It's already Saturday afternoon -- the last few days have gone by quickly with nothing remarkable to mention -- kind of like Seinfeld's "a lot of nothing happened". A large part of the time has been spent catching-up on posting photos, writing journal entries and readjusting to being back on my own after the past ten days.
Tuesday, I finally gave-up on the washer/dryer(after one more load came out soaking wet after supposedly drying) and called the property management company to complain -- their answer -- "We know, that unit should have been replaced two weeks ago -- we'll have someone out to replace it tomorrow" -- next day they came, pulled-out the old unit, installed a new one and said they'd be back to finish the installation (some carpentry work with the toekick board) on Wednesday -- four days later, I'm still waiting and the board is still in the hallway. I'm getting the impression that that's the norm around here -- don't do today what you can put off until tomorrow -- and I don't think it's just me.
My experience so far has been that there's a fifty-fifty chance of someone under age thirty being able to speak at least some English and a ninety percent chance that anyone over forty speaks no English at all. Nonetheless, with my poor French skills and their poor English skills, I've actually been able to have a few conversations about everyday things with people and one theme goes along the line of -- "Someone was suposed to fix my (fill-in-the-blank) on Monday, today is Wednesday and they said they'd come by tomorow for sure" -- and then a smile and a chuckle. Have had the same type of experience in Colorado Springs but here they appear to have turned it into an "art form"!
Thursday, I went out and walked part of the neighborhood I hadn't explored -- stopped for an hour or so for the obligatory croissant and coffee (and people watching) -- got a couple hours of exercise and found a new boulangerie and boucherie that I may try out before I leave.
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Friday meant exploring a new marche on this side of Paris -- Marche Barbes -- and it turned into an eye-opening experience! Paris prides itself as a "multi-ethnic" cosmopolitan city and, having gotten out into the neighborhoods, away from the touristy areas, I can vouch for the diversity claim. Not to offend anyone, but, relatively speaking, Colorado Springs is not especially diverse -- it's pretty much a "Caucasian" town.
In Paris, to some extent because of the Colonial ties from the 1600's-1800's, you have people from all over -- North Africa, Eastern Europe, Russia, Asia, other Northern European countries, the Middle East, etc... and it's obvious as you walk the streets. On Friday, I came face-to-face with one of the realities of this diversity -- a huge percentage of these people are compartmentalized into "slices" of Paris and do not appear to be part of the larger Paris "community". The neighborhood where the Marche is located is one of those "slices".
The market itself was pretty typical -- mostly produce and fruit stalls, some clothing stalls, some notions/odd-and-ends stalls, some electronics stalls, etc.... It was the composition of the crowd and the vendors that stood out -- there were hundreds of people shopping -- I was one of maybe half a dozen Caucasians -- eighty percent of the crowd was from the Middle East with the rest from North Africa. It was pretty clear from the type of things and the amounts that they were buying that these people lived in the neighborhood and that this is where they did their bi-weekly shopping -- I also didn't see another person, other than myself, who got off the Metro and walked the two blocks under the Metro rail tracks to the market.
Sixty percent of the women wore head scarves and were dressed in typical Middle Eastern clothing, another twenty percent wore bright (blue, red, gold), flowing dresses from North Africa with their hair up in a traditional fashion. The men were dressed more main-stream but a sizeable number had North African/Middle Eastern headcaps. They spoke French, but frequent side conversations were being carried on in Arabic. Many of the business in the area had Arabic words as part of their name and although I've never been to North Africa or the Middle East, my impression was that you could have picked me up and set me back down in a marketplace in Libya or Iraq or the Sudan and it would have been very similar. Additionally, almost all of the vendors appeared to be from the same background as the shoppers as opposed to the other marches where there is typically a variety of shoppers and vendors.
One unnerving thing was the large number of young Middle Eastern men who were standing around in small groups on the corners or in shop entries or sitting on benches -- they would have been at work at that time of the morning if they were unemployed. Here in France there is an awareness of the huge number of these young men who are unemployed, have very little money, live with their parents, can't get married and pretty much have nothing positive going for them -- the environment that you could see potentially lending itself to radicalization. There appear to be entire ethnic communities that have not successfully assimilated into mainstream French culture.
Coincidentally, last night I watched a French documentary about Muslims in France that helped put some things that I had noticed here in perspective. A point the documentary tried to make was that older French people do not especially like blacks but they accept them whereas they actively dislike middle easterners -- blacks and middle easterners do not like each other -- those from North Africa do not like those from East Africa -- those from one middle eastern country don't like people from certain other middle eastern countries -- older people here in general just don't like others who are not like themselves.
Younger people fall into the same scenario but to a much lesser extent (part of which may be baesed more on economic issues -- stealing our already impossible to get jobs -- than pure racial issues). We have problems along the same lines in the US but here you can actualy see and feel it on the streets. Maybe it's more noticeable now because of the fairly recent radical Islamist attacks but the documentary position was that the attacks were due to the ongoing estrangement between the groups as opposed to the estrangement being due to the recent attacks. Who knows?
To me, the documentary's discussion puts some of what I have personally observed here into perspective. Shortly after arriving in Paris and while riding the Metro, I started to notice that if there was an empty seat next to a black or middle eastern person on a crowded Metro train, French men and women over the age of fifty would frequently continue to stand than sit down -- which I found odd. Then I noticed similar behavior between older black and middle eastern people. I, on the other hand, have no issues sitting next to pretty much anyone -- and I often felt like I was getting strange looks from older people on the train when I'd sit next to a black or middle eastern person -- as well as surprised looks from the middle eastern or black person. At first I chalked it up to my being an American (a stranger in their country) -- in retrospect, I think it's because I was breaking an unwritten rule about who sits with whom. Similarly, at the market the other day, while there were people who would bump into me and be a little obnoxious, people who were obviously French seemed to be treated much worse. I walked down the side streets next to the marche and got quick looks from the young middle eastern men smoking, whereas men who appeared to be French got hard stares -- maybe my imagination, but it felt different to me.
It's given me a new perspective on why things may be the way they are in Europe.
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Tried to go to a Paris Coffee Meet-Up this morning -- got there a little late only to find no one there and the cafe wasn't even open yet -- hung around walking the streets for a while before returning to the cafe -- still no one -- and my phone once again had stopped working so couldn't get or receive texts -- had a croissant and a cup of coffe on my own and headed for another marche a few Metro stops away. Got my phone working later and found out the Meet-Up location had been changed to a different cafe -- oh well!
Once again, got to the address where the marche was supposed to be and couldn't find it -- saw people with bags full of produce, so it must have been there somewhere but couldn't find it in half an hour of wandering -- even tried heading in the direction these people were coming from with no success -- glad I wasn't starving! Back to the apartment just in time to avoid getting caught in thunder and heavy rain (no lightning, just a lot of thunder). UPDATE: Just learned ten children were injured by a lightning strike (six in serious condition) from the storm -- happened about a quarter mile from me in a park -- didn't think the storm was that bad.
Watching the French Open here in Paris on tv this evening-- feels like I should try getting a ticket and going -- just don't feel like paying five hundred bucks for a couple of hours of entertainment.
