Archive for March, 2025
To Paris and Back (twice!) in a week…
I made the first of two trips to Paris within just a few days last week so that I could go to Adrian Leeds’s monthly Après-Midi meetup. This is one of my favorite things to do when I’m in Paris, and not infrequently I will even come in just for the day to see one of the speakers that is being featured.
This time the speaker was Scott Carpenter, who is a fellow Minnesotan, a fellow writer, and also a part-time resident of Paris. He is the author of two wonderful memoirs about his life in Paris, French Like Moi, and Paris Lost and Found. At this event he read from both of those books, and those who didn’t already know what a gifted–and also very funny–writer he is had the chance to find out. (Word to the wise: Adrian’s meetups are always recorded so if you missed an event but would still like to watch it, you can! Here’s the link to the write-up of last week’s meetup. https://adrianleeds.com/upcoming-events/join-adrian-at-apres-midi/event-recap/ )
I went home the next morning, but just three days later Mary Duncan, author and publisher of Paris Writers Press, was hosting a lively literary soirée on Friday night, and I wasn’t about to miss that. So it was off to the train station in Vendeuvre once again, and on my way back to Paris.
I had a couple of free hours before going to the soirée and so I did it in my very favorite way to kill time. (Why do we use that expression, I mean really why do we?! I think it is very American in a not-so-great way. The French don’t talk about killing time–they are so big on enjoying it! But I digress…)
My favorite way to “kill time,” as I was saying, is to sit in a Parisian café somewhere, order something to drink, and then read and write in a leisurely way, and/or watch the passing parade. In a (French) word, to flâner.
This time I decided I wanted to find out what this “flat white” drink is that everyone is talking about these days. (True confessions of a country bumpkin, I had not even heard of it until a few weeks ago!) So I found a café that I figured might have it, and it did!
Samuél Lopez-Barrantes, a relatively new friend (and a brilliant writer!) was the featured guest at Mary’s soirée that evening, not only sharing information about his most recent book–The Requisitions (which all serious readers should read). I mean it!–but also performing a few of his beautiful songs.
His musical presentation was followed by an informal discussion Mary led about various publishing options in today’s publishing world. Among the guests was Odile Hellier, whose independent bookshop (the Village Voice) was an important–and wonderful–cultural institution in the literary world of Paris from 1982-2012. She recently published a memoir of not only her own very interesting life but the life of that bookshop as well. (Note: You can find Village Voices at your local indie bookseller (or order it from them), or you can get order it through Bookshop.org.)
I do wish I had gotten a photo that evening with Mary, and with Samuél and his wife, Augusta Sagnelli, who is also his partner in their independent publishing company, Kingdom Anywhere, and a very talented and accomplished photographer as well. But that is just one of the things I hardly ever remember to do. 😦 Oh well, next time!
The next morning I was off bright and early to get my train back to Vendeuvre-sur-Barse, which is the closest place SNCF goes to “my” little village in southern Champagne. Normally this is a delightful, direct two-hour train ride from Gare de l’Est. However, as fate would have it, this particular day was a day when SNCF was doing track work. So I had to go home through Chalôns-en-Champagne, which is not at all on the way to where I live. Thus it was going to be a four-and-half-hour ride this time.
Which became even longer when the train was delayed by an hour getting started, due to a problem of alimentation éléctrique (a power outage) somewhere along the route.
Normally this is the kind of thing that might make me feel a bit cranky. But for some reason I decided this time to not get cranky, but just submit to my fate and see what this day would bring in the way of surprises–maybe even some of them pleasant surprises.
And guess what?! It brought a very pleasant surprise when it turned out that the lovely teenage girl sitting next to me on the bus from Chalôns to Troyes (the second leg in a three-leg journey) overheard me speaking English on my phone, and took the initiative to open a conversation with me. She is French, but she speaks English with an absolutely impeccable American accent. (I’ve honestly in my whole life never heard anything like it.) Apparently this is due to the fact that she has spent much of her young life in Canada, and also traveling a lot in the US and Canada with her very adventurous family. We had a wonderful time getting to know each other in the hour-long ride to Troyes, and I hope that maybe this will turn into one of those unexpected, serendipitous long-term friendships in the future.
But even if it doesn’t, what a wonderful way to turn a bad mood around, merci Lisa! 🙂
By the time I got to Troyes, where I still had to figure out how to get the 35 kilometers from Troyes to Vendeuvre, where my car was parked, I was in a fine mood to meet whatever challenge would still lie ahead.
But guess what? There was no challenge at all! Two SNCF employees approached the bus as we disembarked, and I asked one of them if he knew when the next bus would be going to Vendeuvre, since we had missed the regularly scheduled one.
“Pas de problème, madame,” he said to me. “Restez-là.” (Wait here). He located a couple who were also headed for Vendeuvre, and led us to a taxi that was to take us to the train station in Vendeuvre–courtesy of SNCF!
There’s a lot of complaining that goes on about SNCF in France, and I myself have occasionally been guilty of it. (Though mostly I love almost everything about SNCF.)
Also the French are (in)famous for not being very good about customer service. But if that isn’t service extraordinaire I swear I don’t know what is!
The taxi driver was friendly and kind, a real gentleman. He deposited the three of us at Vendeuvre, made sure we were set for the next leg of our journeys, and was on his way.
(PS: Do you know what SNCF stands for? It stands for Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer. If you speak French, say it aloud! I used to love reciting those words to my American students in Paris, to demonstrate just how lovely a set of words can be. 🙂 It is pure poetry!)
Janet Hulstrand is an American writer/editor who lives in France. She is the author of Demystifying the French: How to Love Them, and Make Them Love You, and A Long Way from Iowa: From the Heartland to the Heart of France. You can also find her writing at Searching for Home.
Apologies from an American in Europe
I was in Troyes, in northeastern France (in the Champagne region) on Wednesday, November 6. Which is the day we learned, most of us to our dismay and dread, that Donald Trump had been reelected as President of the United States.
I waited a couple of hours before allowing myself to believe that it was going to be true; that Kamala Harris was going to concede the election, that we would be faced with another Trump presidency.
But it was true, all right. And when I went into the Office de Tourisme in Troyes later that day to buy some pretty postcards like the one pictured above and the woman asked me (as a matter of course, for their records) what my nationality was, I said “Américaine.” And I added, “I’m so sorry for what we have done.”
We’ve only begun to see just how bad things are going to be this time around with this man as our president. It’s not looking good: not for the US, not for our neighbors and allies, not for all of Europe.
But I had certainly suspected it might be this bad: and that is why my first thought was to apologize to the first European who asked me about my nationality.
This choice was not mine. It was not the choice of many millions of Americans. (Probably more than the current records show. We’ll leave it to future historians to figure that out.)
But in the meantime, it’s clear that this presidency is a disaster not only for the US, but for much of the world. For many people in many other places around the world. Especially those who need the most help just getting along. Just simply surviving.
And so, I just want to say, on behalf of my fellow citizens–the millions of us who feel the way I do–that I am so sorry for the harm that has been caused already, and for the harm that still will be caused by this disastrous situation.
We are also embarassed, ashamed, and a bit fearful of what lies ahead.
But many of us–I hope most of us–will be working hard to stop the damage, to reverse and undo the damage, and to turn things around just as quickly as we can.
We will need help to do this. It is good to see European leaders stepping up, determined to meet the challenge of supporting Ukraine quickly and meaningfully in the wake of the sudden loss of the help of an important partner.
There’s lots of work to be done, in the US and abroad, to rescue and safeguard democracy from the clutches of the authoritarian types taking hold in various places, including in the United States. It isn’t going to be easy, and it won’t happen overnight. But history tells us that working together we can find a way through whatever lies ahead. People have done it before.
And there is some good guidance out there for what to do, and how to go about it. (Timothy Snyder, Lady Libertie, Robert Reich, to name just a few.) There are many others, and many of them are posting on Substack, and sharing on Bluesky, two relatively new social media sites not owned by oligarchs that are answering the need for a public space where people who believe in democracy can find ways to work together to save it.
We’re all in this together. This is no time to throw up our hands in dismay. It is time to roll up our sleeves, and get busy. There’s no time to waste.
Janet Hulstrand is an American writer/editor who lives in France. She is the author of Demystifying the French: How to Love Them, and Make Them Love You, and A Long Way from Iowa: From the Heartland to the Heart of France. You can also find her writing at Searching for Home.
A lovely weekend in Lille (Hauts de France)
Lille, the capital of the Hauts de France region, is a lovely city in the northeastern tip of France’s “Hexagon.” Located very near the Belgian border, Lille has been a major center of government, higher education, art, culture, and commerce for hundreds of years. It was the capital of Flanders until Flanders became part of France in the late 17th century. Today it continues to be a thriving urban center, with convenient transportation links to Paris, London, Brussels, and Amsterdam.
I’ve had the pleasure of visiting Lille several times in recent years because one of my sons lives there. This weekend my other son and I went there again, this time to watch him perform with his new band, Samjo.
It was a very exciting night not only because this was the band’s first live performance, but because the energy was everything you could want for a first-time gig: a full house, an enthusiastic crowd, and talented musicians performing in perfect harmony, and in synch with one another. My son calls his niche “introvert rock.” His songs feature soulful, poetic reflections on life in a wide variety of its aspects, and from various points of view. As a lifelong lover of the French language, I am especially pleased that he’s mixing in some lyrics in French here and there. 🙂 Check out, for example, Night Lights. (The link provided is to Spotify, but you can access his songs pretty much anywhere music is streaming.)
There were other pleasures of course, and as always in France, one of those pleasures is eating.
We also had a lunch featuring galettes, which is a kind of thin buckwheat crépe (apparently Breton, not Flemish), in this case garnished with smoked salmon and filled with a hummus spread. It was delicious!
I also enjoyed reading, writing, and watching the world go by from a café while my sons worked, one at the school where he teaches, the other one at a café table not far away from me.
Of course for me the best of all was just being with my two sons and having some nice time together. That was, as the silly commercial goes, priceless.
Janet Hulstrand is an American writer/editor who lives in France. She is the author of Demystifying the French: How to Love Them, and Make Them Love You, and A Long Way from Iowa: From the Heartland to the Heart of France. You can also find her writing at Searching for Home.
Writing from the Heart, Reading for the Road 