The Ryndex

(This is from last October. I know… I’ve still got some catching up to do.)

There were only three kids this Halloween, and they were waiting for me in the hallway when I got home from work.

“Donnez-nous des bonbons ou on va vous jeter un mauvais sort”, they yelled. They weren’t wearing any costumes, I noted. It wasn’t like they were hooligans shaking me up for candy — I got the impression that they just didn’t understand the social contract that Halloween entails.

Probably fair enough. I doubt if one out of ten apartments has bought into the holiday. At the other nine, they’ll get blank looks, apologies or accusations, if anyone even answers. It isn’t ever going to be like our childhood again, with every house lit with a jack o’lantern and a host handing out miniature chocolate bars, Halloween kisses and specially creepy candy specially manufactured for the occasion — skulls, black cats, bats, frankensteins and spiders.

On the other hand, I had a bowl of Mi-Cho-Ko and Krema candy in my my apartment. I was also carrying a precious pumpkin, which wasn’t easy to find here in Paris, so as I juggled my bag and keys, I asked them, “Quelle espèce de mauvais sort?”

They looked at me without comprehension, and finally one of them asked if I speak any French. Ouch.

I repeated myself, feeling depressed about my accent. They asked me if I was English, and were delighted to find out I was Canadian. Even the kids love Canadians. That warmed my heart sufficiently to give them each a huge handful of candy. Weirdly, the three kids were sharing a bag.

Going door to door where most apartments have no idea they’re supposed to give you candy is bad enough. Sharing your Halloween candy is altogether another nightmare — BOO!

Oh, these foreigners and their endearingly strange ways… Except I’m the foreigner. For once, I get to look at the Parisians, with their obsession for doing things correctly, and shake my head. Oh course, the obvious Parisian reply, delivered with a sniff, would be that Halloween is not a correct holiday.

We carved the pumpkin and roasted the seeds, and had some pumpkin pie that night. It was the first time the Italians carved a pumpkin, but they did a great job! I only helped a bit.

The day after Halloween is a holiday in France — All Saint’s Day — and Véronique suggested that we go to the aquarium at the Trocadero. I didn’t even know there was an aquarium there (with one of the largest tanks in Europe). It’s a bit expensive, at 19.5€, but you can get a combination pass for 20€ that includes a cruise on the Seine.

I always enjoy a cruise on the Seine, whether it’s day or night, or whether I’m listening to the French or English audio commentary. In fact, I’ve tried all combinations, plus two dinner cruises, plus the Batobus, plus one cruise that started up at La Villette and went down the locks of the Canals St. Martin before doing the bit on the Seine. All included, this was my tenth cruise on the Seine.

I always beg my guests to take me with them for Seine cruises. I plead that we skip some museum, or cafe, or what-have-you in order for this extraordinary jaunt, with it’s incredible views and brisk, fresh breeze. But my guests are a hard-nosed bunch with little patience for Seine cruises. Véro and I seized the opportunity of the combo ticket.

I learned some new things on this trip. The statue at the Hotel de Ville is Étienne Marcel, who was the first mayor of Paris.

Actually, that’s the only thing I learned.

Before the aquarium, we went to grab something to eat. There’s a sushi restaurant right in the aquarium, appropriately enough, but it was a bit expensive, and we were looking for something warm to munch on. It’s getting cold in Paris, and colder on the ever-so-delightful Seine cruises.

The area around the Eiffel tower, of course, is a graveyard of French restaurants, racing to the bottom of the ladder of quality in order to supply sufficient appearance of a French restaurant without the authenticity. We ended up eating in the area anyway, being sold on the overpriced omelet on the posted menu behind the Trocadero.

When we entered and were seated, however, we were informed that we couldn’t have the omelet. “Even so, Madame, this IS a restaurant…” the waiter informed Véro, with exaggerated snoot, and directed us to the dinner menu. To be clear, it isn’t abnormal for a restaurant to have different lunch and dinner menus, nor to have different menus for the area of the restaurant you’re currently enjoying. One side of an aisle is permitted to order less noble dishes such as a croque-monsieur, while the other side is constrained to confit de canard. According to our server, there was no time or place in the cafe where they could make us an omelet, so we relied on one of the best strategies for dealing with bureaucracy — the second opinion.

The serveuse said, of course, we could have our omelets, and gave us the lunch menus.

The aquarium is pretty awesome. It’s arranged along a spiral, with the usual collection of tanks of different temperatures and of species from around the world. It’s already a great set-up, but they added a bonus — modern cartoon shorts (both topical and irrelevant) are projected here and there, and there are even little cinemas along the route showing longer oeuvres.

Our first stop was the petting pool, where you were allowed to feed the fish and gently caress them. Fishtacular!

It was a midweek holiday, so there was a bushel of children, putting their grubby little fingers on the glass, leaving a blurry, greasy zone at the height of our knees.

They had wonderfully lit jellyfish. I actually loathe jellyfish, especially the dinner plate sized monsters in Vancouver, with the curdled blood-coloured innards. These were only disquieting little ones, floating in tanks under coloured lights like disturbing nightmare angels of doom.

Another highlight was the shark feeding. We all crowded into a Plexiglas tunnel while divers descended into the main tank — 33 metres long and containing five times as water as a municipal swimming pool. It didn’t seem that big, probably because of its landscaping. Fish need interesting places to hide. One diver feeds each shark one at a time using an extended claw device, while another stands guard with a poker. The sharks, however, are kept very well fed and aren’t very aggressive, so they can keep lots of smaller fish in the tank with them.

There was a little internal auditorium, where a woman was playing the piano and singing the songs that accompanied a cartoon short. We stopped at one of the smaller internal theatres to watch a different short about a badger, then one surreal show about japanese frogs moving from their pond with the sage advice of old Oom-pa-pa Toad. SPOILER: He didn’t make it.