Saturday, March 14, 2015

" of bakery, local trains and museums "

saturday, march 14th

At last, dear Reader,  the Reporter,  after many adventures,  returned to Paris, to rest her dusty explorer's boots.


It has been a few harrowing months since her last post on refined Parisian life, where wonderfully talkative taxi drivers can sometimes break your heart with their gleeful views on life.

So, immediately arrived, the Reporter repaired to her favorite haunt, the Boulangerie Proctor or by its second name, Boulangerie des Invalides, and there, our writer got the shock of her life as she discovered that the bakery which used to have heavenly lavender blue walls was all painted fuchsia pink !


 As you can see,  it is definitely pink. To make sure of it, you can check it again below, 


It was a bit of a shock,  and since the owner was there in person, the Reporter asked shyly if there would be a possibility one day to revert to the blue, and he said " No."  It did seem pretty definite that there would be no reversal. Then, as he felt some sort of remorse as probably the Reporter's face showed some tinge of fright at such definite statement,  he offered her a croissant,  and she crumbled in apologies.

He then pointed to how the statues showed so well against that gorgeous color, such as those two :

      

And one has to agree they look really happy up there. Then the owner showed with even more pride his new acquisition, 


which is a poster for a novel written in 1842,  The Mysteries of Paris, by a French writer named Eugene Sue.  Sue in french means sweat. This book brought such fame to the writer that Theophile Gauthier, then a well known writer too, published an article where he said that " sick people in France would delay dying to know the end of 'The Mysteries of Paris'." 

Which just shows how the French are really a very literary people.  Think if the Americans today delayed dying to know the end of Jason Bourne. Honestly, that would mean a lot of delaying as Jason seems to have incredible luck surviving,  and then that would mean a lot of surviving too for tons of dying people, which would create clogging of many hospital beds.  So of course, it wouldn't do at all.

So now that we have exhausted those painful possibilities, the Reporter turned her attention to the issue of french trains, one more.

The Reporter is planning in a few days to visit her friend, again,  in the middle of nowhere, so she had some thoughts as to the details of that dangerous trip, which includes changing trains and treading long platforms to get to the connected train as in this :


You may not realize this but her connected train last year was at the end of that very long platform.

What is more, it was a small, small local train, but which looked like a tiny TGV, the famous french bullet train, and inside you may see it looks really cute and luxurious, with etched glass doors,  as well as seats which are also reserved for, as you can see on the little panel, pregnant women and really old gentlemen bending on their canes,

  



So now that the Reporter had arranged some reservation plans on the SNCF, the  Society Nationale des Chemins de Fer Francais,   she decided to go cultural again.

So she checked out what were the Grand Palais exhibits on that panel :


But then,  there was nothing for the date of march 14th, as the new one was coming up on march 25th, date at which she would be away in the middle of nowhere.  So she cried.

Back in October, she had gone to the Okusai which was really extraordinary,


and where the French were pressing themselves like little ants, whispering in the dark cavernous rooms, 'mais c'est extraordinaire' which just means 'but it is extraordinary'  as you might have guessed, but said in french, it looks and sounds much better. Or  at least, the French certainly think so, if you ask them.

So the Reporter looked meditatively and sadly at the nice little poster which explained where and how the Grand Palais works,  


knowing that for the moment, she wouldn't be able to get into her cherished Grand Palais,  as it was in hiatus, just like her two beloved shows on vulgar American television : Veep, and Downton Abbey.  [ A specific post will be published later on Downton Abbey ]

Then she slowly retreated her steps to the Bon Marche to check out how things were in the simple field of Department Stores.

With All Love,

the frog

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