All quiet on the Parisian front

Today is the last day of July, and is typically one of the quietest days of the year in Paris, thanks to the mass exodus of Parisians on summer vacation during July and August.

In the olden days, Parisians abandoned the city (almost literally) during the month of August specifically, which they spent at their second homes or on the beach. In modern Paris, this tradition has greatly mellowed, and now Parisians take their long French vacations (six weeks is the legal minimum per year) sometime between the start of July and the end of August. The period between mid-July and mid-August seems to be the quietest time of the year these days—the time when the greatest number of Parisians are out of town.

It's no longer a total abandonment of the city, either. Again, in the olden days, just about everything shut down during August, but that's history now. There are quite a few small shops—especially family-run boutiques and bakeries, and other small businesses—that close for two weeks or so (not a month any more) between July and August, but just about all other businesses remain open. These means that there's less traffic and no pollution, and no crowding on the Métro, but there are still things to do, because they don't just roll up the sidewalks the way they used to.

During much of the day, there is little or no sound of traffic outside my window, and I live near a fairly busy street that usually has traffic practically 24 hours a day. It's pleasant. There is still some summer construction work going on in my street, so I occasionally hear construction noises, but for the most part it's quiet. At night, it's completely silent, which is a little bit eerie.

The weather has been up and down. One day it's hot, the next day it's seasonal. We've been pretty lucky most of the time, with only a moderate number of brief heat waves. I still find it uncomfortably warm when I go out, but not to the point of risking heat stroke, as I do during heat waves. I hope cooler (i.e., seasonal) weather prevails.

My favorite ice-cream place in the Latin Quarter (Tutti Sensi) is not reopening. It has been converted into another souvenir shop. Thank goodness the original in Montmartre still seems to be going well enough. I love their ice cream.

Lately I've discovered (or rather rediscovered) Subway sandwich shops. They've suddenly appeared in Paris over the last few years, and they offer a welcome alternative to the lame sandwich offerings one sees at most French places. A typical French sandwich is a parisien, which means a couple slices of ham and a few slices of Swiss cheese on a stale, hard French baguette. The sandwiches from Subway are much better. Politically incorrect, but true! Not to say that there are no good sandwiches in Paris—there are, and some places even have long lines in front of them because of their great sandwiches. But the average basic sandwich you buy at a bakery or something is nothing to write home about; it will relieve your hunger, and that's about it.

Paris Plage is operating now; it runs from late July to late August. The expressway is blocked off and the artificial sandy beach welcomes Parisians who aren't leaving the city on vacation for the summer. It seems to be attracting quite a crowd, although I haven't felt a desire to visit (I don't like going out when it's hot). I rather prefer the Tuileries fair, next to the Louvre, because of a certain little restaurant there that serves great gyro sandwiches for seven euro (beyond my normal budget, but sometimes I splurge).

Heated picnics

With great reluctance, I dragged myself out of the apartment yesterday—even though I had the day off (without pay, of course)—in order to pay some bills. Thanks to my rotten luck, it was one of the hottest days in the past two weeks, with more than 100° F on the street. In the evening, this brought people outdoors (an overcast helped shield people from the blazing sun). This is in part because many places don't have air conditioning, and in part because many people seem to think that 100° F in the shade is “nice weather” (an opinion I'm sure they will change in the future, as hot weather becomes the norm).

On the Passerelle des Arts (more often called the Pont des Arts, although technically any purely pedestrian bridge is a passerelle), there were tons of people sitting and having picnics in the evening. This bridge is consistently popular for picnics of all sorts, from shared bags of potato chips to five-course meals, and there was barely room to stand on the bridge today. Traditionally, people have brought alcohol onto the bridge, since French people can't get through the day without this drug, but there's now an ordinance that prohibits alcohol on the bridge after 10:30 PM (it was about 9:00 PM when I walked over it). The police were out and about, no doubt preparing to enforce this ordinance. There have been scuffles on the bridge in the past in the wee hours, when people got a little bit too drunk, but generally the mood is excellent and it's quite safe.

The outdoor socialization wasn't limited to the bridge. In the Latin Quarter, the terraces of restaurants were absolutely packed, even though this was only a Thursday. In fact, walking through the narrow streets of the Latin Quarter, with their limited vehicular traffic, I could hear the hubbub of conversation in the rue de Buci from several streets away. It was just amazingly crowded, but it was a very nice atmosphere, apart from the sweltering heat. Again, this was in part because most restaurants and bars aren't air-conditioned, and in part because people just wanted to get out of their stuffy offices and apartments … and in part because it's illegal to smoke indoors in public places now, and many French people are just as addicted to tobacco as they are to alcohol.

I arrived home very tired and dehydrated. Oddly enough (and just my luck), today (Friday) is much cooler, only about 68° F outside, and I'm trying to muster the energy to go out and profit from it. I guess I need to buy some groceries anyway.

Beautiful sunsets in Paris

While Paris is a beautiful city, it is not known for beautiful sunsets. Pretty sunsets can occur anywhere in the world, but some weather conditions are more conducive to this type of sunset than others, and the weather in Paris is usually not of the type that produces them. However, there are exceptions, and I managed to catch such an exception while I was beneath the Eiffel Tower a few days ago, as you can see in this photo.

I've seen much nicer sunsets in Paris, but they are quite rare and very unpredictable. I recall one truly amazing sunset once that I was unable to photograph in color because I had my camera loaded with black and white film. There's a picture of it in my gallery of street photos on my Web site, but black and white doesn't do it justice.

Spiders dearly missed

I'm beginning to note the absence of the big spider that breached our peace treaty not long ago and met her demise early as a result. The big spider is no more—but many varieties of tiny flying things have lately made their appearance in the apartment. Coincidence? Maybe. But these tiny flying things would be a smorgasbord for a big spider, and with no big spider to have them for lunch and dinner, they seem to multiply.

I have some sticky stuff that I got at a little hardware store down the street, and I've hung a strip of it in the bathroom (the flying things seem to like water). It's very effective if the tiny flying things hit it, which they often do. After a few days, there are many cadavers stuck to the strip, testifying to its effectiveness. But I'd be happy to leave these flying things to a resident spider, if one were around to take advantage of them.

I did spy a tiny spider in the bathroom, near the radiator. I didn't disturb it, since it was on its own turf. Hopefully it will collect some of the flying things and make them less of a nuisance for me. It seems like an equitable deal. I provide the bathroom, where there's always a bit of water to attract flies and their ilk, and the spider provides the web that removes the flies from active flying status.

Which reminds me … have you seen the movie Ratatouille? Do you recall the seen in which the rodent protagonists visit a terrifying shop that has dead rats hanging in the window? That shop is not fiction—it actually exists, near the Forum des Halles. I've taken a picture of it to prove it. Indeed, when I saw the movie, I recognized the shop from real life right away. It specializes in methods for killing rodents, but it provides some other pest control products as well.

Sanitary sanisettes, heat, and smokers

The temperature is 18° F above normal today in Paris, again, and that's just the official temperature, which is always lower than the real temperature on the street. Yesterday, the real temperature, in the shade, was 95° F. Looks like another season of “unseasonably high” temperatures, just like most of the past fifteen years or so, which have also been “unseasonably warm.” I just sit and listen to the rusting A/C in my apartment, hoping that it will last a little while longer. Even with that, I can't get the temperature below 80° F in the apartment.

Anyway … a few days ago, while risking heatstroke by going for a short walk through Paris, I came across one of those new sanisettes that I've mentioned before, this one fully installed and operating. I couldn't resist trying it out. It's a vast improvement over the previous generation. It's free, like its predecessor. The door is controlled electronically with elevator-style pushbuttons instead of mechanical levers (although there's a big red lever on the inside for emergency exit, which reminds me a bit of an aircraft door). A recorded voice makes announcements as you enter, use, and exit the sanisette. For example, it advises me that “the door is now closed and locked,” which I suppose is meant to be reassuring, although I can imagine it sending a claustrophobic into a panic.

Speaking of claustrophobia, though, the inside of the new generation of sanisette is very roomy—about half the size of the main room in my small studio, in fact. The main reason for this is that all sanisettes are now accessible to wheelchairs. Apparently the concerns that caused New York to abandon the concept of sanisettes after the wheelchair lobby insisted that they all be accessible have not been an issue for the City of Light. I cannot help thinking that this new generation will probably be especially appreciated by low-cost prostitutes and drug addicts, with its interior roominess, but we shall see.

The toilet inside the sanisette looks more conventional with each generation of the gadget. So does the sink, which now looks the way a sink should look. It's still equipped with the automatic sensors that turn on the soap and water when you put your hands over it, and it still has the hot air fan to dry them (more or less) after they are washed. There's a larger mirror to one side of the sink as well. And the toilet has two buttons, one for a “little flush,” and one for a “big flush,” in keeping with current European water-saving practice (in the previous generation of sanisette, the flush was always the same, and occurred after you left the sanisette, during the cleaning cycle).

The outside of the sanisette looks nicer now, and there are multiple indicator lights to tell you what it's doing. Green means it's available, yellow means it's occupied, blue means it's in its cleaning cycle, and red means it's out of order. Right now, all the new sanisettes are spotlessly clean and in perfect working order; we shall see if they remain so after several months of abuse by clueless tourists and vandals. The instructions are now in multiple languages (including braille), so perhaps that will help prevent the former group from doing damage, although tourists can be really stupid.

The sanisette even has a sink on the outside, for washing hands I suppose. It's not marked to indicate that the water from the faucet is potable (the inside sink explicitly indicates that the water is not drinkable), so it's best to assume that it's not.

That last part deserves a bit of explanation. Paris has two municipal water supplies, one of which provides safe drinking water, and one of which provides reasonably clean water that isn't intended for drinking. This is more environmentally sound than pumping drinking water everywhere for every purpose. Outdoor faucets that let you wash your hands usually provide only the reasonably clean water, not drinking water. The exception is Wallace fountains, which do indeed dispense drinking water (in a continuous stream, no less—which seems very wasteful to a former desert dweller such as myself).

In fact, Paris hires technicians to taste and smell the drinking water, in order to make sure that it has no strange taste or odor, in addition to being safe to drink.

But I digress … anyway, this new sanisette is very nice. Even my mom would like this sanisette. I hope they don't get too beat up by the population (cf. Vélib' bicycles, which are being vandalized and stolen at record rates).

And speaking of digressions … on my walk through Paris-turned-inferno, I was once again struck by the vast number of smokers in front of just about any building containing offices. It amazes me that drug addicts such as smokers are entitled to five times as much time off during the day as non-addicts, simply so that they can yield to their addictions. A significant number of French people who smoke have wisely welcomed the recent total ban on public smoking as an additional incentive to quit, but a hard core of tobacco dopers continues to smoke, and instead of abstaining at work, they just spend even more of their employer's money puffing like junkies out in broad daylight, in front of the building. At some places you literally have to work your way through a cloud-ensconced throng of cigarette addicts just to get to the front entrance. It's pretty disgusting.

Eventually the heat got to me and I returned home, after trying to cool off with some ice cream. I was very disappointed to see that the excellent ice cream shop in the Latin Quarter (Tutti Sensi) has closed. I can't imagine why, since purveyors of inferior ice cream in the same area (Haägen-Dazs, Amoretto) seem to be doing well, especially with the ever-increasing temperatures in Paris. I hope the one up in Montmartre (La Butte Glacée) is still there; I haven't been up there lately.

The yearly summer carnival in the Tuileries gardens has arrived. They have great granités (a bit like snow cones, but with the syrup actually frozen into the ice) and gyro sandwiches there.

Death at the Eiffel Tower

(Updated) Yesterday a 17-year-old French high-school student, who had just taken her “bac” exams, jumped from the second platform of the Eiffel Tower and fell onto the roof of the restaurant on the first platform, fifteen stories below. Needless to say, she was killed—which was her objective (she left a note for friends explaining her feelings). She somehow managed to get past all the security barriers (and there are tons of those on the Eiffel Tower), paused on a girder, and then jumped. Initial reports that she had been a Brazilian tourist were in error.

It didn't receive much press, probably because there are more newsworthy events to worry about, and because there's always the possibility that press coverage might encourage other people who are thinking about suicide.

The weird thing is that she hit the top of the restaurant with a loud crash, everyone was startled and looked around until they realized what had happened … and then they resumed their meals. But I guess it's really not that weird—what else are they supposed to do? Most of them are tourists who may never see the Eiffel Tower again, anyway, so why perturb the trip uselessly? They couldn't do anything to help her. It does give them an interesting trip story to tell, however. It sounds a bit callous, but there aren't really any other practical or useful options.

Although it isn't widely publicized, people jump from the Eiffel Tower regularly. Hundreds have killed themselves that way since it was built. Today, and indeed for many years now, the security systems have been more than adequate to prevent anyone from falling by accident … but there's simply no way to completely prevent a human being from jumping deliberately to commit suicide. Where there's a will, there's a way. And human beings can be very clever, especially when they are desperate.

Most jumpers forget that the tower is tapered, being wider at the base than at the top, and as a result, they hit the structure of the tower on the way down, sometimes being partially diced and sliced in the process. A few have survived. A pregnant woman who wanted to end her days got her foot caught in the girders just after jumping and survived, dangling in midair until she could be rescued. Another woman fell onto the roof of a taxi, bounced, and survived. But in general there are no survivors.

The Eiffel Tower surely has a certain romantic appeal for suicides. Why jump off a nondescript building in an anonymous business district (which is pretty easy to do), when you can jump off the world's most recognized national monument? Some people propose marriage on the Eiffel Tower, and others end their lives there (fortunately the former are many times more common than the latter, even if you don't include Tom Cruise). People who don't want the celebrity of an Eiffel-Tower demise often choose to throw themselves in front of subway trains instead, but that's another story for another day.

Another spot that has been popular in the past for suicides is Notre-Dame Cathedral. It has far fewer areas that are open to the outside, though, and so it has been much easier to secure. As far as I know, nobody has succeeded in jumping from Notre-Dame in several years (but I'm sure it will happen again).

I like paving

I've been fascinated by construction and allied domains since I was little, and so naturally I was keenly interested when the city decided to repave the street in front of my apartment building.

The street is a small side street connecting to a considerably larger street (by Parisian standards). Surprisingly, this small street was paved with thick concrete. Over many years (I don't know how old the existing paving was), it had deteriorated greatly, and finally the city decided to replace it.

Streets in Paris are a bit different than they might be in the average young city in the U.S. In the city where I grew up, in the Great American Southwest, city streets were paved with asphalt, and the sidewalks were concrete, as was the curbing (the latter being cast in place by a special curbing machine). Here in Paris, the city streets are paved in a variety of ways (one of which is with asphalt), the sidewalks are also asphalt, and the curbs are carved granite blocks mortared together.

At first the construction crews appeared with a backhoe equipped with a jackhammer attachment, and they hammered regular holes into the concrete. Then they put a bucket on the backhoe and broke up and discarded the concrete, which was a surprising eight inches thick or so. They graded and compacted the dirt beneath, then they poured a new layer of concrete, of equivalent thickness, and after letting that set for a few days, they paved over it with about two inches of asphalt.

For the sidewalks, they tore up the existing asphalt (which had no base course beneath it, and was about two inches thick), compacted and smoothed the dirt, then laid new asphalt down. The curbing, which was made up of hefty granite blocks cut to fit, about a yard (one meter) long and almost a foot high, was pulled apart and then reset with new mortar and careful alignment and finishing. After it was all done, with the paving rolled smooth, new stripes were put on, made of plastic melted onto the asphalt with a blowtorch.

All in all, it wasn't too surprising, but the concrete beneath the asphalt was a surprise, as I wouldn't think that the local traffic over this tiny street would justify eight inches of concrete beneath the asphalt. Maybe it allowed a thinner coating of asphalt, and maybe the asphalt was more expensive? I don't know. I don't recall seeing concrete pours for such streets in the U.S., though, at least not where I lived. The new street should last a mighty long time, in any case.

The curbing raised questions in my mind. I asked some acquaintances of mine about it. They pointed out that granite blocks are highly recyclable, compared to continuous concrete pours. I think the continuous concrete looks nicer, but they did have a point.

This is just the way it's done in Paris. Other French cities might have somewhat different techniques (I don't travel enough to remember how other cities do it).

Asphalt isn't always used for street paving. There are still a lot of streets around that are paved with cobblestones. In some parts of the city, the streets are paved with white marble cobblestones, which must cost a bundle. Some sidewalks are paved with granite blocks, too, instead of asphalt. It looks nice, although vehicles sometimes drive over the (relatively thin) granite blocks on the sidewalk and crack them (maintenance vehicles and things like that). The famous Champs-Elysées is paved with granite cobblestones for the street, and rectangular granite blocks for the sidewalks and curbing. I've posted a picture with this blog entry that shows an example of (recent) all-granite paving, in a pedestrian section of the rue Montmartre.

Still other streets are cobblestones paved over with asphalt. This may be a vestige of May 1968, when the state paved over some cobblestone streets in order to keep students from prying up the stones and throwing them.

My contacts say that cobblestones have the same advantage as granite blocks for curbing, in that they can be dug up and then replaced when maintenance is necessary. Often the cobblestones appear to be simply (but snugly) set in sand, and there is no base course beneath them. They look nice, but they are noisy to drive over, and positively unnerving when you ride over them on a bicycle.

In my Paris gallery on my Web site, you can see a photo of cobblestone paving being set. It's labor-intensive and requires skilled workers, but it's very aesthetic.

Fast trains

While browsing through YouTube, I came across this video of yet another rail speed record being set by the French TGV train. This record, already set two years ago, was 574.8 km/h, which is 357.2 mph. For comparison, this is about twice the take-off speed of a Boeing 747 airliner, and about 20% faster than the speed at which it climbs to cruise altitude.

While France is known mainly for wine, cheese, and other “artsy” things, it also happens to be a world leader in rail technology, and it has been for decades. The TGV is a great example of what can be done with “ordinary” steel wheels on rails. And this is not theoretical stuff: TGV trains speed all over France and nearby countries every day. In fact, for trips of less than about 1000 km (600 miles), TGVs are much more practical than airplanes.

I've been on TGVs on multiple occasions. They are a pleasure to ride in. The ride is so smooth that you cannot tell that you're moving at speeds under 80 mph unless you look out the window. At full speed it's still smoother and quieter than a luxury car, and the only time you realize that you're moving at hundreds of miles per hour is when the train enters a turn—then you get tossed to one side if you happen to be standing in the aisle (I learned the hard way to always have my hand on a seat when walking up or down the aisles in the train). If you look out the window, look away, and then look back again, the scenery has completely changed! If you happen to be riding alongside a freeway (as is often the case on some TGV routes), you find yourself watching Porsches moving backwards at 100+ mph.

Not only that, but TGVs go from city center to city center. No need for a car, or a shuttle, or a two-hour commute to or from an airport. You start the trip downtown, and you end it downtown. And there's no two-hour wait to board. I've boarded TGVs just seconds before their departure times (they always leave on time), and by the time I got from the door to my seat (with the door automatically hissing shut behind me), the train had already accelerated to some 40 mph on its way out of the station. A few minutes later, it was rolling along at 200 mph.

If you come to visit different parts of France, consider taking the TGV from one city to another, as it's much nicer than flying. It's very convenient for going between London and Paris, too, as well as between several other cities (Brussels and Paris, etc.). You can even get from Paris to the Mediterranean in under three hours (it would take at leave 4 hours by plane, door to door).

Cool and rainy days, and the Fête de la Musique

It's a bit rainy and cool today, which is just fine with me. I'm not a big fan of rain, but occasional rain is fine, and if it keeps the temperature down, I'm all for it, as long as I don't have to be out and about (which I don't at the moment).

On the way home a few days ago, I took a nice picture of the Eiffel Tower, from a spot that I won't name (if you want to find it, you'll have to come to Paris and look for it, heh-heh), and from which I've taken pictures before. The photo itself was nice enough, but once home, I opened up my crusty old copy of Photoshop and went to work on it.

I'm quite good at Photoshop. I still use version 5, for various reasons. The newest version is more than twice as expensive as my version was, since a lack of competition allows Adobe to gouge customers on pricing. It also installs a rootkit, which my older version does not. And it has no features that I want; I have all I need in the older version. Plus I'm broke … although that's a minor consideration in comparison to the others. Anyway, I manage to do various interesting things with it, well beyond what the average angry young male manages (newbies usually apply one or two filters and call the result art), since I have many years of experience with Photoshop now.

So I decided to create an impressionist painting from my picture. By applying a variety of top-secret effects and filters (some of which I originally purchased separately) to my image in classified order, I managed to come up with something that I like to characterize as being half the style of LeRoy Neiman, and half the style of Monet. It looks pretty nice as wallpaper (you can find it in the wallpaper section of my Web site). I had actually done the same thing more than a decade ago, but I lost the original, and this one looks a bit better.

I ended up on the tiny rue Fresnel (yes, named after the same French scientist who developed the Fresnel lens), which, despite its small width and length, has three buildings on it with truly gigantic entrance archways. One of these has been undergoing renovation for the longest time, the others are undisturbed. The glassed-in archway in the building on the left in my photo is actually the rear of the Iranian embassy (which is in the nearby avenue d'Iéna—Paris has embassies on practically every street corner).

From the rue Fresnel, it was just a quick hop over to the Trocadéro gardens, and the jinxed CinéAqua aquarium, which looked practically deserted, as usual. They've added a cinema and restaurant, and lowered the price to “only” €19.50 (still nearly twice the cost of the nearby Eiffel Tower), but it still looked deserted. I would have gone in to see what the aquarium is like … but I wasn't keen on shelling out €19.50 just for that, either. I mean, the cool Sea Life aquarium at the Val d'Europe shopping center near Disneyland is way cheaper, and kids love it (they can actually feed the fish, if they want).

Anyway … let's see … on Sunday, it'll be time for the annual Fête de la Musique, which is held on the summer solstice. The sun sets at about 10 PM local time on the solstice, so it's light outside until midnight, and this encourages people to get out and listen to music. It's actually an excuse for every talent-free amateur band in the city to set up amplifiers on the sidewalks and blast away with ear-itating music for hours, but people seem to like it, as it affords opportunities to socialize and consume alcohol. I'm kind of neutral to it, and I don't plan to go out and look at it (I'm sure I'll be able to hear it—even the nearby hospital has live music on this occasion each year).

Hamburgers and heat

The temperature today got up to 35° C (that's 95° F), making today's high in Paris hotter than the expected high for today in Las Vegas. The normal daily high for June in Paris is 21.6° C (71° F), so today was 24° F hotter than normal. It's strange that practically nobody seems to find this worrisome. The humidity is high, too, and as usual for the summer months in Paris, there's practically no air movement.

I've turned on my tiny air conditioner, but it struggles. It's old and doesn't work very well any more. I cannot concentrate or sleep at 35° C, so I have no choice but to use the A/C. I remember the days when air conditioning wasn't really necessary in Paris, but the temperatures have been rising for 15 years now.

Anyway. I went out to wash clothes at the laundromat today. That took about 90 minutes, and I returned home drenched in sweat. I'm low on cash but I had enough to buy milk and some frozen hamburgers.

Speaking of hamburgers … although it doesn't seem to be common knowledge, France is very good at producing frozen foods. One tends to think of the country as a place where every meal is lovingly prepared from fresh ingredients by natives who toil in the kitchen for several hours a day, but that kind of situation is mostly the stuff of Hollywood stereotypes today, as few people have the time to dedicate to preparing food from scratch each day—especially in Paris.

Fortunately, there are alternatives. There's a very large chain of markets in France, called Picard, that specializes in frozen foods exclusively. Their stores contain nothing but lines of freezer cases, containing a bewildering variety of frozen meals of all types. These frozen meals are not cheap, but you get what you pay for. They are very tasty and easy to prepare, and Picard and its competitors are very popular in consequence.

For example, you can get a meal of butter chicken and riz pilaf for one person for €3.80. The chicken is marinated with Tandoori spices and cooked in butter, with a tomato and yogurt sauce. Mmm! Nuke it for six minutes in the microwave and it's ready.

Unfortunately, this is more than I can afford, but it's nice to know that it can be had. If you don't have time to cook, you can have great stuff in a few minutes this way.

The frozen hamburgers I bought aren't half bad, either. They are made by a French company that specializes in beef products, but they've branched out into other kinds of frozen prepared foods. The hamburgers are actually cheeseburgers, made with good quality meat and very good French ketchup and cheese. They are somewhat better than the stuff you get at fast-food restaurants like McDonald's or Quick, and they cost about the same. I blast two of them in the microwave and eat them with a glass of freezing cold, microfiltered, whole milk (my favorite beverage). On hot days like this I drink a lot of milk and water. I let the faucet run for a while for drinking water, because water in the (lead) pipes in my building tastes bad, but once you get water from the municipal water supply it's very nice and very cold.