Lamb of God, Have Mercy on Us (Guest Post)

Shortly after I wrote my previous post which detailed our night in a Parisian restaurant, my friend Sam decided to write his own version of events. At my request, he agreed to let me share his retelling of the story on this blog. –DP

Regret filled every step I took. I knew that burger was too big.

Setting aside its gargantuan proportions for a moment, it was undoubtedly one of the finest burger experiences I had ever had. Everything on the plate was fresh, from the crisp lettuce to the crispy fries, to the buttery bun, to the perfectly-cooked beef. But at a half-pound of beef (which I strongly suspect was calculated AFTER cooking), I knew halfway through I had made a dire mistake and I had not even remembered our dinner reservations for that evening.

At this point, having a meal that surpassed all my expectations had nearly become a matter of course in Paris. The city’s reputation for some of the world’s best food is twice-deserved, and I had only begun to get acquainted with it. Daniel’s guidance in selecting a restaurant was infallible, from the bakeries with the pain au chocolat or quiche Lorraine for breakfast (or my personal favorite, pain avec du fromage et des tomates, which, in retrospect, was essentially pizza) to the small meal in a café invariably found around 2pm, when most Parisian restaurants close for a few hours, to the excellent dinners I had enjoyed. It had all been no less than a splendid and indeed, inspiring display of les aliments de France, and this burger was no exception.

Nonetheless, a burger is a burger, and if you eat half a pound of beef in any form it will slow you down.

The food aside, it had been a disappointing day for me. After making a mental note to not confuse the days on which the Louvre and Versailles were closed, I had of course confused them, resulting in us essentially “missing” the Louvre: a grave disappointment to us both. We even considered taking a later train, but the delay would have cost us 200€. Each.

I do love art, but not for 200€.

So bound and determined to see some art, dammit, we decided after lunch to venture bravely onward to Centre Pompidou, Daniel again taking point and I slogging along behind him carrying too much food and not enough sleep.

Side note: did you know the Centre Pompidou is closed on the same day as the Louvre? After 20 minutes of walking, so did we!

At this point, I felt a meat coma coming on, the likes of which I had not experienced since Thanksgiving and requested we simply return to the hostel so I could nap before dinner, which I now realized was a mere 3.5 hours away.

That might be a problem, I thought.

Premonitions.

A Night in the Restaurant

Note: some dialogue and story elements have been reconstructed from the author’s faulty memory. Certain details may be embellished and/or accidentally omitted.

The RER B was on strike.

Well, for that matter, so was the RER A, but it was the grève on the B that threatened to throw a wrench into our plans. I’d read on TripAdvisor that similar restaurants had a habit of turning away those unfortunate customers that arrived for dinner even a few minutes late—so when I looked at my watch at 18:05, my heart skipped a beat.

“Sam!” I called.

A moment’s pause—then my friend stirred in the lower bunk of the hostel bed where he’d been sleeping off his lunch, a hearty double burger that he’d eaten only four hours before.

“Yeah!”

“We better go!”

Moments later, we started down Boulevard de Dunkerque towards Gare du Nord, but instead of entering the station, we jumped onto the Ligne 4 Métro in the direction of Mairie de Montrouge. Earlier in the day, we’d ridden the RER B from Denfert-Rochereau, an experience far worse than the most ridiculed of budget airlines—after we exited at Châtelet, Sam said it reminded him of a man he’d seen in China, who barged his way onto a crammed bus with repeated pelvic thrusts until the doors closed behind him. The Métro was slower, but I hoped to avoid a long wait and another train so packed I could hardly breathe. Réaumur-Sébastopol—Etienne Marcel—Les Halles—Cité—as my watch ticked ever closer to 19:00, the subway cars worked their way south from the 10^th into the 6^th arrondissement in a jerky manner that seemed to reflect our own waning energy after four non-stop days in the City of Light. Overfed and under-rested, we’d begun moving slower, in fits and starts, stopping frequently to catch our breath.

Odéon. I bounded up the stairs two at a time and looked around for a landmark. My first glance at a bus-stop map on the Boulevard Saint-Germain resulted in my rejecting a perfectly valid route after a hundred meters—then, instead of heading east after the theater, we walked the wrong way past the Palais de Luxembourg before I realized my mistake. Adrenaline took over, and a familiar drumbeat beat out a steady cadence in my head—with twenty-five minutes to go and over a kilometer to walk, I accelerated to a pace I usually reserved for the Christmas-season crowds at work, striding past the RER station whose use the mouvement social had unjustly precluded, then powering down the rue Gay-Lussac, looking for N°30. I was nearing the rue Saint-Jacques, when Sam, slowed by the remnants of his burger, called out from ten paces behind.

Les Patates du Valais/The Potatoes of Valais

My grandmother celebrated her 90^th birthday last December. This was no small event—though one has since moved, four of her seven children were living within a 15-minute drive of her house at the time, with another in a neighboring town, and a sixth just down the mountain across the state line. The seventh, though firmly entrenched out West, came anyway with his family, which, along with the wives, husbands, grandkids, the grandkids’ significant others, and one great-grandchild, made for quite the party. I forget the exact circumstance, but one evening, during a music night, my grandmother and the aunts and uncles got to singing a few songs that she had grown up with and passed on to her kids. The one I remember best went something like this:

Bread at the Chocolate: Round 2

Last year, I wrote about going to a café in my hometown and not knowing what you call a pain au chocolat in English.

This time, thankfully, I remembered.

To review: a pain au chocolat is (most often) composed of two sticks of chocolate inside a flaky croissant-style wrapping. In France, they’re sold everywhere there’s a boulangerie/pâtisserie, which is pretty much everywhere. They usually cost between 1€ and 1,10€ (sometimes slightly more).

There’s a bookstore/Champagne bar in a historic arcade downtown. On Thursday afternoons, a discussion group meets there to chat in French for an hour. My grandmother, a native French speaker herself, was until recently a regular attendee of the group; the others include people who have lived/worked in France and in French-speaking countries (one lady was a lectrice at a university in the Auvergne region, but just how long ago she wouldn’t say, being herself une dame d’un certain âge).

This Thursday, I decided to go. Not having any cash, I looked through the menu before ordering, trying to find something that would fall above the card minimum. I considered buying a slice of cake, a couple of cookies, or one of several other pastries, all of which would have done the trick. But when I saw it, I knew I had to have it.

The Hot Chocolates of Limoges, Ranked

The standard price for a hot chocolate in Limoges is 2,50€. This has a few notable exceptions (which I’ll get to in a moment), but one can easily use it as a benchmark with which to compare other things—something akin to the Big Mac Index, except with hot chocolate.

I’ve had hot chocolates at a variety of places around town. Depending on the weather, of course. Some days I would have loved to drink a hot chocolate, but it was simply too hot outside. (This only happened once or twice). But I figure that for any foreigner in Limoges, there will come a time when one must leave the stuffy confines of one’s threadbare apartment or risk madness—never mind the clammy drizzle outside. And what better way to combat the Limousin winter grays than by having a hot chocolate?

For the benefit of those whom this information may interest, what follows is a near-comprehensive list of all the establishments in Limoges at which I’ve had a hot chocolate, and my reviews thereof, presented roughly in ascending order, and with the knowledge that my memory may have caused me to omit one or two places worthy of consideration in this list.

How to Talk English Good: Self-Evaluation as a Foreign Language Assistant

“You speak way too fast to be an English teacher.”

Most people to whom I told my post-graduation plans reacted as if I was going to Disneyland. “That’s so awesome! I wish I could go. You’re going to love it.”

But one man, a friend of one of my professors, was the first one to blatantly question my ability to successfully instruct young French students in the English language in all of its richness and glory. I don’t think that he actually doubted my enthusiasm or ability; in all fairness, though, he had a very good point.

I work a service-industry job in my hometown that involves a high rate of guest turnover; in order to avoid falling behind during the afternoon rush, I move as quickly as I can, and my speech has followed suit. It’s the subject of repeated comments from the people I serve. Some are matter-of-fact: “You speak wicked fast!” Others enjoy poking fun at me. “On the weekends, he’s an auctioneer!” a fellow quipped last month. Only days later, someone else asked, “Do you sell cattle in your spare time?”

In response to the many ribbings tossed my way, I decided to toss in a few apologetic jokes. Something along the lines of drinking too much coffee or whatever. This failed to satisfy one woman, who, to the scandalized gasp of her neighbor, remarked:

The French Legislative Elections: Quick Observations

Today, Sunday, June 11th, France voted in the first round of its legislative elections—the elections that will determine who retains power in the Assemblée nationale (the Sénat is elected indirectly by a college of electors from city/municipal councils across the country). The legislature, the Parlement, is deliberately biased in favor of the Assemblée, whose deputies are elected for five-year terms. President Macron needs a solid majority to keep his campaign promises, and it appears that he will get exactly that.

–Le Monde reports that out of 289 seats needed to gain a majority, it appears that Macron’s La République en marche party (LREM) and its close ally Mouvement démocratique (Modem—ha! I think these two parties ought to have a really great connection!) will win between 400 and 455 out of the 577 seats in the Assemblée nationale after the second round of legislative elections next week.

–Voter turnout reached a record low, dropping below 50% for the first time in the history of the Ve République: just under 49% of voters participated in this election. This may give Macron’s dectractors some reason to doubt his claims of a clear mandate to accomplish his goals, but good turnout or no, France’s major parties have done very poorly in this election, as they did for the présidentielle last month (particularly the Socialists); if Macron doesn’t have a mandate, they sure as heck don’t either.

–Slate mentions one fact that hadn’t struck me before: currently, Macron’s party does not hold a single seat in the legislature, making their projected gains all the more impressive. It also has cross-posted a tweet from an NYT reporter who likens this election to a Bloomberg/Zuckerberg third party winning the White House and 3/4 of the Senate (although since the AN is the lower house, it’d be perhaps more correct to suppose that this ficticious party had won, say, 300/435 seats in the House of Representatives).

–The regional TV station in Limoges interviewed the candidates but didn’t include their names—I didn’t catch who it was that said this, but in a quick reactions video posted on their website, one man observes that many of Macron’s deputies have little or no prior political experience and cautions voters against entrusting their political representation for the next five years to someone for whom they voted purely out of support for the President. Personally, I find this to be an interesting viewpoint, informed, presumably, by this man’s status as an opponent to an up-and-coming Enmarchiste, but it doesn’t persuade me. If this fellow wanted to take a witty jab at his rival the same way Reagan did to Mondale (but it’s late at night, I still have to do the dishes even though I want to go to bed, and he will very likely lose, so I still don’t care).

That’s all for now. We’ll just have to wait until next Sunday to know the results for sure.

The Valley of Fear

The Centre de la Mémoire sits just beyond the eastern edge of the new town, the nouveau bourg. Its architecture is deliberately discreet: a low sign, a staircase, and an elevator are the only indications that the museum and historical center lies beneath the hillside. Located a 20-minute bus ride from Limoges, the Centre exists to preserve the memory of a singular event in the history of the region, and indeed, in the history of France: the massacre of Oradour-sur-Glane.

Present-day Oradour lives in the shadow of its former self. The town center is small with gray buildings accented by white shutters. Travel down the Avenue du 10 Juin, and you’ll pass by the box-shaped town hall, a pharmacy, the post office, a coiffeur, the restaurant—Le Milord—and the new Eglise Saint-Martin, structures all completed around 1953. From the war monument just behind the church, a path descends to the Centre de la Mémoire; on a hilltop to the east lies the village martyr, preserved as it was found: its homes and businesses destroyed, its valuables ransacked, its inhabitants murdered, their bodies burned.

Saturday, June 10^th, 1944: shortly before two in the afternoon, a company belonging to the 2^nd armored division of the Waffen-SS surrounded the town and worked its way inwards, emptying houses at gunpoint and forcing the inhabitants into the main square. Many country-dwellers had come into town to fill their tobacco rations, distributed on that day, along with others visiting friends and family, swelling the number of people to well over the town’s usual population of 500. The Nazis rounded up everyone, including children in school, and announced they would conduct a search for illegal weapons and other contraband.

This was a ruse designed to ensure their victims’ cooperation.

Here’s to Down Home

Last summer, I attended a retirement celebration for a public university official who directed the school’s scholarships and financial aid for many years. The event was held in the ballroom of a fancy historic inn located just off campus and featured piles of food, drinks, and a round of speeches. I did the rounds, talking with various people, and listening to the speeches, but my appetite quickly got the better of me. I mean not to disparage the speakers, for their words were inspiring and thought-provoking, but I had just driven for several hours and wasn’t about to pass up a golden-brown and crispy opportunity. As the person on the podium delved into a lengthy anecdote, I did the same—into the pile of potato chips on my plate.

I quickly realized that the man standing no more than ten feet away was the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost—he would have been the university’s #2 bigwig were it not for the fact that he was bald—and the noise I produced while enjoying my potato chips was certainly loud enough to reach well beyond where he was standing. Worse, though he’s probably forgotten now, he knew who I was, as we’d introduced ourselves a few moments before.

But in retrospect, the part of the afternoon that lodged itself the most firmly in my memory was entirely unrelated to annoying a top administrator with my chewing noises.

Vive la République, vive la France!

Imagine if Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner formed a political party in 2015, got a ton of support, beat out both Clinton and Trump for the top spot in 2016 and then became President of the United States.

That’s sorta what’s happened with Emmanuel Macron.

During a Facebook group chat a few days ago, a couple of my friends suggested I give them my thoughts on the French election that occurred last Sunday. I’ll keep this short.

(EDIT: define “Short”.)

To recap: France’s president is elected for five-year terms, and may serve a maximum of two. The current president (until Sunday), François Hollande, was fantastically unpopular—an October poll by Le Monde put his approval rating at 4%, though there was a neutral option in the questionnaire that some say made his score lower than normal. This led to Hollande making a decision previously unheard-of in the 5th Republic: he refused to run for re-election, making this the final three days (as of this writing) of his first and only term in office. (One other guy ran again and lost; Hollande is the first to not run at all).

Early in the school year, during a brief discussion, I mentioned the French election in passing and my students took the opportunity to inform their classmates who they thought was going to win. “Je pense que ça va être Fillon, hein?” one girl said to her deskmate. “Ouais,” replied the other, in a very French tone of voice that means “Pretty much,” as if the election of conservative then-candidate François Fillon was all but assured. But it wasn’t.