12 ways to enjoy being poor in Paris

What does one need, to survive? Just read a newspaper article about Mr. Jungner, a Finnish mover-and-shaker who claimed that if one needs to survive with only 10'000 euros per month, it is actually doable, if you have a million euros on you account.; one can fulfill one's basic needs with just that sum. What a relief! Just 10'000 euros per month plus one million in savings, and my basic needs are met! (This reminds me of another mover-and-shaker, a certain monsieur who declared that 'one's life is failed is one doesn't own a Rolex by the age of fifty.) I wonder what Mr. Jungner would say if he had to get by with, say, 450 euros per month and a constant hundred-and-twenty euros of unpaid overdraft. 

I can make an outrageous claim. One can survive with substantially less than the 10'000/1'000'000 euros. And I should know. I have a Masters Degree in Starving Arts from the University of Life, Paris campus. Here's a few hot tips on how to live in Paris with what you gather playing in metro tunnels, or with your tips earned playing five hours in a row in a rowdy bar. And not only live, but to live happily - maybe not for ever after, but for a happy few years. (NB: These tips are meant for the single or coupled, relatively young men/women; I'll address the family way in another blog.)

1. Make sure you live in an apartment you can afford. (This means, do not attempt even a phone booth-size flat in Montmartre or Ile St. Louis, although they are quaint and picturesque and exude pure frenchness. They are in fact not that french anyway, for they are inhabited by either millionaires, far-eastern souvenir salesmen, american exchange students or naive, clueless Finnish artists such as I.) There are reasonably prized areas even in Paris, and some are actually quite nice. The close-by suburbia works fine, too, and is much more Real French than Montmartre. Make sure you're ok with the idea of living in a toblerone-shaped closet before you move to Paris. Having a separate bedroom just doesn't exist in small-budget rentals. Getting ear plugs is a good idea, too.
2. If you cannot afford to rent 'by the book', or you don't have parental rent guarantees that are often required, try renting someone's extra bedroom. Roommate renting can work if you're the quiet, well-behaving type, and your roommates are as well. For the partying, adventurous type, try finding a squat. There are still some around Paris.
3. Make sure your apartment has at least some sort of a kitchen. If not, buy a temporary two-stover and cook with it on the floor. You can't afford to eat out but maybe once a month. But when you can eat out, do so after meticulous research on the restaurant's quality/cost ratio. I admit to having eaten some of the best and worst meals of my life in parisian restaurants.
4. A starving artist can't afford to eat poorly. When you get a few euros - before anything else, buy food. You can manage this if you check out open-air food markets, especially those nearing the northern or eastern borders of Paris. You can get a kilo of basically any vegetables or fruits for one euro. The quality is not grade A, but hey - neither is your income. Another solution is Leader Price or Ed discount stores, where a fiver goes a long long way. The adventurer's added bonus is to wander to the chinese quarters and find the Tang Frères indoor market. A ten-kilo bag of rice is ridiculously cheap there and vegetarians find their cheap canned tofu. 
5. A few things to always have around in your kitchen: Onions, potatoes, canned tomatoes, canned beans, dried lentils, garlic, carrots, pasta, rice, salt, bouillon cubes, bottle of cooking oil, ground black pepper. You can buy all of this of less than ten euros in the discount stored mentioned above, and with this, you can cook an amazing variety of good, nutritious meals for a truly long time. Any other spices are good, they bring extra life quality and happiness. I've noticed that when down in the dumps, good spicy food always helps. One finds all the spices one can ever need in the arab quarters. 
6. Things to avoid on your shopping list: Meat and cheeses. I became the 80% vegetarian I am today mainly because I couldn't afford meat during my Paris years. Cheeses... well, on a payday, I would get a nice inexpensive Camembert from my discount store and just let it ripen outside the fridge for a few days - after all, why live in France if you can't even eat cheese?
7. I'm not going to say no to alcohol here for I've just told you one can enjoy being poor in France. A lot of this enjoyment comes from wine. I would, however, advice you to stay clear of the cheapest wines. You know, the plastic bottle ones. Or the 'champagne' that costs less than one euro. Have you noticed that's what the rough sleepers drink, under the bridges of Paris? It tastes like yeast and will give you the head ache of your life, plus a miserable case of the runs. But no worries - go to your faithful discount store, and you shall find a decent Bordeaux or Côtes du Rhône for mere two euros! Let the party begin!
8. There are some that enjoy hard liqueur; there are some that enjoy beer. Both of which you may also find in very inexpensive versions in your discount store. I will not guarantee the quality of your condition on the next day if you choose to take that path.
9. If you absolutely want to go bar-hopping: Check out the bars in the not-so-chic outskirts of town. They're often cheaper. Dress accordingly, and take a tall, wide-shouldered gentleman friend along.
10. Take an instrument along. People just might buy you drinks if you play well enough. Ask for a permission to play first, though...
11. Great things to do with no money: take walks. Solitary walks. Along the river Seine is always a great one, those paved passageways under the bridges are more appealing in daylight. Parc de Luxembourg, Parc Monceau, Parc de Buttes-Chaumont, Parc de Montsouris... I wouldn't know where to start! 
12. Discover your favorite neighborhoods. Mine were Odéon and rue Mouffetard, Butte des Cailles, Chinatown, a lot of the 14th, 9th and 6th arrondissement, rue Ste Genéviève and the Sorbonne area, a lot or Montparnasse, the Marais and rue des Rosiers, the Père-Lachaise cemetery, and many many others. (Yes, yes, I loved Montmartre as well, although my remarks have so far been scornful on that subject.)

I could go on and on. This is one of my favorite subjects. Not having 10'000 euros per month doesn't mean one can't enjoy one's life. (And what is more, you worry a lot less about shallow things such as appearances, trends and wrinkles!) If you have any fail-proof tips on how to enjoy life while being poor - in France or anywhere else - please let me know. They always come in handy!

France - the first time.

It had been a long drive. A ferry from Helsinki, Finland, to Lübeck, Germany, then a drive through Germany and north-east France, stopping to sleep around Hamburg. We had been traveling all day - my father drove, my mom read the map, and us, the kids, were dozing on the back seat. It was just before midnight when our mother woke us up saying: 'Hey, kids, this is it. We're here.' Driving into what seemed a bush but was actually a tiny country road covered with oak branches, and finally turning to a yard covered in white gravel.


The night was one of those pitch black summer nights, and the only thing that we could see were the stars above. A milky way stretched up there and gave us a little light so that we could find the front door. We stepped in the smoke-smelling house and since my father wasn't able to find the electric switch, we stumbled up the stairs with a flash light, dragging our camping mattresses with us. Each kid found a floor to sleep on, and before I feel asleep, I listened to the crickets for a while. 'I'm in France for the first time in my life', I thought. 'I'm fourteen, I'm actually here, and I can't see a damn thing.'

Morning. Tiny bright-yellow rays of light pierced the dark green window shutters waking me up. I didn't know where I was, for a while, but hearing my parents shuffling around downstairs, it all came back to me. I opened the shutters, and there it was, attacking from every direction. Paradise. 


A gently rolling Sancerrois countryside with lush green and yellow fields, plum and cherry trees, and old shed and a large pond down the hill. Birdsong! My, what birdsong! And crickets and cows and... what is that smell? Croissants? I looked around me in the room, and wandered through the large old 'longère' farmhouse. Huge rooms, 18th-century tile floors, oak stairs and beams. I ran downstairs to the kitchen where my mother made breakfast. 'Look', she exclaimed, 'fresh croissants!' The fireplace was huge. More tile floors, more beams. And tiny little holes left into the walls. What were those, I wondered. My dad, a history fanatic, explained to me that the house had been built on the year of 'La Révolution', 1789, and the holes were for shooting. There had been battles outside, right there on the field. My head was spinning. I could just picture myself writing a great historical novel, right then and there, here in these rooms! (Little did I know that I would work up the nerve to write that historical novel only 21 years later.)


The Finns that we are, my parents made a sauna in the shed outside. We put candles in the old barn attached to the house and ate our lunch there. We hung a hammock between two plum trees. I would just lay there, listening to the blatant frenchness of my surroundings. I was in love. Desperately, irrevocably in love with this house called 'Les Machereaux', the castles nothing but a few kilometers walk away from our house, the village called Sens-Beaujeu, the region called Berry, the French countryside. It was my first summer n France, and I decided, then and there, that this is where I would spend my life.
Some twenty years and four countries later, here I am.

Paris, love vs. hate, part III

Let's say the airline screwed up and you wound up in a completely strange European city. It looks strangely familiar... that enormous iron phallus, where have you seen it before? That brown stinky river that runs through it... that white cream pastry on a hilltop that vaguely resembles Alan Lee's Tolkien illustrations of Minas Tirith... you can't quite place it. The language that buzzes around you, is it spanish? No, unless it's spanish spoken with chocolate mousse in your mouth. Italian? Almost, but italian does not exude hormonal activity like this language. Is it true? Could this be PARIS? - If you're still at a complete loss and the airline misplaced your GPS, let me give you a couple of well-tested clues just to make sure. If you answer 'oui' to the claims presented below, you are in the City of Lights, the Capital of Love and Weight-obsessed women!

1. As you enter a boutique, the immediate presumption that you spot on the salesperson's face is that you are there to steal.
2. This is the only place you've ever been to where you get less service if you smile and apologize.
3. However, if you snap a nasty retort and shrug, the service around you improves by 100%.
4. If you dress to your best, it is still not good enough. If you dress badly, you are ignored and pushed around. If you dress revealingly and put on make-up, you will receive lots of attention from elderly toothless men looking for love they can pay for.
5. If you're a woman and eat with a healthy appetite, you get dirty looks.
6. There are more pharmacies that grocery stores.
7. If you happen to speak the native lingo, but speak it slower than at the pace of 100 words per minute, people give up on you, shrug and sigh impatiently: 'Oh, I thought you said you spoke french.'

Yep, you're in Paris. Now that you're here, might as well go to one of those street cafés you've always heard of, and enjoy the slow service. When you get used to the noises around you - the car engines, the honking, the yells, the high heels on pavement, the tyre screeches - you notice that sitting in a café kind of gives you your own private little space in the universe that is Paris. Your private little living room that smells like strong tobacco, pollution and occasional dog turd. You look at the parisians around you, see how their faces are sort of closed, expressionless when they sip their 'express', no sugar. They couldn't care less about the noise and crowds. They shut them out. You wonder how they do that. Going to a french public school from the age of three does that to you.

I took a 'covoiturage' to go to Paris from my heavenly southern France village. Covoiturage, that wonderful invention, is when you reply to an ad on the net where a ride is offered from place A to place B if you participate in the gasoline fare with a small sum of money. The driver was an extremely nice french guy, a parisian, in fact. He had impeccable taste in music and cigarettes (which we smoked the whole 8 hours to Paris), we stopped for a quick coffee (lunch? what lunch? you're not going to eat? he exclaimed at me) and drove towards Paris chattering in a friendly fashion. The closer we got to Paris, the sulkier the gentleman got. He started sighing heavily, talked less and less and frowned more. When we reached 'le périférique' of Paris, the man started swearing from the corner of his mouth. At the first traffic jam, he started waving his fist, swearing heavily, and then honking. When he dropped me off at Montparnasse, he had become a full-blown parisian. 

And yet, I was in Paris, and loved being there. Go figure. There's no rush like the one when you first step off of the metro. The smell alone sticks to your clothes for days. It was an icy, windy day, fit for a Paris fall and winter, and yet little girls were barelegged, boys bareheaded, chic ladies in itsy-bitsy ballerina shoes. I was dressed to go face the Finnish autumn so I felt no cold - but neither did they, it seemed. They had that closed-up look on their faces as they rushed by me, eyeing me up and down with a kind of cynically amused half-a-smile, then returning behind the iron curtain of parisian sulkiness that gets them through the day.

Honestly, don't know why I like the damn city so much.

The French- The Myths

'So, you must drink wine from morning 'till night, then! Those french people, they're drunk all the time!' That's one of those phrases that come my way when I say I live in France. There's a lot of reality-bending stereotype rumors going around about the french. Most of those rumors are such wild fiction, they sound like great names for novels! Examples:

1. French women don't get fat. Wait, that is a book! Although based on a myth that may sound fascinating to desperate nordic women such as myself, struggling daily with a wobbly derrière or tangible love handles, it is still a myth. I see plenty of fleshy, earthy, well-rounded mamas here in the french countryside. The exception are, of course, parisian women. Those eternal keepers of protein bars and little mineral water bottles. At my age and after, one has to decide whether to go for a lovely face or a lovely body. Parisian women choose the body for some reason I have yet to comprehend.
2. French men are great lovers. Bet there's a book by that name as well. I will not delve deeply into this fascinating subject, although I'm very tempted. And there are without doubt many great lovers wandering around amongst the noble Gallic tribe. But I will say this: a bulging male ego does not a great lover make. This has myth written all over the girth and length of it.
3. French women do not shave. I won't even hint at what kind of a book would have that for a name (again, one probably does). Who came up with that? Come on.
4. French men wear berets. That sounds like a war-time memoir. The oldest men in my village wear berets, and the young french  men probably did in the fifties. However, this is just like saying all Italian guys have a long greasy curved mustache.
5. The french stink. A french-basher's classic. I have rarely met people so devoted to showering and putting hours into choosing just the right expensive perfume as the french. 
6. French people are unfriendly. OK, so this is not a name for a bestseller, but it's still an all-time favorite sentence that I've often heard. I mean, who hasn't gotten wind of a chilling chronicle about some horrible incident in a parisian café or a chic boutique? Even I can throw you some good ones, and true accounts, too! But that's Paris. Or St Tropez. Any major tourist attraction, really. Lourdes. Places where the locals are so tired of tourists that they just don't give a damn about being nice - they want them out, fast, whatever the cost. (Forgive me for saying this, but I kind of understand this. Having worked years as a boutique manager at one of Montmartre's busiest spots teeming with liberal amounts of camera-carrying wanderers every day of the year... after being asked 'Where is the Sacre-Coeur' for the thousandth time, I became chilling as well. Now I've said it. I've ruined some poor devil's romantic Parisian vacation.) However - the french countryside is packed with smiling, helpful frenchmen and -women that bend over backwards to help you out. Something you don't often see in, say, Finnish countryside.  
7. French people are always drunk (and other favorite toast and drinking songs, vol. 1) Nobody drinks as much as the french. Even the working man, on his long lunch break. After having carried stones or laid bricks or paved the roads the whole morning, he orders a heavy lunch and a bottle of red 'vin de pays'. Teachers (have seen this in my Bourges boarding school) drinking at lunch, at dinner. Bankers, postal workers, artists, heaven forbid. They drink wine, wonderful, french, enjoyable, red or white or rosé or sparkling wine. But are they drunk? No. Rarely do I see a french person drunk. I'm talking about the diverse states of drunkenness I'm used to seeing, being a Finn. And if by mistake a frenchman (other than that one village sponge exuding Pastis) does act drunkenly, he is swift to apologize. NB: I do not talk about a worrisome phenomenon that goes by the name of 'teenage binge drinking'. That is a whole other subject, and that for another evening.

Was there some I didn't mention? Send some french-myths my way! I love to correct them and laugh about them. This said, there are some that are true. Will not tell you which ones. Come and see for yourself. It's worth the trip.

How I Ended Up In France: Boarding school dreams

'How on earth did you end up in France?' If I had a 'Napoléon d'or' for every time I've heard that question, I'd have enough ancient gold coins to be able to move away from France (but I wouldn't). Every expat has a cool story to tell about how they became expats. I love expat stories! For my part, it's not like anyone forced me to move in here, that's for damn sure. We used to spend family vacations in an old Berry county farm house when I was a kid. A pre-pubescent girl hardly needs added romanticism to screw up her hormone-ridden brain, but spending endless warm summer days in a house that was built in the year of 'La Révolution', 1789... I was bitten by a big fat hairy beret-headed France-bug with enough winey venom to have me drugged for my remaining days. So even if my 'lycée' in Finland was a nice, renowned, art-oriented school that would probably have served me better in life, I wanted to live out my romantic fantasies of studying in a french boarding school. I had a friend write an application letter in french and got accepted to Lycée Alain-Fournier boarding school in the medieval city of Bourges. (Imagine the school's administrators surprise when they found out I actually didn't speak any french!)

Oh! A castle, transformed into school housing, with creaking oak-stairway leading to my solitary room in one of the turrets, lit by only torches and candlelight! My days were filled with boarding school dreams fit for 'Les Liaisons Dangereuses'. So when I packed up and moved my bags to my family's old farm house and set out to explore my new school-castle, I truly felt like the hero of my own life.


The truth was somewhat different. Calling the boarding house of Lycée Alain-Fournier a castle would be grossly stretching the truth. It is, however, a shining example of the sixties functional institution architecture; a Stalinesque-grey barrack with doors that may or may not have been orange once upon a painter's cigarette break. By the way, upon my first sight of the disturbingly ugly school, approximately all of the school's two thousand students were outside, forming a circle around an anonymous grey steel barrel moving around it like hoards of pilgrims around the Stone of Kaaba, covering the asphalt yard in ritual Marlboro smoke.


My solitary room in a tower lit by candlelight? A dormitory for eighty girls, sort of hospital-beds separated only by flimsy pliable walls. A brown-gray blanket neatly folded on the bed. I could have another upon request, they assured me, if it got too cold. They wouldn't start heating the dormitories before mid-november.


The art-oriented study program I had opted for? Sorry, no room left! But I could opt for ancient greek or latin instead! Mercifully, a month later I was transferred to the music specialization class, and another month later, I started actually learning french. By the end of the school year, I had become a chain-smoker, had found friends, a lovely french sweetheart to write weepy love songs about, and I could curse the teachers in fluent french. But I could never really get over the fact that my boarding school wasn't the castle I had dreamed about. (I have a strange, inexplicable love for old, moldy castles, the murkier the better.) But I loved my french lycée years dearly. 


To answer the question about how I ended up in France: I just thought I would get to live in a castle. Fifteen years later, I still don't. But I do see one from my bedroom window. That's good enough for me. For now.

On Finland, now and then.

I've always considered myself an unofficial ambassador to a less-known country called Finland. And proudly so. What's not to love about Finland? People just don't know, so being a Finn expat, I enlighten them.

1.  It's the Land of Thousand Lakes. 187'888 lakes, in fact.
2.  It's where Nokia phones and technology is from. Originally. The city of Nokia (Nokia meaning a small rodent, like a mink) is some 180km from Helsinki, the capital, that incidentally is NOT spelled 'Helsinsky' or 'Hellsinky'.
3.  It's the home of the sauna. Sauna is a Finnish word that means... well... sauna.
4.  It's the Land of the Midnight Sun. The Nightless Night, a nightmare for those with sleeping problems. And also, the Dayless Day, The Midday Sunlessness that lasts all winter. And that winter, my friends, is long.
5.  It's the Land of Drinking People. Do not drink alcohol with a Finn, or you become like them - an alcohol person with a finnish problem.

It's also a land with many top rankings when measured worldwide. Literacy, school system, technological achievements, female suffrage (women voted already in 1906, as opposed to, say, Cyprus in 1960, France in 1944, Italy in 1946 or Liechtenstein, anybody? in whooping 1984). Total spirit consumption per capita, too. (See list, point 5.)


It has lots of other top rankings also worth mentioning. The world suicide ratings, for example, for the ages of 25-34, 35-44, 45-54 and 55-64. But hey, we're only the 2nd ranking in suicides of the 15-24 year-olds! (No idea about those over 64 years old.) We're also swinging near to the top ranking in family violence and unemployment. (See list, point 5.)


But we do have some of the world's lowest rankings as well. People that believe Finland to be an undesirable neighbor country are scarce. Our foreign population inflow is the world's 2nd lowest (just look at our winters and you'll know why). Our number of immigrants per capita is a bit less than 3%. 


But when I ask around about what people know Finland for, it isn't known for any of these stats. Nowadays, Finland is very well known for its hankering of right-wing extremist politicians. Its biggest party, the 'True Finns', whose rise to fame was swift and steep. The French know Finland to be a willing buyer of French nuclear power technology. (In the USA, Finland was unheard of. 'Whereabouts in Minnesota is that? Finland? Who's the king of Finland? Isn't that the country with a lesbian communist president? The land where they have no refrigerators?)


The longer I stay away from Finland, the less I know about it. I am a relic of the days of old, for I am no longer able to answer questions about the state Finland is (in) today. So I just keep talking about the Finland I grew up in. The one that was known for its lakes, and saunas, and honest, hardworking, quietly hospitable people. I still go there every summer to enjoy that magnificent nature, my family, those lakes and saunas. The people I no longer recognize. Or maybe, probably, it's me who is changed.


Oh yes, and the stats, the stats? They can be viewed, for example, at www.nationmaster.com. BBC for True Finns. Go to Olkiluoto 2 for French Areva nuclear tech. (There is, unfortunately, nothing but my say-so on the comments I have received in the USA. Believe who will...)

Parenting and career advice dilemma

My mother bought me sheet music for Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata when I was 14, and pronounced her wish. She wanted me to choose the career of a classical pianist. My father, however, was quite mad at me for wanting to become a musician to begin with. "Why can't you choose an academic path?" he growled. "Your marks are so good. It would be easy for you, and your income would be guaranteed!" I tried telling him it was too late, my career choice had been made. A singer-songwriter it was, and he shouldn't have anything to whine about for it was him, a musician, who had me record my first single when I was six years old, for God's sakes! "We just want what is good for you", they both grumbled. " But you do what feels right to you. As long as you don't marry a bass player."


And they were right. I should have practiced that piano. I should have pursued my studies. (And I shouldn't have run off to the other end of the world at the age of 19 with a guy I had met a month before.) But why, oh why is it that we truly understand these valuable pieces of advice only when we have kids of our own? Unlike my father, I will probably want my child to become a musician. But if life goes as it always does, she will come to me one day with a big smile on her face and exclaim: "Mom. I've decided! This is my true calling!" "What is, dear?" "To become an engineer!" And I will lecture her for a while, not understanding her decision, but in the end I'll give in. "OK, darling. I just want what is best for you. But by all means, do what feels right to you. As long as you don't run off with a circus performer."


I babble about this now, since my parents are coming over tomorrow to stay with me and my family for a spell. I love them so much, and I intend to tell them they were right about pointing out those career options, however in vain. But they did fail miserably in one aspect of my upbringing.

I've been in a relationship with a bass player for the last ten years and I've married him, too.