really sad for me. I mean, I will really miss her and the great conversations we had, but I mean, I am worried for Inna.
About two months ago, Inna got really sick. She didnt come out of her room for a week and so, obviously, she wasnt at work. She finally went and saw a doctor, and he put her on some meds, which I think she takes religiously. She told everyone that she had a bad flu, but was feeling better. Thats how it was left, but I found out from her manager that- really- her father had died suddenly. Understandably, she was really depressed. She told her supervisor that she didnt want to talk about it, though, because she didnt want everyone tip toeing around her. She said she wanted to make this time in France as a time that she would remember fondly.
So, I never said anything about it.
I have walked by her in the hall, though, when she was on the phone with her mother, and I have seen how she tries to hold it together for her. I know she is stressed, and I know that this Christmas will be a rough one. What is that like? An empty chair at the dinner table or an empty place by the tree on Christmas morning, suddenly?I know that she is going to go home and deal with that tomorrow, and I hope that she is ok. I am really tempted to say, "Look, if you ever want to just vent, you can always call or email me" but then she would know that I know, and that would make the last few months seem really fake.
So, I will take her out tonight, and we will celebrate, and I will pretend that all is right with the world, when I know its not. I am not the kind of person who holds things in; I like having people there I can talk to, but I guess just pretending that everything is great is the best friend I can be to her right now. It sucks though.
It really sucks.
Anyway, to end on a happy note, and to change the subject dramatically, I recently found out that this hotel makes a gross profit of 200,000,000€ a year. That is nearly $400,000,000, 40% of which comes from food and beverage, so that's about $160,000,000 made from the restaurants here and the bar. One of our biggest customers is Air France, as we have a special First Class room with them at Charles de Gaulle Airport that business people, executives, and the various wealthy can hang out in while waiting for their flights. Also, their execs stay here at the hotel.
"Big deal" stuff.
Next week, the chef is hosting some of their executive team in his bistro, a little room in the kitchen that is decorated really well, and gets all of our best products (flavored French salts, Dom Perignon, fine crystal wine glasses, etc).
As I was leaving today, I threw the chef a "Bon weekend!" as I was walking out the door.
That is really pretty informal for this guy, so when he called after me, I thought I was going to get a little lecture on French etiquette. (It would have been more proper to firmly shake his hand, look him in the eye, and say, "Au revoir, chef." Actually, it would have been even better had I just quietly left and said nothing.)
I was surprised that he had no interest in discussing etiquette with me at all.
What he did say, in fact, was:
"Next week I have the executive team from Air France in my bistro. I am personally cooking for all of them. I would like for you to assist."
After I stopped pissing myself, I nodded like an idiot, shook his hand, thanked him about a thousand times, and ran out of the kitchen, giggling like a fourth grade girl, high on coke.
So, I have two weeks left in this country as of this writing, and it seems four months of ass kicking have been worth it.
I dont mean for this blog to come off sounding like, "I'm so great" but I have to say, that I left the States less than confident. If you recall, I didnt even have any pants at the time.
It has been a heck of a ride, and it aint even over yet...
"Thank you."
"You like that team?"
"Yes, I do. That's why I bought the shirt."
"It is a nice shirt."
"Yes, thank you."
"You're welcome."
"Uh, huh."
"Hmmm, did you see the final match?"
"Yeah, I did... do you think we can start the review now?"
"Sure, if you want."
"Yeah, it would be really nice."
"Ok then..."
This is how my second performance review with the chef started yesterday. Upon reading it aloud to myself, it sounds like the chef and I are a divorcee and a widow on our first date in thirty years, and it isnt going too well.
(I'm the widow, by the way, as I am sure thirty years of marriage to me will kill Ruta.)
Good news is that the review went really well. He gave me a 4.40 average out of 5, which is the highest possible B+ you can get without it being an A. Oh well.
He even put extra comments in the extra comments section of the review form. I mean, isnt that usually reserved for things like, "This employee needs to work harder on EVERYTHING" or "Employee's breath is offensive on at least nine levels, all of which I will list here..."
He said that I was a "detail oriented person" and that I "showed great improvement since the last review."
Detail oriented, huh?
Before I left for this trip, Ruta and I sat down and said, "OK, what do we want to get out of this time apart?" One of the things I said I wanted was to create success in my field. A while back, the head chef from Hyatt Vendome was in our kitchen helping out for three weeks. Hyatt Vendome is one of the premiere hotels in Europe, so this guy is a big deal. He even trained with Chef Guy Savoy, who is a confirmed really, really big deal. He is a master chef and totally famous in France. Any way, I made sure to make time to bend this chef's ear. One thing he said to me that really stuck was, "If you want to be great, really, really great, you have to pay attention to the details, because that is where greatness is."
When I worked at the cafe for Lord Vader, one of the dark lord's comments, over and over and over, was, "You are not a detail oriented person. You need to pay attention to the details. Now drop and give me six million."
I cant honestly say she was wrong, and I know the detail thing to be true in my own life outside of work. So, I really focused on it here, and it payed off. The chef said things like, "You wash and cut all the bananas from their stems, and you peel each sticker off. You arrange the salmon plates so that the presentation is appealing. You keep the buffet very clean." So, these are not big deals, but they are things that I do, because I think that they make a difference, and I was sure that no one noticed them. I did them for me though, because I need to. I have become something of an OCD type over here.
For example, the other day, I cleaned out the little kitchen I use to prepare everything for the breakfast buffet. I went out to the show kitchen to arrange a bunch of things, and when I came back, a dishwasher was sitting on my prep counter, ringing out a rag into the sink, and getting little flecks of brown water all over the place. I thought I was having an asthma attack; I got all choked up and really (not joking here) started to have a little panic attack. I shooed him out of the room, and set to cleaning the whole kitchen again. Only when it was done did I feel that I could relax.
I know that I am a person given to fits of hyperbole now and again, but I assure you, that story is totally true.
So, that said, I do all kinds of things like that, because that is how great chefs do them, but not because anyone is ever going to notice. When the chef did, I was bouncing off the walls happy.
The second bit of good news I got was that, seeing as we have hired a new guy, Simon, I will train him on breakfast next week. But today, finally and officially, was my first day in the pastry department.
So, in the interest of being concise, I will say this:
On September 30th, 2006, I professed my undying love and eternal commitment to Ruta.
On December 14th, 2007, I would like to say that if there is a second place in my life, it goes to pastry.
HOLY F-ING COW!!!!
The chef's name is Thierry (Terry), and he is amazing. The guy had me make a mousse off the bat, then a whole slew of these French crumble cakes, a rice pudding, the mix for about 30 creme brulees, and a boat load of pineapple, apple and beet chips. Fruit chips are exactly what they sound like, by the way. You slice fruit super thin, and then you dehydrate it. The effect is two fold: the fruit becomes crispy, and the sugar becomes very pronounced. This is especially true of the beets. I hate beets, and I count them as my archrivals, second only to Mel Gibson. But you dry them out, and I could eat them all day long.
The preceding list of stuff to do took my two hours. Chef Thierry had to go, so I was released for the day.
The good news about being a pastry chef? 1. All the glory, because dessert is last and everyone loves it. 2. Way more money; I dont know why. 3. Much less stress than the Executive chef, so you live longer.
The down side? You gain like, a million pounds. So, to counter that, I bought a really great French rugby jersey to run in, and that was the shirt that the chef liked so much. I think I am all set.
The bit of bad news is that tonight is my Friend Inna's last night in Paris. She leaves tomorrow morning.
A bit about Inna. She is really young- 19 years old. She is really mature for her age though, and she is an art school graduate with a focus on painting. Our conversations are those that I will remember for a long, long time. When she is sad, she paints; if she is happy, she paints. If she is angry, she writes.... or paints. I have never seen the stuff, though, as she is really shy about it.
Also, being Russian, she can drink like nobody's beeswax. I dont try to keep up. I just let her take gulp after gulp of vodka, hold it under her tongue (like they do in Russia), and swallow it down. After she has had three or four vodkas, neat, she will pick me up off the floor and walk me home. I will usually have had two beers; I just cant hold my liquor the way I used to, as I have lost a bit of weight.
Tonight is her going away party, and I am planning on it being a long night.
The thing is, it is really sad for me. I mean, I will really miss her and the great conversations we had, but I mean, I am worried for Inna.
About two months ago, Inna got really sick. She didnt come out of her room for a week and so, obviously, she wasnt at work. She finally went and saw a doctor, and he put her on some meds, which I think she takes religiously. She told everyone that she had a bad flu, but was feeling better. Thats how it was left, but I found out from her manager that- really- her father had died suddenly. Understandably, she was really depressed. She told her supervisor that she didnt want to talk about it, though, because she didnt want everyone tip toeing around her. She said she wanted to make this time in France as a time that she would remember fondly.
So, I never said anything about it.
I have walked by her in the hall, though, when she was on the phone with her mother, and I have seen how she tries to hold it together for her. I know she is stressed, and I know that this Christmas will be a rough one. What is that like? An empty chair at the dinner table or an empty place by the tree on Christmas morning, suddenly?I know that she is going to go home and deal with that tomorrow, and I hope that she is ok. I am really tempted to say, "Look, if you ever want to just vent, you can always call or email me" but then she would know that I know, and that would make the last few months seem really fake.
So, I will take her out tonight, and we will celebrate, and I will pretend that all is right with the world, when I know its not. I am not the kind of person who holds things in; I like having people there I can talk to, but I guess just pretending that everything is great is the best friend I can be to her right now. It sucks though.
It really sucks.
Anyway, to end on a happy note, and to change the subject dramatically, I recently found out that this hotel makes a gross profit of 200,000,000€ a year. That is nearly $400,000,000, 40% of which comes from food and beverage, so that's about $160,000,000 made from the restaurants here and the bar. One of our biggest customers is Air France, as we have a special First Class room with them at Charles de Gaulle Airport that business people, executives, and the various wealthy can hang out in while waiting for their flights. Also, their execs stay here at the hotel.
"Big deal" stuff.
Next week, the chef is hosting some of their executive team in his bistro, a little room in the kitchen that is decorated really well, and gets all of our best products (flavored French salts, Dom Perignon, fine crystal wine glasses, etc).
As I was leaving today, I threw the chef a "Bon weekend!" as I was walking out the door.
That is really pretty informal for this guy, so when he called after me, I thought I was going to get a little lecture on French etiquette. (It would have been more proper to firmly shake his hand, look him in the eye, and say, "Au revoir, chef." Actually, it would have been even better had I just quietly left and said nothing.)
I was surprised that he had no interest in discussing etiquette with me at all.
What he did say, in fact, was:
"Next week I have the executive team from Air France in my bistro. I am personally cooking for all of them. I would like for you to assist."
After I stopped pissing myself, I nodded like an idiot, shook his hand, thanked him about a thousand times, and ran out of the kitchen, giggling like a fourth grade girl, high on coke.
So, I have two weeks left in this country as of this writing, and it seems four months of ass kicking have been worth it.
I dont mean for this blog to come off sounding like, "I'm so great" but I have to say, that I left the States less than confident. If you recall, I didnt even have any pants at the time.
It has been a heck of a ride, and it aint even over yet...
12 December 2007
Firsts and Third
The past few weeks have brought on a whole slew of new things here in France.
First of all, the other day, the first frost came our way. Holy Bejeezus, it was cold, but I am ever grateful, as in came the frost, and out went my allergies.
Really though, watching the sun come up over the hills of Roissy (the petite ville where I am at) while the birds fly south to Nice and the fist morning rays glint off of the newly frozen Earth almost makes it worth while to get up at 4:30 in the morning.
Almost.
Also, a month ago I got to experience my very first ever fashion week here in Paris, and though I attended a stunning total of zero runway shows, I can tell you that the news was all a-twitter with what is hot and what is not.
So, I'll just say for this season's colors: if you're into subtle, then you are definitely not part of the "in" category. Think primary colors, but neon. Oh, and in a dramatic, and some are saying vulgar turn of events, off-white and black is the new black and white. I know, I know: take a minute to catch your breath.
In another first, my friends Sean and Mike recently sashayed into town for a whirlwind tour of the city. It was Mike's first time out of the country, if you dont count Canada, and who the hell does? He did fabulously, braving the tumultuous Parisian streets and diving in, head first, to the shallow waters of introductory French. Good times were had by all, needless to say.
We did the usual things: Notre Dame, Eiffel Tower, drinking a fifth of bourbon while touring Sacre Coeur, you know, the stuff everybody does.
One night though, we all went out to a club I have been really dying to get to. It is called Le Caveau de la Huchette, and it is a tiny jazz club tucked away in the back streets of the Latin Quarter. You might not notice it at all, if not for the small neon sign out front. Anyway, that night the club was hosting a group from the States that played exclusively American standards of beebop and swing.
When you come into the club, you enter the (extremely overpriced) bar, and to your left are the stairs down. Much like Le Guillotine bar, you wind your way down into a cave-like cellar. This cellar is much larger, though, with a sunken dance floor about thirty feet long by fifteen wide. There are stone benches all around, and a raised stage. Everyone there was dressed to the nines, and the music was fantastic! I thought I was going to drop dead of excitement when the band launched into "It Dont Mean a Thing (If It Aint Got that Swing)." I think somehow as you descend the stairs, there is some kind of very Bill and Ted-esque experience that you leaves you unaware that you have travelled back in time about 62 years, because the minute you get into that club, it is Paris 1945 all over again. People dress like it is, the music is exactly from that era, and the club is perfect for it. I felt like I was an American GI in Paris after the liberation from Nazi rule, and was out trolling for some dame to sweep off her feet. Granted, in this fantasy I am an American GI trolling for some dame while entertaining his two gay friends, but still...
I made a firm commitment to bring my wife here the next time I am in Paris. I came to find out later that the club is one of the most important in the Paris jazz scene, which is extensive. I was really glad to have come across it.
Speaking of firsts in music, Monday night was a big first in Europe, as Led Zeppelin reunited for a one off show in London. People payed upwards of 1000 pounds for tickets; that's around $2000. The reviews were that every fricking penny was worth it too. People in Paris even were freaking out. Word from Plant in London is that there are three big shows planned for New York City next year, so all you fans can keep your pants on, and start saving your pennies now. What I found interesting was the crowd. LOTS of Americans, so said the BBC. Unfortunately, they interviewed a couple from the States at the show, and that is where things just went down hill.
A very proper Englishman in his very smart Burberry suit, sporting a very smart microphone smartly ambled over to two Americans who could be described most accurately as anything but smart. He: black clad and sporting the most impressive mullet I have ever seen. It was feathered. He feathered a mullet.
Yikes.
She: black clad as well, but in painted on acid washed jeans, despite her...uh... larger carriage, we'll say. You could tell that if the Mullet was excited, then she had gotten all gussied up for the event too, as her poof was especially pooftastic, and the rest of her hair had been crisply and evenly crimped and frosted.
They told the BBC that they hailed from the great state of "Ohigher," which I can only assume is that elusive 51st state, just a bit north of the more well know Ohio.
When asked why they had paid such a grand sum and come such a distance for a one off show, the Mullet responded: "Its The Zep. Tern't no way we'dah missed it."
Tern't.
This "man" said "tern't" to the BBC, the most respected news organization in the world.
Tern't.
Tern't, I can only presume is the passive conjunctive form of "there weren't", or more extensively, "there were not"; neither of which is grammatically correct in this or any other universe. Who the f?@*! says "tern't"? Ohigherans, that's who.
And when asked to chime in (presumably to save the Mullet from further humiliating the 51 States), the Poof was only to happy to stare saucer-eyed into the camera and reply with a plastered on smile, the likes of which would make any Crest executive gush.
The reporter asked her if she were equally as excited about "the Zep's" imminent reunion as her her man was.
Her response?
"I'm just here for Foreigner."
Not surprisingly, the interview ended abruptly after that, as the reporter fought admirably to repress a smile, and the camera shook, presumably because of the unheard peels of laughter from the cameraman.
Thank you Led Zeppelin. Thank you for helping to embarrass the United States further.
Enemies of the state, they are; now and forever, in my book.
One last first to report. Yesterday I was transferred to garde manger from breakfast, as there was someone out sick, and the one person remaining on garde manger needed help. Garde manger, if you dont know, refers to all things served cold. So if you go to a buffet, and you have sliced mozzarella or cornichons in vinegar or whatever, thats all from the garde manger department.
I got into the kitchen really nervous, as I have never worked with GM before, and the only guy there, Abdella, only speaks French, heavily accented with his Syrian accent. I thought I was screwed, but then, I thought of all my recent triumphs, and I decided to really go for it. What the hell did I have to lose, I thought.
In an hour I preped four sauces, a whole carte of bowls of raw veggies, two huge salads, thirty hors d'oeuvres, and four plates of cold sausages (one of which was made from cow intestines, and smelled just like daisies....)
In short, I got a hell of a lot done, and it worked out really well. Turns out, I am kind of into garde manger. I like the challenge it presents: to serve delicious food, presented beautifully, without the use of fire. Its tough, but when it works, it can be great. Look to the cold lines at the next buffet you are at for evidence.
Finally, one "third" to bring up, sadly. That being the THIRD train strike the city is now facing. I cant tell you my annoyance with this. I mean, I have found a way around it now, and I know how to get into and out of the city with relative ease, if not a little lighter in the wallet. But still, grow up people! Whatever you keep striking for: its not gonna happen. I mean, if your first strike didnt work, and your second super long strike didnt work, then your third isnt going to either.
It will take a hell of a lot more public backing and governmental sympathy and funds to keep people paid so they dont become scabs in order to keep this strategy going. None of which are things these people have, and without them, there is just no way this strike will work.
I mean, really, if you think about it, tern't never a chance.
First of all, the other day, the first frost came our way. Holy Bejeezus, it was cold, but I am ever grateful, as in came the frost, and out went my allergies.
Really though, watching the sun come up over the hills of Roissy (the petite ville where I am at) while the birds fly south to Nice and the fist morning rays glint off of the newly frozen Earth almost makes it worth while to get up at 4:30 in the morning.
Almost.
Also, a month ago I got to experience my very first ever fashion week here in Paris, and though I attended a stunning total of zero runway shows, I can tell you that the news was all a-twitter with what is hot and what is not.
So, I'll just say for this season's colors: if you're into subtle, then you are definitely not part of the "in" category. Think primary colors, but neon. Oh, and in a dramatic, and some are saying vulgar turn of events, off-white and black is the new black and white. I know, I know: take a minute to catch your breath.
In another first, my friends Sean and Mike recently sashayed into town for a whirlwind tour of the city. It was Mike's first time out of the country, if you dont count Canada, and who the hell does? He did fabulously, braving the tumultuous Parisian streets and diving in, head first, to the shallow waters of introductory French. Good times were had by all, needless to say.
We did the usual things: Notre Dame, Eiffel Tower, drinking a fifth of bourbon while touring Sacre Coeur, you know, the stuff everybody does.
One night though, we all went out to a club I have been really dying to get to. It is called Le Caveau de la Huchette, and it is a tiny jazz club tucked away in the back streets of the Latin Quarter. You might not notice it at all, if not for the small neon sign out front. Anyway, that night the club was hosting a group from the States that played exclusively American standards of beebop and swing.
When you come into the club, you enter the (extremely overpriced) bar, and to your left are the stairs down. Much like Le Guillotine bar, you wind your way down into a cave-like cellar. This cellar is much larger, though, with a sunken dance floor about thirty feet long by fifteen wide. There are stone benches all around, and a raised stage. Everyone there was dressed to the nines, and the music was fantastic! I thought I was going to drop dead of excitement when the band launched into "It Dont Mean a Thing (If It Aint Got that Swing)." I think somehow as you descend the stairs, there is some kind of very Bill and Ted-esque experience that you leaves you unaware that you have travelled back in time about 62 years, because the minute you get into that club, it is Paris 1945 all over again. People dress like it is, the music is exactly from that era, and the club is perfect for it. I felt like I was an American GI in Paris after the liberation from Nazi rule, and was out trolling for some dame to sweep off her feet. Granted, in this fantasy I am an American GI trolling for some dame while entertaining his two gay friends, but still...
I made a firm commitment to bring my wife here the next time I am in Paris. I came to find out later that the club is one of the most important in the Paris jazz scene, which is extensive. I was really glad to have come across it.
Speaking of firsts in music, Monday night was a big first in Europe, as Led Zeppelin reunited for a one off show in London. People payed upwards of 1000 pounds for tickets; that's around $2000. The reviews were that every fricking penny was worth it too. People in Paris even were freaking out. Word from Plant in London is that there are three big shows planned for New York City next year, so all you fans can keep your pants on, and start saving your pennies now. What I found interesting was the crowd. LOTS of Americans, so said the BBC. Unfortunately, they interviewed a couple from the States at the show, and that is where things just went down hill.
A very proper Englishman in his very smart Burberry suit, sporting a very smart microphone smartly ambled over to two Americans who could be described most accurately as anything but smart. He: black clad and sporting the most impressive mullet I have ever seen. It was feathered. He feathered a mullet.
Yikes.
She: black clad as well, but in painted on acid washed jeans, despite her...uh... larger carriage, we'll say. You could tell that if the Mullet was excited, then she had gotten all gussied up for the event too, as her poof was especially pooftastic, and the rest of her hair had been crisply and evenly crimped and frosted.
They told the BBC that they hailed from the great state of "Ohigher," which I can only assume is that elusive 51st state, just a bit north of the more well know Ohio.
When asked why they had paid such a grand sum and come such a distance for a one off show, the Mullet responded: "Its The Zep. Tern't no way we'dah missed it."
Tern't.
This "man" said "tern't" to the BBC, the most respected news organization in the world.
Tern't.
Tern't, I can only presume is the passive conjunctive form of "there weren't", or more extensively, "there were not"; neither of which is grammatically correct in this or any other universe. Who the f?@*! says "tern't"? Ohigherans, that's who.
And when asked to chime in (presumably to save the Mullet from further humiliating the 51 States), the Poof was only to happy to stare saucer-eyed into the camera and reply with a plastered on smile, the likes of which would make any Crest executive gush.
The reporter asked her if she were equally as excited about "the Zep's" imminent reunion as her her man was.
Her response?
"I'm just here for Foreigner."
Not surprisingly, the interview ended abruptly after that, as the reporter fought admirably to repress a smile, and the camera shook, presumably because of the unheard peels of laughter from the cameraman.
Thank you Led Zeppelin. Thank you for helping to embarrass the United States further.
Enemies of the state, they are; now and forever, in my book.
One last first to report. Yesterday I was transferred to garde manger from breakfast, as there was someone out sick, and the one person remaining on garde manger needed help. Garde manger, if you dont know, refers to all things served cold. So if you go to a buffet, and you have sliced mozzarella or cornichons in vinegar or whatever, thats all from the garde manger department.
I got into the kitchen really nervous, as I have never worked with GM before, and the only guy there, Abdella, only speaks French, heavily accented with his Syrian accent. I thought I was screwed, but then, I thought of all my recent triumphs, and I decided to really go for it. What the hell did I have to lose, I thought.
In an hour I preped four sauces, a whole carte of bowls of raw veggies, two huge salads, thirty hors d'oeuvres, and four plates of cold sausages (one of which was made from cow intestines, and smelled just like daisies....)
In short, I got a hell of a lot done, and it worked out really well. Turns out, I am kind of into garde manger. I like the challenge it presents: to serve delicious food, presented beautifully, without the use of fire. Its tough, but when it works, it can be great. Look to the cold lines at the next buffet you are at for evidence.
Finally, one "third" to bring up, sadly. That being the THIRD train strike the city is now facing. I cant tell you my annoyance with this. I mean, I have found a way around it now, and I know how to get into and out of the city with relative ease, if not a little lighter in the wallet. But still, grow up people! Whatever you keep striking for: its not gonna happen. I mean, if your first strike didnt work, and your second super long strike didnt work, then your third isnt going to either.
It will take a hell of a lot more public backing and governmental sympathy and funds to keep people paid so they dont become scabs in order to keep this strategy going. None of which are things these people have, and without them, there is just no way this strike will work.
I mean, really, if you think about it, tern't never a chance.
10 December 2007
The end of something
Out with golden leaves! Away with you, cozy afternoon breazes! Pack it up and move it out, green grass! Autumn, your days are done!
Winter has firmly set in here, and though that might mean subzero temps in Chicago or three feet of snow in Siberia, in Paris it means grey, windy and rainy, constantly. It feels like the city has the flu. The days that are sunny, or at least dry are little blessings that the whole city enjoys. In short, it is gross right now.
Another end brought by December, the high season is officially over. We are in our big slow down phase, and we wont pick up again until mid to late January, not that I will be here for that. So, it looks like I have spent my last days at the Premiere Class Hotel, and I am forever grateful for that. The beds at the Hyatt are the best I have ever slept in, which, of course, makes them all the harder to get out of, espcecially when it looks and feels like puke outside.
Things at work are fine. The chef promised me that since we would be full staffed this week, I would be transfered to pastry, finally. A good thing too, all of the Christmas and Chanuka stuff is getting made now, including a three foot tall and wide gingerbread house that is the centerpiece of our Christmas buffet here. There are these little (two foot tall) Christmas trees all over anything that will stand still, but they are cut from real pine trees, so the hotel smells pine-a-licious.
Oh, but wait, someone is out again! Someone didnt show up to work... again. Who could that be, I wonder? Long story short, I am still on breakfast, probably until I leave the chef says, because Francine didnt show up for work at all today. Why dont they just fire her? Because she suffers from depression, and French law protects her because she isnt just randomly skipping work..... she says. So, that is one thing the US defintaly has over France: crazy or no, your ass is canned if you dont show up.
Although, I was glad to be at breakfast today. We had a group of sixty people in from Pfizer (yeah, that Pfizer) today, and Marc took a break before they arrived, thinking that they werent going to show, as they were really late. I took over for him, and thats when they came. I tell you, covering both cold and hot buffets at the same time is no longer a big deal. For example, I had a line of people waiting for eggs, bacon to make, French toast to make and salmon to plate up. I managed to get it all done, and was so not flustered, I actually managed to make myself an omelett during that whole thing. So, I guess I am learning.
Too bad it isnt Christmas in Korea, though, as the Koreans dont stop coming. I found out that Korean Air is "disappointed" in the Hyatt because we are not fulfilling our end of the bargain we have with them. They put in their contract with us that we MUST have at least one cook at breakfast who is Korean, so their employees dont have to fumble over the language in order to demand their boat loads of food.
I dont see the problem. In working with them for the past weeks, I have learned a bit of Korean from them. For example, if you want to say "Good Morning" in Korean, you say: "OMLETTE!!!" If you want to say, "I'm very well, thank you. How are you?" you say, "FRIED EGGS!! NOW!!" I'm so multicultural, it hurts.
Moving right along...
Two weekends ago my friend Olivier and I took our friend Javier out to celebrate his last night here. He was moving back to Madrid, and we thought that some drinks and music might be in order. I was staying at the apartment in the Bastille at the time, so I suggested that Olivier take Javier down to me, and we could go to a favorite bar of mine. We ended up at Le Guillotine and heard some live funk. It was great. You actually descend into this cave like room, where there are wooden chairs set up in rows, and the band is on a raised platform at the back of the cave. We laughed and talked and bopped along to the funk until about 2am. Then we took a leisurly drive down the Champs Elysees, so Javier could say goodbye. Right now, the whole way down to the Arc de Triomphe is lit up especially for Christmas, so it is really pretty. It was while there that Olivier channeled my wife, and that was really creepy.
We passed the huge Louis Vitton store, and Olivier pointed it out, saying: "There's Louis Vitton, one of the most expensive places on the Champs Elysees, although I dont know why. Nobody really likes their bags. You only buy them for the initials and who really likes brown on brown anyway?" This is a direct quote from Ruta, and the two have never met. My jaw dropped. I mean, yeah, Louis Vitton is gross, but that is really weird that two people have the exact same opinion in the exact same words, how many miles apart? Weird.
What really got me about the night though, was that Javier was leaving. I remember when he arrived. He just sat down quietly at the table I was at in the employee restaurant and didnt say a word. Since then, I cant say that I have gotten to know him too well, but one night he made mention that he was leaving on the 30th of November. Everyone around just then: me, Will, his girlfriend Cecilia, my friend Inna from Siberia, all made mention that we would be leaving soon after that. Inna first and then Will, Cecilia and me in succession. So, Javier's leaving signaled the beginning of the end of my time here, and it is winding down in reverse order too. I mean I met Javier last, and before him Inna, and before her Will, so it feels like the beginning of a process, like I am losing friends until I am the only one left. That's when I will go. Strange. I didnt like the feeling that I was actually going to be leaving here, so I doussed that feeling in beer and funk. I am not going to worry about it right now.
The next day, I took my time wandering around the artist's quarter of Saint Germain, but I didnt really find much that interested me. I stopped and had coffee with Catherine on the boat, and then decided that grey and rainy isnt good for much, but it great weather for a museum.
I headed over to the Musée d'Orsey, and had a total ball. The Musée d'Orsey is a huge old train station that has been converted into the museum it is today. It is one of the "big three" museums of Paris: the Louvre, the Musée d'Orsey, and the Centre Pompidou. These three museums cover all the art up to the 19th century, the 19th and early 20th centuries, and the 20th century to modern art, respectively.
I have mentioned that if I see another painting of a swooning duchess, nude on a cloud being carried by flying babies, I was going to vomit uncontrolably, so it was my good fortune that the Musée d'Orsey is dedicated to the 19th century guys.
These are painters! What a museum! I mean, Degas, Picasso, Monet, Manet, Caillbotte, Tolouse Lautrec; they're all in the same place! "Hay Stacks" and "Stary Night" are a few feet away from each other!
I have never been someone who was really into painting, so I rented the little audio guide that will explain any painting or sculpture in any language. It so happens, that the museum is also hosting an exhibit of Hodler's work right now. The lady behind the desk asked if I wanted the audio guide for the Museum or the Hodler exhibit. I was like, "Um, I dont know Hodler." She snorted and chuckled, then said "Nobody does." I liked her.
Anyway, after three hours of wandering the museum, I finally had to sit down. There is that painting by Degas of the outdoor dance hall in Montmarte. I dont know what it is called, but you would know it if you saw it. I sat in front of that one, and I just let my mind go. I think it is one thing to wander a museum and hear all the facts about a painting, or whatever, but I think the hard part about that is that you never get to spend anytime with one painting, 'cause there is so much to see.
I just stared at this paiting, and the more I stopped trying to figure it out, or to listen to the ambient noise of the museum around me, the more I could feel the warm summer breeze of Montmarte, and hear the accordian and piano echo in the distance. I felt like I could see the dancers start to sway, and it made me a little dizzy. I felt like I had fallen head first into the painting, and I had never been so completely transported before. Men in full suits, women in proper little hats; the self important first mustaches of young men, curving out from their faces in crazy angles to visually verify manhood to young women who couldnt find them more rediculous or charming. The tiny, fragile glasses of French pastis skattered over the wraught iron tables. Dancing with a sweetheart, while the old ladies gossip and the men play pétanque and talk about the war, and all of it swirling, swirling under a sky filled with stars, except for the part blotted out by the smoothly sloping towers of Sacre Coeur, who will always remind to leave room for Jesus on your dance card...
Someone's child screamed for mommy, and my rainy day reverie was shattered. In a flash, I was back on the museum bench, rubbing my eyes, and present to the sounds of hard soled shoes on marble floors, the chatter of museum wanderers about this painting or that, the rain on the windows of the museum. I walked over and looked out on a much more modern Paris than the on I had been dreaming of.
I will be leaving soon, and in some ways it seems like I have only just started to be here.
The sun had gone down while I was day dreaming, and the evening lights had come up on Paris. How long have I been gone? I cant believe I am coming home soon! I looked back at the painting before leaving the museum, and I though to myself, "Javier is gone. Its almost December. I am really going to miss Paris." But I am not sure which Paris I will miss more: the one I live in, or the one that lives in my dreams.
I'm not sure there ever was a difference.
Winter has firmly set in here, and though that might mean subzero temps in Chicago or three feet of snow in Siberia, in Paris it means grey, windy and rainy, constantly. It feels like the city has the flu. The days that are sunny, or at least dry are little blessings that the whole city enjoys. In short, it is gross right now.
Another end brought by December, the high season is officially over. We are in our big slow down phase, and we wont pick up again until mid to late January, not that I will be here for that. So, it looks like I have spent my last days at the Premiere Class Hotel, and I am forever grateful for that. The beds at the Hyatt are the best I have ever slept in, which, of course, makes them all the harder to get out of, espcecially when it looks and feels like puke outside.
Things at work are fine. The chef promised me that since we would be full staffed this week, I would be transfered to pastry, finally. A good thing too, all of the Christmas and Chanuka stuff is getting made now, including a three foot tall and wide gingerbread house that is the centerpiece of our Christmas buffet here. There are these little (two foot tall) Christmas trees all over anything that will stand still, but they are cut from real pine trees, so the hotel smells pine-a-licious.
Oh, but wait, someone is out again! Someone didnt show up to work... again. Who could that be, I wonder? Long story short, I am still on breakfast, probably until I leave the chef says, because Francine didnt show up for work at all today. Why dont they just fire her? Because she suffers from depression, and French law protects her because she isnt just randomly skipping work..... she says. So, that is one thing the US defintaly has over France: crazy or no, your ass is canned if you dont show up.
Although, I was glad to be at breakfast today. We had a group of sixty people in from Pfizer (yeah, that Pfizer) today, and Marc took a break before they arrived, thinking that they werent going to show, as they were really late. I took over for him, and thats when they came. I tell you, covering both cold and hot buffets at the same time is no longer a big deal. For example, I had a line of people waiting for eggs, bacon to make, French toast to make and salmon to plate up. I managed to get it all done, and was so not flustered, I actually managed to make myself an omelett during that whole thing. So, I guess I am learning.
Too bad it isnt Christmas in Korea, though, as the Koreans dont stop coming. I found out that Korean Air is "disappointed" in the Hyatt because we are not fulfilling our end of the bargain we have with them. They put in their contract with us that we MUST have at least one cook at breakfast who is Korean, so their employees dont have to fumble over the language in order to demand their boat loads of food.
I dont see the problem. In working with them for the past weeks, I have learned a bit of Korean from them. For example, if you want to say "Good Morning" in Korean, you say: "OMLETTE!!!" If you want to say, "I'm very well, thank you. How are you?" you say, "FRIED EGGS!! NOW!!" I'm so multicultural, it hurts.
Moving right along...
Two weekends ago my friend Olivier and I took our friend Javier out to celebrate his last night here. He was moving back to Madrid, and we thought that some drinks and music might be in order. I was staying at the apartment in the Bastille at the time, so I suggested that Olivier take Javier down to me, and we could go to a favorite bar of mine. We ended up at Le Guillotine and heard some live funk. It was great. You actually descend into this cave like room, where there are wooden chairs set up in rows, and the band is on a raised platform at the back of the cave. We laughed and talked and bopped along to the funk until about 2am. Then we took a leisurly drive down the Champs Elysees, so Javier could say goodbye. Right now, the whole way down to the Arc de Triomphe is lit up especially for Christmas, so it is really pretty. It was while there that Olivier channeled my wife, and that was really creepy.
We passed the huge Louis Vitton store, and Olivier pointed it out, saying: "There's Louis Vitton, one of the most expensive places on the Champs Elysees, although I dont know why. Nobody really likes their bags. You only buy them for the initials and who really likes brown on brown anyway?" This is a direct quote from Ruta, and the two have never met. My jaw dropped. I mean, yeah, Louis Vitton is gross, but that is really weird that two people have the exact same opinion in the exact same words, how many miles apart? Weird.
What really got me about the night though, was that Javier was leaving. I remember when he arrived. He just sat down quietly at the table I was at in the employee restaurant and didnt say a word. Since then, I cant say that I have gotten to know him too well, but one night he made mention that he was leaving on the 30th of November. Everyone around just then: me, Will, his girlfriend Cecilia, my friend Inna from Siberia, all made mention that we would be leaving soon after that. Inna first and then Will, Cecilia and me in succession. So, Javier's leaving signaled the beginning of the end of my time here, and it is winding down in reverse order too. I mean I met Javier last, and before him Inna, and before her Will, so it feels like the beginning of a process, like I am losing friends until I am the only one left. That's when I will go. Strange. I didnt like the feeling that I was actually going to be leaving here, so I doussed that feeling in beer and funk. I am not going to worry about it right now.
The next day, I took my time wandering around the artist's quarter of Saint Germain, but I didnt really find much that interested me. I stopped and had coffee with Catherine on the boat, and then decided that grey and rainy isnt good for much, but it great weather for a museum.
I headed over to the Musée d'Orsey, and had a total ball. The Musée d'Orsey is a huge old train station that has been converted into the museum it is today. It is one of the "big three" museums of Paris: the Louvre, the Musée d'Orsey, and the Centre Pompidou. These three museums cover all the art up to the 19th century, the 19th and early 20th centuries, and the 20th century to modern art, respectively.
I have mentioned that if I see another painting of a swooning duchess, nude on a cloud being carried by flying babies, I was going to vomit uncontrolably, so it was my good fortune that the Musée d'Orsey is dedicated to the 19th century guys.
These are painters! What a museum! I mean, Degas, Picasso, Monet, Manet, Caillbotte, Tolouse Lautrec; they're all in the same place! "Hay Stacks" and "Stary Night" are a few feet away from each other!
I have never been someone who was really into painting, so I rented the little audio guide that will explain any painting or sculpture in any language. It so happens, that the museum is also hosting an exhibit of Hodler's work right now. The lady behind the desk asked if I wanted the audio guide for the Museum or the Hodler exhibit. I was like, "Um, I dont know Hodler." She snorted and chuckled, then said "Nobody does." I liked her.
Anyway, after three hours of wandering the museum, I finally had to sit down. There is that painting by Degas of the outdoor dance hall in Montmarte. I dont know what it is called, but you would know it if you saw it. I sat in front of that one, and I just let my mind go. I think it is one thing to wander a museum and hear all the facts about a painting, or whatever, but I think the hard part about that is that you never get to spend anytime with one painting, 'cause there is so much to see.
I just stared at this paiting, and the more I stopped trying to figure it out, or to listen to the ambient noise of the museum around me, the more I could feel the warm summer breeze of Montmarte, and hear the accordian and piano echo in the distance. I felt like I could see the dancers start to sway, and it made me a little dizzy. I felt like I had fallen head first into the painting, and I had never been so completely transported before. Men in full suits, women in proper little hats; the self important first mustaches of young men, curving out from their faces in crazy angles to visually verify manhood to young women who couldnt find them more rediculous or charming. The tiny, fragile glasses of French pastis skattered over the wraught iron tables. Dancing with a sweetheart, while the old ladies gossip and the men play pétanque and talk about the war, and all of it swirling, swirling under a sky filled with stars, except for the part blotted out by the smoothly sloping towers of Sacre Coeur, who will always remind to leave room for Jesus on your dance card...
Someone's child screamed for mommy, and my rainy day reverie was shattered. In a flash, I was back on the museum bench, rubbing my eyes, and present to the sounds of hard soled shoes on marble floors, the chatter of museum wanderers about this painting or that, the rain on the windows of the museum. I walked over and looked out on a much more modern Paris than the on I had been dreaming of.
I will be leaving soon, and in some ways it seems like I have only just started to be here.
The sun had gone down while I was day dreaming, and the evening lights had come up on Paris. How long have I been gone? I cant believe I am coming home soon! I looked back at the painting before leaving the museum, and I though to myself, "Javier is gone. Its almost December. I am really going to miss Paris." But I am not sure which Paris I will miss more: the one I live in, or the one that lives in my dreams.
I'm not sure there ever was a difference.
29 November 2007
My Hidden Willy
"We cant find your bag. Sorry."
"But my uniform is in that bag, among other things. You lost it; you find it."
"Sorry. We cant find your bag."
That was how my return to the Hyatt began after a blissful five day visit with my wife and family in Paris.
"OK, fine. Can you tell me what room I am in?"
"You're going to be staying at the Premiere Class hotel, as the Hyatt is totally full for the next few days."
"Great."
So I hauled my tired butt over to the Premiere Class hotel for a two night stay. I asked for my key at the desk and was told that my roommate would be back at about 2:30am. I wondered why My Wang would be working so late, but I was too tired to care, so I flopped myself down on the bed and fell fast asleep.
At just about 2:30am, my roommate came crashing into the room. I got up, and drowzily started to berate Wang for being so loud, when I noticed that it was not Will who was causing the raucus. It was some other dude.
I have to say this here: for a man like me to lose his Wang is a very devistating experience, but to wake up in a strange place expecting to find your own Wang, and to discover instead that you have a totally different wang in the bed just next to you, well, that is a bit disturbing. I mean, I like my Wang. I am used to my Wang. This foreign Wang could be anybody, and I didnt want to sleep with that wang near me. I mean, how many Wangs can one man take in the same night?
He told me his name was Pierre... Pierre Malochet. I was kind of hoping for some uphemism for the male member. Like, he could have said, "Hi, my name is Pierre... Pierre Dong" or something. I have come to expect that from the strange men who share my bedroom, you know? Regardless, we saved the formalities till morning and went right to bed.
In the night, this new guy did something that so grossed me out that I have a hard time recounting it here, but for the sake of literature, I will solider on in my attempt to recreate the moment for you, dear readers.
You know how when people think they have something in their teeth, like after eating spinach, but they dont have a tooth pick, so they make this sucking sound? You know how a dog will lick his chops after a meal and make this sound like gums slapping against gums? You know that sucking tube the dentist puts in your mouth to clear away all the saliva so he can work? Put all those sounds together, and that is roughly the sound Pierre makes in his sleep... all. night. long.
I spent the evening dry heaving. In the morning, I was up before my alarm, and ran from the room, just to get away from that terrible noise.
I got to work early that day, and if I thought I knew the meaning of the word "tired" before, then I was dead wrong.
I brewed an espresso, but it would have done more good to pour it down my pants.
I dragged myself from place to place, all the while Pierre's sucking noise echoing in my head. I resolved to kill him later in the day.
In the past, Apollo has been busy. A busy day is when we have a morning of about 150 people in for breakfast, but that is not too uncommon, so I can handle it.
Once we had about 230 for breakfast, and the whole restaurant was so busy, I swear that cooks ran from the kitchen pulling their hair out.
On Tuesday, after five days with my wife, and getting to bed at 1:30am the night before, only to listen to Pierre suck his own face for three and a half hours, I was met with the days reservation list.
It seems Korean Air is pleased with the service they have been getting and have decided to hold a conference with us. Super, a whole boat load of Koreans.
I asked the hostess how many were on the books for the morning.
She smirked.
That is never a good sign.
So, I asked again, how many on the books?
She hesitated before she replied: "Four hundred."
Then, I was awake.
The day passed in a blur. Everyone helped out. Even the chef and I worked together, slicing and plating salmon for the bottomless Korean pits. I think we would have done better to throw live fish at them, shouting, "Sushi for breakfast! Sushi for breakfast!" than actually trying to work out a plate presentation.
When it was over, I had six heart attacks, and then went to lunch.
Later in the day, I went back to the Hyatt Reception, fresh from the Korean onslaught, to get my key to move back into my room at the Hyatt.
"You're in room 2435, with Pierre Malochet" said the concierge, while Pierre stood grinning behind me.
I had had enough.
"Look, no. Change my room. I want my Wang back."
And that is how I was reunited with my Wang. Pierre was disappointed, to be sure, but I dont care. A man's Wang is important to him, you know?
So, that's that. I am back at the Hyatt, working breakfast again, and living with my big Willy.
When I saw him finally, I was happy to give the guy a big hug to welcome him home.
I dont know, maybe its masturbatory, but it was nice to have a firm grip on my Wang again.
It is good to be home.
"But my uniform is in that bag, among other things. You lost it; you find it."
"Sorry. We cant find your bag."
That was how my return to the Hyatt began after a blissful five day visit with my wife and family in Paris.
"OK, fine. Can you tell me what room I am in?"
"You're going to be staying at the Premiere Class hotel, as the Hyatt is totally full for the next few days."
"Great."
So I hauled my tired butt over to the Premiere Class hotel for a two night stay. I asked for my key at the desk and was told that my roommate would be back at about 2:30am. I wondered why My Wang would be working so late, but I was too tired to care, so I flopped myself down on the bed and fell fast asleep.
At just about 2:30am, my roommate came crashing into the room. I got up, and drowzily started to berate Wang for being so loud, when I noticed that it was not Will who was causing the raucus. It was some other dude.
I have to say this here: for a man like me to lose his Wang is a very devistating experience, but to wake up in a strange place expecting to find your own Wang, and to discover instead that you have a totally different wang in the bed just next to you, well, that is a bit disturbing. I mean, I like my Wang. I am used to my Wang. This foreign Wang could be anybody, and I didnt want to sleep with that wang near me. I mean, how many Wangs can one man take in the same night?
He told me his name was Pierre... Pierre Malochet. I was kind of hoping for some uphemism for the male member. Like, he could have said, "Hi, my name is Pierre... Pierre Dong" or something. I have come to expect that from the strange men who share my bedroom, you know? Regardless, we saved the formalities till morning and went right to bed.
In the night, this new guy did something that so grossed me out that I have a hard time recounting it here, but for the sake of literature, I will solider on in my attempt to recreate the moment for you, dear readers.
You know how when people think they have something in their teeth, like after eating spinach, but they dont have a tooth pick, so they make this sucking sound? You know how a dog will lick his chops after a meal and make this sound like gums slapping against gums? You know that sucking tube the dentist puts in your mouth to clear away all the saliva so he can work? Put all those sounds together, and that is roughly the sound Pierre makes in his sleep... all. night. long.
I spent the evening dry heaving. In the morning, I was up before my alarm, and ran from the room, just to get away from that terrible noise.
I got to work early that day, and if I thought I knew the meaning of the word "tired" before, then I was dead wrong.
I brewed an espresso, but it would have done more good to pour it down my pants.
I dragged myself from place to place, all the while Pierre's sucking noise echoing in my head. I resolved to kill him later in the day.
In the past, Apollo has been busy. A busy day is when we have a morning of about 150 people in for breakfast, but that is not too uncommon, so I can handle it.
Once we had about 230 for breakfast, and the whole restaurant was so busy, I swear that cooks ran from the kitchen pulling their hair out.
On Tuesday, after five days with my wife, and getting to bed at 1:30am the night before, only to listen to Pierre suck his own face for three and a half hours, I was met with the days reservation list.
It seems Korean Air is pleased with the service they have been getting and have decided to hold a conference with us. Super, a whole boat load of Koreans.
I asked the hostess how many were on the books for the morning.
She smirked.
That is never a good sign.
So, I asked again, how many on the books?
She hesitated before she replied: "Four hundred."
Then, I was awake.
The day passed in a blur. Everyone helped out. Even the chef and I worked together, slicing and plating salmon for the bottomless Korean pits. I think we would have done better to throw live fish at them, shouting, "Sushi for breakfast! Sushi for breakfast!" than actually trying to work out a plate presentation.
When it was over, I had six heart attacks, and then went to lunch.
Later in the day, I went back to the Hyatt Reception, fresh from the Korean onslaught, to get my key to move back into my room at the Hyatt.
"You're in room 2435, with Pierre Malochet" said the concierge, while Pierre stood grinning behind me.
I had had enough.
"Look, no. Change my room. I want my Wang back."
And that is how I was reunited with my Wang. Pierre was disappointed, to be sure, but I dont care. A man's Wang is important to him, you know?
So, that's that. I am back at the Hyatt, working breakfast again, and living with my big Willy.
When I saw him finally, I was happy to give the guy a big hug to welcome him home.
I dont know, maybe its masturbatory, but it was nice to have a firm grip on my Wang again.
It is good to be home.
28 November 2007
That's Why Parents Eat Their Young
The title of this blog is a direct quote from the induplicable Mary Jo Schab. I think she meant to say, "That is why animals eat their young," but who knows, it could have been a Froidian slip. After four days straight with her kids, Lord knows, no one would have blamed her.
I wonder if my sister in law Leah had the same experience I did. When someone you know comes to visit you in a place where you moved, it makes you feel even more at home because you realize how much you know.
Ruta arrived on Thursday, and I ran from work to see her. It was so good to have her in my arms again. We talked and talked when she arrived. It is so good to have someone who knows you well around. I can talk about the past without saying things like, "Ok, so this one time about five years ago..." I can just talk, and know that she has been there for most of what I am referring to. It is good to be understood.
I got to the apartment that we rent when she comes, and good wife that she is, dinner was waiting. Since the train strike was still on, I had to take a bus to another bus, ride that one standing up for an hour, and then walk for forty minutes before climbing three flights of stairs before I could lay my hands on her, so dinner was a welcome sight.
She told me all about her trip to Brazil. Apparently some people there didnt take too kindly to my earlier comments about Ranch, but my feeling is, if they liked ranch so much, they should have brought some with them when they fled the country. You know who you are.
Regardless, my wife knows how to travel. I asked if she had read Life of Pi, like I had recommened, and she said, "Oh, yes. I started it while sitting under an umbrella on a beach in Rio." Poor girl. Anyway, she had some great things to say about Leah and Brazil, and I think I will live there next. It sounds like a really great country. Come for the capoeria, stay for the pie!
The next day, my parents and sister and "uncle" and "cousin" arrived (you know those people who arent blood, but you grew up with them, so they're 'cousins'). What can I say, Italians dont do things in twos. In total, I became tour guide for seven of us. To quote my cousin Donna, "This is like hearding cats!" It was a lot of fun, but I had forgotten how loud Americans are. Many was the time I had to give the look to a relative who had piped up too much. Geez, people, its a small country. They can hear you in Nice.
Anyway, we took a long walk all around Paris for two days: Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, Champs Elyesees, La Bastille, Hotel de Ville, the Louvre (though we didnt go in), Notre Dame, the Latin Quarter, and a boat ride down the Seine. My favorite parts were when we would stop and eat though.
When first we started out, it wasnt long before someone chimed in with, "Lets stop for a glass of wine" which in Schabeez means, "Who would like to stop for a glass of wine, and finish the bottle, and then get a beer to wash it down?"
We stopped at a place called Dome (someone actually asked me what that meant in French) and had a couple. It was nice, warm and cozy. Donna and I ordered the afrorementioned beers. I asked for the medium, which at Dome translates to: "Please help me start a drinking problem." These were enormous, giant beers. Moments later, Donna was done and we headed out the door.
Being that my wife arrived on Thanksgiving, and my family the next day, no one really had a chance for a proper sit-down Thanksiving Dinner. Make no mistake, there are plenty turkey dinners available in Paris, but we had no desire for turkey.
Saturday night, after the boat tour, we conveined at a little place in the Bastille area. We eschewed the traditional turkey and cranberry sauce for grilled octopus, fried potatoes, braised artichokes, giant shimp in garlic and lemon, baked goat cheese and fresh bread by the loaf full. It was a little, out of the way tapas place, and the food was incredible. My Uncle John ordered a couple of nice bottles of Spanish reds to wash it all down, and it was deelish. We talked forever, and it was so good to be back with my family again.
Earlier that day, we had stopped for lunch at a little place on Avenue Kleber, which connects the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower. I had the roquet salad with buffalo mozzerella. It was magical, but what was really of note was the wine.
My Uncle John is a wine guy, as is his daughter, so I love them a little extra.
My uncle ordered a bottle of Bordeaux that was really, really great. Tannic and very fruity, and dry as the day is long. This bottle was from a region around Bordeaux called Saint Emilion, which is one of the prettiest and most well preserved French communes available. It is also noted for its spectacular wines. This one was no exception. I realize that a white would have paired much better with a salad, but hey, who are you to critcize? When next you find yourself in the market for a great bottle, consider any AOC Bordeaux from Saint Emilion, especially 2004. Its a year I like.
Uncle John and Donna (Donner to those in the know, a nickname I think she earned when my sister and her took a weekend in London. I dont want to know how it came up) left on Sunday morning, so the Schabimkuses were on our own. The general feeling was exhaustion, so we took a walk down Rue de Rivoli, a main drag here, and went to the movies.
Sunday we got out, and I took my dad to the Invalides. It is a military hospital that Napoleon built for the guys who got all shot up for him. Nice guy. He would eventually need the hospital himself, and when his body was returned from exile in Corsica, he was buried there. His tomb is HUGE. It is one coffin within another, to protect one of France's greatest military leaders, or... um, actually, France's only great military leader. They're not into the whole world domination thing like we are. Go figure. Regardless, there are seven coffins, one within the next, and his sons are buried in the corners of the building around him.
It is a place that is supposed to be filled with solemnity and grace, but a field trip of French fourth graders spoiled that. It was in this place of historic greatness that my father spoke his only perfect French, by the by. He said, "I would like to get a picture of that statue, but I will wait until les petites bastards leave." Ahh, high culture.
While my father and I were admiring a Dubleya Dubleya Two exhibition at the same museum, my wife and mother and sister were taking Paris by storm. We all met up at Notre Dame, and the ladies went over everything that they bought, which was an extensive list. I had the pleasure of carrying Ruta's capitalistic conquests around with me for the rest of the day. I'm good like that.
It was shortly there after that we continued shopping. This time for bags and New Year's dresses. My dad and I stood waiting in the lobby of one store. I asked if he didnt want to look around at the bag my mother was thinking of purchasing for herself, to which he replied, "Oh, I've got one just like it. I'll just wait here."
Later, after an hour or so of wandering the tiny rues of the Latin Quarter, we stopped at the Saint Severin for a drink. This is a favorite place of mine for cognac, so that's what I had. It was perfect. We sat at a little table in the window and sipped our drinks, and passed the day away. I realized how much I missed them over and over on this trip, but not more than this time. It was just what I was looking for: simply to talk with my family.
That night we got back to the apartment, and Ruta and I had gone shopping for another Thanksgiving Dinner, so I got lucky. Instead of missing Thanksgiving altogher, I had two dinners in Paris. Not too bad.
We killed a bottle of Bordeaux and a sack of macarons that my mom bought, not to mention the four kinds of cheese on the table.
We sat and lauged, while the open window let in the cool Paris breeze and the sounds of the street. The table was full, the light was soft, the laughter loud, and the wine and company delicious.
Cameras are great, and video is fabulous, but nothing could have captured that night like my mind's eye did. It is how I always want to remember my family, laughing together.
And so it made in doubly difficult that they left on Tuesday, but I had to get back to the hotel that Monday night. My parents and sister said goodbye first, to leave me and Ruta some time. I dont know what made it so hard; as of this writing I have exactly one month before I come home, so it wont be long until I see them again. Still, I put my arms around my sister, and held her tight. She is a wonderful woman. My mom and dad too, the best parents I could ask for.
After they left, I took care of any last minute details that needed attending with the apartment, and said my goodbyes to Ruta.
When she dropped me off at the airport, I knew I would see her in a month. When she left from her first visit, I knew she was coming back, but this time, I felt different. Maybe it was because I was leaving her at the apartment, but I dont know. It was so hard to walk out of that apartment with her still fresh on my lips and buy a ticket to ride away from her, again.
Anyone who knows me or has read this blog knows that I love France. No doubt, but I have to say, I am getting sick of saying goodbye to people.
My friends Sean and Mike will be here in a few days, and it will be nice to see them, but I am hoping that their plane is delayed three weeks or so, so that I dont have to say goodbye again.
Anyway, a wonderful visit all around, and a fresh and well-deserved burst of one of America's best holidays.
I was so glad to have spent it with my family.
I wonder if my sister in law Leah had the same experience I did. When someone you know comes to visit you in a place where you moved, it makes you feel even more at home because you realize how much you know.
Ruta arrived on Thursday, and I ran from work to see her. It was so good to have her in my arms again. We talked and talked when she arrived. It is so good to have someone who knows you well around. I can talk about the past without saying things like, "Ok, so this one time about five years ago..." I can just talk, and know that she has been there for most of what I am referring to. It is good to be understood.
I got to the apartment that we rent when she comes, and good wife that she is, dinner was waiting. Since the train strike was still on, I had to take a bus to another bus, ride that one standing up for an hour, and then walk for forty minutes before climbing three flights of stairs before I could lay my hands on her, so dinner was a welcome sight.
She told me all about her trip to Brazil. Apparently some people there didnt take too kindly to my earlier comments about Ranch, but my feeling is, if they liked ranch so much, they should have brought some with them when they fled the country. You know who you are.
Regardless, my wife knows how to travel. I asked if she had read Life of Pi, like I had recommened, and she said, "Oh, yes. I started it while sitting under an umbrella on a beach in Rio." Poor girl. Anyway, she had some great things to say about Leah and Brazil, and I think I will live there next. It sounds like a really great country. Come for the capoeria, stay for the pie!
The next day, my parents and sister and "uncle" and "cousin" arrived (you know those people who arent blood, but you grew up with them, so they're 'cousins'). What can I say, Italians dont do things in twos. In total, I became tour guide for seven of us. To quote my cousin Donna, "This is like hearding cats!" It was a lot of fun, but I had forgotten how loud Americans are. Many was the time I had to give the look to a relative who had piped up too much. Geez, people, its a small country. They can hear you in Nice.
Anyway, we took a long walk all around Paris for two days: Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, Champs Elyesees, La Bastille, Hotel de Ville, the Louvre (though we didnt go in), Notre Dame, the Latin Quarter, and a boat ride down the Seine. My favorite parts were when we would stop and eat though.
When first we started out, it wasnt long before someone chimed in with, "Lets stop for a glass of wine" which in Schabeez means, "Who would like to stop for a glass of wine, and finish the bottle, and then get a beer to wash it down?"
We stopped at a place called Dome (someone actually asked me what that meant in French) and had a couple. It was nice, warm and cozy. Donna and I ordered the afrorementioned beers. I asked for the medium, which at Dome translates to: "Please help me start a drinking problem." These were enormous, giant beers. Moments later, Donna was done and we headed out the door.
Being that my wife arrived on Thanksgiving, and my family the next day, no one really had a chance for a proper sit-down Thanksiving Dinner. Make no mistake, there are plenty turkey dinners available in Paris, but we had no desire for turkey.
Saturday night, after the boat tour, we conveined at a little place in the Bastille area. We eschewed the traditional turkey and cranberry sauce for grilled octopus, fried potatoes, braised artichokes, giant shimp in garlic and lemon, baked goat cheese and fresh bread by the loaf full. It was a little, out of the way tapas place, and the food was incredible. My Uncle John ordered a couple of nice bottles of Spanish reds to wash it all down, and it was deelish. We talked forever, and it was so good to be back with my family again.
Earlier that day, we had stopped for lunch at a little place on Avenue Kleber, which connects the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower. I had the roquet salad with buffalo mozzerella. It was magical, but what was really of note was the wine.
My Uncle John is a wine guy, as is his daughter, so I love them a little extra.
My uncle ordered a bottle of Bordeaux that was really, really great. Tannic and very fruity, and dry as the day is long. This bottle was from a region around Bordeaux called Saint Emilion, which is one of the prettiest and most well preserved French communes available. It is also noted for its spectacular wines. This one was no exception. I realize that a white would have paired much better with a salad, but hey, who are you to critcize? When next you find yourself in the market for a great bottle, consider any AOC Bordeaux from Saint Emilion, especially 2004. Its a year I like.
Uncle John and Donna (Donner to those in the know, a nickname I think she earned when my sister and her took a weekend in London. I dont want to know how it came up) left on Sunday morning, so the Schabimkuses were on our own. The general feeling was exhaustion, so we took a walk down Rue de Rivoli, a main drag here, and went to the movies.
Sunday we got out, and I took my dad to the Invalides. It is a military hospital that Napoleon built for the guys who got all shot up for him. Nice guy. He would eventually need the hospital himself, and when his body was returned from exile in Corsica, he was buried there. His tomb is HUGE. It is one coffin within another, to protect one of France's greatest military leaders, or... um, actually, France's only great military leader. They're not into the whole world domination thing like we are. Go figure. Regardless, there are seven coffins, one within the next, and his sons are buried in the corners of the building around him.
It is a place that is supposed to be filled with solemnity and grace, but a field trip of French fourth graders spoiled that. It was in this place of historic greatness that my father spoke his only perfect French, by the by. He said, "I would like to get a picture of that statue, but I will wait until les petites bastards leave." Ahh, high culture.
While my father and I were admiring a Dubleya Dubleya Two exhibition at the same museum, my wife and mother and sister were taking Paris by storm. We all met up at Notre Dame, and the ladies went over everything that they bought, which was an extensive list. I had the pleasure of carrying Ruta's capitalistic conquests around with me for the rest of the day. I'm good like that.
It was shortly there after that we continued shopping. This time for bags and New Year's dresses. My dad and I stood waiting in the lobby of one store. I asked if he didnt want to look around at the bag my mother was thinking of purchasing for herself, to which he replied, "Oh, I've got one just like it. I'll just wait here."
Later, after an hour or so of wandering the tiny rues of the Latin Quarter, we stopped at the Saint Severin for a drink. This is a favorite place of mine for cognac, so that's what I had. It was perfect. We sat at a little table in the window and sipped our drinks, and passed the day away. I realized how much I missed them over and over on this trip, but not more than this time. It was just what I was looking for: simply to talk with my family.
That night we got back to the apartment, and Ruta and I had gone shopping for another Thanksgiving Dinner, so I got lucky. Instead of missing Thanksgiving altogher, I had two dinners in Paris. Not too bad.
We killed a bottle of Bordeaux and a sack of macarons that my mom bought, not to mention the four kinds of cheese on the table.
We sat and lauged, while the open window let in the cool Paris breeze and the sounds of the street. The table was full, the light was soft, the laughter loud, and the wine and company delicious.
Cameras are great, and video is fabulous, but nothing could have captured that night like my mind's eye did. It is how I always want to remember my family, laughing together.
And so it made in doubly difficult that they left on Tuesday, but I had to get back to the hotel that Monday night. My parents and sister said goodbye first, to leave me and Ruta some time. I dont know what made it so hard; as of this writing I have exactly one month before I come home, so it wont be long until I see them again. Still, I put my arms around my sister, and held her tight. She is a wonderful woman. My mom and dad too, the best parents I could ask for.
After they left, I took care of any last minute details that needed attending with the apartment, and said my goodbyes to Ruta.
When she dropped me off at the airport, I knew I would see her in a month. When she left from her first visit, I knew she was coming back, but this time, I felt different. Maybe it was because I was leaving her at the apartment, but I dont know. It was so hard to walk out of that apartment with her still fresh on my lips and buy a ticket to ride away from her, again.
Anyone who knows me or has read this blog knows that I love France. No doubt, but I have to say, I am getting sick of saying goodbye to people.
My friends Sean and Mike will be here in a few days, and it will be nice to see them, but I am hoping that their plane is delayed three weeks or so, so that I dont have to say goodbye again.
Anyway, a wonderful visit all around, and a fresh and well-deserved burst of one of America's best holidays.
I was so glad to have spent it with my family.
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