Of protests and pineapple

Bonjour tout le monde!

Before I go any further, I wanted to say a little bit about capitalism. Yes, it may be a weird topic to discuss on a summer blog—or even during the summer, for that matter. For those of us who do not plan to spend our lives wasting away on the 67-bazillionth floor of a Manhattan high-rise, capitalism may not be one of those charming talking points at a dinner party.

Of course, as anyone who has ever seriously contemplated Ayn Rand or the stock market will tell you, capitalism has its faults. We don’t all turn out like Horatio Alger, and for every billionaire who rises from the dust of insignificance to wealth and renown there is a family barely scraping by at the Wal-Mart check-out line. The desire for riches spills over into the moral realm, as people are more than willing to take advantage of their lowers for the sake of the bottom line (which better, by the way, be in the black).

But, again, as anyone who has ever seriously contemplated Ayn Rand or the stock market will tell you, capitalism has its virtues. One only has to look at the current state of affairs in France to see that. Since I have started working here two and half weeks ago, the people at the médiathèque have been on strike twice. I asked one of my non-striking workers what they were protesting. Basically, he said, the French government just employs too many people. The number of fonctionnaires (people employed by the state) is too great to be able to meet all their demands. Even the workers at the Conservatoire are considered state employees, because it is a state institution. In order to keep everyone occupied and curb unemployment, France instituted the 35-hour work week. Compare this to the U.S.; a 35-hour work week is considered scandalously low.

Of course, when I asked one of my striking coworkers about it, the issue was much more serious. I had smiled when he told me that yesterday was going to be yet another strike day. “Non, c’est serieux,” he said (I promptly tried to look as concerned as I could). He went on to explain that the government wants to extend the number of hours in the work week, and is increasingly reluctant to spend money on pensions. Soon, he said, for every retiree who takes advantage of benefits, there will be two people contributing to the tax base (sounds a bit upside-down, doesn’t it?). Plus, he said, gesturing to the very-respectable phonothèque (in which we had just been watching a film version of Madame Butterfly), look at the environment in which they are forced to work!

Now, maybe I’m biased. Maybe I was raised on too many rags-to-riches storybooks. But these reasons just don’t seem to warrant the unceasing civil strife to be found in this country. I turned on my mp3 player this morning while pedaling on the exercise bike in the salle du sport, and instead of the usual morning traffic reports, news, weather, and such, there was music playing. Yep, a strike, this time by a different part of the French labor force. Protests have become a way of life for the French, as common and inconsequential as lint accruing in the Princeton dryers—mildly irritating if not planned for and taken care of, but easily fixed (most of the time). While the medical fees I have been researching for my job seem depressingly low compared to the United States’, and I gaze with mild contempt at the girls at the foyer who complain of having to pay 1000 euros a year for veterinary school, there is something to be said for a metro schedule that isn’t determined by strike dates, and a library whose workers are present more than 86.5% of the time, enabling it to be open for students 100% of the time it is supposed to be.

But one thing I really love about Paris is the sense of community that each arrondissement has (whether this is a result of socialist policies or not, I couldn’t say). This includes each neighborhood having its own defining character, personality, pace of life—and marchés!!! Open-air markets are one of the beautiful things about big cities, and Paris is full of them. Unlike markets in the states, though, the Parisian marchés are an established way of life that its citizens expect and are able to apply to every aspect of their culinary lives. At the Place de la Bastille, for example, ten minutes from where I live, there is a market every Sunday morning. Not only are there fruits and vegetables enough even to satisfy the most stringent vegan, but it is also a place where fish heads cost three euro, berry-laden pastries attract more children than flies, fresh rotisserie chickens get dizzy on their spits (that is, they would if they weren’t already dead), pita bread cradles falafel in fresh hummus, mold blooms on non-imported Roquefort cheese, and young, female, American stagiares learn to their delight that French corn bread does exist (and is work every centime spent—and then some).

Much as you may want to buy up the first box of fresh apricots you see, though, you have to scan the entire market if you want the best deal. I went to the market on Sunday with one of the French girls from La Vigie. We salivated through what seemed like endless lines of food, and even managed to hold off when a vendor tried to entice us to buy strawberries by saying that they are good for having children (yeah, tempting I know). We reaped the rewards of our patience, however. In addition to the soup ingredients I had planned to buy, I came out with two pineapples, a bag full of apples (yay!), and half a loaf of pain au mais (corn bread). The pineapples were part of a lot of four which the vendor was selling for only 1 (count ‘em, 1!) euro, which Marie and split. Of course, they wouldn’t have kept very long, hence the low price, but they were still perfectly succulent and delicious when we ate them…all…that day. Oh, and I must say something about the bread. It neither looked nor tasted exactly like American cornbread; it wasn’t sweet, and it wasn’t cut according to the dimensions of a spatula. On the contrary, it was round, beautiful, and looked like the advertisement for Panera or any bakery that touts the worth of its hand-made breads. Plus, as it was only 10 o’clock in the morning, it was still fresh, and had that lovely, dense cornbread texture that makes you want to curl up in front of a fire with a wool afghan. From now on, I am going to check out the boulangeries I pass on my way around the city. That is, if market day doesn’t come first. ;)

Until next time!