I hate to say it, but Deutsche Bahn has just made getting to Paris even quicker, with a train that goes Berlin-Frankfurt, from which you transfer to a Frankfurt-Paris (Gare de l'Est) train on DB that gets you there 15 minutes or so quicker, not to mention that you don't have to ride the Thalys, the Belgian/French/Dutch high-speed train which I've always found dark and cramped. Plus, there's apparently some deal going with DB that gets you first class for something like €20 more round-trip, which I sure took advantage of. They even serve you a free meal which wouldn't be out of place on an airplane, but hey, it's free.
* * *
As always, there was more to do in Austin than listen to music and eat. The Harry Ransom Center on the UT campus was hosting an exhibition called On The Road With the Beats, which I couldn't wait to see. The center of the thing (although it's displayed right as you walk in) is 48 feet of the original, unparagraphed, manuscript of On the Road, which Jack Kerouac famously wrote on a roll of teletype paper. Even though I get more ambiguous in my feelings about this book as I get older, it's still a part of every American counter-culturist's heritage, and it's an incredible thing to actually see it stretched out like that. The exhibition is text-heavy, and you're going to have to do a lot of reading if you're really going to get into it. It's also very fair, including the Los Angeles scene, and such supposedly minor figures as Ted Joans. There's posters for Beatsploitation films, photos (although not enough) by Allen Ginsberg, and much, much more. I kind of raced through it because I didn't have much time, but it's worth devoting an afternoon to if you have any feeling at all for this period of history.
Even better, next door to it is a show devoted to the undeservedly obscure artist Jess, who was a modern master of collage inspired originally by Max Ernst. You may know him from his Tricky Cad cutups of Dick Tracy comics, which got him sued, but which are often cited as important precursors of Pop Art, or, if you're into poetry, you may know him as Robert Duncan's partner (they had a wedding ceremony in 1951, which sure was ahead of the curve), who provided art for many of his books. I'd never seen much of his stuff, and was very impressed by the show.
I just noticed that the Beats show is up through the beginning of August but the Jess show closes soon, so if you're in Austin, get down there! I'm glad I did.
* * *
There was all the music at SXSW, and then there was the best music I heard in Austin. That was on a pirate radio station I found somewhere in the middle of the FM dial (hmmm, it seemed like a familiar frequency, somehow), which brought back all the joys of free-form radio I used to listen to -- and use to discover new stuff -- back in the early '70s before consultants brought their heavy boots down on the radio industry and utterly ruined it. Oh, sure, there was stuff I didn't much like -- '50s pop a la Rosemary Clooney, one evening that seemed heavy on handbag house, some heavy-handed comedy -- but that's the way free-form radio works. At one point, a guy's voice came on and said something like "You are listening to an illegal radio station. See that cop over there? He's part of the control for this sector. Immediately change your dial to a commercial radio station. Listen carefully to the ads, and then buy everything you hear advertised. You'll feel a lot better." The signal doesn't always come in clearly -- in fact, sometimes the station's off the air for a few hours -- but in central and south Austin it usually sounds pretty good. The big problem is not knowing what you're hearing. I heard a couple of tunes by artists I'd like to investigate further, but with no DJ to announce them, I can't tell you who they were. But I sure like that rebels out there are defying overdetermined radio, and risking their necks to do so. Whoever's behind this has good taste in music and one hell of a record collection. Long may it wave!
* * *
From Austin, I flew to Newark, changed planes, flew to Paris, and then went to the TGV train station inside the airport, waited two hours, and got on a direct train to Montpellier. I was one cripsy critter when I got there, in part because Continental Airlines now offers some 350 movies on demand and I watched a couple of them instead of sleeping, which would have been a far better idea. But the hotel I stayed at has great beds, and I was able to nap and begin conquering my jet-lag immediately.
The idea of going to Montpellier directly after Austin was to find students who'd be leaving their large, cheap places this summer, talk to their landlords, and get a reservation to move into one if I found one I liked.
Unfortunately, I looked at exactly zero apartments. Apparently, there was a student strike last year, which means that many students won't be vacating until mid-June instead of May, like usual. This means that I'm going to have to go down there again, and that timing will be crucial, since school will undoubtedly start up again in August. Fortunately, though, I seem to be developing a great network of folks down there who'll help me look. Some of them, like Marie the translator and of course Bart (go ahead, click the link; he only gets 6000 hits a day, as opposed to my maybe 100 on a good day, not that I'm jealous or anything), I know from blogs. Others I met through Bart's friends at the Bar Vert Anglais, which is a friendly spot. Others I met randomly through friends. I'm a great believer in networks, so I really hope I get results with this one.
Of course, moving means raising around €3000 between now and the first of June. I'm not at all sure how I'm going to do this. I was hoping to sell my old guitar in Austin, but it proved to need too much renovation to make this practicable at the moment. Now I'm just praying that some work will come over the transom, and that, at long last, I can say good-bye to Berlin.
* * *
Of course, I'm back now, and it doesn't look so bad now that spring is beginning. But I got a potent reminder of where I am the very night I returned. Walking back to my building after going out for dinner, I passed a ground-floor apartment. On the wall was a huge poster edged in black, with the scowling face of Kurt Cobain on it. Beneath the photo were the words, written in huge capital letters "I HATE MYSELF AND I WANT TO DIE." Just what I'd want in my living room, I'm sure.
Yup, I'm back in Fun City, all right.
Showing posts with label Paris. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paris. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Thursday, March 29, 2007
I Might Have Dreamed This
But I'm pretty sure I didn't.
I landed in Paris Tuesday afternoon, and found the hotel I'd reserved with a service I'd never used before. Pretty dingy, as was the neighborhood, which was close to Barbes, the largely African quarter. If I'd had more time, like another day, I'd probably have gone in search of the place where a man who claimed to be "the spiritual leader of the entire Senegalese community here in Paris," told me, in perfect English, of his training with the French Air Force in Oklahoma and Texas. They had great fish baked with lemon there, and I bet they had other good stuff, too.
But I knew that in 24 hours I'd be back in a place which, next to California and Texas, would have extremely limited food options, and I wanted to celebrate the possibility of gastronomic greatness one more time. Which, considering I was in Paris, shouldn't have been too difficult.
If only. Well, okay, when I woke up from my jet-lag nap and splashed some water on my face and decided to get out of the nasty room and go look for something to eat I left my indispensable Michelin Map 11
behind, not the smartest move in a city I only know in bits and pieces.
I figured, hey, I didn't have a lot of money, so I should just find some brasserie or cheap joint with a blackboard out front with some appealing choices, go in, and enjoy myself. I was tired, I'd go back to the hotel, read a little, and pass out. Seemed like a plan. Surely the neighborhood, so close to the Gare du Nord, would have plenty of places like that.
So I walked down the street the hotel was on, the rue du Faubourg du Poissonnier. After a few blocks, I saw a tiny place that looked like it hadn't changed in fifty years, but the prices -- no "menu," or multi-course, single-price meals, a la carte only -- seemed a bit high. I glanced at it and moved on. And on.
I walked down the rue des Incredibly Fat Prostitutes and wondered whether the forty-ish men who were striking poses in Calvin Klein yuppie wear on the same block were in the same business or the girls' "business managers." I made a turn and found myself on the rue du Wholesale Clothing. I found a sign which said I was in the Marais, a neighborhood I not only know, but which is stuffed with restaurants, but I couldn't figure out where I was. An hour had passed, and I was now officially hungry, not to mention somewhat lost. But luckily, I almost always have a compass in my head, and it wasn't like I'd never been in this general neighborhood. It's just that except for kebab houses and the occasional designer sushi place, there didn't seem to be anything at all to eat.
Further walking brought me to République and loads of dining options: Quick, Mac Do, Kentucky Fried... This was getting ridiculous. I decided to head back to the hotel and hit someplace by the station. I found myself on the rue du Château d'Eau, which is one African barbershop after another, men's and women's alternating, with the expected amount of socializing. Even on a Tuesday night, it was churning. But nothing to eat.
All of a sudden, I was back on the rue du Faubourg du Poissonnier. Now, that place I'd seen hours ago -- well, 90 minutes ago -- didn't seem so intimidating. I hesitated over the menu, then said to hell with it and walked in.
The front room was very small. A tiny bar was off to the left, as well as a spiral staircase pitched so that I was praying they didn't seat customers up there. A very morose middle-aged Indochinese woman (I use the word because you could tell that the country she'd left behind when she first got to Paris was French Indochina) was bringing out some panniers of raspberries. An old woman sat on a banquette to the right wearing a fawn cloth coat which one could say had seen better days except that it was also evident that it had never been anything but drab. Next to her sprawled a large dog, boxer-like but with a graphite-colored coat. She held its head in her lap and was stroking it. Between her and the bar were the entrance to the dining room and a table loaded with stuff to be served cold: some sort of terrine, something jellied, and the berries.
A stout, no-nonsense woman with pixie glasses emerged from the dining room. "Are you still open?" I inquired. She stared at me, giving me a top-to-bottom assessment. "Of course," she said. "What are you afraid of?" Huh? Was my French that bad? "Well," I said, "I'm hungry," and she smiled and led me into the tiniest restaurant dining room I've seen. Part of the problem was a huge party of perhaps 15 people against the back wall had taken up a lot of the room. I wound up wedged over by the silverware and bread service, scrutinizing the same menu that had been posted outside. The prices were still stiff, but it seemed that you could do okay if you were careful. And surely there was a house wine so I didn't have to order a whole bottle of one of the three on offer.
So: from a very basic menu, two very basic choices. Rabbit terrine and beef Bourgignon "a la ancienne," made the old way. Like I was aware there was a new way. The stout woman's male counterpart was a short, busy man who was obviously her husband, and it was he who took my order. "No, no rabbit terrine," he said. "Poultry. Even better." His eyebrows shot up when I ordered the beef, and I asked him if there were a house red I could have a pichet of. The eyebrows went up again, and he said "Of course!"
The wine and a basket of excellent bread appeared right away. I have no idea what the wine was except I suspect it was a Bordeaux, and it was better than any house wine I'd ever had. The terrine appeared next, and it was perfect: lots of elements mixed in, pistachios and peppercorns, organ meat and meaty bits, the whole thing finishing with a slight tang of alcohol which I suspect was marc, the grape-skin liqueur. As I was savoring it, I was presented with a crock of cornichons, a touch I've never really gotten, and one I'd never seen before which was perfect: sweet-sour pickled cherries. You don't want to eat a lot of them, but they do wake up your tongue.
Monsieur appeared again to take the empty plate, and informed me, gesturing at the long table, that it would be several minutes before the next course arrived. That was fine with me. I sipped the wine, ate a bit of bread, and looked at my dining companions. I couldn't make sense out of the long table, and in fact the only definite impression I had was that I was going to bop the kid who was sitting nearest me, who took to leaning waaaay back in his chair to the point where his arms, which were behind his head when he did this, almost touched me. The group was mostly young, mostly very square-looking, and utterly forgettable. Not so the woman who was at one of the tables directly on the other side of the room from me, dining with a male companion who was impeccably dressed. She looked to be in her mid-40s, and her unlined face and high cheekbones bespoke a sense of humor and an intelligence which was telegraphed by her facial expressions on occasion as she talked with the man. She was wearing a ring with a stone which, if it were a diamond (and how can you tell from across the room?) would have kept me alive for a year. It was big enough that I wondered if it were real. Next to her were two guys, one young, one old, who were just finishing, and right by the entrance to the room was another pair of men who were always taking out hand-held devices and running figures. Both were speaking English, one with a notable French accent, one with the kind of accent native speakers get when they've been speaking another language for a long time. I never did figure out what kind of business they were in.
The Bourgignon appeared at last, and with it a round white thing with brown bits showing which turned out to be made up of potatoes, onions, and bacon, all molded into the shape of a cake layer. As for the stew, it was perfumed with the wine, cooked long enough that the bits of meat could be cut with a spoon, the whole thing topped with a few pearl onions and tiny carrots. I cautioned myself to go very slowly; this was too good to eat too quickly: the stew, the potatoes, the wine. It was, I began to realize, ridiculously old-fashioned, as was the decor. There was a shelf which went around the room on three sides. One part had ladies' straw hats, the one above me men's top hats, and the long wall against which the large party was seated was a hat miscellany which included a pilot's helmet and a diver's rig.
The two English-speaking guys were presented with a cheese plate and a new bottle of white wine, which they insisted on sharing with the hosts. Madame politely took a bit in a glass and they talked for a while. Finally, the American said something in French which ended with the word "mistress," and Madame straightened up, grabbed her glass and stalked from the room. I could see her, though, as she staggered up to the bar, finally able to let loose the laughter she hadn't wanted to let go in the dining room. She was laughing and gasping for air so loudly that the American wondered if she were okay. She eventually got herself under control, walked back in the room with a few tears still leaking out of her eyes, said something concise, and everyone laughed some more.
Even with the uptight bourgeoisie splayed against the back wall, I felt right at home in this place, which was inexplicable because I wasn't really interacting with anyone. But there was nonetheless a feeling of being guests, not customers, and it was a groove that was easy to fall into. Before long, though, I was finished, and being uncertain of the eventual bite, I declined dessert or cheese. Monsieur presented the bill, a whopping €44.40 -- 14 more than I'd wanted to spend, and just about half the money in my pocket.
I knew I was returning to extreme financial uncertainty, the possibility that I'd be completely out of money when I got back to Berlin. I knew I didn't have any work ahead of me, and only one magazine owed me money and was so overdue that I was beginning to wonder if I'd ever see it. I had no ideas what bills would have come in the mail while I was gone. I suspected I'd have a letter from my landlord waiting -- he hadn't heard from me since December, after all -- and as it turned out I was right.
But none of that mattered right at that moment. I'd had one of the best meals of my life, in surroundings that were eccentric and redolent of an age that's definitely past. I'd felt at ease and happy to be alive. That's what I'd paid for, and you can't put a price tag on it.
Monsieur had opened the front door and was standing outside on the sidewalk. What, I asked him, was that potato thing? "Gallette Lyonnaise," he answered. "Potatoes, onions, bacon. You put it on the plate to look like a cake, which is why the 'gallette.'" "And the potatoes make it Lyonnaise," I said. "Exactly." The air was cool and bracing. "You are at a hotel?" he said, pointing down the hill. "The hotel," I said, pointing up the hill. "Ah, rue Lafayette," he decided. I didn't disabuse him. He extended his hand. "Well, my friend, thank you very much. Come again." I told him I would and he went back inside. I started the climb to the firetrap I was going to call home for the night.
* * *
Post script: In writing this, I pulled out my bill for the first time since I'd paid it. Weirdly, it looks like the wine, at 19.80, was the most expensive thing on the ticket, since I remember the terrine at 7.80 and the Bourgignon at 16.80. Clever trick, although I can't prove anything because Monsieur's handwriting is totally unreadable. And this Frommer's review confirms that this wasn't just a lucky find -- if nothing else, the award from the French tourism folks confirms that there may be some calculation in what I saw. Still, the chef's credentials from places like the Cordon Bleu were genuine, and showed. It was a great way to end the trip.
Restaurant de la Grille, 80 rue du Faubourg Poissoniere, 75010 Paris. Reservations: 47 70 89 73
I landed in Paris Tuesday afternoon, and found the hotel I'd reserved with a service I'd never used before. Pretty dingy, as was the neighborhood, which was close to Barbes, the largely African quarter. If I'd had more time, like another day, I'd probably have gone in search of the place where a man who claimed to be "the spiritual leader of the entire Senegalese community here in Paris," told me, in perfect English, of his training with the French Air Force in Oklahoma and Texas. They had great fish baked with lemon there, and I bet they had other good stuff, too.
But I knew that in 24 hours I'd be back in a place which, next to California and Texas, would have extremely limited food options, and I wanted to celebrate the possibility of gastronomic greatness one more time. Which, considering I was in Paris, shouldn't have been too difficult.
If only. Well, okay, when I woke up from my jet-lag nap and splashed some water on my face and decided to get out of the nasty room and go look for something to eat I left my indispensable Michelin Map 11
behind, not the smartest move in a city I only know in bits and pieces. I figured, hey, I didn't have a lot of money, so I should just find some brasserie or cheap joint with a blackboard out front with some appealing choices, go in, and enjoy myself. I was tired, I'd go back to the hotel, read a little, and pass out. Seemed like a plan. Surely the neighborhood, so close to the Gare du Nord, would have plenty of places like that.
So I walked down the street the hotel was on, the rue du Faubourg du Poissonnier. After a few blocks, I saw a tiny place that looked like it hadn't changed in fifty years, but the prices -- no "menu," or multi-course, single-price meals, a la carte only -- seemed a bit high. I glanced at it and moved on. And on.
I walked down the rue des Incredibly Fat Prostitutes and wondered whether the forty-ish men who were striking poses in Calvin Klein yuppie wear on the same block were in the same business or the girls' "business managers." I made a turn and found myself on the rue du Wholesale Clothing. I found a sign which said I was in the Marais, a neighborhood I not only know, but which is stuffed with restaurants, but I couldn't figure out where I was. An hour had passed, and I was now officially hungry, not to mention somewhat lost. But luckily, I almost always have a compass in my head, and it wasn't like I'd never been in this general neighborhood. It's just that except for kebab houses and the occasional designer sushi place, there didn't seem to be anything at all to eat.
Further walking brought me to République and loads of dining options: Quick, Mac Do, Kentucky Fried... This was getting ridiculous. I decided to head back to the hotel and hit someplace by the station. I found myself on the rue du Château d'Eau, which is one African barbershop after another, men's and women's alternating, with the expected amount of socializing. Even on a Tuesday night, it was churning. But nothing to eat.
All of a sudden, I was back on the rue du Faubourg du Poissonnier. Now, that place I'd seen hours ago -- well, 90 minutes ago -- didn't seem so intimidating. I hesitated over the menu, then said to hell with it and walked in.
The front room was very small. A tiny bar was off to the left, as well as a spiral staircase pitched so that I was praying they didn't seat customers up there. A very morose middle-aged Indochinese woman (I use the word because you could tell that the country she'd left behind when she first got to Paris was French Indochina) was bringing out some panniers of raspberries. An old woman sat on a banquette to the right wearing a fawn cloth coat which one could say had seen better days except that it was also evident that it had never been anything but drab. Next to her sprawled a large dog, boxer-like but with a graphite-colored coat. She held its head in her lap and was stroking it. Between her and the bar were the entrance to the dining room and a table loaded with stuff to be served cold: some sort of terrine, something jellied, and the berries.
A stout, no-nonsense woman with pixie glasses emerged from the dining room. "Are you still open?" I inquired. She stared at me, giving me a top-to-bottom assessment. "Of course," she said. "What are you afraid of?" Huh? Was my French that bad? "Well," I said, "I'm hungry," and she smiled and led me into the tiniest restaurant dining room I've seen. Part of the problem was a huge party of perhaps 15 people against the back wall had taken up a lot of the room. I wound up wedged over by the silverware and bread service, scrutinizing the same menu that had been posted outside. The prices were still stiff, but it seemed that you could do okay if you were careful. And surely there was a house wine so I didn't have to order a whole bottle of one of the three on offer.
So: from a very basic menu, two very basic choices. Rabbit terrine and beef Bourgignon "a la ancienne," made the old way. Like I was aware there was a new way. The stout woman's male counterpart was a short, busy man who was obviously her husband, and it was he who took my order. "No, no rabbit terrine," he said. "Poultry. Even better." His eyebrows shot up when I ordered the beef, and I asked him if there were a house red I could have a pichet of. The eyebrows went up again, and he said "Of course!"
The wine and a basket of excellent bread appeared right away. I have no idea what the wine was except I suspect it was a Bordeaux, and it was better than any house wine I'd ever had. The terrine appeared next, and it was perfect: lots of elements mixed in, pistachios and peppercorns, organ meat and meaty bits, the whole thing finishing with a slight tang of alcohol which I suspect was marc, the grape-skin liqueur. As I was savoring it, I was presented with a crock of cornichons, a touch I've never really gotten, and one I'd never seen before which was perfect: sweet-sour pickled cherries. You don't want to eat a lot of them, but they do wake up your tongue.
Monsieur appeared again to take the empty plate, and informed me, gesturing at the long table, that it would be several minutes before the next course arrived. That was fine with me. I sipped the wine, ate a bit of bread, and looked at my dining companions. I couldn't make sense out of the long table, and in fact the only definite impression I had was that I was going to bop the kid who was sitting nearest me, who took to leaning waaaay back in his chair to the point where his arms, which were behind his head when he did this, almost touched me. The group was mostly young, mostly very square-looking, and utterly forgettable. Not so the woman who was at one of the tables directly on the other side of the room from me, dining with a male companion who was impeccably dressed. She looked to be in her mid-40s, and her unlined face and high cheekbones bespoke a sense of humor and an intelligence which was telegraphed by her facial expressions on occasion as she talked with the man. She was wearing a ring with a stone which, if it were a diamond (and how can you tell from across the room?) would have kept me alive for a year. It was big enough that I wondered if it were real. Next to her were two guys, one young, one old, who were just finishing, and right by the entrance to the room was another pair of men who were always taking out hand-held devices and running figures. Both were speaking English, one with a notable French accent, one with the kind of accent native speakers get when they've been speaking another language for a long time. I never did figure out what kind of business they were in.
The Bourgignon appeared at last, and with it a round white thing with brown bits showing which turned out to be made up of potatoes, onions, and bacon, all molded into the shape of a cake layer. As for the stew, it was perfumed with the wine, cooked long enough that the bits of meat could be cut with a spoon, the whole thing topped with a few pearl onions and tiny carrots. I cautioned myself to go very slowly; this was too good to eat too quickly: the stew, the potatoes, the wine. It was, I began to realize, ridiculously old-fashioned, as was the decor. There was a shelf which went around the room on three sides. One part had ladies' straw hats, the one above me men's top hats, and the long wall against which the large party was seated was a hat miscellany which included a pilot's helmet and a diver's rig.
The two English-speaking guys were presented with a cheese plate and a new bottle of white wine, which they insisted on sharing with the hosts. Madame politely took a bit in a glass and they talked for a while. Finally, the American said something in French which ended with the word "mistress," and Madame straightened up, grabbed her glass and stalked from the room. I could see her, though, as she staggered up to the bar, finally able to let loose the laughter she hadn't wanted to let go in the dining room. She was laughing and gasping for air so loudly that the American wondered if she were okay. She eventually got herself under control, walked back in the room with a few tears still leaking out of her eyes, said something concise, and everyone laughed some more.
Even with the uptight bourgeoisie splayed against the back wall, I felt right at home in this place, which was inexplicable because I wasn't really interacting with anyone. But there was nonetheless a feeling of being guests, not customers, and it was a groove that was easy to fall into. Before long, though, I was finished, and being uncertain of the eventual bite, I declined dessert or cheese. Monsieur presented the bill, a whopping €44.40 -- 14 more than I'd wanted to spend, and just about half the money in my pocket.
I knew I was returning to extreme financial uncertainty, the possibility that I'd be completely out of money when I got back to Berlin. I knew I didn't have any work ahead of me, and only one magazine owed me money and was so overdue that I was beginning to wonder if I'd ever see it. I had no ideas what bills would have come in the mail while I was gone. I suspected I'd have a letter from my landlord waiting -- he hadn't heard from me since December, after all -- and as it turned out I was right.
But none of that mattered right at that moment. I'd had one of the best meals of my life, in surroundings that were eccentric and redolent of an age that's definitely past. I'd felt at ease and happy to be alive. That's what I'd paid for, and you can't put a price tag on it.
Monsieur had opened the front door and was standing outside on the sidewalk. What, I asked him, was that potato thing? "Gallette Lyonnaise," he answered. "Potatoes, onions, bacon. You put it on the plate to look like a cake, which is why the 'gallette.'" "And the potatoes make it Lyonnaise," I said. "Exactly." The air was cool and bracing. "You are at a hotel?" he said, pointing down the hill. "The hotel," I said, pointing up the hill. "Ah, rue Lafayette," he decided. I didn't disabuse him. He extended his hand. "Well, my friend, thank you very much. Come again." I told him I would and he went back inside. I started the climb to the firetrap I was going to call home for the night.
* * *
Post script: In writing this, I pulled out my bill for the first time since I'd paid it. Weirdly, it looks like the wine, at 19.80, was the most expensive thing on the ticket, since I remember the terrine at 7.80 and the Bourgignon at 16.80. Clever trick, although I can't prove anything because Monsieur's handwriting is totally unreadable. And this Frommer's review confirms that this wasn't just a lucky find -- if nothing else, the award from the French tourism folks confirms that there may be some calculation in what I saw. Still, the chef's credentials from places like the Cordon Bleu were genuine, and showed. It was a great way to end the trip.
Restaurant de la Grille, 80 rue du Faubourg Poissoniere, 75010 Paris. Reservations: 47 70 89 73
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