Author Archives: Mayken

No Phantom at the Opera

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One Friday night when I was marshal at the Paris inline skate, I chatted with some tourists while guarding an intersection on the Avenue de l’Opéra. The tourists were from the U.S., and I told them that the opera building they could see at the end of the avenue was indeed the one with the phantom and the underground lake.

There are many tales about the phantom and how a real person might have inspired Gaston Laroux’ story (which became the basis for Andrew Llyod Webber’s musical), but the lake is real.

Remember the problem with the high groundwater level I mentioned in my previous post?

The building site was swampy, and water rising from below hampered the construction until finally, they encased the “lake” and used the weight of the water in the foundation of the building. The cistern remains accessible, but you can’t take a boat to row across it. However, the Paris fire-fighters use it for diving training.

But the phantom? A combination of mysterious noises during the first shows, rumors about an underground lake and the never fully explained accident in 1896, when the counterweight of the chandelier fell down and killed the concierge.

Box number five is still reserved for the phantom, as the Opéra Garnier itself confirmed in a Museum Week tweet a few years ago:

Location of the Opéra Garnier on a map of Paris
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The Paris Opera House

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From its completion in 1875 until 1989, the Paris opera house on the Avenue de l’Opéra in the 9th arrondissement was simply known as “Opéra de Paris”. But with the completion of the Opéra Bastille on Place de la Bastille arose the need to distinguish between the two, and so the old opera house is now referred to by the name of its architect, the Opéra Garnier.

A failed assassination attempt on emperor Napoléon III when he visited the then-opera Le Peletier with his wife in January 1858 accelerated the project of a new opera house.
The site was chosen by Baron Haussmann who planned it to surround it with the characteristic Immeubles de Rapport (Revenue Houses) that you’ll remember from a previous post.

The large Avenue de l’Opéra Haussmann planned would not only create a vast perspective and showcase the new opera house, it would also allow for a swift and unencumbered escape route for the emperor from the opera to the Louvre in the event of another attack.

Still today, the Avenue de l’Opéra has no trees so as not to obstruct the view.

The chosen site however turned out to be far from ideal to accommodate a palatial building such as the opera house. Despite sinking wells and having pumps operate non-stop, the groundwater level wouldn’t go down. In the end, Garnier designed a double foundation including an enormous cistern.

At the occasion of the World Fair in 1867, still under Napoléon III, the main façade was inaugurated. An anecdote from this inauguration goes like this. The empress, shocked at the sight of the opera building, asks “What kind of style is that? That’s no style! It’s neither Greek, nor Louis XV, not even Louis XVI!” The architect, Garnier replies: “No, the time of those styles are over. This is Napoléon III style!”

The Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71 not only slowed down the works but it also brought about the end of the Second Empire. The Third Republic that followed had financial difficulties and didn’t approve of everything the opera symbolized, and sent Garnier packing, but when the Le Peletier opera burned in 1873, he was called back to finish the works.

Poor Garnier – once the opera was finally completed in 1875, the Third Republic, cutting ties with the past, didn’t even invite him to the inauguration and he had to buy his own ticket!

Until 1989 and the Opéra Bastille, the Opéra Garnier was the biggest theater house in the world. Today, it mainly shows ballet by the Ballet de l’Opéra de Paris but also the occasional classic opera.

Location of the Opéra Garnier on a map of Paris
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Open Doors at Foreign Affairs

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As I explained in my previous post, on Heritage Days in September, doors are opened to the public that remain closed the rest of the year. Very popular places to visit are the presidential palace (Palais de l’Élysée) and the various ministries, housed in hôtels or palaces in the center of Paris.

Several years ago, I visited the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs in a building on the riverside road Quai d’Orsay, name which was transferred to the ministry by metonymy. “The Quay d’Orsay remained silent on this question”, a journalist might report.

King Henry II (son of François Ier) named the first minister of foreign affairs in 1547, Claude de l’Aubespine. The function was called Secretary of State, and Claude was in charge of the relations with Champagne, Burgundy, Bresse, Savoy, Germany and Switzerland. (He started small.)

The minister’s office and dining room

The Quay d’Orsay was built in 1844-55 specifically to house Foreign Affairs. The interior is in the style of Napoléon III, with the exception of the bathrooms set up in 1938 for the visit of King George VI and his wife Queen Elizabeth (parents and predecessors of Queen Elizabeth II).

Bathrooms of Queen Elizabeth (silver) and King George VI (gold)

In the Salon de l’Horloge, then-Foreign Affairs minister Robert Schuman pronounced on May 9, 1950 the Schuman Declaration, which laid the foundation for the European integration process resulting in the European Union. This is why May 9 is Europe Day.

Detail from the Salon de l’horloge
Location of the Quai d’Orsay
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Opening Doors in September

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Back in 1984, the French minister for Culture created the “Historic Monuments Open Door Days” in France. The idea was picked up by the Council of Europe, which is not an institution of the European Union but an international organization that predates the European Union and has currently almost 50 member states.

King George V’s bathtub at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs

European Heritage Days (the name varies from one country to another) take place in September, and open doors to monuments that are usually closed to the public, or if open, grant free entry, or offer special events and activities, including for children and youth, such as workshops, guided tours, that are not available on a regular basis.

Some sites are more popular than others, such as the French National Assembly

In France, Heritage Days are called Les Journées Européennes du Patrimoine (JEP) and take place on the third weekend of September.

activities and workshops galore at the Château Dourdan south of Paris

In this new series, Opening Doors in Paris, I’ll share some of the open doors I’ve entered over the last fifteen years.

the original machinery of the Eiffel Tower
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French school – part 2

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My first French manual in school had a lesson that started with this sentence:

En France, les enfants de onze à quinze ans vont au college.

Aside from the accumulation of nasals, this sentence contains more precious information about the French school system that hasn’t changed since I started learning French:

In France, the children from age eleven to fifteen go to collège.

The collège, then, is the rough equivalent of middle school. From grade 6 on, years are counted backwards, like a countdown to the baccalauréat:

Sixième (6e) – grade 6
Cinquième (5e) – grade 7
Quatrième (4e) – grade 8
Troisième (5e) – grade 9

a public collège in Paris

The counting continues in the lycée, high school, for the final three years:

Seconde (2nde) – grade 10
Première (1ère) – grade 11

and finally, at the end of the countdown:

Terminale (terminal year) – grade 12

This is when French students pass their leaving exam, the baccalauréat I mentioned in part 1.

a public lycée in Paris

Speaking of part 1, do you remember I said school in France is secular? That’s right, just as there is a separation between Church and State, there is a separation between Church and School (which, after all, is run by the state). So unless you send your kids to a private religious school, thew will get a secular education.

a private Catholic lycée in Paris

This has led to a curious characteristic of the French school system: the Wednesday.
At first, I assume when school ran Mondays through Saturdays, there was no school on Thursdays, so that children could receive the religious education of their family’s choosing. In 1972, the day was moved to Wednesday.

Écoles maternelles and écoles primaires were closed on Wednesdays, and this could extend to Wednesday afternoons in collège. As a result, extracurricular activities are concentrated on Wednesdays too (now supplanting religious education), and parents who work at 80% frequently have their Wednesdays off.

A few years ago, however, the government decided to rebalance school hours and open schools on Wednesday mornings to allow for shorter afternoon classes on the other days. This resulted in many protests, as the responsibility for after-school daycare is the responsibility of municipalities, which were not necessarily of the same political color as the government.

In the end, the government backtracked and allowed each département to choose whether to open schools on Wednesday mornings or not. Welcome to France.

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Book post: MANATEE’S BEST FRIEND

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Last year in May, I got a pleasant surprise: I won a book in a giveaway on Twitter. The downside was, I had to wait more than a year until it was published. I cancelled my preorder of the book (I usually never win anything) and started to wait impatiently.

Finally, a few weeks ago I got first a mail and then a book package. Just look at the cover, isn’t it a beautiful?

Cover art by Scott Dorman, design by Stephanie Yang

I’m a swimmer, and I’ve dreamed for a long time of swimming with some marine animals, whether they are dolphins or sea turtles. But to be honest, I hadn’t been aware of manatees, until one day I was told they are nicknamed sea cows – and if you know anything about me, you know how much I love cows.
This however is the closest I’ve ever come to a sea cow:

Becca, the human main character of Manatee’s best friend, is lucky enough to live in a part of the world where you can see manatees in the wild, namely Florida, and even better, she has wild manatees practically in her own backyard! (Jealous, me?)
However, as is so often the case, the local wildlife is endangered by human activity. Becca wants to speak up for her manatee friends, but she barely manages to speak to anyone outside her family, which unfortunately includes the girl who just moved in next door.
As it becomes clear the human activity in the river where the manatees feed is increasing, Becca needs to make a move – but when she does, things only get worse.

I loved this story of a girl befriending wild sea cows and finding the courage to take action to protect them.

More information about the author and the book on her website:

http://www.enjoyingplanetearth.com/

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French school – part 1

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School has just started again after its traditional two-months summer break, and what better time to look at the French school system?

Let’s start with a quick historic fact:
In 1882, Education Minister Jules Ferry made school compulsory and free (and secular). Primary education became compulsory for both boys and girls from age six to age thirteen. Schools weren’t mixed, and girls studied different subjects from boys.

The duration of compulsory education was extended gradually, the most recent being in 2016. It is now from age three to age sixteen.

Mairie et écoles – sometimes, schools and town hall are under the same roof (French countryside)

At age three, French children enter the school system via the école maternelle, literally maternity school. The three years they spend there are called Petite Section (PS), Moyenne Section (MS) and Grande Section (GS), respectively, small, middle and big section.

At age six, they enter primary school, l’école primaire. The five years they spend there are called:

cours préparartoire (CP) – preliminary course = grade 1
cours élementaire 1 (CE1) – elementary course 1 = grade 2
cours élementaire 2 (CE2) – elementary course 2 = grade 3
cours moyen 1 (CM1) – medium course 1 = grade 4
cours moyen 2 (CM2) – medium course 2 = grade 5

These names might sound confusing, but you have to remember that they stem from the old system where children either continued for two more years in the compulsory education (until age 13) which explains the naming of “medium” course. Boys could continue towards higher studies, first the prestigious baccalauréat and then university.
Today, the baccalauréat, or bac for short, is the French high school leaving certificate. But more on that next time.

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Bonne rentrée !

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At the beginning of July, as the school year ends, activity in France begins to slow down. Parents ferry their kids off to camp or to the grandparents, and once the national holiday on July 14 is over, Bison Futé, the Smart Bison of French traffic predictions, warns of the annual traffic jams on the highways as the juillettistes head off to their vacation destinations.
Repeat this every weekend over the summer, with a particularly sharp peak in both directions as the juillettistes, the July holiday-makers, return home and the aoûtiens, the August holiday-makers, take their place.

The slowest time of the summer comes around the public holiday of August 15, when many small shops in the cities close and coastal towns will triple and quadruple their population as families enjoy the summer. I wrote about Paris in August in an earlier blog post.

But even the longest school holidays eventually come to an end. After almost two months, kids have to be back in school at the beginning of September. No big deal, right? It’s similar in many countries in the northern hemisphere. But France has this particularity that school years dictate the rhythm of the nation.

school supplies for the rentrée scolaire

Sports clubs, for example, won’t offer you calendar-year membership but school-year ones. This makes sense for kids who change schedules and activities from one school year to the next, their continuity interrupted by the long summer holidays. But grown-ups, who only have a three-week break in summer, are bound by the same rhythm.

Just as France slows down for the summer, it wakes up again at the rentrée. The term derives from the verb rentrer, to return. In September, you have the obvious rentrée scolaire, the return to school, but also the rentrée politique, as politicians come back from summer recess, the rentrée littéraire, as publishers throw new titles onto the market, variations like rentrée sportive, rentrée radio/tv (as radio and tv stations return to their regular programming), and others happily used by advertisers in late August and early September.

the rentrée littéraire

Everyone gets back to business, and you can wish your French friends a Bonne rentrée!

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Brittany under investigation

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  • Pink Granite Coast
  • Guérande salt marshes

Have you ever read a book where the setting was as important as the plot? A book that made you want to jump onto a plane (or train or whatever) and go to the place?
The Commissaire Dupin murder mysteries have just that, and—surprise, surprise—the setting is Brittany.

Sein Island

Commissaire Dupin is a remarkable series for several reasons: First it was written by a German author with a setting in France, second it was written in German but is so wildly popular that it’s been translated into a number of languages, third it’s been adapted for tv and is available in both Germany and France (and maybe even other countries by now?), fourth it’s an excellent murder mystery that keeps you guessing until the very end, and finally, the Brittany portrayed in the stories is the real Brittany. The author really knows his stuff.

  • Brocéliande Forest
  • Concarneau

A quick introduction to the series:
Commissaire Georges Dupin has been transferred from Paris to Brittany as punishment (that alone should tell you enough about how Parisians view Bretons, and the feeling is mutual) for a never specified scandal. Once you get to know him, you can make an educated guess that he cared more for catching a murderer than for political sensibilities.

Saint Malo

In Brittany, the “province”, everyone considers him as an outsider, a “Parisian” in the worst sense of the term. His team of two very different inspectors and his assistant Nolwenn who seems to know everything and everyone in Brittany, are convinced he can become a Breton over time. Together they solve murders all over Brittany and even down to Guérande in the Loire-Atlantique which only historically belongs to Brittany, even though technically they are based in the southern Finistère town of Concarneau. (It’s beautiful, you should go visit.)

Concarneau – Commissaire Dupin’s favorite hangout is the restaurant with the red awnings

Here’s where each of his cases takes Commissaire Dupin:

  • Death in Pont-Aven (Book 1) – Pont Aven
  • Murder on Brittany Shores (Book 2) – Glénan Islands
  • Fleur de Sel Murders (Book 3) – Guérande
  • The Missing Corpse (Book 4) – Belon River
  • The Killing Tide (Book 5) – Sein Island
  • The Granite Coast Murders (Book 6) – PInk Granite Coast
  • The King Arthur Case (Book 7) – Brocéliande Forest
  • The Body by the Sea (Book 8) – Concarneau
  • Death of a Master Chef (Book 9) – Saint Malo

The following books don’t seem to have been translated yet, but here are their locations:

  • Book 10: Belle-Île Island
  • Book 11: L’Aber Wrac’h (new in 2022)
  • Book 12: Pornic / Grand Lieu Lake (new in 2023)
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Book Post: Bilingual Success Stories Around the World

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I’m very excited to share a book that means very much to me personally. Let me first explain why:
As you might know, I’m passionate about languages and I’m an expat raising my daughter bilingually. But did you know my fascination with bilingualism dates back to middle school? It got another boost when I spent a year as an exchange student in Canada, living with a bilingual host family.

At university, I embarked upon a bilingual course with a binational diploma, and my diploma paper was on bilingualism in the German-French border area, and more specifically in kindergarten classes on both sides of the border. I read a number of books for my research, but the book I would really have needed then, and again when my daughter was born, hadn’t been written yet. Now it has, and I am proud to say, that I played a tiny little part in it.

But enough about me. Adam Beck, the author of this book, is the founder of the blog Bilingual Monkeys and the online forum The Bilingual Zoo for parents raising multilingual kids. An educator for over 30 years, Adam has worked with hundreds of bilingual and multilingual children as a classroom teacher and private tutor. Originally from the United States, he has lived in Hiroshima, Japan since 1996 and is raising two trilingual children in Japanese, English, and Spanish.

His previous publication include the bilingual-parent handbook Maximize Your Child’s Bilingual Ability, the playful “picture book for adults” titled I WANT TO BE BILINGUAL! (illustrated by Pavel Goldaev), 28 Bilingual English-Spanish Fairy Tales & Fables and a humorous novel for children and adults titled How I Lost My Ear (illustrated by Simon Farrow).

Along with his books and his online writing, he provides empowering support to bilingual and multilingual families through personal coaching, online and off, and through speaking appearances at conferences and workshops worldwide. He is on the consultation team at the Harmonious Bilingualism Network (HaBilNet), led by Annick De Houwer.

For Bilingual Success Stories Around the World, Adam interviewed families all over the world raising their children with more than one language. He presents their many different situations and lets them describe their approaches, the obstacles they encountered, and their successes in their own words. Some families have very young children, others live with teenagers or are already in their second generation. Some use the “one parent one language” method, others “minority language at home”, some have only one parent speaking the minority language, others have three languages in their daily lives. (And as you might have guessed, one of those families is mine.)

This is the book I wish I had when my daughter was born!

(Well, this and Maximize Your Child’s Bilingual Ability). I hope it will encourage many other families to embark or continue on the path of bilingualism and multilingualism.

Bilingual Success Stories Around the World: Parents Raising Multilingual Kids Share Their Experiences and Encouragement is a real-life roadmap to greater success and joy for any parent raising bilingual or multilingual children. Written in the same empowering spirit as Adam’s first book Maximize Your Child’s Bilingual Ability, this practical, worldly-wise guide features the success stories of a wide range of families and details the kinds of attitudes and actions that can enable your family to enjoy the same sort of rewarding success. The focus of this book is on the actual practice of raising children to acquire active ability in more than one language, conveyed through the revealing experiences of parents who are now succeeding admirably at their bilingual or multilingual aim. Read this book for ideas and inspiration to help you realize your own family’s joyful success story!

Here you can download a free PDF sample of the first 37 pages – go ahead, it’s just a click away!
Adam provides all the links to buy Bilingual Success Stories Around the World on this page, here are some of them:
Amazon.com
Amazon UK
Book Depository
Amazon France
Amazon Germany

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