Agissez à Paris!

Hello again!  It's been a week since we saw each other, I hope all of you have been experiencing the same delicious beginnings of fall as I have here à Paris.  As of September 23rd, the equinox (you'll have to ask google why it wasn't the 21), we are officially into fall.  And I couldn't be happier about it!  I actually looked forward to getting on the metro the other day, because I knew it would be warm there. The air smells crisper, the leaves are changing, automne est arrivé!

This week was another exciting one, not least because it started with the marche pour le climat on Sunday. This picture pretty well sums up my feelings about climate change:

Parce-que la terre est la seule planète avec du chocolat, preservons-là!!!

This is the Place de la Republique, where the march started, with a banner reading "Because the earth is the only planet with chocolate, let's preserve it!"  Mais oui!

My Grandpa instructed me that if I got nabbed by a flic while I was out protesting, I should blog about it!  Well, rather fortunately, I did not get nabbed, and the march on the whole was pretty festive and genial.  There were lots of kids there, even in our group, and lots of fun costumes.   It ended at the Paris City Hall, where there were speeches and a concert and lots and lots and lots of people!  The New York Times estimated between 5000-25,000....thanks, NYT.  I think it was probably around 10,000, but it's very hard to tell when you're in the centre of something.  Nothing like the 371,000 (ish) in New York, but the point is there were people there, and they were quite literally walking the walk to protest climate change.  I can't post pictures of them because it would have been weird to take them in the first place, but I think the strongest part of the day for me was seeing the little kids on scooters who had "Je suis la future" painted on their faces - doesn't get much more real than that!

If Sunday was about the future, Saturday was a bit more about the past.  I spent most of the day with a lovely new french friend, Célia, who I was put in touch with before I came to France. 

Célia et moi

 We went to the Hotel de Ville (the aforementioned City Hall) as part of something called the Journées du Patrimoine, a yearly holiday where tons and tons of government and other historic buildings around the Ile-de-France region are open to the public.  The Hotel de Ville was, for lack of another phrase, super blinged out.  Frescos on the ceiling, gold leaf everywhere, libraries full of spiral mahogany staircases...if the French were serious about fixing up their economy, there could be a few savings to be made around that place for sure!

Just a bit of light bedtime reading.

No, it's not a museum silly, it's a municipal government building!  Couldn't you tell from all the bright colours and marble statues and gold plate?

Ok, I know this isn't a great photo, but I just couldn't get over the fact that these statues were in the lobby and there was no explanation, nor could the staff provide one.  

Fresco on the ceiling of the main conference room - this is Apollo fighting for the arts.

Numbers on how many cleaners the Hotel de Ville employs - 83!!  And they own 70 vaccum cleaners!  

I guess this is also an opportunity to remind the population about the evils of tax evasion?

And I have to admit, the rest of the week has passed by in a haze of work and social events!  Oh, but for the purpose of talking about french happenings I should add that today I went for lunch to welcome someone new to the office at work, and there are a few things to note about the meal that were particularly 'cultural':

1) They seemed to have either lost our reservation or did away with it when we were 5 minutes late

2)They mixed up the orders, did not apologize, and then forgot to bring someone their food at all.

3) Because we complained about this, they did not bring us any complimentary bread.

4)The guy who asked if we could have complimentary bread got his food last.

5)The lunch took 2.5 hours because service was really....really....slow.

6) The addition, or bill, was a gros bordel, but on our part, because we were so unsure of who had ordered what and how things worked out that we almost over payed the very grumpy waiter.  In France, tips are unnecessary, and while you can pay by card you have to do the math on the bill yourself - none of this separate bills nonsense!

7) Of course, the food was delicious.

And that last point makes up for the rest of them, in my books.  It's pretty easy to complain or make fun of the french way of doing things, but at the end of the day there is a reason why their gold plated mahogany staircases and options to pay by cheque everywhere persevere well into the 21st century - when the traditions produce results that are worth all the hassle.

Et bon, c'est ça.  Bon weekend à toutes et tous!