La Ville des Lumières...

View from our balcony down Boulevard du Montparnasse...

The TGV took us from Toulouse northwest to Bordeaux, where the train, previously almost empty, filled up completely.  From Bordeaux there were no stops at all until we reached Paris.  The whole trip took just over 5 hours and was wonderfully peaceful, because Steve had booked us into the no-cell-phone car.  A conductor came by and teased me about the lunch I was nibbling: peanuts and apple slices and one tiny piece of chocolate: Ce n'est pas bon pour la santé!  (That is not good for your health!)

We dragged our four suitcases and two potted plants (gifts from Toulouse) through the streets of Paris to our nearby apartment at 2, rue Boissonade in the 14th arrondisement.  Our landlady was patiently waiting for us in the kitchen she had stocked with milk, jam, coffee, tea, baguette and brioche, and of course a bottle of wine.  There were newly-purchased flowers (potted cyclamen) in the living room and herbs growing outside the kitchen window in the traditional jardinière (balcony planter).  She showed us around the place and invited us, within a couple of days, to come prendre une verre (have a drink) with her and her husband (who by coincidence is also a mathematician) in their nearby apartment.  We have not, in the past, been used to such extremely warm treatment in Paris, so this took us by surprise.  Perhaps all of France is changing?

The apartment is in the type of 19th century building one thinks of immediately as Parisian.  We are on the 6ème étage (6th floor French, 7th floor American), with a spiral staircase and a tiny elevator that can accommodate only one person and one suitcase at a time.  The building wraps around a corner, so our apartment has windows facing all directions but northwest, and since we are on a grand boulevard, there is light streaming in all day long through the tall French windows with their wrought iron balconies.  It was the wonderful light, as well as the high ceilings with elaborate carved moldings, that captivated Steve when he first saw the place and made him decide he could forgo absolute quiet and a cozy, small neighborhood.

There are farmers' markets in several different nearby streets, all open on different days.  We began at Blvd. Edgar Quinet, where the fish lady instructed me on the best method to cook (and preserve for a day) the two whole mackerel we bought, and the vegetable man asked us where we were from and tried out his English on us, telling us he had once spent a year in New York City.  Then he gave us a present of a bunch of parsley to use (he said) chopped up on our potatoes.  In the supermarket, in the canned fish aisle, an elderly lady helped me select the best brand of canned sardines, which I was buying in honor of my mother (an in-joke for those of you who knew her!).

On Monday we spent most of the day at two different police préfectures, trying to apply for our cartes de séjours, which give us permission to spend longer than three months in this country.  This entailed a wait of two hours followed by the discovery that there was a stupid error on one of Steve's protocols d'accueils (letters of invitation) from the university, which of course entailed more phone calls and more appointments with various functionnaires.  Luckily, though, the university will mostly take it from here, and all we should need to do is show up for our obligatory medical exams at the department of immigration, then go pick up our cartes whenever they are ready.  We hope.

Beyond that, I've been exploring the quartier and a bit beyond, catching up on email (thank you for your patience, those of you to whom I owe letters!), and working with my "Fluent French Audio" CDs and booklets to try to get my French to the next level.  Last night was the very pleasant evening of wine, various hors d'oeuvres, tarte de tomate, and cheese at our landlady's apartment.  Though she and her husband are both fluent in English, they seemed quite pleased to speak French the whole time to help us with our formation (training).  And I gained a new model for entertaining that had never really occurred to me before: l'apéro, accompanied by enough easy little dishes that you can talk to your guests the whole time and nobody really needs dinner afterwards -- or at least, we didn't!