Baby Bottles of Wine

Yep, you read that right. The day after our Fontainebleau/Vaux-le-Vicomte excursion, a group of us went to Le Refuge des Fondues in Montmartre to celebrate Y.'s birthday.

At this point in my stay here in France, I've gotten pretty good at sifting through restaurant reviews. It's not uncommon to find wildly conflicting reviews about the same restaurant, with some patrons touting an establishment as "the highlight of their Paris vacation," and others saying it was the most over-rated tourist trap they'd ever fallen for, with bad service to boot.

First things first - ignore American complaints about poor service. In the States we're used to charismatic unemployed actors grinning at us as they regale us with descriptions of the day's specials and fastidiously note all our special orders - all in the hopes of getting a big fat tip. Here in France, service is compris, and leaving a tip is completely optional - a reward for truly outstanding service. Since I'm an obviously a poor foreign student, no Parisian waiter expects me to leave a tip, and the service usually reflects that. Mais, tant pis! I'm just here for the food, anyways.

Alors, I could tell by the reviews online that Le Refuge des Fondues was going to be fun. The people who wrote negative reviews online sounded like old farts. The people who wrote positive reviews sounded like they were young, adventurous, and had a good sense of humor.

Although Y. claimed she had called the restaurant and made a 6:30 reservation for us, they restaurant refused to seat us until 7:00, claiming they they didn't even open until then. Oh well - we strolled around Montmartre for a bit. We were finally seated at a long table against the wooden walls, which are covered in scribbles and carved signatures of past patrons.

The meal was prix fixe at 21€ per person, which got us all apéritifs, a plate of hors d'œuvres (head cheese, cheese, pickles, olives, and spicy potatoes), a choice of cheese or meat fondue, and - of course - the famous biberons (baby bottles) of wine (choice of red or white).

I think the wine has to come before the fondue to help you numb the guilt that comes with consuming ridiculous quantities of bread and molten cheese.

On nights like tonight, calories don't exist...

As one review aptly put it, it's neither the best wine in Paris, nor is it the best fondue in Paris - but it's one of the best quirky Parisian experiences you could ask for as a hungry/thirsty study abroad student!

Ornate Ceilings (Fontainebleau et Vaux-le-Vicomte)

On October 15th we ventured outside of Paris by bus to the châteaux of Fontainebleau and Vaux-le-Vicomte. It was our last CUPA excursion organized by CUPA, and I commemorated it for posterity by taking far too many pictures.

But the thing about historic châteaux is that when they're filled with ogling tourists, the rooms - grand as they may be - actually feel quite small. Sometimes the only thing you can get a good picture of is the highly ornate ceilings.

Here are the highlights from Fontainebleau...

(The king of France meant for the ceiling of this chapel to rival that of the Sistine. I've never been there, but what do you think?)

We dined in the town of Fontainebleau, then headed back to the bus for Vaux-le-Vicomte.

Vaux-le-Vicomte inspired such a jealousy in King Louis XIV that it prompted him to build Versailles! Unfortunately, our time there was cut a bit short, but here's what I managed to snap of the ceilings...

But my favorite part of Vaux-le-Vicomte was actually the gardens. I had a sudden urge to run and frolic with Beethoven's 6th symphony playing in the background, as if I were some pastel creature from Disney's "Fantasia." But French people don't really frolic, so I contained myself.

Although, when I saw these stone tigers, I just couldn't resist a pose in honor of my dear

Old Nassau!

MacDo

If you were wondering what the fast food in France is like, here's your answer: McDonald's (or MacDo, as it's not-so-fondly called here in France) brand-new goat cheese wrap!

These ads just went up in all the métro stations. Weirdly enough, the picture doesn't make it look that bad - but as we all know with fast food, what you see is rarely what you get...

On the other hand, I did go to a Quick - that's France's home-grown response to McDonald's. I think I heard it's now owned by the company that owns Burger King. Anyways, a few weekends ago, partway into sharing a bottle of rosé with a friend, I decided that I had not eaten enough that day. So we "quickly" (ha ha...so witty) found a Quick, and I picked up a vanilla milkshake with a shot of espresso in it for 1€. Yep, you read that right: one euro. Now, if it's just a once-in-a-while kind of thing, that's a fast food deal I can certainly live with!

Speculoos, aka My Kryptonite

The first step is admitting you have a problem. And I have a real problem, folks: I'm addicted to Speculoos paste.

What's that? you ask. Well, it's actually quite strange. Speculoos refers to "a type of shortcrust biscuit, traditionally baked for consumption on St. Nicholas' Eve in the Netherlands and Belgium." The thin, cinnamon-y cookies are now often served with coffee at restaurants year-round. You may also know them if you've ever been served one with your coffee on a Delta Airlines flight. The most common brand of Speculoos cookies is Lotus.

You're probably thinking, "A cookie? That's it? You're addicted to a regular old cookie?"

Just wait, dear readers.

Three years ago, a woman on a reality show had a strange, but brilliant idea: to make these cookies into a spread. Now, this would almost seem contrary to the order of nature: for example, we use peanut butter (a paste-like spread) to make peanut butter cookies, not the other way around! But this visionary woman defied the laws of nature and created a heaven in a jar, sparking some legal controversy along the way.

I'll be honest, I don't even really like the cookies that much. They're pretty ho-hum, even when you dip them in coffee. But when you pulverize them with oil into the consistency of Skippy peanut butter, that's when the magic happens.

Confession time: I bought this jar on Wednesday. By the end of the day Wednesday, half the jar was gone. By the end of the day Thursday, the whole jar was gone. There's just something about it that makes it impervious to my "just one spoonful" rule...

Unlike peanut butter (where you can argue a case for protein), Speculoos has no redeeming qualities other than having "good fat" (aka, not trans fat). So no excuses here: I just plain love the stuff, and I'm not ashamed to admit it!

I'm pretty sure a jar or two will stow away in my suitcase when I return to the US...

Coffee Connoisseurs Continue their Quest at Café Coutume

I ran into P. at CUPA the other day (we were both there straightening out some class logistics), and we decided to grab lunch together - and coffee. P. is a barista in Portland, so he knows his java - he's one of the friends who put his seal of approval on La Caféothèque a few weeks ago. So I knew I was in for a treat when he suggested a nearby café in the 7eme arrondissement.

When you walk into Café Coutume, you feel like you've stepped out of Paris and into some trendy little place in Brooklyn or LA. The décor is done in a soothing color palette; minimalist, but with some charming quirks. Plants grow out of stainless steel sinks, and there are rolling office chairs at a little side bar. There's a diagram of the human tongue on the wall.

Once seated, we were brought the menus (attached to clipboards) and a carafe d'eau. But this wasn't just any carafe d'eau - it was a test tube!

P. ordered a regular black coffee, while I opted for a café crème. FYI, that's what you have to order if you want coffee with cream in France - and it always costs extra. No free little containers of non-dairy creamer here! But no matter, I was quite hungry and didn't feel like subjecting my empty stomach to the burn of black coffee (albeit black coffee made from single-origin beans roasted on the premises). Usually when you order a café crème, you get a shot of espresso with the milk already mixed in, or on the side. But at Café Coutume, I got a lovely surprise:

Remember, I ordered a café crème, not a cappuccino! And it was as delicious as it was pretty!

Then came lunch. I ordered their Lebanese offering, which came impeccably presented on one of those trendy square plates:

An elegant presentation of tabouleh, flanked by succuluent roasted eggplant, a blob of creamy goat cheese, and some baby greens drizzled with lemon oil. Everything lightly sprinkled with sesame seeds. You could tell just by looking (and by tasting!) that these were high-quality ingredients. So high quality, in fact, that I think the 8,50€ price tag was well-justified.

I also noted as we were leaving that Café Coutume sells small bundles of vanilla beans from Madagascar. There were perhaps 7-10 bean pods in each bundle, which went for about 7,50€ each - though nothing compared to the deals I got in Madagascar, it's still the best price I've seen since leaving the island.

We then strolled up to Invalides...

...then across the Seine into the 8eme arrondissement - the part that's filled with high-end couture shopping (aka, nowhere near my appartment!) - where we gawked into the windows purportedly selling "stylish" clothes. Is it just me, or do "designer" stores often sell a lot of ugly things, too?

Then it was off to the metro to catch line 14 for class at INALCO!

"First Day of School" - A False Start

Monday, October 3rd was my first day of school. Well, sort of...

French universities start late. The earliest I heard of anyone starting this year was the last week in September (at Paris-IV Sorbonne); everyone else started the week of October 3rd. Including INALCO, the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations (also referred to fondly as "Langues' O"), where I am taking most of my classes.

So, swallowing my nerves, I boarded a Paris city bus and somehow found my way to the INALCO building in the 13 arrondissement (not far from where I stayed when I first arrived in Paris in August). It's a very new building - in fact, they just moved in for this semester, and things are still a bit chaotic as a result. C'est le bordel, as they would say in French. Students standing in long lines, waiting to sign up for classes (yes, they still do this ON PAPER here in France), a broken elevator - and my class was on the 5th floor (that's 6th floor if you count the American way!).

No matter, I somehow found the classroom, and my fellow classmates for beginning Malagasy written language : a middle-aged couple who are leaving in January to do humanitarian work in Madagascar, and an elderly woman who wants to do ethnography in Madagascar. So much for the intimidating Parisian university-age students I had been imagining!

Voilà la salle de classe,

clearly indicating the start of Malagasy language on Monday, October 3rd!

So the four of us chatted while we waited for our professor to arrive...and waited...and waited...

An hour went by.

One half of the middle-aged couple went downstairs to see if any of the secretaries had word on the location of our professor. In typical French university secretary fashion, none of them did.

So we waited some more.

It was supposed to be a three-hour class.

We waited three hours for a professor who never showed up.

Then we were supposed to have a half-hour break before our next class (Malagasy oral language practice), which was also supposed to be three hours long.

Now, quite frustrated myself, I went downstairs to see what news I could find. I found a table marked "Information." That seemed promising. I waited patiently in line to ask a lady at the table. She told me that since she had seen the head of the Malagasy department that morning, she assumed that classes were supposed to start today...

Thanks. Real helpful.

So while the elderly woman gave up, the middle-aged couple and I decided to wait one half-hour into our second three-hour class to see if a professor showed up, before calling it quits.

No professor.

Disappointed to have worked myself up for nothing and wasted an entire afternoon (the building doesn't have wi-fi!), but happy to get to go home early, I rode the metro home and bought myself a jar of organic fair-trade imitation Nutella to console myself.

It was only a few days later (after one of the lovely academic support people at CUPA went to INALCO in person the next day on my behalf, made several phone calls, and sent several e-mails) that the mystery of the missing prof was solved. Turns out, all the professors in the African studies departments just decided not to start class with everyone else and to wait a week. Go figure.

Welcome to the French university system, petite américaine!

So this meant an extra week of "vacation" for me, which gave me plenty of time to work on fellowship apps, thesis, and continue my "Couch to 5K" running program. And it gave me the perfect excuse to spend the weekend in Normandy - my first time back since I interned their through Princeton in France in 2009!

Although my internship in Normandy was only two years ago, it feels like much more time has passed since then. That summer feels like a part of my childhood, when I was a person very different from who I am today. But I felt my heart beat fast and I couldn't suppress a smile on my face as I watched Paris melt into emerald green hills dotted with spotted Norman cows...and by the time the train stopped in Lisieux, and I looked up at the Basilique de Ste. Thérèse, I was positively beaming.

This is where my spoken French became what it is today, this is where I lived on my own for the very first time, this is where I first got a chance to learn about myself away from everything and everyone that was familiar.

The weather gray and blustery, the food rich and hearty, the people warm and friendly...Paris, je t'aime, but Basse Normandie will always be my first French love!

Eureka! I have found it!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the French love their little individual plastic dessert cups. Be it chocolate mousse, crême caramel, fromage blanc, or yogurt, a French person will almost always take the time after a meal to indulge in some sort of creamy single-serving dessert (or at least a fruit purée like applesauce). As one might imagine, French supermarkets devote a remarkable amount of shelf space to these items, which usually come in two or four-packs, sometimes in glass or ceramic pots instead of plastic.

But despite the French love of creamy sweets, I found myself wanting when it came to Greek-style yogurt. While the battle for Greek-style yogurt market supremacy continues to rage between FAGE, Chobani, and Oikos in the US, the French seem disinterested. I asked the French about it: they said it wasn't popular here by any means. I couldn't even find a lonely attempt at Greek yogurt on a dairy aisle shelf.

Until now!

There, mixed in with all the boring regular yogurts, I saw it! Eureka! I found it! FAGE in France! At 1,50€ a pop, it wasn't cheap, but I was willing to consider it if I was desperate for that creamy, tangy, protein-rich filling that I sometimes just crave...

But then, more delight - Monoprix makes it own Greek-style yogurt! A four-pack for 1,61€ is a no-brainer!

The catch-phrase under the title instructed me to "make my spoon into an airplane and fly to Greece" - so that's just what I did!

I'll never go hungry for want of a creamy, sugar-free, protein-rich dessert again!