Ausgang

n. – exit

Notausgang

n. – emergency exit

These words are in German as you may notice and I discovered them a while ago when visiting my husband on a business trip in Munich. I have nothing much to say about this other than I just found it funny since the second word looks like it would mean “not” an exit vs. more importantly an emergency exit.

German words can be very long. I think it’s their way of being efficient with the language – why waste time separating words when you can string them together to make one giant one.

While living in Paris, I experienced being tri-lingual vis a vis computer keyboards. Mine had the English “qwerty” version, my husband’s work laptop had the German “qwertz” version and my in-laws’ home computer had the French ”azerty” version. It’s amazing how much difference one little key can make when it’s not where you’re used to having it.

I love my computer and I love to type on it. But I have a confession – I still like pens and paper. The other day, I brought out my ancient Filofax to write something down while meeting with someone and he looked at me as if I’d grown another head. Jokingly he asked if I would like a post-it note. I like those, too.

Don’t get me wrong, I can download, upgrade, re-start, log off and shutdown with the best of them, but there’s just something secure about writing on a piece of paper. Notebooks and I mean the ones made from trees, rarely spontaneously combust or disappear into thin air. Hard drives crash – I suppose they use the word crash since it’s a drive. If you haven’t backed it up on your second hard drive and it has to be restored or replaced, you lose everything. And what if the back-up drive crashes? I like to think of my back-up drive like an airplane’s black box, convincing myself that it will survive anything including a nuclear holocaust. Of course, I wouldn’t so it wouldn’t really matter. Paper doesn’t crash and it’s not as if a giant eraser will rub out everything you’ve written (that is if you write in pencil, which I don’t, so even that I don’t have to worry about.)

There’s a funny commercial (I forget what it’s for) where a man comes into an office meeting with his pad (again the kind made from trees) and pen, which has leaked in his pocket. His co-workers make fun of him as if he’s some sort of cave man and it’s funny. But I relate to that man.

Computers do cut down on paper waste, which is a good thing and you can’t get a paper cut from a keyboard, which is also a good thing. There’s no ink to smudge, leak or run out. Computers have changed the world for the better and will continue to amaze us in the years to come. So as long as my keyboard stays in “qwerty,” I’ll keep typing, but that paper and pen will always be around somewhere.

L’herbe est plus verte chez le voisin

Exp. – the grass is greener at the neighbor’s.

Now that I’m back in New York, I can look at it more rationally than I did when I was living in Paris. It’s easy to romanticize what we don’t have and then see things in a new light when we get them back. In some case, that light has dimmed and in others, it burns even brighter.

For better or for worse, something that stuck out when we first returned was the abundance of things. On top of that, there was the speed at which things got done. Small home renovations were accomplished in a matter of days where in Paris we waited six months to have a hole in our ceiling repaired. Time doesn’t stop here like it does in France for Sundays or the month of August. As a result, the time seems to be flying by at record speed.

Here there’s hardly any request that will be turned down especially when in a restaurant. Dressing on the side, substitutions, sending something back to be cooked more – whatever it may be is almost always met with a “No problem!” In Paris, the few times I dared question something on the menu, I would get a cold hard “Non.” Service comes at lightening speed, the bill shows up before you even have to ask for it and as a result, it’s possible to get home from a weekend lunch while it’s still light out.

That’s not to say I don’t miss long, lazy lunches from time to time. And I do miss saying “Bonjour” to strangers in the elevator. Here if you say hello to someone, they sometimes look at you like you’re trying to mug them. And that’s if they even hear you since almost everyone has their ear buds in or their noses and thumbs pressed down towards their smart phones.

And what’s with all the protesting? I used to make fun of the French for that, but it turns out we’re even worse. I know people are angry about the economy and with good reason, but the protests down in Wall Street have become more of an occupation. That’s one thing about the tenacity of a New Yorker – in Paris, once it’s time for dinner, everyone is willing to pack it in, crack open a bottle of wine and call it a day. Here they’re literally setting up camp and moving in.

The public transportation in Paris is terrific. You can get everywhere on the metro or bus or even velib. Here, the subways are often not running and if they are, there’s no indication when the next train is coming. I don’t think there’s an MTA app like the one we had for RATP, but I could be wrong. There is of course an abundance of taxis at literally arm’s reach, but not so many between 4 and 5 pm. Nobody has ever been able to explain why absolutely all of them have to go off duty at the same time.

It’s true that the city never sleeps – construction is continuous, sirens blare, music pulsates from cars and restaurants and people as a result just naturally talk louder in order to be heard. My dog barks longer, walks faster and plays harder. But with all of this comes an energy that I missed. By comparison, Paris is peaceful with a pace that’s softer and easier. There’s a serenity, a stillness and a calm that allows you to stop and look around and with good reason because Paris is the most beautiful city – La Ville-Lumière – the city of light indeed.

So there’s no comparison because the two places are each unique and precious and how lucky am I to have been able to live in both.

To zen or not to zen

Yesterday my husband and I went to yoga together. We got there as we always do a few minutes early so we can set up our mats and settle in before the class starts. There are some people who don’t really care where they may end up in the class, but there are others who are very adamant about not only their personal space, but where in proportion to the rest of the class it may be. I fall somewhere in the middle.

Class started, we were working on bumble bee breath, which I had never done so I was trying to concentrate on the instructions, but someone arrived late and the distraction began. I could see out of the corner of my eye that she had nowhere to put her mat and the teacher, I don’t know whether it was to make a point or not, really wasn’t helping her. Once we finished our bumble bee breaths, which I bumbled pretty badly, the late woman came over to me and asked me to move my mat so she could put hers down.

This was yoga, but man was I bugged. It was the way she asked, which was more of a command and without any apology. I moved of course and staggered my mat, but she chose not to stand at the top of hers, but rather in the middle. Mats are staggered not because the mats bump into each other, but because people do, but if you’re not going to stand where you’re supposed to, that’s exactly what’s going to happen. Aggravated, I moved again and let her hand bump into me on the next swan dive forward just to make my point.

Half an hour in to class and I was still irked, but now it was because she was one of those over achievers. The teacher would call out a pose and she would take it to the next level – I hate that. What I hated even more though was that here I was in yoga of all places filled with so much hate.

The studio where we practice is the studio where I actually got my certificate to teach yoga. Although it’s changed ownership since then, it’s continued its atmosphere of pretty down to earth yoga and by this I mean, it stays away from a very spiritually led practice. For me, this is not a deal breaker – truth be told, I started going there because of its proximity to where I live, but I like the classes and find them challenging. The clientele, however, I think very much likes that the spiritual side is not really included apart from a few Om’s and a Namaste once in a while.

There was an article in the paper yesterday about this very thing as it related to teaching yoga to schoolchildren. Most schools insist that the instructors refrain from chanting Om or using the prayer position or even saying Namaste, which struck me as a bit extreme.

Om, for a simple definition, represents the sound of the universe, which we all do unarguably inhabit regardless of what religion you follow. Namaste means “the divine in me bows to the divine in you” and who doesn’t want to be divine?! Anjali Mudra or hands in prayer is really just a position where your hands are pressed together in front of your heart, which I find hard to believe could offend anyone.

To take this topic to a more controversial level and across the pond, France passed a ban on head scarves or hijabs for Muslim school girls, which raised a lot of protest. Taking it a step further, they also want to ban the niquab and burka as the traditional full face veil for women in public. These are seen as oppressive to women and against the secular nature of the French government.

But where does it end? What about the orthodox Jewish women who also cover their heads, whether it be by a scarf or many times a wig? What about the yarmulke or the kippah as the French call it? What about people wearing crucifixes or Stars of David? What about the red dot or bindi worn on Indian women’s foreheads? What about lip plates or neck rings worn by African and Burmese-Thai women? True the latter are seen more commonly in their native lands, but hasn’t western culture adopted all sorts of body modification practices itself, the most common among them, tattoos?

It’s interesting that the French culture, which is much less puritanical than ours and where topless sunbathing is the norm has bigger issues with too much covering of the female body. I understand there are more complex issues that are behind the burka ban with regards to women’s rights. Further complex still is the fact that many of the people protesting the ban were the women themselves.

I unfortunately have no answers, only questions. I know it’s far too simplistic to say live and let live even if I don’t know how I got all the way from an annoying yoga moment to questions about religious freedom. But that is the journey that began yesterday and who knows where it will end. For this moment, however, deep breath in, deep breath out and Namaste.

Désabonner

v. – un-subscribe

It’s been three months now since we moved back to New York from Paris and while I have had no trouble letting go of living in France, it seems France has had trouble letting go of me.

Despite the fact that I asked the bank manager to close my account before I even left, it remained open until only recently. My fault, I suppose for moving in July because just the anticipation of vacation and then the sacrosanct August vacation itself completely distracted him from doing his duty. This was a bad thing because despite the fact that I let the cell phone company know I was leaving the country, they continued to debit my account.

I think I’ve already explained the system of “debit immédiate” vs. “debit diferée,” but to clarify, the French don’t really allow credit like we do. If you use your ATM card to pay for something, the money comes out almost immediately, like in the States, but if you have a credit card you can only defer payment until the end of the month, not decide how much you want to pay.

Most services like cell phone bills and utilities use the same system linking directly to your bank account. I don’t necessarily have a problem with that since I like to pay my bills in full and on time, but only while I’m using those services. The two payments taken out from the cell phone company after we moved put me in the red from a contract I had cancelled and in an account I didn’t want to keep.

While I was finally able to get that all sorted, I still receive a French newsletter by email even though I continue to un-subscribe to it. This is much less bothersome obviously, but no less amusing to me that it won’t let me go. It’s not to say that I don’t have similar issues here. I’d forgotten how annoying telemarketers are and in the first month of setting up our landline (yes we still have one of those), I would get numerous calls daily including calls from the provider of the phone service itself. When I asked how I could remedy this, I was told I could put all the offending numbers on a blocked list so that they would no longer be able to get through, including the number of the phone service provider. Sounded like a great idea so I asked them to sign me up, which the customer service representative did right away. She then asked if I got a call from a telephone survey, could I give her a good review. But didn’t I just say I wanted to be blocked from these calls?!

Times are tough everywhere and everyone who has your business wants to keep it – I get it. But France doesn’t have to worry about losing me forever – there were many happy memories we made during our time there and many wonderful friends. So we’ll be back – sooner than later. In the meantime, I will continue to find more material in Manhattan.

À bientôt!

Apéritif

n. - cocktails

It only just struck me as strange that while the word for cocktails is apéritif, the nickname, or what it most commonly goes by is apéro. Why not apéri? And come to think of it, cocktails may be stretching the translation because the French aren't really known for their bar-tending skills like the Americans or even the British are. Drinks are more delicate tinctures of a wine based nature. Scotch can be readily found, but you will get a strange look if you order a vodka and don't get me started again on martinis since I already covered that in another post. They simply do not exist. I do like that the French toast with "santé" or to your health and the way they drink really is quite healthy.

On a completely separate note, someone recently pointed out the difference between the word parapluie and parasol. I always knew that parapluie was an umbrella, but I didn’t make the distinction between the fact that it was literally to protect from the rain (pluie) while a parasol, was to protect from the sun (soleil).

One thing you are sure never to find in Paris, however, would be an umbrella IN your cocktail. Santé!