Jalapeños in Helsinki

A few years ago, one of my retired graduate school mentors dropped me a line after his first-ever trip to Finland.  He saw many people that resembled me, which he explained as persistent evidence of inbreeding in a still relatively insular society.  (I was amused by this characteristic observation from a confirmed sociobiologist).  On my recent trip to Finland after two years in southern France where people seem shorter and smaller and have more dramatic coloring, I did feel like my blonde hair, pale skin, and height were just about average.  In my own sociological view though, what really stood out for me on my visit was how globally diverse Finland has become, and how easily English rolled off people's tongues.

I was thrilled to discover so many people of foreign origins speaking Finnish fluently.  There was the man of Chinese, or perhaps Korean origin, who sold me a hat at the flea market in Naantali; his Finnish had a lovely inflection as did the Helsinki bus driver's, whose native tongue was probably Arabic.  At the airport, the young grocery store cashier with the dark, perhaps African complexion seemed to have absolutely no accent that I could detect, nor did the airline agent of Somali or north-central African origin.  Aside from a course I took many years ago in Helsinki with other young students from mostly Europe, I have never before heard fluent Finnish spoken by such a diverse group of people. In the past, it was my accent or inflections that puzzled Finns who couldn't quite place my origins.  Today, many more immigrants have come to Finland from beyond Europe, settling in to work and learn the language of their new country.

I was also pleasantly surprised by the ease with which young Finns slip between English and Finnish.  When I was younger, just the shop clerks at the big department stores and flight crews spoke English comfortably, but now, museum ticket-takers, waiters, ice cream stand sellers, apartment managers, all effortlessly switched to English when my husband was talking, and then switched back to Finnish when I spoke up.  Today, English is the first foreign language that Finnish schoolchildren take in school, and it is then followed by, instead of preceded by, the second national language, Swedish.  This, along with the ubiquitous English-language television programming which is subtitled but not dubbed as it is in France, means that Finns are broadly exposed to English.  It is after all the official language of the EU.  Yet it doesn't appear that Finnish is disappearing by any means, as it clearly remains important for the immigrants who make Finland their home.  As with many languages, external influences are enhancing how the Finnish vocabulary develops.  In a short article in a Finnish women's magazine, the chairperson of the Left-Wing Youth used many Anglicisms: would people get the 'pointi', if women 'sheivaa' or not their body hair? ("Antaa Rehottaa", Me Naiset, 1.8.2013, nro. 31, p. 16).

Finally, we also observed that the foreign culinary influence in Finland has widened, as we discovered jalapeños on our hamburgers and pizzas! Subsequently, we noticed the proliferation of Mexican-influenced restaurants in Helsinki.  While we enjoyed eating certain uniquely Finnish foods (the meat pies, the rice pasties, Fazer chocolates and candies), we did appreciate the flavor enhancements brought about by globalization.  Apparently, so do other Finns.  In a newspaper interview comparing the values of Finnish elites and ordinary people (that I happened to catch a glimpse of at the Cafe Strindberg on my second to last day in Helsinki, "Homoliitto erotti eliitti-Benin ja kansa-Karon" by Hannu Tikkala, 4.8.2013, Helsingin Sanomat), the Finnish guy representing the point of view of ordinary Finns pointed out that having international workers and people in Finland means that Finland gets better food...and better-looking people.  While I don't know about the latter, there are clearly benefits associated with the global movement of people, languages, and traditions.

Une porte fermée

This week we had the frustrating experience of losing access to our rental parking spot due to a poorly-publicized changing of the garage door sensors.  The first evening my spouse was caught between two closed garage doors, unable to go forward towards our section of the garage nor to exit (or even to call for help due to weak phone reception).  The next day I watched helplessly through the grating on one side of the center garage door as the new transmitter I had been given failed to open the door immediately in front of me yet worked nicely for the one beyond that leads to the street.  On both occasions, we could see where we wanted to go, the rewards were tantalizingly close, but because of une porte fermée (a closed door), we couldn't quite get there. 

That's not so different from the experiences of women that I wrote about last time in regards to salaries (La Politesse, March 2013).  In addition, women can often see the occupational and promotional opportunities above them, through the plafond de verre (the glass ceiling) but they can't quite reach them, at least not in the numbers that we should expect, not in France and not in the U.S.  A similar situation faces immigrants, particularly those from poorer countries-of-origin, for whom the rewards of a better or at least hopefully more comfortable life may be all too visible but not so easily reachable.  This is the theme in the témoignage I am currently reading (which is a kind of memoir, or personal testimony) by an Algerian Muslim immigrant who grew up in the Paris suburb of Val Fourré.  (About 13% of French immigrants come from Algeria.)  In Du côté de chez moi, Salima Senini* (2013) tells of life in the isolated city housing project, and the thrilling glimpses of French mainstream culture she gets, through television, school, and eventually, through her reading of French literature.  For her family and most of her immigrant neighbors, living the comfortable French lifestyle though is beyond their grasp.  Her father works several jobs to pay the rent and feed his large family and to get them to Algeria for summer visits, so for Senini, the desire to celebrate Christmas and receive gifts, to spend holidays skiing or frankly, anywhere outside of the immigrant ghetto, to wear more fashionable clothing, all these have to be satisfied with infrequent discount shopping trips to the city and or through dreams depicted in her made-up answers to school assignments about what gifts she received or to questions about where she spent her holidays.  (The teachers didn't realize that not all of their students celebrate Christmas?!  These same teachers also suggested that the  immigrant kids who spoke French and a tribal language at home were not 'really' bilingual because the other non-world language didn't count as a real language.)

Most of Senini's seven siblings don't complete school, ending up in strictly manual or blue collar jobs, just like all of the other neighbors' kids.  Unfortunately, they and others like them are often among those that suffer disproportionately in times of economic downturns such as we are experiencing in France right now.   This can put to a halt any progress made towards those elusive immigrant dreams.  (We have a family friend in Washington state who no doubt sees this same thing over and over again in her work helping immigrants and refugees learn English and find gainful employment in their new homes.)  Here in France, unemployment is the highest since 1999, at 10%. (See France24, French joblessness climbs to highest rate, March 7, 2013.)  It's over 25% for those under age 25, and some of whom are indeed immigrant youth or youth of immigrant parents, especially here in the south of France.  And, the sectors that continue to see declines in the past few economic quarters are precisely those in heavy blue collar (and immigrant) sectors, such as construction, mechanical work (vehicle repair for example), transportation, manufacturing (see INSEE report, in English, Ongoing decrease in payroll employment March 13, 2013).   Thus, glass ceilings, and open and then suddenly locked doors remain a fact of life for many immigrants, here and elsewhere.

*(Click here for a French language radio interview with Senini on the release of her book.  The English edition of her book from the Arenes publishing house seems to be forthcoming, and is entitled In search of myself.)

Here's another door that is hard to penetrate.  It leads to Le Panthéon national in Paris, that final resting place for illustrious contributors to the glorious French Republic (as decided by the current president of the Republic).  Among the many men's remains, there are remains of two women (next to their spouses) and one person of color.
 

La cuisine fusion

Having been away from the U.S. for a year and a half, there are definitely foods and flavors we are missing.  Initially, we really missed Mexican food, improvising with chile peppers for jalapeños, and white or kidney beans for pinto beans.  We've gratefully accepted and frozen 100% corn tortillas from the U.S., yet we do appreciate the excellent avocados, coriandre (cilantro or fresh coriander) and seasonal tomatoes here.  More recently, it's the flavors of Asian food that we are craving.  There are several ethnic food stores in Aix, specializing in halal (food prepared according to Muslim dietary rules), orientale (Asian), and exotique (some of the above).  The one closest to us stocks the Asian foods we are most familiar with given our Seattle ties, and lately, I have been there more frequently than usual, adding tamarind paste, miso paste, and lemongrass to my regular purchases of fresh bok choy, soy sauce, noodles, and rice.  This is in part thanks to our purchase of a cookbook from the British-based restaurant chain Wagamama, which we visited twice while in London.  Certainly, Aix restaurants offer la cuisine orientale (Asian food), especially Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese, but what's missing are the Asian fusion foods that are so typical in the bigger U.S. cities, and that we so happily discovered in London.  We miss that amalgam of flavors and menus and ethnic specialties, where lemongrass mixes with soy sauce mixes with ketchup, and Korean noodles find themselves in Japanese miso broths alongside Chinese cabbage.  Some call this 'fake' Asian food, but what is authentic food anyway?

Here in France, one might say we are eating somewhat more authentic national cuisine, as it seems that everyone living here is intimately familiar with this cuisine, with its ingredients, how it's prepared, and how one eats it.  Traditional French foods we've eaten in the past weeks have included les entrées (appetizers) of escargot, or snails, main dishes of daube (meats cooked in wine sauces) or confit de canard (duck legs in their own fat), and plenty of cheeses and desserts.  Our kids' school meals are especially traditionally French, in the number of courses and what they contain.  In the U.S. on the other hand, we have grown up eating from a much broader plate, where meals, even single dishes, are comprised of a variety of ethnic flavors and foods.  When you think about it, all of American cuisine is fusion-based, since most 'American' foods have come to the U.S. via the movement of people across borders, from all directions.  (Much of it comes from immigration processes, but we also must account for the forced migrations and uprootings of peoples too, all of whom have and had their own food traditions.)  In the process, whatever traditional, 'authentic' recipes were brought by immigrants, or slaves, or indentured servants, have been fused to what is locally available (remember the stories of how the natives taught new arrivals how to plant corn?).  Later, the flavors of the meals become more complex with increased interactions with other new arrivals of different backgrounds.  In some respects many so-called traditional foods are not even so similar or authentic anymore to what is made back in the country-of-origin, such as the 'Chinese food' or 'Tex-Mex food' in the United States.  In my own ethnic traditions, even the processes have changed, in the opposite direction; what I learned to prepare from my immigrant mother were the Finnish holiday sweets, made 'authentically' from scratch, where butter pastries were laboriously mixed and folded over and over before being rolled out, and fillings were cooked from scratch, whereas my friends and cousins in Finland just go to the grocery store and buy the cookie doughs and fillings ready made.  The theme, of fusion, is something one recognizes with other social forces too, and not just in relation to food preparation and the meals themselves.  For example, this quarter in my sociology of religion course, we explore how the effects of immigration and the interactions and experiences with new people in a new place often result in new forms of immigrant religious practice.  Surely, these feel authentic to those following them.

As for France, its sources of immigration are much tighter geographically (coming mostly from the south and east), and thus, the external influences on its foods (and other practices) feel narrower or smaller.  There are certainly regional variations in the French cuisine that are influenced in part by the movement of people across borders, from the heavier German-style cuisine in the northeast Alsace region to the Mediterranean flavors here in the south.   Yet, it still seems to me that there is a tighter definition of what French food is and how it is prepared and experienced, and this is shared across the entire country.  Maybe it's because of the French school system's lunch offerings or standardized French geography lessons where children learn about the culinary and viticultural specialties of each region.  Maybe it's the relatively narrower range of foods available in regular grocery stores.  Or perhaps immigrants here face greater pressures to assimilate to French ways; people here are either French or they are foreigners, and fused, hyphenated, French-something or other identities are not as commonly expressed or recognized as they are in the U.S.  Whatever it is, as foreigners here, I feel grateful to be able to experience French cuisine, however authentic it is or isn't, in the place where it originated, while also satisfying my family's hankerings for foods from 'home'.

So, you can just call me a wagamama,* as I cook my way through my new cookbook, creating new fusions of la cuisine fusion, where tonight's Asian-influenced mackerel with soy and ginger was in fact pêche en Méditerranée (fished from the Med's waters) and the spicy vegetable stir-fry consisted of bok choy grown in the French town of Orange, west of here, and the peppers came from Vietnam.

*Or am I?  Apparently, a wagamama is not a mama at all, but a willful person, or even a naughty child, perhaps meant to signify the restaurant chain's philosophy of not following any one food tradition too religiously.  (http://www.wagamama.com/about-us)

Du shit

We've been smelling du shit all summer, at home and at the beach.  Attention (beware), Anglophone readers: I'm not talking about doggie do-do on the sidewalks.  Du shit is marijuana, a substance with its own distinctive smell.  (Du shit is another one of those faux amis, or false friends, where the same words mean very different things in French and English).  A neighbor seems to have an insatiable appetite for l'herbe (grass or marijuana), and luckily for that neighbor, the drug capital of Europe just happens to be down the road from our town (as well as from the beach), so a direct supply line isn't too far away.  That supply line, however, is probably one source of the violent conflict that has been taking place between rival drug gangs in Marseille all summer, resulting in nearly two dozen deaths.  (Update to my post: Click here for a NY Times article summarizing the situation, 9/19/2012.)  A new national level police commissioner has been appointed just for Marseille in an effort to get a handle on the situation, while a news magazine today has called Marseille, which is France's second most populous city, a 'lost territory', and ponders how we have arrived at this point.
 

I do not know Marseille well, having visited just a few times, and I have yet to feel drawn to it, despite its potent sociological appeal.  Demographically, it is an extremely diverse city, both in terms of ethnoracial identity and age.  About 20% of Marseillais are foreign-born, and they come from all over: Spain, Italy, Corsica, Armenia, Turkey, the far East, northern Africa (Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco), central Africa (Ivory Coast, Mali), southern Africa (Comorros).  We got a glimpse of this rich variety last fall at the prefecture in Marseille.  I felt very white, blonde and boring, as I watched families enter and leave the waiting room for processing work and residency permits.  I was entranced by the colorful veils, scarves, saris, caps, headdresses, bangles, beads, gold jewelry, and by the huge variety of skin tones and ethnic backgrounds (the ones I could surmise anyway).  On the other hand, I also recognized the impoverishment and subtle desperation in the demeanors of some in that room and on the steps outside the building.  In fact, Marseille will not be the promised land for all of these comers.  Because of the persistent immigrant flux, the unemployment rate is high and the city is relatively poor by the standards of other French cities.  One sees this just by looking at the city's urban core; parts are dirty, dingy, and gray, with copious graffiti adding rough swatches of color both to once-elegant apartment façades and to newer cement apartment blocks.  I have also felt, more than once, a slightly menacing ambiance along some streets, particularly those that appear virtually empty in the center and those that are filled with idle men sitting at cafes passing the time while nursing their pastis (the famous Marseille anise-infused aperitif).  When legitimate or lawful economic opportunities are few, illicit ones, like drug trades, will exist and persist (as may drug wars and other related phenomena).  Unfortunately, the social and physical environments will reflect those.

Does this mean Marseille is a city lost to drugs?  It has always been an unusual French city because of its grittiness and multiethnic character.  Perhaps the civic pressure is reaching a bubbling point right now, as Marseille is just about to become the 2013 European Capital of Culture.  It feels like there is still much to be done, with significant construction underway, creating persistent traffic problems in major parts of the city, not to mention the security issues posed by the criminal activities in a few districts.  I am sure Marseille will eventually ascend to its role as capital of culture, and perhaps it will shed its other 'capital' reputation, if for a short while.  As I have discovered, sometimes the paths to achievements here in France are those that are the most sinuous and least expected.

Speaking of such paths, I took one last Friday evening in Marseille, in a part of the city I had never seen before.  We drove into and through the urban center, then along the beach in the 8th arrondissement (district or section of a city), all the way south until the road narrowed and became bumpy and then ended.  We left our car and hiked along a rough-hewn rocky path through a calanque (rock formation) for about 100 meters, towards the very tip of the calanque, to the very tip of France in fact.  And there we found a little Marseille restaurant, hidden truly at land's end, where we ate the freshest dorade (snapper or bream) we have ever tasted, while looking down at the roiling turquoise sea just meters away and at the dramatic rocky islands in front of us.  What other 'lost' treasures does this city have for us?

Les blogs

I know where the expatriate ladies do lunch in Aix.  Last week, my Canadian friend and I scored a table sans reservation (without a reservation) at a lovely restaurant adjacent to a fountain, and it became clear by the end of the meal that this was the place to have lunch, particularly for English-speaking expatriate women.  Is it because the wine is pink and chilled, and the waiters speak English? (Coincidentally, I posted a photo of this chilled wine in my previous post Rouge or rosé, and I describe a meal at this same restaurant last November on the night of the new wine release, see Beaujolais Nouveau.)  Or, it is because expatriates tend to connect with each other wherever they are in the world, and sometimes they just coincidentally converge on the same restaurants at the same time?

While I've not become heavily involved with the expatriate organizations in Aix, there are many of them.  I'm most familiar with the English-speaking organizations which connect primarily the large numbers of North Americans, Brits, and Down-Unders who are here.  These groups create a sense of community and serve as important resources among people undergoing similar experiences.  This is not unlike older immigrant communities that have served to integrate, support and even assimilate their members in new countries over the centuries.  In the West, I'm thinking of the Chinatowns and little Cubas or other international districts in larger cities.  In these communities, ethnicity or national origin and language have been the typical ties that have bound people together to share resources and information so that they can successfully forge new lives in their new homes.  The differences with the contemporary expatriate communities is that in these latter communities the members seem to be connected most closely by their social class backgrounds.  Most of the expatriates seem to be relatively well-educated, of middle to upper middle class, and their occupational roles have largely transferred laterally here.  These are people who have been able to find or create professional positions for themselves on par with what they left behind, and who are not starting at the bottom of the the social ladder like earlier and less privileged immigrants have often had to.  Even those who do not speak French well do fine here, because in a sense, their educational and social statuses trump their linguistic deficiencies; they know how to get information and learn quickly how to work the system, so they are able to hit the ground running. 

One particularly important tool for these expatriate communities is the use of online resources.  Certainly, such resources and online access are available to everyone these days, but many expats, because of their educational and social backgrounds, are particularly adept at using online tools to connect and seek information.  They may also have more time and access with which to log in most effectively.  Here and now, expatriates are emailing, twittering, texting, and blogging, as they connect to other expats like themselves, and these much more immediate ways of communicating have largely replaced the letters and phone calls that immigrants of the past had to really on.  (That's a wall of old mailboxes photographed in a passageway in Marseille several months ago.)  I am particularly aware of the expatriate blogging communities in France, but they exist all over the world.  While there are broader ones centered on Paris and in other large areas, I'm noticing in Provence and in other regions of France, smaller, tighter blogging communities of primarily Western, middle to upper middle class women sharing their experiences here, asking questions, telling some of the same kinds of stories (of the endless rosé, the escapades of the French villagers, the familiar frustrations with the French ways, etc.), and posting stunning photographs of quintessential French scenes.  Some of these women appear to have formed online friendships and avidly follow or link to each other's blogs.  (My little sociology blog here on which I'm recounting our experiences from a sociological perspective doesn't even register on these amazing networks of French-themed blogs.)

The concentration of women bloggers, especially American and English-speaking women married to French husbands, is notable, but they aren't alone; there are all kinds of other expat blogs, of Finnish women (and no doubt Spanish and Italian and...) living in France (is it the water, or the French men?), of Irish and Dutch expats farming organically or restoring houses in France, of Christians evangelizing the secular French, and so on.  This suggests to me that expatriates, even those who are well-educated and economically-privileged, have the same needs to connect socially with each other that many other earlier or less economically stable immigrants have.  The Internet facilitates these connections, by giving opportunities via les blogs (the blogs) to share and link and relate virtually.  Yet, sometimes virtual connections may not be enough, and we want face-to-face contact with someone who speaks our language.  Then, we rely on the French to facilitate our social connections, by doing what they do particularly well--providing us with good dining opportunities and delicious food and wine, at lunch or anytime.  With these we share our expatriate stories and experiences and renew our spirits for yet another day.  Santé! (Cheers!)

Humilité

We've had a lot of lessons in humilité (humility) recently.  Mine are related to the fact that I am simultaneously a parent, a middle-aged woman, and a foreigner.  The humility that comes with parenting is certainly one that many of us understand.  In my case, as the parent of deux adolescents (two adolescents), I have these boys' challenges to authority, their encroaching height and developing bodies, their potty humor (which seems to be positively correlated with puberty), and their more elastic language learning to deal with.  I receive much eye-to-eye eye-rolling from one tall son when I "just don't understand" how important something is to a pre-teen, while I receive spontaneous French pronunciation lessons and translations from the other when I really just don't understand what that nice French lady said to me at the doctor's office. 

Then there is the humility of aging.  A woman of a certain age, at least this one anyway, really begins to see the effects of physical aging in this bright, unforgiving Provençal light.  The wrinkles are so much more visible here, on one's visage (face), as are the gray hairs (and one's kids don't fail to point all of these out).  And, try being the oldest person in the testing room at the autoecole (driving school), just old middle-aged me and the hip French high school and college kids in their ripped jeans, scarves, cute shoes and cigarettes.  Furthermore, while we may all be students and I may have many more years of experience being a student and studying for exams, my previously excellent memory is no match for the quicker, younger, brains around me, as we click our way through questions on sample épreuves théoriques générales (driving theory tests). 

My driving school experience also highlights the ways in which being a étranger (foreigner) is so very humbling.  My parents and I were foreigners to the U.S. many years ago, but I didn't have the experience of being an adult foreigner that they did, and that I do now.  There is nothing more humbling than having to learn, as an adult, different ways to do things that in another setting one has long known how to accomplish, perhaps even well.  I may be a fairly forthright, direct, confident speaker and teacher in the U.S. where my command of English is excellent, but here, I am very watchful and timide (shy), sitting silently on the seats at the driving school or standing on the periphery of the parent circles at sports events.  Likewise, I may be a driver of nearly 30 years, but that means nothing here in France where foreigners like me have to learn different traffic rules and processes, and we have to take the same tests as all the young aspiring drivers, only not in our native language(s). (For the record: a small miracle happened this morning, which I attribute partly to the good karma of the Seattle-like rain which has been falling in Aix since yesterday, to the dismay of many a tourist.  The rainy day for me was the day I somehow passed the driving theory test, in French, on my first try, even though I barely understood the facilitator.  It is not an easy exam to prepare for and I was thinking last night in my final preparations, that I am too old for this humbling experience.  Well, part one is done so I may as well move on to part two: practicing actual driving, with a French-speaking facilitator, and according to specific French protocols, like the order in which one adjust seats, mirrors, seatbelts....) 

May rain in Aix

I've spoken with others and we all agree that being a foreigner can make one feel especially stupide, and this is true for kids too.  My boys no doubt felt this way a little bit every day in the initial months of attending French school here, and one boy has had persistent feelings of inadequacy on his sports team.   (This latter is another excellent example of how not knowing how things are done creates humility.  We didn't understand how important parental patronage and French nationality were to a child's opportunities within a particular club until the very end of the season, so we didn't know 'the game' we were to play on our child's behalf.  Fortunately, we now know and we also know that there are other clubs with different ways of operating, so we have made a change for next year.)   In a way, the foreign experience makes us feel doubly humble, whether we are children or adults, because it accentuates or enlarges the learning curves that face us as we move through different life stages.  We may already be uncertain about being a middle school student or the parent of almost-teenagers or a driver(!), but being these things in a foreign country adds to our uncertainties.

Nevertheless, there is always something to be learned from lessons, especially from lessons in humility:

1. Everyone feels stupid at one time or another.  Speaking and connecting with foreigners or anyone in new humbling situations can go a long way in making others feel less stupid, and it can help them navigate those aforementioned learning curves of their new situation or society.  I am privileged here in that I have access to people, through the parents we've met and the driving school staff, who have engaged me and helped me understand how to function in France and who have helped lessen the discomforts of not knowing.  They've extended simple human kindnesses such as speaking French slowly and patiently, or offering detailed information when requested.  Such small gestures offered to anyone in new straits can make a significant difference.
2. Lessons in humility while painfully learned, do create a richness in our own lives that we might not have otherwise.  It's incredibly silly that my spouse and I have to pass new driving tests in France, and it's very frustrating to see one's child shunned while trying to play the sport he loves, but in the process of standing in line at the testing center or pacing on the sideline of a soccer game, our whole family is learning so much about French society and also about ourselves--what we believe in, how we want to behave towards others, and what we are capable of accomplishing.