Louvre, Cafe Angelina, Bagnolet & interactions with the French

Alright. The last two visits I'd made to Paris were devoid of anything Louvre-related. I know, what's wrong with me, it's perhaps the most famous art museum in the world. However, in the past when I simply walked by the building facade, I'd get an uncomfortable feeling in my stomach and quickly procrastinate a visit there until next time. I don't think it was a case of not wanting to see it because "everyone already has," - for starters, I am not that condescending, and I'm also an avid Harry Potter fan. The sheer idea of viewing some of the greatest works of art in the middle of Paris in a massive building with 100,000,000 other tourists running around and screaming simply frightened me. I discussed the whole matter with Liat, and she said, "Look. I don't have patience for more than an hour there. But I think you should see it - it's like someone coming to visit you in Chicago multiple times and not seeing the Sears Tower at least once." Thus it was decided - I would see the Louvre today. After breakfasting on warm challah and chai, I practiced (that's right, you hard me...I ACTUALLY practiced while in Paris) for about an hour and a half - mostly scales and doublestops, dreading how I'd be sounding on the fiddle after not properly working for 2 weeks. I left at around 11:30 for the Louvre. The Jardin des Tuileries was full of international tourists but provided pleasant terrain for a walk, although I must say that I have been in many a prettier park - they are certainly lovelier public gardens in Paris, too, than the Tuileries. The location of the park, its history, and the views of great monuments/buildings from the Tuileries is what makes the place so famous. As I approached the Louvre, I made out the infamous glass pyramid entrance and saw a truckload of Germans spill out of a tour bus. What's a day in Paris without a daily sighting of Germans. I grabbed a map and planned my strategy. First were 15th and 16th century French sculptures (ok) and then 18th and 19th French sculptures (much better...more expressive to me). I wandered through an exhibit called Armenia Sacra, or a special exhibition done by the Louvre on Armenian Christian art. It was quite interesting, but it took me a good 15 minutes to figure out where I was and what the exhibit was even about - it wasn't very well marked, even in French. I have a love for Egyptian art so I looked at Egyptian Thematic and Chronological Art during the time of Pharaoh and was really impressed. I figured that the Louvre would have an impressive array of Egyptian art because of Napoleon's conquests and imperialism attempts in Egypt, but upon further reading, I found that most of the collection had been privately donated or obtained. Nothing, though, will top the King Tutankhamun special exhibit at the Field Museum that our family went to see last year. I headed to the ceramics section to see "Venus de Milo" - it's magnificent. The way the statute twists and spirals upwards makes it seem like it's alive and ascending. I've often wonder how an artist turns a hunk of dead stone or marble into something that breathes. I would have liked to spend more time examining it, but that was difficult to do with all the camera flashes and shrieking international tourists. The next masterpiece Hellenic statue is positioned dramatically in a stairwell - "The Winged Victory of Samothrace." For me, this work is the decidedly more 'masculine' out of the two Grecian statues. The "Mona Lisa" wasn't so far from this point so I decided to walk through the classical art gallery corridors and head to the most famous gallery in the museum. There was a group of at least 30 tourists at any given time staring at the painting, I couldn't get a good up-close views of her (his?) unsmiling (smiling?) face. Anyhow, the Mona Lisa is famous because of da Vinci himself and the theoretical reasons of why he painted the piece. For those whose aesthetic preference for beauty can be defined as being accompanied by early Mozart string quartets while eating dinner, the Mona Lisa is probably a disappointment. The painting is situated in the Louvre's biggest gallery connected to a corridor that is full of romantic large scale French paintings from the 18th and 19th centuries (mostly nationalistic, depicting bloody battles and decorated military officials), a large collection of Italian works (including a few stunning works by Raphael - controversial, though, because unlike Michelangelo, Raphael worked with a large group of assistants, so scholars aren't sure which paintings have actually been done by him), and late romantic Italian art - the section that I would have liked to see more of but ran out of time with by that point. I did see El Greco's Christ on the Cross Adored by Donors. Known for the highly emotional and expressive themes of his paintings captured in the eyes of subjects and also for his beautiful portrayals of hands, El Greco has always been one of my favorite Spanish painters. I left the Louvre around 3:45 and concluded the following: I appreciate the place but it's too big and too full and just too much. As I've been going to more art museums and reading more about European art over the past few years, I'm seeing myself gravitate towards Flemish Renaissance painters, Hellenic sculpture, and Spanish oil-on-canvas artists in general. I did appreciate the international feeling of the tourists in the Louvre, too - a group of people surrounding one painting would be speaking at least three languages. Another thought I had was on the Indian and European/American traditions of museums. Throughout most of my visits to India, I've rarely visited an art museum there. Perhaps that's because I've only recently started to become a tourist there since I'm finally old enough to travel alone within the country and am at the point in my life where I am more interested in India's classical and cultural history. Even saying, I do believe that, like religion, 'classified art' is incorporated into daily life; it's still in use. There is no reason to exhibit a murti because we pray to it every day. There's no reason to encase the gates from the Vitthala Temple in Maharashtra in a museum because they are still being used every day. We don't have to actively 'protect' our artworks because that would be like protecting a soup spoon that you'd eat with at any given meal. Perhaps I'm overdoing it a bit by making such a statement, but there's a certain amount of truth to this idea. Liat, Bryan, the twins and I met for hot chocolate at Cafe Angelina on Rue de Rivoli and Alice also joined us. It's an upscale looking place where Parisians look intimidatingly trendy and tourists try to keep up (one particularly Syosset/North Shore Chicago-looking woman with a thick Long Island accent tried to cut the line with her fur-clad daughter while uttering a wretched-sounding, "S'il vous plait, can we just get through? Geez, people."...ummmm cricket). Thankfully, the waiters didn't make us leave the baby stroller outside. Liat was wearing her rain gear and tennis shoes, and Bryan had on the same. While I mussed about whether I should have worn better shoes, they were perfectly comfortable with looking like basic working parents in the midst of a very chic scene. I like people who still remain normal while living in Paris. Here begins the people section of my entry. The interactions between Alice and Liat + Bryan were very interesting. Alice has forgotten a lot of English (we speak in only German now) and so Liat switched to speaking with her in French, and every now and then would look across the table at me and form an "F" with her fingers while mouthing the words "REALLY French". I understood completely what she meant, and honestly, I don't really know how to explain it in words. I am, however, beginning to realize that I'm quite different around Europeans than Americans, but not in a bad or artificial way. I can't joke in the same way because many of my European friends would probably not find American humor the least bit funny, and I usually need to modify the English that I speak to be more understandable and less infused with slang/trendy language. Similarly, I wouldn't have certain conversations or make jokes and word phrases in ways with Americans as I do with Europeans. I don't feel like I can't be myself; I rather like how different people bring out different sides of me. It can be awkward, though, when the two sides meet one another, because then I sometimes don't know how to act. It worked out fine in Cafe Angelina but I have to admit that I was a bit nervous. We paid after an, ahem, interesting stint involving Alice's small change (most of her money was in single, double, and five cent coins, and she was a bit short but was embarrassed to ask for more money, so I had to figure everything out discreetly in German while the waitress was stood impatiently at the table). It was also awkward because I thought I was going to hang out with Alice that night, but she had a chamber music rehearsal with her friend Jessica, a Parisian born to American parents and whom I'd met in Detmold (very nice). Jessica had told me in Detmold that I "must have dinner at her place and meet her Californian mother - she'll be thrilled to meet you!" So I said, "Well, great! I promised to see Jessica anyways, so maybe I'll just come meet you at her place, and then I can meet her mother, too?" Alice acted a bit odd about the whole thing and I realized that I'd just accidentally invited myself to someone's house. It was such a weird position, because if someone came to visit me in Chicago or Detmold or India or wherever, I'd do everything possible to hang out with that person and make their stay just fantastic. Alice was being very sweet, but didn't seem to understand that part of the reason why I decided to come to Paris was also to see her and become acquainted with her Parisian life as she'd previously invited me to do. After a few scrambling phone calls, Alice said, "Ok! No problem! We'll be finished at 8:30 so you should come then and have dinner." She gave me directions to Bagnolet, an area just outside of Paris' 20th arrondissement and the start of Parisian suburbia. In the meantime, I had a good 3 hours to do one of the Parisian Walks. I decided that while I was on the north side of the Seine, or the Right Bank (Rive Droite), I'd do the Place des Voges walk, as it's in the Marais, or a very Jewish section of the city that Liat and Michal both told me I must go see. I took the Metro to St. Paul in the 3rd arrondissement and was enchanted by the lively near-dusk scene of the Marais on a Saturday. I walked past a beautiful church (St. Paul) that seems to be falling into ruin because Paris local officials aren't properly taking care of it...I walked into the church but a mass was being held and I felt rude for interrupting, so I quietly left. The walk itself actually begins at Place des Voges, so I strolled by some fruit stands and patisseries on Rue St. Antoine until I reached a narrow street leading to Place des Voges. Basically, it's a collection of elegant old apartments that enclose the oldest square in Paris. Originally known as Place Royale, it was built by Henri IV and has a colorful history of residents including Victor Hugo (a museum is now there in his old place of residence - it was unfortunately closed by the time I arrived), the dreaded Cardinal Richeliu, various members of high class French society and important city officials, and women such as Anne de Montbazon, a precieuse (n. An affected woman of polite society, esp. a literary women of 17th century French salons) who was known for her torrid and scandalous love affairs. While you can admire the beautiful reddish-pink color of the buildings, its elegance, or the high-arch style of architecture, nothing will make it come alive to you as my Parisian Walk's explanation did. There are between 40-50 apartments here, and each one has a fascinating history that's detailed in the book. I walked from apartment to apartment and leaned against walls as I read about what had taken place in Place des Voges. It was like reading a Danielle Steele novel! Apartments went from being near-brothels to jewelry stores to synagogues to what is now a preschool today! And that's only the start of it. The book explained which doors you could push through to enter a lovely secret courtyard or an old staircase. I felt like I was holding a treasure map. If any of you go to Paris, I highly recommend that you do NOT buy a typical tourist guide (Lonely Planet, Frommers, Rick Steve's, Fodors, or whatever you fancy), but invest in any edition of Alison and Sonia Landes' "Paris Walks". Mine was 1 cent on Amazon.com and while it's the 1981 version, nothing is outdated or less interesting (except for some shops/restaurants provided in the back of the book...but it's not intended to be a guide to such places). While typical guidebooks are helpful and provide decently practical information, I think that it's more interesting to go by foot and thus forge a truly personal connection with Paris. Let me know before your trip and I will mail you a copy of the Place des Voges walk or any of the five walks in the book for that matter. If you have the patience to read and walk simultaneously, this is a great way to see Paris. The walk wound through some other streets in the area, but its main focus was Place des Voges, so I decided to wander around by myself until 7:45 when I'd take the train to Bagnolet. The Marais is full of eclectic cafes and hole-in-the-wall type places. I quietly strolled by myself, window shopping and observing and pausing to admire the decor in a particular restaurant or a tree. It is a truly fantastic neighborhood. I took the train to Gallieni which is the start of Bagnolet, and then followed Alice's scribbled out map and directions. On my way, I picked up a bouquet of yellow roses for Jessica's mother. I missed a turn, though, and found myself on a poorly lit Arab street. Feeling worried and a bit insecure, I stopped in a butcher's shop to ask for directions. Me: Bon soir, monsieur. Parle vous anglais? Butcher: No, pardon. Me: Espagnole? Butcher: No, pardon. Me: Allemand? Butcher: No, pardon. Me: Hindi?! Butcher: Oui, en fait, un petit... Apparently, he'd picked up bits from watching Hindi films! The gentleman actually proceeded to give me directions in broken Hindi + French and thanks to him, I found my way. I arrived 20 minutes late at Jessica's place where Alice sat, worried out of her mind. They didn't know I was a vegetarian, either, so Jessica had to quickly fix a cheese + bread platter for me, which was kind. I know that it is difficult for many Europeans to think of something quick that's completely vegetarian/egg-free. They don't have the benefit of knowing how to prepare delicious Indian cuisine :) There was also another Parisian couple present - Zadien and Dominique. They had a very avant garde and artistic look about them. Dominique is a pianist and was Alice's chamber music teacher while growing up, and Zadien is a composer. They don't speak a word of English, but were quite nice. I told Zadien (via Jessica as translator) that I have a keen interest in new music so if he has any compositions for violin, I'd be interested in taking a look. He actually took my email address and said he'd be in contact with me if he composes a piece any time soon for violin. Jessica's mother is a warm and welcoming lady. She grew up in San Francisco and had the choice to attend Juilliard or Stanford (she chose Stanford - didn't want a professional career in music) and although she's now a French citizen who's lived in Paris for the last nearly 40 years, her French, while perfect, is heavily American accented. Jessica was telling me that she thinks it's a pity that her mother always spoke French to her - "I could have learned perfect English from my mother!" Her English is quite decent but I understand that it could have been really good. They live in a clean and fresh house with a beautiful flower garden in the backyard. The adjoining house is rented by Jessica's mother to Jessica and her boyfriend Tristan, a horn player studying at the CNSM Paris (same school as Thomas). After visiting with Jessica's mother for some time, we headed next door to Tristan and Jessica's flat. Tristan fixed us an alfredo pasta dish complete with chocolate mousse for dessert - he's a talented chef. The three of them asked me where else I wanted to go in Paris, and I mentioned the idea of Fontainebleau. Alice was staunchly against the idea - "Es ist wirklich zu gefaerlich fuer dich wenn du bist allein! (It's really too dangerous for you when you're alone!)" Jessica was relatively ambivalent about the matter, but Tristan also whole-heartedly agreed with Alice and tried to convince me to see Buttes-Chaumont, a large public park in the middle of Paris. They didn't seem to understand that I wanted to see the residence of old French royalty and not only the forest of Fontainebleau. Zu gefaerlich, eh? Well, I'm writing this entry weeks later, still alive! Tristan put a French film on for us called Delicatessen...a sort of a surrealist dark comedy about a landlord who serves cannibalistic meals to his weird tenants (reminiscent of Sweeney Todd). There weren't any English subtitles on the DVD so we watched it in French, but because the storyline was quite figurative, you didn't really need to understand all the dialogue, only the gist of the conversations, which I didn't have so much of a problem comprehending. At around 12:30 we headed back on the Metro and I came home by 1:30ish. I was very happy to have seen Bagnolet because it took me out of tourist Paris and into a part of the city (or the near outskirts) that many Parisians told me that hadn't seen. It is always a treat to see experience something of real life when you're an ambling tourist in a big city.