I just got back from visiting Paris (08 Nov - 11 Nov). I have some other trips I've taken since my last post, but have felt a bit swamped. Rather than wade through them in chronological order, I figured I would post this one (while it's 'fresh'), and post one or two others soonish (I visited Lille at the end of September, and went to Oberwolfach earlier in September (which included some hiking)).
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I was invited to Paris to give two talks, one a seminar talk and an additional 'informal' talk, on my research and also that of my advisor, and planned an extra day and a half at the end to walk around. I stayed in a hotel right next to Gare du L'Est, which is around the corner from Gare du Nord.
I grabbed a beer and some tapas on
Fridaywith the professor who'd invited me. The beer we had is brewed in her home region of Alsace,
Fischer tradition. I found it tasty, crisp and refreshing, the kind of beer that would be perfect on a summer day and was still nice on our more rainy and gloomy day. En route to the bar (Chez Prune), we passed by a wall that she said is newly grafitti'd (almost) every day.
I went out for dinner later (9pm ish, prime Parisian dinner time :P) with a friend who'd also been in Urbana, Il for grad school and is currently a fabulous Bio-physics postdoc in Paris (I stayed with him
when I visited Paris before).
We chatted about how European applying-for-jobs process is different than the states; he said he resolved to only apply for positions he's invited to apply for (as otherwise, the people usually have made that position with someone in mind, and you won't get the position anyway).
We also talked about how people come across differently depending on
which language they're speaking. I've found some Germans to sound more polite when speaking German and more blunt/brusque when speaking English. My friend said he was told he sounded arrogant when he was interviewed speaking French. He also made the point about how in the states you're expected to make yourself sound awesome and say "I did this, I did that" and that that is not quite what's expected here (at least in France).
Another friend of mine has been doing a Postdoc in Lille (thus, the Lille visit in September :) ), which is about 45 minutes from Gare du Nord by train. She came to Paris (we met at 8am outside my hotel) and we did some touristing on
Saturday, mainly just walking around Paris, including the outside of Notre Dame.
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| The quintessential 'I can't get far enough away from this church to take a proper picture' shot. |
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| From Lille and Paris |
We also walked past the city hall, which seemed a bit museum-like to me
We also did a little shopping and window shopping. Found a bunch of little vintage/used clothing shops, one with Norwegen sweaters (ala Dale of Norway), none of which fit me. Ah, well. Also saw these in a shop window:
and a store with some surprisingly authentic southwestern and native american stuff:
This probably led in part to a discussion about
Karl May and the fascination Germans have with all things Native American (which is related).
Lunch was at a nice little Café, where we both had
Leffe Ruby (de-licious. Unless you hate grapefruit) in addition to our food.
Finishing up our walk around town and turning to head back north, we saw this church with a neat multi-colored roof, as well as what looks like a person-sized orange juice box -- some kind of advertising or art installment.
Before we'd reached the church, we'd seen a long line of police vans (empty) go by, followed by police marching in riot gear, which led a protest march. Here's the tail end (i.e. the riot-gear-toting cops that followed them), complete with random fabulous Parisian guy:
Relevant, but perhaps strange: if you notice, there's a green bag. That's a trash bag. There are no trash cans around. This is a safety issue. I guess people are less likely to leave things that go boom in trash bags (or, if they do, it's perhaps easier to see that they've done this?).
So, back to the protest. The protest was against a new airport near Nantes. A nice old French guy stopped and made an effort to (in English, although he didn't know the word for 'pavement'/asphalt, but could explain it with gestures) clarify what the protest was about. He was holding a piece of paper that said something about vegetables (Legumes), not asphalt (Bitumer).
Walking back, we went by this random arch (Porte St. Martin), which was apparently part of the original fortifications of Paris -- kind of amazing, actually. The place was much smaller in 1674. It also had two Latin inscriptions which I couldn't read. The
German wikipedia page is much more helpful than the English one, and includes both the inscription and the translation. Here the are in English:
- (South side) "Ludwig the Great, who conquered twice Besançon and the area of the Sequani and defeated the armies of the Germans, Spanish and Batavians, from the provost (of merchants?) and aldermen of Paris in 1674"
- (North side) "Louis the Great, who after taking Limburg everywhere dismissed the threats of the helpless enemies, from the provost (of merchants?) and aldermen of Paris in 1675".
I was able to figure out which arch it was since it is adjacent to the following cool building:
We also saw a cactus-covered post box. This reminded me a lot of New Mexico, since various power boxes and whatnot downtown are painted to look awesome.
Today, my flight was at 15:30 or so, so I had enough time to get up early and see one last thing. I chose to go to Sacré-Coeur, which I had seen off in the distance before but never visited. It was a 30-45 minute walk from the hotel.
So, pro-tips:
- Approach from the east. Sure, there are a crap-tonne of steps (the first round is maybe 4 stories worth, as is the second and the third, and then you have another 20 or so steps to enter the chapel proper), but it's not coated with beggars or con artists, even later in the day.
- Arrive well before mass. I got there at 10-ish, wasn't particularly crowded. Also, nobody was there yet selling kitschy things and there was only one beggar (blind and limping, from the looks of it).
As a side note, Paris takes the cake with beggars. Besides the blind guy, there was a guy between the church and nearby square who had
no legs, and a little south of the Church was a guy who had
no arms (and was wearing a sleeveless shirt, so it was clear that he really had no arms).
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| first view, before the last round of steps (well, second to last. I don't really count the last 20 or so steps, since every church seems to have steps leading up to its chapel). |
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| From Lille and Paris |
The weather in Paris has been cool/crisp, and intermittently rainy. It's actually perfect for going to Sacré-Coeur, which was a bit of a workout, because by the end of it (going up the steps, then going up 300 more steps to get up to the Dome proper, and coming back down), my sweat had dried and I was comfortable again. I think it'd be somewhat unbearable in the Parisian summer.
Due to this weather, we had a partially could-covered sky and some really amazing light over the city:
To get to the Dome (or get on top of it, I suppose), one goes up a bunch of stairs, walks along the roof a bit, and then up more stairs. And, before that, pays a few euros entrance fee. Here's a view of a nearby tower that I assumed was somehow associated, from the part in between stairs and more stairs:
The area inside the Dome; I opted to filter it a bit because without, it looked like moldy black-and-white.
Here's the view to the south, along the lawn. That's the way I went down when I finally headed back to the hotel (later), but wish I hadn't, due to the swarm of people trying to get you to give them money, and blocking the bottom of the steps.
Here's a fun gargoyle:
You could see the Eiffel tower. You could also see Hôpital Invalides, but it didn't turn out well in the picture I tried to take. So, here's the Eiffel + Sacré-Coeur one:
Looking down, I think that's yet another church, Église Sant-Pierre de Montmartre. Behind, where you can see the throng of people and shops, is a cute square (Place du Tetre), which I went to after climbing back down the 300 stairs.
And the afore-mentioned square:
So, walking up to Place du Tetre (with my legs shaking a bit from all the climbing up and down stairs), there was a swarm of people, several of them with large sketch pads. One approached me and asked where I was from and I said "no, no, no" in answer to all questions/statements and walked off. I watched these people approach other tourists, and it was clear that they were offering to draw/sketch peoples' pictures for some amount of money.
I just had never seen so many sketch artists in one place. Throngs of them. I'd estimate 20 or more ringing this tiny little square. In the square proper were (proper?) artists selling their wares, which I thought were over-priced. This was in sharp contrast to the (rather nice, really) mass-produced smallish posters that were selling for 2 euros apiece (and a discount if you bought 5 or more).
After deciding I didn't have time to wait for service in one of the cafes for some lunch, I went down lawn-wards to leave the area.
I got back to the hotel, grabbed my bag, went to Gare du Nord and then to the airport (CDG). Relatively uneventful. I left myself lots of time, although I'd arrived at a time in Gare du Nord when the trains to the airport were not due to arrive for another 30 minutes -- maybe the train operators were taking a lunch break (normally they run every 15 minutes).
The airport itself made me a bit nervous, as there are several stands before the baggage check in counters advertising secure-your-bag services for 10 euros or so with x amount of insurance of the contents. Basically they shrink-wrap your bag shut, you pay them 10 euros, and this is supposed to stop people from stealing stuff out of your bag when it's en route. This wouldn't fly in the states (I'm sure the TSA'd throw a fit), and made me wonder how common it is for people to have stuff stolen when flying through CDG.
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Some parting thoughts: I occasionally run into Americans in Europe. So far, we've not been immediately busom buds. There was the girl I ran into who's from Massachusetts, but not the liberal gay-marriage-supporting, socialized-health-care-loving faction of Massachusetts, instead from the rich, Republican haven of Cape Cod. A kid from California (Republican, military), first time in Europe, spent about 3 days in Berlin, drinking from sundown til the early morning (it seems to me like you could party anywhere, why blow the cash to do that in Berlin in particular).
I guess I expected expats to be more similar to me in temperament than the average random American, but, despite the deflated economy and horrific cost of flying to Europe, the average American tourist seems to be not any more liberal than the average American.
This next bit is only related because the person is question is also American and we were not busom buds, but she seemed quite liberal and reasonably nice.
On my flight back to Hamburg, the person I sat next to turned out to be a pharmaceutical (cancer drugs) researcher who lives in California. There's some big conference/convention in Hamburg this week, which she'll be giving several talks at. She was here at the same conference a few years ago, same time of year, and apparently there'd been snow then (now it's 10 C/50 F and drizzle-prone). She told me that she did her postdoc in Israel, and lauded the experience of doing a postdoc abroad.
She also brought up that she'd read about
Köln outlawing circumcision (this only applies to the Köln/Cologne area, not all of Germany), and wanted to know the reasoning behind this. The resultant discussion was a little argumentative in tone, in part because she disagreed with the reasons I presented (which are not my own, just what I could remember of what I've heard/read) and also because she clearly wanted/expected me to state that it was racist and/or anti-muslim in motivation. Being a scientist as well, I think she wanted Germany to make decisions rationally/sensibly and was railing a bit at that (mentioning that there are numerous health benefits, etc (lower risk of transmitting disease, and I think decreased risk for other things as well)).
For some more information, here's a snippet from the above linked-to article:
"The court made its ruling in the case of a 4-year-old boy who had been circumcised at the wishes of his Muslim parents. Two days later, he began bleeding profusely and was taken to a hospital — at which point a public prosecutor stepped in and filed charges against the doctor.
The regional court acquitted the doctor, but decided that the operation did in fact constitute bodily injury and that the child’s right to physical integrity and self-determination comes before the parents’ basic rights, including freedom of religion.''
Here's a piece from the
BBC's version of the article:
"The ruling by the district court of Cologne says circumcision "for the purpose of religious upbringing constitutes a violation of physical integrity".
The judgement added: "The child's body is permanently and irreparably changed by the circumcision. This change conflicts with the child's interest of later being able to make his own decision on his religious affiliation.""
Here's
an article in German lauding the decision and making a point that under German law you're considered able to make decisions about your religion from 14 years of age, so this could lead to a decision that boys will be allowed to decide when 14 whether they want to be of their religion (and then circumcised, in the case of Judaism or Islam).
I suppose it was a bit of a gauche topic (not my choice, for sure). It even covered all three things one's not supposed to talk about in ''polite'' conversation (politics, religion, sex (well, inasmuch as STDs)).
Well, that's enough excitement and controversy for now. Á bientôt!
(oh, ok, one more thing. I learned today that the circumflex (this thing: ˆ) often occurs when there used to be an 's' following the vowel. E.g. Hôpital, Côte)
