F Train to Paris

In which a Jewish family from Brooklyn moves to Paris, France for two years of work, school, and adventures.

 

Happy Thanksgiving. So, how do the French celebrate Thanksgiving? They don't, of course, everyone knows that. And how do Americans living in Paris celebrate Thanksgiving? In one of two ways: they ignore it, or they postpone it. Today is an ordinary school and work day (unless you work at the American Embassy or attend the American School of Paris, I suppose), so it's not really a convenient day to schedule a massive feast. Better to postpone it to the weekend, then get together with your American friends to eat turkey with all the trimmings.

We fall into the other camp. For us, one of the joys of living in Paris is simply ignoring Thanksgiving. We didn't talk about it today at all. If I happen to come across some cranberries tomorrow, perhaps I'll make cranberry sauce for Shabbat. But I won't go out of my way to find them.

Instead of eating turkey and cranberry sauce, we had salad, fish (unclear what kind exactly, although it was very good nevertheless) accompanied by gratin dauphinois, followed by a charlotte of chocolate and pears for dessert. This dinner took place at the home of Gilles, a colleague and friend of Ralph's, and his petite amie Anne. They very charmingly invited us over for dinner (without children), which had nothing at all to do with Thanksgiving. A lovely time was had by all.

 

posted by: pariskleinmans at 21:45 | link | comments |

I'm working on two articles about our life in Paris, both for Jewish publications, and therefore I find myself thinking a lot about the Jewish aspect of our Paris life. While it's true that there's a feeling--a climate, a mood--of uneasiness and maybe even fear about being Jewish in Paris, the bottom line is that it does not affect our daily lives. It's true, on one hand, that we are not obviously Jewish. The boys don't walk around wearing kippot, for example. (Even if they were inclined to do so, the rabbis here advise Jewish men not to these days.) But we haven't experienced any anti-Semitism ourselves.

On the other hand, it isn't easy to lead a Jewish life here, at least for us. Our lives are out of sync with the school schedule, a problem that was much worse this year than last because all the holidays in the fall fell on weekdays, while last year they were mainly on weekends. And so many of the things that are enjoyable in the context of a community become much less fun when you're doing them on your own.

We do belong to a shul--Adath Shalom, the one and only Conservative synagogue in Paris--but we don't go nearly as regularly as we do back home, where we are Shabbat regulars. We have learned this about ourselves: what motivates us to go to shul every week is the chance to see our friends. In Brooklyn, we get up every Saturday morning and get ready for shul. Each of us is equally interested in getting there and catching up with our buddies. Here, the older boys don't want to go at all, because they don't have any friends there. Besides the language issue, the fact is there are virtually no kids at shul, because French public schools are open on Saturday mornings. E. doesn't mind going as much, because he has made a couple of friends. There are generally a few kids his age, including the rabbi's daughter, and he's happy to play with whoever is around.

I really wasn't intending to get into this tonight; what I meant to write about was what I've been cooking lately, and what each of us has been reading. But this is what came out when I started typing, so I guess I'll post it. Anyone reading this who wants to know more about this subject, please post a comment and I'll follow up on this topic another time.

 

posted by: pariskleinmans at 18:17 | link | comments (1) |

When a holiday falls on a Tuesday or a Thursday, Parisians like to "faire le pont" (make a bridge)--that is, take an extra day off and have a very long weekend. Thursday, November 11th, was Armistice Day, and everyone was off from school and work, so we took Friday off too and went to Normandy. As of last Wednesday, we have a car, and we inaugurated it with this trip.

We rented a gite (vacation home) about three hours from Paris, from a British couple who own a property with a bunch of stone houses, which they rent mainly to other Brits who come over on the various Channel ferries. The house was roomy and comfortable. Renting a gite is an ideal way to travel over Shabbat, since we had a kitchen in which to cook our Shabbat meals and store food. (When we stay in hotels on Shabbat, we either eat in their restaurants and sign for the meals, which we don't really like to do, but we do it anyway, or we shop for bread, cheese, fruit, etc. on Friday and then eat in the room. It's amazing how much food you can wedge into a minibar.) Unfortunately, we spent too much time on Friday at the supermarket, where we threw all caution to the wind and let the kids choose Cookie Crisp cereal, four kinds of cookies, and three kinds of puddings. Since Shabbat starts so early this time of year, we had just a few hours left to see the D-Day Landing beaches.

When we weren't out sightseeing, the boys just didn't know what to do with themselves, as the house had no TV. There's a barn on the property with ping pong and foosball tables and toys, so that kept them busy some of the time, but there was a tremendous amount of complaining about boredom, especially from R. who has finally become a reader but who just couldn't seem to settle down and read. (J., however, started reading Moon Palace by Paul Auster and couldn't put it down all weekend.) On Saturday we hung around the house most of the day--Ralph and I took a long walk in the afternoon--and when we declared that Shabbat was over, nothing much changed. There was no computer, no TV, no Playstation for the kids to turn on. We just turned on the dishwasher, and went back to reading and doing a jigsaw puzzle.

On Sunday we went to Mont St. Michel and then to Bayeux to see the tapestry. I'm not going to try to describe these, or the landing beaches; enough has been written about them in other places. Let's just say that when a 12-year-old boy is impressed by a 900-year-old tapestry, it is worth the trip.

posted by: pariskleinmans at 22:26 | link | comments |

Perhaps you've been wondering, "What do the Kleinmans do for fun on Sundays?" Here's the kind of thing we sometimes do: We had a fun family outing yesterday to the Marais. I sold it to the kids as an opportunity to eat falafel, go to the Red Wheelbarrow, a wonderful English language bookshop, and perhaps have gelato for dessert at Amorino. Secretly, my husband and I planned to sneak in a visit to the Musee Carnavalet, a museum of the history of Paris. R. made an attempt to get out of it by calling a friend and trying to make plans, but we didn't let him off the hook.

L'As de Falafel, which apparently means the Ace of Falafel, has a reputation as the best falafel joint in Paris, and I was skeptical until I tried it. There's typically a line to get in on Sundays, but it's worth the wait. Get the shwarma if you must (R. did, and then he whispered to me that he was glad he came), but I urge you to try the falafel, preferably the special pita sandwich with cabbage salad and fried eggplant. Their french fries are great, too. It's kosher, by the way, and located on the main drag of the Jewish section of the Marais, la rue des Rosiers.

Stuffed and happy, we waddled off to the bookstore. I wish I could give you a link for The Red Wheelbarrow (named in honor of the William Carlos Williams poem), but they don't have a website. The store is located on rue Saint Paul, a couple of blocks south of rue St. Antoine. J. has been eagerly awaiting the newest Lemony Snicket book, and they finally got it in. I needed the third book in the Phillip Pullman trilogy His Dark Materials. And we managed to find a few other books we couldn't live without.

Finding affordable English books in Paris is one of the challenges of our lives here. We belong to the American Library and go there frequently, but keeping a book-loving family supplied takes more than a single library. So we find ourselves spending a fortune at the English bookstores here, like W.H. Smith and Brentano's. The Red Wheelbarrow has been a great discovery, partly because we enjoy supporting an independent bookseller, partly because we enjoy chatting with the charming owners, Abigail and Penelope, and partly because they have a great selection for such a small shop. Abigail and Penelope seem to have read nearly everything--almost any book I pick up from the table of new paperback fiction elicits a comment from one of them.

We then shepherded the kids toward the museum, ignoring their protests, but when we got there we didn't insist that they actually go in. J. and R. sat on a bench in the lobby reading their books; at the last minute, E. decided to come in with us. We did a quick walk-through, stopping at just a couple of our favorites and at the things we thought E. would find "cool." Ralph's favorite is the cork-lined room in which Proust wrote Remembrance of Things Past; mine is the art nouveau interior of Fouquet, a jewelry shop built in 1900. (Click here for a little information about it, and a photo.)

It was cold by the time we left the museum, so gelato was nixed. We tried to go to a great salon de the on rue des Rosier called Le Loir dans la Theiere (The Dormouse in the Teapot!), but there was a long line. So we went home.

posted by: pariskleinmans at 17:43 | link | comments (2) |

We had a wonderful vacation in Rome, but we only had a couple of days to enjoy the post-vacation high before the disastrous U.S. election outcome brought us down. J., our 15-year-old son, was passionately interested in this election--the first he's paid attention to--and is as depressed as I am at the result. He was raging yesterday at the International Herald Tribune's headline: "Bush Wins 2nd Term By A Solid Margin." He had been following the elections all day Wednesday and knew that "solid" margin was as flimsy as a few hundred thousand absentee ballots and provisional registrations in Ohio.

Today I made the mistake of bringing the most recent issue of the New Yorker along with me to read on the Metro. It's the pre-election issue, although it arrived here on Election Day, and the entire Talk of the Town section is devoted to an endorsement of Kerry and a summary of Bush's catastrophic first term. I had to stop reading--I found myself beginning to cry.

The writer Anne Lamott, one of my heroines, wrote in Salon yesterday, "We'll take care of each other....We'll baby ourselves for a few days. (I personally am going to finish off every single bit of Halloween candy.) We'll make lots of indoor domestic lights, as the darkness increases -- fires in the fireplaces, candles on the mantel...."

And I, personally, have been trying to make myself and my family feel better through food. Paris offers plenty of possibilities in this regard, as you can imagine. I bought all of us marron glaces as a treat on Wednesday night, following a dinner of macaroni and cheese, dripping with Gruyere. I had a hot chocolate with whipped cream yesterday at Carrette, one of Paris's best tea rooms.

And tonight, of course, I'll light Shabbat candles. I've been lighting only two, recently, to conserve candles, as the supply I brought from NY runs out. But tonight I'll light all five. We need the light.

posted by: pariskleinmans at 13:27 | link | comments (2) |