St. Malo

Put. the French. Down.

That I enjoy this so much is proof that I have well and truly gone over the edge at this point, or that I've just spent waaaaay too much time working on my thesis. (Which involves French translation, although, sadly, nothing as delightful to the ears as "Ou est la piscine?")

The BNF: where sanity goes to die.

Loosely translated, this says, "Intellectual pain and suffering, THIS WAY."

There's not too much to tell about last week's trip to Paris, only because the majority of my time was spent in a building that sucked out parts of my soul that I'm just now starting to get back, a week later. I'm speaking, of course, about the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, or the BNF. It is only now that I can recall my time spent there without wanting to crawl under a blanket and die, or stab myself in the eye with a fork.

"How can it be that bad?" you ask. It's just a library, right? Wrong. It is so much more than a library. It is an institution designed specifically to inflict an immediate inferiority complex on anyone who dares step through its hallowed doors, while aesthetically offering up feelings of impending doom and crushing despair.

Alright, enough with the drama. It's not the worst place in the world (I imagine Guantanamo is marginally less enjoyable), it's just that I don't think it has ever in its existence given someone the warm fuzzies like so many other places in Paris are wont to do. I mean, look at this thing:

It's a beast. I imagine the architect who designed it was simultaneously tripping on acid and reading Orwell's 1984 when he came up with the concept. The library consists of a wooden rectangular platform with four glass skyscrapers, one on each corner. The middle is hollowed out and filled with a bizarre forest of evergreen trees, that, so help me God, are CHAINED INTO THE GROUND. In an effort to spruce it up, they also put various shrubbery around the platform, and then enclosed it in mesh wire cages to you know, give it a home-y feel.

The reading rooms are located ten stories underground, naturally, and the interior is primarily decorated in what I would term "industrial chic": lots of concrete and metal, a bit what I imagine a stalag looks like. To even get to the reading rooms, however, you have to endure a demoralizing interview with a librarian so that she can determine whether you are worthy enough to put your grimy American paws on a single volume of French sagesse. You must present various documents to prove your worth as a human being, such as a letter from your university, a doctor's note confirming your blood type, and four years' worth of tax returns.

God forbid you forget your passport and only have your driver's license and your student ID as well as four different credit cards on you as a form of identification. But I don't speak from experience.

Once the librarian decides you aren't a British robot come to steal secrets, she will take your grainy picture at an inopportune moment (when you are wiping away tears of frustrated exhaustion, most likely) and paste it on your card. You then thank her profusely, because she has done you a huge favor by allowing you to descend into the reading rooms, or what I like to call the Pit of Despair.

You then must go check your coat and put all of your belongings into a bizarre plastic see-through messenger bag, that will slap against your hip loudly if you move, and swing around to hit fellow pilgrims in the temple of knowledge when you walk by. This wins you many friends.

Once you ride fourteen escalators down to the P. of D., you must register for a place in a reading room, which are designated by letters of the alphabet and separated by subject matter. Again, God forbid, you want to research overlapping material, like I don't know, history and biographies. YOU MUST CHOOSE ONE, CRETIN. And choose carefully, because you can't access books from another room if you are not assigned a seat there.

To actually access books you must make online catalog requests, and wait an average of 3 hours before a notice will alert you that your books have been brought down out of the glass towers. You then go pick them up at the desk that serves the location of your assigned seat. (This system exists so the proles will not walk in and wreak havoc by picking up books and looking at them freely. This is a library, after all.)

Additionally, you must scan your card when you log onto a computer, walk through a set of doors, or use the toilets, so that Big Brother knows where you are at all times. I'm not even kidding. Every hour on the hour he comes on a huge screen and you have to cheer loudly.

Meanwhile, you struggle and stammer as you try to communicate your research needs to the librarians in French. They will make no effort to speak to you in English, so don't even try. This is no conversation with the waiter or the taxi driver. This is serious stuff, so bring a French dictionary so you can go back to your numbered seat and furtively look up the obscure words that you will no doubt need. (Do this hunched over under the table if you want to maintain your street cred, obviously.) Again, clearly, I don't speak from experience...

And then embrace that feeling of utter incredulity, when, on your very last day after countless hours of pathetic babbling in French, you hear the announcement over the loudspeaker of the quintessential French institution of academics, the storehouse of all French knowledge that would never dare to be anything but the Frenchiest, saying, "Ladies and gentlemen. The library is about to close. If you wish to reserve books for tomorrow, please let your librarian know."

In English.

Are you KIDDING ME?

And that was my time at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. The end.

Journal Entry, Day 1

"Go to Paris as soon as possible, and remember it as best you can." -Betty Stanley

Everything about one's arrival in Paris seems designed to disappoint. The airport (Charles de Gaulle or Orly, it doesn't matter) is depressingly drab and anticlimactic. It is inevitably cold and drizzly, regardless of the season, as if the weather is purposely trying to dampen your natural American inclination toward overenthusiasm. Calm down, the rain says. Don't expect perfection.

The cab ride into the city is never much better. I have a theory that Parisian cab drivers take secret delight in driving Americans through the grittiest parts of the city. Meanwhile, I imagine nearly all Americans have the same reaction: "I just dropped a thousand big ones to fly over here, and it does NOT look like the movies. Shitballs."

It's easy to worry, on your first visit (for you will never have just one visit to Paris), that Paris won't live up to your expectations. If you find yourself disillusioned after the mandatory battle at the airport to regain your luggage and find transportation and understand just what in the hell people are SAYING, and a bit disappointed in your postage stamp-sized hotel room with the twin beds pushed together in the French version of a king-sized bed, do this. Go to the Metro stop St. Michel, and don't worry about the smell of the underground. Yes, it's urine that you smell, with maybe a little sweat and burnt rubber thrown into the mix. You'll get used to it. Once you emerge from the station, go to the cafe on the corner, Le Depart. Yes, it's a little touristy, but the food is delicious and the waiters will take pity on you for being American. Sit at an outside table, order a carafe de Bordeaux and people watch. You'll see tons of Americans (easily identifiable by their fanny packs and nasal screams - "CARL! The Eiffel Tower is THAT WAY.") But you'll also see tragically hip twenty-something Parisians, homeless people, families, people from every possible walk of life. And if you sit there for an hour, and occasionally peek around the corner to take in Notre Dame in all its ridiculously magnificent glory not two blocks away, I guarantee you will begin to fall in love with a city that, while not perfect, comes pretty damn close.

Des petites mignardises de Paris

Here I go again on my own

Well, I'm off to Paris tomorrow for six days for my research trip. I was excited up until my meeting with my academic advisor today, who informed me that, oh no, one can not simply walk into the Bibliotheque Nationale. Apparently, I have to interview with them to prove myself worthy of entering the research part of it. Holy Mary, Mother of God. This is so typically French, first of all, and second of all, this means that I have to actually figure out a way to explain what I'm doing (even though I'm pretty much flying by the seat of my proverbial pants), in a language that I haven't really spoken in a year and a half.

I feel like I might as well go ahead and cry the tears of frustration that I'm sure will ensue, just to get them out of the way.

However, it's nice to know that no matter how hairy things get with those uppity librarians, I'll be able to comfort myself with obscene amounts of pastries.

Have a lovely week!

Most days, I miss Paris

"The hardest thing to convey is how lovely it all is and how that loveliness seems all you need. The ghosts that haunted you in New York or Pittsburgh will haunt you anywhere you go, because they're your ghosts and the house they haunt is you. But they become disconcerted, shaken, confused for half a minute, and in that moment on a December at four o'clock when you're walking from the bus stop to the rue Saint-Dominique and the lights are twinkling across the river-only twinkling in the bateaux-mouches, luring the tourists, but still...you feel as if you've escaped your ghosts if only because, being you, they're transfixed looking at the lights in the trees on the other bank, too, which they haven't seen before, either.

It's true that you can't run away from yourself. But we were right: you can run away."

-Adam Gopnik, Paris to the Moon

The French Paradox and the Easiest Dessert Ever

Alors, I eat and eat and yet I gain nozing...

Perhaps one of my favorite things about living in Paris was eating everything in sight and not gaining a pound. I’m not sure if it was all the walking I did or if there was actually something in the water, but I ended up losing weight in France despite eating dessert every day. And we’re not talking fruit, we’re talking gooey, fatty, buttery pastries, or my favorite, crepes. (Were I to live this lifestyle in the States, I would blow up like a pregnant Tori Spelling before you could say "croissant.") My favorite crepe stand was what my friends and I affectionately referred to as “the blue awning place” off Rue de la Huchette (its real name is Boulangerie de Papa) next to the St. Michel Metro. I highly recommend it if you make it to Paris.
Unfortunately, creperies are slightly less ubiquitous here in the states, but luckily these delightful treats are super easy to make at home.

Dessert Crepes
Recipe adapted from The Gourmet Cookbook.
Makes 4 medium-sized crepes.

2 eggs
6 Tbsp. all purpose flour
½ cup milk
A couple pinches of sugar

1. Mix together eggs and flour until blended.
2. Add milk and stir until batter is runny. Add sugar. It will pretty much look like creamy snot at this point.
3. In a crepe pan or medium-large frying pan* pour out ¼ of the batter and swirl the pan around so the batter coats the pan in a thin layer.
4. Cook over high heat for a minute or two, then flip. Once you’ve flipped, you can drizzle on a topping (examples: sugar and lemon juice, Nutella and bananas, whipped cream, paper clips and thumb tacks for enemies, etc.)
5. Fold in half, dust with powdered sugar if desired, serve.

(Note: The Gourmet recipe calls for Grand Marnier. I’m in college and can barely afford the vodka that comes in the plastic bottle, thus, I did not include it. Toss a teaspoon or so in the batter if you like.)

*Is there really a difference as far as the outcome? Methinks no. I'm going to call Brian Williams and suggest crepe pans as an episode topic for "The Fleecing of America."

Boulangerie Photo Credit: B. Rinne

Yes, it's pronounced like it looks: Oeuf à la Coque

Last year, I studied in Paris, France. I lived with Mme. De Billy, a charming old French woman who made me dinner Monday through Thursday. Her culinary repertoire wasn’t very varied, but it was delicious, and one of my favorite things she made was the simplest – oeuf à la coque. This is essentially a soft-boiled egg, but it sounds so much fancier in French, although the first time Madame said it I snorted wine out of my nose because I am that mature. Served with mouillettes (buttered pieces of bread) in a coquetier (egg cup – Crate and Barrel has ‘em on sale right now!), it is a great way to enjoy an egg, provided you don’t mind a slight risk of salmonella. But everything exciting involves a little risk, non?

Oeuf à la Coque avec des Mouillettes
Serves 1

1 egg
2 slices of bread, any kind – we’re not picky here
butter, a little or a lot depending on your cholesterol
salt

Special equipment: egg cup

1. In a small saucepan, bring some water to a boil.
2. When the water is boiling, drop your egg gently in.
3. While the egg is boiling, toast two pieces of bread, butter them, and cut them into strips.
4. After 3 minutes (no more, no less, says Madame), remove the egg and place it in its little cup.
5. With the edge of a spoon, gently tap around the top of the egg in a circle until you’ve formed a little cap that you can take off. Remove cap and give to your hamster to maybe use as a hat.
6. Sprinkle a bit of salt inside of the egg, then dip your bread fingers (mmm fingers made of bread) inside and eat.
*Note: I like to eat this with some steamed broccoli drizzled with olive oil and sea salt for a simple, healthy, French-y dinner.

Photo credit: crateandbarrel.com.