Monthly Archive for March, 2006

Deportation

Published on March 30, 2006 in 4th, Paris, PostsWithPictures and ResidentHipster. 0 Comments



DSC03412.JPG

Originally uploaded by un_cola.

I went to the Memorial des Martyrs de la Deportation today on my way home from class. I’ve seen signs pointing to it a few times but I could never figure out where it was. Turns out that I’ve been past it many times but didn’t know it was there. There’s a small park across from the back of Notre Dame, separated form the churches gardens by a smallish road. The memorial is actually underneath the park. You have take a flight of stairs down into its stone courtyard. It’s just above the river’s water level.

The memorial is extremely tightly spaced. The doorway to the inside of the memorial is pretty narrow, as are the small rooms off the main entrance. That’s the point, of course – giving visitors the feeling of being trapped. I was the only one in there for a long while and I felt a bit closed in. i can only imagine how tiny the space would feel with a normal amount of tourists in there.

I took a few photos, which I put up on flickr. Fun fact – as I was looking for keywords to tag my photos with I discovered that the tag deportation mostly has photos of this memorial and photos of the recent immigration law protests.

Paris photo set

Student protests

Published on March 28, 2006 in CA, Politics, ResidentHipster and USA. 0 Comments

I’m so proud.

Nearly 40,000 students from across Southern California staged walkouts to protest proposed immigration legislation Monday, blocking traffic on four freeways and leaving educators concerned about how much longer the issue will disrupt schools.

*Sniff*

( there’s a longer post infrequently updated other blog )

Strike

Published on March 27, 2006 in DailyGrind, France, Paris, Politics and ResidentHipster. 0 Comments

There’s a strike planned for tomorrow.

It’s not a total shut down, but it will affect the Metro in Paris. I’ll be biking to school tomorrow.

I cannot believe I still have school. WTF?

Bureaucracy is the price we pay for impartiality.

Published on March 25, 2006 in DailyGrind, France, Paris and ResidentHipster. 0 Comments

The process of getting a visa of any kind to stay in France involves jumping through many hoops. Many, many hoops.

The Hoops I’ve already blogged about:

You can just skip this part. I just feel like venting again.

First you have to assemble your visa application. This involves trying to figure out on your own what papers you’ll need and how much money you have to have. Then, once you gather all that stuff you go to the nearest consulate to find out if you do indeed have all the papers you need and enough money. You probably don’t. So you go back to the consulate as many times as you necessary to get your application accepted.

Once the application is accepted, it is sent to France where tea leaves are read and incantations are said over your papers. If necessary they may dunk one of the three copies of all your paperwork that you gave them in mineral water to see if floats. If the pure water from the French alps accepts you, you are allowed to stay in the country.

Now, once that’s been decided you have to go back to the consulate to get a sticker put into your passport. Please note that there isn’t a consulate in every state so you may have to make travel arrangements in order to do this.

Then! Then when you arrive in France, you have to go to a police station somewhere and try to let them know that you are here. In Paris this means going to the main office and getting a list of stations that you’re supposed to go to. At this point you need to have a copy of a few of the same documents you gave the government when you applied for the visa, but not all of them. It’s best to have all of them in triplicate, however.

Now, in my case I was given a temporary card proving that I’m in the country legally and an appointment for three months in the future. Please note that I’m only supposed to have a year long visa. I’m spending a quarter of my time waiting to get an official piece of paper.

New Hoops!

Ok! So it’s three months later and you’re at your appointment. Now, if you were smart you’d have updated versions of all your documents including a document showing that you’ll have some kind of insurance for a year from now. Now check it out – you had to have this same document when you applied for the visa six months ago. So you actually need a year and a half’s insurance coverage. Sweet! Oh, and your financial documents showing how much money you have need to be current as does your proof that you have someplace to live. If you’re smart you would have figured this out before hand and gotten it all together. I, however, am not smart so I had to go back to the office with updated documents. Both these visits involve having an appointment time which for you is a time you need to be there but for the folks giving you your visa is more of a guideline. I waited for two hours after my appointment time to get to talk to someone. It’s just like going to the DMV.

Now! Once you get your papers looked over and approved you have one final hoop to jump through – a health test! Chest x-rays ahoy!

I did this yesterday. It was one of the least annoying parts of all this. YOu go to a clinic and they give you a quick eye test, get your weight and height and x-ray your chest to make sure you aren’t sick. You also get your blood pressure taken and scolded by the doctor for having poor French. The rest of the clinic staff, however, will be super duper nice to you and even go so far as to help translate for you when you need to talk to a non-English speaker. Because the French are actually very nice for the most part.

I mentioned getting a chest x-ray. One of the things I love about the French healthcare system as I have experienced it is that they let you keep your x-rays. I’ve got a nice little collection of pictures of my insides now. I have a life-sized picture of my chest and head! And close-ups of a few of my teeth! Why don’t you get to keep your x-rays in the US? People switch doctors all the damn time. They should have their medical records.

Ok. So! Once you get checked out by scold-y doctors (Are there any other kinds? How come dentists aren’t so scold-y?), you need to buy a set of expensive stamps to stick onto some kind of form. Those stamps cannot be bought were you get the form. You have to go to a tabac down the street with a big wad of cash and then come back to the office that you were just in and give them the form and the stamps. The tabac owner’s union must be extremely well organized.

Ok. Passport photos taken: 4 times. Paper work: copied 10 times, updated 3 times, turned in 3 times. Police offices visited: 4 times. Chest: X-rayed once. Large sums of money: Payed.

Time for the sticker to get stuck in my passport, right?

Wrong!

Turns out that normally they have your visa ready for you the day of your health test, but not for me! No! I have to go back to that office again in a month to pick it up. At that point it will be 5, count them, 5 months from arriving in France and getting my final residency card. Of a 12 month visa. Awesome.

In case anyone is interested.

Published on March 23, 2006 in France, Paris, Politics and ResidentHipster. 0 Comments

Blogging about the CPE protests in France

There was a huge march today. It got out of hand, as things seem to here. Cars were burned around les Invalides.

Who’s buried in Sartre’s tomb?

Published on March 23, 2006 in 14th, 20th, Paris and ResidentHipster. 1 Comment

Simone de Beauvior, that’s who. Oh, and Jean-Paul Sartre.

I mention this because I spot their graves today while killing time between classes.

Everyone knows about Pere Lachaise cemetery here in Paris. It’s where Oscar Wilde, Isadora Duncan, Proust, Gertrude Stein, and um…Jim Morrison are buried. It’s huge. It’s got tons of silly statues of women weeping over the graves of dead bureaucrats and businessmen. I love photographing there.

Because I am closet goth.

Um. Yes. Well, there’s a whole other good sized cemetery on the other side of town that also happens to be full of famous people – Cimetiere du Montparnasse, in the 14th. I’ve been past the walls many, many times because my phonetics class is about three blocks away from the main entrance. I have an hour and a half to kill every day between classes so I decided to take today to check it out.

Pere Lachaise is full of these weird little houses that are used as tiny family plots. The houses are all about the size of a large coat closet. they tend to be topped with crosses and almost always contain stained glass windows in the back. I could see a few peeking over the cemetery’s walls so I had some idea of what the place was going to look like before going in. I was not disappointed. The grave markers are in much the same style as Pere Lachaise, although they tend to be a bit smaller. There also happens to be a few more pieces of modern sculpture there than in Pere Lachaise, which is fun. Fewer angels, more art deco.

I didn’t know if anyone famous was buried there when I walked in, but there are helpful maps at all the entrances saying who is where and why I should care about who they are.

I decided with the hour I had to wonder around, I should go find Man Ray’s grave. I do enjoy my Dadaists after-all. I didn’t manage to find him, though. I did happen by Tristan Tzara’s grave as well as the above mentioned Sartre and De Beauvoir.

I didn’t have my camera on me today so I’ll have to go back sometime in the near future and get a few photos. And also find Man Ray, damn it.

Upgrading

Published on March 21, 2006 in ResidentHipster. 0 Comments

I just upgraded my blog software to WordPress 2. If things look a little strange or you can’t see some old content, please to give a holler so I can see about fixing it.

I’m thinking of changing themes soon as well so this place might look a little diffrent for a few days. Not to worry, though, I’ll have everything back to normal soon.

So I’m going to Amsterdam….

Published on March 20, 2006 in Netherlands, ResidentHipster and Travel. 0 Comments

I need to find a hotel/hostel/houseboat/b&b to stay in. The place the ‘les recommend to me is booked the weekend that I’ll be there so I’m looking for recommendations.

Anyone have any suggestions?

I had no idea that this city was so expensive to stay in. I’m hardly finding anything for under 40 Euros a night, and that’s if I’m lucky.

Also, I totally want to rent a houseboat but I don’t know that I can justify the expense.

Help!

Protestin’

Published on March 19, 2006 in 11th, 12th, 14th, 1st, 20th, 5th, DailyGrind, France, Paris and ResidentHipster. 0 Comments

I went to this protest!

I wasn’t protesting. I was watching the crowd go by in about the middle of the parade route.

Yesterday was the anniversary of the Iraq invasion and ‘les and I figured that we’d try to find a demonstration to join. We figured it would be tiny because everyone in Paris is concerned with the the CPE and there was a march scheduled for that same time.

The Iraq demonstration was to take place at 2pm at the Place de la Concorde . The Place de la Concorde being the base of the Champs-Elysées, the start of the Tuileries garden, and the location of a large Egyptian obelisk. It’s also across the street form the American consulate. Not a bad place to wave flags and hold up signs.

The demonstrations was indeed tiny. There’s a group here called Americans Against the War which tables near the Les Halles shopping center twice a month. They were the main crowd of people, although there were a few folks like ‘les and I who’d just shown up. There was also a sizable group of what appeared to be Turkish communists waving big red flags. The Turks took off shortly after we got there to join up with the CPE protest. Eventually the Americans decided that that sounded like a good idea and took off to go find the CPE protest and table along the parade route.

‘les and I decided that since we were out we might as well go see what all the fuss was about so we hopped on the metro over to the Ave des Gobelins. Des Gobelins is near the border of the 13th and the 5th. The march had begun Place Denfert-Rochereau, which is in the 14th. It was going to cross the Seine and head towards Place de la Nation, which is the border point for the 12th, the 11th, and the 20th. Which is a long way of saying that it was a huge march route and we showed up around the middle of it.

The march itself was gigantic. We hung out watching it for a long time and there was no end in sight. It was mostly made up of students and other young people although you’d see groups of older folks mixing in with the crowd. Several groups of students marched under signs homemade representing their schools, which was neat. The English language news reports focused most of their attention on the Sorbonne since it’s so famous, but schools have been shut down all across the country and it was fun to see so many of them organized together.

I’ve seen many a protest in my time in Paris. Some of them rather sizable by American standards but this was really above and beyond anything I’d seen so far. Thousands of people were marching. There were big tons of photo journalists out with their huge cameras. There were balloons and stickers and a small band on a flat bed truck leading chants.

Also, lots of white kids with dreadlocks. Hippies are universal, guys!

Ahem.

‘les and I watched the march for a while. I took some photos with my film camera. Neither of us felt that it was our place to be joining this things since we aren’t French or workers. The portion of the march we saw was totally peaceful. People had taken markers to signs here and there but I wasn’t in fear of an impeding riot.

It was hard to get an idea about the size of the crowd beyond “huge” because there aren’t any hills in the area so I couldn’t get a look at the march as a whole. I was really impressed by the size when our metro home took us by the bridge they were on, though. I was amazed at how far people were walking at how unbroken the crowd looked.

I’m not surprised that the crowd got out of hand at the end of the route. There are trouble makers in any crowd of that size and a you can get a group of twenty people out of several thousand to do just about anything.

The story I linked to is funny, though. They talk about rioters at Place de la Nation and at the Sorbonne as if those two places are in any way next to each-other. I don’t doubt that something happened in both places or that people at the Sorbonne could have been at the march, but the article makes it sound like the march and the crowd at the Sorbonne were somehow the same thing. They’re one two different sides of town so the two events either happened at vastly different times or they were totally different groups of people.

It’s always fun living somewhere in the international news. Most American reports about Paris involve a lot of incorrect information about where things actually happened. The riots in the suburbs last fall involved a lot of “riots in Paris” headlines even though there weren’t any riots in Paris at all. The flip side of this, naturally, is that the French news reported flooding in San Francisco a while back when the flooding was actually happening in the North Bay or something. The moral of this story is that it’s impossible to figure out what actually happened where when reading international news. Good times!

You know what’s awesome?

Published on March 17, 2006 in 5th, DailyGrind, Paris, Politics and ResidentHipster. 0 Comments

Comments on one of my photos where I have no idea what they are saying. Nice.

I should learn French or something.

Ahem.

The student protest/riots continue unabated. The French love a protest.

That photo that I linked to is of a storefront whose windows are now totally smashed in. I guess that happened yesterday sometime? I have no idea.

I’m still going to classes every morning. I pass by the Sorbonne proper everyday, but I have yet to see anything actually happen. I’ve seen students making signs. I’ve seen graffiti. I’ve seen a lot of broken glass bottles at the Place de la Sorbonne. I’ve seen rows of police vans and buses lined up on Blvd. St. Michel and Blvd. St. Germain. I’ve seen the police blocking off the street, first with normal barricades and now with seven foot high fences. But I haven’t seen a protest nor have I seen anything resembling a riot. I guess if you’ve been locked out of your school there’s no need to get there at 8am.

Maybe I should show up at 8pm sometime instead…

Even though I have not seen any riots, I did learn something very important today on my way home from school today. I learned that police all over the world use the same tone of voice and body language when they’re annoyed at you for doing perfectly legal activities. It’s a fun fact and one everyone should have to opportunity to find out for themselves.

I mentioned that the police have had the Sorbonne blocked off all week. Up until this morning they’d been using those portable police fences that you see lining the streets during parades. The police love these things because they can take over city blocks in under a minute. They used them a lot during the RNC in New York – you’d be in the middle of a march and suddenly you see them blocking both sides of the block you’re on and it’s your cue to go or be prepared to be arrested. Ahem. Anyway, the thing about those barricades is that they’re very, very easy to move. And, it turns out, throw at police. Students did this very thing a few nights ago. I guess with the continued unrest the police have decided to make their blockade of the university more permeant so they’ve put up these huge fences all over the place.

I’ve been taking my camera with me to school this week in case I see something interesting on my way home. I figured that seven foot high police fences were pretty interesting so I went around taking some photos of them. I made sure that there were a few other people on the street taking photos before I took out my film camera. I hadn’t been taking a whole lot of photos because I was worried about pissing off the police and getting yelled at by angry gendarmes but I figured that if other people were taking photos I’d be ok.

I was using my manual thing so it took me a little while to get the light settings right before each shot. I guess I was snapping away long enough to annoy a cop or two because as I was walking away this dude who was obviously a cop but for some reason was just wearing a sweater and some jeans comes up behind me and starts asking me about the photos I’m taking. See, I know that he was a cop even thought he was sweating a sweater and not body armor because of the Annoyed At Your Legality tone he was using. Cops have to learn to tone that shit down if they ever want to go under cover, you know?

I was flustered and tried to explain that I don’t speak French.

“Am I a student?” he asked. “No. I’m American.” I replied.

I didn’t understand what he was saying to me until I was about half a block away. While he was talking all I could think was “Prendre….I know that verb. But what does it mean?!?!” Yeah.

I should learn some French.