Up, up and away …

Posted on by je parle américain

Saturday afternoon, I joined some friends at Parc André-Citroën to do something I’d never done before: ride in a balloon! That’s right. Perhaps surprisingly, this almost 40-year-old had never, ever gotten inside the basket of a hot air-balloon to make an ascent. It’s not that I’m afraid of heights. (I have, after all, been to the top of the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building, and the Sears Tower in Chicago. I’ve even gone parasailing.) It’s just that, for whatever reason, I had never gotten around to doing this before yesterday.

I was invited by a friend who was doing field research for a presentation on Parc André-Citroën. This 59-acre park was constructed on the site of the 1915 Citroën factory, where André Citroën built one of the first fleets of French automobiles. That factory closed in the 1970s, and the city of Paris purchased the property and opened the park in 1992. The park features an expansive central lawn around which are situated two greenhouse pavilions, “dancing fountains” where kids (and adults) can play in the spray of the jets during the summer, a reflecting pool traversed by a suspended walkway, and six ornamental gardens. But what drew me to Parc André-Citroën yesterday (in addition to catching up with friends, of course) was the opportunity to take a ride in the Ballon Air de Paris. Continue reading Up, up and away …

An American … no, make that eight Americans … in Père Lachaise

Posted on by je parle américain
Your Guide to Père Lachaise © 2011 Michel Pouradier, all rights reserved

Best known to most Americans as the final resting place of Jim Morrison, Le Père Lachaise cemetery is the largest graveyard in the city of Paris, occupying 110 acres in the 20th arrondissement and having over 1 million interments. I can still remember my first visit to Père Lachaise back in April 2009—it was nothing like I had expected. There, in the center of a bustling multi-ethnic quarter, was a veritable city of the dead, with streets that actually bear names and divisions that function somewhat like little neighborhoods. It was even large enough to have a map with an alphabetized key for locating the grave sites of literally hundreds of its most famous occupants. I spent a few hours during that first visit, strolling along wide, tree-lined avenues and down narrow, winding cobblestone chemins in search of such luminaries of French literature, music and history as Honoré de Balzac, Marcel Proust, Georges Bizet, Jean de la Fontaine, Édith Piaf, Molière (who isn’t really there, but that’s another story), and even the legendary twelfth-century lovers Abelard and Héloïse (at least according to the 1817 marketing scheme to attract cemetery plot purchases).

Continue reading An American … no, make that eight Americans … in Père Lachaise

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood …

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… And sorry I could not travel both / And be one traveler …”

— “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost

“But, what does Robert Frost have to do with your life in France?” you’re probably wondering. “Shouldn’t you be citing Verlaine or Prévert or somebody else with a French name?”

Well, as a matter of fact, I should be. Just last Thursday, Monsieur Carlier, my French teacher at CCFS, encouraged us all to recite “L’Albatros” by the French poet Charles Baudelaire … or at least some part of it. It is, after all, the first poem that we’ve studied this semester. In the alternative, however—knowing that most of us wouldn’t be able to recite a French sonnet, whether out of timidity or just sheer laziness—we could recite something in our native language. This was a French class, though, so we would have to explain (in French, of course) the meaning of that incomprehensible barrage of foreign words, be they Russian, Japanese … or English. Continue reading “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood …