"A second homeland..."

Well, at least Trump has succeed in uniting people. Nothing brings people together like a common enemy.

He has succeeded in energizing people; in convincing people that they can't just sit around assume everything will turn out OK. He has totally discredited the (popular but wrong and dangerous) belief that rich businessmen must be competent and intelligent and deserve their wealth and power.

I hope it will be enough....

I agree with the author of this Mary Sue article that it was totally inappropriate and horrible of Susan Sarandon (and others like her) to encourage people to allow Trump to win because that would energize people and "bring on the revolution" faster. That is a deadly gamble, and one that someone of her level of privilege has no business making -- considering that she's betting other people's lives, not her own. If Trump's incompetence leads to nuclear war and/or if our inaction leads to climate change becoming irreversible, it's today's kids who will be paying for that with their lives. Anyone who has led a long, full life and then went ahead and bet our kids' future on Trump should be deeply ashamed.

But since we're stuck in this mess, let's hope this new-found unity and purpose will be enough to get us out.

France's new president, Emmanuel Macron, just got a softball opportunity lobbed at him for his first big photo-op as president: the meeting with the G7 leaders, including Trump. Your mission is to meet with Trump and look good by contrast -- kinda hard to mess that one up. But he took that softball and hit it out of the park!

First Macron beat Trump at Trump's own stupid handshake game. Then he took a walk in a lovely flower garden with Trudeau, whom everybody loves -- prompting even some serious news outlets to cover the question of who's handsomer. Then he wrapped up by giving a forceful speech about how the Paris accords will go forward -- and not be watered down -- including this awesome special bit directed to the American people, in which he brazenly poaches America's smart people for France:

Apparently Macron figured out that nobody but nobody hates Trump like America's smart people hate him. 

It made especially good optics considering that many of Macron's political rivals were pushing to exit the EU. But the recent rottenness of the US and the UK makes Germany look like the most awesome best friend ever! (Points to Merkel for her courageous statement that Europe can't count on those guys anymore.)

So President Macron is off to a good start with people like me -- people who didn't know much about him, and only voted for him because he was the "not Le Pen" candidate. Yes, it was my first vote as a citizen of France, and now I'm feeling pretty good about it! (Though I assume he'll do something to piss me off soon enough, like Trudeau with those oil pipelines -- grrrr!)

I especially loved this part of Macron's address:

To all scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, responsible citizens who were disappointed by the decision of the President of the United States, I want to say that they will find in France a second homeland. I call on them, 'Come, and work here, with us, to work together on concrete solutions for our climate, our environment. I can assure you, France will not give up the fight.'

This part is personal to me because I left the US to settle in Europe and become a French citizen (though I am currently living in Switzerland, an adjacent, also awesome country). I also recently quit my job in educational software and took a new job in climate-change software -- specifically, I'm working with scientists and fellow engineers on software to compute the carbon footprints of different meals (for restaurants). 

Sure, I don't need to have the President of France give a speech welcoming me and affirming my personal life decisions, but, hey, it doesn't hurt! :D

Just another weekend in Paris!

One of my complaints about moving from Bordeaux to Zurich was the relative (in)convenience in getting to Paris. Bordeaux is three hours from Paris by TGV, with trains every hour. Zurich, OTOH, was more than five hours from Paris. But now we have a new TGV route, cutting the trip down to four hours!! (Still not quite like in Bordeaux, but getting there!) So, when my husband had a conference to attend in France, I took the opportunity to gather up the kids and meet him in Paris for the weekend!

Naturally, the kids were thrilled because they got Bey Blades as their being-good-on-the-train treat. Fortunately that wasn't the only cool part:

Here Leo's pouting because his daddy just told him that he can't go on the ferris wheel.

And here he is happy -- right after riding the ferris wheel. Nico and Leo are both showing off the little souvenir Eiffel Towers their daddy bought them.

Leo also enjoyed riding the merry-go-round of extinct and endangered animals.

To keep it balanced, here's a cute picture of Nico too.

And the obligatory picture on the Paris Metro!

This picture reminded me of this other picture from long ago:

They grow up, but they stay the same in so many cute ways! When they were little, we used to take them out and run them around the fountain to get their energy out, and it's still a fun way to have a race!

I found another space invader to add to my collection.

And discovered that my sweetie has quite a knack for dramatic reading!!

A fun trip overall -- I can't wait to do it again!!

Paris, it's good to be home!

A few weeks ago, I went to Paris to meet some friends. As I expected, as soon as I stepped into the streets of Paris -- and especially as soon as I got into the Metro -- I had an immediate sense of the familiar; like going home.

Now I've read a lot of people say that Paris is overrated, that the Métro smells, etc. The thing is that Paris can't help but get overrated -- it's one of the top tourist destinations in the world. Naturally, it must have a whole lot of people recommending it, yet, like all cities, Paris has its particular character and advantages, which won't appeal to everyone. And, voilà, you have a recipe for a lot of people wondering what all the hype is about. Then, once you visit a few more European cities, perhaps you'll find one whose flavor suits you better, and you can show your sophistication as a traveler by picking a less obvious city to recommend to your friends back home.

It's a little like the Eiffel Tower itself. I remember, as a kid, wondering why the Eiffel Tower is so famous. It's not impressively tall compared to modern buildings, and it's just a steel framework like some sort of antenna. I figured (correctly) that you must just have to be there. It turns out that it's actually kid of pretty for an antenna -- and it's cool that you can see it from all over Paris, and it's fun to go up and see it towering over a huge plaza and park.

Personally -- as a kid and young adult -- I was skeptical about all the francophile hype. I don't know much about art history (or European history in general), so a trip to Europe was never really high on my priority list until I started learning to speak French (as an adult, in grad school). Then, when I first got to Paris, I was pleasantly surprised by how convenient the public transportation was. I could wander on foot or by Métro in any direction and always stumble upon something interesting. I was also surprised to learn how different a city can look from the way all the cities look in the US. Plus, the culture just exotic enough to be charmingly fun without being truly disorienting.

My first trip to Paris was magical -- I wished I didn't have to leave. And, since then, I've been back there so many times, with family and friends. So what if the Métro smells? It's a familiar smell now, and all of the crazy corridors with their shiny white bricks and their ad-posters all in French are like home.

Naturally, it has become increasingly obvious that a big part of the magic of France for me has to do with the amount of effort I put into learning French. It affects how I feel about the place, about the people there, and about myself. So I've recently started listening to some German recordings that are a translation of a series I used when learning French so many years ago. No matter how silly the story or how cheesy the music, I like listening to it at night -- it relaxes me -- because (for me) it's the sounds of success.

During this past visit to Paris, I loved hanging out with my friends, and I always love visiting art museums with people who know a thing or two about art.



Yet, perversely, I didn't love how all of this English-speaking made me feel like an outsider, not really part of the city. (It's a little crazy, I know, but back at my hotel -- if anyone asked -- I was from Switzerland, and I was ready to make it convincing with a few phrases of German, if necessary.) Two of the friends I was visiting, though, speak good German, and they were very polite about letting me subject them to some of my terrible German. And, while wandering around, I was occasionally reminded of Zürich, and stuff I like there.

At the end, I got back on the train and settled into a good book. And as soon as the train pulled into Zürich Hauptbahnhof, I had an immediate sense of the familiar. There's the big clock whose design matches my watch, the familiar poster-ads in German, the kinetic light sculpture and the giant flying lady hanging from the ceiling of the great hall of the train station. Then I got on the tram and sat back and enjoyed the sights as it squeaked and squealed its way to my apartment. There, I hugged my husband and sons, and thought: It's good to be home!

Blog Retrospective: Clash of Cultures!

Being an expat, I'm always interested in that mysterious space where cultures interact! How do we perceive each other? This question has been one of the main themes of my blog from the beginning. Here's a little taste of how my ideas on the subject have evolved over the past few years:


Have you ever wondered what the French think of peanut butter and Vegemite? Or what they think of "freedom fries"? Or what's my least favorite thing about France? (Hint: it's the merde). Well, wonder no more -- just follow the links!

Of course, anyone who has even a passing familiarity with this blog knows that my favorite thing about Europe is the transportation!!! I loved it when I was Living Downtown and Car-Free in Bordeaux, I've loved le metro ever since I first visited Paris, and I absolutely adore it here in Zurich: Transportation Paradise!! (Even if the Swiss rules of etiquette are a little mysterious...)

(Other great benefits, of course, are the education and health care.)

One of the most interesting things about moving to a new country is learning a new language! It's fun for the kids to test the linguistic boundaries. As for the grown-ups...? I contend that A foreign language is best learned in the bedroom . But that's not to say that good ol' English is uninteresting! Au contraire ! What with its million tenses and grammar rules that are made to be, like, broken. ;^)


And how's that culture shock? After a certain time abroad, my original country starts looking like a parallel universe, where the same laws of physics do not apply. After learning the richness of a new culture, it's frustrating to see your old compatriots reducing your new compatriots to cartoon characters! And don't forget the further-culture-shock adventure of moving from France to Switzerland -- It seems like it shouldn't be that big a deal, but it is! (Lucky thing I have my fellow weirdos to keep me company.)


And how do I fit into all of this? Well, you can start with my misadventures at a couple of big Catholic weddings. Or have a look at my time capsule: Baby's day in Bordeaux. Or have a look at some of my photos of the things you see in Bordeaux, of my life in Bordeaux, of the scale model of the solar system in Zurich, of Europride Zurich, and -- as a bonus -- of Lago Maggiore.

And do I miss my old traditions? Being a "cultural Mormon" in Europe? Stay tuned for next week's blog retrospective to find out!

Finished the illustrations for Bordeaux Mission!!

I meant to finish these before my vacation, but better late than never!




You can see the rest of the illustrations for this story here!

You can see that I've scheduled this segment to begin on September 22. I'm hoping that I'll succeed in getting my new edition ready by then: the complete book -- with all the illustrations and an ISBN -- that you can either buy as an e-book or order (reasonably priced) physical copies. We'll see if I can get it done in time! :D

My fellow weirdos...

When I was living in France -- for seven years -- I felt like I fit in. I would walk down the street, look around me, and feel like I "get" this place, and I'm a part of it. After a year and a half in Zürich, Switzerland is starting to become homey and familiar, but it's still foreign and strange, and so am I. Perversely, I find that I've made more friends here than I had in Bordeaux. And it's not in spite of my strangeness, it's because of it.

Back in Bordeaux, I didn't have much reason to pursue a friendship with one person instead of another. I joined a club for anglophone expat women in France, but I only attended once -- I didn't feel like I had much in common with them. But here, I naturally fall right in with my fellow weirdos. American, French, Canadian, Brit, and people from even more exotic locales, we all make up one motley band.

The people of the expat and blended-poly-cultural community have a lot of common experiences, regardless of which country they started out in and which culture they moved or married into. (Actually, I was already a part of it in France and earlier, as the Mathematical community is very international.)

"Am I cool with fitting in nowhere? Am I okay with being in a limbo?" asks Andrew, this time talking about that other part of my identity: being an atheist "cultural Mormon."

Well, I am what I am. Like it or not, I have only so much choice in the matter. And I'm happy living in limbo, why not? Being a perpetual outsider, straddling multiple communities -- without fitting entirely in any one -- isn't the absence of real identity. It's an identity that's a little bit different.

My Summer Vacation Essay, part I

The previous time I went back to the U.S. -- three years ago -- I was surprised by how much culture shock I felt.

Moving to Europe, I really hadn't experienced any culture shock to speak of. I'd expected various things to be a bit different (and they were), but not long after moving to France I had my first baby. And that was way more of a shock to my system than anything the French could throw at me.

Coming back to my home town after living abroad (if you'll pardon a Pulp Fiction cliché) the little things that had once been familiar now started to seem strange, like the particular foods at the supermarket or on a menu.

Even stranger, though, were the big things. Everything seemed enormous -- as though the country had been afflicted with a bad case of gigantism -- from the stores to the vehicles to the dinner portions to the endless parking lots. I gather many people arriving in the U.S. from other countries are dazzled and impressed by it. I was impressed all right, but not exactly in a positive way. It wasn't just the pointless wastefulness of it all, but even more it was the lack of alternatives and options.

Now, before you start rolling your eyes at me, I'll tell you that I'm perfectly aware that all of my praises for compact, walkable neighborhoods and public transportation have to be taken with a grain of salt since I obviously have the zeal of a convert. The funniest illustration of this was way back in the beginning of my European experience when I met a French woman who'd chosen to make a life for herself in the U.S.A. I started on my usual blah-blah-blah about walkability, and it turned out that she had an equal-and-opposite blah-blah-blah about how things are so much better in the U.S. than in France! (I don't remember what her complaints were, maybe something about French people having a bad attitude or something.) Anyway, I thought it was hilarious as soon as it hit me why she and I were having so much difficulty communicating with one another: As an expat, you constantly get asked to compare your old country to your new one, and naturally (in a friendly conversation with someone from your new country) you focus on what's better about the new one. But then that means that two opposite expats are like matter and anti-matter. I highly recommend moving to another country for a few years and then trying to have a reasonable conversation with someone who has chosen to make the opposite switch -- I guarantee you'll learn something amusing about human nature! ;^)

On my more recent trip back this past summer, I was ready for all the stuff that surprised me last time, so instead I got a new surprise! Everywhere I went, I would sing my usual praises of car-free freedom. I'm a total broken record on this (if you've somehow missed it, please review here and here), but the thing is that after living the first twenty six or so years of my life in car-dependent suburban-type areas, it was such a revelation to realize it doesn't have to be this way, and I'd like people to at least be exposed to this idea and encourage them to want to try (and create) alternatives.

But that was the surprise. My claim (here) that Americans can't take good ideas from other countries was proven wrong. Everywhere I went, my discourse on walkability was old news. (And not just because I'm repeating myself.) People all had their own tales to tell about their neighborhood's walkability and/or about public transportation! :D

Coming up in the next installment: my kids' reaction to America!

Just write it down

One of the craziest things I discovered when I was first learning French was that the French have laws about what you can and can't name your kids. They've relaxed the laws a bit in the past few years, but it used to be that you had to choose the given names from a big list (of Catholic saints) and the kid's last name was determined by a simple algorithm: it's the same as the last name of whichever parent gets to city hall first to declare the baby's birth. (The dad has a bit of an advantage here, not being stuck in a hospital bed.) Or, if the parents are legally married, then the kid would get the father's last name.

Also, under normal circumstances you can't change your own name at all. I think they grant a special exception if your last name is "La Merde" or something, but I'm not certain. Actually, there is one exception: If you're a woman and you get married, then you weren't allowed to not change your name.

This whole idea took me completely by surprise. How could it be the state's business to choose what you can and can't be called? I understand that there are legal reasons to keep track of people's identities (for example, I think in the U.S. if you want to change your name you typically have to declare that it's not for the purpose of hiding from creditors or the law). But it seems like it should be the individual's (or family's) job to select the name, and the government's job to just make a note of it.

I was thinking about this the other day with respect to gay marriage.

The thing is that the marriage-type relationship exists in every human society. If you go to another country, you'll meet plenty of couples that you perceive as "married" -- even if in their country they use a different word, and even if their country's legal documentation for marriage is totally unfamiliar or non-existent. Sure, the corresponding rights and responsibilities vary from one culture to the next just as the behavior of parents towards their children varies from one culture to the next. But the relationship itself -- to be someone's spouse -- you understand it as intuitively as you understand what it means to be someone's brother or someone's mother.

Legal identity documents (for birth, adoption, marriage, death, etc.) can have some effect people's perceptions and behavior. For example, if a French person doesn't like being named after a Catholic saint and decides to ask all his friends and colleagues to call him "Rainbow Appleseed" or something, he'll discover this is a huge pain in the butt to explain every time he has to fill out any forms (a surprisingly frequent occurrence in France). I learned this lesson myself, actually. As a young, idealistic American feminist, I decided that I wanted to keep my own name rather than taking my husband's (because your name is your identity!) But after less than a year in France, my laziness won out over my principles and I took to just introducing myself as "Madame husband's name" in all situations except my own work. Legally I never did change my name, but French forms -- instead of having one "last name" slot -- have separate lines for "maiden name" and "husband's name". So I fill out these lines accurately and Voila ! -- the fact that my husband's name doesn't appear on my U.S. passport becomes a minor technicality...

But what is in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

I think that people who say "the solution is for the government to get out of marriage altogether" are missing the boat. The underlying kinship relationships exist whether the government writes them down or not, and a society that needs legal identity/kinship documents such as birth, death, and adoption certificates has an interest in correctly documenting marriages as well. There are a number of rights and responsibilities that follow from kinship relationships (inheritance, immigration, next of kin, etc.), and "spouse" is a kinship relation that is as fundamental as "parent" or "sibling."

Similarly, those who think they can keep couples from being married -- just by denying them the word "marriage" or the legal recognition for it -- are deluding themselves. Sure, you can make life inconvenient for some couples by making them go back to doing it the old-fashioned way: by declaring their commitment in front of witnesses (without the corresponding legal identity papers).



And it's true that by restricting marriage documents (in a society that normally uses them), one can create a host of minor-to-major problems for the families that aren't legally documented. But it won't change the underlying reality of which couples are married according to the common perception of what it means to be married. It's just a question of cleaning up the paperwork.


see also Discrimination against homosexuals: why? why? why??? and Why? Why? Why??? II

Humanist blogging à la Voltaire!

Me: So, today I have to write my essay about Voltaire.
My Sweetie: Poor Voltaire.
Me: Ah, you feel sorry for Voltaire and not for me...?
My Sweetie: Well, everyone is going to say he wrote a very bad book, and it's probably true...


My husband objected to the Nonbelieving Literati's selection of Zadig as soon as I told him about it.

Why?

Because -- said he -- the context and influence are what's interesting, not the text itself. Reading Voltaire today is like people three centuries from now reading a popular columnist from this year's New York Times. High School kids in France study Zadig in the context of a few semesters' worth of study about its time period and influence.

(He then went on to suggest that the Nonbelieving Literati should be reading Joyce and Melville. That was where I parted ways with my hopelessly highbrow-lit husband. If there's a list of authors I'm not reading for any damned book club, #1 would be Joyce and #2 would be Melville.)

But I agreed with my husband about Voltaire's place in history firing the imagination. A few months ago, I read a couple of fantastic books by Robert Darnton about the culture and literature of the time:



The Great Cat Massacre: And Other Episodes in French Cultural History and The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France.

Working from an amazing array of primary sources, Darnton explores the culture and attitudes of all the different segments of the population of enlightenment France, from illiterate peasants to artisans to the "bourgeois" to the nobility. A newly-abundant information technology -- printed books -- was spreading new ideas far and wide. Books that the church or the state found threatening were at once illegal and quite popular. Voltaire was one of the usual suspects. Illegal books (as a category) were called "philosophical" by the publishing industry (as well as by the authorities) even though this genre included books about politics (especially the king's personal life) and smut/erotica in addition to books on more obviously philosophical subjects like deism and atheism.

Naturally I see a parallel with the Internet today. It may just be that I see blogging everywhere (being obsessed with it and all), but please hear me out.

Printed books are a form of one-way communication -- like television -- from knowledge producers to knowledge consumers. There's one big difference, however: less is more. The less your infotainment consumes of your brain's attention, the more your brain has to work on its own in response. Caleb Crain argues this in The Twilight of Reading: "It makes you smarter because it leaves more of your brain alone." Darnton's research illustrates this in his chapter analyzing police records of (spying on) nightly conversations taking place in taverns around town. Unlike television today which can consume all of your brain's leisure time without your brain ever having the strain of producing a single thought of its own, in those days you could only read books for so long, and then the next natural step is to go down to the pub and discuss them.

And so with the Internet today. We're bringing back not only written communication but also a two-way flow of ideas (as I explained in Think for yourself!). Blog and forum space form a beautiful silicon web of conversation. The division between idea producers and idea consumers is blurred to the point of being completely erased. No one article or post is ever the final word on any subject -- the most interesting ones get linked into a network of hundreds and thousands of related but contrasting perspectives.

Are we ushering in a new "enlightenment" in the tradition of Voltaire et al? Perhaps. Hopefully it will be one that doesn't end quite so badly...

p.s. I really did read Zadig (in French, no less -- be impressed! ;^) ), and I'll add my thoughts on the text itself in my comments on the posts of my fellow Nonbelieving Literati.

Now live from Switzerland!!!

Hey folks!!! I've arrived in my new apartment in Switzerland!!!

As you know, I absolutely loved Bordeaux, and I was very sad to leave. On the other hand, now that I'm getting settled in Zurich, I'm very happy to be here!!!

I feel like the age my kids are at (4 and 6) is really the perfect time to start fresh on a new lifestyle. Having little babies and toddlers dramatically changes the types of things you can do, especially in our case since we had no relatives nearby who could take the kids for an evening or help us with them occasionally. So we hardly ever socialized with people, and everything we did as a couple had to be something where it was okay to have babies or toddlers in tow. And remember we didn't have a car (and still don't). Fortunately Bordeaux is a beautiful city, and compact enough to conveniently go everywhere on foot or by tramway even with little kids. But as you might imagine, we got into a habit where if something wasn't in downtown Bordeaux (or at least conveniently accessible by train or tramway), then we didn't go there at all. Here in Zurich more things out of town are accessible by public transportation (including trips to go hiking in the mountains), and we have some new friends who are giving us ideas on the fun stuff to do around here with kids.

Actually, I'd gotten into quite a comfortable little rut in general, and I'm glad to be obligated to break free of it. For one thing, after seven years of living in France, I'd gotten to the point where I totally identified with being French. Not that there's something wrong with being French -- the problem is that I'm not looking for a final destination. I don't want to say "Yes, I'm satisfied here, I'm done." I want to keep having new adventures and stay open to new things. So in my travels to other countries (and even back to the U.S.), it was bad that I'd gotten to the point where I would look around and say "Hmph, this isn't the way we do things in France." France is funny that way -- there's a huge assimilationist mindset, so if you go there wanting to fit in, it doesn't take long before you get absorbed and start thinking like a French person. I feel like it's good for me to be thrust into a situation where everything is weird again. ;^)

Then there's the language situation. Right after I learned to speak French (while I was in grad school), I got the idea that learning foreign languages is fun! So I made some decent progress on learning to speak Italian, some non-trivial progress on learning to speak, read, and write in Hindi, and some very feeble beginnings on learning Dutch and Spanish. Then baby #1 came along, and I went back to working full-time while he was still little, and something had to give. That hobby was the one that got the axe. All the language books and tapes went up on the shelf, and I decided that, well, I speak English and French, and let's just leave it at that. Now that my kids are bigger I could take it up again, but now my Internet addiction is occupying the free time that I once used for other projects. So again I'm glad to have some external motivation to break out of my bad habits. I felt like a fool yesterday when I couldn't even understand when the cashier at the grocery store was asking me if I want a bag or not. (I didn't want one, but I got one due to my cluelessness.) Now everything that surrounds me is in German (or Swiss-German), and I'm full of curiosity to understand it all. And as a bonus, one of our new friends is Italian, and I found that I could understand some of the things she was saying to her kids, and even exchange a few sentences with her in Italian. What an encouraging way to get off on the right foot for my new adventure!! Zurich is around the same size as Bordeaux, but far more cosmopolitan and international.

As far as Switzerland vs. France in general, I'm a little ambivalent. Some stuff that's special about Switzerland seems kind of questionable to me. On the other hand, it may just be that I'm looking at it with a French bias, and it might be useful to see the Swiss side of the story. From the French I learned that the reason the Swiss won't go on the Euro like everybody else is because they don't want to share all the prosperity they get from their lucrative-yet-questionable banking industry. If you have a huge amount of loot and need banking services where you don't have to worry about being asked any uncomfortable questions about where the money came from, the Swiss are there for you. And everybody from the Nazis to Al Quaeda to the mafia are happy to take them up on it. But maybe that's just a misimpression, and now that I'm in Switzerland, I'll see what things look like from their perspective. Plus, it's not as though France is perfect. Back in Bordeaux, I used to always comment on what a beautiful city it is, and more than once the response (from a French person) would be that one shouldn't be proud of how beautiful Bordeaux is -- the gorgeous white-stone buildings and decorative plazas all over town were built on the economic prosperity that came from being a major port in the slave trade.

On the other hand, that was then and this is now. Apparently the Zurich suburbs are the home of one of the most overtly racist political parties in all of Europe. I haven't seen the posters, but I heard there was a picture of a Swiss flag with a white sheep kicking a black sheep off and a slogan saying it was for greater security. Also I hear this party did a commercial with a black hand holding a Swiss passport, and asked the question "Do you want this?" (The assumed answer being "no.") Yikes!!!

So I'm torn: Am I potentially helping the cause of enlightenment and anti-racist values by being here where bad problems exist, and hopefully helping influence things in a good direction? Or is that just an excuse, and am I actually supporting something bad? Or both?

On my previous trip to Zurich (when we were preparing our move), I saw something of a bad omen. When we were on the train from France to Switzerland, there was exactly one non-white person in the car we were riding in. He looked like he was from India or thereabouts. As soon as we left the last station in France, a whole team of customs agents came by to interrogate him. They didn't ask anything of anyone else. They came by twice just to talk to him, and they actually made him stand up so they could frisk him. Then on the third visit, when they checked everyone's passport, they barely glanced at our passports and waved us through with a smile. (I think the Indian guy was eventually cleared through as well.) All I can say is that I certainly hope they had some sort of legitimate reason to suspect that guy in particular, and it wasn't just some sort of horrible racial profiling. One should never watch something like that and think "Well, my family and I have nothing to worry about -- we're white." We're minorities here ourselves, being foreigners and atheists. But even if you live in a place where you're in the majority, to many people in the world you're a foreigner and of the wrong race and/or religion.

So, what am I in for? An amazing adventure? Here goes nothing!!! :D

European dream

I attended a very white high school in the suburbs of Minneapolis. Looking at my high school yearbook, out of my graduating class of 550, I count less than ten faces "of color." And when I say "of color" here, I'm including the Asian students and the kids from the A.B.C. program: the handful of kids brought in from inner-city school districts to get "A Better Chance."

About the only minority my school district had managed to integrate was the Jewish population. I can't really even estimate for you what portion of the student body was Jewish because they didn't look different and they didn't self-segregate. All I know is that many of my friends were Jewish and many were not, and either case was perfectly ordinary. You may think that integrating the Jewish population is no big deal, but considering the fact that a big chunk of my town had been explicitly chartered as "no blacks and no Jews," I feel like integrating the Jews at least showed some good improvement.

In history class, we learned about segregation. We learned about "separate but equal." We learned about the civil rights movement and "separate is inherently unequal" and about forced integration through busing. Just imagine this charming scene of all of these lily-white young faces learning such things from a history book instead of from real life experience. We also got to learn about things like "de facto segregation" and "white flight."

And thus my white liberal high school teachers encouraged me to think about racism.

I've talked about how difficult it is to avoid racism -- the gut level sentiment that those guys aren't just ordinary people like us -- and I concluded long ago that one of the most effective and painless techniques is to have people of different races and ethnicities interacting with each other in their daily lives, and especially to play together as children, as in Martin Luther King's dream.

But I figured that realistically I'd be one day be faced with a choice between sending my kids to an integrated school or a good school, and not have an option that includes both. As a high school student I fretted over this question, and I basically concluded that I would probably end up sending my future kids to a school system as white as the ones I attended because it wouldn't be fair to my kids to shortchange them on their education for the sake of my idealism.

Fast forward to today. I chose my neighborhood here in Bordeaux, France based on its proximity to downtown and to the tramway line, not the school district. And when my kids reached school age, I was pleasantly surprised with what they got.

It would be a whole additional article to describe how impressed I am with the quality of the education my kids are getting -- the curriculum, the materials, the outings, the programs, and how closely their development is followed. And I didn't have to make the unfortunate choice that I thought I'd have to make. The school is about a third white non-Muslim, about a third Muslim or of Muslim origin, and about a third "other" including black, asian, various hybrids, and many whose ethnic origins are difficult to identify precisely. From the names and from the fact that we're near a large synagogue, I assume some of the kids are Jewish as well. I wouldn't consider moving out to the suburbs to take my kids out of this school.

In France, the education is run 100% at the national level. Every kid of the same age in all of France has the same basic curriculum. The teachers are hired and assigned at the national level. In the U.S. -- as you know -- education is 100% local.

As a consequence, in the U.S. an individual school district or school can experiment with an innovative new program or teaching style that could prove to be very effective and catch on in other places. Impossible in France. As a consequence, in the U.S. if one community wants its kids learning an additional subject that the next town over doesn't want to bother with, they can add it to the public school curriculum. Again not possible in France. As another consequence, the disparity between the rich kid's education and the poor kid's education is dramatically greater in the U.S. than in France.

The disparity creates a vicious circle in the U.S. where bad schools get worse -- as parents who have an interest in their kids' education and who have the means to get their kids out of a poor school will do it.

I'm not claiming that French schools are perfect in the diversity-peace-and-love department. Far from it. Yet I feel like some very positive options exists in some cities here, and I haven't seen anything quite like it elsewhere. Watching the interactions among the kids, teachers, and parents at our school, I get the impression that nobody's even aware of the racial/ethnic differences. I can't tell if it's P.C. politeness or if it really is that after a certain amount of time living in the city you stop worrying about it. And the school does an impressive job of teaching the kids about France -- instilling them with the idea that they're all French -- while at the same time recognizing the diversity by teaching stories and songs from Africa and other countries and having programs where parents whose native language is not French (like me!) come in and read stories or sing songs in their native language.

Recently my little family took a trip by train, and as usual the kids spent most of the train ride drawing and coloring. Nico was getting ready to color Batman's chin, so he asked me for the "beige" (the French term for caucasian flesh-tone). I looked down at the handful of colored pencils I'd brought and found I'd forgotten that one. Before I had even a moment to think what to do, Nico said "That's okay, I'll just use brown," and grabbed the brown pencil out of my hand and colored Batman's face with it. He then proceeded to draw a bunch of other people and colored their smiling faces brown as well.

I feel like I shouldn't have been surprised: it's just a color, after all -- it doesn't mean anything.

Well, it shouldn't mean anything. That's my European dream.

More tales from the nude beach...

My post topless on the beach -- which I wrote nearly a year ago -- remains my #1 post, bringing in tons of hits from search engines every day.

I hadn't realized the subject of nude sunbathing was quite that interesting. At the time it was a post I tossed off practically as filler. But I'm starting to think that many of you out there in cyberspace have never been to a nude beach (or even a topless beach), and perhaps are curious. So in the interest of making sure my blog provides a valuable public service, today I'm going to try to remember more about the subject.

One question that comes up in a lot of search queries is about nude beaches for families. I personally didn't see many kids the few times I went to the nude beach in New Jersey, and the few I saw were very small. My impression is that bringing kids along for nudist activities is more a nude camping thing. I've never done that, but I've heard about it.

On the other hand, the beaches in France are full of kids, and partial nudity abounds. It's common for little kids to swim naked, and as I said in my earlier post, lots of the women go topless. I don't recall seeing that many moms going topless when they have kids with them, but I wasn't really looking out for that.

Another very common topic for search queries is people being shy about going topless on the beach for the first time. That seems like a pretty logical topic to wonder about since it must happen: A woman wants to go to the nude beach because all her friends are doing it, but she's shy about it. Really, that's kind of an erotic image. Unfortunately I don't have any anecdotes about that because I've never seen any obvious examples. All the people I've seen going nude or partially nude looked like they were either completely blasé about the whole thing or they were actually getting off on it. I know in my own case that was the whole draw: the thought of all these random strangers wanting to get a good look. So when the guy I was with would tell me about this or that guy taking an extra long look (apparently they wouldn't do it much when I was looking at them, but they were ignoring my companion), it was kind of amusing. For my inner anthropologist.

It's a good idea to go with a guy, though, because that way all of the random strangers keep their distance. Whenever we would get separated (if one of us would have to go get something) guys would come around and try to start a conversation with me. It's probably absurd of me to be annoyed by that, but I guess on some level I'd decided that the rules of the game should be "look, don't pester" and those guys were ruining it for everybody. Maybe other ladies feel differently, and in that case they're better off going to the nude beach with other women.

(Feminists will probably be annoyed that I'm taking it for granted that guys will assume that a group of women together are fair game for being hit on. But seriously, if you'd like to go hang out with a bunch of other women without having random guys hit on you, the straight area of the nude beach is the wrong choice.)

One funny thing that happened when I was at the nude beach was that I saw a guy get a citation for public urination. Apparently for some people the mere fact of being covered by pants is their primary inhibition from peeing -- not hygiene or social convention or stuff like that. As soon as the guy was done, a beach cop drove up in a beach buggy and chewed him out, pointing out the public toilets not far away.

That was the only time I've ever seen anyone get a ticket for public urination. I've certainly never seen anyone get in trouble for it here in France. Now that I think about it, I'm not sure it's even illegal here. After all, with all the dog crap in the streets, who's going to notice a little human urine here and there?

That's all I can think of for the moment. I wish I had more stories for you, but I didn't go that many times...

Why I'm a bad mom, part 2

Recall from part 1 that I was teaching my kids some naughty words. Well, along those same lines, I've started teaching them about Jesus. The system I've been using is very similar to the one used by the Exterminator as he explained in his atheist confessions ("I say 'oh, Christ!' and 'oh, shit! about an equal number of times each day, even though I believe in only one of them").

Despite my efforts, though, during my recent visit to Lourdes, I discovered that my kids don't know who Jesus is apart from his role as an expletive.

We were staying in a convent, so of course every room had a crucifix in it. We got a room with a really gory one -- where you could see the blood dripping down His dead, drooping head -- hanging right over the bed. (Sweet dreams!) Honestly, it blows my mind that anyone could find such a gruesome image uplifting. Anyway, my little four-year-old Leo was sweetly playing on the bed when he noticed the thing and asked "Mommy, who's that?"

My husband and I looked at one another for a second and I said "It's a picture of someone being executed." Leo doesn't know that that means, but it was sufficient to get him to go back to playing.

On the other hand, I found that my kids can recognize Buddha. We were walking past a Chinese restaurant one day, and Leo said "Look, Mommy! It's Buddha!" I looked where he was pointing and, sure enough, there was a big golden statue of Buddha.

I taught my kids about Buddha kind of unintentionally. One time a colleague went on a business trip to China and brought back tiny Buddha statues for everyone, as souvenirs. I gave mine to my kids to use as a toy. All I told them about him was that his name is Buddha, so naturally they put him with their Spiderman, Batman, and Superman figurines (and dubbed him "Buddha-man").

Since then I figured I should try to make an effort to teach my kids about religion at home since they're bound to hear about it from other kids at school and get all sorts of wrong information. So I bought them an excellent book Les Religions du Monde, and put it on the shelf next to that other in-case-they-have-questions book I bought them (It's Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health).

I like the book on religions because it's quite even handed -- it covers all known major religions including extinct religions and some fairly obscure religions (although Mormonism didn't make the cut, unfortunately). The bigger the religion, the more extensive the description, but they don't favor one over another (in terms of presenting it as better or more reasonable) nor is there a subtext of "of course this is obviously all a bunch of hooey..." All we've learned from the book so far,though, is that Buddha is really huge. There's a Buddhist monk on the cover sitting next to a statue of Buddha, and the monk is no bigger than Buddha's hand! Now that's big!! (I know you're all waiting for me to add a comment about my earlier post here, but I would never stoop to that level... ;^) )

I can't seem to find a way to explain religion to my kids though. I feel like they're still a little too young to understand the difference between live people, historical figures, legendary characters loosely based on historical figures (eg. Santa Claus / Saint Nicholas), legendary characters that may be based on historical figures (eg. Jesus), fictional characters, etc. And how do you explain to a kid that many people think that there are invisible beings with supernatural powers? And that people think these beings really exist -- they don't see it as just imagination or playing pretend. And how do you explain that some people think they can communicate with mystical beings through lighting candles or saying particular phrases??? So for the moment we're at the point where "Buddha is huge" and the kids can see he's a statue and draw their own conclusions.

I'm happy we've had the opportunity to take the kids to Lourdes so they can see their Catholic heritage in its true context (something they wouldn't normally get from us). I made a point to take them to the basilica and get a picture in front of the giant golden crown.


"Big enough that Buddha could wear it!": the kids were duly impressed.

When we got back to our room, Nico looked out the window at the basilica and asked "Is that a castle, Mommy? Does the king live there?"



As usual, I was at a bit of a loss to explain.

The little angel on my one shoulder was saying "Tell him the truth! Tell him that some people believe there's a super-powerful magic being who likes people to worship him, so people build these elaborate buildings..." And the little devil on my other shoulder was saying "Ick! He's only six -- does he really need to hear about such things? Can't he stay innocent a little longer?"

So I just said "No, the king doesn't live there. We don't have a king anymore."

Nico was a little disappointed with that answer, so he invented a fanciful story about how every country (including France and the US) has lots of kings, and they live in castles with huge gold crowns on top.

Well, why not? He'll hear the standard myths in time, but for the moment he can have the fun of inventing his own. :D

Steal this idea: Greetings from the opposite of America!!!

Reading commentary Americans write about how things work in France is incredibly frustrating. It tends to be a random mix of stuff that's right with stuff that makes me go "What the...? Where did that come from?"

Then one day it finally dawned on me where it's coming from. Most of the time when North Americans write about France they're not actually writing about France at all -- they're writing about America.

Whenever an American wants to write an essay describing the American way of doing something, it's important to set it off with a contrasting example of a first world country where things are completely the opposite of the way things are in the U.S. That country is France. Always. Whether things really are done differently in the real-life country of France is quite irrelevant. There are two ways of doing things, the American way, and the opposite of the American way, and to put a human face on "the opposite of the American way" we like to add a beret and horizontally-striped shirt and call it "France."

And so with that background I want to talk about an amusing article that was sent to me by Æsahættr: Hillary equals France.

I don't want to be too critical of this article since it's obviously a humor piece (and one that's nice to the French for a change...), but it fits the standard model pretty well: When comparing the French to the Americans, the author (Bill Maher) got some stuff right and some stuff wrong, but the one point where he was truly right on the money was a point about Americans.

Each culture has its own set of shared assumptions, and one of the most deeply held assumptions by the American people is that the American way is the best way; that all great ideas, advances, and innovations come from America, and the rest of the world is watching with envy and scrambling to copy "the American way" of doing just about anything.

You may be saying "Come on, Chanson!! The people of every country think their own way of doing things is best!!!" And I will respond with all sincerity: Not like the Americans do. The other half of you are probably saying "The reason Americans think that is because it's true!!!" And I'll grant that there's more than just a grain of truth to it -- there's a boulder of truth to it. That's probably why this belief is so popular. ;^)

Nonetheless, there are many cases where this unquestionable article of faith is wrong. And in those cases, it's a big stumbling boulder in terms of solving problems and improving things in the U.S.

Talking to the average European-on-the-street, as horrified as they are by Bush, there's still a strong sense that America leads the way -- largely in technology, but in other areas as well -- so there's no shame in watching closely and adopting practices seem to be working on the other side of the pond. (Case in point: Sarkozy -- who just won the French presidential election by a wide margin -- is perceived as the "Americophile" who will be leading France in a more American direction.) On the American side of the pond, by contrast, there's a perception of Europe as the "failed system" -- the standard example of how not to do anything.

Now let's look at this in purely mathematical terms: even if it's true that more innovation comes from America, who has the advantage? The people who use your ideas only? Or the people who use your ideas and their own as well? The American founding fathers weren't above having a two-way exchange of good ideas with other countries (notably France, as pointed out in the article), and America is all the better off for it. So why scrap this fine tradition?

Bill Maher gives an excellent modern example: Health care. Why is U.S. health care in the state it's currently in? Why, it's because American health care is the best in the world!!! And la-la-la I'm putting my fingers in my ears and not listening to you if you say anything different!!!

But seriously, (from a snail's eye view at least) the health care system here in France is excellent. As someone who grew up on U.S. healthcare, I am constantly impressed by the quality and comprehensiveness of the French healthcare system. I talked about the contrast a little bit in my post about those wacky health insurance companies!!! Just to take three day-to-day quality of life issues that are important to me -- healthcare, transportation, and public education -- all three are far superior in Europe. Now if you're about to remind me of the taxes, I'll just put it in crass capitalistic terms: sometimes you pay more for something that's better.

I've been hesitant to talk about the above in lo these many years of blogging because I don't want to alienate my American audience (or unduly worry them with the fear that those evil European socialists gotten to me and melted my brain). If you disagree with me, that's fine -- I welcome dissent here, and I don't claim to be an expert on economics. But I'm not speaking as a knee-jerk "France is always best" cheerleader -- I'm as willing and happy to criticize French folly as I am to criticize anyone else's (recall grammar police among others).

Regarding some of the other points made in the article:

The French do indeed like to swap gossip about their leaders' personal lives. Of course I heard about the fact that Royal never actually married the father of her children and I heard the rumor about Sarkozy's marriage being on the rocks. My husband even told me he'd read that Sarkozy's wife didn't bother to vote in the election, so notably she didn't vote for her husband. Now, one reason Royal's non-marriage was a non-issue was the fact that it seems like half of France is in the same boat. Not just my generation and younger either -- it looks like whether you've legally married your S.O./co-parent has been viewed as something of a minor technicality for some time.

Mahler is right, however, that politicians' personal lives don't show up as serious election issues. I talked a little about the relationship of the French with political sex lives in my post about Hillary Clinton. I think part of it is the fact that more than a hundred years ago there was a French president who died while receiving a B.J. from his mistress, and French politicians since then...? Well, they've had a hard time topping that one.

Another point for Americans to be aware of is that French history doesn't start right around the time of the French Revolution and cover France exclusively as a republic. From what I understand, it starts with "Our ancestors, the Gauls..." and runs through quite a bit of monarchy before that whole enlightenment-and-democracy thing. And since nobody's going to tell the king that it's not okay for him to maintain a mistress or two, it turns out that "the king's mistress" is a frequent stock character in the French history books. Obviously people will have somewhat different expectations for democratically-elected leaders, but still I think this sort of thing affects the public expectations about how leaders are going to behave.

Regarding the claim that "there is no Pierre six-pack" -- that's a funny line but... The author seems to be claiming that in France everybody's an intellectual and there's no political pandering or voting on the basis of emotional/symbolic issues. That's an interesting theory, but let's try to stay here on the planet Earth with us please...

That said, what I saw and read of the presidential debate here in France seemed fairly serious: The main issues covered were apparently economic theory and energy policy, and in particular how reliant France is (and should or shouldn't be) on nuclear power. I didn't see any discussion of how the candidates measured up in terms of pronouncing the word "nuclear" so I suppose they both did okay on that point. Y'know, for French people.

The last point I'd like to mention -- touched on briefly in the article -- is immigration. I'd like to devote a separate post to immigration and race issues in France -- how they are similar to related issues in the U.S., and how they're different. I've avoided the subject up until now because it's even touchier than anything I've spoken of in this post, and unfortunately it's a subject whose analysis suffers from more wrong-headed "France is the opposite of America" rhetoric than any other issue I've seen. Plus I'm not convinced that my readers are actually interested in this issue, so I hate to get myself mired in controversy for nothing. But I'll write up my ideas on the subject if you guys are interested.

Until then, this is Pierre six-pack signing off!!! :D

I wonder what all of those celebrity Hansons are up to today...

One of those weird automatically-generated-by-topic blog agglomerators has latched onto my last few posts, and it's a particularly stupid one that seems to think my blog contains info on the band called "Hanson."

On an unrelated note, the press seems to be reporting that Sarkozy just won the election. As you might guess, that's not the outcome I was hoping for. If I had any interesting or insightful commentary about the situation, I'd be posting it right here.

Le Hammourabi

Continuing in my series on ethnic curiosities of Bordeaux, this past week I had lunch at the restaurant Hammourabi!!!

I had to try this place out because I was intrigued by the idea of a Sumerian-themed restaurant. It originally had a sign written in cuneiform, which really made me curious about the place. Now the sign is partially written in Aramaic:


Both this photo and the one at the top were taken from inside the restaurant looking out -- I inverted this photo so you can read it more easily.

It turns out that the proprietor is a Syrian (Eastern Orthodox) Christian, and very interested in the culture of his native region. He showed me a sheepskin document he had written (a wall-hanging in the restaurant) and explained that it was the Lord's prayer which he had written himself in Aramaic, pointing out that that was the actual language spoken by Jesus (unlike every other Christian sect, who all read Jesus in translation...):



The culture is apparently a direct continuation of the Mesopotamian civilization, which has the oldest known recorded history. Hammurabi was the king at the time of the first written code of laws.

I brought along my husband and a colleague of his (a mathematician visiting from Lebanon) to have lunch at the restaurant. Now I know you're probably thinking "Great, Chanson, he's visiting from Lebanon, and you immediately think to take him to a Syrian-Lebanese restaurant..." But the thing is that he's visiting France for a full month, and I'm sure all of the other French mathematicians will be proudly taking him to places where he can sample the local (French) cuisine, so he was willing to try this out. It was fun because he was able to describe and recommend some dishes, and explained that region of Syria that the restaurant owners are from is particularly famous for its cuisine (Aleppo).



Here are some tasty stuffed grape leaves, with some Sumerian art in the background for atmosphere. It also turned out that the Lebanese wine that was featured at the restaurant was made by some sort of relative of our Lebanese friend.



This is Makdoos which I had as an appetizer, and below is what I chose as a main course, Kibbe Labniyye.



I'm not really a restaurant critic, so I can't describe the food in detail, but it was quite delicious, and a fun cultural and educational experience!!! :D

America Rockin' in France!!!

actual conversation:

me: Are you French?
Nicolas: Yes.
me: Are you American?
Nicolas: What's American?
me: [thinking] Hmmm, I guess we need to work on that...

Like every nostalgia-maniac generation-X parent, I've got my kids watching Schoolhouse Rock!!!

It's funny to watch these cartoons again thirty years later and in a different country. I don't know about the rest of you, but strangely I've found that the "America Rock" set from this series has more meaning for me than any other patriotic songs about America. I'm not sure why -- maybe because I learned them and liked them as a kid? Whatever it is, sitting my kids down on my lap and putting in this DVD seems like the most natural way to teach them about their American Heritage.

Even though war history is my least favorite part of history, I think my favorite in the "America Rock" series is The Shot Heard Round the World which recounts the sequence of battles of the Revolutionary War. I'm not entirely sure why I like this one -- there's just something about it.

Maybe I'm just responding to the fact that it shows the French role in the American Revolution, which I always point out to my kids as it flashes across the screen for a few seconds:


Well, they showed such determination
that they won the admiration
of countries 'cross the sea like France and Spain...


At Yorktown the British could not retreat
bottled up by Washington and the French fleet...

My second favorite is probably No More Kings. When they show the people on the Mayflower meeting the Native Americans, I like to mention to my kids that they had ancestors on that very boat -- as well as among the Native Americans -- so they can make a personal connection with all of this:



Actually, the more I look at this, the more questionable it looks to portray the the Native Americans' ominous meeting with the European invaders in this cheerful manner. Overall I'm a little torn on how to teach my kids to value the positive traditions of their heritage without glossing over the the negative parts and what we can learn from them. Oh well, at least Schoolhouse Rock didn't do some cheery song-and-dance number about slavery...

One of Nicolas' favorites (which I don't really care for) is Mother Necessity, which lists all of the great American inventors. I don't really like the fact that they promote the myth that technological innovations are the works of spontaneous genius (rather than acknowledging all of the earlier research they're based on), and worse: it promotes the myth that inventions always come from America.

To their credit, Schoolhouse Rock mentions that Marconi invented wireless radio communication. But weirdly the song almost seems to imply that he was American. Or at least you could easily get that impression from the song. Yet this comic book I read about Italian history (La Storia d'Italia a Fumetti dall'Impero Romano all'Anno 2000) seems to indicate that Marconi was Italian and that he did his research on radio in Italy and Great Britain. Oh well, I guess all of this would be less confusing if I tried learning history from some source other than cartoons...

Another one that's funny to watch here in France is The Great American Melting Pot. It seems a little ironic to show it to my kids considering our family's situation:


America was the new world, and Europe was the old...

I'd actually rather be showing them a song that gives a global perspective on worldwide migrations, but I guess that might be too complicated.

Leaving aside "America Rock" for a moment, there are a couple of items in "Science Rock" that are kind of poignant viewed with thirty year's perspective:


And Pluto little Pluto is the farthest planet from our Sun...

Poor little Pluto is no longer "the farthest planet from our Sun" since astronomers have demoted it to just another piece of space debris. Sigh.

And this is the saddest one of all:

If everyone tries a bit harder,
our fuel will go farther and farther.
Energy, we're gonna be stretching you out.

Considering America's current energy problems -- and the national security disaster that is America's oil dependence -- I can barely watch this one without feeling some pain and regret about the opportunities that were thrown away thirty years ago.

This is why I often think of my generation -- generation X -- as "the generation that dropped the ball." Older generations can rightly claim they didn't know any better. But my generation was raised with the idea that energy conservation is important and still had to get that McMansion out in the sprawling suburbs and the giant S.U.V. to drive there.

The only positive thing I'll say is that at least we have this song that has become timely again, and maybe this next generation will actually learn from it...

And if you're still up for more of this crazy nostalgia trip (I know I can't get enough of it!!!) I wrote even more musings about Schoolhouse Rock over on The Hathor Legacy here: The Tale of Mr. Morton

The things you see in Bordeaux!!!

Today, let's have a look at some of the amusing things you see in downtown Bordeaux.

First, a shop I've been trying to fathom ever since it appeared here:



This is a beauty shop for black people called "So White!"

Is it just me, or is that weird?

I think if I were black I'd be embarrassed to go into a place like that. (Actually, even as a white person I'd be embarrassed to go into a place like that...). I think I'd be more inclined to go to one of the shops facing that one on the other side of the street: "l'esprit Black" or "Black Cosmetique":



Those seem to have a more positive attitude. Actually, though, I probably wouldn't go to any of them. I don't generally go to beauty shops, and I don't see why it would be any different if I were black...

On the other hand, sometimes I think maybe "So White!" is meant to be taken ironically, like the ironically named "French Coffee Shop":



I know the joke isn't funny if you have to explain it, but I'll explain it anyway since it might not be clear from the picture. "The French Coffee Shop" is a new chain of American-style coffee shops (à la Starbucks) that has started appearing in France. So they named it "the French Coffee Shop." In English. But it's in France. Get it? Haha!!!

Okay, it's a little strained, or at least subtle...

While I'm on the subject of ethnic oddities, the next on the list is "Southern Fried Chicken":



If you can't tell, this is a knock-off of "Kentucky Fried Chicken." (There's a real KFC a few blocks away from this place.)

The thing I think is funny about this place is random mix of cultural elements they have going on. The main theme is American-style fast food fried chicken, but note the very French sidewalk crèpe-and-waffle bar on the left. Plus, if we zoom in on the sign, you can see that among "Nos Spécialités" they offer a hallal chicken burger. ("Halal" is the Muslim version of "kosher.")



And I'll close with a random item you don't see every day:



It snowed here recently, and it was the first time an actual coat of snow stuck on the ground for a day in all of the six years I've lived here. And classic VW beetles are also incredibly rare (but the kids are big "Herbie" fans, so they love 'em!!!), so I didn't want to miss the opportunity to photograph them together.

Snow on a Herbie! Right here in Bordeaux!!!

The things you see... :D