by Oliver Gee
One call I did answer was from my neighbour Stephane. He rang, worried for me, asking where I was, but there was a real trouble in his voice.
“I’m fine, I’m in Stockholm,” I said. “But what about you, are you OK?”
“Yes, I’m OK. But I was at the stadium tonight,” he said.
Shit. I remembered him talking about going to the soccer match at the Stade de France. It, too, was a target that night.
“It was horrible,” he said. “We heard an explosion. No one knew what was happening. No one told us anything. We got back to Paris and ran all the way home. There are police everywhere, everywhere.”
A suicide bomber had blown himself up outside the Stade de France stadium, where 80,000 people were watching the game. The bomber managed to kill a security guard and himself. He never made it inside the stadium.
But by far the worst was at the Bataclan, a concert hall in the 11th arrondissement, where gunmen and suicide bombers killed 89 concert goers. I felt sick writing about it and even to this day I still struggle to comprehend it.
I stayed up through the night, reporting on the terror. And that was just the “What” part of the story. The “How”, the “Who”, and especially the “Why” would take months, even years to cover.
I was on a flight back to Paris the next day. To my home. Which on the one hand felt extremely foreign to me, yet more “home” than it ever had. It was a strange time to be a new resident in Paris. I’d lived there for almost a year, but I had never considered myself Parisian, even though I lived in the centre of the city, had a job there, and had no plans of leaving. But I felt a kind of belonging and a closeness with my friends and with the locals. The Parisians had been strong and resilient in the face of the Charlie Hebdo attacks earlier that year, but would it be the same now that the attack had been so huge and so indiscriminate? 130 people were killed. How can you respond to that?
And whether Paris was home to me or not (and how do you define home anyway?), one thing was for sure. When I arrived in Paris to cover the Charlie Hebdo attacks, I had no context of the city. I didn’t know what Charlie Hebdo was. I didn’t know what anything really meant. But I did know exactly what it meant that a huge number of young people in the 10th and 11th arrondissements were massacred at bars, restaurants, and in a concert hall, all in my neighbourhood. But I was far, far from understanding why it happened. And to this day, I still can’t.
2.8 Paris after the terror
The months following the terror attacks were unusual. There were so many questions about it all. How could anyone do that to other people? And why would they?
It was a testing time for all Parisians, and a difficult time to be a journalist in Paris. We spent every hour at work covering some aspect of the attack. Who were the victims? What were the ramifications for us all in Paris? What was to happen next? France declared a state of emergency - what did that mean? Who was the terrorist that survived, and how the hell did he get away like that? How did they get their weapons? How was France’s Muslim community reacting to the increase in hate crimes against them?
That was our life as reporters. All other news took a break for months. And as much as the city was trying to get back to normal, everyone knew it would take a long time. Some people looked for distractions. Others dwelled on the attacks. Some left the city for good. Tens of thousands of tourists, probably more, were scared away from the City of Light, and Paris suffered from that too. But what I noticed most was that many, many people got on with it. They flocked to the bar terraces for drinks, despite the November cold. Once again, Paris was resilient. The big difference between the response to this attack and the one at Charlie Hebdo was that there was no massive march afterwards: the president had banned public gatherings as part of the state of emergency that was to last two years. Yes, Paris had changed, and soon it would become common to see heavily armed soldiers patrolling the streets. For months, we’d have our bags searched as we went into shopping centres and cinemas. And everyone got used to it. There was no other choice, really.
And gradually, very gradually, life got back to normal.
CHAPTER THREE
The French countryside, difficult bankers, and a blowout birthday party in a castle.
3.1 Birthday plans
“You should hire a castle for your 30th birthday,” said Shelly, an American friend in Paris. “You can totally get them cheap in the French countryside.”
Even though I’d spent over a year in Paris at this point, these kind of sentences still sounded odd to me. I suppose it was something to do with my upbringing in Australia, where we don’t have things like old castles in the countryside. We don’t have any old buildings at all, really. Not like in Europe. In fact, the oldest thing in my Australian hometown was the lady next door. I wonder whatever happened to her.
“It’s simple, you just type chateau into AirBnB and set it to France,” Shelly continued, snapping me back to the room. “If everyone chipped in, you could get something amazing for a full weekend.”
Several months had passed since the attacks and people were looking for distractions. The trauma had brought many people closer together, including my own group of friends. None of us had shown any signs of wanting to leave Paris. Myself, I’d signed to extend the lease on my apartment for another year. But everyone wanted something to look forward to, and a weekend at a chateau seemed like the right kind of idea.
In fact, renting a chateau in the French countryside was exactly the kind of outrageous thing you should do when you turn 30 in Paris; I agreed. So I opened the AirBnB app and did as she said. It turned out that there were over 200 properties for rent in France listed as “castles”. They were spread all over the country, some tucked among the other luxury homes on the Riviera, others nestled in the hillsides of Brittany, and some only a short drive from Paris. These chateaux ranged from as little as €107 to €8,600 a night. So our challenge was to find one that wouldn’t break the bank for anyone - yet would still be grand enough to make for an impressive birthday weekend.
I settled on the Chateau d’Autricourt, which was somewhere in the Champagne region, around 250 kilometres to the east of Paris. We scrolled through the pictures online. Chandeliers, four-poster beds, and enough space for 40 guests. But what really sold it for us was the poetic and enigmatic description on the chateau’s website. It spoke of nude nymphs at the nearby stream, a moat filled with enormous carp, an ancient kitchen, ghost hunting, and succulent snail tasting.
“Built on 11th century foundations, but mostly in a Renaissance style, 15 bedrooms, three salons, a vaulted dining room and a medieval kitchen are surrounded by 25 hectares of cow meadows, gamey woods and fish-filled rivers. The decor of your dreams awaits you in this magical atmosphere,” it said.
While my birthday wasn’t for months to come, I emailed the owners and reserved the chateau. This would be a birthday to remember. And why shouldn’t we party like it’s 1599?
3.2 The basketballers
Playing basketball in Paris opened more doors for me than pretty much anything else. I’ve played since I was a boy so I’m no slouch on the court. And what’s more, while my height made showering at home a nightmare, it was pretty damn helpful on the court. Just being tall meant that I’d often be the first pick for a team, even if no one had seen me play. I shot hoops every weekend when the weather allowed it and I soon became a familiar face on the outdoor court in the Marais. But not everyone warmed to me, and I suspect this was because of a particularly embarrassing language blunder.
But first, a bit of context about the Paris basketball community, which is unlike others I’ve seen around the world. For starters, many of the French players want to seem tough and cool. They love the American basketball style and often wear the jerseys of current players, the newest sneakers, and play American rap music from portable speakers attached to their phones. When a player arrives at the court, he will walk the le
ngth of the magnificent Philippe Auguste wall, and he will “check” every other player, even if they’ve not met before. By check, I mean he will give them a casual but strong high five, followed by a fist bump - almost like gently punching each other in the fist. And I have no problem at all with that; I think it’s pretty cool, actually. Certainly a lot cooler than guys I played with in Sweden, who would give each other a hug before the game like it was some kind of yoga retreat.
The French guys love to use slang with each other too, which fits in pretty nicely with the fist-bumping, tough guy attitude. When I first came across verlan, the infamous backwards slang, I almost tripped over my own shoes. I had sunk a long shot and a guy came up to me, bumped my fist, and said what sounded like “bien wedgj” or perhaps “bien wezzhh”. I suppose no one knows how to spell it because it’s not really a word. At least, it definitely wasn’t a word I’d heard before. My teammate, sensing my confusion, told me it was verlan, or backwards slang, for bien joué (“well played”). So instead of saying bien joué, he switched the joué around and made it sound more like wedge. Get it? (Joué sounds like zhoo-way, which becomes ooway-zh - or “wedge.”) Confused? Well, so was I! And all I was trying to do was play basketball. All verlan words are made by switching the syllables or sounds around in words. An easier example is how the word for thank you, merci, becomes cimer. People actually say that! And while this might sound like some kind of secret code for children, French people use it a lot, provided they are under the age of 40. Me, I was floundering in the language, but always listening and always learning from these Parisian hoopers.
The guys also had a wide variety of ways to address each other - and never by name. Where in America you might say dude, or where Australians say mate, the French have seemingly endless options. Some of them are mec, as I’ve mentioned before, and which is probably the most common; gar (short for garçon, or boy); grand (as in big); pote, poto, and bro (which they just took from English). They also love to add the word mon, (meaning “my”) at the start, similar to how some Americans will call each other “my man”, or I suppose how Brits might say “my good man”. In any case, you can add the mon in front of almost all the slang words above, except one. Which I learned the hard way.
So, while there is no problem with saying mon grand, mon pote, or mon gar - and they said all of these on repeat - you absolutely cannot say mon mec, which actually means “my love” or “my darling”, more or less. I had no idea, of course, and trying to fit in I would walk the length of the wall and high-five all the guys while saying the French version of “Hello, my love” to each of them. They maybe looked at me strangely, but that was nothing new. The weirdest thing is that no one ever corrected me. Not until much, much later when I emailed a French friend and began the email with “Salut mon mec”. He responded that I should never utter the phrase again unless I either had a boyfriend or wanted to start a fight. At that point, I’d been saying mon mec for months. Maybe the guys were all too cool to help a struggling foreigner with his blunders, maybe they didn’t care, or maybe they thought I was gay. Who knows?
Anyway, some of my “little darlings” on the court became good friends. I’d heard them talking of an almost mythical indoor league in the Marais and I was itching for an invite. I say mythical because the buildings in central Paris are so narrow that the idea of playing basketball inside one of them seemed impossible. But when my invite finally arrived, basketball became an even more magical experience. The courts were housed inside a stone building called the Halle des Blancs Manteaux, which was over 200 years old and used to be the local covered market. I found an illustration of the building from around 1820 and it’s hardly changed. The hall had kept its grand archway entrance and the roof is still supported by enormous stone pillars, which are now separating the two courts. On summer nights we’d be blinded by the sunlight coming in through windows that seemed worthy of a cathedral.
Spots in the league were hard to get, but once you were in you were in for life. The games were every Tuesday night and I played there for years. Often, I’d go out for a drink or two with some of the guys afterwards, particularly two of them who were from Normandy. They who introduced me to Ricard, a drink made from aniseed that’s mixed with water and washes down easily after a few hours of basketball. They’d take great pride in this little ritual, using tongs to put the ice in tall tumblers, pouring the Ricard over the top, then adding just the right amount of water so that it wasn’t spoiled.
They also led me through the minefields of French slang and other language mishaps. Often, we’d end up in hysterics discussing our worst mistakes, hours into the night. One told me he’d left his English-speaking colleagues in tears after saying pet sleeve, instead of pet peeve. Another told me that he never used the English word focus because he couldn’t, for the life of him, make it sound like anything besides f&%k us.
“I was giving a presentation in English and trying to get some Americans to pay attention. I said: ‘I really need you to focus. Focus hard’. At least I got their attention,” he said, as we all roared with laughter.
People have often asked me for tips for integrating into Paris - and especially meeting French people - and I always suggest a group activity like a sport. Even better if it’s the kind of activity that can end in drinks afterwards to loosen the tongue and hide the shame of the eternal language learning struggle. Without basketball, I sometimes wonder just how many Parisians I’d actually know.
3.3 Brittany with Fabien
If you want to learn French in Paris, don’t hang out with expats. This was a lesson I’d come to learn from Fabien, a sailor from Brittany. Well, he wasn’t a sailor, but he had been in the navy, and “Fabien the Breton Sailor” had a ring to it. Fabien, with his penchant for hats and his thick beard, was about as French as you could get. But after a decade in London he had decided that he preferred to hang out with English-speaking expats in Paris. One day we were having a canal-side drink and I was talking about my lack of exposure to the French language and the real France.
“Mate, why don’t you come out to Brittany? Come and stay with my family for the weekend. That’ll give you a real taste of the French language, France, and most importantly, Brittany,” he said.
I’d heard about Breton pride. A survey once found that people from Brittany were more likely to consider themselves Bretons first, French second.
“Really? I’d love to come to Brittany,” I responded. “I’ve heard great things about the whole region.”
Fabien’s eyes filled with pride. There’s no quicker way to a Breton’s heart than to praise his region. Or his cider. Fabien excitedly pulled out his phone and scrolled through his calendar. This was no empty gesture, this was a plan. By the end of the evening, we’d booked three train tickets from Paris to the French countryside. Lina was coming too.
“You won’t regret this, mate, there’s nowhere in the world like Brittany,” Fabien said.
“Should we order a cider to celebrate?” I responded.
“No, don’t drink the cat piss cider in Paris. If it’s not Breton cider then it’s not worth drinking. You’ll soon know the difference.”
On the day of the big trip, France was in the middle of a fairly typical summer rail strike. Rail workers weren’t happy with something or other, and most of the trains were cancelled, including our train to Rennes, the capital of Brittany. I was covering the strike for the news site during the day and I texted Fabien to let him know about the cancellation.
“Don’t worry mate, we’ll find a way. Meet at the station as planned, see you at 6.”
We all met at Gare Montparnasse, a train station on the Left Bank. A little-known fact outside of France is that all the main train stations in Paris serve specific areas. Trains from Gare du Nord head to the north (nord) of France. Gare de l’Est serves the east (est). And trains from Gare du Lyon go to... you guessed it, Lyon and its surroundings. Gare Montparnasse (which w
as called Gare de l’Ouest when it opened) serves Brittany and the west of France - and the whole area around the station has a strong Breton influence. The best galettes in town can be found at stands and restaurants dotted around the station. If you want cider, that’s where you should head. But I learned all this much later. I was just focusing on getting to the station on time.
When we arrived, the departures board made it crystal clear. Almost all of the trains were cancelled. But a fascinating thing happens when you travel with a Frenchman. You learn how to play the system. Fabien approached the ticket seller, who was clearly exhausted and irritated after spending his day dealing with irate customers. Fabien talked to him politely and calmly.
“We’ve booked tickets for the 6.30 train to Rennes, which I see is cancelled. Now, there’s one other train that’s going to Rennes at 7pm...” he began.
“Yes monsieur, but it’s fully booked. Not only that, everyone at this station wants to get on that train, because they all want to get to Brittany this weekend.”
“I understand,” Fabien responded. “But I wanted to know which platform the train will leave from.”
The ticket seller looked suspiciously at Fabien and his two tourist friends.
“It’s platform four, but it shouldn’t serve you any purpose to know it. You don’t have a ticket for that train, monsieur, so why would you be getting on it?”
“But of course, merci beaucoup.” Fabien smiled, thanked the man, and left.
“OK, let’s go to platform four,” Fabien told us with a smile. “We’re getting on that train.”
We headed to the platform in the main hall, where scores of Bretons were spread out widely, all with their eyes on the departure board. Fabien did the same, but from the safety of the entrance to platform four.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Everyone in this crowd wants to get on that train, but there’s not enough room for us all,” he said. “It’s first come, first served. As soon as that sign reveals which platform the train leaves from, it’ll be a blind panic as everyone rushes to the platform. But we know which platform it is, the man told us.”