Dateline France, 7 July 1990 Report 25 This report covers more doings around town. We went back one afternoon to the chateau in St. Germaine-en-Laye. There is a reproduction there of part of the Lascaux caves we wanted to see that was closed the last time we were there. Also, Kaye did not get to see the more recent periods the last time because Sarah gave out. Sarah made it through this time, with a little carrying from me. Things that caught my eye this time were the Merovingin jewelry (kind of looks like cloissone, but its done with stones) and polished neolithic axes (for some reason I find their shape very soothing to look at). Having recently been to prehistoric sites in Brittany, we also looked for all the items from that region. We had another look at the chapel there, called St. Chapelle, done by the same architect, probably, who did St. Chapelle in Paris. However, the one in St. Germaine no longer has stained glass windows. This was the chapel where Francois I and Claude of France were married. Kaye and I finally got to see inside of the Paris Opera (Garnier, the old one). We lucked onto some tickets to see Swan Lake as choreographed by Nuryev (though he left the opera in July of 89). We had seats in a center box in the first balcony. Kaye said the night was complete because she got a snotty look from a Parisian woman when she asked her to move. (The woman had taken Kaye's seat, which was better than hers.) The music and dancing were good, but the set was absolutely minimal, which disappointed me, knowing all the backstage gimmicks that exist there. At intermission everyone eats ice cream cones. Outside the Opera, before the show, owners of 4-wheel drive vehicles were having a rally to protest tightened regulations for off-road driving. The way they honked their horns and obstructed traffic made a compelling case, I'm sure, to give them more freedom to tear up the French countryside. I've been twice now to the City of Sciences museum at La Villette--an area that used to house a livestock auction, slaughterhouse and individual butchers. There was a plan to renovate it all, but the refrigerate transport companies got the operation moved to Rungis (along with the market from Les Halles), because the traffic situation that close to Paris was getting so bad. One new building was already started, but was converted to an exposition hall. The museum is great for kids, up to about 65 or so. There is a 180 degree Omnimax theatre called the Geode, housed in its own geodesic dome covered with stainless steel. We saw a computer generated 3-D movie there, along with another feature. The best part was a "zoom-out" of the (3-D) structure of DNA, starting with atoms and pulling back to the cell level. I don't believe any of it. Inside our cells are really just tiny, tiny models that look just like us. In the museum there are special rooms, called Inventoriums, one for kids ages 3-6 and another for ages 7-12, with projects and lots of hands-on exhibits. Since a parent had to go along, I took Sarah to one and Kaye took Luke to the other. Sarah got to grind wheat into flower, try different kinds of water pumps and do a puzzle about the weather. I also read her some storybooks in French. Her favorite part was the construction site. There is a two-story metal frame of a house, along with large foam bricks to fill in the walls and roof. There is a crane to lift bricks to the second floor, a wheelbarrow and a large turnstile (like at a railroad crossing) for the kids to operate. Also lots of traffic cones to put around. The kids put on hard hats and construction vests and have at it, with no parents allowed into the site. It's great! The kids start working together almost immediately--one bringing bricks to the crane in the wheelbarrow, another load the crane, a third cranking the crane up and a fourth unloading it on the second story and filling in the walls. The whole effect is much like an ant hill. (However, ants make progress overall. There was no net progress here, as the bricks to fill one wall of the house typically came out of another wall on the other side of the house.) The exhibit part of the museum is huge. It is dedicated mostly to explaining current technology, rather than to the history of science or displaying scientific artifacts (which other Paris museum cover). There are about thirty different zones in the museum, including 2 or 3 special exhibits. The first time we spent time in optics, robots, images and movies, microbes (where you got to smell the effects of different bacteria), and computers. In the computer exhibit there was a giant model of an undirected graph, and you could watch different graph-coloring algorithms run on it, such as exhaustive search and the "guzzler" (greedy) algorithm. There was also a small room with TV images coming in from all over Europe. One innovation of French cable TV is the "Mosaic Channel" on which you can watch small images of all the other channels at once. On the second visit, the kids wanted to see the robot area again, and we covered math, undersea exploration, a special exhibit on water (including a clip from the Playboy channel on the history of the bathtub), and sound, and also saw another movie at the Geode. If you are ever in Paris with kids (under 65), you should go to La Villette. My only complaint is that about 15% of the exhibits were inoperative. Time out for the US: At the end of May I was back to the US for a workshop in New Hope Pennsylvania (where I bunged my knee badly playing ultimate frisbee) and the SIGMOD conference in Atlantic City. I will not comment much on my travels, as they were "home" rather than "away". The one cultural icon for I can't resist comment, though, is the Trump Taj Mahal. It was conceived by a designer of carnival rides who was given a mild hallucinagen and told to caricature the Kremlin. Twenty colors of glitter-filled plastic. Instant tack. Any citizen of India should be insulted by the implied comparison. (The French press is exhibited unstifled glee at the tribulations of "Le Donald".) Back in France, we headed underground, to see the Catacombs. There is a maze of quarries 30 meters under Paris, some of which date to Gallo- Roman times. They are located under Montparnasse, Montrouge and Montsouris. You can visit the part under Montparnasse. There are some carvings and wells made by the quarrymen, but the really unusual part is the ossuary. Starting in 1785, bones from cemeteries all over Paris were moved here. There are shoulder-high walls made of femurs and skulls, with all the other bones piled up behind. An estimated 5-6 million skeletons are down there. During WWII, the resistance had a radio and telephone network in the Catacombs. (Those involved won't say exactly where, in case they need to use it again.) There is Inspector General of Quarries in Paris. Not that any of them are still active, but he is in charge of inspecting for cave-ins and approving building that goes on over the quarries. About a week after we visited, we saw a TV special about people who hang out in the quarries, subway tunnels and sewers under Paris. Teenagers, skinheads, partyers, drunks--there are even plays performed in one of the bigger caverns. One Sunday was spent around Montparnasse. We started at the Postal Museum, which covers the history of the post in France, has an exhibit of mail boxes from around the world, and also has a complete collection of all French postage and semi-postal stamps. (A semi-postal, for you non- philatelists, is a postage stamp that carries a surcharge that goes to a charity, like the Red Cross.) We saw some remnants of the pneumatic tubes that used to carry express mail around Paris up until about a decade ago. I think FAX machines killed off pneumatic mail. There were also various devices on exhibit that had been used to try to get mail out of Paris during the siege of 1870. One was a container for floating mail down the river. Another was a hot-air balloon that carried mail and pigeons, the pigeons being used to carry microfilmed messages back. In the section on the history of the mail, there was a copy of the kind of scroll that used to circulate between monasteries, with each monastery splicing on a piece and adding their news. My family did that with birthday cards one year. Another display showed a set of tongs for perforating letters before they were dipped in vinegar to disinfect them, during an epidemic in 1830. From there we went around the corner to the Bourdelle Museum. Bourdelle was a student of Rodin, and liked to do things big. Models, plaster originals and bronze casts are all over the buildings and garden, which used to be his house. (There have been some exhibit rooms added on.) Sarah and Luke were interested to find out that most of the castings were hollow inside, and to see all the studies and models for one of the bigger pieces--an equestrian statue for a South American leader. Thanks to Judy Bayard- Cushing for suggesting we visit. A few blocks from the Bourdelle is the Montparnasse Tower, which, at 56 stories, is supposed to be the tallest office building in Europe. We went up the observation gallery, which gives a great view of Paris. I think it is a better place to get an overview than the Eiffel Tower, because it is nearer to the center of the city. We stopped to have dessert at a little cafe up there, and were treated to the sight of a woman fainting after first looking out the windows (vertigo?) and to reruns of part of Sarah's chocolate mousse after she gagged on a maraschino cherry. Even you don't get to see these sights, it's worth the trip up to see Paris from on high. Another weekend visit took us to the Palais de Tokyo. I'm not sure why it is called this. The building is left over from some Paris exposition and houses the modern art collection of the city of Paris. It is a much more modest collection than at the Pompidou Museum. Part of the collection was closed off during remodeling of some galleries. It does have a representative collection of Fauvist paintings, and a room of excellent Art Deco furniture. Afterward we walked across the street to sit in the garden behind the Palais Galliera. At first I thought this was some variation on galleria, but Galliera turns out to be someones name. The building houses part of one of the University of Paris campuses, and also the Museum of Clothing/Costume. Kaye refers to it as the "Umbrella Museum," because it had an exhibit on umbrellas when we first got to Paris. It was between exhibits that day. Right now the exhibit is on evening gowns, so it we will probably pass on visiting it this trip. I keep getting it mixed with the Fashion Museum by the Louvre, as both have "Mode" in their names in French. Leftovers: 1. Many Britishers, especially from around London, are buying up property around the French end of the channel tunnel, presumably for vacation or retirement homes. 2. I saw a very clever speed limiting device. There's a speed detector in the roadbed and a sign that says that if you go more than 60 kph across it, it will automatically turn the upcoming traffic light to red. 3. Sarah lost another tooth, and dutifully put it under her pillow so the petit souris would bring her a present. Kaye and I had the perverse idea of leaving a dead mouse there instead. We were stopped not so much by the thought of horrifying Sarah as by the lack of a dead mouse. 4. In French business, it is usual for the "executive cadre" (upper management) to arrive at work between 10 and 11, then stay until 7 or 8, to have some time at the end of the day for work and discussion without interruptions. 5. Spring has brought out dozens of magpies around Le Vesinet, which are large birds with beautiful black and white markings. Striking birds if you haven't seen one before. 6. Kaye got invited to the opening of the "Theatre de la Mode" exhibit at the Fashion Museum in Paris. Any of you who have visited Maryhill Museum in Washington might have seen the French fashion dolls exhibited there. These dolls were created by French fashion designers after WWII, and toured the US to raise money for charity. It was unknown (at least in France) what happened to the dolls after the exhibit closed in San Francisco in 1946. They were discovered (uncovered?) in the inventory of Maryhill in 1984. They were brought to France earlier this year for cleaning and restoration. I don't know if they go back to Washington after the exhibit, or not. 7. There was a fete at Sarah's school close to the end of the school year. The different classes had costumes from different parts of France and foreign countries, and performed dances they had learned. The notice said that children must be there promptly at 9, and parents should be there right at 9:30 for the performance. What that meant was that the kids were mostly there by 9:15, most parents arrived around 9:40, and the show commenced at 10. As near as I can figure out, "9 o'clock sharp" means you should have already left your house by 9. Just "9 o'clock" means you should start thinking about leaving around 9. Unlike the US, where if someone said 9 o'clock sharp you would probably try to be there at 5 minutes till, no one in France would think of arriving before the stated hour. It works this way for theatre and movies, too. If the show is at 8pm, you'll be fine if you show up at the door at 8pm. The exception is trains and airplanes, which generally depart at the stated time.