for many years now, paris has had a party on the summer solstice. it is the “fetes de la musique” or “festival of music”. apparently, there had been a blossoming music scene in paris many years ago but it was squashed when the government decided to tax any live music performed in public. the fete de la musique is an evening when anyone who has access to an instrument can bring it out and perform in public without “authorization”. the french love music, but mostly are really bad at it. the worst musicians, if you can even call them musicians, come out on this evening. jj’s violin teacher says that any real musician cringes and hides on this evening. but it is a BIG party. everyone is out wandering the streets, dancing and partying. it was such a success that it has spread around the world to different cities. i am all for celebrating the longest day of the year.
in fact, jj was supposed to have her last orchestra concert tonight. we had been toying with letting her quit the orchestra because it was much below her level and was demanding more and more time. i felt that she should finish out the year, as the conscientious thing to do. i figured we could go out to fete de la musique after her concert finished, but i assumed that the concert would be in paris. when i found out that in fact, it was out in the suburbs and did not start until 8:30 and knew their habit of having ALL the concerts play at the same concert for hours and hours, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. we decided to blow it off. it was just too much to ask of her, with her full time internship.
we planned to meet my cousin, marianne and the family (husband and sons) at brasserie balzar, located in the latin quarter, a great animated neighborhood. the metros were packed at 8:00 in the evening, a hint of things to come. brasserie balzar had been a famous brasserie in the old days. about 15 years ago, it had been bought by a big chain. there had been an outcry that such an institution should become part of a corporation. as i recall, the faithful clients decided to protest, by going there and having dinner... they were unable to stop the deal from going forward in spite of their radical action, and as they had feared, the quality went down. dinner tonight wasn’t great, but it was a place where 9 people could sit together for a french dinner. the young men of the group ate impressive quantities of food.
they told us about their tourist day from hell at versailles. it was quite an interesting story for us to frame our life here. my cousin's husband is an upper level manager in new york. i always knew him as an easy going guy, but now he has spent many years as a manager. he admitted that certain things push his buttons and one of them is workers talking on cell phones when they should be working. the ticket seller was making them wait while she talked on the phone to her friend and it made him mad. he had very limited french so all he could say to her was “vite!” [quick!], which of course made it a situation. it pissed her off and she sat there and stared at him, refusing to sell his ticket. the two of them stood there for minutes angrily staring at each other while the guard asked the ticket lady, what was going on. finally, my cousin and family just walked away. so, she won, they lost and all had bad vibes. i didn’t get a chance to tell him about p’s theory of the basic difference in attitude between france and the US. the US is a CONSUMER favored society, where the customer is the important party. making the customer happy is the goal. france is a PRODUCER society, where the producer is favored. the worker is most important. it’s more important to make the salesperson in the shop happy, rather than the customer. it favors the teachers over the students, the salespeople over the customer. this actually explains why the teachers don’t seem to care if the students learn.
in day to day life in france, it’s not worth the confrontation. it’s like in martial arts, when you are taught to take the negative energy (from a punch or a kick coming at you) and divert it or redirect it, rather than try to confront it head on by force. sometimes, though, it’s hard to resist getting mad. i had a phone interaction with a big store the other day, and finally hung up in frustration. “pas de tout” (not at all, no way) they always say, when you ask if it’s possible to get some sort of satisfaction for bad service or unclear conditions.
after dinner, we walked to the ile st louis to have berthillon ice cream and sorbets. i have to agree with popular opinion that this is one of the best ice creams and sorbets in the world. i also love having it while standing at the side of the seine on the ile st louis, looking over at the back of notre dame cathedral on a summer’s evening. libby’s cousin sam came to join us. sam grew up in greenwich connecticut, had gone to john hopkins and was currently doing an exchange at science polytechnic in paris – the harvard of france.
on the way to ice cream and while standing there, we heard some really bad music, but it was a real party. jj loved it. she wanted to stay out all night, but it was 11:30 and she had to go to “work” the next day. so i dragged her away from our little party. we walked to our subway line and the trains were on their normal late evening schedule – namely, not so often. the platform got more and more crowded with people heading home (even though the streets were still full). everybody pushed onto the train, which was already quite crowded. the doors had trouble closing. we were glad to be on the train. at the next stop many people got off, as they were just starting their evening and we were able to get seats, while the train refilled to the brim. we were lucky. jj admitted to me as we got to our street, that she was indeed tired and was glad to be home. p had gone off to wander some more that evening and when he came home he could barely get on the train. libby stayed longer with the family and they ended up in a bar where a few of them were smoking flavored tobacco from water pipes! that is a recent fad around here, but i couldn’t imagine the family hanging out around a hookah...
her cousin, sam brought her to the subway, which at that point had stopped running. there had been talk about the subway running all night, but it seemed unimaginable that the french workers would accept that. they tried to take velib bikes back, but there were none of those around either, of course. not knowing the city at all, she was very nervous about how she would get home. sam ended up walking her home and she got back around 3am. i was a little concerned when i woke up and she wasn’t home, but then i heard her coming up the stairs and figured she just had a good party evening.
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