Day 6: Sunday, April 27, Paris

We started Sunday at the American Church in Paris. It was an old building that could have been mistaken from the outside for another Catholic church. The inside was just as ornate. The crowd was very diverse, with some people wearing the traditional dress of their home country. The church was obviously active, since the bulletin listed events and Bible studies going on throughout the week. They also have concerts at the church almost every Sunday evening. There were probably 200 people, making the sanctuary moderately filled. They subscribed to the Apostle’s Creed, and I don’t think they were attached to any other church/denomination. The service and the teaching were both surprisingly good. As I walked in, the guestbook had a big note scrawled over a page that was a “Note to President Bush” from someone who said they had met him a few years ago, and to please give them a passport and airplane tickets to Washington, D.C. There were job postings in both English and Italian, and many of the English ones were for native English-speaking nannies or playmates for children. I actually know a girl in Paris who is doing just that.

After church I took a picture of three people and then learned their stories. The man and woman were from Port Townsend, Washington. The black lady with whom they were taking the picture had grown up in D.C., been in South Africa as a Fulbright scholar, and was finishing up a Ph.D. in Paris while working for UNESCO. She liked some author from Port Townsend who had written about her area of study. Meanwhile my brother had struck up a conversation with a mid-20’s French guy named Philippe.

Philippe hadn’t been born in Paris, but he worked downtown for a company that basically sold ingredients to pharmaceutical companies. He had traveled in the U.S. from coast to coast for four months, so that was a main topic of conversation. Though a Frenchman, he had come to the American Church in Paris at the suggestion of a friend and really liked it. I don’t remember the course of the conversation, but I do remember a lot of points from it. He said that American media’s portrayal of Parisian Muslims was somewhat accurate. They aren’t rioting all the time, which are the times they show up in U.S. papers, but they do have a very strong Muslim-only community in which they are trying to impose Muslim law and culture. They want local pools to be gender-specific, women rarely went around by themselves, etc. He also said that they pretty much kept to themselves, which made things worse (because reports of violence against women, etc. would come out but the community would block investigations). He said there are three types of employment contracts in France: a “regular” contract (5 weeks of vacation, 35-hr workweek, overtime hours turn into extra vacation days, cannot be fired without cause), a “contractor” contract for a fixed period of time, and a third employment-at-will contract. They have special courts for “firing without cause” cases and he said that nearly everyone goes to it at least once in their life, since you don’t have anything to lose and it’s hard for an employer to show cause. His company pays 70% of his healthcare, and he enrolled in private insurance for E60/mo that covers the other 30%, so his healthcare is totally free. He said that some cultures (he specifically mentioned blacks here) have their own accent/lingo similar to that in the U.S.

In his time in the U.S. he had crossed the country. He specifically mentioned Santa Barbara, CA, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Kansas, and NYC. He said his favorite thing about the U.S. was just the feeling of freedom and flexibility, which I thought was interesting. He thought transportation was hard (understandably) since public transportation is rare, trains are almost nonexistent, and renting cars can get expensive quickly. He said his ten days in Kansas were probably his least favorite. I admire him for hitting the Midwest, which most people pass up. He said he was just there too long and he got snowed in for a couple of days. He was amazed by Wal-Mart (and he said he took pictures of a huge lady on one of the motorized scooters) and Cabela’s, where he handled guns for the first time in his life. (“It was like choosing baguettes!”) He thought people in the U.S. eat unhealthily, which I certainly can’t deny. He also said that public transportation in France makes people walk, further cutting obesity, and (if true) confirming a hypothesis. He also said that lots of women smoke (which we had noticed) and attributed this in part to their desire to stay thin. (I was very surprised by the number of people who smoke, both men and women.) We talked for an hour and a half and really enjoyed it. Fun guy.

I call this "Taking Pictures at an Exhibition," with apologies to Mussorgsky.

We then headed back to the Musee d’Orsay to finish it off. We stayed until closing time (again). We then hit the L’Orangerie where Monet’s Water Lilies are housed. They rooms were custom-made to house them. A loud group of French high school students were a pain. The rest of the museum housed the collection of an art dealer who was crucial in getting a lot of well-known artists of the time started.

Outside was a square where an Egyptian obelisk is incorporated into a French sculpted base. It marks the spot where the guillotine of the French Revolution once took so many heads.

The base of the Eiffel Tower.

After a cheap and fast Chinese dinner we walked to the Eiffel Tower. People were picnicking and playing in the ground in front of the Tower. Two girls, both early 20’s who looked like college study-abroad students, passed me while talking. They were obviously American, and one was commenting to the other that, “Well, he’s an architect, so he obviously has money. Money isn’t an issue…” I’ve overheard a lot of English conversations and I’m sometimes surprised by what people say. Maybe they figure the French can’t understand them, but not only is that usually a bad assumption, but there are lots of Americans over here. While standing in line at the Tower, I spoke with a group of four Americans who were in line behind us. (They were older and trying to figure out converters/adaptors, so I lent a hand.) One commented that “you don’t meet many Americans around here,” which might mean they had been talking more than they had been listening. A couple of minutes later the couple who was between me and the four spoke to us in Brooklyn accents. So much for the “rare American” myth.

The Eiffel Tower at night with its revolving spotlights.

The Eiffel Tower is impressive from a distance, and the span of its base is even more impressive up front, but it isn’t a beautiful structure. The steel is a drab brownish color, and I can see why it was supposed to be a temporary structure. It is lit up at night, making it a nice landmark. For the year 2000 they put strobe lights on it, so now for the first ten minutes of every hour after being lit up it sparkles. It’s neat, but not as cool as it might sound. We only went up to the second deck (not to the top). The view really was good, though the view from the Arc d’Triomphe isn’t much worse. They say Paris is the City of Lights, but honestly I didn’t think it was anything particularly special in that department. However, the café nightlife that goes on under those lights is a highlight.

On the way back home I was following two American women in their late 20’s/early 30’s. They were having a conversation about their respective guys’ chest hair. Because we all know that if you talk in English no one will understand…

A night shot from the Tower.
William and I were asked for directions for the second time today. This time a lady on a Vespa pulled over to talk to us. I don’t know how she took us for natives.