Pamela Druckerman

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Paris by Bike

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I used to consider the people who biked around this city to be members of a fearless warrior tribe. Mostly men, they dressed for battle in helmets, chain locks and reflective gear. The city’s few cycling lanes were shared with swerving buses or sandwiched between rows of pitiless drivers and were known as “les couloirs de la mort” — corridors of death.

I’m risk averse, and I have three kids. For the first 16 years I lived here, I never got on a bike. But something changed recently, and it’s not just because I fear catching the coronavirus on the Métro.…  Seguir leyendo »

Benjamin Griveaux ended his Paris mayoral campaign last month after a sex tape became public, a decision that left some French people puzzled. Credit Lionel Bonaventure/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

EuropaUnión Europea,

Like everyone else in France, when I heard that Benjamin Griveaux was quitting the Paris mayor’s race because someone released his sex tape online, I immediately searched for the tape.

When I couldn’t find it, a friend warily agreed to send me a link. It was a video selfie of a man masturbating. You could hear him breathing but you couldn’t see his face.

I watched it, then wrote back, “I understand why people have sex in the dark”.

But what I didn’t understand, at first, was why Mr. Griveaux had dropped out of the mayoral race — whose first round is March 15.…  Seguir leyendo »

Smoke billowed from the Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris after a fire broke out on Monday. Credit Julie Carriat/Reuters

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I learned that Notre-Dame was burning on Monday night when a stranger — an older man — stopped me on the street. A shrieking ambulance had just sped past us. He pointed to a plume of smoke in the distance, and said: “It’s going to Notre-Dame. Notre-Dame is on fire.”

The French don’t spend much time in churches. Though most of the population is nominally Catholic, France is one of the least religious countries in Europe. Urbane, intellectual Parisians often dismiss religion as archaic and unenlightened. A Parisian writer once assured me that God died in the late 1960s.

And yet, the fire at Notre-Dame feels as if it has struck everyone here.…  Seguir leyendo »

Protesters demanding a free press at a rally in Budapest in April. Laszlo Balogh/Getty Images

EuropaUnión Europea,

If you’re wondering what attacks on the news media around the world mean for the future of democracy, it’s worth a trip to Budapest. Consider it a cautionary-tale vacation.

When I visited Hungary recently, I knew I was entering a waning democracy that’s become increasingly authoritarian. I knew that Prime Minister Viktor Orban won a third term in April by convincing voters that a phantasmic combination of Muslim migrants, the Hungarian-born billionaire George Soros and European Union bureaucrats was coming to get them.

But I only understood how Mr. Orban pulled this off when I spoke to Hungarian journalists. They explained that Mr.…  Seguir leyendo »

To Live and Die in Paris

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia

In June, I got an email from a Frenchwoman I know. I’ll call her Hélène.

“I am now embarked on a fascinating trip as I will no longer be around at the end of the summer. I am serene and ready. I would be happy to share some thoughts on death if you could come and see me. Pick a nice day, we’ll chat in the garden.”

Hélène is a teacher in her 70s whom I’d met a few years earlier when she invited me to speak to her class. She became a friendly informant on French culture, with a distinctly Parisian way of sounding familiar, then suddenly saying something altogether foreign.…  Seguir leyendo »

Cómo sobrevivir a tus 40

ReflexionesSocial

Si quieres saber cuán vieja te ves, ve a una cafetería francesa. Es como hacer un referendo público de tu rostro.

Cuando me mudé a París, recién entrada en mis treinta, los meseros me llamaban mademoiselle (“señorita”, en francés). Cada vez que entraba en una cafetería, me recibían con un: “Bonjour, mademoiselle”, seguido de un: “Voilà, mademoiselle”, cuando me servían el café.

Sin embargo, en cuanto cumplí 40, hubo un cambio colectivo y los meseros comenzaron a llamarme madame (señora). Al principio, esos madame eran vacilantes, pero poco después me caían encima con la contundencia de una granizada.…  Seguir leyendo »

A poster reading “I am a Jew” during a demonstration in Paris last month after the killing of an 85-year-old Jewish woman.Credit Thibault Camus/Associated Press

EuropaUnión Europea,

Here’s some news you might find surprising: By and large, the French like Jews.

Yes, there have been despicable anti-Semitic crimes here, and there are enduring stereotypes. But 85 percent of the French have a favorable view of Jews, the same as the British do, according to the Pew Research Center. Since 1990, France’s national human rights commission has annually ranked Jews as the one of the country’s most accepted minorities. In polls, most French people say the state should vigorously combat anti-Semitism.

That’s little solace to the family of Mireille Knoll, the 85-year-old Holocaust survivor who was stabbed to death last month in her Paris apartment in an apparent hate crime.…  Seguir leyendo »

Are the French the New Optimists?

EuropaUnión Europea

When people used to ask me what I missed about America, I would say, “The optimism.” I grew up in the land of hope, then moved to one whose catchphrases are “It’s not possible” and “Hell is other people.” I walked around Paris feeling conspicuously chipper.

But lately I’ve had a kind of emotional whiplash. France is starting to seem like an upbeat, can-do country, while Americans are less sure that everything will be O.K.

Cynicism has deep roots in France. In the 18th century, Voltaire mocked optimists for their naïveté and celebrated pessimists for their lucidity. He’s still part of the national curriculum for French eighth-graders, and the râleur — the dissatisfied, grumpy whiner — remains a national archetype.…  Seguir leyendo »

A hologram of Jean-Luc Mélenchon projected at a campaign event in France. Credit Thierry Zoccolan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

EuropaUnión Europea,

I’ve lately been telling French people about the Hail Mary pass. I explain that it’s a desperate move in American football: You’re running out of time to score, so you lob the ball toward the end zone and hope for the best.

The ’ail Marie — as I’ve been pronouncing it — is the best metaphor I’ve found for the French elections this Sunday. The country that gave us the Enlightenment, Cartesian logic, the Napoleonic Code and possibly reason itself may be about to just throw a ball into the distance and see what happens.

Proof of this is the sudden rise of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, until recently an angry ex-Trotskyist on the left wing’s colorful fringe.…  Seguir leyendo »

The French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte Trogneux, arriving at a state dinner last March. Jean Catuffe/Getty Images

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The cover of Paris Match magazine late last year featured a handsome, 30-something man strolling arm in arm with an attractive blond woman in her 60s. The same couple were on the cover of a summer issue, holding hands at the beach, and on a spring edition dressed up for a state dinner.
As France gears up for presidential elections in April (and probably a runoff in May), this unusual pair could help prevent it from becoming the next country to succumb to xenophobic populism. He’s the upstart presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron, and she’s his former high school French teacher, Brigitte Trogneux, now his close adviser and wife.…  Seguir leyendo »

Adolfo Kaminsky in a darkroom in 2014. As a teenager in World War II, he forged passports for French Jews. Raphael Zubler

ReflexionesSocial, ,

Though he was a skilled forger — creating passports from scratch and improvising a device to make them look older — there was little joy in it. “The smallest error and you send someone to prison or death,” he told me. “It’s a great responsibility. It’s heavy. It’s not at all a pleasure.” Years later he’s still haunted by the work, explaining: “I think mostly of the people that I couldn’t save.”

Mr. Kaminsky empathized with refugees partly because he was one himself. He was born in Argentina to Russian Jews who’d first fled Russia to Paris, and then been kicked out of France.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión EuropeaUE a debate,

My family was once invited to lunch at a chateau owned by a friend of a friend. As we drove our rental car up to the giant castle, my kids gasped and said, “They must be rich!”

“Whatever you do, don’t mention money,” I warned them.

An hour later, I found my 6-year-old walking in circles on the lawn, talking to himself. Up close, I realized that he was muttering “money, money, money, money” over and over.

With Paris now competing to become Europe’s post-Brexit financial capital, France’s fraught relationship with wealth is under global scrutiny. There are more than 700,000 finance and related jobs in London alone, including the bulk of foreign-exchange trading, European hedge funds and private-equity firms.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea,

A fellow I know arrived at work recently to find that his company had hired someone new, and given the woman his exact job title. Soon afterward, he said, higher-ups cut his department’s budget and stopped replying to his emails.

The man suspects he’s headed for that infamous place in French companies known as “le placard,” or the closet. Many workers here have permanent contracts that make it very hard to fire them. So some companies resort to an illegal strategy: They try to make someone so miserable, he’ll quit. “What happens next is, I’ll lose my team and my staff, and therefore I’ll have nothing to do,” the man predicted.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión EuropeaDefensa y SeguridadInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional

When I moved to Europe 12 years ago, my biggest concern was whether I’d ever speak decent French. Practically every American I knew came to visit, many saying they dreamed of living here, too. I didn’t worry much about far-right political parties, or the European Union. I certainly didn’t fret about terrorism.

That now seems like a long time ago.

One of the most upsetting facts about the bombings in Brussels on Tuesday was how unsurprising they were. One day earlier, Belgium’s interior minister had gone on national radio and warned that his country faced a “credible and imminent” threat of attack.…  Seguir leyendo »

France’s Cult of Fearlessness

InternacionalTerrorismo InternacionalEuropaUnión Europea, ,

Since the attacks two weeks ago, I’ve been avoiding supermarkets — which seem like potential targets — and doing most of my shopping at a minimarket. The cashier there, a young man from Mali, keeps telling me not to be afraid.

“They’re not going to make me change my life,” he said of the attackers. “I’ll go wherever I want.”

I’ve been getting this lecture all the time. “You cannot be afraid, Madame,” said the lady who runs one of my daughter’s extracurricular activities, when we didn’t show up soon after the attacks.

In Paris these days, it’s not chic to admit that you’re terrified.…  Seguir leyendo »

Police officers outside the Stade de France in Paris on Friday. Credit Michel Euler/Associated Press

InternacionalTerrorismo InternacionalEuropaUnión Europea, ,

It is a perfectly normal dinner party until someone stands up, checks his phone, and says: I think there’s been an explosion, at the Stade de France.

My husband is not at the dinner because he is at the Stade de France as a journalist. Everyone runs for their phones. I say something I’ve never said before at a Parisian dinner party:

Could we turn on the TV?

Soon people are staring at their phones and calling out the names of familiar places: Le Cambodge restaurant — the hipster noodle shop near the Canal St.-Martin. I passed near there on my way to dinner.…  Seguir leyendo »

The refugee camp known as the Jungle in Calais, France. Philippe Wojazer/Reuters

EuropaUnión EuropeaPolítica Inmigración

When I moved to France 12 years ago, it was like arriving in an unfriendly paradise. Sure, hardly anyone spoke to me. But there was national paid maternity leave and free preschool. Practically everyone seemed to agree on the need for strict gun laws, and access to birth control and abortion. Not only did the whole country have health insurance; most undocumented immigrants could get medical and dental care free. (Cruelly, their thermal bath cures weren’t covered.)

I also came to appreciate the way the French think, as explained by Sudhir Hazareesingh in his aptly named new book, “How the French Think.”…  Seguir leyendo »

A volunteer gave refugees an English lesson last week in a makeshift library at the "Jungle" refugee camp in Calais, France. Credit Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times

EuropaUnión EuropeaPolítica Inmigración

“You like the place?”

That’s what people in the “Jungle” of Calais keep asking me. They want to know what I think of this dirty, unelectrified stretch of land below a highway, filled with camping tents, plastic-covered sheds and frightening toilets. It’s a temporary home for several thousand people, most of whom have recently fled East Africa or the Middle East.

I’m not sure how to reply to this question. Should I be polite and say the Jungle isn’t so bad? I quickly realize that’s the wrong answer. These men want to hear the same thing I’d want to hear if I lived here: that it’s miserable and beneath their dignity.…  Seguir leyendo »

The French Do Buy Books. Real Books.

EuropaUnión Europea,

One of the maddening things about being a foreigner in France is that hardly anyone in the rest of the world knows what’s really happening here. They think Paris is a Socialist museum where people are exceptionally good at eating small bits of chocolate and tying scarves.

In fact, the French have all kinds of worthwhile ideas on larger matters. This occurred to me recently when I was strolling through my museum-like neighborhood in central Paris, and realized there were — I kid you not — seven bookstores within a 10-minute walk of my apartment. Granted, I live in a bookish area.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial, ,

At dinner recently, one of my 5-year-old twins announced that he intended to learn Croatian.

This didn’t surprise me. Mealtimes at our house have become low-level colloquia on international affairs. Often I play resident expert as the children fire questions at me: What language do they speak in Korea? Is Barcelona a country? Does someone in our family live in Iran?

Honestly, my kids used to talk about superheroes. But two months ago, my husband bought them each a World Cup sticker album. Within a week, they were full-blown soccer fanatics. They now trot off to school wearing soccer shirts, beg to watch matches the moment they get home and fall asleep clutching their albums.…  Seguir leyendo »