It’s all about the right place and the right waiters.
Well now, here’s a surprise. Since my last visit here in spring, this has popped up on the Boulevard St Germain:
13 hours ago
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
I have no profound objection to Starbucks. I’d say that I split my latte business evenly between the various providers in Madison. But here?? Starbucks was born out of one person’s travels to Italy and his inspired insight that the Italian coffee culture could burgeon in the US, but the coffee chain never did set up shop in Italy. [Nor in Poland for that matter, but there, I think the rejection came from Starbucks rather than from the imitate-all-things-American nouveau-riche of Poland.] To find Starbucks in Paris, though, is a shocker. And it doesn't help that my search on the Net revealed three other Starbucks coffee shops in the French capital. Can we just let it stop right there, please?
As midnight approaches
I’m eating dinner late, at my same old place. I like it here. Why? It’s all about the waiters. No no, don’t get me wrong, they’re not hot or anything, they’re just so fast and professional. They make the entire dining experience a tour de force indeed. I choose the smoking section which has 100% French customers, as opposed to the ugly upstairs non-smoking rooms which are filled with 100% foreigners. The waiters (therefore) assume I am French. Everyone else does as well.
Madame et monsieur are at the table next to mine (oh so close – you know how it is: one big comfy couch for the ladies, then chairs opposite small tables for the men). Madame is eyeing my dessert. She throws one glance, then another, then another. Finally she can’t stand it and asks what I am eating. You know what she really can’t stand? Monsieur’s monologue about the reasons behind the falling dollar. We talk about the loveliness of serving warm winter fruits with a delicate sorbet. Monsieur does not like this. He has lost Madame’s attention. He coaxes her to try a more intricate chocolate dessert. She hesitates. The waiter comes. She gives a wisp of a smile and says: I will have what madame is having at the table next to mine. I leave before Monsieur shoots me or slashes my throat with a bread knife. But damn, I feel French! Stripped of Polishness & Americanisms for a brief minute, I am stateless, nationless, I am nothing. I may as well be French.
As midnight approaches
I’m eating dinner late, at my same old place. I like it here. Why? It’s all about the waiters. No no, don’t get me wrong, they’re not hot or anything, they’re just so fast and professional. They make the entire dining experience a tour de force indeed. I choose the smoking section which has 100% French customers, as opposed to the ugly upstairs non-smoking rooms which are filled with 100% foreigners. The waiters (therefore) assume I am French. Everyone else does as well.
Madame et monsieur are at the table next to mine (oh so close – you know how it is: one big comfy couch for the ladies, then chairs opposite small tables for the men). Madame is eyeing my dessert. She throws one glance, then another, then another. Finally she can’t stand it and asks what I am eating. You know what she really can’t stand? Monsieur’s monologue about the reasons behind the falling dollar. We talk about the loveliness of serving warm winter fruits with a delicate sorbet. Monsieur does not like this. He has lost Madame’s attention. He coaxes her to try a more intricate chocolate dessert. She hesitates. The waiter comes. She gives a wisp of a smile and says: I will have what madame is having at the table next to mine. I leave before Monsieur shoots me or slashes my throat with a bread knife. But damn, I feel French! Stripped of Polishness & Americanisms for a brief minute, I am stateless, nationless, I am nothing. I may as well be French.
Destination: Poland, France (Tuesday)
Transitioning
I’m riding with my sister to the airport in Warsaw and we get stuck in traffic. The road is partly under construction, but that doesn’t explain the complete impasse. It’s the trucks, she tells me. There is no highway that circumvents the city center and so every piece of machinery heading north or south ends up passing through the city itself. The cars no longer pollute in the way that they did ten or twenty years ago, nevertheless there certainly are a lot of them.
We pass the dzialki, little plots of land once given over to city residents who wanted to cultivate gardens. My sister reflects, sadly, that it’s hard to maintain them now. Vandalism and theft make it difficult to leave anything behind. Things disappear.
In Paris, I take the RER train to downtown Paris. I have always liked the ads they have posted at the airport: bus to Paris: delayed; taxi to Paris: delayed; car to Paris: delayed; RER to Paris: 29 minutes. I always arrive here from Warsaw at the same time: during rush hour traffic. It is unthinkable to take the bus then – it takes too long. Rush hour on the metro with a suitcase and a computer poses interesting challenges nonetheless.
I pass suburban stations and I note the graffiti on the platform walls. Vandalism: a theft of clean public spaces. As I look at it, I am remembering the worst graffiti I’ve seen in a long time: my sister and I had been walking through Warsaw’s Old Town and we saw it there, on a wall of one of the pretty, blue buildings. I thought then –how could some jerk with spray-paint deface something that was built out of the rubble, by the bare hands of those who had the vision of a new “Old Town?”
Paris always serves as the connecting city, the city that transitions me to the US and so I make a point of stopping here for a couple of nights. Because I know that once I step off the plane on the other side of the ocean, it will be as if I never had my week in Poland. That’s the way it always is: my Polishness remains nearly invisible to everyone but myself, even as my Americanisms are so obvious to all my Polish friends and family. One country (Poland) is a scanner and a sponge for all that comes from the other (the US). And that other? Oblivious, unaware. It’s just the way it is.
Okay, one last look at Warsaw: decking out a restaurant for the holiday season, then a quick switch to Paris: decking out a restaurant for the holiday season.
I’m riding with my sister to the airport in Warsaw and we get stuck in traffic. The road is partly under construction, but that doesn’t explain the complete impasse. It’s the trucks, she tells me. There is no highway that circumvents the city center and so every piece of machinery heading north or south ends up passing through the city itself. The cars no longer pollute in the way that they did ten or twenty years ago, nevertheless there certainly are a lot of them.
We pass the dzialki, little plots of land once given over to city residents who wanted to cultivate gardens. My sister reflects, sadly, that it’s hard to maintain them now. Vandalism and theft make it difficult to leave anything behind. Things disappear.
In Paris, I take the RER train to downtown Paris. I have always liked the ads they have posted at the airport: bus to Paris: delayed; taxi to Paris: delayed; car to Paris: delayed; RER to Paris: 29 minutes. I always arrive here from Warsaw at the same time: during rush hour traffic. It is unthinkable to take the bus then – it takes too long. Rush hour on the metro with a suitcase and a computer poses interesting challenges nonetheless.
I pass suburban stations and I note the graffiti on the platform walls. Vandalism: a theft of clean public spaces. As I look at it, I am remembering the worst graffiti I’ve seen in a long time: my sister and I had been walking through Warsaw’s Old Town and we saw it there, on a wall of one of the pretty, blue buildings. I thought then –how could some jerk with spray-paint deface something that was built out of the rubble, by the bare hands of those who had the vision of a new “Old Town?”
Paris always serves as the connecting city, the city that transitions me to the US and so I make a point of stopping here for a couple of nights. Because I know that once I step off the plane on the other side of the ocean, it will be as if I never had my week in Poland. That’s the way it always is: my Polishness remains nearly invisible to everyone but myself, even as my Americanisms are so obvious to all my Polish friends and family. One country (Poland) is a scanner and a sponge for all that comes from the other (the US). And that other? Oblivious, unaware. It’s just the way it is.
Okay, one last look at Warsaw: decking out a restaurant for the holiday season, then a quick switch to Paris: decking out a restaurant for the holiday season.
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