Salon de l'Agriculture

We braved the crowds Saturday morning for the last weekend of the Salon de l'Agriculture. It's kind of like the state fair except that it's inside a huge convention center, there are no fried Twinkies, and there's a lot more wine. Otherwise, there was plenty of livestock, farm equipment, people clamoring for freebies, and yes, even a guy demonstrating a knife.



For the record, it was not a Ginsu knife but "Le Nicer Dicer." No joke. I would say that his sales pitch was rather understated compared to the guy who hawks those Ginsus at the Missouri State Fair.

At any rate, we had a lot of fun, at least, until we started to run out of steam about three plus hours in and the crowds started mounting and all those restless French folks started throwing in elbows, strollers, and whatever else they had to get through the crowd.

We tasted quite a few apples (The "Ariane", created and grown only in France, was our favorite); checked out the cows, sheep, goats, and pigs; and watched a horse show put on by students at an agricultural school in Champagne-Ardennes. We even beat the pants off a French dude in a quiz about growing grass. Plus we saw President Sarkozy on his official visit to the Salon. Correction: we saw a glimpse of the top of his head as his entourage passed by. Unfortunately, he was shaking hands on the other side of the aisle from where we were standing. But we still got a brief thrill from the proximity to celebrity. I'm sure he'll mention us when he visits Washington at the end of the month.



Yesterday was the closing day for this year but if you are around in 2011, I highly recommend it. I'll leave you with a few more momentos of our trip.


Olives for sale from an Italian vendor in the farmers of the world section.


Hunting horns.


Now that's a food pyramid. Regrettably, I failed to take a picture of the free cotton candy station sponsored by the sugar beet growers.


Gratuitous beef picture.

I'm Too Sexy

No, no, not me. It's Madame Sarkozy who is once again causing a stir. Turns out that she attended the state dinner for Russian president Dmitri Medvedev in a stunning skintight gown but sans appropriate undergarments. This didn't even make the French press until the British newspapers started making comments. Actually, the real problem with Madame Sarkozy is that she makes anyone standing next to her look like a dwarf or hopelessly frumpy or both. What's worse for her guests (especially poor Mrs. Medvedev who is only two years older than la belle Carla) is that she actually wasn't as smoking hot that night as she sometimes is. But you be the judge. You can find an incredible slide show on the Paris Match site right here.

Musée Rodin

Everyone who comes to Paris wants to hit the Louvre, the Musee d'Orsay, and the Pompidou. After that, there are still lots more choices (150 in all, I'm told) but just what qualifies as numbers 4 through 10 is a pretty subjective business. Still I'm willing to bet that of all the smaller museums in town, the Musée Rodin is a favorite of many visitors. And with good reason! The work is familiar yet still interesting, the location central, and the setting divine. Go for the special exhibitions, the permanent collection, or chuck the indoors and pay the 1 euro entry for the gardens, and you will not be disappointed.

The building dates from the early 18th century and had a long history of aristocratic tenants before the Revolution, and students and artists after, including Isadora Duncan, Jean Cocteau, Henri Matisse, and of course M. Rodin. The rooms, which are badly in need of a major updating, are filled with Rodin's own work (finished and in draft form) as well as pieces by other artists he collected for himself. The process of creating bronzes is complicated but the curators have assembled models to explain the different steps in the process.

Then there are the lovely gardens, dotted with masterpieces like The Thinker, The Gates of Hell, The Burghers of Calais, and a controversial portrait of Balzac. It was too cold this week to linger there but I know I'll be back.



Pondering the universe or what's for lunch?

All for the Want of a Button

My husband's raincoat came back from our low-rent dry cleaners the other day with a broken button and sadly, if there ever were extra buttons sewn into the inside lining, they are long gone. So stay at home mom, femme de foyer that I am these days, I set off on a cross town journey for a replacement. And actually, it didn't turn out half bad since it gave me an excuse to finally visit le Marché St. Pierre, fabric central at the foot of Montmartre.

I didn't bring my sewing machine with me to Paris. In truth, I didn't use it all that often back home but it did come in handy for Halloween costumes and the odd this and that. It's my mom's old machine, brand new around 1967, and I didn't think it would take too kindly to being run off a transformer. Honestly, I haven't really missed it all that much; I've just crossed sewing off the list of possibilities.

Le Marché St. Pierre is not really a market; it's more of a district. Just around the corner from all the heinous souvenir shops lining the hill up from the Anvers métro stop, it's one fabric store after another, some just holes in the wall, others offering five full floors of silks, toiles, cottons, wools, and all the notions your heart might desire.


Every color silk imaginable.


Toile de jouy, natch.


Awesome stripes so you can pretend you live on the Côte d'Azur.


Couldn't resist this shot. It wasn't the best store but the reflection couldn't be beat.

It took two stores before I found the right buttons, not before fingering lots of fabrics and dreaming, completely unrealistically, about whipping up some curtains or reupholstering my living room or making fabulous striped pillows for the deck furniture we don't have. The lady at the cash register wanted to be sure I knew that the two-button card I'd picked out would cost almost 5 euros. "Damn straight," I was thinking. I wasn't about to go home empty handed. I just hope the dry cleaners does a better job next time around. At least I have one button in reserve.

The Parisians Everyone Loves to Hate?

One of the things with which I've struggled a bit in reflecting on my expat experience is which things I see and hear are Parisian and which are more broadly French. When it comes to personal behavior, in particular, I have a hard time separating the two since most of my time in France has been spent here in the capital. After all except for that brief period after the terrorist attacks when everyone said "I Love New York" with all sincerity, most of the time the modal American doesn't hold New Yorkers in very high esteem.

It was with some interest that I noticed this poster on the news kiosk.



Actually, it's a bit of hyperbole. The poll done for the magazine, Marianne, found that the French don't really hate Parisians. In fact, 68 percent of them have a good opinion of them. But those in the provinces also find Parisians more stressed, less smiley, less sympathetic, more aggressive, and less humorous. In addition, 71 percent consider Parisiens "plus snob." (I love this usage of "snob", by the way. It also sometimes appears as a verb. In English, the word "snob" is never used except as a noun. The adverb or adjective would be "snobbish" or "snobby.")

On the plus side, Parisiens are viewed as harder workers, more chic, better informed, more plugged in, more fulfilled, and more cultivated. Not a bad rap, I'd say.

Hint of Spring

February went out like a lion in western France on Sunday with a terrible storm that left at least 50 dead, homes flooded, and more than a million homes without electricity. High winds sent awnings flapping, street signs flying, and tipped over parked motorcycles in Paris too although that was the worst of it.

Yesterday morning we awoke to blue skies and while the air was still cold, there was a hint of spring in the air. The sun is up and shining at 8:00 am when my kids leave for school and it was still out when my older child arrived back home around 6:00 pm. The crocuses have pushed their way up and the forsythia is in bud. We're not out of the woods yet but at least we have hope for brighter, warmer days ahead.

Kudos

Since customer service is not assumed in France, it's important to give credit where it's due. My hat is off today to the folks at the RATP, the authority which runs public transport in Ile de France.

Believe it or not, my husband and I both managed to lose our Navigo cards, our unlimited passes to mass transit, within a few days of each other. Pulling my card out of my bag as we arrived back in Paris from London on Friday evening, I was thinking that I needed to get a replacement for the cracked plastic case. Tomorrow, I said to myself. By the time we got to the metro entrance, not five minutes later, my card had slipped out of the case, lost underfoot in the crush of humanity at Gare du Nord.

But no matter. The lady at the Montparnasse branch of Le Club RATP (open on Saturdays and Sundays!) was all smiles and within minutes, both of us had a fresh Navigo pass in hand, no questions asked. Well played RATP. I'm a fan for life.