Decisions, Decisions
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| I ♥ Caféotheque |
I wish that the choices for a good cup of coffee in Paris were like my university options: overwhelming and agonizingly difficult to choose between. Sadly, this is not true, as it is weirdly difficult to find a good cup of the stuff in Paris. After living in Portland for so long, I'm used to rolling out of bed and into the campus café, blindly depositing a platter of banana bread and groping around blindly until the kindly barista hands me a steaming mug. After which I feel more human, and can safely unclench my eyelids and appreciatively suck in the smell of my freshly ground caffeinated savior.
It's a little different here. Coffee is more of a social drink, an excuse to lounge about on the sidewalk, scrutinizing flâneurs and having a spittingly loud argument just for the hell of it. The espresso is just an accessory, always à la mode in its miniature cup and saucer with a side of sugar cubes and speculoos cookies (or truffles, or chocolate, or in the scroogiest joints, just a spoon). The beans tend to come from a childhood of abuse: incinerated, prematurely ground, and then cheaply packaged so whatever essence they have left evaporates into the open air. Indeed, it is a sad life for a coffee bean in Paris.
But there's hope! Multiple rays of hope, actually, in the form of real coffeehouses that have sprung up all over the city. I've been to two so far: Caféotheque, picturesquely located on the north bank of the Seine, and Terres de Café, whose boutique in the Marais is smaller than my bedroom but man, I wish my bedroom smelled like that. My barista friend also brings me tidings of two other cafés that he has visited in the meantime, to which my drug-hungry veins will no doubt carry me in good time.
Caféotheque holds a special place in my heart because the handsome barista (who, immediately spotting my American accent, promptly switched into his native New York English) was kind enough to ground the coffee beans I lovingly cradled in my baggage all the way from Portland. He held up the paper bags for me to sniff appreciatively after each one was ground! He gave me the name (moka) for that Italian stovetop contraption that has been eluding me for months! I am smitten.
In the past week, I've already drunk my way through one bag and am well into the second, thanks to a surfeit of university options. It's hard enough for me to decide at Reed, where my choices are mercifully limited to one college, but here? Here I have my pick of a smorgasbord of universities. There are more courses to choose from than there are varieties of French cheese. But after a weekend of suffering--in which I put my knowledge of number theory to good use and mapped out every possible combination of courses--I emerge triumphant. Check it. Out.
It's a little different here. Coffee is more of a social drink, an excuse to lounge about on the sidewalk, scrutinizing flâneurs and having a spittingly loud argument just for the hell of it. The espresso is just an accessory, always à la mode in its miniature cup and saucer with a side of sugar cubes and speculoos cookies (or truffles, or chocolate, or in the scroogiest joints, just a spoon). The beans tend to come from a childhood of abuse: incinerated, prematurely ground, and then cheaply packaged so whatever essence they have left evaporates into the open air. Indeed, it is a sad life for a coffee bean in Paris.
But there's hope! Multiple rays of hope, actually, in the form of real coffeehouses that have sprung up all over the city. I've been to two so far: Caféotheque, picturesquely located on the north bank of the Seine, and Terres de Café, whose boutique in the Marais is smaller than my bedroom but man, I wish my bedroom smelled like that. My barista friend also brings me tidings of two other cafés that he has visited in the meantime, to which my drug-hungry veins will no doubt carry me in good time.
Caféotheque holds a special place in my heart because the handsome barista (who, immediately spotting my American accent, promptly switched into his native New York English) was kind enough to ground the coffee beans I lovingly cradled in my baggage all the way from Portland. He held up the paper bags for me to sniff appreciatively after each one was ground! He gave me the name (moka) for that Italian stovetop contraption that has been eluding me for months! I am smitten.
In the past week, I've already drunk my way through one bag and am well into the second, thanks to a surfeit of university options. It's hard enough for me to decide at Reed, where my choices are mercifully limited to one college, but here? Here I have my pick of a smorgasbord of universities. There are more courses to choose from than there are varieties of French cheese. But after a weekend of suffering--in which I put my knowledge of number theory to good use and mapped out every possible combination of courses--I emerge triumphant. Check it. Out.
- Histoire de l'histoire de l'art, in the beautiful brick building of the Centre Michelet of the Sorbonne.
- Semiotics: the text and the image, at Saint-Dennis, the far-flung university of Foucault fame (and possibly also "Ordinary language and literary language: myth or reality?")
- The situation of the novel in Europe today
- Contemporary Spanish cinema: the visualisation of memory (with Pietsie Feenstra!!!)
- The Nouvelle Vague and film theory
- A history class at the Sorbonne starting with the Cold War.
- Oh, and a studio class for painting/drawing.
Yippee!
Wait, so - you get to choose your classes from any university in the Sorbonne? How cool is this? What is this program called anyway?
CUPA (Center for University Programs Abroad) acts as a sort of intermediary between the home university and the French system, which makes the latter much less of a headache for me. Otherwise I would have to contend with endless forms (how the French love their papers!) and queues that would put the British to shame.
The great advantage to this is that I can choose between any of the schools in the Paris system, which are numbered 1-13, and take any classes in any department, to boot. Most French students have all of their courses predetermined from day one that they choose their course of study. The word they use here is "chemin," or "path," which is indicative of how much they endorse intellectual wandering.
So, even though this is awesome in theory, I want to take advantage of the great variety of subjects on offer from innumerable experts in their fields. But this also means that because everything is scattered all over the city, I am effectively taking classes at four universities and get to commute between all of them.