Fourteen days in Paris

We squeezed so much into our 11-day Paris trip in June of 2006 that our blood vessels expanded as time compressed, like the bellows of an accordion. Just a day after landing at Roissy, we drove to the town hall in Milly-la-Forêt, south of Paris, and then to the Chateau de Malesherbes to attend a wedding ceremony and reception. A few days later, we were on our way to Corrèze, in the heart France. The seven-hour road trip involved making our way through the maze of one-way streets, detours and dead ends in the fifth district, only to end up idling on a painfully slow-moving arc of the beltway, all while trying to keep Tiggy entertained and our Renault Scenic rental from becoming a bumper car. When we got to Correze, we followed a narrow country road that snaked through the majestic countryside to Le Fagnat, where we stayed for three nights before heading back to Paris.

When we were not on the road, we were on the go, making our rounds, reconnecting with friends and family, rediscovering our old haunts and filling up on food and mineral water that we can’t afford stateside.

What’s so special about revisiting a city we used to call home? Well, everything. And that’s why we are eagerly looking forward to our next trip to Paris in March. When we lived in Paris, we never could find the time to do the things on the bottom of our ever-expanding list of fun and interesting things to do, such as spending time in a bibliothèque a l’ancienne, like the Bibliotheque Mazarine, or taking in an art show at the Palais de Tokyo in the 16^th district. We were simply too preoccupied with taking things for granted and plotting our escape to some place farther afield. Public holidays were ideal times to get as far away from the capital as possible. During my six years in Paris, I spent so much time complaining about the way things worked in France and how I thought things ought to work that I didn’t even notice how much I had evolved, or how many things I’d miss when they were no longer an option. In two months, I’ll be able to appreciate the shopping pleasures of Monoprix and a traditional French bakery, even if it means having to wait in long lines as the baker individually wraps all the baked goods for the clients in line ahead of me.

Fourteen days in Paris won’t be long enough to appreciate all the things I’ll put on our agenda this March, but we’ll make the most of every hour that we are there.

C’est le jour des crêpes!

Chandelmas (Crepe Day) is celebrated each February 2nd.

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La Chandeleur, fêtée chaque année le 2 février.

 

Winter sales in France

In France, retailers ordinarily hold big, store-wide sales (les soldes) twice a year: once in the winter and again in midsummer. This year’s winter sales season (Les soldes d’hiver) kicked off on Wednesday, January 10 and will continue for about a month.

France has a forest of regulations governing when vendors can hold big sales and on which items they can slash prices, including:

·         The French départements set the dates for and lengths of the two sales periods (in January and July, up to six weeks long)

·         The sale items must have been products already in stock the month prior to the soldes  

·         Merchants cannot replenish their stock of sale items during the sales period, and

·         Stores must display the full prices and the sales prices. Naturally, the tagged markdowns must be lower than the original prices. And French fair trade and competition authorities will verify whether items marked as “soldé” are, in fact, on sale.  

These laws protect both small and mid-sized businesses and consumers. They prevent below-cost pricing («… offres de prix ou pratiques de prix de vente aux consommateurs abusivement bas par rapport aux coûts… » in the French Code de Commerce), which could seriously hurt smaller players in the field; and they deter vendors from marketing cheap, junk merchandise as sale items, or marking up prices to offer bogus markdowns or going-out-of-business, everything-must-go “steals.”

The first day of the sale is like Black Friday, which signals the start of holiday shopping in the United States. Stores open extra early, and shoppers, who have waited months for the big sales, line up in droves outside the shops waiting for the doors to open. The checkout lines are long and slow-moving, and the shopping experience is nerve-racking.

Pharmacies in France

Saunter along any Paris street and you’ll spot a ubiquitous croix grecque (Greek cross), which, in France, is affixed to a store front to denote a pharmacy. In the United States, pharmacies dispense medicine in settings that include counters, tucked away at the back of supermarkets, and convenient drive-through windows, where customers can drive up and fetch pharmaceuticals from their cars. In France, however, pharmaceuticals can only be dispensed through small, stand-alone pharmacies. And unlike in-store pharmacies, popular in the United States, pharmacies in France are out in the open, and easy to spot, thanks to the neon green and blue "plus signs," which are illuminated, and often flash, when a store is open for business. Pharmacies in France also tend to be visually appealing, with attractive merchandise displays and chic and enticing product ads.

New visitors to France will discover that the product line in local pharmacies is limited to prescription and non-prescription drugs, health, beauty and nursing products, and sometimes veterinary supplies. Pharmacies don’t sell meat, or offer the convenience of one-stop shopping, but they are the only place you can go for cough syrup and pain killers.

The French pharmacy is more than just a white counter where you pick up refills and aspirin. It is more like a health and wellness center, staffed by a trained and licensed pharmacist. It is not uncommon to see a pharmacist out in the aisles, advising her customers on anything from baby formula to dandruff shampoo. And not only do pharmacists tend to be extremely helpful, they also seem to genuinely like reassuring customers and dispensing advice. This is, perhaps, what attracted many of them to the profession. The only exception I encountered in six years was a seemingly bitter and misogynistic pharmacist practicing on a shady side street in the eighth arrondissement, but we’ll consider him the exception that confirms the rule. The pharmacist doesn’t just want a customer to walk out with drugs, she wants him to leave with products that will work for him. If a customer has been throwing up or has had no success with pills, she might suggest an equivalent drug in suppository form, rather than another pill, or even a remedy of her own concoction.

And consumers look to their neighborhood pharmacist for guidance. France has cultivated a different approach to medicine, one based on deference to the pharmacist rather than self medication. Even products containing benzoyle peroxide, a chemical often used in off-the-shelf gels and creams to treat minor acne, requires a prescription in France. When I was pregnant, a pharmacist in the 18th arondissement refused to sell me pre-natal vitamins because she didn’t think I needed them. I explained that I had read an article on the importance of folic acid and that I would like to take a supplement, the equivalent of taking out an insurance policy for "folic acid." Instead, she suggested that I eat a balanced diet and everything should be fine. I could have just gone to another pharmacist but I didn’t.

The pharmacist is also a great resource for nursing moms, dispensing advise on anything from homeopathic remedies for breast feeding and ailments to the rental of breast pumps and baby scales. Shortly after our son was born, I went to our neighborhood pharmacist in Paris to pick up a sterilizer for baby bottles. The pharmacist suggested simply submerging the bottles in boiling water. When I complained that I didn’t want to boil (the limestone in our water left chalky deposits on everything), she suggested dropping sterilizing effervescant tablets in cold water. She also asked the baby’s age, and reminded me that once babies are past the newborn stage, it would not be necessary to systematically sterilize everything. She could easily have sold me a fancy sterilizing appliance and made more money, but that was not her goal. She even reminded me that kitchen space was a commodity in Paris, and that while handy, I could easily get by without one.

 

Photo: La pharmacienne par excellence

Pharmacie Ossart-Escoffier, Véronique. 70 r Am Mouchez 75014 PARIS

Cheesy Trivia

I recently caught an episode of Des Chiffres et des Lettres (Numbers and Letters, a French game show in which contestants compete to spell the longest word, from a given set of letters and solve a math calculation in a a given amount of time) already in progress. Between sets, the host and participants were discussing the difference between Gruyere and Emmenthal, two types of Swiss cheese. Ostensibly, the participants had to spell or figure out a cheese-related word. When I tuned in, the host was asking the contestants why Emmenthal cheese had holes. I was sure the holes were either marketing (like the Nike swoosh for Swiss cheese) or a way to air the cheese out, perhaps to make it age faster. 

I’ll never be invited to compete on that show. The holes in Emmenthal (real Gruyere doesn’t have holes) come from the bacteria used to make the cheese, which consume lactic acid and release carbon dioxide. The bubbles from the gas form holes over time.