Fatherland

This summer I went to France to meet my father who I had never met before. It was also the first time I had ever been overseas, and the whole experience proved itself to be extremely overwhelming from both a cultural and emotional perspective. Last January, I found my father's business address in Paris on the Internet. In March, I had the courage to call him, and in May he met me at Charles de Gaulle airport for what was to be a two-week visit, but turned into a stay of three months. During my stay, I had to acclimate myself to what a French daughter should look like, act like, and talk like. I observed many cultural differences, some better, and some worse than American culture. Unlike the average American tourist, I was given an insider's view into the French lifestyle.

First, I'd like to clear up some misconceptions of the French because I noticed that a number of American stereotypes about them just aren't true. For starters, I didn't see one beret during my entire stay, nor were many people carrying baguettes under their arms everywhere they went. I saw no frog legs on the menus in any restaurant, people didn't smoke any more than they do in America, not everyone owns a dog, French children are not served alcohol at the table, women do shave and generally take much better care of themselves than Americans, and the French are less rude than most Americans I know.

During my first 24 hours in Paris, I first noticed the differences in my surroundings before I started to pay much attention to people or things. Paris is a city constantly re-inventing itself, starting on the Ile de la Cite as the home of the ancient Parisii tribe, then occupied by the Romans, afterward becoming a city created by royalty, then destroyed and re-built by the (in)famous Haussmann, and currently transforming itself around the peripherique with places such as La Defense. My first impression of Paris was one of wide boulevards linking together monumental spaces often embellished in gold, and lined with 19th century eight story stone buildings that give the city a graceful continuity not seen in American urban planning. Paris is also a city marked by religious monuments--from Notre Dame to Sacre Coeur and St.-Chapelle to name a few. At some point I started to wonder if the churches were erected as a monument to Christianity, or if Christianity was practiced for the sake of building such ethereal structures.

Paris is a city tied closely to the church and state. France's ancient Catholic Faith has built for Paris some of the most beautiful cathedrals in the world, and France's socialist system of government has funded amazing public oeuvres--most recently with Francois Mitterrand's Grands Travaux which heralded in structures such as La Defense, Institut du Monde Arabe, and the much-troubled Francois Mitterrand Bibliotheque Nationale.

After settling in to my surroundings, I started to observe drastic differences in every day life. The most obvious example are the French eating habits and manners. I learned French eating customs the hard way--after my first lunch with my grandmother, my father told me she was appalled at my table manners which I had always considered to be good. The next time I went out to eat with my grandmother, I was so nervous that it took me an hour to finish my plate. First of all, you will never find a paper napkin anywhere. All the napkins are cloth, and when you sit down the first thing you do is to place them on your lap. I know we do this in America, but usually we wait for the food to arrive. In France, it's do not pass go, do not order until the napkin is placed. Following this, the French put their bread directly on the table. If you put your bread on your plate, it is extremely rude, unless you are in a $100/plate restaurant where they give you a separate plate for bread. Once I was served a meal of Salmon eggs, fresh cream, and blinis (thin pancakes). I didn't know what to do with the blini... I had a panic attack... is it bread? Do I put it on my plate? Do I put it on the table? I thought, it's bread, so: the table. Then I watched everyone else put it on their plate. Not a good incident. During the meal, the French do not put down their silverware. They hold the knife in the right hand, and the fork in the left, and turn the fork backwards to put food in their mouth. They never cut anything with their fork. The knife cuts must be graceful and effective because otherwise you will be accused of playing a string instrument. Yes, it happened to me. Also during the meal, the hands must never rest on your lap. I can speculate on the possibilities as to why this is considered rude, but instead, let me just say it's almost better to put your elbows on the table than your hands in your lap. Don't ever pick up anything with your hands--not even pizza. Such manners are barbarian. It took me a long time to get used to everything. I love French food, but for about a month, eating felt like a performance art where the audience was ready to throw tomatoes at me.

After trying to master the French way of eating, my father wanted me to master the French language. I think he thought, despite the fact that I had only taken a semester of French in 7th grade, that I would be fluent by the time I left. I wasn't. However, I think I picked up the most useful four letter phrase in language. No, it doesn't start with an F. It's "ca va". "Ca va", literally "it's going", generally has three meanings: "How are you?" "I'm fine" and "I'm alright, I'm not hurt". If you see someone you know, "Ca va?". If someone asks you how you are, "ca va." If you bump your head on the Metro, "ca va". It's a utilitarian phrase worthy of all occasions. After I didn't have the language down, and sort of had eating down, my father expected me to start dressing like a good Parisian. Considering he's an entertainment lawyer who only dates fashion models and other lawyers, his expectations were fairly overwhelming for me. Accordingly, I "looked like a peasant" when I walked off the plane. My boots were too masculine, my brown pants clashed with my black shirt, and my pants were way too big. My navy blue pea-coat wasn't feminine, I had bangs, I had earrings on, and I wasn't wearing enough make-up. My father forbid the boots and told me I either had to wear sandals, heels, or New Balance gray sneakers. I let him buy me the sneakers. I had to get all new pants--mine weren't tight enough for Paris. They have a thing for the black pants sorority girl look; I don't. I tried on five pairs of black pants that my father picked out. I could only get two over my hips and I'm a size five! Eventually I found some pants that fit. I had to stop wearing earrings because only "middle and lower class French girls wear them". I went to the Salon and had my bangs removed, a French manicure, and a session to learn how to put on Parisian make-up. Then my father was seen with me in public. Following all this, I got to attend the World Premiere of a French film called "Jet-Set". Coming from Ann Arbor, it felt very strange to walk down a red velvet carpet with flashbulbs in your face, and the director of TF1 waiting to shake hands with you at the entrance to the theater. Incidentally, after already being out for two months, "Jet-Set" was still playing on the Champs-Elysees when I left France.

Women in France have very different attitudes American women, especially concerning fashion. In America, in general, clothes are more casual and unisex. In business, women dress in similar fashion to men to show they are on equal terms, and to be respected for their skills instead of their beauty. In France, the trend is reversed: for French women, sex is power. In the workplace, dressing femininely is looked upon as an asset, and sexual harassment is much less of a concern. In fact, my father couldn't even begin to understand the women's movement and American feminism. In France, women have been in the workplace for much longer than American women, and in general, there are almost no housewives in France. My father said he couldn't understand how any American men and women manage to have functional relationships in a country where the roles are no longer defined. My father finds the idea of women initiating a relationship very strange. In fact, French attitudes towards sex in general are the opposite of most Americans. As my father's friend summed it up: "The French talk more and do less. The Americans do more and talk less." In America, due to our puritan roots, we tend to shake fingers at everything that could be perceived as sexual, and yet, in private, we do more than most cultures, and think about sex more. Nudity is considered natural is France. I once saw an image of a man sucking a woman's breast right on the wall of a magazine kiosk in Paris. I watched school children pass by without even noticing. I imagine that if the same image were placed in America, NOW and the GOP would stage a protest around it, call it derogatory to women, say it damages children, causes aggressive tendencies in men, and then label it pornographic. Once, I was looking through a photo album of my cousin's in Dijon. I came across a photograph of a relative completely nude, after getting over the initial shock, I tried to imagine finding a photo like this in one of my American family albums. I couldn't.

I was in Strasbourg for about ten days visiting my cousin in Dijon's father and his family. One night, my uncle had a cook-out. I was asked if I like Sardines. "Why?" I replied. "Because we are going grill them." My immediate reaction was one of dread, and "where's the BBQed chicken?" In the end, the grilled Sardines weren't that bad, but I still can't imagine seeing them at a Labor Day cookout. Besides meeting other relatives like my uncle's family in Strasbourg, I also made a few friends while I was in Paris and got to know some of the nightlife. In particular, there was a great hole in the wall called "Porte Amsterdam" on the right bank of the Seine. My friends, a mixture of French, German, Austrian, British, Spanish, and American (only me), would go to this bar in the evening to dance on the tables. On Saturdays, around 11pm, they would push back the tables, clear a dance floor, and turn up the Techno music with occasional Wham! thrown in. Once every hour, the mostly Dutch clientele would drunkenly join arms and sway back and forth to the Dutch National Anthem and traditional folk songs, or whatever else uniquely Dutch and kitschy that the DJ could find in the dusty stacks. The walls of the tiny venue were covered with Dutch signs, chalk boards that read "Shot du Jour--Drunk", advertisements for the special "Meter O' Beer", and the much coveted picture of the King and Queen of Holland. Once, while dancing to Abba, my German-speaking friends and I were approached by a young Dutchman. Realizing that my German speaking friends didn't know Dutch, he said, "But you speak English though?" To which they replied "Of course." It was interesting for me to see how English is used as a form of communication among non-English speaking individuals. The cute Dutch boy had wanted to let us know he and his friends were headed over to "The Queen". Yet another interesting bar was called "The Long Hop." It was supposed to be American, except the funny thing was that there were no Americans there!

I also had the opportunity to go to many restaurants. About half the restaurants that I went to were owned and operated by the Coste Brothers. Anywhere that you find a famous site, be it La Louvre, Les Invalides, or the Champs-Elysees, you will find a Coste Brothers restaurant. They are kind of like the Microsoft of Paris cuisine--definitely not great, a lot of flash and little depth, functional and inescapable. One of my favorite non-Coste restaurants is La Gare which is located inside an old train station in Paris. Once, I went there with my father, his best friend, and a man he worked with. Upon sitting down at the table, I watched three identical cell phones placed consecutively on the table. If you've ever been to Paris, then you know there isn't one person in the entire city who doesn't own a cell phone--and they talk on them all the time. They talk in restaurants, waiting in line at the deli, at the gas station, at the hair dresser, anywhere. If cell phones are ever proved to be cancerous, this is a country that will see a brain tumor epidemic.

My father was especially fond of keeping in touch using his cell phone when he played the ever-so-American game of golf on the weekend. The golf course that my father played on was located about a half hour west of Paris in beautiful rolling countryside. However, I thought the best thing about the course wasn't the landscape, but the Gypsies who squatted in the dead-end road next to it. Accordingly, the Gypsy children would scour the golf course for lost balls and then sell them back to the golfers. The Gypsies weren't supposed to be living there, but the government was too afraid to move them.

The government in France does strange things. Besides letting gypsies squat next to golf courses, the government keeps the price of certain goods at ridiculously high levels. Take for instance, the price to fill up your gas tank. In America, it usually costs between $15-$20, but in France it costs around $80 American dollars! This, combined with narrow streets, is why France and other European countries have a trend toward building smaller and smaller cars. My grandmother's car which is called a "Special" is a good example of this. It is fire engine red, stands about four feet off the ground, and has a length no longer than a park bench. If it were seen in America, people would think clowns from the circus had stolen it for a joy ride. The two doors of the car are about one inch thick at maximum, in order to start the car, you have to crank a lever next to the steering wheel, and there's such a small amount of space that the wiring is exposed underneath the passenger seat. Luckily, there is another alternative to having to drive clown cars. Cars with diesel engines are also very popular. My aunt has a luxury Audi that runs on diesel. I bet you never thought youÕd hear the words "luxury" and "diesel" in one sentence.

Despite the high cost of functional living in France, clown cars, and wandering gypsies, I find that I cannot wait to go back. In fact, after I graduate next year, I hope to move to Paris. Once a person gets past all the etiquette and faux pas of French culture, you discover something that America lacks--a solid cultural identity of good living steeped in old traditions. This is not to say that America has no cultural identity (it does), or that we don't live well, but that in France, more often the goal of life is to enjoy it to the fullest. In America, I think there is more of an emphasis on financial and career success. Each country has its own positive and negative aspects, however, I think if I had to choose between sitting on money in the bank, or living in beautiful surroundings and eating delicious foods, I would choose the later.