All-Access Pass

Hands-down, my favorite event in Paris is the annual Journées du Patrimoine.  On the third weekend in September, government buildings throughout the city --- normally off-limits to those lacking special clearance --- open their doors to the public.  Anyone can come in and tour the gems of the République for free.  Naturally, this means really long lines.

A word to the wise: don't cut in line in France. The French love their rules, and I have never seen strangers in this country so united for a common cause as when two women tried to sneak into the line near the front. A la fin de la queue, putains! (In New York terms: "Get in the back of the line, you assholes").

In two days, we visited the French equivalent of the House of Representatives, the White House, and the head of public transport for the region.  (Texas friends: public transport is kind of like carpooling...) The longest line, by far, is for the Elysée Palace, which the new French president François Hollande has made his residence since May. We got there at 7 a.m., an hour before the palace opened, and braved the cold alongside thousands of French citizens.

Two hours later, we were inside the Elysée. The long wait was entirely worth it, because the palace is awe-inspiring. Room after room is filled with priceless antiques and hundred-year-old china. The ceilings are covered in frescoes, and the walls sport hand-woven tapestries between gilded decorations.

In case this wasn't enough to make any lover of French history and culture swoon, the Président de la République himself made an appearance.

Personally, I found Hollande's photo-op to be disruptive. Orderly people that they are, the French were all waiting very nicely in an hour-long line to get inside the Palais. This is after waiting in line for three hours outside the gates all morning. But Président Hollande, who fiercly criticized his predecessor and electoral opponent, Nicolas Sarkozy, as being too bling-bling and more interested in being un rockstar than un politicien, decided to stage a photo-op on the one weekend that the Elysée would be crawling with visitors. He welcomed children with terminal illnesses on the front lawn. Certainly a nice thing to do, but the goal is generally to pander discretely. Hollande then walked around and signed autographs. When he came inside, I had the opportunity to get an autograph and shake his hand. 

I thanked Président Hollande for welcoming students from America and abroad into the French educational system. Although these exchanges predate him by decades, I wanted him to know that the hospitality of the French is always appreciated, especially by American students.

Later in the day, we had the chance to visit the president's office.  You can tell a lot about someone from his desk.  Monsieur Hollande brought his own beat-up desk chair from his previous job, and he uses it in place of the gilded and upholstered armchairs that adorn every other room.  The president also had an interesting reading list: his bookshelf was filled with political writings, including a publication he penned himself and a biography of Barack Obama.

Sunday afternoon, we talked our way onto a tour of the métro that revealed a lot about the underbelly of the city. The parcours ended at an abandoned quai at the Invalides station, where we were allowed to explore some of the old trains.

The weekend was fabulous, and resulted in far more pictures than I could ever put up on the blog. If you are ever in Paris on the third weekend in September, you absolutely must line up for these tours. The journées du patrimoine now take place throughout Europe in most major cities, but I think that the experience in Paris is quite unique. For one, there is a LOT of gold. So much gold my white balance doesn't even know what to do.

But more importantly, the French are very proud of their heritage, and they firmly believe that it belongs fundamentally to the citizenry. That makes a big difference in terms of the level of access.  I can't remember any American ever asserting that the White House was truly the property of the American people, who allow the President to stay there by their common will. Of course, the French have truly paid for these treasures: a portion of the country's astronomically high tax rate must go to shining the silver chandeliers.

A final note: if you visit the Journées du Patrimoine, you should seriously consider taking along a friend with impaired vision. Blind visitors get to touch EVERYTHING.  Jealous!

The Parisian Café-teria

It is an accepted fact that American school cafeteria food is bad. Not just nutritionally bad and probably-infected-with-E.Coli bad, but nasty bad.

The French would never eat this. Not even poor Parisian children would eat this. The French public school system provides 132 different menus for its students over the course of the year, each one of which features a four-course meal (hors d'oeuvre, a salad, a main course, and a dessert). There is no flavored milk and no high fructose corn syrup. Just 100% French meat and lots of vegetables.

The school system virtually ensures that French children are taught from an early age to appreciate good food. Schoolchildren try many of the country's hundreds of varieties of cheeses before they are ten years old. By the time they are out of high school, they are fully prepared to receive degrees in food-snobbery (a requirement for any true Parisian). Of course, this kind of menu comes at a cost: the public educational system in France pays an average of three times more per student on meals than American public schools do.

Having raised French schoolchildren with such a strong appreciation of food, it's obvious that Ramen noodles are not a big college student staple on this side of the Atlantic. Dégoûtant, ça! No, the French university students have cafeterias too, and they are très bon.

Any university student in Paris (French citizen or not, enrolled at a fancy-schmancy grand école or a community college) is eligible to receive reduced-price meals at the CROUS restaurants throughout the city.  Extremely reduced-price: a three-course meal will cost you 3.05 euros ($3.85). If you're still hungry, you can add on extra courses -- perhaps a slice of brie -- for about $0.50 each. And the food is excellent.

The meat is only French-origin, and the vegetables are organic whenever possible. Each restaurant employs a nutritional staff to make sure that the students are receiving all the good foods we need to absorb everything the French professors try to shove in our brains.

This was my 3.05 euro meal yesterday. There are three different serving lines to choose from. I went with the "unhealthy food" line, because it was a Wednesday.

A salad of arugula, roquefort, walnuts, and tomatoes, dressed in a mustard vinaigrette.  With a whole-grain pizza with zucchini, chicken, and olives. This is the healthiest unhealthy meal I've ever had. And also (not pictured) un produit laitier, which translates to "EAT YOUR CALCIUM." The French like to push milk products a lot.

I quickly learned from the students around me that the proper way to eat a pizza is by knife and fork, cut into miniature little slices that you are absolutely not supposed to touch with your hands. This is not New York, folks. Getting pizza grease on your hands would be very uncivilized.

I traded my yogurt for half of a chocolate bar. Because hey, if I'm going to eat lunch in a cafeteria, all of the fourth grade exchange rate rules apply.