Getting Settled in Paris

I'm doing my freelance writing shift at a sidewalk cafe in St. Germain des Pres at the moment, a move necessitated by the internet being out at my apartment this morning. My French really isn't good enough to call the provider and find out what's going on, so I'm hoping the situation resolves itself on its own! But as long as I'm here, watching the pedestrians stroll along the cobblestoned Rue de Buci, I figured it would be a good time to write an entry about my first few weeks in Paris, and share some photos I've taken.

I've now been here about three weeks, and I'm slowly adjusting to the "work-at-home" lifestyle. I have a freelancing shift I do for a news web site in the morning, and then in the afternoons I have French class every day for four hours (2 hours of phoenetics, two hours of grammar). The schedule has kept me much busier than I thought I would be, as evidenced by my lack of blog posts recently. Obviously the events of this week in the world's financial markets have inspired some ideas, and there's an entry I want to write about the root cause of the crisis, but I just simply haven't had the time. Why aren't I writing it now? Well I'm at a cafe nursing my capuccino, and it seems more appropriate to write about life in Paris!

So far I've actually found everyone here to be really friendly and nice, which is completely different from my previous visits here when I was visiting. Perhaps it's because I'm speaking French with people, although for more complicated interactions that has been difficult. It really is just a shockingly beautiful city. I've been utilizing the city's 'velib' service, in which you can check out bikes from stations posted around the city and return them anywhere else. The first half hour is free, and it's just a euro for each half hour after that.

This past Sunday I rode my bike around the city a bit, first visiting the Palais Garnier, the grand opera house at the center of Paris. It was really stunniny, I'm hoping to see an opera there before I leave. Afterwards I rode the bike to La Defense, the business district outside the city that is similiar to London's Canary Wharf. The tendency in Europe over the past 30 years has been to impose height restrictions for buildings in the city centers and establish skyscraper zones in specific districts outside the city. It was interesting to be in La Defense on a weekend, as it was almost completely deserted and I was able to ride the bike all around the walkways, platforms and planks. It's much bigger than Canary Wharf, and some of the buildings are really quite interesting. I went behind L'Arc de La Defense, a huge arch-shaped building that mirrors L'Arc de Triomphe miles away. >That's where the construction for La Defense stops abruptly, because there's a massive (and chaotic) cemetary there. Bizarrely, there's this long wooden plank that extends out over the cemetary. it looks as if it should be over a beautiful waterfront, and I rode my bike down it assuming that at the end there would be a stairway to go down to the cemetary/construction zone. But there was nothing, just a big plankway overlooking graves and piles of asphalt. Perhaps they're planning to put something in this area later? Afterwards I rode my bike through the Bois de Bologna, a gigantic park on the outskirts of the city just outside the ring road. It was rather uninspiring, as my guidebook predicted. But apparently they're planning to give it a big revamp soon.

Class has been ok, but not ideal. To my dismay the other students turned out to be mostly American college kids, all either 19 or 20. There are some other "older students," but not many, and none of them are anywhere near my age. It would appear the students in the program are either 19 or 40, but nowhere in between! There's a significant contingent of Latin American college students as well, but the Americans make up the overwhelming (and loudest) majority. I don't have a problem with their being American per se, or the fact that they're young. But they're clearly in this course for a very different reason than us old folks. Theyre on their semester abroad, and the course is being paid for by mom and dad. For that reason most of them are not taking the classes very seriously, and seem to be more focused on where they're travelling to every weekend than with how their French is progressing. Don't get me wrong, I was one of them once too! I mean, my study abroad semester in Prague was academically challenging (it's known as the most academic of NYU's study abroad programs), but I definitly didn't take my Czech language course very seriously as a 21 year old spending a semester in Europe and jetting off on fabulous trips every weekend. But I'm not in that situation any more. It's very important for my career that I have a proficient level of French by the end of this course, and I resent it when the American college students speak in English during the class and don't do the homework, because it's wasting my time. Maybe I'm just becoming a cranky old man.

My verdict on the city so far is that it's beatiful, very fun, but I don't think I would live here long term. It may be large and cosmopolitan, but it just isn't an 'international' city on the model of London or New York. It actually feels quite provincial. Most everyone I meet here is French, and most of them have never lived outside the country. In fact, I've met two people who have never even left the country! I can't imagine meeting any such person in London. Paris is just very French, in a way that London is definitly not British! London may belong to the world, but Paris belongs to the French, and they make that very clear!

I have some friends from London scheduled to come visit over the next few weeks, so hopefully the Eurotunnel mess won't mess up their plans. Other than that I hope to take some weekend train trips over the next few weeks. I hope to visit Lille, Normandy and Brittany in particular.

Eurotunnel Still Ablaze

I don't think it can be exagerated what a nightmare this fire in the Eurotunnel is causing for traffic, commerce and travel in the UK and France. Though when I went to bed yesterday the tunnel's operator was saying the fire had been extinguised, when I got up this morning I hear the fire is still burning. This does not look good for the long-term impact of the blaze.

The fire in the rail tunnel, which since 1994 has connected the UK and France running under the English Channel, was apparently caused by a truck/lorry overturning on one of the vehicle transport trains. Some injuries have been reported and hundreds of passengers have been left stranded. By some miracle, there were no passenger trains in the tunnel at the time of the blaze, amazing considering that 100 trains pass through the tunnel each day. The injured people were evacuated through the central service tunnel (the BBC has a cool diagram of how the chunnel works here).

1996, it took months to fix the structural damage to the tunnel. That caused enough cahos then, but since then the traffic through the tunnel has increased dramatically. If such a closure were to happen again for so long it would cause massive long-term chaos and an economic blow to Britain, the UK and Belgium.

Even more worrying, the overturned truck/lorry reportedly contained phenol, a deadly chemical that isn't allowed to be transported through the tunnel. The people who are reportedly in the hospital for smoke inhalation could have inhaled this chemical as it burned.

According to Wikipedia, the toxic chemical was used in the Second World War at Auschwitz as a means of rapid execution. Seeing as the fire happened on September 11th, there are some obvious concerned about whether this was truly an accident.

As someone who was planning to take the Eurostar train many times over the next several months, this is quite worrying. But for the economies of England and France in general, a shutdown of the tunnel for several months could be devastating. The majority of freight traffic between the UK and continental Europe now goes through the chunnel. In addition, the Eurotunnel just recently turned a profit for the first time, and there were big plans for expansion of the passenger services through it.

Just hours before the fire broke out yesterday, Air France announced it was launching its own high-speed train company through the tunnel which would take less than 2 hours, breaking the Eurostar monopoly. The journey currently takes a minimum of 2h 15m. Clearly there's a lot riding on the tunnel and its activity is only increasing. If anything were to go wrong with the tunnel at this crucial time it would have huge reverberations through France and Britain's economy.

Europe still favours Obama, but has it lost faith in the US?

Obama may be having trouble in the polls lately in the US, but a new poll by the BBC released yesterday shows that he is still favoured by the rest of the world by a large margin. A poll by the BBC released yesterday surveyed 22 countries around the world and found that in each one, Barack Obama was highly favored over John McCain to become the US president. In total, 49 percent of the global respondents wanted to see Obama win, compared with 12 percent who favoured McCain. 17 of the 22 countries thought that if Obama were to be elected, relations between the US and the rest of the world would improve.

I thought the results for Europe were particularly interesting, not because Europe's preference for Obama hasn't been well-documented before, but because although Europeans seem to think Obama will usher in a closer relationship between the US and its European allies, many of them aren't particularly interested in that becoming a reality. Although the majority of respondents in the 12 European countries surveyed said they thought Obama's election would bring closer relations with the United States, a majority also said they do not want closer ties with America. This would suggest that even if a president Obama were to heal the rifts between Europe and America, so much damage has been done by the Bush administration that Europeans now view the United States as an unstable or undependable partner. The logic being, if the elected a George W. Bush once, they could easily elect one again in the future, even if the preferred candidate is elected for now. The logic here would be that the election and reelection of George W. Bush exposed a fundamental difference in values between Europe and America.

Still, 67 percent of Europeans said the European Union should deal with international threats in partnership with the United States rather than independently. While this is a healthy majority, it is significantly down from previous years, and is about 10 points lower than the 75 percent of American who agreed with that statement.

US media still on the defensive

This piece of news from the US caught my eye today. It seems that Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, two of cable news network MSNBC's most popular personalities, have been demoted after the McCain campaign complained of a "liberal bias" in their coverage of the Democratic and Republican national conventions. For those in Europe who often find themselves perplexed by US broadcast media, this is probably an excellent lesson for understanding it.

There's been speculation over the past two years that MSNBC, which consistently ranks third among the cable news networks (behind Fox News and CNN) and has had trouble finding its voice since its inception, is going to veer to the left to try to become the "Fox News of the left." Fox News, which was launched in the late 90's promising to deliver news free of "liberal bias," is reviled by the left for its strongly conservative slant. All of Fox News' main personalities are right-wing, and its news coverage is often blatantly (and hillariously - as often featured on the Daily Show) enamoured with the Bush Administration and the Republican party. Tapping into the widely held American belief that there is a "liberal bias" in the US media, the network has been remarkably sucessful and consistently ranks above CNN.

So the thought was, MSNBC might try to emulate that success by becoming a network that favors the democrats. They began featuring Olbermann, who is a frequent critic of the Bush Administration and the GOP, more and more prominently. And Chris Matthews, who has been with the network since the begining, has been increasingly critical of the Bush Administration.

Back to the culture wars: Palin's brilliant debut

I just watched the Sarah Palin RNC speech on CNN Europe, and all I can say is wow. A star is born.

The speech was brilliant. In one fell swoop Palin managed to deliver one of the most vicious political speeches in modern history while at the same time coming off as sweet and domestic. While trumpeting her own "small town values" of compassion and simplicity, she outlined a series of blisteringly cynical attacks on Obama's 'elitism.' Trust me, this will play in Peoria.

Every European should watch this speech if they want to fully understand the current American political climate. The strategy employed here is classically American, and I think it will work. For a week the McCain campaign let the media criticise the Palin choice because of her inexperience (she's only been governor of Alaska for 20 months, and before that she was a suburban housewife - she's only left the United States twice) without seeming to offer any defense of her. Throughout the revelations about her teenage daughter's pregnancy, her questionable dealings while in the governor's office and her past as an Alaskan separatist, the McCain campaign refused to put her forward to answer reporters' questions, and even McCain himself was unavailable for comment. From the outside, it looked like the campaign was in full implosion.

But in reality, it was a set-up. The campaign was using the media circus around Palin to draw a record number of viewers for her speech last night (early speculation is that viewership will rival Obama's speech). Once they were there, she made herself out to be the victim of media elitism. How dare they question her lack of relevant experience for the presidency! They just don't appreciate small-town values like you and me. They are "entrenched interests" who don't want to see a "Washington outsider" come in and shake things up. It was brilliant, and the anti-elitist message will play big in the US.

The crowd went nuts. It's definitely been a long time since a group of Republicans felt so enthused. You can see from the reactions of the crowd, as the camera pans to their faces and they mouth "I love her!" This woman is going to be a force to reckon with.

What was also clear from this speech is that the GOP intends to once again frame this election in the context of the 'culture wars,' an us-versus-them mentality which seeks to capitalize on the fact that one half of the country seems to despise the other half. It's small-town, regular Joe Americans versus those liberal urban elites, and it's a tried and true tactic.

Yet the fact remains the idea of Palin becoming president is almost absurd, with her complete lack of relevant experience. This was echoed by the fact that she didn't bring up a single policy issue in her speech. And yet with McCain's age and his history of melanoma, this is a very real possibility. I'm reminded of the fictional situation that was presented with the short-lived NBC drama "Commander in Chief," in which Geena Davis plays a woman who was selected as vice president as a gimick, but then shortly into her running mates' term he falls ill and dies. She's expected to resign and allow the speaker of the house to become president, but instead she stays on. One can imagine that if something were to happen to a President McCain, such a situation would present itself.

It will be interesting to see what happens after this speech, but its hard to see how the McCain camp won't get a huge poll boost from it. And yet, it will be a tough act to follow for McCain's speech tonight. Perhaps all the enthusiasm and excitement that Palin has generated for the demoralized GOP will fizzle if McCain delivers a lacklustre acceptance speech.

Je suis arrivé à Paris

I've made it through my first few days in Paris, and actually the move has gone remarkably smoothly so far. My friend Lori came along to help me move and we took the Eurostar train over with three suitcases, two backpacks, and a giant Argos shopping bag full of coats. I guess I'm officially a migrant now. You bring the suitcases right on the train and there's no weight limit or anything, so it wasn't too much of a hassle. It's amazing though, a two hour train ride and I'm here in this completely different world. I'm so glad I took the train instead of a plane, it makes me feel like I'm not going very far from London. And really, I'm not am I?

Last week I had a series of goodbye drinks and festivities. First Wednesday night I had leaving drinks with my friends, then Thursday I had drinks with my coworkers, then Friday I had another night of saying goodbye in Soho before I left Saturday morning. It was all kind of surreal. On my walk from my flat to Seven Dials, walking down Monmouth Street, there's this spot where a French cafe faces an English cafe, and they each have these giant flags of each country, facing each other across the street. I just kind of stood there for a bit, as it seemed appropriate.

My flat here is great. It's a one bedroom in St. Germain des Pres, which is a really lively neighborhood. It's a nice place, perfect for what I need. And it's right next to the river so Notre Dame and Place St. Michel are just a 3 minute walk from my door. It's quite funny though because the decor is really feminine, kind of the polar opposite of my grubby London flat! It's a quick walk to the Sorbonne so it's perfect for going to class. The only problem is it's on a party street (the locals call it 'the street of the thirst') so there are people out partying in the street below my window every night till about 5am. There's no cars, so it's relatively quiet during the day, but at night is quite a different story! Ah well, I'll adjust to it probably.