Driving in France: Part One

Just the other day I strolled into a driving school to sign up for driving lessons. I want to learn how to drive a manual transmission (mostly because it scares me more than it should). You may not know it, but we Americans are ridiculed over here for not knowing how to drive stick. In France, it's mostly the sick or disabled who drive automatic transmissions. I've been told that that's the assumption, anyway.

I was delighted to learn that I could just take a few lessons à la carte to learn how to control a car the old-fashioned way. All was looking good until I was told that the information I'd received last week was incorrect. It turns out that you can only take those "perfectionnement" lessons if you already have a French license. And at that point, I'm assuming you already know how to drive, and therefore don't need the lessons?

I bundled up my passport, a copy of my lease, my visa letter, a paper that certifies that my long-stay visa is forthcoming, the application forms for my French license, a French translation of my CT license, and five passport photos. Side note: if you watched Amélie, you might have noticed the central role of the photo booth in the film. And I think that's because you need official photos that come from those very photo booths to get most administrative tasks completed here.

I took this hefty pile of paperwork and went to the French version of the DMV, which is located in the northern edge of Paris at Porte de Clignancourt (not far from the famous and fab-u-lous Parisian flea markets and some really fun ethnic food markets. Those impossible-to-find black beans are not so impossible to find after all. And a giant tub of Greek yogurt? Quite tempting at only two euros). There was a long line at the ''DMV,'' of course, and the applicant at the window was engaged in a heated discussion with the staffer, which made me nervous, as the anger he caused was going to remain long after he'd left.

About ten minutes later it was my turn. The woman took my passport, pecked at the keyboard, asked me a few questions, and then began to frown. ''If you had come back in 2010, when you'd been in France for less than a year, you could have easily exchanged your Connecticut license for a French one. Sans problème. But now there's nothing I can do. You must go to French driving school.'' We talked about my other options. She said I could apply anyway, but then her boss would be obliged to reject my request. That didn't seem particularly promising. 

She and I soon agreed that a more hopeful course of action would be to re-do driver's ed here and then take the written test (there are over 11,500 possible questions to review and be able to answer, plus all that technical vocabulary I've never learned. Comment dit-on ''day time running lamps'' en français? No idea.). Once I pass the ''code de la route'' I will be allowed to take the driving test. I love to learn, and it's true that the road signs here are quite different from what I'm used to back home, but the full driving course costs over 1,300 euros, and that seems a bit steep.

A friend here suggested I take driver's ed in Germany, where it's most certainly cheaper. When I suggested there might be a language problem, she said, ''It's Germany! Everyone speaks English!''

Then, after calling a driving school up the street, the woman gave me an alternative solution: apparently I can apply to get my license as an "external candidate," which  means I must submit an application (in person, back at Porte de Clignancourt -- why didn't they mention this option when I was there last week??) to take the driving test without going to French driver's ed. However, I will have to be able to drive a manual transmission to take that test. Recap: in order to learn how to drive stick, I need a French license. To have a French license, I need to know how to drive stick. Not only that, but if I apply to be an "external candidate," I can expect to wait at least eight or nine months to have an appointment for the test. That's enough time to learn how to drive the car, I suppose.

When I returned to Porte de Clignancourt this morning, I went up to the fourth floor, took a number, and waited. Finally a man came to the desk, visibly perturbed that his empty waiting room was no longer empty. ''You realize you have to wait a year?'' he cautioned me. ''Yes,'' I replied. ''But I have no other option, right?'' I suspect his attempt to dissuade me was actually an attempt to keep his workload light.

More paperwork in hand, I left the office and hopped on a vélib (those city bicycles that you pick up and drop off as you wish around the city) and headed home. After a few seconds, I realized my bicycle was broken, so I returned it to a nearby station and started walking, too impatient to wait the few minutes before my account was cleared, allowing me to take out another bike. About twenty five minutes later, my feet began to hurt, and the two kilos of beans I was carrying were getting heavy, so I went to take out another bike. When I swiped my card, the machine buzzed and the release button stayed red. I waited a few seconds and tried again. Sighing, I pulled out my phone and called the information number.

Apparently when I returned my first bike, the return was not registered properly. I was given the bike's ID number, told to return to the station back near Porte de Clignancourt, and see if it was there. If not, I would be fined 150 euros. Reluctantly, I walked back, found the bike, and saw that the whole station was ''off-line,'' which is why the computer didn't register my bike's return. Annoyed at having retraced my steps when my feet were already hurting, I took another bike and came home, where I promptly walked into a pole and hurt my ankle.

Armed with an ice pack and a glass of wine, I'm taking it easy this afternoon. I think I'll take the métro when I go out to dinner tonight.

On the trail of ''Chou''

The first time I heard a mother call her child mon petit chou, which means ''my little cabbage,'' (or ''my little pastry puff,'' depending on how you free-associate) I did a double take. I was of course intrigued by this expression because I am obsessed with the cabbage family. It is no surprise, then, (well, actually, yes it was a surprise) that my mother recently greeted me at the airport with a bouquet of green kale. My restrained smile in the photo to the right belies my immense excitement at being reunited with my beloved leafy green.

When people ask me if I miss the US, I say, ''I miss people. Friends. Family. And kale.'' I also miss buying hydrogen peroxide at CVS for under a dollar; a small bottle here costs over 5 euros.   

Some friends have encouraged me to try planting kale, to go to Belgium, Italy, Germany, or England to buy it, or to simply look more carefully at the markets scattered across town, insisting that it must be here. I looked at what famed Paris foodie and blogger David Lebovitz had to say about it. When you google ''kale'' on his blog, there are over 40 posts or user comments, often discussing how he can't find it here, either.

Not far from Orly airport, there is the Marché de Rungis. Last year I visited Rungis with a food purveyor who scours the market daily between 3 and 10 am, and sends top products across the Channel. He offered to take me on a visit, though was smart enough to delay our rendez-vous until 6 am. The market is a huge complex (234 hectares of facilities, or roughly 234 baseball fields), includes two disco clubs, and lots of cafes and bars where you can start drinking wine as early as you want. Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations had an episode that included a visit to the marché as well. Imagine all the wholesale food that gets bought and sold throughout Europe, and then put it one place for redistribution, and there you have Rungis.

Sadly, during my visit, I was unable to spot any kale. But when I got back to my apartment, I called their main information line and was given a few potential suppliers. No luck. Then I remembered I had a packet of kale seeds sitting on my desk. I took the seeds to the new organic food store around the corner, and asked for the produce manager. Jérémie was very polite, and knew about kale. I showed him the photo on the seed packet, just to be sure, and he took my name and number, promising to try to locate it. Three weeks later, I received a phone call that they were stocking kale! In my excitement, I rushed to the store and bought nearly the entire supply. Then I came home and emailed Mr. Lebovitz, asking him to keep the news on the down-low, but welcoming him to enjoy the bounty with me. Known for being a Right-Banker, he cheekily asked if my Left Bank store would deliver.

For the next few months, I bought kale nearly once a day. In kind support, my roommate started buying kale too. I was eating more of it than I'd ever eaten before. ''Don't overdo it,'' friends warned, but I was afraid of losing my supplier, so I kept buying. I often thought of Lucille Ball in the chocolate factory, and ended up throwing some out after it developed yellow spots in my fridge. To compound the challenge, my cousin, who had generously been supplying me with kale whenever she went to London on business, started increasing the number of bags she brought back. There was room for little else in the refrigerator, even though it was, atypically, American-sized. I started offering kale to my anglophone friends, I brought raw kale salad to dinner parties, and eventually began to grow weary of it altogether. 

Since then, I moved across town. My move happened to coincide with the coldest three weeks in Paris this winter (and when Paris gets below 32 degrees F, it is a situation). Trips to that health food store dwindled to zero, my cousin stopped going to London, and my kale supply quickly disappeared.

Except.
 

A few weeks ago I was stretching on a hilltop perch in the Buttes Chaumont Park, overlooking a massive green lawn. My eyes bulged forward when I spotted a familiar green leaf in a newly-planted flower bed!

Dinosaur Kale! Buttes Chaumont August 4, 2012

I tried to collect myself as I lowered my leg and approached the nearby gardeners. My excitement mounted as I pulled off one headphone earbud, and then the other. ''Excusez-moi,'' I started. ''Je peux vous poser une question?'' I did the silly ritual of asking permission to ask a question. Most of the gardeners ignored me, or looked at me quizzically, but a few looked on.

 ''I'm wondering about that green plant,'' I began, my words tripping over one another as if I'd just met someone famous. ''I'm from the USA. We eat that. It's called kale (I said something like kay-uhl to give it the proper French accent), but I don't think there's a French word. It's like blette (swiss chard), but the leaves are thicker, like chou (cabbage).  But I can't find it here...'' I noticed that my audience was shrinking, and that the two men who were still listening had their eyebrows deeply furrowed. ''I mean, I saw a similar plant at the Jardin des Plantes, and the animals had eaten it -- it's...it's full of vitamins and so good for you!'' I gushed. At this point, my audience was down to one, quiet, gentle gardener. He politely allowed me to continue, before confirming something I've never heard a French person say: ''yes, madame, you can eat that.''

He led me to a sign and pointed to the words brassica oleracea. I grew quiet, almost frightened as I pictured myself sneaking back at night to clip a few stalks. ''D-do you know where I can GET that?'' I asked. He suggest I try  the flower market on the Quai de la Corse, along the Seine here in Paris. My heart sank, knowing that I'd scoured that market at least a dozen times and had never seen kale. ''Or,'' he added, ''you can go to flower shops in the suburbs.''

The following weekend, I was in the countryside and visited a few greenhouses with my cousin. I bought some more kale seeds and a flowering pot of kale (a kind that I'd never seen before, more round than leafy). My cousin's neighbor is graciously planting that for me, though he says he only feeds that variety to his rabbits. I consoled myself by saying, ''yes, but rabbits also eat carrots.''

Knowing how trendy kale is in the US, I feel pretty confident that it will one day catch on here, too. After all, Paris has recently seen a few food trucks appear (including the very first ice cream truck), so following American food trends is not hors question.

Speaking of American food, until yesterday, I'd never heard ''Chick-Fil-A'' pronounced aloud, so I'd been saying, ''Chick-Filla,'' whenever I came across a headline. It sounded gangster and I wondered what that funny name was all about. Oops.

By the way, if you're coming to Paris anytime soon, slip a few tubs of kale chips in your suitcase: once I'm done eating them, I'll take you on a lovely tour of the city.

Oh, and for a little more fun, here's a list of other terms of endearment in French.

The Little Genie

Say what you will about Joan Rivers. She inspired me the other day. Click on that link with care -- her potty mouth remains as dirty as ever (or skip ahead to the 4:15 mark, when she gets into some real, pure thoughts of her own). It's been a while since something on TV has moved me. Several years ago I was jolted out of my melancholia while watching the film Veronica Guerin. If you missed it, Veronica Guerin was a fearless journalist who exposed a drug ring in Northern Ireland. Watching her story left me feeling like a coward.

At the time, I was sitting on my brother's blue velour couch in Beijing, enjoying lots of delicious homemade dumplings and steamed cakes. During my six weeks in China, I mastered one Chinese sentence, even learning to write it in calligraphy. To this day, I can still proudly say, ''I am American, not Chinese.'' In retrospect, I see I could have been more judicious about what I learned to say. To a Chinese person, I imagine that statement was rather self-evident. When I retell this story now, I own up to the silliness upfront (never divulging how long it took me to master the characters and sounds!), and somehow that makes it a little less silly. A few days after watching that film, I was back in New York working to (re)build a life.

Speaking of ''owning up'' to mistakes and shortcomings, I named my business here La Petite Génie. While certain French nouns can be changed to show gender (maître and maîtresse for male and female teachers, for example), génie is not one of them. When I tell certain French people the company name, they wriggle their eyebrows a minute and then say, ''you know, it should be Le Petit Génie. We don't really say la génie.'' I nod and smile, thanking them for the tip, wishing I hadn't already printed 200 business cards and bought a domain name.

In France, it's common to simply call your teacher ''maîtresse," which becomes a little problematic for me, since the same word also means ''mistress.'' One former student always made me smile when he started each text message to me like this, ''Hi Teacher, how are you?'' Other students have talked to me about their open-relationships or stagnant sex lives, and I sometimes wonder, are they, too, playing with the doo-bluh on-tahn-druh (double entendre) of my role as ''maîtresse?'' To be fair, that term is often reserved for elementary school teachers and women who disrobe; neither is true for me. In fact, my title here is really ''professeur,'' which adds more weight to my job than my credentials merit (in Anglo-Saxon terms, anyway).

So what did Joan Rivers say? She told a disheartened Louis CK that he can't give up, that you simply don't give up when it comes to work and your career (or anything else, I suppose). She warns that you should be prepared to falter and fail, but then you must get back up. Two good morsels of advice for someone who is feeling a bit disheartened about building a business here in Paris.

I recently emailed a friend and said that I was ''sur le champ de bataille contre les fourmis,'' (on the battlefield against ants). It has been a long week, but thankfully, that battle has come to an anti-climactic finish: I resorted to chemical weaponry, and those poor beasts walked right to their deaths. I was secretly amazed at how unfazed they appeared after the previous day's onslaught of boiling water, mint-scented glass cleaner, and a few lavender bubble baths. The more drastic my measures to eliminate them, the more determined they seemed to be, walking around the base of the stem, in lines and with purpose. Ironically, it's the very same work ethic observed in ant colonies that I now need to summon in myself.

Ant problem aside, I can now focus my energy on developing business brochures, targeting potential clients, and boosting myself up as I prepare to walk down a path that may not lead to success.