blonde hair, blue eyes.

it really does describe the people in copenhagen quite well. i arrived here thursday evening and got slightly lost trying to find the hostel, which is 15 mins from the train station, and it took me about an hour to find my way. then i waited for rachel and co in the hostel, which is very nice, with comfortable beds and three of us to a room. i have much to report--probably most of which i won't get to in this post. we've done a ton of walking around this city and seen not too many of the sights (botanical gardens, round tower with great view of the city, walked by but not in tivoli gardens, big squares, will go to ny carlsberg gyptotek--modern art museum-- tomorrow), but have also had an interesting time for many other reasons. let us see shall we.

thursday evening we had beers with the owner of this place along with some other staff who were hanging out in the lobby after hours. i got in this really intense debate with the owner about american politics and how americans are stupid and stuff, and the dude totally started attacking me which got rather unpleasant. it became sort of clear just how anti-israel the guy was, and he kept basically yelling at me about what america's problems were and using me as a prototype, in a way, for what was wrong with america, bc of our ignorance. every time i'd argue with him he'd take my points the extreme and say ridiculous things like "so you don't believe in darwin then, or evolution?" which had absolutely nothing to do with what we were discussing or anything. rach was really uncomfortable and was basically pissed at me for not stopping the thing earlier. it must've gone on for about an hour.

we walked around the city a lot today and yesterday, which is quite beautiful. it actually looks a lot like amsterdam, and has a similar feel in that everyone speaks english with very minimal accents. we went on a boatride yesterday around the canals and saw a lot of the big stuff, including the little mermaid statue for the man of this city, hans christian andersen. funnily enough, yesterday when we were hanging out in the big square by the stork fountain, a newscaster came over to ask us some questions, and i seemed to be the only one into it, as rachel and all of her friends started inching away as i spoke into the camera to tell the nice lady what i knew of andersen. i probably came off like a real asshole. i wonder whether i was on tv...

we were tired pretty early from walking around (especially this one street strøget--which is one of the main ones with lots of shops and TONS of h+m's, which started in sweden) and napped and stuff last night, drinking in the room. later there was a funny cuddle session with interesting moments and good times had by all. rach's friends are really fun and i get along well with all of them which is very good. her guy friends keep eating sausage all the time, because there are stands everywhere.

there are some cool buildings here, lots look just like amsterdam, and tons of steeples and other buildings with clocks on them. the view from the top of the round tower which was great, and you could see the other really cool view of the city, in this crazy steeple that's curvy and rounded in a small area called christiana.

we haven't yet visited the "free town" of christiana (we shall go out there tonight), but what i've read about it is really interesting. it's basically this part of the city that was very drug-ridden with an intense "hash culture" that had so many issues with the government but finally came to an agreement in which they pay their own utilities and have their own political structure. it sounds really strange and i can't wait to visit it tonight.

anyway i know this post isn't all that perceptive or interesting, but i wanted to at least record some of the small adventures that've taken place before i forget everything.

don't walk. don't walk.

so i'm sort of embarrassed to admit it took me so long to notice this difference, but here i am admitting away. in the states, or at least in new york, there's no "red man" and "green man" (as dad likes to put it), but instead, the red words don't walk and the white ones walk on the stoplights. in between walk and don't walk, there's what could be called the yellow light for pedestrians, or the flashing don't walk, which my mom used to say danny interpreted as run.

cute anecdotes aside, it never occured to me why the stoplights here in paris are so much shorter than they are in the states. when marielle and rachel came they'd say "red man = dead man", and even then i didn't catch the significance of it all. however, i finally realized that red man does not equal dead man, because the french don't have the flashing don't walk signs. i don't know why this hadn't occured to me earlier, especially considering the fact that it fits in perfectly with the french way. you see, there is the official right and wrong way (as in walk on green man, don't walk on red man), but like so many other things here in paris, no one follows the rules, which is in itself a generally accepted rule (which it's true, leads to other paradoxes), so that you can take the first 15 seconds of the red man as a flashing don't walk sign.

so really, marielle and rachel's little line needs to be edited to something like "depending on the amount of time for which the red man has been present, red man may or may not equal dead man". parisians. they make everything confusing.

clarification.

ok, so i'm busy packing and figuring out stuff for copenhagen and berlin, but i'll take this time to answer you, miriam tauber. OF COURSE i've read catcher in the rye. like fifty times. starting around sixth grade, when i thought i was way cooler than everyone else for having read it earlier, and had my fuck you attitude intact that i still (sorta) carry around with me today. however, i haven't read it since freshman year of high school, and i picked it up at that british girl's house a while ago, and decided to give it another whirl, since it's been so long. boy has my perspective on things changed since then. i no longer really feel like i'm on holden's side because i'm just not that crazy. straight-up, holden's got issues and just needs someone to hold him a little, and tell him to stop getting "depressed" (a word he just can't stop using) every time he doesn't like something. he should just get annoyed like the rest of us neurotics.

and oh yeah, since this is a post for you, miriam, i might add this quote, page 21 of the penguin edition: "'do you mind cutting your nails over the table, hey?' i said. 'i've asked you about fifty--'". yeah, that's right. my main man holden gets really annoyed when people cut their toenails on the floor.

love,

lisa

the last of the holy days.


so i'm finally reaching the end, which is very much relieving. today i handed in my first paper for my french university class. i wrote (columbia university) next to my name so my teacher should know that i was actually trying my hardest when i wrote the thing, it's just that my french sucks. however, when i got to class, it became abundantly clear to me that this was unecessary, as my paper would be readily recognizable as a foreigner's. why? because nobody in france types anything up! i already sort of knew that since my friend ora asked me to help teach her how to touch-type (like that's a teachable skill), because no one here does. they write on these weird graph-looking papers that are attached. i don't know how they don't type it up--i mean their outlines must be crazy and stuff, and they can't copy and paste things and move them around. what's funny about it all is also that a whole bunch of people didn't have their papers ready and so she said she wanted them by thursday. however, since they don't have them saved on their computers, they can't just send it via email. so, the teacher gave them her home address. how funny it all is.


anyway, i'm going to keep myself busy this holiday by reading catcher in the rye (started it, loving it, realizing that holden's just a crazy neurotic), and my guidebook on copenhagen. can i get a what what.

oh yeah, i got some new music. i'm seriously a much happier camper with music in my life.

why, i think i might be starting to like paris better than new york.

it's just so damned pretty here, and smallish, and clean (well, besides the dog crap and pda's everywhere). and i find it easier to spend massive amounts of time alone here than i do in new york. i'm not sure if this is related to the fact that i am used to my life in new york not being alone, but i feel like it's ok to be quiet and isolated here. because the city is your friend. i don't even care if that sounds lame.

today i made friends with the brit who works in the village voice bookshop, a sort of famous "anglo-american bookshop" in st. germain de près. they sell 7.50 euro new yorkers there and 14 euro sunday times--absolutely absurd. but the guy (michael, about 45, bad teeth, very british) liked me so he gave me last week's sunday times for free. i can't wait to read what mr. ethicist has to say this week.

i bought guidebooks for my forthcoming trips to copenhagen and berlin. getting psyched over here.

i drink wine alone on saturday nights.

who knew?

picture this:

it's friday afternoon and you're in a rush and it's drizzling out. what does this mean, you ask? well, as i hurried down the sometimes claustrophobic side streets i take home, i was faced with the traffic of after-school loiterers (think 78th between park and madison friday afternoon, when all the lovely ramazies get out for the week), and people whose umbrellas would block almost the entire sidewalk, which is even more annoying when it's only barely drizzling and you don't actually need an umbrella. oh well, what can you do?

anyway i haven't really had much human contact since wed. evening, and even then it was only with my parents friends. so tonight and tomorrow should be lonely. but i'm switching rooms so i'm oh so excited!

smoking a clove, drinking a beer.

so yeah, i've basically been sitting around all day today trying to bring myself to write this paper on "la mort des amants", one of the poems in baudelaire's les fleurs du mal for my french university class, and goddamit i just can't do it. i haven't analyzed poetry in ages, and i've literally got nothing to say. so, i'm hoping a beer will get my creative juices flowing. i fear it won't do this, though, and i'll end up not doing this as i'm supposed to, which would be very very bad because i need someone to look it over for me.

oh well. it feels good to be bad.

i'm starting to hate americans.

maybe it's the misanthrope in me (is there one within me?), maybe it's my frenchness, or maybe it's just those americans i've been staying with. very nice people, i might add. and admittedly, spending time over there does make me feel smarter. i had a nice long argument (in which i knew i was right) over whether mark twain was an anti-semite (he's not), with walter, a self-proclaimed archie bunker who'd never even read huck finn. sitting at lunch today, though, i really was reminded why french/europeans really hate americans. my god the way he ate his food, shoveling it all in in scoops before his wife could even finish serving it, really put me off. he makes outrageous comments he can barely back up, also. some of the arguments we have are over things for which i cannot bring evidence because they were before my time (such as who got more crap for the vietnam war, lbj or nixon), but i am so sure i'm right. at the same time, he's very nice to me and thinks me an intelligent person.

meanwhile, his wife rivka/sara (depending on who she's talking to) strikes me as a real live housewife in a sense i'd never been struck by before. growing up where i did, many mothers didn't work, but none were the motherly figures who cooked and cleaned and took all the shit from their husband and kids. she does it all, though. no matter how many times walter says "delicious darling" in his thanking voice, i get the sense that he would have no less from her than such a meal. she told me she doesn't cook new things because everyone will turn their noses and say "what is this". she never really raises opinions during meals, although it's clear to me she's smarter than her husband, and she seems to get no help.

meanwhile, the only son still in the house is kind of a brat. at 14, he still leaves the table feiging illness or fatigue as soon as he finishes his meal. he complains that the food tastes weird often, he whines, and asks his mother for "huggy-buggies". the thing is, they're all such nice people that i can't figure out the family structure. but by the end of the weekend, i wanted to shout "amen" when rivka said "don't become annoying" to her son.

wow i'm a critical bitch. oh well.

marielle and rachel came to visit, and pictures are on webshots. do look!

i speak english. wall street english.

that's an ad all over the metro for some english-speaking school. i love how wall street is this emblem of america, of the english you'd want to speak, the place you'd want to be in. it's also interesting that the smiling face who speaks wall street english is, in fact, a woman, and not a man. because everyone knows wall street isn't just a boys club. right.
i have to be quick because i need to get ready for the third holiday of the month (after having eaten a lot, fasted, we'll be sitting in huts), but i wanted to say a word about this weekend, in which marielle and rachel came. it was great fun, but something interesting that hadn't happened to me before occured. i finally was introduced to the french rudeness that people have been asking me about for quite some time now. twice. first the woman from whom i ordered marielle and rachel's crepes was snide and acting like she couldn't understand my french, even putting the price on the calculator when i couldn't hear what she said the first time. meanwhile her accent was also terrible and she wasn't french.
the guy at the brasserie around the corner from me also wasn't particularly friendly--when i was told breakfast would no longer be served and had to figure out what i wanted, he stood over me, refusing to give me more time, and i was pressured into getting three fried eggs i just didn't want. i guess they don't have to be nice and friendly here because they're not getting tipped anyway. so then i wonder, is the no-bullshit way, in which the servers don't pretend to be nice because they know they'll get nothing out of it favorable? does it beat the over-friendly way of the waitstaff in the states, which always leads me to snidely remark, when the sugary waitress who took my order goes away, "she's deefinitely not from new york."? i'm not so sure. in some ways maybe the french should be admired for lacking the fakeness that goes along with our country.
but i still don't want to feel like i'm pissing off my waiter by taking an extra minute to peruse the menu.

drinks are expensive.

i haven't really had a craaaazy night since i've been here, but i certainly drank a lot last night. and now i'm paying for it. and i should be studying for tomorrow's midterm, for which i am entirely unprepared, but instead i'm nauseated (i have the nausea) and am lamenting that. marielle and rachel were here this weekend, in fact marielle is still here, but i sent her out to the pompidou so i could study, which i'm clearly doing. it was a very fun weekend--we walked around a lot and went to the orsay, the eiffel tower, luxembourg gardens, and oberkampf last night. i got spilled on by some random guy who then wiped it off of me. i was not pleased.

exciting news: i'll be going to copenhagen and berlin with rachel and her friends. those were two destination cities for me so i'm oh so excited. yay.

jardins du luxembourg, you make me happy when skies are grey.

which they haven't been lately, because the weather's been unbelievably gorgeous. i added a photo tour of my apartment to my webshots (god i hate that website). go ahead and look.

my pre-halfway point thoughts.

actually, it's not even my own thought. but erica told me someone told her this and i think it's very true: studying abroad is like being pulled out of your life for four months and really having time to look at it and yourself. i couldn't agree more. being here for me has been very interesting and very frustrating. i've first off learned quite a bit about other people, some in particular, but also i've been having a lot of time to reflect, as lame as it sounds. i'm not gonna be that much of an open book and write it all out here, mostly because i think that the people who matter most and have been talking to me, and are my most loyal readers anyway, know what i mean.

and to those people, on the other side of the globe, who have actually listened (on skype, on the phone) or read (via email) what i do mean, i dedicate this post. without you guys, i probably (fine, definitely) couldn't function. thanks for being the tissue to my nose.

have i mentioned i got internet?

yes i did. set it up all by myself too. it's been part of the reason i've gone to bed so late every night this week (530am sat night/5am sun night/330am monday night), and we mustn't forget that i have class at 9am all three days i actually have class. gotta love them four day weekends.

in other news, tonight i go see spoon. how do i justify coming to paris to see american acts, since i've gotten some flack for it? well, in a couple of ways. first, it's already clear to me i'm not going to integrate into parisian culture. so, i might as well do some of the things i like to do (for others this takes the form of seeing american movies, but no one gets shit for that). plus, everyone knows the best way to even attempt integration is by finding a smaller niche in which to do so. for instance, i have met more french people than anyone else i know by embracing my jewishness (but not necessarily my judaism). so, i might as well try the hipster/indie scene here. in fact i'm very interested to see what it'll be like at the "pop sunday party" at the nouveau casino in the hipper-than-thou oberkampf area. i probably won't meet anybody, but the area's cool that maybe i'll be cool by just being there. isn't that how these things work?

in totally unrelated news, this girl christine told me a great pda anecdote yesterday as we passed notes during our three hour french university class. girl sits on guy's lap on metro, but, before starting the makeout session, she reaches into her bag, pulls out a hairnet, and puts her hair in it. obviously, she doesn't want to get her hair in guy's face, because that would so ruin the moment. or she has a serious case of head-lice.

please don't feed the meters.

so basically, parking is a free-for-all here in paris. sometimes i cross the street thinking there's a car on the other side i need to let pass, but instead it's just a parked car. there are little french cars, smart cars, and mopeds squeezed into every imaginable crevace of space, and people don't really seem to pay for parking either. walter, my american host, remarked to me last week that "paris must be in trouble--they're giving out parking tickets". i'm just confused as to whether there are rules that aren't followed, or whether there are simply suggestions. it's like the merde everywhere, like, it would be nice if you cleaned up after your dog, but we know you won't anyway. alternatively, it would be swell if you parked in some sort of uniform manner, but we understand you need to park your car, so do what you have to do.

this isn't 'nam, but are there rules?

why does it have to be such a creepy looking baby too?

check it

maybe it's a bad thing my tp is so quilted.

the toilet paper erica and i bought in bulk is pink and quilted better than anything i ever bought at school. she didn't want to buy pink toilet paper, asking "isn't there any normal toilet paper we can buy", but i convinced her. plus, we couldn't find any plain-colored tp.

two weeks ago, i began getting sick thanks to going to a cooking class with a girl who complained about being sick and got her germys all over me and my food. if you know me at all, you know that when i get sick i don't just have to blow my nose (that being a usual occurence), but i basically live with a tissue shoved up there. so, not having yet purchased a big box of tissues, i started using the very quilted and prettily colored toilet paper we had so much of. of course, i couldn't just use it at home, and the small amount i took to school the first day definitely did not suffice. so i've begun to walk around with a roll of toilet paper in my backpack, and take off each square separately because i'm already on my third or fourth roll. but everyone french sees what i'm doing, and even when i make the effort to rip off a square in my bag so no one sees my whole roll, the color of my "tissue" gives away what i'm using and they look disgusted and confused on the metro or bus or street. stupid american.

point supported? hell, i don't even know.

i lazily took a cab home from the latin quarter tonight alone around 1:15am. in the cab i spoke with the cabdriver in french, and among the questions he asked me was how many languages i spoke. i had a brief moment where i thought whether to answer that one was hebrew (because going back to my previous post, is it okay to admit to being jewish?), but i decided to tell him anyway. immediately he said "at midaberet ivrit?". apparently, he's a tunisian jew. oh how funny the world is.

i must say i think it's interesting how much of this blog's become about jewish things. what is that?

i know i'm over-posting, but...

...i've missed internet so i just can't help it. i found this which is quite possibly the most annoying and amazing thing ever. if someone ever did it to me i'd probably have to leave the room in which i was sitting. it's almost as bad as the one, which i have yet to implement, in which i switch the right and left click on someone's mouse. i'm so deliciously evil.

adam gopnik, why did you have to be smart?

this weekend i finally hit the 100th page of adam gopnik's paris to the moon. now i've officially realized whatever i write on this blog will never be as observant or as subtly written as what he has to say. oh well, at least it's shorter.

anti-semitism in france: i was told to watch out for it before i left. my mom sent me article after threatening article about the hardships of being a jew in france; my dad made me change my t-shirt which featured a bit of hebrew writing before i got on the airplane. it's true that guys can't really walk around in kippot and showing you're jewish outright is probably not wise, but i have to say i got an entirely different impression of things thanks to the american media. and the jewish media at that.

even some guy i talked to when i went away on that weekend told me that anti-semitism here isn't all it's hyped up to be. i guess i'd conjured up an image of 1930s poland where not only was it impossible to be jewish, but nothing jewish-related was appreciated or discussed by the general public. maybe that's why i was so shocked that a production of fiddler on the roof was being advertised more than broken flowers (and we know that the french do love and take very seriously their cinema) in every metro station. tourists and non-jewish locals patron the ever-popular l'as du falafel, the "lenny kravitz reccomended" falafel joint in the marais.

maybe things are calmer here now, which is what i've heard. and it's probably not as simplistic as i've made it all out to be. but i'm here to make my own damned observations, true or untrue, observant or not. so screw you adam gopnik.

on neurosis and energy-wasting.

i stayed with my parents' semi-friends for the holidays and i discussed many things over the past two days. actually, it boiled down to many an argument with walter, the father, over bush, politics, america's shameful history (slavery) and other things which probably made him label me a lost liberal. but an intelligent one at that.

so i think i mentioned that he requires you to wash your hands (with soap, that is) every time you come into the house. but he's really crazy about it. today they had some guests for lunch--an interesting couple of intellectuals, actually. the man is a retired french lit professor from brooklyn and his wife is the math chair at some university and is french, and their software engineer very smart son. anyway, this sort of argumentative ex-prof. refused to wash his hands with soap. i found it all sort of amusing, especially because it was clear he was just trying to push walter's buttons. i guess i didn't realize just how deep walter's ocd is, because when the couple left he started fuming about how he was "very upset" and how his wife should not only wash all the dishes, but "make sure you get all the handles". well i've never seen neurosis that deep.

but this ocd also plays into why walter notices things so much. for instance, one of the only points he agreed with me on during our debates was how embarassing it is how much america wastes, because i guess he'd notice something like that being sort of--crazy. i'd noticed the small ways in which french people try to conserve energy: there are two buttons on the toilet flusher--one for, well how to put it nicely, heavier loads; the turning on and off of the water every time you use the washing machine; the smaller and more efficient cars (apparently more mileage, which of course i know about as much about as i do how this here computer works); the light-switches in apartment buildings which are glow-in-the-dark and you need to turn on every time you want to walk up the stairs or move about the hallway (as in, they don't stay on all night). those are to name the ones that just came to mind. but there are more, oh are there more.

other metro differences part 2 and the new year.

first, i get cell phone service on many of the metros. you might think it's my cell phone service (orange), but everyone seems to get service since they either talk or text on the metro, so i'm inclined to believe it's not. either all the towers are better here or the metros are just not as far underground. i'm not sure.

second, in this lovely city, when the public transportation people say they're going to strike, they strike. unlike in new york, where last time the mta workers threatened to strike (and i crossed my fingers praying for no school), they stayed up all night and worked it out, these metro dudes are having none of it. screw negotiations. tomorrow they strike. of course it's rosh hashana so it won't really make a difference to me.

ah rosh hashana. as i got out of the metro on my way to the rosenbaums for the holiday, whistling (which my cute grammar teacher who now hates me--we'll get to that later--told me only men do in paris) i felt like the holiday was in the somewhat cold, but eye-squintingly bright air. it has that feeling of wearing a bit too warm of jacket, feeling like it should be a bit cooler than it is out, and of tashlich. maybe to others that's called fall (or autumn). i don't know.

anyway, on the metro on my way over a man several rows away from me was staring at me totally befuddled by the fact that one could possibly blow his/her nose for as long as i was going. and he kept watching me, doing a half-smile, probably wondering is she really going back for another square of that pink toilet paper in her backpack? what the hell does she have up there? well guy, i don't know.

and lastly, my grammar teacher. i switched sections today because the other section conflicted, but i totally forgot my revised composition because i was used to being in the section that meets tomorrow. so of course, i go over to prof. thuiller and tell him i don't have it, that i'm not coming to school until thursday because of religious reasons, and can i give it to him then. first he's pissed, but then he has to act all nice because it's a religious thing. so he says he understands. then i get a scathing email from my advisor who tells me it's fine to miss class because i don't travel on the holidays but it's not fine to not have my work. but seriously! i just switched sections! chill the hell out. and if you're gonna be pissed at me, oh-cute-grammar-man, tell me. not my goddamn advisor. pussy.

shana tova.

nuit blanche, cold weather, and long walks home.

last night i discovered that my sweet sweet internet which has really kept me going for days now has disappeared. it tells me i have a very good connection. VERY GOOD. but it won't do anything. the status bar at the bottom doesn't get progressively greener. alas.

last night was nuit blanche. as carrie so correctly put it, paris is obsessed with celebrating itself. god it's so self-absorbed and arrogant. whether it's the fête de la musique, where there are concerts all over paris one day over the summer, to the journées du patrimoine, when all national monuments/museums are free at night, to the nuit blanche, where a lot of historic buildings have crazy expeditions inside, there's all these outdoor parties and instillations, and everyone is very very drunk. nuit blanche translates literally into white night but actually means a night where you don't go to sleep.

we got off at hôtel de ville and it was packed. the metro was free and very much booming with people. bottles of wine were being held carelessly (apparently it's not illegal here to have an open container of alcohol), pda's abounded, and many a shady man thought it find to personally accost the females who were not accompanied by men. one guy grabbed onto carrie while asking for directions and it took my pulling her and her screaming at him (and coming very close to punching him) to get him away. the night was pretty interesting--it reminded me a lot of new years. first, it was packed like it was new years and there was no way to get anywhere. not a cab in sight and the metro closed except for one line which ran across the seine on the right bank (ie: useless for me). second, it had the same sort of hype surrounding it, where it's supposed to be amazing and everyone gets wasted and stays up all night. but in the end, you're tired relatively early, your buzz has worn off, and while the night hasn't quite been a bust, it's not as good as you thought it should/could be. but you're fine with it. because you've come to expect it.

anyway, we ended up walking back from the marais and getting home around 3. exhausted, i crawled into bed and watched the most recent two episodes of the oc which erica's friend jared had so wonderfully had on his computer. yay.

yesterday morning i went to shul--about a 35 minute walk, and met a nice british girl which is good news for me. i walked back through les jardins du luxembourg and finally see why people--including my dad--love it so much. it's big and beautiful and filled with every kind of parisian there is. the little kids play and scream as their parents watch, the old man sits reading a ratty newspaper, the young hipster plays with his small powerbook and the couples cuddle.

oh, the couples. at this point there should be a law banning the hand-holding, eye-gazing, shoulder-massaging couples that populate this all too romantic city. bitter? me? never.