Appendix A

Dmitri, a small man with a Russian accent as thick as the sweatshirts he was wearing, led me out a door and into a walled-in courtyard. He gestured at four plastic drums, each one about the size of two ATMs back-to-back, each one coloured in a ridiculously peppy shade of recycling-bin green.

“This,” he said, “is where we collect rainwater to use for our toilets.”

I nodded slowly.

“I see,” I said. This was a new one. In my admittedly short life, I’ve seen quite a few apartments. Exactly zero of them had toilet systems based on rainwater.

Dmitri gestured to somewhere behind me. “Now, if you like, I’ll show you your room,” he said.

I nodded vacantly; my brain was still on the rainwater toilets. The implications of that system started to wash over me. It isn’t that that fact would make a difference when actually using a toilet – but what did it say about Dmitri? Was he some kind of eco-freak? Or just conscientious?

Regardless of which of the two was the case, he was now looking at me rather oddly.

“Your room is behind you,” he said.

I turned quickly; Dmitri led me into the diffusely lit enclosure via a flap of thick translucent plastic. The room, if it could be called that, was small and spare. To the right was a white mattress on what looked like exactly one half of an Ikea bedframe. To the left was a white desk with a depressed old folding chair tucked underneath. A space heater sat dejected in the middle of the room. The ceiling was built out of corrugated metal on wooden slats: the kind of construction most often seen in Discovery Channel documentaries about Kenya.

“So this would be your room,” he said. “This is what we like to call the Writers’ Studio.”

The Writers’ Studio. Interesting spin to put on it. I pity whoever has the Actors’ Studio, especially if they have to live with James Lipton.

“So are you interested or not?” said Dmitri. “If not, we can just call it an end here and not waste time.”

I looked around the room again. “Well, theoretically, I’m still interested,” I said. “But can you explain to me what this place is?”

“It’s a loft,” he said matter-of-factly.

“But there’s some kind of art component to it? What about all the art I saw on the way in? And what about the other guys I saw sitting around on the way in?”

“Oh, they’re all English. They’d be your roommates. And it’s not really an art loft, just a loft.”

I paused. “So,” I said, “is the washroom communal?”

“Well, why don’t we go take a look at the rest of the loft and I’ll show you,” said Dmitri.

From the Writers’ Studio we traced our way through the loft. Dmitri led me through the common space, where the English guys sat with their laptops. We passed a few other rooms and arrived at the kitchen. It looked like something out of Good Morning Vietnam: a stove sat dejectedly under a layer of rust-coloured grime. The entire back wall was covered in small drawers with odd names like “Spaceship” and “Sunrise.” The refrigerator looked as if it had been plucked out of I Love Lucy and then summarily dropped off a cliff.

“We share our groceries,” said Dmitri, “and we compost and try not to waste.”

That I could handle. We used to compost back at the apartment in Montreal, until our landlord complained that our compost pile had drawn a colony of black flies into the apartment. Weakling.

From the kitchen we moved on to the restroom. Neither the toilet nor the shower appeared to have any divider separating them from the rest of the apartment. And along the side of the shower were about fifteen bottles: soap, shampoo, conditioner.

That did it. Maybe the kitchen was weird, but at least I could cook; maybe the bedroom was small and developing-world style, but at least it was separated and quiet. Even the common toilet would be OK; I do that now with people I don’t even know. But sharing a curtainless shower with multiple guys? I haven’t had to do that since sleepaway camp seven years ago.

“So if you’re still interested, why don’t you come this way and we’ll talk about it,” Dmitri said, gesturing to a room that branched off the hall.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I think I’m going to go.”

“Okay, bye,” Dmitri said with a shrug. He opened the door across from his room and gestured with very little fanfare that I leave.

So I went. Back in the street, I reached for my cell phone. My Polish friend, Charles, had been looking for dinner during my apartment visit, and we met and boarded the metro to head over to a student bar area where some friends were due to be gathering.

Since English is the language that’s easier for both Charles and I, it’s the language that we speak when together. As the metro rumbled toward its next station, I recounted the apartment visit: the funny drawers with odd names, the sad-looking space heater and desk, the shower with no curtain. And then, as we ground toward a halt and the doors opened -

“And they should send all of the foreigners back to their countries! La France aux français!“

I turned my head quickly. Entering the Metro were two scruffy-looking thirty-odd year old men, each wearing hooded sweatshirts and clutching large cans of Pelforth beer. Each one took a folding seat at the middle of the metro car, legs thrust straight forward to form a V, heels on the floor.

As the men continued to lash out at one minority after another, Charles and I shot each other the kind of mischievous glances that one uses after having stolen a few pieces of licorice from a roommate’s desk. A woman sitting across from Charles who had heard us talking in English noticed the stupid faces we were making and laughed.

“Pelforth isn’t a very French-sounding beer,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Charles. “You’d think they’d be drinking Kronenbourg at least.”

For the next five or six stops until Charles and I made our transfer, the two men continued to spew idiocies as others flicked them off or yelled at them. Of course, my French isn’t good enough yet to try to throw ripostes at racist drunkards.

But then the portly man behind me got in on the action. “Would you stop pissing people off!” he roared. “It’s people like you who make France look bad to other people.”

“Well, fuck them!” retorted the louder of the two racists. “They can stay in their own countries.”

The man shook his head and turned to Charles and I. “I’m really sorry that people like this exist,” he said quietly. “Just ignore them.”

“Yeah, it’s OK,” I said. “They exist in Canada too.”

As I left the metro, I caught his gaze and nodded a thank you.

—–

I have an apartment. Moving down the hall in a few days. I might eventually blog about it, but I’m still kind of angsty about the whole deal, and anyway, my sense is that it isn’t that interesting.

If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that my life thus far has revolved around a certain piece of paper known as the carte de séjour. Well, I got it. Kind of.

As you may recall, I had been told that I needed one of two documents to receive my bank card: either my carte de séjour or its receipt. I had been expecting a letter from the prefecture with the receipt in it, along with a convocation to go pick up the carte itself.

Monday morning as I left the bathroom showering, A – she’s my host here in Paris, remember – plucked the day’s mail off the mat in front of her apartment.

“Hey Sam,” she called, “you have mail!”

I rushed over and looked at the brown envelope she was holding. “This is it!” I said. “It’s definitely it. I recognize the stamp.”

I clearly recalled the stamp because I had accidentally bought a stamp of a wholly wrong denomination, a good fourteen cents higher than necessary. I have yet to figure out the French postal system. Unlike the US and Canada, which have very clear tiered pricing based on the envelope’s size, destination, and requested speed, the price of French stamps seems also to vary based on the current meteorological conditions and post office Feng Shui. Most of the stamps here have no denominations written on them. If you were expecting a postcard from me, this is why you don’t have it: I have no idea what stamp to use.

I took the envelope and knew immediately that something was off. It was too light. It was impossible that anything important could be inside an envelope this light.

I hate it when I’m right.

Sir,

In order to be authorized to remain in France, you must, as per the current rules, effectuate a medical check-up from the National Agency for the Welcome of Foreigners and Migrants.

The day of your visit, you must bring:

1. This convocation.
2. Your passport, your vaccination records, your recent pulmonary radiology reports, your hospitalization records, your reading glasses, and your maternity records.

It is not necessary to come on an empty stomach.

First of all, I hereby nominate this letter for consideration by People for the Ethical Treatment of Bullet Points. That second bullet point should probably be split into, oh, I don’t know, how about six.

But I’ll stop being petty.

I had thought it was pretty draconian that a new arrival in France had to register with the police. But this just takes the cake. Everyone knows about the health menace posed by Americans who live in Canada. They might have eaten Alberta beef, all of which is tainted with Mad Cow Disease. And they might be poisoned with conservative political beliefs! Not that any of this really surprises me. I’m done being surprised in this country.

The kicker is that the envelope actually contained two pages. The second page advised me that this whole process would cost 55 €, payable in form of a 55 € stamp that I was to buy and affix to the letter. A fifty-five euro stamp? Is this how you mail refrigerators in France?

So after four weeks, the envelope that I had thought would be my salvation turned out to be just another bureaucratic stepping stone. As I sat in the kitchen with my granola and yogourt, I started to wonder whether this paper would be enough for Madame Chabol and Harry Potter back at the bank branch.

But the first thing I noticed when I walked into the bank branch was that Madame Chabol was not in her office. I glanced in on the way to the front counter, only to see someone entirely different sitting at the computer talking on the phone. And the man at the front counter was not the Harry Potter lookalike with the round glasses. Instead, there was a man who looked to be in his fifties, a textbook case of male pattern baldness.

“Hello sir,” he said.

I started to explain my situation to him. I was a foreign student, I had opened a bank account a month ago, and had been told I couldn’t have my bank card until I received my carte de séjour. Now I had another two letters from the Prefecture suggesting that I would soon receive that document. Would this be enough to receive my bank card?

He took the papers and slowly read them through.

“Well, generally speaking, no, this isn’t enough,” he said.

“Oh,” I said. Maybe there was a solution somewhere on the black market for me. Though loan sharks tend not to offer ATM cards.

“But you said you were a student, right?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “University of Paris 1.”

“Then I don’t see why you didn’t already receive your bank card,” he said. “The rules are completely different for students.”

He looked around quizzically at the rest of the bank personnel. “Julia!” he called to a woman at a desk on the other side of the foyer. “Do students need their cartes de séjour before they can receive their modes of payment?”

“I don’t know,” said Julia.

“Whatever,” said the man. “I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t have your chequebook. One second.”

And just like that, I received my chequebook and ATM card. I left the bank a happy man.

It was time to press my luck: maybe I could also get a cell phone today? I stode confidently into a chain cell phone store.

“What justificative documents do I need for a cell phone?” I asked an attendant.

“Well, that depends,” he responded. “What’s your nationality?”

“American,” I answered.

“Well, first your carte de séjour,” he said.

“All right, thanks,” I said, cutting him off. “What do you have in the way of prepaid phones?”

Whatever. Prepaid phones cost an arm and a leg, but I count it as a reasonable success that now I can spend that money in the first place.

—–

More exciting news: autumn has hit Paris. It’s been setting in so slowly that it’s taken a long time for me to notice it, but now it’s definitely there.

New Jersey Transit issued a bulletin a number of years ago identifying something that they referred to as “slippery rail condition”: that wet leaves falling on commuter train rails would sometimes impede the functioning of the trains’ brakes. Here, the wet leaves fall right on the street – alongside the omnipresent Paris dog doo – and create the equivalent of ice slicks. Thursday morning, while on the way into my metro station, I slipped on a leaf-covered step and tumbled about halfway down the staircase, landing hard on my right wrist and hip, and skinning part of my hand.

A group of gendarmes – “policemen-plus” – had been standing at the top of the staircase at that moment. They rushed to the top of the staircase and looked down quizzically at me.

“Ça va!” I called, waving them off with my left hand. I slowly stood up, brushed my pants off, and limped the rest of the way down to the metro.

The hip was fine within the hour, but I did a number on my wrist. Two days later, it’s much better and less swollen, though I still don’t have my whole range of motion back.

But here’s the kicker: the day I took that fall just happened to be the day of a pop quiz: a two-page essay on glaciers. Injury, meet insult. I made it through, but only with a bit of help from my good friend, ibuprofen.

All right, says the casual reader of this site. All this business about you being in France is well and good: we’re interested in your classes and your social life and your problems with expressing yourself and all that business. But fundamentally, at the bottom of it, how is Paris as a city? Or as my mom put it, “What’s Paris like?”

Well, for starters, you know the Eiffel Tower? Chuck it. You know the Arc de Triomphe? Chuck that too. And chuck Sacré-Coeur, Place de Vendôme, the Tuileries, the Invalides, and every above-ground component of the Défense. Throw out the bateaux-mouche and the two islands in the Seine. You can even dispose of the Louvre: except for the evenings when it’s free for students, it’s useless to me: I can do a lot with that 8.5 €. And the Champs-Élysées is far too touristy and overpriced for me to stomach, so nix that too.

I think one aspect which many people forget is that despite Paris’s stature as the world’s number-one tourist town, it is still a large and modern metropolis. Behind all the tourist attractions is an important world city, the seat of what is still one of the world’s most powerful countries. The winding residential streets conceal some of the world’s most powerful banks, charities, manufacturing interests, and NGOs.

This isn’t to say that I spend much time on the Alsthom Corporation’s assembly line – only that life here probably is not as different as you may think. The butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers do pretty much the same thing no matter which flag they wave.

All that said, there are differences. For example, the French have a somewhat different notion of courtesy than we who live in Anglo-Saxon countries do. What to us means “stepping out of my way so that I can get as much done as possible in the time I have” becomes “not dispensing with any possible social nicety.” In other words, more or less the exact opposite. If the baker is tied up talking to a customer about the status of his cat’s paw infection (this has happened), well, your rye bread can wait. And if you forget to say “hello madame” or “please,” then you can expect horrible service.

Unlike North Americans, Parisians are not accustomed to buying every single one of their groceries in the same building. Sure, they have supermarkets, but those supermarkets tend to specialize in packaged goods – an enormous Super C/Costco-like prepackaged butcher section is unheard-of here. And the bread selection is generally tiny. So when you need to go grocery shopping, you probably have to make three or four stops: first at Monoprix or Franprix for your packaged goods, and then at the fruit stand, butcher, and baker. This isn’t as annoying as it sounds, though, because the four are usually right near each other.

So that right there is four “bonjour monsieur”s and four “bonne journées” or “au revoirs.” In France, you actually have to speak to people. The butcher, for example, is trying to teach me the words for the various parts of the chicken, since last time I was unable to express what I wanted except by pointing. The baker, on the other hand, clearly recognizes me but doesn’t seem to care too much. Whatever. Parisians are hard to cultivate, and I have time.

One does not live on groceries alone, though, no matter how good they might be. After you’ve bought enough food to last you a few days, you’ll head home to your apartment. If you’re a student, you probably live in an apartment the size of the average refrigerator, and you pay up the nose for the privilege. The average Montreal student rent is somewhere around 450 $CAN; the average Paris student rent is somewhere around 550 Euros. So you can double that number and subtract a bit to get the number in Canadian dollars.

But putting aside the money issue, you live in a small apartment, perhaps a studio if you’re lucky. You’ve probably got a bar fridge, a hot plate, a microwave, a bed, and a cabinet or two. If you’re really lucky, you have your own washroom! And your apartment is your pride and joy: if you’re French, it’s because odds are otherwise you’d be living with your parents (who probably live in the area). If you’re a foreigner, it’s because it’s all you have. You can stock the fridge with whatever you want and put posters on the walls and have some of a sense of possession when you invite people in. (If you invite people in. If you’re French, you probably don’t invite people in.)

So let’s talk about getting places. If you did things right, you live next to a Metro line – much to your benefit, because then you can move from any one point in Paris to any other within an hour. And thanks to the RER commuter trains, you can be anywhere in the Paris region, including Versailles, within two hours. The network is very extensive and clean, and breaks down less than Montreal’s (and even if it does break down, there’s probably an alternate route to your destination). The downside is that Paris’s metro network is extremely congested. Part of the solution to that was to install seats that fold upwards automatically, such that during periods of congestion there’s more standing room. But that means that it’s often harder to get a seat in Paris than it is in Montreal (though, admittedly, it’s a lot easier than in New York).

Speaking of the Metro system, Paris has a few transit-related novelties that I don’t believe exist anywhere else. Lines 1 and 14, for example, are basically giant mobile crazy straws: like longer city buses, the cars are joined with a large pivot that can be walked through. So if you were so inclined, you could walk all the way from the front of the train to the back without actually leaving the train. And Line 14 is actually an entirely computer-controlled train. It’s like living in Rollercoaster Tycoon!

As for the stereotype of the French being snobby and distant: I really haven’t found that to be the case. True, to a certain degree, they are stereotypically “French”: the regimented processes to get anything done, the fact that you can’t get into any offices between noon and 2 on account of lunchtime, the constant and ubiquitous cigarette smoking. But the French seem to be, in most ways, a lot like “us.” The teenagers most of all. They talk in class, write papers last-minute, have inside jokes, etc. But since all of us spend all our time in the same one building – the Institut de Géographie – there’s no “chilling on campus.” Students take quick smokes out in front of the building, or go around to a cheap student bar nearby, Le Pantalon, which is dingy inside and hard to find outside. And if you ever talk to them, you’ll find them much like Canadian students are: some are nice, others less so.

I’m sure I’ve missed a few things that you wanted to know. But then, everyone in North America seems to have preconceptions about Paris. So, any questions?

—–

God, it’s been a while since I’ve posted. I have no excuse for it really; last time it was that I’ve been sick, but I’ve been fine recently. I’m not even going to try.

Had an interesting, political night out a few evenings ago that I’ll try to blog about later on – that post is actually half-written already. The American congressional elections were big news here, and since I’m the only American a lot of these people know, I get asked about it a lot. Again, people seem to be surprised that my political views jive so well with their own.

I’ve ranted enough about glaciers, but it’s become evident that I’m not the only one who’s fed up with them. One French girl proposed bringing up glaciers at a French dinner party – an event which, unlike dinners in the States are a big, formal undertaking. “Here, did you know that in Greenland, the albedo can reach 80 percent? Isn’t that crazy?“