#antisites

There are two little gems in the heart of Paris that I go to at least once a week. One is my feeding hole; the other is my watering hole. However if you think I am going to spill their names on the World Wide Web, you have another think coming. Call me selfish, maybe even call me French, but I want to keep my anti-sites exactly that, pure, Parisian, and free of Birkenstock-sandaled tourists.

            My feeding hole, in my humble opinion, has the best tasting steak frites in all of Paris, however I don’t travel all the way across town for the food. I go for the atmosphere. My friends and I discovered this spot because it is right down street of her apartment. In the fist week of our discovery, I went there four or five times, and now whenever I come in, I get a big hug from one of the waitresses. The place is very small, which forces you to socialize with the tables beside you. I am talking so small that you have to literally get up and move your table if someone beside you or across needs to get up. I’ve met anywhere from kids my age, to sixty-five year old men who I’ve shared bottles of wine and digestifs with.  Here I feel like a complete local: I’m comfortable, my presence is wanted, and the waiter knows my order.

            My watering hole is walk able distance from my apartment (très convenient), and I stumbled upon this place the first night I went out in the city. It’s actually a very expensive restaurant that turns into a happening spot after 2 a.m., when all the bars in the surrounding area close down. At 2:30, this après hours place is completely packed to the brim with slightly inebriated, well-dressed Parisians. Sometimes I wonder if this place is illegal because of its odd hours, and its nonexistent smoking policy. Regardless if it is or isn’t, when I go I feel like a rebellious Parisian sticking it to the man with my fellow comrades. Like with the waitress at my feeding hole, my presence is also known when I walk in, but this time by a fellow patron. I met him the first night I came, and ever since I always get a text if he is there and I am not. Call me crazy, but I like feeling that I belong and my presence is wanted, in a city that technically I don’t belong to. (A side story, the first time I met him I actually thought he was a complete jerk. I was outside of my watering hole, when he came up to me asking if I wanted the fleur he was holding which was actually a barren tree limb. I rejected his pathetic “fleur” and he ended up lightly hitting the stick on my forehead. Appalled I called him a swear in English, and ran back into the bar seeking salvage (a worker actually saw this interaction, and immediately came to me with a glass of wine, which was cool to say the least). Flower boy ended up running after me apologizing that his joke didn’t translate well into Franglish. We ended up grabbing a table with our friends and shared wine until closing.

 It was early February and rain was misting down dismally from the slate-gray sky. I wrestled my bags out of the airport shuttle, turned around, and felt myself slowly deflate as a stared at my home for the next five months. If I was not mistaken, my apartment-to-be was perched atop an iron and glass monster. A train station monster.

I stood frozen on the sidewalk, the shuttle long gone, perhaps swept off in the waves of people that gushed in and out of the gaping portal below the words “GARE MONTPARNASSE”. For a few moments, people dodged around me with sighs and backward glances until it struck me that I was very much in the way. I awkwardly dragged my bags off to a discrete inlet in the wall and shuffled in next to a homeless man who was swathed in a pink and yellow quilt. We both peered out at the humanity moving frantically past, him with vague disinterest and me with growing discomfort.

I have never done too well with cities. Why then, you may ask, did I choose the capital of France as my study abroad location? Well because it is... Paris! Tiny streets, quaint bakeries, bouquets of roses, and clusters of red-shingled roofs. A villagecity. But this scene unfurling before me was no village.

After getting over my shock, I finally escaped the urban wasteland below me to discover my lovely apartment with a welcoming family. However, the train station lurked below, roaring and shifting and making strange, ghostly noises late into the night. The thought of it down there bothered me. Would I ever get used to its noises? Its appearance? Would strange people be loitering outside when I came home at night? It became that frightening and eccentric neighbor that you try to ignore on the street.

As time passed, I reluctantly began to cut through the main floor of the station on the way to school. I was fighting my way though the crowds one such morning when I paused, hearing a strange, flickering noise. An enormous board hung above my head and tiny black flaps were flipping over in quick succession. They were spelling out the names of cities in bold white letters. Chartres, 08h10. Versailles, 8h20. Lyon, 8h30. City after city after city. People hovered below the board, scanning the departure and arrival times with expectant faces, then rushing off one way or another. I watched, starting to feel tingles of excitement. These people were all going places! They were hopping on trains and zooming off all over Europe! This was very exciting.

I started finding more reasons to pass through the station. During these times, I found businessmen sitting on briefcases and sipping espressos, teenagers rollerblading down the fastest moving walkway in the world, and most importantly, an immensely vast Haribo stand.

One night, I came home late and did not find strange and ominous characters lurking about the doors of the station. Instead, there were several families crouched on islands of baggage, eating sandwiches and chattering quietly. As I passed one family, I picked that they were catching a late-night train to the seaside to visit Grand-mère. I was comforted by their presence, and silently wished them a "bon voyage".

As I have defined a large part of my Parisian experience by the food and desserts I have been eating, it is little surprise that my anti-site is also food related. Honestly, I just cannot help it. Food is something that has always been important to me on a cultural level (my family is Armenian and we not only love to eat but bond over cooking and eating large meals). Plus, it is delicious.

 An anti-site is a site that is most likely not included in a guidebook or would not necessarily stand out in the urban geography; it can be mundane and “insignificant”. The question then becomes: what makes it a site? My anti-site is the back room of Boulangerie Paul, which is located two doors down from my apartment, anytime after midnight. Hilariously enough, I actually do not like the baguette you can buy at Paul but I do love Paul after midnight. This specific Paul on Rue des Belles Feuilles has a back room with a large window facing the street, meaning you can see in and watch as all the baguettes are baked. I absolutely love this and it has become part of my daily ritual to walk by Paul if I am out at night just to see the bakers kneading the dough, shaping it and cutting the slashes across the top. Simultaneously, the many baguettes in the ovens are reaching a beautiful golden color, as they rise to perfection.  I have never seen another person stop to gaze at the magnificent display of the baguette baking process. Perhaps this is because in many ways I am a tourist and the intricacies of the baguette still fascinate me or maybe others just do not have the time or desire. Honestly, I do not know how they can resist it. The warm glow of the bakery juxtaposed with the cool air and the dark night is simply intoxicating. I often peek in from the corner as to not alert the baker to my presence. This strategy is twofold; I am simultaneously avoiding embarrassment and allowing myself to see his uninhibited process. I realized that openly gawking (as I did the other night while taking a picture) surprises the bakers and they will stop to watch you watching them.

In an attempt to do a bit of research on the baguette and baking process I so often observe, I accidentally spent way over an hour reading about my beloved baguettes and the fascinating laws and history surrounding them.  “In 1920, a law was passed preventing bakers from working before 4am. This made it impossible to make the traditional loaf in time for customers' breakfasts. The longer, thinner baguette solved the problem because it could be prepared and baked much more rapidly” (http://www.francethisway.com/frenchrecipes/frenchbread.php). 

   Though this law is no longer in practice, it is one of the reasons for the development of the long baguette, which crisps quickly due to its thin shape and somewhat doughy interior. “In 1993, the State enacted a French bread law, holding that ‘baguettes de tradition’; should be mixed, kneaded, leavened and baked on premises, without ever being frozen. In addition, breads must be additive-free and can contain only the following ingredients–wheat flour, salt, yeast, and water” (http://simplyparis.org/blog/2010/08/baguettes-and-paris/).  This dedication to French heritage is the very reason I see the bakers in boulangerie awake and baking at midnight and through the night. The baguette must be fresh and prepared only hours before being sold to all the Parisians for their breakfast tartines, lunch sandwiches and dinner sauce dippers.

This history got me thinking again about the concept of an anti-site. While the after hours baking I observe at Paul is so significant to me, it is unseen by locals and definitely not in any guidebook I have ever seen.  Though the baguette is clearly a beacon of French culture and deliciousness, it is so common here that it has become mundane, as has the site which produces them. The ability to notice what others find mundane might make me a tourist but I take pride in the fact that the warm glow of Paul can be more captivating that the lightshow of the Eiffel tower (which is also a quick block from my apartment). 

 In my research I came upon a wonderful article, which describes an American amateur baker’s apprenticeship with a Parisian Boulanger. He describes walking to work in the middle of night and working through the early hours of the morning to produce more than 2,000 loaves in a tiny kitchen. He beautifully describes the intricate process and technique to baking delicious baguettes that I have so often seen late in the night.  While reminiscing on his time in Paris, Fromartz remembers the Boulanger’s most important lesson, “The most important thing is to make people happy, to love what you have done!” Then I remembered: This was the lesson I had witnessed every day in France. It was the source of great bread, the most important rule. And now it was mine.” I cannot help but concur with what appears to be the most central component of baguette baking technique: happiness and love. The care with which each baguette is crafted is evident in every bite and crunch of the loaves so lovingly made in the middle of the night.