The Auld Alliance of Bagpipes (and silly costumes)

So I won't bore you with the story of how busy and how preggo I've been for the last month. I'll just post something that I've had on my camera for a couple of weeks and leave it at that...

Over the weekend of the 14th, Paris was inundated with Scots who came to watch the 6 Nations rugby match between Scotland and France. The Republique de Montmartre took this as an excuse to throw a parade.

The Republique de Montmartre seems to have a parade about once a month, whether it's to celebrate wine (which seems to happen quarterly) or classic cars, or the new year, or Saint's days, or, well, whatever they can dream up. This particular weekend, it was bagpipes, both Scottish



and Breton



and, of course, it was an opportunity for loads of people to dress up like Aristide Bruant and strut their stuff down rue Caulaincourt.

Morocco dreaming on a winter's day.

We've had a whole day of what American weathermen call "wintry mix" today, with sidewalks so icy that even the Sidekick didn't want to go for a walk. In my current, waddly state it's not advisable anyway, so we skipped it. I was browsing through iPhoto this afternoon and was transported back to our week in Morocco, part of which we spent in a village in the High Atlas Mountains. At this time of year, there's so much snow up there that the roads are impassable, so it's not as if I'm longing to go there right now...but in my mind's eye it has a Garden of Eden kind of allure. That, my mug of mint tea, and the Sidekick's steamy breath will keep me warm this evening.

Why Paris?

passage Cottin, Montmartre (photo by Marta)

When my husband Andrew and I meet people here, French or otherwise, they often ask, "What brought you to Paris?" or simply "Why Paris?" I suppose it's a common question, the expat/immigrant equivalent of the American "So what do you do?" Usually when we're asked "What brought you to Paris," we smile at each other before answering, "Paris." We're here simply because we like it here. When you're self-employed and work online, as we do, one of the biggest perks is that you can live wherever you like (within legal limits, caveat, caveat).

One of the tradeoffs of self-employment is that the line between "work time" and "leisure time" becomes blurred, to put it mildly. I'm very pleased, for instance, to have started this little photoblog: in blogging I've found a real hobby: something that interests me purely for its own sake, and gets me out of the house to enjoy my new city. (And in the process, I get to "meet" fascinating people from all over the planet--more on that another time.)

For the better part of the past two years, we've been developing our new social news website, APEsphere. For the first several months, we simply talked about it (amid a somewhat lunatic international courtship). As time wore on, we started working with a team of designers and developers (and got married and settled in to Paris in the process). As the launch date neared, we spent more and more hours hunched over our keyboards, developing, testing, and reading and writing content. We launched the site on January 20th, President Obama's Inauguration Day. To this Anglo-American couple, seemed a most auspicious launch date, particularly for a website whose mission is to help create real and lasting change.

In building and launching APEsphere, we've spent hours (days) on end when we could have been living anywhere, when we've barely seen the light of day, and haven't enjoyed the splendors of Paris at all. But when we do manage to back away from our keyboards and head out on the town, we're not just "anywhere." We're in Paris. Cosmopolitan, musical, lyrical, colorful, culinareriffic Paris. Where a simple stroll round the neighborhood is a sensual feast, and not just for the dog (although the dog, a former Manhattanite, adores Paris, in particular its boulangeries, street rotisseries, and cafes. In cafes, she is warmly greeted like a neighborhood celebrity). Often, when we Take the Day Off, we go see a film or an exhibit, or meet up with freinds. But just as often, we are likely to stroll "into town," that is, down the long slope from Montmartre to the Seine, and wander the vast network of Anglophone bookshops that dot central Paris. We peer in gallery windows and forbidden courtyards and decipher the city's historical markers. We get a coffee and watch the world go by. And we look at each other and giggle like children, and say, "we're in Paris." Although our Days Off are precious and few nowadays, they are full of riches. Therefore, we are rich. And people say Paris is expensive. Silly people.

If your work concerns critiquing your own culture, as ours does, it can be helpful to live outside it: living in Paris enriches our work as well as our leisure time. Standing outside Anglo-American culture gives us a new perspective. Juxtaposing French with Anglo-American customs and mores helps to unravel the mysteries of each.

The next question people ask, after "Why Paris?" is "How long do you plan to stay?" The answer is, indefinitely. Which is to say, we don't know. We may discover, down the line, that APEsphere needs to be run from New York or London, for example. But we're expecting what will inevitably be a French baby in July, and (s)he might have something to say on the subject. Which is to say we might not be expats so much as immigrants, a distinction that time alone can make. In the meantime, we'll keep working long hours as we expand our reader base (a bump from the Huffington Post yesterday didn't hurt--Is Detroit Preparing to Bully Americans into Polluting?). And when we're not working, we'll keep enjoying the Movable Feast.

Nouveau Église

Église Saint Jean de Montmartre, rue des Abbesses, Montmartre. A groundbreaking Art Nouveau church made of concrete, then all the rage in construction. Still is, come to think of it...it's very Modern, anyway.

rue André Antoine, Montmartre.

Artmobile.

rue Lepic, Montmartre.

This stupendous vintage Mercedes van is the property of one Christogach.

Party at the Hôtel de Ville.

What's been described as a VIP event in many places on the web was really just a lovely open house given by the mayor of Paris to his American residents. I mean, if I was able to get in, how VIP could it be?!

The doors of the impressive, if rather scruffy, Hôtel de Ville were opened to hundreds of Americans and their French friends to watch the inauguration on big screens together. Moments before the swearing-in ceremony began in Washington, Mayor Bertrand Delanoë switched off CNN and appeared on the stage with the American Ambassador Craig Stapleton.

Delanoë offered some remarks: “What we celebrate tonight is the hope of America. The hope of America will also be, somewhere, the hope of the French because like the American people, we hope that the election of Barack Obama opens a new era for peace, and for a greater respect between nations across the world.” (Basil Katz, New York Times) Ambassador Stapleton followed with a few remarks of his own in painstaking French, and then the jazz vocalists known as the Golden Gate Quartet sang the Star Spangled Banner. The crowd was getting a little nervous by this point--would we miss Joe Biden's swearing-in? There was a sense that the events in Washington were so important, so historic, that we couldn't bear to miss a second of them. The final round of applause for the quartet and the speakers was mingled with chants of "CNN, CNN."

To our relief the TV machine came back on promptly at 5:30 Paris time, 11:30 DC time. We watched, clapped, cheered, and cried our way through the event, and as a bonus laughed at Wolf Blitzer ("More people are watching this inauguration than have EVER watched ANY event in the HISTORY of television! This crowd is so big we're getting a satellite image so we can SEE IT FROM SPACE!"). We listened to Aretha Franklin (and marveled at her hat!) and Itzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo-Ma and, finally, to Obama's speech, with such reverence that the grand salle where we stood seemed like a cathedral.

Afterward, of course, there was Champagne and delicious nibbles (hard to get ahold of, I think, not because there weren't "enough," but because of the voracity of some of the guests) and more of the very enjoyable Golden Gate Quartet. But the sweetest "after" moment came when now-former President Bush boarded now-former Marine One to leave Washington. The crowd forgot their Champagne, for a moment, to cheer (jeer?) wildly and wave goodbye.

French media swarmed the event. Many Americans were interviewed by TV and radio crews, and print journalists huddled over laptops in corners. Even though we weren't "there" for history-in-the making, we had a sense of having gotten as close as we could have here in Paris.