An American weekend in Paris

Last weekend was excellent.

I don’t usually embrace my nationality a whole lot while in France (aside from the moments when I talk about how where I come from you can go shopping at 3AM on a Sunday if you feel like it whenever I feel particularly bothered with everything being closed). Last time I was here I would flat out lie and pretend to be British or Canadian, because people were seriously not fans of Bush. Obama, regardless of what any Americans think of him, is much more popular internationally, so I’ve stopped lying about being from the US. That said, I only have so long in France, and I’m all about profiter-ing from my time here by embracing the French-ness. And, for the first two and a half months, that was exactly what I did. Then I went to a skating competition.

I haven’t been to a Senior level skating competition (excluding synchro competitions) since I competed at Indy Challenge in the summer of 2004. That, US Junior World Trials in the late 90s, and the 2000 US National Championships are the extent of my competition attending experiences (as a spectator), and all of those were only National competitions. Indy Challenge was an early season competition with only Pairs and Dance teams competing, and since I was busy competing myself, I don’t remember much of that, although I’m pretty sure I saw the Senior Pairs Short. The US Junior World Trials were in a Chicago suburb when I was younger, and my dad took me to watch. That was a pretty fantastic experience—if I was skating at all at the time, I had probably been skating no longer than a year, and I was absolutely in awe of everyone I saw. It was especially nice because I saw several up and coming skaters and then got to see them break through over the next few years. My biggest skating competition experience to date was the 2000 US Nationals in Cleveland. That was awesome. Not even going to get into the details or this whole update will be about that.

Anyway, the point of this recap is that I have not been to a Senior level competition in years, and all the competitions I have been to were National competitions, where most skaters had a lot of friends and family around cheering them on like crazy. And as for the dozens of synchro competitions I’ve competed in over the course of my life, I was always pretty sure that the real competition was to see which team could cheer loudest, not which team could win.

The crowd at Trophée Eric Bompard (which, when I was a kid, was called Trophée Lalique, and thus I shall be calling it Trophée Lalique for the rest of this update and probably the rest of my life as well as I do not adjust well to change) was not nearly so boisterous. On the few occasions when they were boisterous, it was for either for the two Frenchmen competing or for one of the Japanese ladies competing. The German World Champion pairs team also got lots of cheers, as did Finnish ladies champion Kiira Korpi. Not sure how there were so many Japanese fans there, but it makes sense that in Europe there would be a decent German and Finnish turnout. While I like figure skaters from all over, I’m definitely a bigger fan of US figure skaters. Maybe because I know more about them, I see them more often on TV, or because I can find more long, complicated ways in which someone I know knows someone they know—whatever the reason, most of my favorite skaters competing this weekend were American. And I supported them vocally.

At first I figured maybe I just knew too much about skating when I was the only one cheering for American pair team Felicia Zhang & Taylor Toth. I am, after all, far more invested in skating than the average person and they are, after all, just on their first season at the senior level. I could hardly blame people for not applauding them when the former Pairs World Champions were there. So, I continued the pairs event not too distressed by my excessive cheering, and it was a great event. I loved Zhang & Toth’s program, and in general pairs is a much better event to watch live than on TV. I had been completely disillusioned during the Olympics with what used to be my favorite event, but I was pleasantly surprised. Russians Bazarova and Larionov were fabulous. I hate admitting that people other than myself are right (particularly when it means I end up supporting a huge pairs dynasty like Russia, because I’d always rather cheer for the underdogs), but the Russian system of training really leads to amazing ice coverage and fantastic skating skills. It’s incredibly obvious in person but much harder to pick up on when watching on TV. Savchenko and Szolkowy, who won Worlds in 2008 and 2009, were also excellent, even though they did skate to Pink Panther, which is not my favorite music (largely because I had to skate to it and was less than pleased with my costume). They and the Russians were just in a different field from the rest of the competition.

The men’s competition was what I was least excited for, and for good reason. The highlight was Frenchman Florent Amodio, who did a very fun dance-themed program (Michael Jackson music included) and had the crowd going insane. There’s nationalism for you—I heard more “ALLEZ”-ing in the minute before his program started than I probably have in the rest of my life combined. He skated a really strong program and came in second. Brandon Mroz of the US was third, and while he was pretty good, the only thing exciting about his program was that I caught some people waving an American flag, which suggested that maybe I wasn’t the only American around!

There was a short break for the medal ceremonies for Pairs and Men’s. The medal ceremony did not include any real flags, just the images of flags projected onto the center video thing.

Ladies were next, and I was really excited to see the ladies field. Americans Mirai Nagasu and Alissa Czisny were competing (two of my favorite American ladies skaters, both of them former National Champions—Mirai in 2008 and Alissa in 2009), as well as Mao Asada (World Champion and Olympic Silver Medalist last year and the only woman competing today with a consistent triple Axel), Kiira Korpi (who won Nebelhorn Trophy earlier in the season, and who is three months younger than me…which makes her old for a figure skater, but I still can’t believe that I’m older than most figure skaters now), Lena Marrocco (who is French and adorable and definitely younger than me), and six or seven others who I will not document so as to keep you from getting too annoyed with me. Unfortunately, the event wasn’t the most well-skated event I’ve ever been to, but it was still fun to watch. Marrocco started off with a nice triple-triple, but she started to fall apart as the program went on, and she was clearly exhausted by the end. I was pleasantly surprised by Sonia LaFuente from Spain. I had never heard of her going into the competition, but she skated a clean (as best as I can remember) program to Les Miserables. I don’t think she has her triple lutz yet, but she’s a lot of fun to watch and I’m excited to see where she goes from here. Mao Asada, who has had a terrible season so far, had a very rough skate. She was going for the triple axel during the warm up with decent attempts—one two-footed landing and one fall, but in the program she did a single and a double on her attempts, which was disappointing. She’s supposedly reworking her jump technique, but I have to wonder at the wisdom of competing while doing that, because I think she only managed to pull off one clean triple the entire program. It’s been a rough fall for her, but she’s a lovely skater and I’m hoping she manages to bounce back by Worlds.

It was when the second group of ladies skaters took the ice for warm-up that I started to realize that yes, I really was the only one cheering for Americans. It’s one thing to not cheer for a team just up from juniors, but Mirai Nagasu was fourth at the Olympics last year. My enthused reaction to her getting on the ice led the woman next to me to ask if I was American, which is the first time I’ve ever been asked that in France. Guilty as charged. This ladies group (which consisted of the medal contenders) unfortunately didn’t end up skating that much better than the first group. Alissa Czisny is an absolutely gorgeous skater. She’s taller than your average figure skater, but that gives her a really nice line on the ice. Her edges and spins are incredible, and I love watching her. Until she jumps. Because, sadly, most of the time she jumps, she doesn’t come down the way she wants to. And, once she makes one mistake on a jump, you can usually assume that she won’t land another clean jump for the rest of the program. As lovely as her program was, that’s exactly what happened. Mirai Nagasu had the strongest program of the night and won the long program (coming in second overall by a mere .05 since Korpi had a lead from the short program). Obviously, she did a great job and was clean on all her jumps (to the naked eye, anyway—she got marked down on a couple by judges using instant replay, which is fine), but she had a sad mishap on a layback spin that was painful to watch. It looked like she caught an edge and then she was completely unable to keep the spin going, which had to cost her a lot of points. Anyway, it was a huge improvement over her earlier long program this season, and it gives her something to focus on for Nationals and Worlds. I’m not wild about her long for the season; it seems a bit dull and doesn’t sing the way her past programs have, but it’s a post-Olympic year and there are bigger problems in skating. Kiira Korpi skated an overall solid program with one fall, and she does a great job on edges and transitions. I still think she needs to attack her last footwork sequence more (the music is Evita and that particular piece is Buenos Aires, which just begs for an awesome footwork sequence), but she’s really polished for this early in the season. Korpi was first, Nagasu second, and Czisny third.

By the time the Ice Dance event came around, I was cold (I think that the amount of time I’ve spent in ice rinks over the course of my life has permanently altered my body temperature and thus makes me get cold far too quickly), tired (despite all that time spent in ice rinks, much of it at six AM, it appears that I’m no longer very good at getting up at six AM to catch trains to Paris), and my back and calves hurt from sitting for so long (yes, I’m an old lady). But ice dance has taken over ladies as my favorite event ever since Michelle Kwan stopped competing, and it’s always been one of my favorite things to work on when I skate. While the Olympic Champions Tessa Virtue & Scott Moir had withdrawn from the event (the nerve of Tessa’s shins to get injured!), another of my favorites teams was there: Nathalie Pechalat & Fabian Bourzat. They, however, were the last to skate, so we had to first get through a Chinese team that skated to a weird techno version of Singin’ in the Rain (I wanted to give them a deduction for poor music). We then got treated to Canadians Kharis Ralph & Asher Hill, skating to Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. They were wonderful, with really nice knees and edges, and his lines on the ice are gorgeous. Following them we had a young American team just up from juniors who I’d never heard of (Cannuscio & Lorello). They had a rough skate, but they have a lot of raw talent and excitement, so they’re definitely another team to look out for. Another American team, Chock & Zuerlein, skated to Cabaret and a had lovely routine except for the part where she fell over and he dragged her along for a few feet. In synchro you’re supposed to immediately let go of anyone who falls, but maybe that’s not a rule in ice dance. They wound up with the bronze, a Russian team that didn’t make much of an impression on me was in second, and the utterly lovely Pechalat & Bourzat won with a Charlie Chaplin themed program. I first came across Pechalat & Bourzat in early 2008 when I was studying in Avignon. They were not the top French team at the time, but I happened to see them on TV during the European Championships and their edges and knee bend were amazing. I wrote in my journal at the time that they were going to be international contenders soon, and here we are, almost three years later, and they’re one of the top three teams in the world.

In case any of you are still reading this (HA! Maybe Anna, if she’s really procrastinating, but I’m pretty sure I lost everyone else with all the skate babble, and the only reason Anna understands it is because I forced the poor girl to learn everything I knew about skating so I’d have someone to talk about it with), I shall now quickly sum up the rest of my weekend and let you get back to your lives. I went to my hostel, got slightly lost on the way there even though I’d been there before, crashed, woke up, enjoyed my free breakfast and the fact that it came with free tea since this was a British hostel, hopped on the Metro since I had a few hours to kill before my train left, and searched out one of the only places that I knew would be open on a Sunday morning in Paris: Starbucks. I splurged on a tall skim mocha (since I am very well acquainted with French milk vocabulary and thus can ask for such things as skim milk) and spent an hour listening to Frank Sinatra and people watching. I figured that while I was being blatantly American over the course of my weekend, I might as well go all the way and have some delicious corporate behemoth-made coffee. And I enjoyed it.

Okay, I had hopes of getting entirely caught up, but I am just going to post this and be done with it. On our next installment: work, weather, and…um…walking? I do a lot of walking, I’m sure I can find a way to bring that up somehow.

Fine, make me spend a week in Paris. See if I care.

I’m determined to get this written up and posted by the end of the day, because starting tomorrow, I will be entering novel-writing mode. I’m going to attempt to do NaNoWriMo again, and that means that these blog posts may become more sparse for the month of November. Don’t worry, I’ll be back by December with lots of new stories to tell.

Last Sunday, just before I was set to take off for my break, I got an e-mail from SNCF saying that I should check their website since they had lots of cancellations due to grèves. Sure enough, when I went and checked, my train was canceled, and this called for some last minute reshuffling of my schedule. The girl I was going to meet up with in Strasbourg had already told me that due to a last minute change in plans, she wouldn’t be making it to Strasbourg, either. So I did some quick decision making and ended up deciding to stay in Paris the entire time. I’m disappointed that I didn’t get to Strasbourg, but I know I have plenty of breaks in the future, so I’ll definitely try to get there next spring. And there are worse things than a week in Paris.

Early Monday, despite the fact that my train was canceled, I headed to the train station to try and get another train into Paris, hopefully that day. It was far simpler than I had imagined, and I ended up getting a train that arrived only a little bit later than my original train was supposed to. To my surprise, I arrived without any other trouble and once again managed to navigate the Metro without any disasters. I like the Paris metro—I’ve never once gotten lost taking it, though I do occasionally get confused upon exiting.

In Paris I was staying with another Marquette alum, Amelia. She was one of the roughly three other people who studied French at Marquette (so that’s a slight underestimate…maybe there were seventeen other French students at MU. On a good day.), and she also happened to study abroad with me in Avignon a few years ago. Once again we’re back in the same country doing the same program, and lucky for me, she was nice enough to put me up for my trip.

As soon as I got in we went to a grocery store to procure food for a Avignon-style picnic at the Luxembourg Gardens right by Amelia’s apartment. We had some chèvre, basil, and tomato sandwiches on a fresh baguette with wine and chocolate, and it was simply lovely. Some of my favorite memories of Avignon are the many picnics we had on the Ile, and it was fun to relive that.

Tuesday morning, once I managed to pull myself out of bed, I set off for the Palais Garnier. I was feeling a little bit desperate to take in some culture while in the city, and I really wanted to see a ballet while in Paris (there are very few ballets performed in farmland). They still had tickets available for 8€, though they obviously weren’t the best seats in the house, so I grabbed two of those for that evening. I had no real destination for the rest of the day, but I was pretty desperate to wander around the city a little bit. I stopped by the Galleries LaFayette, which has a gorgeous dome, because they already had their Christmas decorations up. Under the dome they had a huge Christmas tree, and there were presents hanging from the ceiling. It was quite impressive. My wanderings then lead me down Rue des Italiens, which I selected for no real reason whatsoever. After continuing that way for a while, I turned left because I happened to notice a nice view of a church and Sacré Coeur in the background. I thought that it might’ve been Place de la Madeline, but once I got there I discovered that no, it was Notre Dame des Lorettes, and that apparently there is no limit on the number of impressive looking churches in Paris. I meandered my way through the streets, stopped in a few stores, bought a quiche for lunch, and managed to resist spending 4€ on a tall mocha from the first Starbucks I’d seen in over a month.

After my ambling morning, I got back on the metro and went out to Parc Monceau, which Amelia had recommended to me. I was lucky enough to have gorgeous weather pretty much the entire time I was in Paris, and that afternoon in particular was quite nice for wandering around the park. It’s a pretty whimsical place, with statues and monuments plopped down at random intervals. According to one of the signs on the outside, it was created as an attempt to make “a truly French park,” and it definitely had that feeling. I sat and scribbled for a while in the sun when I got tired of wandering, and then I made my way back to Amelia’s to chill for a bit before the ballet.

I knew nothing about Paquita going into it, but I didn’t particularly care—I just wanted to see a ballet. And I did indeed get to see it, or at least 60% or 70% of it. I was expecting to have seats in the back, but I wasn’t expecting to have seats that looked directly across at the other side of the audience rather than at the stage. We missed a chunk of the dancing that was taking place on the left side of the stage because of the odd angle, but I enjoyed the ballet nonetheless. I was a little confused story-wise about what was going down—all I got from the first act was that there were gypsies, and some evil guy among the gypsies was trying to kill a Prince Charming-esque character (who was fittingly blond), but Paquita had a thing for the prince, which we gathered from the fact that they did a pas de deux together. The bad guy hired some evil people (who we knew were evil because they were wearing black capes) to help him out, and then invited the noble dude over to dinner. Paquita found out about the plan, and after much hilarious gesticulating, she was able to save Sir Blondie. End Act I. In Act II, Sir Blondie brought Paquita back to the court, and there was a ball and lots of dancing. There was also some very confusing gesticulating towards a painting of the king, and upon checking with Wikipedia, we learned that due to a piece of jewelry Paquita wore, they realize that she was also a member of the nobility and had been kidnapped by the gypsies as a child, which meant that she and Sir Blondie (a far removed cousin) could get married. Hurray!

Aside: Paquita’s world premier was done by the Ballet de l’Opera National de Paris in 1846, the same company that we saw perform it. That was pretty awesome to find out.

Almost as exciting as the ballet (though without any bandits running around) was the building itself. For those of you who have seen the 2004 movie version of Phantom of the Opera, this is the building it takes place in (though they just built a set to make it look like that). There is an amazing main staircase, incredible arches everywhere, mosaics covering the ceiling, and one hell of a chandelier. You do not want that thing dropping in the middle of a performance. The building itself also has an interesting history—they had a lot of trouble building it because it was on top of an underground lake (the inspiration for the phantom’s lair) and the chandelier did in fact fall at one point, killing one person. The outside of the building is just as impressive. See photos from my last post for details, there’s no way I’ll be able to do it justice.

After the ballet let out, Amelia and I went out to dinner at a restaurant recommended to her by one of her private English students. I ordered duck, which was delicious, and Amelia was braver than me and got beef tartare. It was a great meal, but we had a rather annoying waiter who was being a punk and seemed to dislike us for speaking in French to him when he spoke to use in English (and yet he had befriended another group of annoying American girls doing shots). We had to ask twice for the check, and ended up getting it from someone else. That was the downside of the meal, but I’m going to choose to remember the food instead.

Wednesday was entertaining in that very little went right. Amelia and I headed to a café to enjoy some coffee, but we managed to randomly pick an outrageously priced café and I ended up paying almost 5€ for my café au lait. Oy. I spent the rest of the day reminding myself that it was really, really good coffee. From there, we went over to La Conciergerie, which is the prison where they kept Marie Antoinette. I had heard good things about it, and I really wanted to visit it. We got in the line, which was the same as the line for Sainte Chapelle, and decided to stop and see Sainte Chapelle as well. After a long line and a security check, we got in to discover that La Conciergerie was closed until the day I left. Excellent timing, France. We decided that we might as well see Sainte Chapelle (especially since it was free for Amelia). In theory, it should’ve been free for me as well, but apparently my lycée didn’t give me whatever card it was they should’ve, so I ended up paying to get in. THEN, because France really wanted to make a point, we got in to discover that a good chunk of the chapel was closed for reconstruction. At this point, I shrugged, laughed, and took pictures of what I could see.

We walked over to Pont des Arts afterwards, which is a bridge with chain link fences on the side. The fences have lots of locks hanging on them—apparently it’s a thing for couples to leave locks there with their initials and the date. I assume people come by to cut them off periodically, but there were a couple locks that were older, including some from before I was born. At this point we decided it was lunch time, and so we headed to a market to grab some cheese and fruit to bring back to the apartment for lunch. In the afternoon we met up with one of Amelia’s friends, Marina, who is also a teaching assistant in Paris, and we stopped at a costume store since they were looking for Halloween costumes. Halloween is definitely not popular with the older generations here (I asked about it and was told that a lot of people don’t like it since it’s so close to All Saints’ Day, which is a really big holiday here…I thought the whole point of it was that it’s the day before All Saints’ Day, but what do I know? I’m just a stupid American!), but some of the younger generation seems to get into it, and companies definitely use it in their advertisements. We walked back over to the Luxembourg Gardens afterwards and sat and chatted over there. I tried to stop by the Montparnasse Cemetery that evening, but it keeping with the rest of our Wednesday, it was closed. I ended up staying in since I was feeling rather exhausted. I forgot about the whole part of travel that makes you want to sleep for twelve hours at a time.

Thursday morning Amelia and I went back over to the Montparnasse Cemetery (after stopping for pain au chocolat, which we did pretty much every day I was there), which was open this time. Hurray! There are a lot of famous people buried there, but I was most interested in seeing the graves of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. I like existentialism, so a trip to their graves was necessary. I probably should’ve searched out some other famous graves, but instead Amelia and I just wandered the cemetery (which really feels a lot more like a garden or a public park than a cemetery), taking pictures of things. We found a bench after an hour or so and sat down to people watch and talk. I spotted a guy who looked remarkably like Cyrano de Bergerac, complete with a heavy cloak, a mustache, and long curly hair. It was a low-key sight-seeing trip, but I enjoyed the chance to catch up with Amelia and just take everything in. Once our stomachs started making noises, we decided to set off for lunch, even though it was already after 3pm. Whoops. Later that afternoon we went over to Cité Université, which felt more like a college campus from the US than the middle of Paris. There were lots of people running and students wandering around. It’s a very international school, and each country has its own housing place for the students from that country. There’s a pretty park that we walked around for a bit, and then we headed off to meet Marina for dinner.

I had demanded pizza while I was in Paris, since I have been having a terrible time finding decent pizza in Rennes. They have pizza, but it tends to be covered with salmon or chèvre, and while I do love my chèvre, it does not belong on a pizza. Where’s the mozzarella? Anyway, one of Amelia’s friends had recommended a delicious pizza, and I was quite satisfied with it. I just had a plain cheese pizza, but it was very good. And then, because I hadn’t consumed nearly enough calories yet over the course of my trip, we all got profiteroles to share. Yayyyy profiteroles! And, best of all, we had a very nice waiter, so that just made the experience even more enjoyable. He totally got a tip.

From there we headed back to Amelia’s, where we drifted off to sleep while watching Amélie.

Friday I headed back into Rennes, and I arrived delighted to discover that fall had stopped by while I was gone. The trees are finally changing colors, and it’s gorgeous. I was starting to worry that they just didn’t have a fall here (or at least not one with pretty colors, which is the whole point of fall as far as I’m concerned), but thankfully that is not the case. I’ve spent the weekend running errands, doing laundry, and trying to get back on top of everything I can before I lose the next month of my life to writing a novel. Tonight I’m going to be hanging out with a bunch of people (largely Americans) who have no objections to celebrating Halloween, even if tomorrow is All Saints’ Day. Classes start up again on Wednesday, and hopefully (fingers crossed) there will be students. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?

I’m afraid this has not been one of the most interesting blog entries I’ve ever written, probably because I’m too busy trying to finish it to be exceptionally entertaining. Sorry about that! You could file a complaint, but I might not get around to reading it until December 1^st.

Happy Halloween!

Paris: Proof

While I try to put together a coherent blog about the last week, you get to look at pictures!

1) Galleries LaFayette is already all decked out for Christmas. Guess that's what happens when you're in a country with no Halloween and no Thanksgiving...


2) I looked down a street while wandering and caught a gorgeous view of Sacre Coeur behind another church, Notre Dame de something or other.


3) Parc Monceau, a lovely and whimsical park.


4) Palais Garnier at night, after seeing Pacquita (a ballet). Otherwise known as the Phantom of the Opera opera house!


5) What SHOULD have been the front of Sainte Chapelle, but France was being France, so instead we have a picture of a picture of the front of Sainte Chapelle!