: Paris for Dummies, an introduction to museums and monuments

Monday, 19 Feb 2007

Buenos Dias mes amigos et mi familla, (good thing I’m not in Espagna)

After a failed attempt to call places where I've sent in summer internship applications, I decided to write you all an email. Evidently today is Martin Luther King day. Did you know that? I bet you did. I didn't. I didn't figure it out until one of the answering services of the businesses I was calling told me so. It said "HANNAH! Stop calling. You'll have to luck today. It's MLK day." OOOOh. That's why you're not picking up. Well we don't celebrate holidays like that in France. (Disclaimer: this comment does not mean I don't think MLK was a great man and did wonderful things. End of disclaimer)

Let's see... yesterday I teetered around town (in the soberest of ways, though not sober in reference to mood), first to Balzac's house. It's my favorite kind of museum... the free kind. That even beats out the musical steps in the Boston Museum of Science... maybe. It was well put together. Too bad I haven't read Balzac. 'La visite’ might have meant more if I had. After that, I with my day companions hopped on the metro across town to catch a parade. Mardi Gras. The parade, like lead in water, did not float. By that I mean it did not have floats. It did have, however, drumming rastas, a live cow and a cleverly costumed cortege (take that for aliteration). To share a typically French moment with you... A man dressed as a chicken replete with feathery fabric attached to his arms et (et... that is French for ‘and’. I typed that inadvertently and decided to leave it as is so you can revel in my franglais) chicken hat/demi-mask who.. WHO was on slits no less is walking up the street, part of the parade. He turns to the crowd and asks "Can I get a cigarette from someone?" A cigarette and lighter materialize from the crowd and he continues on his stilted-way smoking with his feathered arms.

Saturday I went on a guided tour of Pere Lachaise with Thomas. Pere Lachaise, for those who don’t know, is one of Paris famous places. You often run into celebrities there. The place is often photographed and unlike much of Paris, is filled with greenery. Sounds romantic, eh?
Would you still think that if I told you we saw there Jim Morrison, Chopin, and Moliere? 'Huh?' you think... Well, this ain't yo' mama's park... this is Paris's most renown cemetery. (I just realized that I've spoken of this place before so that probably wasn’t as funny as it could have been because you probably recognized the name. Oh well). The tour, in complete French was very good and I understood about 80% of it. For those complicated sentences and word plays that went over my head higher than the mausoleums around me, Thomas was there to help out. I learned plenty of interesting tidbits... examples...
- Tidbit 1 in re the founder of the Monte Carlo (I think) casino: It would pass from time to time that patrons who lost all their fortune at the casino would walk outside and kill themselves in front of the casino. This owner-man ordered his workers to go outside and discretely place money in the cadavers pockets so that when the police came, the casino could not be held liable for provoking the death due to distress over money loss...
- Tid bit 2: Moliere... When Pere Lachaise was first created, no one wanted to be buried there, way far outside Paris. When the cemetery was created it was outside Paris and had the government figured, we'll put this here cemetery waaay outside Paris. No way Paris will ever get that big. (The cemetary is in the 20th arrondisement.) But how does one convince people to be buried out in the boonies? Throw some famous dudes in the mix. Let’s see…How about Moliere? So the governement officials read up on Moliere's burial site (which was not well marked). His friend documented the burial and wrote that Moliere was buried at the back next to the wall in a certain cemetery. So off go the officials to this cemetery. They pick a spot at the back next to the wall and start digging like they were a pair of bulldozers. Soon they stumble across some bones. "Oh' look it must be Moliere!" They take the skeleton, move it to Pere Lachaise and stick a pretty stone engraved “Moliere” on top. I bet the took the skull in hand during the transportation process and played Hamlet. "To be or not to be..." Moliere would have been rolling over in his grave, which is ... where?... we don't know.

A visit to the Palais de Toyko (modern art) last week left me wondering what happened to art. The key example as to why I was pondering such a question is following... In one exhibit, the artist took many elements of food and used them to make art that he thought was good. There were not pretty photos of eggplants or still lives of shanks of ham. Instead, he painted the walls with carrot puree and stuck petri dishes over this new wallpaper in an orderly way. Now underneath there grows lots of mold, emitting an odor of decay and of old. Another 'work' involved an old couch; the results were not great, to that I can vouch. He covered this sofa with a cocoa-based mix and hung it from the ceiling with some rope tying tricks. How he sells this as art I can't understand; it belongs in a dump in some far-away land.

Now that, my friends, that above description of the couch, THAT is art far finer than what I saw.

Well, I'm off to dinner at my cousins. I’ll be a-playin’ some piano there too.. there still a surprising amount of skill left in these old fingers.

This weekend to Barcelona!

Hasta la vista baby!
Hannah