i saw a french girl burp!

i did! she was about sixteen, impeccably dressed, and let out a burb--not a cute one--in front of her friends. wow, i have a whole new french view.

the events which have passed.

i'm getting bad at consistently writing in this sucker. spent a nice shabbat lunch, interesting chat/debate with my neighbor about politics, why america sucks, and israel, began starting to think about writing my 15 page paper due next week, and saw rufus wainwright in the casino de paris!

this last one needs at least one sentence. it was a nice theater and i went with rachel and this girl silvie who was also going. we had fairly good seats (no assigned seats), with plush velvet chairs (no i'm not writing a review), and rufus was oh so wonderful. this is after an hour of his whining sister, martha. anyway after he left in the middle of a song, he comes back on in a crazy robe with his band and they start this crazy dance and then strip him of his robe, so he's in this blue thing and he pretends to be jesus being crucified for two songs. it was sooo weird.

anyway, i'm enjoying the tinfoiled high so that'll be all.

sarah, does the amount of ( )s in here make you cringe?

le refuge des fondus

why yes, erica and i are drinking wine out of baby bottles. because that's what you do at le refuge des fondus, a tiny fondus place up in montmartre, where you pay 16 euro for an appetizer with assorted foods and an aperitif wine, fondus, dessert, and all you can drink wine. the place is really small and has writing in chalk, paint and marker all over the walls. the tables are lined up against the wall with no spaces between them, so if you're sitting up against the wall you basically have to climb up and over the table to get there. it was great fondus and had the small, crowded yet friendly atmosphere that makes paris so grand.

while we were cooking, it began to snow.

anna and meg stuffing the turkey, which even if i probably could've eaten it, after seeing it be stuff, definitely wouldn't have.

of course i get the low chair during dinner. look how colorful my plate is!

thanksgiving dinner for nine people chez moi, a day late was great. good wine, good food, good people. it was nice to be away from home and have a home-y atmosphere. we finally got some good use out of our kitchen, i made things like sweet potatoes and chestnuts, and got rather tipsy. it was a real french/american fusion with some jacques brel, edith piaf, and pink martini playing, good ol' fashion homecooking, and some very cheap wine. oh, and some disgusting beaujolais nouveau too.

and i suddenly remember that feeling...

y'know the one. you're sitting inside on a cold and grey day. it's darkening outside because it's winter(ish). you're alone in your room trying to do work, but the sad/emotional songs keep coming on the shuffle (david gray), and the light in your room just isn't right. so you adjust, you snack, you search to talk to people online you haven't spoken with in months, and then you realize what it is.

loneliness.

what a strange feeling, because it's not readily apparent what it is. all you need is some hot chocolate, a good friend, and a rental. but you can't have that because you're in paris. which is amazing...but not for now. because now, no one's online due to some construct called thanksgiving which is bringing together families around lots of food for some obscure reason that has something to do with the american dream and with the immigrants in your family.

oh well. my thanksgiving dinner will be tomorrow with friends, wine, and a turkey i can't eat. god bless framerica.

opinions? i'm not so sure...

like the pillsbury doughboy, only not so white.

nestled unabashedly next to the nesquik hot chocolate is the banania brand's hot chocolate/cereal/banana thingy. apparently that logo is just a logo like any other--like the nestle bunny next to it, or the pillsbury doughboy. that is totally outrageous!

people have said stuff about how the racism in france plays out very differently than it does in the states. you see, in the u.s. everyone's always worrying about being pc, so they watch what they say. but they still think it. they're still afraid when they see the black guy coming the other way, or they're constantly searching for the current politically correct term to use. in france, they're less ashamed of their racism, which may or may not be a good thing. i mean, if they voice it, then it's easier for someone to point out exactly what's wrong than if it were completely latent. but then you come across a logo like the one above, and you're like what the fuck? i mean seriously.

this post may be controversial. i'm not sure. we shall see.

it's like everything else in france...

i hear that phrase a lot. what it implies is, that doing whatever it is you are trying to do will be unnecessarily difficult. there is a way of doing things here that seems counterintuitive and counterproductive. as if the simple way would just be too, well, simple.

the most recent context i heard the word in was referring to doing research in the libraries here in paris. you see, each library has its own library card (bring your passport to get one!), specializes in different things, has long lines to get in, strange hours, and, best of all, doesn't permit you to take out books. if you're lucky, you can put in a request to make xeroxes. if you're lucky.

many also don't have online catalogs, so you don't even know if what you'll find is useful. and oh yeah, it's all in french. tomorrow, depending on my braveness and whether i feel like it, i'll go to a library and see the fun process (complete with very long lines in the suddenly-very-cold-and-rainy-weather) in action.

être en retard = to be late. alternatively, my alarm clock troubles.

those of you who know me (at all), know that i am incapable of being late. i'm always five--usually ten--minutes early for class, and end up sitting outside my classroom reading the dp and waiting for the class ahead to finish. trying to change to become an "on-time" person, or at least one who arrives two minutes ahead of schedule, never works for me, because if i leave five minutes later than i usually do, i end up sprinting because i think i'll be late. this accomplishes little, as i end up at class just as early as usual, only flushed and out of breath as well.

the past two weeks, however, thanks to my undependable alarm clock, things have changed. i slept entirely through my grammar class last week, which is bad news considering the fact that i've missed that class most thanks to the holidays. then today i woke up five minutes before my history class began. it was fun to get dressed and run to class, fall up the stairs, and walk in red-faced and almost twenty minutes late. so maybe all i need to do is make my alarm clock fail me, and i'll become an "on-time" person. if only there were a way to force mistakes...

the french trust its young too much.

i'm fine with the fact that they let their kids drink nice and early--that's why they appreciate wine and aren't such alcoholics when they start university. i also have no problem with the fact that they can buy cigarettes before i was even allowed to vote.

however, what i simply cannot understand is how the schools let them go out for lunch so early. we're not talking about senior/junior year of high school, when american students first taste freedo, and are let out for that glorious hour. i'm talking about little shit middle schoolers who spend their lunch hour blocking the streets by reid hall, elongating the lines at my establishments, and making the wait both noisy and frustrating. cm'on france, don't you think that's a bit too much freedom?

why haven't i been posting much.

it's because i've pretty much settled into la vie quotidienne (everyday life) here and it's hard to examine things as easily. i come home every day on average at five and screw around not doing my work, end up talking to people in the states till like 4 or 5ish (a.m. that is), and start the cycle again. things'll change now that i have an insane amount of work coming up, though.

i'm starting to realize going back to penn is going to be very strange and scary. i hope i take care of everything i want to and really focus on things well. i'm psyched for my classes, so there's that.

in the tradition of writing about stoplights.

the ones in genève have a flashing green man. how interesting. the weekend was nice--there isn't much going on geneva, if i may so myself. the lonely planet's description of "tidy and aesthetic geneva" basically indicated that there's not much there. i ate a whole buncha delicious fondue, though, which i actually think was the first time i'd hand fondue before. we went to the u.n. basically all day on friday, and somehow got hooked up to go into some of the committee on torture meetings, and got to put in the little earphone to hear the translator, because the dude was from ecuador and speaking in spanish. translating must be a stressful job. one of the guys in the room was totally dozing off, which was funny to watch, because you wouldn't think that'd happen in the u.n.

we also checked out the red cross museum, which was basically a history of atrocities done on a large scale and how the red cross had helped, and the ethnography museum, which talked about cultural relavitism.

the shul in geneva is beautiful--it's painted different colors and is like nothing i've really ever seen before. i also checked out calvin's church (cathedral st. pierre) and got a lovely view of the city, went to the gardens, saw the rhone, the big floral clock and did a buncha walking. on sunday, everything was closed and the city was more dead than paris on sundays (which, in case i haven't mentioned, is also dead on sundays and somewhat on mondays--my favorite boulangerie isn't open to serve me on mondays.) it was a nice, relaxing weekend without craziness or a stressful amount of sights to see.

the one funny thing i enjoyed there were these signs stuck onto stoplights that said "c'est un super chien avec un super maître" (this is a super dog with a super master) that were meant to encourage people to clean up after their dogs. there are these black plastic bags hanging down from the sign so people can grab one to clean up the poo. they should really establish that in paris. although people probably wouldn't even have any idea of what to do with them.

caveau des oubliettes.

or in english, the vault/cellar of the forgotten. it's a jazz club in the 5th arrondissement with overpriced cocktails and beer, but no cover charge. i've been there several times now, and can't get anough of all that jazz. paris is really quite amazing with its smokers and musicians and beautifully dressed people. i so don't belong.

i don't know why i don't have much to say these days. the riots are still going on, but dwindling down a bit since they instituted a curfew, started arresting tons of people, and apparently also threatened to deport convicted immigrants.

tomorrow i'm going to geneva for the weekend. i'll bring back chocolate and neutrality for everyone.

sarkozy, blogarrests, insanity.

check it out here.

today.

today someone bagged my groceries for me. today the professor of my french university class praised my baudelaire paper in front of the whole class. today i study for the midterm i have tomorrow.

today also marks the 12th day of violence in the suburbs of paris. the first death was reported today. last night gunfire was shot at policemen, ten of whom were wounded, who then arrested 395 people. i went over to my hungarian cousins (who've lived in france for over 50 years now) and it's clear to me the french have no sympathy for the rioters. so the best this can do is garner international media attention, i guess. how the hell is this all going to end?

chirac hasn't said much about the whole thing, but called an emergency meeting. meanwhile sarkozy's being stubborn and silly.

vive la france?

i don't have a better sense than you about what the hell is going on.

and now, for some quotes.

"This has nothing to do with religion," [a 28-year-old] said. "But non-Muslims are afraid of people like me with a beard. I look suspicious to them. Discrimination is all around us. We live it every day. It's become a habit. It's in the air." -washington post

"Certainly, as anybody would, we mourn the loss of life in these kinds of situations. But, again, these are issues for the French people and the French government to address." -u.s. state department spokesman Sean mcCormack. oh, america.

and finally:

"Paris n’est pas à feu et à sang, Paris dort sur ses deux oreilles, Paris vit dans sa bulle. Paris feint de ne pas voir les 400 voitures, les centaines de mètres carrés d'entrepôts à Garonor et le dépôt de bus de Trappes qui ont flambé cette nuit." -the parisist.

roughly translated (par moi): paris is not on fire and bloody--paris sleep on its two ears, paris lives in its bubble. paris pretends not to see the 400 cars, the hundreds of square meters of warehouses in garoner and the deposits of buses of trappes that were blazed tonight.

living in the center of paris, one would have absolutely no idea of les émeutes (the riots) going on in the very nearby suburbs. it is rather shameful. meanwhile, i spent last night in montmartre having dinner with erica and erica's french friend pauline. i'm not sure if pauline was a typical french girl--i think she comes from outside of paris but lives in paris now, but she didn't want to go to oberkampf last night because i think she thought the area was unsafe. so i realized she was a bit paranoid. but not once, but twice, when we passed different bars we considered going into, she said no, because she didn't like who she saw inside. "there are a lot of mexicans in there". she didn't say it quite that badly, but it was clear that these immigrants made her very nervous--xenophobia and racism have clearly penetrated.

i asked her about the riots and she just seemed to think it was kind of sad, but i didn't get the impression that she cared too much. we talked about a lot of things (all in french, of course) and got into the american dream, which i said i don't believe exists, and how when we read books like gatsby we were taught such things. she told me she'd be taught the opposite and believes in the american dream, although a bit less now since she lived in new york for a while.

the caretaker of a gym in these divisive suburbs said this: "We don't have the American dream here," said Rezzoug, as he surveyed the clusters of young men. "We don't even have the French dream here."

for more on relations in the banlieue (suburbs), watch the film "la haine" or "hate" in english.

ich ein berliner.

oh where to begin? whatta crazy city berlin is. to begin with, the whole thing is under construction. i really don't feel that saying that is an exaggeration. anyway, i got there sunday night, we went out for some drinks and chilled for a bit, hitting the hay early so we could get up for our nine hour walking tour through the city. that's right--me, walking for nine hours, willingly. i figured since i only had two days there i should make the most of them by seriously seeing as much as possible. meanwhile, my legs were already tired as hell because we walked all around copenhagen, only taking public transportation to and from the airport. but, rach's brother strongly reccomended the tour so i hoped it'd be good. terri brewer, the originator of the brewer tour (british, about 70, held a lot of very official positions in england and germany) was our guide, and he took a fondness to me from the beginning, i guess when i was the only one who said i was jewish and translated some hebrew, but also because i knew the answer to most of his questions. he was funny and sometimes harsh, making us walk fast and yelling at the group (comprised of mostly australians and the eight of us americans) when we were slow, but it was good times.

we started at the old synagogue that was once the largest in europe before the dohani in budapest was built, and went all around what was east berlin. the way you know you're in east berlin is the tramlines, which never existed in west berlin, and the stoplights, which have funny looking red and green men meant to encourage little kids to stop and go (see pictures above). apparently when berlin was reunified they tried getting rid of these lights, but people protested so they were brought back and have become sort of a symbol of berlin. ah the irony of this communist symbol becoming an icon of current berlin. but i guess germany/berlin has a history of irony and strangeness, to say the very least.

when i talked to dad later that evening and he asked me if it was strange to be there, i said, "well, i was in poland before..." and he said, "oh no, it's very different". and i began to think about it the rest of the time i was there, because it's very strange to think that only 60 years before the city was filled with nazis killing jews and breaking their windows and taking their shit away, and there were many civilians on the street seeing the whole thing go down, some helping, many turning away.

we continued on to some more holocaust-related sites, which was very uplifting, let me tell you. we saw a lot of things that day--the berlin wall, checkpoint charlie (now reconstructed and not the original), the reichstag, this holocaust monument recently built with just a ton of slabs of concrete, walked on museum mile, where hitler's bunkers had once been and where he killed himself (the memory of which has now attempted to be erased, as a non-descript apartment building now sits on top of it), the hotel adlon (ie the infamous place where mr. michael jackson dangled his baby blanket, and i don't mean his blanket from when he was a child, out the window), the frank gehry-designed deutsche bank, and probably more i can't remember since it's been a week now. walking around the city, with noise everywhere due to the construction, i could really see the effects communism had on the city, and was rather amazed how divisive things had been only 15 years ago.

i left the tour early to go to the jewish musuem, a new museum designed by daneil libeskind. the architecture of the very geometric and sharp building was interesting, as were the "axis" that made up the beginning of the museum, which included the holocaust tower, a dark and cold room where you can see nothing and is meant to evoke the helplesness of the jews during the holocasut, and in which i could never imagine being alone. i stayed in there as long as i could, but even then i had to shuffle around and move my feet for some sort of reassurance. the museum itself wasn't very good--it didn't have any interesting artifacts or anything, but as a history of german jews for 2000 years, it did a pretty nice job explaining customs and such. the history of the jews is really fascinating and sad, i must say.

the next day i got up early to go to the pergoman museum, which has among its treasures the pergoman altar and other interesting roman and greek ruins and an extensive roman collection, and the gates of ishtar from turkey, a beautiful blue and tiled structure attached to the museum. it was rather amazing and some people were restoring a bit of it when i went so that was cool.

then i went to the checkpoint charlie museum which i found the most interesting thing ever. it was this pretty small space started basically when the wall went up, and it was filled with different artifacts and stories about how people escaped from east berlin. some of the most interesting included a family who built the biggest hot air balloon ever to be made in europe at the time at home, and hot air ballooned their asses to west berlin. another group of students spent months digging a tunnel and successfully got a whole buncha people out of east berlin. i don't think i realized what a struggle the whole situation was, with families being torn apart etc. i enjoyed the museum a lot, after which i went back to the hostel and headed back to paris.

i have to say, i got to spend more time in copenhagen, got to know the city better, and spent more time out at night there. everyone raves about berlin and i'm kind of bummed i didn't get to see the nightlife/culture that's supposedly amazing. i guess this means i'll have to go back. but i swear, if i go back there in, say, ten years, it'll be a whole new city.

you are now entering the eu.

so read the sign as we exited the small freetown of christiana on saturday night around 2am. it was by far one of the craziest places i've ever been to. we walked around the area for a while saturday evening and it looked nothing like the rest of copenhagen: it was desolate and graffiti-ridden and just strange. when we saw the sign over an arch which said christiana that led to a very creepy looking street (with shady guys standing out in front), we almost didn't go in, but we went to ask a shopowner about it and some very nice woman told us it was perfectly safe and that she lived there, so we went for it. inside was, as rachel's friend maggie aptly put it, like that place in pinocchio where all the bad boys turn into donkeys. it was freakin' trippy to say the very least. it used to be old army barracks and looks like many of the structures aren't meant to be permanent. the shacks are all painted/graffitied, and hash is sold rather openly, although it's illegal and the cops have been busting down on it lately. the nice woman told us to go into this bar so we went upstairs, paid the cover, and sat in a really cool bar with probably all locals. A ska band went on and performed which was really fun, and we drank lotsa local beer (carlsberg and tuborg. i like the latter better). the place was brightly colored, with a youngish crowd of mid-20 year olds, pot was smoked inside, there were some random creepy dudes, including one who was old and wasted and went around with a multi colored duster and literally dusted people.

our guidebooks said that you need to ask permission before taking any photographs, and absolutely NO PHOTOS ON PUSHER STREET. this is the main "street" (if you call the small pathways inside the town streets) inside the town. there was a no cameras sign painted onto a building there. i guess they want to protect themselves against the government which so badly wants to shut them down.

other observations about copenhagen/places i went in copenhagen:
-the kroner, the currency which is about 7.5 to a euro, was annoying to figure out, and the coins which were large (some with holes in the center) confused us because they all looked the same.
-there must be elections right around the corner because there were sooo many posters for the different parties. in fact, two of rach's friends said they met two senators their first night there. i think there's lots of political parties or something. one of the posters was a "no needles" poster which was strange. i think it refers to the fact that Copenhagen was one of the first places to do needle exchange or whatever.
-there are 711s EVERYWHERE. i'm going to look into why that is.
-in case i didn't mention it, i got dragged to the erotica museum, which was exactly what i expected. porn and inappropriate pictures abounded.
-we went to see the ny carlsberg glyptotek museum, the palace with parliament, and the marble church, our last day.

finally, on an unrelated note, i can't usually see who reads my posts, but my counter does tell me if someone searched for something to get to my blog, i can tell what they typed in the search engine. how big brother-esque. (stay tuned for my berlin post with communist points of interest). anyway, someone found their way to my blog by typing in "super long erect nipples". god that makes me happy.