Springtime & Shopping Spirit in Paris
Yesterday was a travel day. I left Hotel Su Gologone and as usual I left anticipating my return next year. I so enjoy the students, the region, and the warm spirit of the Sardinians. The hotel is really more like a large household and I always feel included. There was much good “good-byeing” all around.
The trip to Paris was uneventful, and my once-lost green bag clearly has had enough independent travel. We arrived at our hotel as planned.
My mother, who now lives in Pennsylvania, was born in Paris. She was hanging out of the Hotel Montfleuri window as I pulled up, looking every bit the parisienne grandmother. She will visit family while I go to my business school meetings.
Saturday was a fantastic spring day - perfect temperature, leaves just emerging, and flowers bursting forth. It seemed that all of Paris was off shopping, filling their bags with baguettes and tulips. The French shopping spirit was reported yesterday in the Financial Times of London. Apparently the Germans are madly squirreling away money with the contraction of their welfare state, but the French continue to consume happily, at least those with jobs.
The line in the Monoprix, a combination food and department store, attested to the continuing consumption. It was hard not to notice differences from U.S. stores. Cans of Coke are 8 ounces. Milk does not come in gallon containers but rather in liters. Packages of bisquits, cereal and rice are half the size we consider "normal". The variety is good but not overwhelming. There are two or three brands of goods offered, not half a dozen.
There was no Mexican food aisle as at home, but Asian and Middle Eastern foods were available. Indeed, Paris has visibly changed complexion. Twenty-five years ago Paris had few people of color. Maybe a few Moroccans were about, and someone from Cameroon, but Paris had few people in the streets whose grandparents had not been born in France. That is decidedly not the case now.
The pedestrian scene is very multicultural today, especially among the young. I saw a woman in a black burkha so enveloping that one wondered how she could watch her step. I saw what I assume was another Muslim woman wearing a tightly fitted t-shirt and slacks but modestly wearing a scarf to cover her head. A young man wore saffron robes.
The French citizenship that used to come with colonization has produced a generation of native-born children whose parents are émigrés from beyond Europe. The service personnel at the hotel, the young man who checked me through at the Monoprix, the people working at the Metro are the new French.
Like our Hispanic population in California, they are only being absorbed with some difficulty. We have not had - lately - the sort of violent protest that France saw last year where thousands protested their exclusion from economic and civil life. I think US labor policy which makes employment less stable but creates a dynamic labor market has a much better chance of integrating the next generation. And right now our unemployment rate is about half that of France.
The trip to Paris was uneventful, and my once-lost green bag clearly has had enough independent travel. We arrived at our hotel as planned.
My mother, who now lives in Pennsylvania, was born in Paris. She was hanging out of the Hotel Montfleuri window as I pulled up, looking every bit the parisienne grandmother. She will visit family while I go to my business school meetings.
Saturday was a fantastic spring day - perfect temperature, leaves just emerging, and flowers bursting forth. It seemed that all of Paris was off shopping, filling their bags with baguettes and tulips. The French shopping spirit was reported yesterday in the Financial Times of London. Apparently the Germans are madly squirreling away money with the contraction of their welfare state, but the French continue to consume happily, at least those with jobs.
The line in the Monoprix, a combination food and department store, attested to the continuing consumption. It was hard not to notice differences from U.S. stores. Cans of Coke are 8 ounces. Milk does not come in gallon containers but rather in liters. Packages of bisquits, cereal and rice are half the size we consider "normal". The variety is good but not overwhelming. There are two or three brands of goods offered, not half a dozen.
There was no Mexican food aisle as at home, but Asian and Middle Eastern foods were available. Indeed, Paris has visibly changed complexion. Twenty-five years ago Paris had few people of color. Maybe a few Moroccans were about, and someone from Cameroon, but Paris had few people in the streets whose grandparents had not been born in France. That is decidedly not the case now.
The pedestrian scene is very multicultural today, especially among the young. I saw a woman in a black burkha so enveloping that one wondered how she could watch her step. I saw what I assume was another Muslim woman wearing a tightly fitted t-shirt and slacks but modestly wearing a scarf to cover her head. A young man wore saffron robes.
The French citizenship that used to come with colonization has produced a generation of native-born children whose parents are émigrés from beyond Europe. The service personnel at the hotel, the young man who checked me through at the Monoprix, the people working at the Metro are the new French.
Like our Hispanic population in California, they are only being absorbed with some difficulty. We have not had - lately - the sort of violent protest that France saw last year where thousands protested their exclusion from economic and civil life. I think US labor policy which makes employment less stable but creates a dynamic labor market has a much better chance of integrating the next generation. And right now our unemployment rate is about half that of France.
posted by UC Davis at 3:04 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home