Les Naufragés du Fol Espoir

So last night, thanks to Judy and her fabulous connections, Kari and I had free tickets to the new Théâtre du Soleil production, called Les Naufragés du Fol Espoir. The TdS is a very special group--they sort of live as a cult, almost, and they put on these sweeping fresco-type plays that they write and develop collaboratively. They don't even assign roles until the end; everyone gets together and brainstorms, then the director (Ariane Mnouchkine) figures out who will be doing what later on. This can be quite tricky, as it's such a big group that some of the actors are necessarily left on the sidelines, for example. But everyone has a job, as I will explain. And their shows are usually quite long. This one is 4 hours, and the one I saw in NYC last summer was 7.

In any case, the play is absolutely amazing. There's really no good way to translate the title. Literally I think my best shot is "drifting dreamers," but that doesn't do justice to the multiple layers in fact contained in the title. "Fol espoir," or "crazy hope," is the name of a cabaret east of Paris just before WWI. The owner and employees of this cabaret decide to make a film that involves explores going to Patagonia and getting wrapped up in a dispute between Argentina and Chile over an island. Their boat is called the "fol espoir" as well, and there is a shipwreck, thus making them "les naufragés," (literally, "shipwrecked"). This movie within a play is in fact based on a Jules Verne novel that was published posthumously. Oh, and it's a left-wing propaganda film about greed and social justice.

So anyway, the play functions on multiple levels, particularly because the movie-in-a-play doesn't have a happy ending. The attempt at creating a utopian society on this island in South America is thwarted by the discovery of gold (this story occurs in the late 1800s), the shipwrecked people start competing and killing each other, and the remaining "drifting dreamers" decide to flee when they see what gold has done to them. Man, this is complicated to explain. And then when you add to the fact that the filming of this movie is taking place within the two weeks following the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and Europe is careening toward WWI, you get another layer of meaning for the "drifting dreamers" of the "fol espoir" cabaret (in that they're trying to focus on art while the world is falling apart around them). So you sort of have to think of this on three levels--the context of the movie (late 1800s), the context of the play (July 1914), and the context of the performance itself (as in, today). The themes of national identity, social justice, and the role of engaged artistic production (to name a few) apply in all three temporalities, of course. I think I'll stop there on the plot, because there's really no good way to break it apart on paper.

In any case, getting back to the experience of the event, however, the compound-like nature of the group means that you're supposed to get there early and have dinner too. Yes! So this is what many of the actors who aren't selected for the show are stuck doing--cooking and serving the public. I can see how this could create issues, but I wasn't about to complain, the experience was extraordinary. The compound is called "the cartoucherie," and it's located in this huge park just outside Paris on the eastern side (the bois de Vincennes). You have to take the subway and then a special shuttle to get out there. Anyway, on the compound, they actually made the performance space into the "fol espoir" cabaret. So the facade is all done up and everything, the idea is that the public is quite literally entering and dining in the cabaret before the performance. Kari and I are kicking ourselves for not having our cameras, but our minds were so thoroughly blown by the performance that we're seriously considering going back again. Which is saying a lot for a 4 hour show, that we were captivated enough to see it again!

So you enter the cabaret and then go to a big counter for the meal, which offers a few selections--last night there was a salmon and lentil plate or a hearty stew. Homemade, of course. We went for the stew, and then there are of course all sorts of drink options, including hot brewed hibiscus, which is what I tried. It didn't taste like hibiscus tea, but it did taste like flowers. It was served with orange and lime in it, so it had a fruity flavor too. Divine. We pondered having an extra drink before going into the show but decided against it because, well, when it's a 4-hour production you never know what the lines for the bathroom at intermission might be like, haha. And when I went to the bathroom just before the show as a preventative measure, I was sure glad I had decided to forego that extra drink, because that's when I discovered that the bathrooms were Turkish. ohhhhhhhh. Small price to pay for an otherwise extraordinary evening!

Busy weekend...

So yesterday was an exceptionally busy Saturday, as I had a SEVEN hour orchestra rehearsal for my upcoming concerts this week. Ouch. But the rehearsal actually wasn't as tedious as I feared, it should be an ok concert. The most interesting part of the rehearsal was the space, actually, in that it was held at the Bastille Opera house. The Bastille opera house is one of the more strange Mitterrand contributions to the architecture of Paris. And that's saying a lot, as he's also responsible for the National Library and the pyramids at the Louvre. So yeah, it doesn't take much imagination to consider how strange this building looks nestled in with the regular Haussmannian buildings surrounding it:


I don't know who said it, but my favorite critique of this building is that it "answered a question no one asked." hahahaha. In any case, for as impressive at is looks on the outside, it's equally noteworthy on the inside. I swear it's another non-euclidean building. It just doesn't make sense. Our rehearsal was on the SIXTH basement level! So yeah, I spent most of my day 6 floors underground in a rehearsal room. Then we had a short break for lunch in the staff cafeteria, which is on the 7th floor above ground. You can do the math, that was a hell of a lot of escalators we ended up on, haha. We tried to find an elevator but gave up when we got pathetically lost. And the escalators ended up being more interesting anyway, since we saw the hallways for the soloists' studios and stuff like that. I didn't get to see inside any of them, but we all agreed we wouldn't mind being divas for a day and having access to all the fancy facilities. We had to content ourselves with feeling important in the staff cafeteria, which, for the record wasn't bad at all.

I think I solidified my reputation in the orchestra as the American nutcase, however. After my stellar performance of an American accent in French last fall, this time I solidified my American credentials with my knowledge of Grease lyrics. Yes, you read that right. The story is that the third movement the Mendelssohn piano concerto we're playing has this one line in the cello section that sounds EXACTLY like the walking bass line of Summer Lovin'. It's been a joke in orchestra all season long and we are all rather amused whenever we get to it. We were drilling that section (for the winds, the cello part is obviously not a problem), and everyone was laughing as we did it over and over. So then some people started trying to sing along, but of course they only knew the melody and didn't have the lyrics down at all. Finally I was like, "oh no, if we're going to do this, we have to do it right!" And that's how I found myself doing a full karaoke rendition of Summer Lovin', with even the conductor laughing his ass off at me. The only thing that would have made it better is if I could actually sing, hahaha. They were all impressed that I knew the lyrics, but I was sitting there like, "I didn't hear that song at EVERY middle school dance I went to for nothing!" When we got to the "tell me more!" part, at least I had some backup, as they could figure that part out! Otherwise, though, I was stuck being both Olivia Newton John AND John Travolta. And 100% crazy, I'm sure. But hey, you don't mistreat Grease. If you're going to make fun of it, you've got to do it right!

Once I got out of orchestra, Kari and I had grand plans for the evening, namely to go see our friend Charlotte dance in a burlesque show up in Belleville! Very cool. We had tried to go see her about a month ago but got to the club too late and there was no space left. This time we got there super early and stood in line for an hour, which was a good thing because we weren't in fact the first people in line. Charlotte was awesome--she's enrolled in the "école des filles de joie," which is basically a dance program to learn how to be a moulin rouge dancer. I'm insanely jealous, as it looks absolutely awesome. And hilarious...as I said to Kari, I haven't seen so many pasties in one room since I graduated from Bryn Mawr, haha. Too bad it's both a) expensive and b) heavily time consuming, or I'd think about it myself. SO funny.

Beyond just the students, there were also some professionals who came to do special routines as well. The highlight of the pros was clearly the fire dancers, who had a whole routine with these fancy torches that were attached to their hands somehow. I'm not entirely sure how it worked in that they weren't holding onto the torches, they were strapped on somehow. But then the women did all this crazy stuff with the way they moved their hands so that it created patterns in the air. We were really nervous about one of the dancers, who had super long hair in a ponytail that was flying all around. She's a pro so she must have it under control, but we definitely had visions of the ponytail going up in flames.

Anyway, that was perhaps enough excitement for one weekend, as at the end of the show I was cat-calling Charlotte and all of a sudden I felt like I had a knife in my throat. I've been trying to fight off a sore throat for a few days, I think, and I think perhaps it quite suddenly caught up with me last night. Today ended up being a low-key day of reading, as I realized just how tired I am. I decided the one productive thing I could do would be to do some spring cleaning, so I've completely redone my room. It's about time, this place was a holy mess. I suppose the one good thing about living in a shoe box is the fact that there's a limit to how long it can take to clean, haha. I mean, seriously, I think I can mop the floor in under a minute, since there just isn't much floor to mop!

Oenological dilettantism

So it will probably not come as a surprise to most of you that the ENS apparently has the oldest university wine tasting club in France. Naturally. And of course they're extremely proud of that fact.

I have wanted to go to one of their club meetings all year, but for one reason or another it hasn't worked out. Until yesterday. The theme of last night's "dégustation" was portos. Not French, I know, but whatever. My main problem with tastings, of course, is that I don't particularly know what I'm doing, haha. When Ben and I were discussing the fact that we were going to the tasting, my comment was, "all I know about portos is that I like them!" haha.

Anyway, I arrived at the tasting (in the dining hall) to find long tables with white tablecloths, two glasses per person (water and wine), and everything all set. Yes! A guest expert was there to guide us through our tasting, and the main thing I learned was that portos are actually a derivative of a Burgundy pinot. Some dude way back when took pinot grapes down to Portugal to try his hand down there and ended up with porto. And I'm glad he did, as we ended up with some delicious wine last night!

Here's the funniest part: all the 20-year-olds with their developed palettes. I was clearly the heretic of the room, while they were talking about the "robe" and how they tasted red fruits, cinnamon, you name it, I sitting there like, "yum, this one is good!" And seriously, how many 20-year-old American guys do you know who would attend a wine tasting and have such sophisticated commentary AND use the spit bucket thingies? Well, correction, how many 20-year-old American guys who are not members of a Princeton eating club do you know who would do such a thing? haha. In further proof that the ENS is in fact Princeton in disguise, the student in charge of pouring our samples was wearing a shirt with cuff links! Yes! Young Republicans of the world unite!

Of course, you can also imagine my consternation at the end, when we had to go around the room and say which wine we liked the best and why. Like a good mediocre student I took the safe route and parroted back what the presenter said about the one I liked the best, haha. So I discussed why I liked the "cognac overtones, like an armagnac" of the one I liked. I can sling the bullshit with the best of them :-)

Oh, and each wine was paired with some chocolate, so we sampled chocolate from: Indonesia, Ghana, Equador, Venezuela, and the Caribbean. Again, others were commenting on the flavor variations while I was basically sitting there like, "mmmmm, chocolate!"

After the tasting, there was a buffet meal. I struck out on the first round, which was all sorts of fancy cheeses. But whatever, the bread was delicious, so that's good enough for me! The next round was a set of macaroons from Pierre Hermé, which were DIVINE. I sort of ran afoul of the dairy in them (French macaroons are nothing like the American incarnation, they're little merengue cookies with cream in the middle) but kind of didn't care, that's how good they were, haha. I then fell off the bandwagon completely, however, and sampled the cherry tart and the raspberry tart. Both with cream sauces, of course. I am an idiot. But man were they good!

Amazing older people

So the theme of my past two days has been meeting older people who have done way more interesting things with their lives than I could ever dream. Serious manimals here.

Yesterday I had an interview with Maurice Nadeau, who is the editor of La Quinzaine Littéraire and who has his own elite publishing company. What makes Nadeau so fascinating is that he was born in 1911...thus meaning that he has seen a hell of a lot of history. And not just SEEN a hell of a lot of history, he has PARTICIPATED in a lot of history. He was a major contributor to Combat, Camus' underground resistance journal during WWII. And before that he was tight with all the leading surrealists and had written "the book" on the history of surrealism. After the war he launched such luminaries as Perec, and he also ran afoul of the French government in 1961 for publishing the "Manifeste des 121," a document prepared by all the leading intellectuals of the era to protest the use of torture in the Algerian war. Later he launched the career of Tahar ben Jelloun, one of the first (and most consecrated) authors from North Africa writing in French today. He also discovered Houellebecq, but we'll pretend that didn't happen (hahahaha). Three members of the Academie Française got their start with him!

In any case, I was mainly interviewing him because I was lucky enough to have a former professor at Bryn Mawr who knows him and set it up. Which was awesome. Like I said, he's 99, but you would NEVER guess it. He met me in his office, which is in a building overlooking the main entrance to the Pompidou Center. Nothing short of awesome. He gets around better than I do on some days, like when my knee is acting up. hahahaha. He's totally lucid, hears everything just fine, and just generally rocks. Everyone should aspire to be like him when we're 99, because DAMN.

So that was Monday. Tuesday I continued my winning streak by going to visit a woman another professor from Bryn Mawr put me in contact with. This woman has nothing to do with my research, but she's also nothing short of awesome. She falls into that category of Bryn Mawr women who totally raise the bar for the rest of us, because again, if in my lifetime I manage to do 10% of what she has done, I'll be a success. She is French and was a teenager when her family fled the Germans. They came to NYC and she ended up at Bryn Mawr. Graduated in 1942 and joined the Free French forces. She landed in Normandy as a translator in July 1944, like a month after the Allied landing! She told me that there's a special window of her stuff on display at the D-Day museum in Caen, so obviously I have to go. There's apparently a picture of her team in the Invalides military museum, since her group of women were considered a special case in terms of female participation in the war effort. Again, how awesome is that?! Leave it to the Bryn Mawr woman to take everything to the next level, including liberating her own country. Yes!

My afternoon with her was both serious and light, in that she told me both war stories and hilarious Bryn Mawr stories. My favorite Bryn Mawr story was about how shocked she was by the other girls who weren't prim and proper. She's VERY Parisian in that awesomely classy sort of way, haha. I had met her briefly before, at the Bryn Mawr lunch, and fortunately I have a well enough trained cultural nose to smell what I was getting into. Sure enough, her apartment is exquisite. She collects modern French tapestries, so they're hanging all over the place. Very, very classy. As soon as I walked in I knew I had made a wise choice in wearing a crisp button-down shirt, skirt, and pearls. hahahaha.

Anyway, the funny part was when she told me she had never heard of jeans as a concept until she arrived at Bryn Mawr and was horrified to see everyone wearing them. I laughed hysterically at this point, thinking of the classy French girl showing up at Bryn Mawr and thinking, WTF. And I'm sure that relatively speaking, it probably wasn't that bad in 1940 as compared to the informality of today!!! But I was appeased to think that Bryn Mawr women were pushing the envelope from day 1, haha.

So there I was smugly thinking to myself that thank god I had chosen the right outfit, when I reached down to fix my shoe and my hand came back covered in blood. Like, fairly seriously covered. I knew I had hit my ankle on a construction barrier while biking over to her place, but I didn't think it was that bad and it didn't really hurt so I forgot about it. Yeah, that's adrenaline for you, because once I figured out that it was actually apparently split open, that's when it started to hurt. I am a rockstar. Anyway, I felt like a dumbass at that point since I hadn't realized it sooner, so I figured, whatever, I'll deal with it when I get home. So I didn't say anything and continued our conversation (which then took a turn for the more serious as she discussed the war). Needless to say, when I got home I had a bit of a mess on my hands...it's not all that big of a cut, but it's DEEP. Which is saying a lot for an ankle, since there's not very much fat or anything right on the bone! Took forever to stop the bleeding, but it seems fine now. Fortunately I still have some of that weird French scab-forming webbing stuff from when I gashed my arm on the airplane coming over in September!

Yes, I'm still alive!

Well, I don't quite know where the time has gone...I've been back from Berlin for a week and a half. Actually, I suppose I do know where the time has gone, in that I wrote 45 pages in the space of a week. Word. Lots of words, in fact. Chapter 5 is done, although it's not nearly as impressive as it seems since 4 doesn't exist yet, haha. 4 and 5 go together as a binome, so I can't truly complete 5 until I write 4. And for the record I was planning on writing the diss in order but then I started what I thought was 4 and then realized that it made more sense as 5 and that my original 5 made more sense as 4. So I flipped the order and ended up writing 5 before 4. But no worries, I'm almost ready to write 4, hopefully that one will be done by the end of the month. yes! In any case, this means I have 4 chapters written, so I'm officially halfway there! Yay!

Anyway, our trip to Berlin can generally be broken down into two themes: eating/drinking and kitschy historical tourism. hahaha. Kari's comment on my penchant for the tourist trap goofiness was: "you embarrass me." hahaha. That did not, however, stop me from getting a picture trying to climb the wall:


Nor from getting a picture with checkpoint charlie:


And getting a fake visa to leave the eastern part of the city, from the random dude set up by a piece of the wall:


And yeah, I seriously pondered getting my real passport stamped but decided that the Americans might take a dim view of that when I try to get back into the States, haha. So I settled for the fake visa instead!!!

Kari was not embarrassed to join me on the sausage and beer fest, however:


This was our first (of many) pints in Germany! Check out those fun glasses. And the foam. We were pretty wiped at this point since it was our first night, but the beer perked us up. Until it made us crash later, haha.

One of the specialties in Berlin is currywurst, which is a white sausage covered with a sauce that appears to be ketchup sprinkled with curry powder, HAHA. Since the sausage was clearly high quality, it was actually delicious. Kari and I enjoyed currywurst on multiple occasions. Goulash too.

Our snacks through out the trip tended to come from this store, billed as the largest chocolate shop in Europe. We approved, particularly because they had a chocolate Reichstag which I insisted we record (that's Leah with me):


As you can see in this picture, Berlin was COLD. And I mean, really, really cold.


We never thought we'd be warm ever again. Fortunately the Germans have an antidote to the weather, in the form of mulled wine. BUT. This is not your average wussy French mulled wine. Oh no. The Germans add a shot of captain morgan's to their wine. Yes. I don't exactly know how it works: either the rum warms you up or else just leaves you so tipsy you don't care about the cold anymore, haha. In any case, our routine became a glass of wine around 11 or 11:30, which then led to an immediate need for currywurst to sop up said wine in our stomachs, haha.


When we weren't busy eating, drinking, or falling for stupid tourist traps, we went to Dresden. And I'm really glad we did, despite some pretty intense train issues (long delays). Dresden is fascinating, for two reasons: first because of what happened there and then for the fact that you can't really tell. Everything is totally reconstructed. Here are two examples, the first is the Zwinger palace:


And then this is the main church in the center of town. You can see darker stones sprinkled in there; those are the originals from the first church. And they're put in as close to the same spots as possible. This church actually only reopened in 2005!


Anyway, plenty more pictures are available here.

I think that's about it for now...I'm currently on a theater kick, saw a play by one of my authors last night, and then Judy is in town and we have hot theater dates tomorrow and Saturday nights. Yes! Saturday's is kind of funny since the show was totally sold out and they told me there was no chance in hell we could get tickets. Judy called and pulled her strings, and sure enough, we're good to go!

Too much to do!

Well it's been a busy few days! Sunday night was one of the coolest evenings I've ever had in France; I went to the Concert for Haiti out at the Zénith, a medium-sized concert hall on the outskirts of Paris. Here's a picture of the hall:
We got there on the late end, so we didn't have seats. Instead we were standing in the middle, which was actually MUCH cooler. Much more tiring, as we were on our feet for over 3 hours, but we were waaaaaay closer to the action, haha. Here I am with Jason, Basia and Paolo:
And then with Annalina and Iva:


It was very similar to the American version, with all sorts of top French pop stars getting in on the action. The highlight for me was very clearly Diam's, who I would say is like the Pink of France. Kind of an "in your face" rapper, who has some really incredible songs about contemporary France. There's one song that's absolutely amazing to use in the classroom, called Ma France à moi (My vision of France), in which she goes off against Le Pen and the far right. All very well done. Anyway, you can imagine what sort of shock it was when, last fall, she suddenly started wearing a headscarf:


Particularly because she's not of Muslim origin. She's actually half French, half Cypriot. She was raised here and converted to Islam a few years ago. Then she started wearing a headscarf, and the country was in a tizzy for a good few weeks. It was fascinating. She's as spunky as ever, though, and it was great to see her.

Other acts included Bryan's favorite, Rose:

I'm not a huge fan of Rose, I find her music a little slow. But on that night she sang one of my favorite French pop songs from the 90s, Alain Souchon's Foule Sentimentale. It's also kind of lame (haha), but what can I say, it's catchy. So she scored some points in my book with that choice.

Another of my favorites is DePalmas, who is actually pretty cute in real life. This picture does absolutely no justice to that, I know!


Anyway, so that was Sunday. The energy was really great, and I think they raised a good amount of money. I was also rather impressed by some of the programming, in that they presented work by Haitian authors and read a bit of Dany Lafferiere's excellent interview in Le Monde. This is why I love France at times...good to have the lit front and center sometimes! The Minister of Culture (Frederic Mitterrand, nephew of the late great François) even tried to speak Creole, which was pathetic but well intentioned!

Needless to say, I was fairly wrecked on Monday due to my late night. But it was worth every ounce of subsequent suffering. I couldn't take time to rest on Monday, however, because I had a big interview to prep: Rachid Djaïdani, the centerpiece author of chapter 4. I spent Monday reading through the press archives of book reviews on his work, and perhaps the funniest part was that I found a reference to a TV show he did in which he brought his dopey little French moped over to the States and traveled around Texas. Apparently for the hell of it. Since I was at the audiovisual archives I decided I might as well check it out, and it was hilarious. Kind of like a less malicious Borat, in the sense that he wasn't trying to make people look stupid. Instead it was just good natured--he walked into some random bar in the middle of nowhere asking to see cowboys, for example. The guys in there were like, "oh, ok, hop in the pickup truck, we'll take you to see the cowboys!" So they did. In another scene he went to a car dealership pretending to want to buy a big hog of a pickup and went through the motions with the outlandish dealer, who was clearly well aware of what he was caricaturing. In any case, it was just rather amusing to see the random French Arab guy bumbling along on his moped in the middle of Texas, hahaha.

So the big interview was yesterday, which was equally awesome. We met up in the 11th at this amazing Moroccan café, where he clearly knew everyone. He was back in the kitchen greeting everyone, and I got the royal treatment purely for being a Friend of Rachid. Except that I had just met him, haha. But no matter, he's clearly friends with everyone. And he was super helpful, so I got all sorts of great material for my chapter. Yay!

After all that excitement, I'm now trying to get organized to head to Berlin tomorrow!!! Kari and I are VERY excited, we're going to see everything. We're probably going to lose some limbs to frostbite as well, as the forecast is BITTER COLD. Like highs in the teens every day. ohhhhh. Needless to say, most of my luggage is made up of multiple pairs of long underwear, haha. I sure hope they have those things you can put in your shoes to warm your toes up!

I am actually getting work done here!

I realized it's been a while since I wrote about my real work, since I'm not being paid to sit around and play all the time, hahaha. Well, my work is pretty cool sometimes, so it can feel like I'm getting paid to rock out :-)

Anyway, right now I'm laying the groundwork to start writing my next two chapters. I've finished most of the background reading I need to do for chapters 4 and 5 and have pretty much finished the research for 4. The best part has been the interviews/meetings I've been able to do/attend. Last Friday I went out to the banlieue to the home of one of the original activists in the genre I'm working on. She was more on the social end, but she did form a theater troupe in the early 1980s to get the word out. She's awesome to talk to--has the same energy as the insane interview I did last fall, but with a much more positive outlook on life. She didn't get as involved in politics so she seems to have come out of it with more of her idealism intact. She was super friendly and talked for FOUR hours! haha. I went with a few other masters' students who are participating in my research group, so we all asked her questions (side note, I realize it's useful in its own way, but I sometimes find sociologists tiring...they were asking such specific questions that weren't all that interesting in and of themselves, although I realize it's to build a bigger picture regarding what was going on. But man it got tedious at times, hahaha. This is why I'm not a sociologist, I am much more interested in the bigger ideas and her own analysis of what was going on, even if that makes me a heretic in sociology circles).

Then last Saturday I went to another banlieue to visit an after-school program that empowers youth from these areas through filmmaking. I had met one of the directors of this organization back in New York and we've stayed in touch (and met up in Paris before), but this was the first time I had the chance to go out there to see their actual site. A former student of mine who is writing her honors thesis on this organization came along too, which was awesome. We had a great time, met a few of the kids and another one of the directors, then we went to lunch in Belleville (one of the most ethnically diverse parts of the city). That's where I discovered my durian in the grocery story (haha). In any case, perhaps the funniest part of that meeting was when they asked us what we missed the most about the States when we're in France, and without missing a beat we came up with the exact same answer: portable coffee. They thought it was hilarious (and lame) that we would walk around with our cup of coffee, but we launched into a tirade about how it's not really about Americans being so obsessed with saving time, etc. It's much more about having a beverage, as an experience, and we want to appreciate it for a longer time and thus carry it with us. They said it was because American coffee sucked, we fought back and said no, it wasn't about the coffee, just the ability to be able to carry it around. hahaha. It was awesome, having a philosophical discussion on coffee consumption. Of course, I've had this conversation multiple times here and they still don't believe me that portable coffee is worth having.

That said, though, considering how many Starbucks branches there are now, an obvious observation must be made: SOMEONE'S going there, and it's not just tourists. I've seen them in places where tourists don't bother to go, so it's just like McDonald's. They can whine and complain all they want, but it's clearly filling some sort of demand. That said, I still won't go to one here. I just wish they'd come up with an (affordable) French equivalent. Because I'm not spending 6 euros ($9!) on a coffee at Starbucks here, haha.

Next Tuesday I have another interview, this time with the author who is anchoring my chapter 4, named Rachid Djaïdani. Yesssss. He seems very cool and nice on the phone, and very willing to chat. So I'm definitely looking forward to that. The goal is to have all the remaining research for Chap. 4 done before I leave for Berlin next Thursday, then I can write the chapter the following week :-)