The Rake Magazine

Tag: france

  • Franco-American Relations, Indeed

    A smattering of bonjours and soft smiles accompanied the light, nervous energy that breezed through the Alliance Française this particular Monday morning. Huge croissants and berries lay untouched on the table as hosts and hostesses pinned tricolored nametags to their jackets and blouses. A few people wandered absently around the meeting room, grazing past the old upright piano against one brick wall, peering at French books aligned on bookshelves against each other, or craning their necks to inspect the ragged charm of the weathered cracks near the ceiling. "We are still waiting for our guest of honor," a tall woman with dark wavy hair whispered. Her nametag revealed her to be Peggy Linrud, the Alliance board president.

    After another ten minutes of waiting, in which nobody dared to venture an inch toward the food, the anticipated guest of honor walked down the cramped hallway and into the room. The small group of people moved smoothly toward his tall frame, a flutter of grays and blacks and browns settling around him like a flock of birds. It seemed quite an understated welcome for the Ambassador of France: the smallness of the room, the lack of ostentatiousness, the presence of a mere two press figures. But perhaps that is what made it so very-well-French?

    From this perspective, the Alliance Française seemed to be the natural stop for Monsieur Vimont. Although it is simply a small space tucked into the Warehouse District next to Theatre de la Jeune Lune, it is perhaps a dominant hub for the French community of Minneapolis. Native and nonnative speakers gather for language classes and cultural events. A few of the Alliance’s French instructors were among those present at the intimate breakfast.

    Monsieur Pierre Vimont has been traveling around the country since President Nicolas Sarkozy appointed him to the Ambassadorship last August. Refusing to stay cloistered in Washington, DC, he has been speaking at university and public functions, generally about Franco-American relations. "I try to get a little bit away from Washington…to get a complete picture of the country," Vimont smiled warmly, craning his neck and leaning inward, barely heard above the buzzing conversation around him. "I travel to visit the country, but also the French community, wherever it is. I meet the people. I also meet with the business community." He states that France’s relationship with the United States is "improving" and that he is working to enhance it—especially the interaction of our economic policies.

    Mayor R.T. Rybak    , who escorted the Ambassador to the Alliance, chimed in more loudly in his agreement. "Minnesota has always had a strong connection to France," he declared. "French explorers were the first ones to come to Minnesota. Culturally, we have Theatre de la Jeune Lune." He gestured in a vaguely southward direction. "I like to think that Washington Avenue could be the Champs d’Elysées of Minneapolis."

    The mayor’s and ambassador’s ensuing conversation, punctuated by the obligatory PR photos, was genial and optimistic, marked by comments about public transportation and sustainable initiatives, including the recent Northwest-Delta merger (NWA currently offers non-stop flights from the Twin Cities to Paris). Vimont nodded and smiled, his unflinching posture only broken by occasionally tapping the table with the tips of his fingernails—whether a nervous gesture or just plain habit, it was difficult to tell. Consul-general Alain Frécon beamed nearby, accepting congratulations for the French Legion of Honor he was about to receive that afternoon (for "exemplary service," Vimont explained). The other attendees gradually broke off, their glow of meeting a national figure a bit dimmed by now. They ventured toward the croissants.

    One of the older women defied the otherwise muted garb of the bustle, smiling broadly through her bright, shimmery blue and fuschia makeup. She turned out to be Marie-Rose Adams, a language teacher at the Alliance. Sweeping two younger instructors to her, one in each arm, she declared, "She is a teacher. She is a teacher… and I am the grandma of them all." As they laughed and squirmed slightly, she wryly announced, "I started the school, if you wanted to know."

    Adams proceeded to educate me about the history of the Alliance, then moved on to French food; with my croissant in hand, I made a faux pas by reaching for the butter and the marmalade. "Oh, non, non, that is not done in Paris," Adams yelped. She explained how much butter there already is in a true croissant. "But you Americans always have to have your butter!" Later on, I truthfully admitted to myself this might have been the most notable thing I learned about Franco-American relations that morning.

    After lunch, I walked into my supervisor’s office at my day occupation, who knew where I had been earlier that day. "Hey, I think I saw your ambassador on the street," he said.

    "You did?" I was confused and mildly impressed. "How do you know what he looks like?"

    My boss shrugged matter-of-factly. "He looked French."

    Ah, Franco-American relations, indeed.

  • Better Than An Italian Supermodel

    So how was JesusChristmas for you all here in the United States? I have been away over the holidays but I have not been wasting time.

    Au contraire.

    You see I have been busily working in France test driving cars that most people can only dream about. Cars even hotter than France’s new President’s bride to be (a former supermodel, shamelessly so). I’ve included a shot of the F40 I picked up in front of the Ritz on the Place Vendome’. This is the Ferrari that everyone wants due to its umitigated brutality (the last full car designed by the Holy Devil himself.)

    My photos are taking too long to upload at present but a Veyron is in here as well as a Gullwing and some more classic Bugattis, Alfas and Porsches.

    Who needs women, nez pas?

    (That’s what Nicholas has been known to say.) 

  • What I Saw on My Summer Vacation

    In celebration of thirty years of my wife’s profound ability to tolerate me, we went to France for ten days last month. We did the things we usually do when we go to interesting places. We got a very small and inexpensive hotel room (under the theory that we’re never there anyway) and spent all day walking from museum to café to art gallery to bar.

    Paris last month had much of the aspect of a boom town. The Rugby World Cup was in play, along with thousands of mostly well behaved supporters. The plaza in front of Paris City Hall was partially covered with artificial turf. An enormous high-definition screen covered the façade of the Hôtel de Ville, broadcasting the equivalent of French ESPN’s interminable updates on the condition of every team and player. Further evidence of the importance of the World Cup to the city could be inferred from the price of beer. Anywhere that fans were likely to congregate was charging about fourteen dollars for half a liter. Of course, the price could have just seemed high to Americans, whose currency is only slightly more valuable than that of Zimbabwe.

    We Americans quickly learned to embrace the spiritual refreshment offered by a glass of vin rouge, which was delicious, and cost only the equivalent of five dollars—two bucks less than one pays in most Minneapolis wine bars—and the tip is included.

    The French could have been in a good mood just because of the full hotels and restaurants supplied by the tourist influx, but they seemed genuinely hospitable to anyone who had bothered to learn enough French to at least start a conversation. In general, if you made an effort, they were happy to switch to English when you ran out of French, especially if that event didn’t follow immediately after bonjour.

    Their attitude extended to the tourists in the Louvre. Although the museum is peppered with signs prohibiting flash photography, the guards actually don’t seem to mind. That is perhaps because the Mona Lisa is now behind its own glass enclosure, and ropes keep the mob from getting close enough to admire the painting except through viewfinders set on maximum zoom. In fact, that seems to be how many find their way through museums: behind a digital camera. Someday someone will explain to me why, instead of stopping to look at a painting while you are three feet from it, you’d prefer to review a pale reproduction two weeks later on a home computer screen.

    Normandy, two hours northwest of Paris by train, was also thick with tourists. Some stop in Bayeux to see the famous tapestry that narrates the story of the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. But most are there for the cemetery at Omaha Beach. None of the boisterous revelry of Paris here; the European and American tourists are all struck silent by the manicured green field that stretches over the rolling plateau above the Channel. There are nine thousand marble-white crosses and Stars of David, but no physical signs of the battle. Like the panels of the Bayeux tapestry down the road, the visitor center’s tableaux offer explanatory vignettes of the Normandy invasion of 1944. But at Bayeux there were no choked-back sobs of the pilgrim who came upon the etched name of a young man he knew.

    Up the road six kilometers is Pointe du Hoc, where the detritus of battle is everywhere. The craters from the D-Day bombardment still pock the cliff-top site of the German shore batteries. Barbed wire rusts at edge of the precipice. The shattered walls of the pillboxes jut up at irregular angles from the overgrown meadow. Steel reinforcing bars sprout from the wrecked concrete, twisted by the heat and concussion of the explosions into grasping shapes that mock the men who reached up their hands that day to heaven for help that didn’t come.

    Unlike at the Paris museums, no horde pushes you along here. You can stand in one spot as long as you like and imagine every detail of the tumult that colored this landscape.

    Tom Bartel now blogs at Travel Past 50.