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PARIS LATELY.
There´s lots on my mind these days and the city is a flutter with newness. The big story of course is the French presidential elections which are coming up fast -- the frontpage of Libération this morning showed Jacques Chirac looking weiry and the caption read: Putain, Encore Six Semaines ! Which would probably be censored by lots of servers in our Puritan homeland if translated. In any case, it´s hard to imagine a photo of George W. and the line "Son of a bitch, six more weeks!"
The polls are showing that Socialist PM Lionel Jospin would sneak by the Gaullist prez by a few points in the second round if the elections were today. They´re not. What is kind of disappointing about French politics these days is the absence of fresh ideas. Yeah, there are some cool small stuff like paternity leave for dads, but no one has really addressed the issue of innovating the post internet-boom economy or tackling the mounting problem of crime in the cities and suburbs. The police is psychologically ill equipped, and worse, the French public does not possess a collective mind-set for community civic action. In fact, grass-roots community involvement is pretty un-French. Parisians will pour out into the streets in hoards if the gig is organized by the Ministry of Culture or should it be holiday celebrated on the same date for 200 years, but try to get ten neighbors to show up for a pot luck street party and, non, c´est trop intime.
The Salon des Livres is coming up this month in Paris (March 22-25) at Porte de Versailles. A great way to ingest French culture from its intellectual peaks to its most enticing popular vulgarities. The featured guest country is Italy, and the Italian right-wing president will not be on hand for the inauguration, because French Culture Minister Mme Tosca has refused to greet him. Too reactionary. France is great for its display of selected principles.

Oh... I almost forgot. We have decided -- by popular demand -- to organize the next My Mercredi get-together. One faithful beer drinker has suggested the Frog & Rosbif pub just behind Les Halles at the foot of rue St. Denis. Happy Hour drinks are reasonable. So see you on Wednesday March 13 between 6 and 8.
David Applefield
david@paris-anglo.com

PARIS STRUT GARE DU NORD
Lisa Pasold Takes Us to the Gare

You´re heading for a different continent, but you dont need a suitcase or plane reservation, only a Paris metro ticket. Take any line to Gare du Nord. You´ll emerge from underground to find yourself in the newly-opened glass extension, which is an Escher drawing: all staircases and ramps, with no clear destination. Ignore this modern addition and walk through to the original central section of Gare du Nord. Go up to the mezzanine (where the Eurostar ticket offices are located) and look for the sculpture "Europa Operanda" by Ludmila Tcherna. This looks like a woman balancing an egg on her knee, though its supposed to symbolize the Channel, the Tunnel, and Europe. With your back to the sculpture, you have a marvellous view out into the station.

Gare du Nord was first built in 1846 for trains going north to Belgium. The railway boom was just beginning; a bigger station was soon needed, so the original Gare du Nord building was dismantled and sent to Lille. The opening gala of the new Gare du Nord was the social event of 1863. Writer Jules Janin describes the party: "In that station, immense gathering-place of all the railroads of the North, Belgium had collected all her glories... The French backwoods and the German nobility, royalty of Belgium, Flanders and Holland, all dripping in diamonds old-fashioned at the time of Louis XIV, oppressive manufacturing fortunes and one or two Parisian ladies, looking like butterflies in a swarm of bees, had rushed to this celebration of industry and restlessness, of tempered steel and obedient fire and conquered time." Imagine that crazy scene, while you look down at todays high speed trains and the crush of passengers heading to London, Brussels, and Amsterdam.

But a different country is waiting for you just behind the station. Go downstairs, out the main entrance of Gare du Nord, and turn left. At the corner, turn left again onto the rue Faubourg Saint-Denis. Just beyond the post office, youll begin to notice Indian and Sri Lankan shops. This is the surprising Little India of Paris; like so many immigrant communities in France, its origins are colonial. Though less known than the British raj, France too had business interests in India. The French East India Company was formed in 1664. Inevitably, there was conflict with the British, and the company was defeated in 1760. But French colonies such as Pondicherry remained separate from English-speaking ones; it was only during Indian Independence in 1947 that the French zones were included in the new free state of India. Today, this corner of Paris often speaks Tamil; many Sri Lankans and South Indians have settled here. Take some time to check out the food shops here - "Cash & Carry" is just one of the many groceries that stock all sorts of hard-to-find ingredients. -LP

Editors Note: Lisa Pasold hosts excellent walking tours of Paris. Contact her at lisa.pasold@wanadoo.fr.

CREATIVE LOITERING: MEET ODILE
THE VILLAGE VOICE BOOKSTORE

As a writer and reader, I have a lifelong weakness for bookstores. A few
minutes‚ stroll from Café de Flore is one of the best English language bookshops in the city, founded some years ago by Odile Hellier.

During the 1970s, while living in the United States in the post-Vietnam and Civil Rights eras, Odile was impressed by the philosophical vitality and multicultural literature that was coming out of North America at that time. The idea of opening a bookstore had been generating in her
soul since childhood for reasons that even she did not fully realize until an epiphany struck her after "living several lives" before the age of forty, teaching Russian language and literature, and working as a translator in the United States. She returned to France and took a full year to "wonder and wander," giving herself some leisure and " mind space. "

Odile spent her childhood in Brittany and in the Lorraine, and her young adulthood in Washington D.C. and Paris. When Odile was just a child of two during the second World War, her father was a French army officer
who had been imprisoned in Strasbourg, and subsequently executed.
Gestapo goons then came to her family´s home home and found a portrait hanging on the wall of her father´s library of Lyautey, the French army officer who had in pre-war times exposed French "colonialism with a human face." They also found Karl Marx´s writings among the volumes, and dumped the entire library in the front yard and ignited a bonfire to
the neighbors‚ horror. She did not actually witness it, but the vivid details were told and retold in her family for many years. "Throughout my childhood I took refuge in books -- and I still do!"

It was during her sabbatical year back in France that her motivation came into focus: She started Village Voice bookstore, providing
English-language books in the neighborhood best known for philosophy, intellect and wartime resistance to fascism, the St-Germain-de Pres. It was to honor not only her father and his cherished library, but the
English language itself. She acknowledges that English represents not only the juggernaut of globalization and its all too frequent "economic violence," but also celebrates English as the language of the core values of liberal democracy, and the expressions of many cultures that once formed the British Commonwealth. In fact, more than half of her customers are French.

Although she lives in a suburban village, Odile has an abiding love for Paris. On her way to the shop each day, she exits Metro St-Germain-des-Près and always pauses in the square in front of the church to meditate
on the beauty and history of the neighborhood. Place St-Germain-des Près has a plaque commemorating Jean-Paul Sartre and his companion, Simone de Beauvoir, the existential writer and the pioneering feminist philosopher who spent endless hours at the Café Deux Magots and other haunts nearby,
during and after the war. de Beauvoir´s book, The Second Sex, is still widely read in many languages, and was the first modern systematic analysis of gender politics -- the fundamental philosophy of which was
not anti-male, but passionately humanistic.

Odile cherishes the Pont des Arts, which symbolizes for her literature and the arts, connecting as it does the French Academy on the Left bank with the Louvre on the Right. Among her laments about this city is the
creeping gentrification of once-Bohemian quarters. But she says that for a single woman, Paris has to be the easiest big city in which to live.

When you visit the Village Voice at 6, rue Princesse in a maze of short streets in the 6th see if Michael Neal is also working that day.
Suffice it to say that he is one of the liveliest, most gregarious and knowledgeable Brits in Paris, and claims to own 40,000 volumes! Unlike many bibliomaniacs, he actually reads avidly, and is a hoot to talk with! He has been at the bookstore for more than eight years, and I´ll tell you more about him later. Better yet, go meet them at this literary treasure trove. They have author book signings and readings, and attract a fascinating clientele.

Note: Odile´s team at the Village Voice will be offering a comprehensive list of Paris-related literary titles on www.paris-anglo.com soon!

©2002 by Jeff Berner

EAU DE VIE – LET THE SPIRIT MOVE YOU.
Julia Price Let´s the Spirit Move Her When It Comes to Eau de Vie

After having devoured a glorious dinner of sumptuous foie gras, an onctueuse Blanquette de veau with pommes sautées, a sliver or two of “light" (haha) cheeses such as a vieux Cantal and a Saint-Marcellin on crusty fresh baguette, followed by a sweet and sinful moelleux au chocolat, and not to mention a bottle or two of your favorite "rouge", breathe deeply, sit comfortably and, well, yes, continue to consume. I´m not talking Tums or Digedryl! Now is time for the "digestif".
In France, there are no shortage of choices. Let’s take another look at the beverage menu, shall we? Armagnac, Cognac, Calvados? The French opt here for a single malt whiskey, but let´s keep it French. What about a Mirabelle? What are all these eaux-de-vie? How do we sort out life´s great waters?

To begin, the name “eau-de-vieä, meaning “water of lifeä and originating from the 17th century as a hope to cure diseases, includes liqueurs made from fruits, plants, and grains, such as Armagnac, Calvados, Cognac, Kirsch, Rhum, Vodka, etc.
Vodka is best served chilled. A rhum aged in an oak barrel for at least three years is best for a digestif. Try it “arrangé," mixed with fruits and spices, after a nice Créole dinner. Kirsch, an eau-de-vie made from cherries, traditionally comes from the Black Forest in Germany and from Eastern France. It’s great for flavoring pastries as well as for a nice digestif in “purä or “naturelä form.
Calvados, an eau-de-vie made from apple cider, originates logically in the northwest of France, where Normand apples flourish. The best have been left to age ten or twenty years in oak barrels. The label indicates the area, the percentage of alcohol and usually the age. Three stars or apples means that your selection has been aged at least two years; “Vieuxä or “Réserveä – at least three years; “VOä or “vielle réserveä or “very oldä – four years; “VSOPä (very superior old pale) – five years; “Extraä, “Hors d’âgeä, “age inconnuä, and “Napoléonä – more than five years. Reserve the young ones for cooking, and sip the older in a cognac or brandy glass, which will allow it to develop its bouquet.
Cognac is produced by a double distillation of white wine and found in Charentes in western France. Cognac quite clearly also improves with age, and is indicated by “VSä or three stars for 30 months; “VSOPä – 4 years; and “XOä, “Napoléonä, “Extraä “Impérialä, or “Très Vieuxä – six years. When not mixing it into a cocktail, adding Vichy, having a “long drinkä, or cooking with it, sip it slowly in a cognac or brandy snifter gently warming it in your hand to release its aroma. The truly great stuff you seem to ingest, not drink.
Armagnac, found in the Gascogne region in southwestern France, is also made from white wine, the best coming from Bas-Armagnac. The age is also important and is indicated on the label by the following: “VOä or “VSOPä – at least five years of aging; “Napoléon XOä – at least six years; and “Hors d’âgeä – at least ten years old, often older. To savor, serve in a brandy snifter. However, contrary to cognac, do not warm in your hand until the last taste. Instead, swirl it around, allowing the aromas to mix, and take small sips. Don’t hold it in your mouth, as it will kill the taste buds and hence alter the flavor.
Remember, at least half of the pleasure is turning this fine moment into a ritual of delight.

Now it’s your turn to déguster and digester. Happy sipping.

DEAR DAVID: Theater?
Dear David,
My boyfriend and I are coming to Paris for two weeks at the end of the month. We love theater. In London, we know what to do. In Paris? Can you suggest any English-language theater in Paris worth seeing?
Lucy

Dear Lucy,
You´re in luck. First, there are a number of theater groups performing regularly in English in the city. Consult the Theater section of Paris Inside Out or on www.paris-anglo.com.
More specifically, the Dear Conjunction group has just announced two new productions. A comedy called The Thinking of the Titanic and a wonderful drama -- Brian Friel´s Faith Healer. The first opens on March 12th, the second on March 29th. Both at the quaint Sudden Theater, 14bis rue Ste. Isaure, 75018 PARIS.
The really good news is that the producer has offered the first four My Mercredi readers who contact them FREE tickets. Hope you get ´em Lucy. Email: sudden@wanadoo.fr or call 01 42 62 35 00.
I´ll be working on getting us more offers like this in Paris.
Best,
DA

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