Epi-blog-ue: I’m Now an Ex-Ex-Patriot

This is the last entry of my blog documenting my trip to Paris in the summer of 2008. As I write these words, I am now on a flight from Paris back to Philadelphia. Since we have finally managed to get our in-flight entertainment system working, Daphne and I have been enjoying our flight. Nancy is seated across the aisle from us, so she may as well have been on another plane. The biggest downside of leaving Paris is really the travel burden.

Paris has been really good to us these past nine weeks, and I am sure that it will have a profound impact, especially on Daphne. I was thirty before I ever got to travel abroad. I hope this experience in a different country with a different language shrinks the world for her. She has had a few bad days while abroad, but overall she has been just awesome. As she sits next to me watching a cartoon and drawing a book about her alter-ego “Hypno-Girl,” I am looking forward to traveling more with her as she gets older — hopefully to Zambia, before elephants are extinct.

It has also been excellent to live on the road for so long with Nancy. I don’t want to get all mushy or anything, but she is the bee’s knees.

Besides the fringe benefits of spending such a delightful quantity of quality time with the fam, I think that my work-time has been fruitful as well. Spending two months wading through the copious holdings of European freshwater mussel types in the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle is kind of a bizarre job. But (to make a very long and tedious story about the scientific significance of these shells short) they either needed to be found and brought into the light or wiped from the face of the Earth once and for all. I think that my way probably turned out to be a lot easier. With any luck, when this work is all published, it will spark a fire underneath the malacological community to take a good hard look at these mollusks again. At the very least, I will have paid my dues with this species assemblage and gained the street cred to be vocal about how much more needs to be done.

With my work largely completed last week, I slowed my pace down a bit. On Sunday, Daphne and I finally got to go up in the Panthéon Dome to see our 6th floor apartment from the outside. Forget the Eiffel Tower or Sacré Cœur: the Panthéon has the best view in Paris.


For our last evening in Paris, we went back to Le Comptoir du Panthéon, the spot at which we dined on our first night, back in May. We had a lovely meal, and then afterwards walked down to Mouffetard (“Your’re a mouffe-tard!”). Even though we had been in our Left Bank neighborhood for sixty-some days, it was still a learning experience. For instance, did you know that the burger sauce at Le Comptoir is just like the chip dip that my Grandma makes? If I had known that, we would have eaten there more often. And, I learned that a 75 cL bottle of 1664 is only 2€50, whereas the 50 cL cans I have been buying are 2€. Where was that knowledge hiding? I look forward to learning even more from la ville lumière sometime in the future. Someone needs to work up all that Drouët type material that is still in the zootheque...

From the Dungeon to the Sewers

This past week I worked like a nut. I have been driven by the anxiety that I would have to leave with my goals 95% accomplished — a lot of work done but it would be incomplete until I could find a way to come back and finish it. What a perfect waste of a summer that would be! Fortunately, that kind of fear is a powerful motivator, and I have made very good progress.

During the first half of my Paris adventure, when I was going through the Anodonta specimens, the going was slow. Not sure how things were arranged, what I would find, what kind of information I wanted to gather and how I would ultimately present it, I went through and inventoried every specimen in that part of the Locard Collection. By the time that I found all the Anodonta types, I had a pretty good handle on the nature of the collections. I had also developed a handy database interface to speed up data capture. By the time I started working on Unio the week before last, I only needed to worry about the specimens in which I was interested, and there was no confusion about what I wanted from them. I was able to do in a week what had previously taken three!

I spent Monday through Thursday last week freezing in the dungeon of the zootheque from 9:00-5:00 (the only hours of access), finding and setting aside the Unio types in the Locard Collection. I also spent my mornings from 7:30-9:00 in the MNHN library digging data as necessary. On Friday, I brought the rest of the types from the general collection in the zootheque to be with their cousins across the Jardin des Plantes in the Malacologie Department type collection. And, I photographed them all. I appreciate that all this might not sound all that interesting or entertaining, but Friday afternoon, when I was finished, I was positively euphoric. I just wondered around the department telling the few people that were there (and not on holiday) that I was done. All that remains of my work here in Paris is a bit more library work and to write up a detailed account of what I did to their collection.

Besides going to work everyday, I also managed to get out for a little tourism. Nancy and Daphne have done positively EVERYTHING, so we are running out of landmarks to visit. Last Saturday, we visited the Sewers (you read that right, the Paris Sewers). It smelled like a sewer and was so loud that Nancy and I had to take turns scream-reading the various exhibits to Daphne. We took the opportunity of that excursion to tape the first episode of The Daphne Show.

On Sunday, we took the Metro out to Père Lachaise Cemetery to hunt for Jim Morrison’s grave. That was a fun walk through a beautiful cemetery but quite a disappointment. All the graffiti, empty bottles, evidence of midnight orgies and even his famous bust have been removed. Now a fence has been erected and the spot is under constant video surveillance. There is no longer anything noteworthy about Morrison’s grave except that in it is interred one of the most over-rated hippies of the Rock and Roll Era. On the bright side, we had lunch at a delightful cafe with the best service in Paris. When we ordered our hamburger à cheval, our waiter made sure that we understood that it would come with a fried egg rather an a bun. He even drew a picture to make sure we would be satisfied with our order.

And so, we have come to our last week (5 days, really) in France. It’s time to start cleaning up and make sure we haven’t forgotten anything. I am looking forward to going home and getting a haircut.

The Beginning of the End

I think it is starting to almost become time to begin getting ready to make plans to head back to the States. The girls have just about done it all here in Paris, my work is wrapping up at the MNHN and the Parisians are beginning to leave town for their holidays. The two things that I most enjoy about Paris right now are the weather and the escape it provides for what’s waiting for us in the States. The City of Light is providing a nice refuge from the deluge of responsibilities that will hit me as soon as I get back to the USA. Now I know how Roman Polanski feels.

Nancy and Daphne are getting restless for a change of scenery. Especially Daphne. She needs some friends to play with and some opportunities to be outside without being so closely supervised. After 7 weeks, we really have crossed gone over the hump where we need to decide whether we are going to abandon our little studio apartment to return to home or stay longer and get a bigger place. Daphne and I still have to visit the Panthéon and climb up the dome so that we can get a picture of our apartment from the outside, and I think this weekend, we will be visiting the Museum of Sewers, so it is not like we are bored or anything.

My work at the museum has been going well. Too well, in fact. I had found all the Anodonta and Pseudanodonta type specimens that I was looking for in the MNHN before I left for Frankfurt, and I was planning to spend the next couple weeks moving all those specimens to the malacology department where the rest of the types are and photographing them for the MUSSEL Project Database. Who knew it would only take me two days? So now, I have embarked on a whirl-wind effort to find all the types of the genus Unio, which is slightly better organized than Anodonta was. My fear is that I will leave France with two weeks of data that are incomplete and that I will need to come back to try to pick up where I left off mid-project.

One thing that has made my work go more quickly this past week is that everyone is gone at the museum. The French get six weeks of annual vacation. This is perhaps why they are so happy to be French but also why they have never been to the moon. Apparently, those six weeks for many begin with Bastille Day, 14 July. It is kind of like the 4 July in the USA: it celebrates a revolution. In the States, we celebrate the revolution that led to our current constitution and independence from Great Britain. In France, they honor the symbolic storming of the Bastille — the notorious prison of the Bourbon king, Louis XVI — in 1789. That revolution led to the first republic, which gave why to the dictatorship of Emperor Napoleon, which ended with the return of the Bourbon monarchy, which then collapsed into another republic that then ended with another Napoleonic despot... blah, blah, blah... a few different German occupations... yadda, yadda, yadda... Charles de Gaul and the fifth republic. And, here we are today. So complicated, but a nice excuse to have a parade and for current-president Sarkozy to show off his wife. The downside of this vacation period is that the proportion of foreigners has gone up exponentially in Paris. The sidewalks are filled with gawking slack-jawed yokels moving in slow motion.

I would still rather be in Paris than Philadelphia right now. It is so hot there, and we still have so much packing to do before we leave for Alabama — one week after we get back!

Frankfurt isn't Paris, but it has Lots of Mollusks

I really changed things up this past week by leaving Paris all together. While Nancy and Daphne stayed behind to visit Versailles and have their own adventures, I left Sunday after an early dinner for Frankfurt and the Senckenberg Museum. That collection in Germany was the last one mentioned in our original MUSSELp grant that Kevin (my project partner) and I needed to “do.” We had been thwarted in 2006 when the mollusk collection was being rehoused, and in 2007, health reasons (presumably brought on by Kevin’s jinxed shoes) forced us to cancel. This was our last chance to visit the shells of Haas and von Ihering before the project expires at the end of August. It was convenient for me because I was already on the Continent, and I think we had a successful trip.

“Doing” a collection means shooting digital images and capturing text data for all of the freshwater mussels of the southern continents: South America, Africa/Madagascar and Australasia. Those data are then incorporated into the MUSSEL Project Database (after much post-processing). Kevin and I have assembled a useful resource for freshwater malacologists by bringing together more than 15,000 specimen records from collections in the USA, Europe and Australia.
Normally, we would have to spend two weeks in a collection the size of that in the Senckenberg Museum: ca. 1200 specimen lots of the species in which we are interested. Fortunately, we had some help this time. Katie had worked for me during 2006-2007 when she was between her undergraduate and masters programs. Before Kevin and I had to change our plans (jinxed shoes again), we had brought Katie a ticket to work with us in Brussels last summer. She was still interested in European exploration when this trip came up, and we were able to apply last year’s ticket toward a Frankfurt flight for her. Katie is a hard worker and has a good sense of humor (especially after a couple giant schwartz-beers), and so she fit in well with our special brand of malacological loudness. It also worked out well that Katie brought along her boyfriend, Paul, so that she wasn’t forced to spend all of her time with only two old guys for company.

It definitely also worked in our favor that the Senckenberg mollusk collection was so well organized and that Roland, our host, was so helpful and accommodating. The scientific endeavor of this short diversion to Germany was wonderful.
Shells and personnel aside, visiting the town of Frankfurt was kind of like visiting Akron or Tulsa: it was better than a sharp stick in the eye, but only just. The train system — actually, multiple train systems overlain — is the most complicated ever conceived. After landing at 10 PM, completely shagged out, it was only by pure dumb luck that I eventually stumbled onto the Hotel West — you know, the one on Gräfstraße.

I didn’t explore the town too much — beyond the Extrablatt across the street from the hotel — but apparently it doesn’t get too many tourists. All the places of interest except the Cathedral were bombed during the war I guess.

Paul had a lot of free time during the day, and based upon the experience of his wanderings, he led us to a scrumptious dinner across the River Main in the “old” part of town. That was the highlight of the trip for me. We sat outside near a painting of a local fairy-tale hero that, based upon the long blades attached to his fingers, was the basis for Wolverine, Freddy Kruger and Edward Scissorhands. He may have been a fairy-tale villain. I don’t really know the story of the Struwwelpeter. The restaurant had excellent dark beer, and I was able to get the pork hock that I have been jonesing for since the last time that Kevin and I were in Germany.

Besides meat on the bone and beer (that, compared to Paris prices, is essentially free), Frankfurt also has a little unique shopping. We saw stores that specialized in Gnomes or Brushes, for example. But that is it. Unless you are in Detroit, there is probably just as much going on where ever you are right now. Being in Paris is more appealing to me now than it ever has been, and I am looking forward to the long Bastille Day weekend.

The Sun Also Sets

Do you know what happens at night in Paris? It gets dark! Who knew? As far as I have been able to see, the sun is shining when I wake up, and we have to close the blinds against it when it is time for bed. I am a northerner by nature, but these summertime latitudinal effects are nuts. But we got to start this week right at midnight last Sunday. We had been out late whooping it up at a big oyster dinner with some friends in the 1ere on Saturday night, and we didn’t leave until all the mollusks and wine were gone. If there had been a keg, we would have just been sucking foam. That gave us the opportunity for a lovely evening stroll under the streetlights.

There was a fair set up in the Jardin de Tuileries, with a ferris wheel, so we indulged Daphne with a ride. I rode with her while Nancy stayed below to keep my cigar burning. Daphne and I had great views of the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, all lit up. Naturally, one 10€ ride wasn’t enough, and she had to throw a little fit... you know how she is. On the way home from the fair, Daphne finally got to see the “freak out” lights on the Eiffel Tower. Every once in a while, instead of just the rotating spotlight at its summit, the Tower starts flashing and shimmering all over. That distracted her enough to stop crying.

Our other adventure for the week was to visit Orléans. What better way to celebrate the 4th of July — the anniversary of American independence from Britain — than to visit the city that Joan of Arc made famous by taking the first step on the road to French independence from Britain? On Thursday, we hiked down to Gare Austerlitz to catch the once-an-hour train, and we covered the 120 km to Orléans in just under an hour. The town was easily walkable, and we wandered the medieval streets, explored the cathedral, visited the house where Ms. d’Arc stayed, and soaked up the provincial culture along the Loire River. It was a fun day that we capped off with dinner at MacDöner and getting caught in the rain trying to walk across the bridge over the Loire.
The girls had more adventures on their own, which included visiting the crown of thorns at Notre Dame, but I spent the rest of my days this week with my nose to the grindstone in the Zootheque. I finally finished going through all of the specimens of Anodonta and Pseudanodonta, identifying which are types (or at least potentially type specimens) and getting them ready to bring over to the malacology department to photograph them for the MUSSEL Project Database. I found the types for about 150 nominal species, and now they are all dusted and labeled and ready to see the light of day. They will have to wait, though, until I get back from Senckenberg Museum. This Sunday I will be meeting Kevin and Katie in Frankfurt, Germany where we will be making the last of our several museum visits on the grant that we were awarded in 2003. It will be the end of an era.

It Sucks to be Sick in a Foreign County

This past week has been relatively quiet, and that has been nice. During the day, while I was working at the museum, the girls went out and about to visit a bunch of churches. Our iPhoto is just full of pictures of stained glass and statues of either martyred saviors or their mothers. I will leave it to them to tell you about their adventures. For me, the most out of the ordinary occurrence was getting a terrible head cold, a rhume as they call it here.

I guess by out of the ordinary, I mean that it has been a memorable part of this part week. Upon further reflection, it occurs to me that I almost always get a bad cold when I am traveling. In Zambia last year I was up all night honking my nose on a bandana after I had used up all my Kleenex, and then I spent the following day doped-up on Benadryl. In Australia in 2006 I was so congested I couldn’t snorkel, but I still got in the water to collect mussels. In Berlin, same deal, as well as the last time that I was in Paris. I remember coming home from London once with my sinuses stuffed and stabbing pain behind my eyes as we landed and took off. I don’t know what it is, but a “travel cold” is just par for the course for me.

One difference between trying to get cold remedies in the socialized world vs. in the USA is that there are few consumer marketed pharmaceuticals. Just about anything that could be called medicine needs to be obtained from a pharmacy, whether a prescription is needed or not. In Sydney, I went to Woolworths looking for something equivalent to Nyquil. I found lots of items packaged that way, but when I looked at the ingredients, they were just made with hippy, herbal crap. I seem to remember that the active compound in the night-time cold “medicine” was blueberry extract! Because actual medicines aren’t marketed to consumers over here, there is no competition for customers driving innovation, and there is no such thing as a “coughing, aching, stuffy head, fever so you can rest medicine.” Instead, there is one pill for each symptom. And thanks to the meth-heads back home with their hillbilly heroine, we can’t even get real Nyquil in the States anymore either.

So this week, while I was down in the freezing dungeon of the zootheque, I was producing copious amounts of snot and sneezing while I made great progress on sorting through the freshwater mussel specimens. There is barely any work space down where the specimens are, so I have had to make liberal use of the floor.

The Beginning of Summer in Paris

I can’t imagine there being such a thing as “writer’s block” in Paris. It is such a lively and interesting city, and this past week I have again found myself wishing to just sit and write. About whatever. I would like to find a shady spot with a breeze on the sidewalk in front of some cafe in view of a monument or ancient church. Then, with my notebook and stack of euros to keep the espressos coming, I could explore the limits of my creativity. I doubt that I have the gonads to be able to make such an adventure productive, and it would probably just result in a bunch of navel-gazing — like the last 114 words. Besides, that is not why I am here this time.

As with every other one before in our Paris adventure, Nancy, Daphne and I started the week touristically. Grandma Barb, Autie Kari and their Minnesota friends were still in town, and it was Fathers Day (at least, back in the States it was). Moreover, in our house, Mothers Day had been postponed to that date as well, as I had been on the road collecting mussels in May. So, last Sunday was informally designated Parents Day, and that meant doing family stuff. So, while the other Older Ladies did their stuff, Barb, Kari and the Grafferlys walked down to the Catacombs, where one will never in-person see the remains of so many dead people, stacked up neatly like so much wood. We lunched on kabobs and had dinner at the Balzar, an expensivish brasserie on rue des Écoles near our flat. I had wanted to eat there ever since I read Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik. He painted it as such a charming, neighborhood bistro. I thought the food was excellent. I had a steak and there was a big plate of frites. However, for a place that caters to tourists (probably 95% of the clientele the evening that we were there), the service was not very impressive.
Kari left on Monday, and Barb and her friends on Tuesday. Monday night, we had dinner with Barb and her friend Cathy at a little spot in that cozy maze of shops and restaurants between the bases of St. Michel and St. Jacques. The other ladies were off apparently searching for prune pie?! While we were eating, Kari was still on her flight, and when she got to Philadelphia International Airport, she found she was stranded by a cancelled connecting flight. How ironic that she finally made it to Philadelphia, but we weren’t there to show her around. Kari made it back to Minneapolis on Tuesday, only five hours before Grandma Barb arrived herself.

As nice as it was to have visitors, it was also good to get back to our routine: going to bed early, waking up early and eating at home. I made good progress on pulling together type specimens in the freshwater mussel collection at the MNHN. There really isn’t anything new or interesting to report. No milestones were reached. Just steady progress on a big project. All of the work that I have done, pulling all of the relevant literature together is really paying off now. It seems unlikely at this point that I will get through more than half of what I came here to do, at as far as regards these French mussels. I have some other goals for July, when I will be working on my own euros.

Today is the first day of summer, and it was a beautiful day. We spent the it going up the Eiffel Tower (to the 1ere étage) and exploring St-Sulpice Church. The picture to the right shows the holy water thingy at St-Sulpice, made of a giant clam and decorated with octopus tentacles. Next week, Nancy’s friend, Daniel, visits from Michigan. He has spent a lot of time in Paris and knows his French, and I am hoping that he can direct me to where I can get a cheap haircut.