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Bonjour!

Last night, we sent Dirk off with a night at a local brasserie next to the Jardin Russeau. Typically nice Parisian evening, the kind of which I’m getting all too used to. The owner, who ran the bar (as they do here) had lived in London for six months. As is the usual case with French people like that (outside of the tourist districts), this meant that we got the usual completely fluent apologies for his “bad” English. Once those were over, he turned on his favorite jazz tapes and cracked a bottle of something typically fantastic in honor of Dirk’s last day in Paris for a while.

It was a lot like being over at a friend’s house, and perhaps it was, except at a friend’s house, you don’t usually have the local old guys sit down next to you and flirt outrageously confused I had to repeat “Non, merci monsieur, je ne fume pas” a few times as he tried to offer me (and then, as a cheerful afterthought, Dirk and Oxy) cigarettes. I think he had visions of lighting a cigarette in my mouth or something like that). Heh. I suppose I ought to be flattered, but I guess I was mostly bewildered.

The owner seemed a tad embarrassed, and repeatedly assured us that the fellow was harmless. I never thought he wasn’t, of course, and frankly, it’s stuff like that that gives brasseries a different feel from the “bar scene” back in the States. By that I mean that there is a real feeling of community there—the young mix with the old, the professionals with the blue collar, the singles with the married. I would be less than thrilled if a young man were to hit on me like that, but from a harmless old fellow, it’s sort of a way of his saying “we accept you around here.”

Well, maybe Oxy was feel romantic from our restored privacy, or maybe he’d had something planned for a bit, but today we went back to Versailles. I thought that it was maybe to see what we hadn’t seen before, but instead he suggested going down to Marie Antoinette’s Petit Trianon again.



(Here's a couple of interior shots from our first visit. Sorry about blowing chronology!)






This time, though, we didn’t spend anytime at all inside, but instead sought out the wandering paths through the perfectly manicured woods.



We passed through a false grotto--



and up stone lined walkways



to a small little clearing about thirty or so feet across, completely shielded from the wind by tall trees.



There, in the former private garden of the Queen of France, he broke out a bottle of wine, camembert sandwiches and chocolate domokun We ate in silence for a while, just sitting there, listening to the wind. It was as if we were, for a moment, the King and Queen themselves—without all that unpleasantness about needing to run the country and eventually getting guillotined for your trouble eek

After we got back to the hotel, we had another post-Versailles collapse. You certainly walk a lot there, next time I want a carriage (I’m not high maintenance, really I’m not whee ). Anyway, by the time we woke up, it was dark and drizzling a bit, so we just took a stroll under the awnings along the storefronts. Near the Metro, we passed an old man, dressed in a ratty suit and fedora, carrying a guitar case. For some reason, I called out ”La, it fait le guitar!” (Hey, he plays guitar!). The man needed no further encouragement, broke into a wide grin and started strumming away on an old acoustic with a cracked face.
Now, street musicians are pretty common in Paris. About half the stations have somebody playing somewhere. Heck, a soprano saxophonist and accordion player had barged into our train compartment on the way back to Versailles with peppy dance music and a seasoned manner with the hat passing. But there was something different about this fellow. For one, despite the cracked guitar and a missing and bandaged finger, he was pretty darned good. He had to tune constantly, but he did it without missing a beat. And he was so blessed earnest. He seemed to really feel the old sixties and seventies tunes he was belting out.

We listened to him, until he stopped for a while and in an incredibly hoarse and low voice told us he used to be an English teacher. He was Greek by birth, and somewhere along the lines had ended up in Paris. No sob story, or anything annoying and manufactured, just a matter of fact explanation without a real explanation. Somewhere between teaching English and playing guitar, he’d ended up on the damp streets of Paris with a hurt hand, a lost voice and a broken guitar, but he didn’t tell us how and we didn’t ask him. Instead, Oxy just thanked him for the music and gave him four Euro. The man was clearly a bit embarrassed by the need hold the hat out, but you know, Oxy has done turns playing in the streets, although not as a primary income. It’s not anything that can put a roof over your head. Maybe it’ll buy you dinner and a drink, or on a really, really good day a room with a hot shower. We both received a kiss on the cheeks, and then the coins disappeared neatly.

We went back to standing on the corner while he played “The Boxer” by Simon and Garfunkle. Oxy picked up the song from him, with occasional hoarse prompts and the two sat there under the awning, belting the words out, stomping on the refrain and playing while the rain of Paris misted around us.