Plan B Forum

That's my current theory.

Every meal was delightful from the room-service breakfasts and bistrots picked at random to the recommendations from the Guide Michelin (I gave my spouse the French-language version on the theory that she will do anything, even learn to read some French, if there is a food reward on the other side of it. Worked too). The great cooking is a cultural answer to the question; once you become somewhat affluent what do you do next? In France time (2- hour lunches!) materials and great care are all expended to better ground themselves in the sensual here and now.

Service was uniformly good and the average hard-working Parisian is ... French. There were some from India, some from Spain, and some from Japan leavened into the mix in their respective houses of national cuisine but other than a Nederlander (very polyglot) in a cafe, most were French.

And helpful? I've go to tell you, if you erred in some detail in your attempts at "the French, how she is spoken" they were always right there with the correct gender, tense or whatever to straighten you out. No leaving you wallowing in error for these people! (hey, vin should be female, right? It smells nice, its expensive, its irresistable, it makes you act stupid <female!> No, it is Le Vin and most particularly it is Le Vin Blanc not Blanche. I'm still working this out but I think its Le Vin because it is powerful and culturally important; hence <male!>.)


yrs,
rubato

Welcome back.

As to your trip:


Only kidding; I'm just jealous. Hugely.

rubato wrote:I'm still working this out but I think its Le Vin because it is powerful and culturally important; hence <male!>.

Gender in French only rarely has any basis in the gender of the person/place/object/concept behind the noun. Yes, l'homme (man) is masculin and la femme is feminine, but la personne (person) is feminine, while the plural les gens (people) is masculine, regardless of the actual gender of the person or people in question. There are general rules that can help identify the gender of a noun from its ending, but there are multitudes of exceptions (it's not like Italian or Spanish where almost all nouns ending in -o are masculine and almost all nouns ending in -a are feminine).

I had several bad meals in England.

Does that count?

Only if you took them to France

Scooter wrote:

rubato wrote:I'm still working this out but I think its Le Vin because it is powerful and culturally important; hence <male!>.

Gender in French only rarely has any basis in the gender of the person/place/object/concept behind the noun. Yes, l'homme (man) is masculin and la femme is feminine, but la personne (person) is feminine, while the plural les gens (people) is masculine, regardless of the actual gender of the person or people in question. There are general rules that can help identify the gender of a noun from its ending, but there are multitudes of exceptions (it's not like Italian or Spanish where almost all nouns ending in -o are masculine and almost all nouns ending in -a are feminine).

Gender, in any language, is pointless. It makes as much sense as arbitrarily adding a + or a - sign to things and then requiring you to recall that the + sign ended words have different suffixes and conjugation.

In the more perfect world I would devise such things would never happen.

yrs,
rubato

rubato, I'd have to challenge the veracity of the thread title - even though I've never been to France, I know they have McDonald's.

rubato wrote:That's my current theory.

One phrase: steak chevaline

Just because it's horse meat?

Only if you took them to France

I understand that's a big problem...

People smuggling food from England into France....

bigskygal wrote:rubato, I'd have to challenge the veracity of the thread title - even though I've never been to France, I know they have McDonald's.

McD's is the largest employer in France. Shocking, but true.

I'm not sure what to make of this. I only saw McD's outside of Paris, and not all that many, but our statistical sampling is limited to Normandy.

yrs,
rubato

I've been to France five or six times and had two dodgy meals. The last one was a type of sausage that tasted so bad it made me cry.

Cookie still laughs at the day of the unhappy sausage.

Lord Jim wrote:

Only if you took them to France

I understand that's a big problem...

People smuggling food from England into France....

Don't think so. Just my suggestion for how to get a bad meal in France.......

Daisy wrote:I've been to France five or six times and had two dodgy meals. The last one was a type of sausage that tasted so bad it made me cry.

Cookie still laughs at the day of the unhappy sausage.

They probably thought you were English and were trying to make you feel at home.

yrs,
rubato

Part Trois:

There are very few handicapped people in Paris. This is one of those things that takes a while to notice but compared to other places you don't see many people with 'mobility issues' in Paris. The reason is pretty clear, everyone walks a lot to get around and there are stairs everywhere, with no way around them. There must be nothing like the disabilities regulations we have pretty much everywhere in the US.

One effect is that in Paris at least there are relatively few fatties; out of the city there really are a lot more. Our average day involved miles of walking and a lot of flights of stairs. Good for the appetite.

yrs,
rubato

Part Quatre:

Very few cars in Paris (or Normandy) are any color but White, Black or some variant of Silver. In a capital of fashion where clothes are much more colorful than here the cars are ... really boring. My wife was the first to notice this from our hotel room window (overlooking the Seine and Notre Dame).


yrs,
rubato

Part the cinq:

I was completely taken by surprise by La Joconde. Like everyone else I've seen reproductions of it thousands of times and thought I knew what to expect. I really only went because we got to the Louvre early (Yay! museum pass) and mi esposa said we should take advantage of the timing. So the crowd wasn't too bad and we got to the front of it and I just ... lost it. I teared up and couldn't speak, I was ashamed of my reaction and tried to hide it. That is not the same picture in person that I'd seen before.

Astonishing.

We loved the JL David pictures. I'd seen and read about them many times in classes about the French Revolution, Simon Schama's books (Citizens), and more recently his videos about JL David &c. Genius is given randomly. To both sinners and saints. David was not a saintly type and that's what showed.

Some fucking totally prolix goddamn bitch nattered on with her tour group in front of the Vermeers for EVER! Some people should know when enough is enough and Shut The Hell Up! And Get The Hell Out of The Way for those of us who want to just have a graze at the damn picture!

I'm still a little ticked.

yrs,
rubato

Part the whatever:

Parisian schoolchildren have better field trips than we did. They get to go to the musee D'Orsay, the Louvre, the musee d'histoire naturelle (aka the hall of evolution).

yrs,
rubato

But did you go to the Musee de Cluny and see the tapestries?

Don't think so. Just my suggestion for how to get a bad meal in France.......

Oh bloody hell...

That's one on me....

I feel the perfect fool...