My Lover and My Husband

I’ve been a bit quiet. I’m trying to find my balance between what I have been writing about life in Italian village and my new life adding Paris into the mix. Frankly, to both John and me, living in Paris is like what we can imagine having a lover is like when one is married. A lot of discovery and excitement versus the known, familiar, and loved—our village in Italy, the one we married. My affections are going in all directions.

Meanwhile, here are a few things I love about the new guy, and one fault I’ve uncovered so far.

A woman waves us down on the sidewalk and says, with great alarm, “C’est une catastrophe!” John and I are heading into the farmers’ market two blocks from our apartment. It’s my favorite market—small, filled with gorgeous food, and vendors who already know us—and I am alarmed. Did someone just die? Was there a stabbing? Was someone brutally robbed? I can’t imagine what would have provoked giving such an emphatic warning to total strangers. She continues, “I just saw the butcher slicing the ham with bare hands. Can you imagine? In this heat? Be very careful!” And with a knowing look she was gone. I wasn’t too surprised, as the Italians are fastidious about food as well. Just try to pick up a piece of produce without a plastic glove on in any Italian supermarket and see what looks you will receive.

Nowhere is perfect. Beyond missing good friends in Tuscany, the village, the house, and the garden, I miss parmesan. There isn’t a shred of decent parmesan cheese in all of Paris. I thought you could get any cheese imaginable here. I’m insufferable in Italy always talking about the range of French cheeses when I can only buy pecorino and parmesan in our valley. I never predicted that there would be a hole in the Parisian cheese universe as big as a wheel of parmesan. Even in the fussiest cheese stores in Paris, what they sell as parmesan is nasty.

I will be the woman on the train with a cooler bringing parmesan from the cheese truck at the Wednesday village market back to Paris with me.

The new lover is surprisingly friendly. In addition to stopping to warn total strangers about market hygiene, I am constantly surprised by how helpful, smiley, and lovely the Parisians are. I was expecting a Tuscan village to win this one, hands down. Of course in Paris, as in Italy, I run across the occasional grump (talking to you vile woman in the hardware store who when I came in with a perfectly prepared question delivered in French responded “I do not speak English” with a sneer).

I was carrying a couple folding chairs from IKEA through the metro, along with some other purchases that I was clutching, and things must have looked precarious. I had three different men come up and offer to help me carry things. When John and I first looked at our apartment the owner recommended a nearby classic bistro for lunch. We went and had one of the funniest and more competent waiters ever. At the end we introduced ourselves and said we hoped to be regulars as we had just seen an apartment we wanted. We came in two weeks later, after we signed the lease, and he greeted us by name with a huge smile and congratulations. I’ve adopted a tiny coffee place around the corner and by the third visit I’d become quite friendly with the barista. She had to run around the corner for supplies and asked me to mind the shop while she was gone—despite my lack of French and any knowledge of how to work an espresso machine.

I often see strangers carrying a heavy suitcase up stairs for someone who needs the help. Seats on the metro and bus are regularly offered to those who look more frail. And once I saw an older woman trying to board a crowded metro train with several heavy shopping bags. Three different people, not traveling together, jumped onto the platform, grabbed her and her bags, got her on board, and found her a seat.

The friendliness I often receive is not because I speak French. I’ve spent a lot of time in Paris over the years, and used to speak some French before I dove into learning Italian. Now, when I speak, I never quite know what mongrel mix of Italian and French will emerge from my mouth. “Bonjour. Prendo une baguette per deux, grazie.”

I think it helps that I’ve always loved Paris and have a great deal of affection and respect for the culture. The old advice of always saying hello and goodbye in a store goes a long way. Waiters are considered professional peers to their customers, and want to be treated that way. Americans can be seen as loud, messy puppies who aren’t yet fully trained. We can be loud—I often overhear entire dinner conversations half a restaurant away from where I am sitting. And there can be a kind of eager, “won’t you be my friend” energy that seems not to play well here. But what gets the worst reaction from the Parisians (I’ve seen this in action with a few people I’ve been in Paris with over the years) is any hint of superiority, entitlement, or arrogance. If a typical Parisian smells this they will disembowel you alive.

Where is that Parisian woman? This warrants a whole piece on its own, but one of the surprises is how seldom I find examples of that coveted Parisian chic in the wild in either the male or female variety. During Fashion Week it’s a different thing, the outfits are pretty jaw dropping, but around Paris I’ve been surprised at how bland and uniform clothing has become—sneakers, jeans, and t-shirts. I do occasionally see someone dressed wonderfully, but it is much more rare than ten years ago. I didn’t think that the globalization of fashion from the same handful of stores worldwide would hit Paris as well.

Despite needing to upgrade my wardrobe less than I feared, I did feel the need to buy a trench coat. That staple on every list of “The ten pieces every Parisian woman owns” is actually incredibly useful for Paris’s unpredictable weather and I succumbed to a vintage find at the flea market. I do feel pretty damn cool when I wear it, although it pretty much does nothing functionally against the rain.

We have a car parked outside the apartment and have used it twice since February. Standing ovation for the fast, ubiquitous, and efficient public transit.

Long-live the apéro. I didn’t know until this year that I was missing a whole category of eating in my life. We have the aperitivo tradition in Italy, but it is usually pretty minimal, mostly chips and nuts at a cafe with a glass of wine, sometimes with some small sandwiches.

An apéro in Paris can serve as a simple drink before dinner, either in someone’s house or at a cafe, but is more amorphous than that. In our experiences so far, it can serve as an open-ended invitation which seems to organically shift with the evening—it’s a great way to get together with people you don’t know well and see how it goes. The social equivalent of meeting someone for coffee on the first date.

Our neighbors across the hall had us over for an apéro along with some other friends. We came at seven to find a beautiful array of cheeses, baguettes, charcuterie, hummus, and veg and planned to stay an hour. We all were having such a good time that we were surprised to find that it was suddenly after eleven, and we were the first ones to leave.

And I love that grocery stores have an entire refrigerated aisle dedicated to premade items to host an apéro. For those who want to push things further, David Lebovitz has a really nice cookbook called Drinking French. I think it’s a bit misnamed as it goes far beyond drinks to include many interesting recipes for what to serve for food when having friends over for an apéro.

The French don’t jog. This has completely changed over the last decade. Try to make it through any Paris park or wide avenue without dodging French joggers.

Grab a book. I delight in seeing people reading real, actual, physical books everywhere. On the metro, at a cafe, or on a bench in a garden everyone seems to have a book at hand. I’ve started to carry a book with me and it is so much nicer than staring at your phone.

That’s it for now. I am headed back to Italy next week with a cat in tow. The things I’ve learned about moving dogs and cats across Europe… Thanks again to all my lovely subscribers, especially the paid ones, who continue to fill me with gratitude and not a small amount of awe and lifetime devotion.