A fish out of water

One of the most indelible images from our first few months in France was of the asylum-seekers I saw storming the door at the prefecture in Marseille one morning.  The foreigners were mostly men, and the speed and aggression with which they approached the doors at opening time revealed so clearly and painfully their desperation and their need.  They were grabbing as hard as they could for the chance to find a safe place for their families to re-build a home and a life.  My family was in the longer, more sedate line, of legal immigrants, of people with residency permits in process, all of us with far greater prospects for staying in France.  The road to residency was still not an easy one, even for us as temporary seekers (see Les documents Sept. 2011, for a small example of the monumental pile of documents we needed), but we did not have the added pressures of a lost home or the painful memories of a lost life.

I've been thinking a lot about those asylum-seekers as well as of the thousands of refugees that were passing very close to France's southern shores in the months before we left, those Eritrean and Somalian refugees arriving by the boatload to Italy's islands (see for example, Italian coastguard rescues 700 refugees, Oct. 25, 2013, France24news)  Then there were, and are, the enormous waves of Syrian war refugees fleeing their villages and country to re-start their lives in Europe, adding to the pressures of those tasked with helping refugees.  And finally, in November, a natural disaster on the other side of the globe created more refugees, by uprooting the homes and lives of thousands of Filipinos.  Meanwhile, my family prepared to leave our temporary home in France, and we arrived fairly calmly and to open arms to our 'home' in the U.S.  Yet, because our physical home, our house, is currently occupied by renters, we have since had a very small taste of what life must feel like for those forced to move from shelter to shelter, bed to bed.  We've slept in 7 different beds since we moved out of our French apartment a little over a month ago, carrying our winter clothes in two suitcases each, and bags of books, electronics, and food.  Certainly, our welcome has been significantly warmer (after all, we have returned to what we call 'home'), and our shelters have been much more comfortable than the government-issue tents or makeshift lean-tos of scrap wood and metal used by the Eritrean, Syrian, and Filipino refugess.  But we understand a little of what it must feel like to lead a nomadic existence all the while trying to work, to attend school, and to manage the mundane tasks that every family needs done, day in and day out.  It's very different from moving about say as tourists, because being a tourist is such a temporary, and more luxurious and artificial experience of daily life.  Not having a real place to call home in the long-term, in which to settle in, to rest, to recharge is debilitating, on both a personal and social level.   I've discovered how rootless one feels living out of unpacked bags and suitcases for weeks on end, and how disorienting it is to wake up in so many unfamiliar beds.  It's like being a fish out of water, not a good situation in the long term.  My family's status is quite temporary and far from being detrimental, but imagine if we had to figure out how to get water, cooking supplies, and food, and access to toilets and showers, on a daily basis for months to come, as many thousands of families all over the world are right now, or if we had to deal also with the lingering personal and other traumas related to forced and dangerous departures, such as those resulting from political unrest or war in one's country, or a natural disaster in one's town, or even abusive relations in one's home.  Without stable, safe, permanent places in which to catch one's breath, in which to lick one's wounds, in which to prepare for one's social roles, children can't do well in school, and adults can't be effective employees and contributors to society.  Homelessness hurts on so many levels.

A la prochaine

From Portraits de boutiques by Lolmède, Rencontres du 9e Art, 2013

While I have been a regular biweekly customer at the local coffee roaster for almost two years (there's only one in Aix that I know of, and it's not a Starbucks), and I have learned over time how to place my order in French for two 500 gr bags of two varieties, ground coarsely for my cafetière à piston (that's what the French call a French press coffee pot), the shop owner and staff at La brulerie are strictly professional with me.  So, I was really surprised by the owner's reaction a few months ago when I discovered my wallet missing from my purse as I was about to pay for my coffee.  I tried to stammer that I was sorry, that I'd run right home and get my wallet, but the owner simply handed me the ground beans and said to me with a discreet smile, pas de soucis (no worries), I could pay on my next visit.  She didn't even make a notation of my IOU.

This gesture has been matched by many others over the past months, suggesting to us that we have become a part of the community here in centre-ville, even if transiently.  Lately, I've noticed that my regular fruit and vegetable vendors at the market now occasionally say à la prochaine (until next time) or à bientôt (see you soon) to me, instead of the customary merci, madame, au revoir.   One of the sellers at our closest bakery is sometimes a bit more personal with our family (I think it's my husband's friendly smile and goofy French), and she will slip a box of day-old sweets into our hands once in a while with subtlety and a smile, as we purchase a baguette or loaf of bread.  She once remarked on my absence after a long spell of grading and other work.  Her co-workers are generally more aloof, although one of them gave me a baguette without payment recently when all I had was a big bill instead of change, saying to me in French, Madame, won't you be coming in again tomorrow?  You can pay for this one then.  Just around the corner from this bakery is a gold and silver shop in front of which stands a security guard whom we first met outside another shop adjacent to our old apartment.  Coincidentally, he changed shops just as we moved to our current apartment nearby, and ever since, we see him nearly every day.  He and our boys regularly exchange fist bumps in passing, and he gets the latest reports about football, rugby or school activities.  Two weeks ago, in his melodious African-accented French, he complimented me on the boys' manners and upbringing when we came across each other on the street.  

How long does it take to feel like one is part of a neighborhood or a community?  In France, because people tend to have many small economic transactions and social exchanges virtually every day, at the bakery and at the produce markets, even if they live in large cities, such social exchanges can become more personalized over a relatively short period of time.  And this personalization can foster a deepening sense of community.  In our case, because we live right in the center of a small, pedestrianized city with a distinct center, we have walked the same streets for nearly 2 years, and even though we still stick out a bit, we are recognized as we cross paths with the same people every day.  Some allow that recognition to reflect a closer bond, such as the caviste (wine seller) who now comes specifically to shake our hands if we stop by for a meal or some wine at his shop/restaurant, or the more reserved husband of my regular vegetable vendor who helped me recently with some suggestions for une assiette de crudités (raw vegetable platter).  My Belorussian hairdresser greets me with bises (cheek kisses) and then we chat in French, our common language, while I have my shampoing/coupe/brushing (shampoo/cut/blowdry).  But not everyone is similarly open.  Of our neighbors across the narrow street on which we live, only the Persian rug shop owners (who appear to be brothers or cousins) regularly greet us daily, while neither the tattoo artist nor the realtor ever make eye contact.  The clerks at the nearby department store, post office, and news stands also seem to be more reserved.  It may be these latter folks that feed the stereotype that outsiders have of the 'haughty' French, but in the big picture, people here are not so different than elsewhere.  Everyone needs some sense of community but carves it out as he or she sees it.  (See Neighborhood people, August 2009 for more on the sense of community.) Who to include as part of that community is up to each person, as is how to do so.  We may not have the chatty and casual exchanges we might have with a grocery store clerk in our Seattle neighborhood, and in France we still must use the formal French vous in speaking with each other, but it deepens my sense of community to know that for the moment, 'my' French fruit vendor considers me essential to his economic and social exchanges and that he really does mean it when he says à la prochaine.

Villeneuve

The two Washington towns in which I have spent most of my life are quite young.  Seattle was established in 1869, and Hoquiam, the coastal logging town in which I grew up, was incorporated in 1890.  My birthtown, Helsinki, is considerably older, having been established in 1550, and I've always loved that I originally come from an old settlement.  Perhaps that was why I was so attracted to the old town of Tallinn, Estonia, for my dissertation fieldwork.  I was there about five years after Estonia regained its independence, and I wandered the streets of the beautiful Hanseatic old town daily (it dates from the 1200s).  I lived outside the historic city center, in a residential part of town that was both old and relatively young, with centuries-old wooden buildings interpersed with Soviet-era highrises from the 1940s and 50s.  Today, parts of Tallinn look much newer, even though I have not yet witnessed its metamorphosis into a truly contemporary European capital.
   

Luckily for me, moving to Aix gave me another opportunity to live in a really old city, with some Roman ruins sprinkled here and there, and lots of quaint old X's bracing walls, as in the photo above.  I describe our family's move to our current location in a post from last December (Emmenagement).  It's funny to think that the quartier (quarter) in which we live is in fact called the villeneuve (new town).  The villeneuve was built up from 1590 until the 1700's, as compared to la vieille ville, the 'old town', which dates back to the Roman period up until the 14th century.  This notion of new towns and old towns offers a wonderful example of how we construct different social meanings, sometimes for even the same words, depending on the time and place in which we live.  To the Aixois in 1600, our part of town was the new town, and it remains one of the younger parts of this old city, even though currently some very new construction is taking place just south of the city center.  On the other hand, if we want to talk about new towns in a more global sense, Seattle is definitely a villeneuve! 

I'm currently pre-occupied with one other villeneuve and this one is not so much socially constructed as it is creatively constructed.  I mean that it is not a real town, but it's the name of a fictional town that is the subject of a French television series called Un village français (A French Village).  One can even visit the fake town virtually on the official website.  I learned about the series from my Finnish friend here whose family first followed the show on Finnish television.  (Not a single French person that I've asked knows the series, despite the fact that it features some well-regarded French actors.)  The series imagines the experiences of the French in their small towns during the Occupation in World War II, and the first season's episodes are each followed by some short historical reminiscences of actual French citizens who lived through the Occupation.  ("They were there...." says the caption under the title in the photograph below.)  I was able to purchase the boxed dvd set of seasons 1-4, thinking that I could improve my French comprehension by following engaging story lines, and learn about some French social history at the same time.  (I've just begun the second season and have discovered that I'm going to have to do some seriously listening because the subtitles suddenly end after the first season's dvds.)

So far, I understand that the Occupation brought about some significant changes in the relationships among the people in town and in the ways in which the town operated.  As a mirror for the French war experience, the series shows how all kinds of different private interests came to the fore as a result of the Occupation.  For some French, the urge to go on as before was strong but impossible to do fully, given the restrictions placed on ordinary activities.  New rules governing social activities forced some French to leave or lose their jobs, and others to adjust their diets, their daily movements and their hopes for the future.  Other French saw opportunities not only to survive but perhaps even to prosper, by cozying up to the Germans or by dabbling in the black market, perhaps even at the expense of their fellow neighbors (a point that has often been conveniently overlooked by the French until very recently).  And then there were those who saw the openings for other kinds of clandestine activities, on behalf of the French resistance or the latent communist movement.  As the series progresses, Villeneuve is becoming a new town because of the Occupation, and I suspect that when the series is over, the town will no longer look like or feel like the one in the opening episodes.  I suppose this is true of all human settlements; they are always in flux, but sometimes external forces, or violence, or new ideas, bring about change more quickly than at other times.  In some ways, this is exactly what I was thinking about in my last post about Marseille, a real French town that seems to be on the brink of something new (see Du Shit). 

A pied

Despite my current obsession with the French driving rules that I must master in order to get a French driver's license, I do not regularly use the one car our family owns here.  (I tell why I need that license in an earlier post, April 2012 A is for Autoecole.)   Some know that in Seattle I was a keen urban walker, walking the mile to and from elementary school with my children nearly every single day, rain or shine, usually with my black and white floral Marimekko umbrella in hand.  (Even in physically-active Seattle, some thought we were remarkably dedicated.) My spouse and I selected our Seattle neighborhood in part because of its sidewalks and the walkable proximity of grocery stores, a post office, and a pub.  In true U.S. fashion though, I used my car for my main grocery shopping, the transporting of kids to after-school activities, and my commute to work. 

In contrast, in Aix, I take care of virtually everything à pied (on foot) or en ligne (online).  European cities are generally more walkable because of how these cities' cores developed over time, and perhaps also because of different social priorities.  I appreciate that I can faire mes courses (to run my errands) on foot relatively easily here (with a little help from delivery services and friends with cars), and I am of course grateful that I can do my professional work and occasional shopping at home in front of the computer screen.  Another factor in Aix that makes errands easy is that the weather is much more conducive to walking, so there is little need for parapluies (umbrellas), although a hat and a water bottle are often necessary during the hot summer months.  Yet, for many Aixois, driving to work and to run errands, rather than walking or trying other transportation alternatives, seems as common as it is in the U.S.  Many drive themselves to work, clogging the ring road out of Aix in the morning and into town in the evenings.  As for errands, we don't have Costco, here, but the parking lots at the supermarchés (supermarkets) and warehouse stores outside of the urban center are always quite busy.  On my big walking days when I cross town and walk a bit over 4 km, trying to catch the end of one boy's sports practice at a stadium near the center, and then hoofing it south across the autoroute (freeway) to the end of the other boy's sports practice, I am in the minority as a walker.  Just a few parents may walk to the stadium (I've gotten my share of strange looks and questions even here), and I am the only parent that retrieves her son at the other sports field on foot (we walk back across the autoroute to catch a bus home).  Walking beyond the general urban core, I am quite alone on the trottoirs (sidewalks) and passages du piétons (pedestrian crosswalks), except for the many, many voitures, camionnettes, motocyclettes, cyclomoteurs, and cars zipping by (cars, vans, motorcycles, mopeds and buses).  Even the relatively few urban bicycle riders (in contrast to those in training or exercising) seem to stick pretty close to the urban core.

In the U.S. but also here, walking has largely been "engineered out of existence," as aptly noted by Tom Vanderbilt in a recent Slate Magazine article (The Crisis in American Walking, April 10, 2012).  We have created other means to get where we need to go and we use them when we can, because they require less physical effort, or they feel faster, easier and more convenient.  Some confer more social status than others too.  Like a flashback to my own childhood, nothing elicits groans more than my suggestion of a family walk on a quiet provençal Sunday afternoon; after all, why WALK when we can drive, and what if someone sees us?  Furthermore, the bus-riding son tells me that riding the bus just isn't that cool, even in Aix.  It may be that Aix doesn't have enough well-developed, attractive alternatives to cars because there aren't enough people here to popularize them.  Paris, on the other hand, is full of stylish walkers, and then there are those incredibly hip business men and women on rented vélos (bicycles), while in the center of Lyon a few weeks ago, I couldn't help gawking at the half dozen grown women zipping around elegantly on foot scooters.

As a consequence of the continued love affair or dependence on the car, traffic in Aix is significant in and around town, as are the struggles and creativity to find places to park.  These issues are typical in many old European cities, where labyrinthine, dense urban centers have tried to accommodate motorized vehicles.  In the larger cities like London and Paris, restrictions against cars in certain zones are becoming more common, to ease congestion, pollution and the wear-and-tear of historic centers.  For us here in the south, the increasing cost of gas (even diesel is at nearly 1,50 euros/liter, that's about $7.87/gallon, The Connexion, April 17, 2012), the difficulties with navigating narrow 300+ year old streets (in our case, resulting in a nice dent and missing door handle and a costly repair), and the limited traffic and parking options (to run some simple errands last week, I spent three hours, mostly circling, to find short-term parking, to drop off groceries, and to get back to our 110 euro/month parking garage), being a piéton (pedestrian) may not be hip, but it is definitely smart.  Sometimes it's even really fun, such as when pedestrians take over the main thoroughfares, as they did on Cours Mirabeau last weekend after a very joyful carnaval parade covered the street with lots and lots of paper confetti. 

Sources:


The Connexion. 2012, April 17. "Sales drop as fuel prices hit record." The Connexion. http://www.connexionfrance.com/Fuel-petrol-diesel-prices-record-Doubs-13628-view-article.html

Vanderbilt, Tom.  2012, April 10. "The Crisis in American Walking." Slate Magazine. http://www.slate.com/articles/life/walking/2012/04/why_don_t_americans_walk_more_the_crisis_of_pedestrianism_.html

Notre petite vie

Earlier this week as I was refreshing the flower pots on my front window sills with bright orange ranunculus flowers, I realized what has been so fun about apartment living in Aix.  It's like playing house!  On a much smaller scale than in our previous home, we've set up housekeeping here, filling the nooks and crannies of our French flat with our furnishings from home and whatever we've been able to find from other ex-pats and at dépôt-ventes (consignment stores) and thrift shops.  While our apartment isn't tiny, our adorable French kitchen requires a great deal of efficiency, with bowls stored inside other bowls on top of platters, and once Saku or I are seated at our small kitchen table, there's no vacating until Allen or Jori get up from the table.  (Here's Saku in his corner along with Jori, making egg rolls this week for dinner, on our very full little kitchen table.)  Likewise, our bathroom is also the laundry room and kitchen storage, so there's no room for 12 or 24-pack toilet papers or cases of tomato sauce or any of those features of the super-sized American lifestyle.  We do of course have a few cases of wine and champagne, but those are French essentials, and we have a space for them in the cave (cellar) many floors below us.

Our life in many ways is much smaller here. It's not that French live small lives, but relative to the very big and full U.S. life that we left behind last August, what we have here is smaller, simpler, and dare I say it, more relaxing?  Some of it may be a factor of apartment living, or of urban life, or of life particularly in the South of France, I'm not sure.  On the other hand, this small, simple life here in France, which while quite pleasant, is also a bit paradoxical, because to have it means to put up with some hassles that we are not used to.  I've heard others say that life is just a bit harder in France, or in Europe, compared to the U.S.  I think in some ways yes, but in other ways, perhaps no.

*SHOPPING for daily essentials: Not shopping every few weeks for jumbo packs of toilet paper as we did in the U.S. means going to the store more frequently here and buying smaller quantities.  I always found Costco warehouse shopping exhausting in Seattle, but it's equally physically grueling to walk back and forth across town, stopping at various shops for this or that item (never everything in one store), and then schlepping all back home.  (And imagine all this in the scorching heat of summer!)  I use my wheeled cart more and more frequently, and when I can, I use delivery service.  When we do shop with the car, driving to the megastores in the outskirts of the city, we have to drop bags off at the apartment main floor, and then circle around the city center to park the car in its garage, and then walk back across town to get those groceries hauled up to our floor.  Stores are also organized differently here, which may mean standing in various check-out lines for different items, like the kleenex I was trying to buy two weeks ago at Monoprix which was on a different floor than the groceries that I'd already stood in line to pay for.  At the warehouse hardware store, Castorama, which resembles Home Depot in Seattle, one has to walk back and forth across a parking lot to three different buildings and stand in three different check out lines to purchase garden items, home furnishings, and building materials. You just can't be in a hurry to get your shopping done.

*daily BREATHING: Living closer to other people on a smaller land mass, and especially in a concentrated urban setting in Aix, much like I had in Helsinki several decades ago, means everything and everybody is closer together: lots of people, little space, and lots of germs.  I still remember the wicked case of the Shanghai flu I got in Helsinki over 20 years ago, and these past two weeks, I am afraid that the French flu epidemic has ravaged our town and our family. (See http://www.connexionfrance.com/France-flu-grippe-epidemic-H3N2-13500-view-article.html )  You cannot walk down the street without hearing someone coughing or sneezing, and it just feels like that everywhere we go, hundreds of people have touched that same railing or those same door handles.  It's true that people get sick in Seattle, and my sister reports that a school in her San Francisco neighborhood actually closed due to a widespread outbreak of gastroenteritis last month.  But the space we have in the U.S., at least in our Seattle life, means we could isolate ourselves a little more easily from others.  We've been sick more than usual this year, but perhaps we are simply being exposed to many new and unfamiliar viruses and bugs.

*DRIVING small cars on small roads: As we did in Seattle, we have sports' activities to attend on the weekends, many of which require some travel.  We've also occasionally had conflicts with both boys' games on the same day and time.  These we've managed relatively smoothly, thanks to the willingness of parents on both the soccer and rugby teams to help drive our kids, and this was no different in friendly Seattle.  The bigger differences have been in the actual travel; much of it has been within a relatively small geographical radius, within our région Bouches-du-rhone, for both sports, and the routes are much more idyllic than any of the traffic-laden routes on the freeways near Seattle.  But, they are so idyllic that it's necessary to use a GPS or Navigator application on one's phone to find the way to the complexe sportif (sports complex: usually 2 soccer or rugby fields, some stands with locker rooms and restrooms, and sometimes even a snack shack, serving cafe and sometimes bière) in some small, sleepy Provençal village.  The roads are often pretty quiet on the weekends, but Sunday driving this is not, because the speed limit on the narrow two-lane routes départmentales (secondary highways) is a nerve-wracking 90 km/hour and there are ditches on each side.  Seattle traffic is stressful, but so is trying to listen to the Navigator narration, (which exit from the next roundabout?) while keeping one's car on the road and avoiding the sideview mirrors of the rapidly approaching little cars.

*TIMING: And, after our breathless arrival, the start of any sports' event is, like all other activities, on French time.  Here's Saku's team last weekend waiting for their coach on the fog-shrouded pitch in Meyreuil, about 20 minutes from Aix.  Game warm-up at 8h30?  Expect the coach at 8h45 or closer to 9h.  Game time at 9h30?  Expect it to start by 9h50.  Yet no one seems agitated by this.  At home, we were always watching the clock, because there was always that next activity to get to after the game.  Here, it seems the only thing most of us might be rushing back to is our next meal, and heaven knows, those are also very languid affairs.  Maybe I'll have more to say about those meals next time.  We're in the middle of school holidays, so our life is even quieter than usual, and our family has downgraded its vacation plans a bit due to work commitments.  Instead of a ski holiday, the boys and I are heading to Lyon, the city that some describe as a small Paris.  In characteristic over-programmed U.S. fashion, I've mentally planned out our days, with three museum visits, and shopping, and sightseeing, but I'm sure once we get to our first bouchon (small French bistro typical to Lyon) and I have my first sip of wine, everything will s-l-o-w down and we will experience the city in more typical and relaxed French fashion.

Emménagement

In my last posting I mentioned how important the social environment is to sociologists in their attempts to understand social behavior and patterns.   While I stretched the meaning of social environment a bit by referring to the ways in which the physical environment, namely the weather, affects human behavior, I am much more in line with typical sociological thinking in this post when I consider residence.  Residence refers to the socially created environment in which one lives, that is, typically the neighborhood and its social characteristics.  For example, this quarter in my online Social Inequality course, my students and I read about the ways in which racially and ethnically segregated neighborhoods affect the occupants' opportunities in life, their personal security, and even their health outcomes.

My family has just made a change of residence, moving into a new apartment in Aix (emménagement means moving in and déménagement, moving out).  We are still denizens of the centre-ville (the city center, which consists mainly of the old town), although our new quarter is the villeneuve (the 'new' old town, by a century or so).  Our building is a hôtel particulier which means that at one time the entire building was a private residence (not a hotel as we understand it in English).  Now there are 6 units carved into this 4-story building.  There are at least three other former private residences on our street alone with intricate facades while ours is much less ornate and seems newer.  A hôtel particulier often has a grand entry and the ground floor apartments may have high ceilings and elegant spaces as they would have been the reception rooms or salons, while the floors above would have been bedrooms and other private spaces.  We, at the top, on the fourth floor, may in fact be occupying the servants' quarters, as a French friend pointed out; our ceilings are a little lower and windows a little shorter than in the apartments below us.  The French call our floor the troisiéme étage (third floor), since they don't count the ground floor as the first floor; I can tell you that whatever floor we call it, there are six flights of stairs (six landings) between the street level and our floor, because we made the trip up and down countless times last Thursday, Friday and Saturday!  I believe we have the largest apartment in the building though as we have over 125 m2 of living space, trois chambres (three bedrooms), a typical French kitchen (see below), a living/dining room, a wc, a bathroom/laundry room, another bathroom with toilet, and two balconies, all spread over two floors.  (The French call a two-story residence a duplex; that's another cognate, same word in English and French but different meanings).  One of the boys' classmates marveled that our apartment is almost like a house!

We are lucky indeed.  The light is incredible in the living spaces, and we have some lovely views, of the lace-curtained apartment windows across the street and peaceful inner gardens at the back of the apartment.  The balconies are rare luxuries (relatively few exist in the old town) but they were a priority for me so that we could sit outside during spring and summer meals and I could step outside during respites in my online teaching work.  Being at the top of the building, we can't hear neighbors (although the ones below us hear us walking around; we shall try to tread more lightly in this old building.).  As is typical, we have to buy our own appliances, and you can see from the photo that I am still short an oven and dishwasher, but Julia Child churned out some amazing meals in her small Paris kitchen sans frigo, (no refrigerator!), and I believe we can make do in ours.  (Check out this brief interview of the production designer who reproduced Julia's French kitchen for the film Julie and Julia. http://www.themagazineantiques.com/news-opinion/current-and-coming/2009-08-05/behind-the-screen-a-look-at-julie-julia-with-mark-ricker/)

The location of our new building also remains very convenient to local shops and the boys' school, even if our orientation is slightly different.  I found a new boucherie/charcuterie (butcher shop/delicatessen) nearby and the boys were thrilled by the familiar foods at the Asian food store off the périphérique to the east of us (the ring road around the old town).  I have now also ordered my first online groceries in France, complete with livraison (delivery) all the way up to my apartment's front door!

Such benefits, proximities, space, and light all mean that we are relatively privileged in our residence and that our social and other opportunities are enhanced as a result.   Some consider Aix itself a bit 'high-falutin' as we say in colloquial American English, or like a mini-Paris, according to another French friend, if prices and/or egos are any indication.  We know we are fortunate to afford to be here.  As for residence-based health outcomes, while I did have a a sick boy at home yesterday, Jori's sore throat and croupy cough had little to do with his living conditions and much more to do with attending a very big school with lots of students and air-borne viruses.  In fact, thanks to his new living conditions, Jori was able to rest comfortably all day in his new bedroom's built-in loft (the French call this a mezzanine), and he was well enough to return to school today.

Une pendaison de crémaillère

We had a lovely crémaillère (housewarming party) last weekend, and we decided that we would stay in this elegant apartment on rue Papassaudi at least through June.  The apartment is very comfortable and is beginning to feel like a home.  (A pendaison is the chain that holds the crémaillère over the fire, and cooking dinner over a fire like that warms up the house, doesn't it?)  Much of the comfort stems from the fact that we can control the heat inside the apartment, during the summer and even now, as we have air conditioning, which is quite a luxury here. 

Unfortunately, our propriétaire (landlady) has other plans for our appartement (apartment), and we must be out by January at the latest!  This means I am now having to plunge into the world of real estate, something I was able to avoid because this furnished apartment was recommended to us by an acquaintance and we made the agreement privately.   Without personal connections though, finding an apartment is a challenging and expensive endeavor in France.  Real estate agencies work for the landlord, so the renter must pay the agency a finder's fee (usually one month's rent or more) and the renter's deposit also is often held by the agency (and not easily refunded).  The agencies post their listing together on the Internet, but are slow to respond to email queries (they don't really work for the renter!).  Phone calls work much better, but require a little more fortitude especially with one's poor French skills.  I THINK I have an appointment to view one apartment à vendredi à quatorze heure (Friday at 2 pm), and we'll see tomorrow if I got that right.  Today, I came upon a service that connects landlords to potential renters directly for a much lower fee and visited the spartan office and found no suitable listings at the moment.  Even with this organization, you get shafted as the renter, because the fee is not contingent on whether you find a suitable property and sign an agreement, but merely gives you the right to connect with the landlords of properties you are interested in over a six month period. 

Renters also have many upfront costs.  Many apartments do not come with the fully-equipped kitchens.  Renters may have to buy refrigerators, stoves, ovens, dishwashers and microwaves.  Likewise, laundry is not a given.  So, those items add to the cost for renters significantly, as does the renter's tax that we just found out about, that must be paid if one is renting at the end or beginning of a calendar year.

Then there are the considerations about where to live.  We are in an elegant apartment on the deuxième étage (3rd floor, but the French call it the second floor because the ground floor is not the first floor but the ground floor), with 3 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, high ceilings, a nice floor plan, a full kitchen and laundry, and even a tiny balcony in the center of the building where the sky is visible if one looks upward.  And we are right in the middle of the old town.  Our street is quaintly narrow so we can easily see into the apartments of the college students across the street (if my neighbor in Seattle lived here, we wouldn't even need a phone to call each other to wave from our respective living rooms.  We could just open the windows and say bonjour!)  I wouldn't want to drive up in my car, although delivery cars use this street every morning.  Allen parks our car in one of the nearby city parking garages, of which there are several around the périphérique (the ring road that circles Aix).  Monoprix, my grocery store, is just around the corner, the barber is in the other direction, the boys' school is 5 minutes away, and at least 5 bakeries, 2 wine shops, and as many lingerie shops are all within a very short walking distance, for those last minute hankerings.   There are some lovely and affordable villas and maisons à la campagne (in the countryside) surrounding Aix, but this shifts the lifestyle considerably.  Some come with piscines (pools), but may require more furnishings, and would almost certainly require an additional car, and more time management.  And, I do so enjoy the foodie M.F.K. Fisher's chronicle of her time in old Aix many years ago (see Two Towns in Provence), living not far from where we do now.  She too was captivated by the energy here.  

So, while I have now completed most of the boys' school and sports-related paperwork, and my fall quarter community college course is underway, a new fall project is upon me, one that will surely expand my French skills, as I deal with agents, and potential landlords, and who knows who else.  In addition, we think our shipping container has or is about to arrive in port, so we will have to deal with local moving agents here, to pay storage of the contents for a few months or arrange to have our 39 boxes sent here, and then schlep them all ourselves to wherever we end up living.  All of this is beginning to make the atmosphere in our current home feel a little warm!


(ps. Aixoise friends, let us know if you hear of any apartments in the vicinity, T4, 3 chambres, 95-100 m2 minimum!)

picture credit: http://prunelle.skynetblogs.be/archive/2004/08/18/pendaison-de-cremaillere.html

Neighborhood people

Last fall, I read an article in Key, the NY Times Real Estate Magazine called “It’s a Wonderful Block” (Fall 2008) about how some neighborhoods and streets just ‘work’. In that article, Mark Oppenheimer described a great block as a ‘delicate ecology, consisting of elements in perpetual flux.’ That characterization has really stuck with me, as I've thought about what makes my particular neighborhood block work, and I thought about flux again last night, after my neighborhood enjoyed its annual Blockwatch Night Out for Crime potluck.

I happen to live on a wonderful Seattle street, which had an established blockwatch program when I moved here in 1996. I and another neighbor now share the blockwatch captain duties, which means we maintain the neighborhood map and contact list. We all know who lives in every single house, along one block, on both sides of the street including the corners: that's over 20 households! I take my responsibility seriously, sending or forwarding neighbors regular emails about crime reports or incidents, but looking at the content of many of my neighborhood messages over the years, it's clear that although the neighborhood came together in order to fight residential crime, we also stay connected for practical and social reasons. We've come together over the issue of traffic safety, by organizing the acquisition of a traffic circle to slow traffic on one of the perpendicular streets, and we regularly call the city to fill the potholes that inevitably appear on our street or intersections. We pass on news about new farmer's markets or garage sales. We also share rides or walk to school in groups, we pick groceries up for each other, occasionally share meals, and we have neighborhood happy hours and craft nights and even bipartisan election night get-togethers. Ultimately, our neighborhood, our street, satisfies a social need in many of us, a need to be connected. This is particularly so, in a highly-mobile society like ours, where extended families aren't exactly next door, to share practical assistance and offer social continuity. For many of us, our neighbors are the people we see regularly, the people we rely on, and the people who help give our daily existence purpose and social meaning.

In fact, President Obama invoked this same idea in January this year when he told the dance crowd at his first inaugural ball stop that he and his wife Michele are 'neighborhood people', and that was why they wanted to have and attend a D.C. neighborhood people's ball because D.C. was their new neighborhood. For Obama, being in Chicago and now in D.C., means he has been far from his familial roots, so being a neighborhood person is what has helped keep him socially connected to his community and given his life meaning.

So, what about the 'perpetual flux' of a great block? That simply means that the nature of our neighborhood connections, however rich they may be at a given time, are constantly evolving. The Night Out potluck I enjoyed with my neighbors last night really showed how change is the only constant factor in neighborhood life. For example, one elderly neighbor, Phyllis, is no longer living on our block, and we always counted on her to bring baked beans, as we might count on someone else to bring the pasta salad or the brownies. In fact, several other neighbors have moved on or passed on since I've lived here. And of the neighbors present, we're older and so are some of our kids. In years past, the bulk of the 20+ kids on the street have traditionally decorated their bicycles elaborately for a bike parade from corner to corner and have spent the 3 hours of the potluck playing in the closed street since the closure happens just once a year. This year many of the children have grown up enough not to want to decorate their bikes or even ride them all evening on the closed street. Actually some of these kids have gone or are going to college now, while an smaller, emerging younger set is still too young to ride! We must have sensed this change, as we've moved to showing an outdoor movie on a neighbor's front lawn.

Change... people move, age, and social connections shift. Indeed, our neighborhood is deep into its renaissance; when I first moved in, my elderly neighbor, Clint, shared with me how in the 1950's and 1960's, this street was very lively, with young children and families socializing, like we do now. He even had a party room and wet bar in his basement! But, the character of the street changed by the 80's, as the demographic shifted, and as it will again. I think my old neighbor Clint would be surprised by the ubiquity of email correspondence connecting neighbors on the block. It just goes to show that we don't stop seeking social connections--some of us really are neighborhood people. But, how we seek those connections, and who seeks those connections are indeed constantly in flux, as we should expect in any great neighborhood!