Imperfect but possibly useful historical analogies time

Léon Blum : Vichy :: Barack Obama : Ferguson/Staten Island

Indolence

Today's reading is about the legendary laziness of The Jewish Woman. This was a big deal, apparently, in the world of 19th C French cliché, but how big a deal everyone's going to have to wait for my completed dissertation to find out. I will say, though, that this is making me awfully self-conscious about wanting every so often to take a Daily Mail break...

Romantic notions shattered by moisissure

The end of the dorm era has, at last, arrived. I'm nearly 28 years old, so about time, too. The contents of my room did apparently fit in luggage, save for items it wouldn't have made sense to bring, such as one gigantic if now twice pre-owned mini-fridge I was not entrepreneurial enough to try to sell. I watched as one by one, nice-seeming and nice-looking French 50-year-olds arrived in what I can only guess were nice cars to pick up their intellectually Supérieur 20-ish offspring and their stuff. This immediately brought back for me how it would go at the end of the year in college, when kids from the Midwest would just haul everything into the minivan, when the fools from carless NY families who at 17 had had romantic notions about getting to know other regions of the country had to figure out, at 21, how to get years' worth of stuff (and books!) back via an ATA flight. Where was my pickup? Over by the Gare de l'Est, effectively.

Not back home just yet though. I'm now in German university housing - a guest house and not a dorm - and the contrast between the two establishments could not be greater. Every possible cliché about the value placed on cleanliness in the two countries is supported by the way these two buildings are kept up. Here, there's a mix of near-continuous cleaning service and ubiquitous lists of instructions to keep your room and the common areas clean. (The staff, it seems, will clean but not "tidy.")

Meanwhile, back in Paree, an egg that had been dropped/thrown in the staircase still remained, weeks after the fact. That which is smeared on the walls of the communal bathrooms isn't going anywhere. Two of the most basic facts about keeping a bathroom functional - stocking it regularly with toilet paper and having a sink that actually runs water - were beyond the capacity of the powers that be. (Train restrooms and other public toilets began to seem pristine.) For reasons I will never understand, the janitor responsible for the kitchen would put only one of the two possible jumbo garbage bags in before the weekend, during which time the kitchen trash is not taken out, meaning that when he'd return on (optimistically) Monday, the kitchen would be basically a trash heap, however well-meaning the residents. The ideal of students cleaning up after themselves - always, with college students, an ideal at best - was rendered futile by the fact that so many people were sharing each kitchen that the moment one person/group finished up, the next needed and had already begun using the limited burners and counter-space, leaving a layer of grime beyond what a quick scrub on off-hours might fix. The showers were so moldy that, it was agreed, one left dirtier than one entered.

All came full circle when, when I asked about the check-out procedure, I was told, in the tone of someone scolding a child, to "nettoyez bien" my room - the standard instructions, and ostensibly there's a fee if you don't - and of course what was going through my mind was how, when I arrived, the room I'd been assigned contained the previous resident's (s'?) food and drink containers, towel, assorted other garbage, and, oh, used pad.

Also generally agreed upon by internationals: the dorm was disastrous by Western if not all-but-refugee-camp standards. As in, this was not, as might be suspected, a case of a bunch of entitled Americans, accustomed to air conditioning and cable television, large suites, plush beds, and a coffee shop serving iced soy lattes downstairs. The only Americans - the only grad students, period - who'd think to sign up for this kind of exchange (i.e. at ~30, living in a Parisian college dorm) are quite low-maintenance. Which made for a great group of people, actually, but which also meant that when anyone did complain, the complaints were pretty legit.

Overall, the semester was... a mix. I'd swing back and forth between thinking OMG free room in the center of Paris, with all the glamor that implies, all the proximity to primary sources and primo croissants it came through with... and thinking that the living conditions were a bit much to ask, even by grad-student-in-expensive-city standards. There's this notion - again, romantic - about grad students, held by society at large, as well as those who were once grad students themselves (although with this latter group, there's perhaps a touch of, 'if I had to do it...') that they should live in squalor, that any revulsion the grad student expresses about said squalor is a sign that the person's not cut out for a life of the mind. So I realize that the above description of Parisian dorm life will be met with a giant 'meh', and advice from the Dear Prudences of the world that if I wanted Paris and sanitary living conditions, I ought to have chosen a different career path and taken occasional vacations to hotels where, optimistically, filth would not be such an issue.

Oh, Rosedale

I've spent the last few days in semi-vacation (Parisian dorm staycation) pre-Heidelberg Eiskaffe-and-dissertation extravaganza, finishing up the last of the shampoo I don't want to schlep across Europe, and buying as many French books as I'm willing to haul around. English-language-wise, my two latest attempts at non-work reading - Coningsby (done, ugh) and now The House of Mirth, which I'm about midway through so no spoilers please - will both end up sneaking their way into the dissertation. I'm now accepting recommendations for novels in which none of the following topics come up: 19th C/fin-de-siècle Western Europe/U.S., Jews, intermarriage, marriage strategies of the Western upper classes.

Other recent observations:

-Le Boulanger des Invalides Jocteur continues to be the center of the culinary universe.

-What French poodle? Everyone here has a yorkie. If not a yorkie, a Jack Russel.

-Naniwa-Ya might be the best Japanese restaurant I've ever been to, but I'll allow that I was quite hungry by the time we got there, so it might merely be the place with the best (and saltiest, not unrelated) agedashi tofu I've ever tasted. It was at any rate remarkable in that, despite fresh and perfectly-flavored food, the prices were low, not merely by Japanese-restaurant standards, but also by Paris ones. (6 euros for a bowl of soba noodle soup, for example.) This, I figured, was because in Paris, at least on the rue Sainte-Anne, Japanese places can function a bit like Chinatown ones in NY - cheap ethnic food for diners who don't care about decor or mind being rushed out quickly.

-The rue des Rosiers, however, I do not understand. It's not really Paris's Jewish neighborhood these days (that would be in the 9th), and the falafel is kind of standard-issue European-town-big-enough-to-have-falafel. I just relearned this, but seriously, why the lines?

-The place to go for a cold coffee beverage is Le Pain Quotidien. Sorry, purists who don't go to Paris for that kind of Americana, but damn it's hot, and neither the public transportation nor the dorm room have a/c, anything resembling a fan, etc. If you get the regular iced coffee with milk (not the iced "crème"), what arrives (or did today, at least) is what would normally be called an iced cappuccino, the price no higher than that sort of thing is in NY, which is to say reasonable treat-price, which is to say I don't even want to think of what 3.20 or whatever is in dollars because it's depressing. Add a bunch of sugar and you're transported to Tel Aviv, or some more PC Mediterranean locale.

-Friggin' soldes. Why did these have to begin while I'm still here, not in July when I thought they would, and when I'm not especially looking to buy any clothing? I did, however, end up getting somewhat spectacular jeans from what's apparently a very upscale boutique, for 30 euros - Shine's rue Montmartre branch can't seem to get rid of 'em. They do have a certain quality-denim look that I pretend does not exist when the only such items go for $200, but will freely admit does when they fall into my acceptable price range for pants.

Unnecessary find of the day:

An ad, from 1884, for a "Maison de santé pour névrotiques israélites." That's my next vacation figured out!

Bonjour, Bonsoir, Bonne soirée

It is rude in Paris, as it apparently is in Real America, not to say hello and goodbye in all manner of contexts that, in NY, could go either way. Entering a store, fine, fair enough, mostly true in NY as well, if not a major issue in my life as the main store I frequent in Paris is Monoprix, which is not a "bonjour" kind of environment. You can - and I do - say "bonjour" to the cashier ringing you up, but whether you get one back depends, presumably, on how annoying it was to work in Monoprix ringing people up on that particular day.

Where it's more of a complicating factor is in the dorm. Every time one crosses paths with someone else, there must be a greeting. This, I realize, sounds like a complaint from a "Seinfeld" monologue - Jerry describes having worked in an office and not known how many times/ways to say hello - as well as a "Seinfeld" episode (Leo! Helllllooo!!!). What's different in the dorm is that it's 24/7 (unlike the office) and involves perfect strangers (unlike Uncle Leo, R.I.P.). Anyone in your hall for all you know might be a neighbor, and the rule appears to be that you greet when in your own hall - other halls, it depends.

The difference between this and, for example, saying hi in a normal apartment building (another episode, the polaroids in the lobby...) is that we do not have our own kitchens or bathrooms, which means a whole lot of time coming and going from our rooms. So whether it's 9am and you're off to the kitchen or midnight and the bathroom has beckoned, bonjour, salut, bonsoir, bonne soirée.

Let's say you're cooking the following: an artichoke (they're so cheap and delicious here! not like the major-investment and inevitable-disappointment California imports at Whole Foods back home!), pasta, and pasta sauce. Using one pot only, this means several trips back and forth, to and from the kitchen. Bonbonbonbonjoursoirwhoknows. Sometimes, you just want to get the pile of awkwardly-arranged, hot, potentially messy food items back to your room - which is locked because otherwise people will, apparently, steal everything in the minutes it takes to cook something - and unlock the door, while somehow still balancing the saucepan, etc., before the timer-set hall light goes off at precisely the moment you've gotten out your key, and you're not feeling especially bon-.

Sometimes you're returning to your room from the shower in a precarious wrapped-in-towel, carrying-shampoo-and-soap situation (after refusing, at 27, to buy one of those shower caddies, and thus admit to one's self that one really does live in a dorm), and are... once again, hoping to make it into your room before the lights go out. You will say it, but you won't mean it.

Other times, the greeting culture is friendly and delightful. It depends.

The only time, as a rule, one is excused from the bon- is when one has assessed that all nearby bathrooms are out of toilet paper, and one has returned to one's room for tissues. Then, I think - and I don't know the official French regulations on this - you're allowed to pretend you didn't see the person getting the tissues or, if you're the one getting the tissues, that you were not seen doing so.

The high level of civility functions, I suppose, to mask the fact that the living conditions are... location-location-location. Short of being a servant at a palace, you're not going to find too many greater discrepancies between standard of living and standard of surroundings. Everyone's in a tiny room a paper-thin wall away from somebody else, and if not somebody else, from a construction site complete with welding, drilling, the works. Everyone's sharing far too few toilets and more tragically, far too little toilet paper. For a variety of reasons having to do with labor disputes I'm semi-following and the general tendency of college students, even nerdy ones, to be not the most tidy people ever, the kitchens are in a permanent state of garbage-heap. But! Center of Paris! Center of Paris! Proximity not only to necessary microforms, but also the Seine, the pastries, the wine, and the cheese.

Despite Paris being Paris, and none of us having exactly the right to complain, the dorm lifestyle has a way of making people, especially the pushing-30 sorts who are the substantial grad-student population, a touch on-edge. Dorm life works for those excited just to be living away from home for the first time - less so for those for whom that's no novelty. But the bonjour/bonsoir/bonne soirée gives the impression that everyone up and decided to live communally voluntarily, out of camaraderie, and not because a free room in Paris (or close, for the French undergrads) is a free room in Paris.

Jews and Princesses: the Official WWPD Royal Wedding Post

This reminded me: if I were not writing my dissertation on Jews and intermarriage in 19th C France, it would be on the relationship between Jews and the nobility (in, obvs, 19th C France). I had had a hunch there was something there from mid-19th works on the Rothschilds as the new feudal lords, in particular Toussenel's book declaring Jews "the kings of the era." But I didn't have much to go on. This, however, has changed, to the point that I kind of am writing about Jews and aristocrats.

But first, to back up for a moment: what was the relationship between Jews and nobles in those years between court Jews and "Jewish American Princesses"? Because it's really the bookends of this we're most familiar with - Jews serving as money-folk for royals, and young American Jewish women, of new-money backgrounds, being compared, not-so-reverently, with genuine royals. What came between these? Was there any relationship?

Oh yes! And this can be divided into two categories.

First, Jews-as-aristocrats:

-From 1789 on, "parasitic" heredity castes were considered by many to be the opposite of what the new French nation was all about. Check, check.
-Jews represented a new order, in which wealthy bourgeois were the elites. Yet aristocrats were still hanging around. They got to be elites all together. (Because the existence of poor or even just not-rich-or-influential Jews was easily forgotten.) See: Proust.
-Romances between Jewish women and aristocratic men were huge - huge! - in literature. First as beautiful young girls having to choose between dashing suitors and the wishes of stubborn uncles. Then as rich but grotesque women of no particular age getting married off to penniless, decadent noblemen. (And I suspect that some combination of these tropes explains, along with the "Goldsmith" thing, why people were so intent on claiming, incorrectly, that KM is a Jew.)

Next, Jews-as-anti-aristocrats:

-Aristocrats alwaysalwaysalways owned land. Jews, not so much.
-Aristocrats, on account of keeping track of their bloodlines, had an especially firm claim on Frenchness. Jews, on account of having allegedly pure bloodlines, were assumed to have virtually no claims extending prior to the Revolution.
-Aristocrats represented the height of manners, social graces, proper French, etc. Jews, no.

What's above is either a) the outline to one of my many ideas for a book-no-one-would-read (Jews and Royals: from Court Jews to the "JAP"), b) the outline to a small portion of the chapter I'm currently writing, which at the very least five people will one day read, or c) the blog post that kept me busy during an especially good dinner of orrecchiette alla dorm-room.

Punishment, reward

"La Libre Parole." On microfilm. Not 'fiche, 'film. Then Le Boulanger des Invalides Jocteur. With, for the first time since I've been going, at least, millefeuilles. Predictably the Platonic ideal of a millefeuille. Best and worst of Frahnce, all in one afternoon.

Bichons? Aisle 4.

Sometimes the whole dorm-and-microfiche part of my time in Paris overshadows the beautiful-weather-and-pastry one. Today has been very much one of these days. And the microfiches were super interesting! And useful for the dissertation! But reading 300 pages of novel in that format, all at once, while taking notes, brought back the headache, as one might expect. And there's only so much reading about French anti-Semitism - even when the anti-Semites are fictional characters, albeit ones with whom the author sympathizes - a person of the Jewish persuasion can take before becoming oh just a little bit less rah-rah Frahnce.

The rah-rah returned, however, at a supermarket near the library.

In NY, there are dogs in strollers, in handbags. But this precise combination of scruffy lap-dog and shopping basket... this is what makes Paris great, the famous off-the-beaten-path, non-tourist Paris one hears so much about. And yes, I had the owner's permission to take the photo. Whether she had the supermarket's permission for this set-up is another matter.

The Ninth

-For future reference, let it be known that visiting certain Jewish buildings in Paris is only slightly more complicated than getting on a flight to Ben Gurion. The ridiculous thing is that it had occurred to me this might be the case, but it was only once I'd taken the mile-long journey from my room to the exit of the building that I remembered I'd forgotten my documentation folder. I'm not talking mere bag-inspection, metal-detection. It's a full-on interrogation about what you're doing there and why. Poor, poor security guards who have to hear about my dissertation. Bet they now regret choosing that post!

-So I went to the now-famous Rue des Martyrs. Where are these Bobos? I did find a place that sells flan that tastes more like creme brulee, which is something, but I don't think what the Times had in mind. And there appeared to be one Brooklyn-ish coffee place, which charged a whopping 4 euros for a cappuccino or similar, and as much as I wanted to get my second-ever "flat white," whether or not they make a mean one will remain a mystery. I mean, other than that one place, it's a nice, typically-Parisian shopping street, with a mix of Paris-only (France-only?) chains and nondescript but upbeat shops. Not hipstery or David Brooksy or lined with rich hippies. NYT, why are you sending readers to these random neighborhoods? Why not, assuming newspapers don't need to explain such things as there is the Louvre, there is the Eiffel Tower, why not the Boulanger des Invalides - Bon Marche - Bac - Saint-Germain - Seine loop? Why waste time? Unless I'm being too naive about this, and these articles are not for those for whom a trip to Paris is, if not once-in-a-lifetime, a special-occasion thing, but rather for those wondering where to get a pied-a-terre.

-Sorry, library, but my stomach is just going to make these sounds until Japanese Noodle Hour, which is, obviously, not going to happen until I've left.

At my most alluring

There was an article a while back in the NYT about how, if you're a black man in the US, dressed however professionally, no one will sit next to you on a commuter train in a white area. I must be whiter than whiter than white, or something, but I have the opposite problem: everybody, but everybody, wants to sit next to me on the Paris bus. There can be empty seats next to other people that are closer to the doors. Empty seats next to other empty seats. Facing front, even. Doesn't matter. People make a beeline for the seat next to the one I'm in. It doesn't matter if I have lots of bags with me and need to adjust those to make room. The seat next to mine is never empty for long.

While it's easy enough to figure out what the NYT writer was experiencing - hmm, black, in the US, might it have been... racism? - I'm finding my bus situation, though of course far less upsetting than racism, far more mysterious. I'm by no means the whitest person riding public transportation in Paris, nor am I the smallest. The latter is sometimes the case in NY, which is why, when the empty seat next to me on public transportation back home inevitably fills, I'm not that baffled. I'd think that those with racist tendencies would not be inclined to park themselves next to someone as non-Gallic-looking as I am, but that the occasional riders wishing to make a PC point would opt for someone more of-color, veiled, or both.

This aside, I tend to think I give off an air of unapproachability in public, even when not intending to, honed from... years spent riding subways and buses in big cities. People do not gravitate to me in this way in other public situations. So, what is it, and how can I make it stop?

Normandy, where poodles are ombré

-I spent the weekend at a chateau in Normandy, thanks to an invite from Rachel Hills. Whee! Made for a slight change from the dorm.

-Originality, please! The "Armchair Ethicist" is a fun idea, but the question of what to do if your coworker and friend suddenly drops dead and leaves behind correspondance that would be upsetting to their spouse, and you of course are knee-deep in that correspondance because it is for whatever reason your job to do this, has already been addressed.

-Now that my academic still-in-Paris goals are where they need to be (appt to meet a prof, books and books and microfiches galore reserved, etc.), I'm thinking of what I need to do otherwise prior to leaving. And by "otherwise" I mean cookbooks, in particular a good one for recreating a boulangerie at home, as well as measuring implements for metric so as not to have to constantly look this up when switching between cookbooks. Specific suggestions re: cookbooks/easy-to-transport and cheap French kitchen-improvers are most welcome.

Coffee in Paris: not quite a guide

-The issue, lest there be confusion, is not that Parisians drink their coffee black because they're sophisticated existentialist-types, and so do not go in for such Anglo-Saxon inventions as mocha-frappa-whosawhatsis. It's that even if what you want is black coffee, espresso, or some combination of the above with foamed milk, there is no expectation in Paris that this will taste good. No doubt some Americans are disappointed when coffee arrives as an espresso and not a milkshake, but for those with that complaint, there's Starbucks. If, however, you're used to Oren's/Stumptown/Intelligensia/Gorilla, if you, in other words, have out-pretentioused or (more generously) out-quality-obsessed the Parisians, you're in more of a bind.

-If you're in town for a week or less, and have good coffee where you're from, this is not the thing to go around looking for in Paris. And it's not a matter of going off caffeine or switching, god forbid, to tea. The coffee you get at every café is perfectly drinkable. It's just not anything special, and always tastes exactly the same. Focus on the cheese, the pastries, the produce, the wine, the pavé de rumsteck, that which can't be replicated at home. Be grateful when a place that serves pastries also serves coffee, because that itself is a rare occurrence.

-If you decide you do want to go looking for good coffee, don't be under any allusions that you will be getting good French coffee, that the place you find will simultaneously have good coffee and be 'authentic,' filled only with locals, etc. (Speaking of filled with locals, if local teens count, Starbucks is for you.) You have to choose between that-which-is-French and places that are microcosms of Back Home, whether that's New York, London, Sydney, Portland, etc. The places that offer more than drinkable sludge with or without milk are... a bit like when you go into a place in Montreal, and speak on and on with someone in French until it's revealed you're both Anglophone. But if you don't speak French, it's a safe bet that anywhere known for its coffee that you just walk into speaking English, you'll find yourself welcome.

Today, for example I had a whole back-and-forth in French with a man who turned out to speak English with an Australian accent - the fact that he stood seven feet tall (I exaggerate only slightly) was something of a giveaway that he was not French, but otherwise he passed. Then, when it emerged that not only was I 'merican, but I wanted a cappuccino to go, a barista was called out of the woodwork who could, I'm not kidding, have been one at Oren's, Joe, Think... And I of course left with a caffeinated beverage of a quality that only a barista who discusses "bands" and "shows" while making your drink can produce. Which is to say, highly recommended. This was at Coutume, which will henceforth be where I get coffee to go with Invalides pastries, and then I'll sit and have this in a park with some Zola because this does, strangely enough, constitute work. But there's also Merce and the Muse, an NYU-grad run café which was where (long story unrelated to the coffee) I paid rent in the summer. There's also Le Bal Café, which is near the Alliance Israélite library, which is to say not in a posh tourist spot. If the cappuccino hadn't been 3.90 - all the more shocking given that the street it's just off is the Avenue de Clichy - who knows, maybe I'd have tried it and could report back. And then there's Oliver Strand's follow-up post about how coffee in Paris is no longer so horrible - that plus its many comments may provide more examples. Point is, there is good coffee in Paris, but it's not a matter of being in-the-know with the locals.

-There is no ice in Paris. None whatsoever. OK, maybe at Pain Quotidien, but for the most part, ice is not a thing here. So if good coffee in warm weather is something you associate with iced coffee/cappuccinos, from this point on you might just be best off making coffee at home (and for non-dorm-dwellers with freezers, ice is very doable) or just caffeinating for addiction purposes only at whichever café is most convenient.

April Fools if only

After living next to what had clearly become not only a loud and dusty construction site, but a dangerous one - and by "next to" I mean the empty room next to mine - and those around it - is being demolished, with full-force drills going into the adjoining wall - I had had enough. I not only needed to be up by 8am when it started, but out, done with breakfast and showering, and ready to leave. Leave for where? A non-existent office? The library I need most is only open from 1pm on.

Regardless, it was when the water from the tap in my room switched to a thin brown stream that I was almost at my wits end. However, it took for the construction workers to enter my room when I was out - no warning ahead of time, no information from them following - to put a bag over the faucet and turn off the water in my room, for me to really wonder what this "free" room had amounted to. I came back to that accompanied by a note in the sink from a fellow student here explaining what was going on. Meanwhile, I'm thinking, not only noise, possibly toxic dust, and no water, but people can just enter my room whenever.

All this, combined with the fact that when I opened the window, it was to what was by day yet another construction site, by night a smoking terrace, combined with the fact that said construction balcony's workers have twice when I was undressed opened the blinds I'd specifically kept closed for that reason to do repairs or "do repairs" or who knows, and I was about ready to pick up and head back Stateside. I had privacy from exactly neither opening to my room, and was not thrilled.

But I did first give complaining in person a shot (an email was acknowledged but never replied to or dealt with), which wouldn't have worked except that they keep extra rooms for foreign students; the girl I went with, my across-the-hall neighbor, is, it seems, screwed. (Before it was known that I was an exchange grad student - something I'd have thought would be clear what with that I'm pushing 30 and don't know the French for things like "welding" - we were asked which of us had it worse, in case only one room became available. Gar!)

Lucky, lucky, fancy-American-grad-student me, I made it to the new room. No ants! Freshly painted! No mold! Mattress without protruding coils! Lightbulbs present!

After moving stuff in shifts for oh the whole day (and this is still in progress), some friends from the hall (but a bit further from the need-to-flee zone) helped me move the not-so-mini-minifridge. When we got to the new room, one of them confirmed what she'd suspected: my new room is one another grad student friend of hers had not long ago moved out of... because of some kind of atrocious mold all over the walls. The school's solution had been to paint over the mold, thus my recently-painted room. Now that I know to look for it, I see the traces of what will any day now be the mold explosion.

So here's the thing. I'm probably not princessy enough, in that at 27 years old I agreed to live in a dorm room, with communal bathrooms, kitchens, and showers, for a semester. In that I was totally OK with the peeling paint, willing to accept without fight the coil-protrusion mattress. I told myself that communal facilities meant never having to do serious cleaning. Now I'm wishing I were a whole hell of a lot more high-maintenance, because these living conditions are pretty damn ridiculous.

Best of French TV

Fascinating stuff, if you happen to be interested in the intersection of intermarriage and French national identity.

That doggie in the window

Fish on Fridays

-Heights of fame, or at least a chance to make my obsessions with wallabies and garlic scapes known to a wider audience.

-Cultural Catholicism lives on in Paris - in the course of my jogging/grocery-shopping expedition this morning, I ran across many, many fish markets with lots of customers. (I observed this traditional approach to food as I picked bits of the pain au chocolat I was eating out of my fleece. For the record, as crumbs-on-fabric go, croissant flakes do not brush easily off fleece.)

-I finally sat in on a French university seminar. It was ostensibly about something altogether unrelated, but l'Affaire Galliano was mentioned! Several times! I sat up from my usual listening-to-lecture slouch and took notice! Unfortunately this was not the portion of the class during which participation was encouraged, but if it had been, that would have been something.

Dorm mysteries

Overall, I'm finding life in a tiny dorm room not such a big deal. It helps to have moved to it from a studio apartment - it isn't requiring that much of an adjustment. And, despite the coils, the mattress now strikes me as normal, leading me to wonder what kind of cloud from heaven the plush Queen I'll be returning to will seem like. And initially, the presence of these coils was my main complaint about dorm life, so all is well.

Still, some mysteries remain:

-The thing with the lights. The hallway lights, for example, are on the timer system, such that as soon as you're about to get out your room key and enter with, for example, a pot of pasta, or a few bags of heavy groceries, all of a sudden, you're in the dark. There's essentially no natural light in the hall, so this is the case at all hours. This is, I suppose, the opposite end of the spectrum of those shops that leave on their display-window lights even when closed. A happy medium would be ideal.

The commitment to shutting lights is not merely structural, but shared by the students, who dutifully shut the non-timer-system, i.e. normal on-off, light in the communal bathroom once they're done. What they fail to realize, however, is that perhaps someone else in another stall is not yet done. It's only a matter of time in the dorm until one finds one's self on the toilet in dark, which is not the world's most delightful experience.

-The stream of ants that recently passed through my room, only to migrate to greener pastures in the shower area. Why do we now have ants? Is it ant season?

-The juxtaposition of signs everywhere about an upcoming extermination project (complete with graphic drawings of nasty-looking roaches and rats; ants are to be tolerated, presumably) and the process of communal-fridge-cleaning in the kitchen, which is supposed to involve food being thrown out but which instead involves all the food that anyone thought perishable enough to put in the fridge being placed out on surfaces in the kitchen.

-The presence of crying babies at random times. The students here are not of the babies-having-babies variety. Where do these babies come from?

Quote of the day

"Car, voyez-vous Monsieur Strauss-Kahn, il ne suffit pas seulement de posséder un quelconque passeport français stipulant que vous êtes plus ou moins de nationalité française pour que Français vous le soyez. Ce serait là tâche trop aisée. La France, ça se mérite. La France, ça se respire. Ça se hume. Un Français devant le postérieur d’une vache, ça pleure toutes les larmes de son cul." - Laurent Sagalovitsch.

Off to a good start UPDATED

Got to the BNF before 9. Coffee not available, turns out, till 10. First book of the day was not the history of the Jews I'd requested, but the Book of Psalms, whose code was one number off.

UPDATE

Slight improvement - the right book was in fact possible to locate, located, and not useless. The café opened. The woman who prepares the coffee employs the cough-directly-onto-hand method of blocking the spread of germs, meaning the afternoon coffee may come from elsewhere, but things seem to be heading in the right direction.