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all I know is weddings never start on time.
I don't start playing anymore until I see the bride.


Doreen Hall

www.palomapiano.com

Thanks for the kind words. I've been slowly scanning my parents' old slides and photos. Here's something "on-topic" (long-time readers will recognize the irony) for this thread:

Jean and Tony Guarino
Married May 25th, 1952

My Dad would have been 31, and my Mom 26 on that day.

Beautiful!! A perfect post.

Congratulations: Let's Talk Weddings has tipped over 3,000,000 hits, apparently reaching 3,000,805 sometime during the night. Here it seemed we were in a cozy little backwater, when we were actually playing out in the Interstate.

I jotted down on my desk blotter the raw figures, starting with 2,997,947 on Monday 3/2/15. On Tuesday 3/3 it was 2,999,198, and Wednesday 3/4 it is 3,000,805. And that means that from Monday to Tuesday, the one-day total was 1251 hits, and from Tuesday to Wednesday it was 1607.

I hastily called the jobber and placed a much larger order for cases of chilled champagne, than I had anticipated needing. More cut-crystal glasses, more waiters, a bigger ballroom, a longer piano, a larger orchestra, more giant cakes with more strippers to jump out of them. I alerted haberdashers within a fifty-mile radius, that there might be a run on tuxedos. When I called the media, I learned that they already knew, having heard it over the police radio. The airports were already deploying red carpets to the landing gates. CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and The Wedding Channel already had their mobile units parked out front, with their microwave dishes extended like so many sunflowers, following the satellites across the sky.

And when I tried to call Robin, I learned that news of her recent unemployment had caused such a stampede of suitors that she had found it necessary to employ a secretary--- with an assistant.

Well! See you at the fete.

I'll be there. I'll be the one in the black dress. Oh what the heck—I'll wear the tiara.

Three million? This astounds me. Thanks to all of you!

xoxoxo RMG

While we're on the subject of statistics, I happened to notice the "Print Topic" function under "Topic Options" today. I clicked it. To my surprise, it opens a screen that shows all of the posts at once; not "paged".

I was curious to get a handle on just how much text that came to, so I keyed in "CTRL-A" and then "CTRL-C" to copy the whole thing. Then I pasted it into MS Word.

And waited.

It took a good couple of minutes, partly because it seemed to be downloading the photos that were in the posts directly from the web. I left the Word Default settings, which provide for something like 1" margins on Letter size paper. The text pasted in with formatting, so the heading for each post is in larger print. There are spaces after the headers, and there's some quoted text. All of that makes the "packing" a little inefficient, padding the space the thread takes up a bit.

Any guesses as to how many pages it came to?



864. Yes, really.

I've been thinking about what 3 million hits means. Does anyone know how it's tabulated? Does each "read" of each "post" get counted as a hit? In other words, if someone comes along and reads the whole thread, does that count as 1600 hits? Or maybe it's by pages? Or each discrete visit?

I'll bet a lot of people have actually read the whole thread, which would be the equivalent of a 500-600 page book. Quite the phenomenon you've started, Robin.

"...Any guesses as to how many pages it came to?..."

That sounds like a very fine Wedding Jeopardy question to me. Weed out the amateurs.

Love these forum fun facts.

I'll take Buttercup Blondeau for 500.

It snowed here yesterday afternoon and evening, including for several hours past the vernal equinox, i.e., in Springtime. Snow is unusual in the NYC area in March, but it's been an unusual winter. We didn't get the nine feet of snow they got in Boston, but it was consistently colder than usual, frequently in the single digits Fahrenheit, for a very long time.

The snow didn't add up to much, but the driving conditions were a little dicey and the restaurant we played in is 37.8 miles from my house. That precision may seem a little "Spock-like" for a musician, but we've played in this place several hundred times; sometime in the distant past I clocked it on the trip odometer.

I got there late; exceeding my usual lateness by 20 minutes or so. We were to play at 9:00; I arrived at 8:50. Still, I wasn't too agitated about it. It takes me maybe 15 minutes to set up my gear.

For some reason the owner asked us to wait a bit before starting. There were fewer than half the usual number of people there, but I believe he was delaying us so one more reserved party could arrive.

There was another break in the action in the middle of the second set. A woman collapsed from - depending on whom you ask - high blood pressure, bad lasagna or alcohol. One of our band members is a nurse, so he lent a hand until the ambulance arrived. It's one-stop-shopping when you hire us.

Anyway, all of that stuff above was a long-winded way of saying we had a lot of time to sit around and chew the fat. You'd think we'd be out of material by now; our average acquaintance with each other goes back decades. But you'd be wrong.

We have a female singer now; our most recent addition. But several of us know her from a band we played in about 25 years ago. She told a story that I liked, even though I was allegedly there when it happened.

Her daughter, now comfortably grown up, would have been a young child. Camille would sometimes bring her to rehearsal if there was no one else to watch her. On this occasion she brought pencils, crayons and paper. She decided to draw a picture of the band, including each member.

We were seven pieces then: 4 piece rhythm section, sax and two vocalists. We were all in the drawing and - like saints in stained glass windows - we each had a characteristic feature by which we could be distinguished.

Marty with a canary-yellow saxophone.
Joe with a fire-engine-red guitar.
Tommy with several boxy outlines of drums arrayed around him.
Greg (me) with a keyboard with 12 or 13 keys
Camille and Bobby with oversized microphones.
And Willie (our bass player) with ... a beer.

More between-set table banter:

Lyrics

One of our singers was mentioning a very old song that he has only very recently discovered the correct lyrics for: "Twistin' the Night Away" by Sam Cooke. He had always heard (and sung) "He's dancin' with the chicken slacks", which left him a lttle perplexed. He said he thought maybe that was some sort of '50s fashion. Turns out the lyric is "... dancin with the chick in slacks".

A further note: These days Google Search reveals that nearly everything we do, say and think has been done, said or thought by numerous other people. So it is with misheard lyrics; so much so that there is actually an R&B band named (I love this) "The Chicken Slacks".

Old Grudges Die Hard

We have a couple of more recent members, who give us an excuse to revisit some of our older stories. Of course, we got around to the Fat Naked Drunk at the Pool Party. (the story is upthread somewhere)

As some of you may remember, our bass player (Willie) was taking a rare turn as frontman; a party guest was filling in on bass. Most of the band was already chuckling at the scene for a good thirty seconds before Willie finally turned around during the guitar solo, finding the naked guy a few feet behind him.

Willie was knocked backward by the shock, almost exactly like that old film of a guy taking a cannonball in the gut. Enough so that he was really unable to see the humor in it. This only made it funnier for the rest of us, of course.

Willie walked over as we were telling the story the other night. It turns out that his reaction has changed little all these years later. "Hey man, you don't do that to a guy, sneak up behind him naked...". Needless to say, this made us all laugh even harder.

Art

Quite a ways back we did a theme party of some kind. It was held in a place that was a meticulous simulation of a fifties Diner, but strangely, was located in the basement of an office building.



I must have arrived much earlier than usual, because our drummer was still making trips loading in his gear, Typically Tommy is already set up before I even leave my house.

He was walking out of the building as I was coming in. He looked annoyed. He said "Do me a favor. Walk over to that security guard down the hall and ask him how to get to the Diner"

"Why? You've already found it, right?"

"Yeah. But that son of a bitch didn't even look in my direction. I knocked on the window, waved at him, nothing."

I carried my gear through the long lobby. Along the way I noticed what must have been modern art pieces; a pile of fire hoses, a stack of railroad ties - that sort of thing.

Finally I came to the glassed-in security booth. Sure enough, the guard was inside with his arms folded. A middle-aged paunchy fellow in a uniform and a hat, could have used a little closer shave. And sure enough, he seemed to take no notice of me either.



I took a closer look. His name tag read "Art". Hmmmm. And he didn't seem to be moving at all. Or breathing. Satisfied that "Art" was, well "art", I brought my gear the rest of the way in.

But Tommy remained unconvinced. I have to say that Art was masterfully executed. It would be hard to discern his true nature from a brief glance.

Tommy decided that he was going back up the lobby on the first break. "I'm gonna sneak up the hallway and then jump in front of the window all of a sudden. Let's see if he doesn't flinch then!" And indeed, Tommy did that. Art remained unmoved. Tommy was wavering, but still wasn't sure Art wasn't flesh and blood.

Tommy visited Art again on the way out, even giving him the finger for good measure, but to no avail.

As I mentioned before, the Internet allows for very little uniqueness. I found a NY Times article that described Tommy's reaction perfectly; as repeated over and over by new visitors to the building.

I played at a wedding where one of the couples was dancing wildly, as so often happens. The band was completely unprotected, with no stage or anything. Finally, the young lady lost her partner's hand and spun into the band. Fortunately, I was playing trumpet at the time, so I was standing and was able to check her progress. She would have toppled the microphone and landed on the drummer. I switched my trumpet to my left hand, grabbed the mic stand with my right hand, then caught the dancer in the crook of my right arm. She was moving like a torpedo, so it was quite an impact! Strangely, I played my trumpet solo without a perceivable interruption.

On another occasion I played piano at my ex-girlfriend's wedding. Just before going on to play I heard her make a speech in which she told everyone how her husband was the only man who could make her laugh. "That's funny," I thought. She used to say that to me!

On another gig (a wedding?) I found a message on my mobile's voicemail during the break. There was no real message, just a jazz band playing. I realised it was us. On investigation, we discovered that the musician next to me had accidentally called me while we were doing the last set.

The Chicken Slacks and ART. Keep 'em coming, Greg. ART reminds me of the crash-test mannequin that replaced me at the Marriott Marquis flagship hotel in Manhattan. Sorry, but I have a knee-jerk reaction to dummies taking jobs from humans. In fact, ART could be the same dummy. When he took my job at the piano he was wearing a tux, but when Local 802 and Downbeat Magazine created a scene over a dummy stealing work from four musicians (and encouraged music lovers to boycott the hotel) my dummy went AWOL pretty quickly. Maybe that's him in the security uniform.

APP, thanks for your stories. I particularly like the take of the butt dial from the musician next to you on the stand. Very funny.

Here is my latest essay, all about Paris. I played a concert there last week. I've not yet played a wedding in Paris, but there's still time.

Happy reading!

An American in Paris

Whenever I visit Paris, I want to be a tourist. I want to fall in love. I want to be enchanted. I want magic and romance and art and a big crusty baguette. I crave the silvery slanted light that seeps over the horizon in late morning and clings to the edges of the city until sunset. If I’m not actually in the Eiffel Tower I want to be staring at it from a distance, watching, in the early evening, as it sparkles like the world’s largest bottle of champagne.

I know Parisian food can be overpriced, French fashion can be overrated, and snootiness often underscores daily life. I know the political situation in France leaves much to be desired; racism and the nationalistic tendencies of some citizens pull on the frayed sleeves of others. I know these things, but still I cannot look away from the golden patina of the city itself. The city glows. I walk through Paris in my somber black clothes, like I’m trying to absorb a bit of the city’s smoldering blush. If only.

I’ve been to Paris seven times. Here are some jumbled notes from those visits :

1977: Pittsburgh to Paris

My college roommate, Debra, and I attend Chatham College for women, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We have been in London on a study trip for the last six weeks and feel a strong desire to visit Paris. Who knows when we’ll be this close again? Between the two of us we have twenty four dollars. Off we go. Allez!

In Paris, we stay in a hotel with a bidet in the room and a toilet down the hall. We think the bidet is a place to wash our undies (that’s one way of looking at it). So we dutifully rinse our panties and socks in the bidet every night, impressed by French plumbing. Madame, a stout woman with a severe face and a demi-beard, serves chocolate croissants for breakfast. I drink hot milk from a bowl and pretend I’m sophisticated. I feel far away from Pittsburgh.

We go sightseeing. We can’t afford admission to any of the museums, so we stay outside, shivering in the Jardin des Tuileries, and eating chocolate crêpes made with Nestlé Quik. We stare at the Eiffel Tower. We walk a thousand kilometers because the Metro scares us. Hiking through Paris can be a pleasure, but Deb insists on wearing red cowboy boots with five-inch stiletto heels. She bought them in London and hobbles through Paris looking like a Monroeville Mall hooker out for une aventure française. We say “ooh-la-la” and sing Jacques Brel songs until a smarmy man wearing tight pants and several earrings tries to grab Deb’s ass. In a rare act of physical revenge—I’ve always been a wimp—I punch the little guy in the nose and we run away, no easy thing in those cowboy boots. For many decades, Debra will claim I saved her life. Merci beaucoup.

Debra almost gets arrested when we pay tribute at the tomb of the unknown soldier under the Arc de Triomph and she inadvertently tramples on the tomb. Teetering on those red boots while attempting to take a snapshot of moi, she has backed up and stepped right onto the poor soldier’s grave, the spikes of her heels firmly planted over the commemorative plaque. A Gendarme in a spiffy blue suit—don’t we just love their hats?— screams, “Attention!” at her, along with other French invectives we don’t understand. I suspect he’s saying, “Get the f*** off the grave you idiot,” but who knows? When Deb attempts to flee, her stilettos catch between two cobblestones. Stuck! Eventually she frees herself and we exit the Arc stage left, our heads bowed in shame. A flame burns next to the tomb. We’re lucky she doesn’t catch on fire.

That night we pool our remaining funds and visit the Folies Bergère. We are seated in the last row—quite a climb with those red boots—right next to two American soldiers from the South Side of Pittsburgh, our hometown. “Wait till yinz guys see the babes,” they say, in perfect Pittsburghese. “Foxy!” I’m discovering that people from Pittsburgh lurk everywhere, even in block Y of a topless Parisian cabaret. Slack-jawed, we gawk at the naked dancers as they hang, upside down, from the bejeweled ceiling. We don’t have this kind of thing in Pittsburgh; certainly not on the South Side. Deb decides we need to add feathers to our college girl wardrobe when we get back home, something I’m sure will be a big hit at our feminist school. We eat several more Nestlé Quik chocolate crêpes and head back to London the next day.

2003: Circus, Circus

We live outside of Cologne, Germany, skipping distance from Paris on the Thalys, a high speed train that whisks us through Belgium and into Paris in four and a half hours. Our daughter, Julia, is six; our son, Curtis, is nine. Short on cash, but desperate to get away for a weekend, we’ve booked a seedy hotel room above a Chinese restaurant next to the Gare Saint-Lazare. As transplanted New Yorkers, we should know better than to stay next to a train station, but we’ve booked late, we’re strapped for cash, and it’s Easter vacation, so we’re lucky to find anything at all.
We eat baguette sandwiches at the Tuileries, engage in a spirited conversation with a French pharmacist when one of the kids gets sick, walk up Montmartre to Sacre Coeur, listen to a cellist playing Mozart next to the cathedral steps, check out the gargoyles at Notre Dame, and spend many hours looking for an affordable restaurant for a family of four. We dodge pickpockets and dance between the raindrops. It drizzles almost constantly. I love Paris in the springtime, when it—oh, never mind.
Julia and I attend a free fashion show at Galeries Lafayette, presented under a stained glass dome on the top floor of the store. She laughs through the entire program, amused by the flashy ready-to-wear costumes, and charmed by haughty models who every now and then break character and smile at her. During the finale, when the models glide over the catwalk sporting bridal gowns that resemble spun sugar, Julia says, “Mommy, this is just like the circus.”

We visit a small park for children that features an amusement park, a dusty playground, and a petting zoo. While waiting in line for croissants, we meet a Chinese American family from Los Angeles. The kids ride together on a dangerous looking roller coaster that threatens to derail at every turn. John and I drink coffee and chat with the parents. They are staying in the Hilton, close to the Eiffel Tower. I think about the firetrap where we’re lodging and vow never to return to Paris until we can afford a decent place to stay. They leave the park in a taxi; we walk to the Metro. We promise to stay in touch, but we won’t.

We take the kids for a boat ride on the Seine. Look at those bridges! Julia pretends to pilot the boat. Curtis pretends he is traveling without parents.

We eat chocolate crêpes made with Nestlé Quik.


2005: Room with a View

Girls’ Weekend! Julia and I stay in a charming little hotel on Montmartre; a step up from our 2003 train station rat-hole. We have to walk up a steep hill to get to our digs, but it’s worth the climb. From our room, if we lean out the window and swivel our heads just the right way, we can see the Eiffel Tower. We drop our bags and head right over there, stopping for mousse au chocolat on the way. We climb to the second level of the tower and stay for two hours, watching the sun poke through storm clouds, spotlighting various landmarks. From our steely perch we plan the next two days; where we’ll go, what we’ll see. I’m determined my daughter will love Paris, that she’ll speak a little French some day, that she’ll soak up Parisian art and beauty and claim it as her own.

We visit the Louvre and Musée D’Orsay. We go to the Rodin garden and tour Notre Dame. Julia is nine years old and takes in the architecture and culture like a seasoned pro. She plans all of our trips on the Metro, circling stops on a paper map with a pink magic marker. After a day of non-stop tourist activity, she sleeps soundly in our little hotel room.

I discover we can go to Disneyland Paris on the train—for the bargain price of ninety euros, including train ticket and admission for both of us to the park. I’m not keen on confusing Paris with Disneyland, but our girl is nine years old and if not now, when? I don’t tell her where we’re going. We get off the train, she sees the pink castle, and doesn’t stop laughing the entire day. Mickey Mouse, it turns out, exudes even more charm when he speaks French. Goofy is another story, but you can’t have everything. We avoid the souvenir stands, eat lunch in the Pirates of the Caribbean restaurant—Jul is a little scared of the pirate waiter, who wears an eye patch—and watch French Tinkerbell descend from the Magic Kingdom castle. Is it my imagination, or is Tinkerbell wearing red lipstick? We take the train back to Paris, all the while singing “It’s a Small World” in French (Le monde est petit, après tout).

In a quaint restaurant in Montmartre Julia orders the children’s hot dog special, served with a kid-friendly combination of Roquefort cheese and sauteed onions. My American daughter scrapes off the goop, shrugs her shoulders, and says, “C’est la vie.”

2007: Marais, Meurice, Monet

Julia and I arrive in the Marais to meet up with our dear American friends, Carole and Emilio, who have rented a lovely little apartment in Paris’s most charming district. We stay in a hotel across the street.

All of us are on a tight budget, we go for long walks and boast about our ability to visit Paris without spending a fortune. The weather, for once, plays along, and we walk for hours. We ride on a Ferris wheel, people watch, and drink chilled white wine in the Tuileries. Julia needs a restroom, so we stroll into the Meurice Hotel. Carole, Julia, and I go to the ladies’ room, or the Queen’s Potty, as Jul calls it. We spend a bit of time in there, lounging and lolling about in velvet chairs, splashing cool water on our faces, repairing our lipstick and powdering our shiny faces. When we emerge from the Queen’s Potty, Emilio, who occasionally thinks of himself as Thurston Howell III, has snagged us a table in the bar.

“Emilio,” says Carole. “We can’t do this. It’s really expensive here.”

“Ah, come on, you only live once,” he says. Emilio is wearing an ivory linen blazer. He looks like he was born in this hotel.
I
stay out of the fray—I’m too impressed by the hand painted ceiling and the jazz duo serenading us as we take our seats.

“You’ll be sorry,” says Carole.

The appropriately grumpy waiter takes our order. After consulting a menu (one without prices), Carole and I go all-in and request champagne with crushed rose petals. Not to be outdone, Emilio orders a mint julep, which seems a little odd for Paris, but he’s paying, so mint julep it is. Julia orders a 7-Up.

“We do not have the 7-Up,” says the sneering waiter. “What we have is like the 7-Up, but it is not the 7-Up.”

He brings a tray of olives.

“Do you like olives?” Carole asks Julia.

“Not really,” says Julia, who is still recovering from the 2005 Roquefort cheese incident.

“Well you better learn, because we have to eat everything they give us. At these prices we’ll have to skip dinner.”

Mademoiselle eats about thirty olives. The bill comes—130 euros for four drinks. And that’s with fake 7-Up.

The next day we take a bus to Giverny and visit the Monet gardens. We see Claude’s water lilies—the ones he planted and painted, the Japanese bridge he built and recreated on canvas, the cathedral at Rouen. I feel like I’m standing right in the middle of a Monet painting. It moves me to tears.


2009: Fusion Gypsy-Jazz Guitar, Toile du Jouy, and Bronchitis

I am finally in a five-star Parisian hotel with my husband, John. He will perform tomorrow night with Biréli Lagrène and the WDR Big Band. Sadly, John has a bad case of bronchitis and can do nothing but stay in the hotel room and try to get better before this evening’s sound-check and performance. So much for our romantic weekend.

What to do. I hate to leave John suffering and hacking away alone in our suite, but I don’t get to Paris very often, I’m here for the first time since 1977 without kids, and I don’t particularly want to waste a day in a dark room watching CNN weather reports or French game shows. Nor does John want me to hang around. He wants to sleep. So I head to the fabric markets and stare longingly at bolts of toile de jouy, decorating, in my mind, the Parisian flat I’ll never own. I buy nothing, but I entertain myself for hours by running my fingers over the cloth. I consider heading over to the Meurice for the crushed rose-petal champagne cocktail, but show restraint and drink Sauvignon Blanc with my lunch. I walk. The wind chills me, but I go for a boat ride—the ultimate tourist activity. Strangely, I enjoy being alone in the City of Love. I should do this more often.

I arrive back at the hotel just in time for the concert. Birelli, the genius guitarist, sounds great; so does John. A little bronchitis can’t stop a good jazz musician. The next day John and I arrange a trip a deux to the pharmacy, where we snag a grab bag of specialty medications with instructions we don’t understand. We eat extremely spicy Indian food, which John can’t taste, but I assure him it’s delicious even though my head is on fire. We travel back home on the train. We’ve booked our tickets separately, so he sits in first class with the band. I ride in coach, fall asleep, and dream about bridges and fabric.

2010: Les Garçons

I travel with two sixteen year old boys to Paris—my son, Curtis, and his South African friend, Chris. We sit in different parts of the train and stay in separate hotel rooms, but, since I’m the gal with the money, we meet for meals. I spy on them at various tourist attractions, and, with the help of a cell phone and Chris’s bright red scarf, I spot them in the Eiffel Tower, high up on the second level, as I sit in an outdoor bar on the bank of the Seine. I wave to the boys and one of them waves the scarf. There’s something beautiful about this, but I’m not sure what it is. The Eiffel Tower reminds me of a teenage boy—tall and strong, but delicate somehow. Fragile, robust, stretching up, up, and away.

2015: Free the Girls

As often as I’ve been in Paris, I’ve never performed here. Until now. I’ve been invited to present my Piano Girl concert program for the AAWE, an American women’s organization, at Reid Hall, part of the Columbia University Global Center in the Montparnasse district. My concert will benefit “Free the Girls,” a program that rehabilitates victims of human trafficking and prostitution.

Julia has come along with me. She has recently spent some time here alone, but this is our first Paris trip together since the 7-Up episode at the Meurice. The Thalys trip now takes only three hours from Cologne—the railroad officials have upgraded that pesky Belgian stretch—and we arrive at our hosts’ apartment in no time at all.

Deborah and John, Americans who have lived in Paris for over fifteen years, reside in a huge old Parisian apartment in the 17th Arrondissement. It’s one of those big places with a tiny elevator, high ceilings, velvet sofas, and a gazillion books. French shabby chic. I could move in and not change a thing.

Our friend Sallie lives in the Marais. She takes Julia and me to lunch at her favorite bistro. Julia’s hot-dog days are long behind her—she has been a vegetarian for eight years, so we eat braised vegetables, salad, and a pear and almond cake for dessert. Sallie takes us on a tour of the Marais, starting at the Place des Vosges. The sun shines and we see pale green buds on the trees. The Marais has become a tourist attraction in recent years, but Sallie knows her way around. She shows us secret pathways leading into hidden gardens, down winding streets, and past historic half-timber homes.

On this trip I try, as I always do, to speak a little French. I give up. There’s always next time.

Rounding the corner in the Marais, eight military policemen, in full riot gear and carrying machine guns, march past us, patrolling the neighborhood. Their presence is a result of the Charlie Hebdo massacre and subsequent siege at a Jewish supermarket. Later that evening, Deborah shows me photos of soldiers at her synagogue, in the days following the attacks.

“The soldiers are still patrolling,” she says, as she rolls her homemade chocolate truffles, one by one, in powdered sugar.

I have grown up here, without meaning to. Every time I return, I’m a little further along on my trek through adulthood. I’ve gotten lost in back streets, struggled with the language, and learned to negotiate Paris both with and without money. I’ve traveled here with a red-booted friend, with curious children, nonchalant teenagers, and a handsome (but coughing) husband; as a teenager, as a mom, as a wife, as an artist. I’ve watched parades and concerts and street performers and now, soldiers. I’ve been cold and wet and exhausted and hungry in Paris; anxious and sad; startled and astounded, amused and elated. Never once have I been bored.

Paris remains a place of beauty. Man-made beauty, with extremely good lighting. Really, the city is a wonder.

I play my concert. We raise money for “Free the Girls.” Julia sings. I play some more and tell a few stories. Applause. We take a bow. The audience’s warm embrace scrapes the chill off the early spring day. After so many decades of getting to know the City of Light, maybe now it knows me, just a little. Time for a chocolate crêpe.

To "Another Piano Player":

I think you have managed to perfectly encapsulate the musician's place in the world in three short anecdotes. I especially love the image of a trumpet player intercepting the incoming missile party guest without missing a note. We should really give out medals.

Bravo.

Yes, I think awards are in order. The first annual "Let's Talk Weddings" awards ceremony . . . . where should we hold it? The ceremony, I mean. Maybe a catering hall? A castle? A ROOF?

And what will the statuette look like? A bride? An event planner? Lang Lang? Tempest Storm? Our own Frank Baxter?

We need categories. Clef, I expect you to chime in on this, but all suggestions are welcome.

I want to be on the nominating committee.

A Bridezilla, of course!

BTW, I really enjoy lurking in this thread! And Robin, I loved your Piano Girl book and just bought your Asparagus People book. You've inspired me to establish a goal of becoming a part-time cocktail pianist. (It's a shame that thread died out.). I'm only two years into my piano journey, but I am hoping that I can get there in another couple of years.

We've been to Paris three times, which is to say, we've made three trips to Europe, each of which included a few days in Paris. Two of those were many years ago, before our enfant (now 19) came along. The last was intended as a trip to Amsterdam, but we decided that Amy's first trip to Europe should really include Paris, and a train ride, so we went to both cities.



Fashion occurs in a dimension I apparently cannot perceive (ask anyone). The price of even a quite pedestrian meal can be high, especially for non-savvy tourists like us. We have experienced relatively little snootiness, certainly less than we were given to expect. This may be because we spoke a little French, and always at least began any conversation en Francais.



Our first Paris visit was on our honeymoon in 1987. Our Madame was about as close to the French stereotype as we have encountered. She ran, or possibly owned, the Hotel Crapp. OK, the sign outside read "Rapp", named for the avenue it was on, but we prefer truth in labeling.

The location was great, a very short walk from the Eiffel Tower, and just across the Pont de l'Alma from the Metro.

Our room at the Crapp was at the top of a long staircase, but wasn't quite level with the landing. Nothing was in fact quite level. Not the steps, not the floor and certainly not the bed. It had the topography of a failed soufflé, covered only with a bedspread that had hardened blobs of plaster stuck on it. Apparently it had recently done duty as a drop cloth. The pillow (singular) was a long cylinder that spanned the whole width of the bed.

The bathroom was up a tiny demi-step from the bedroom at perfect trip-hazard height. There were two towels on the rod; one I'd call a face towel, the other smaller, more like a hand towel.

There was also a sign, in French, warning us not to spray water all over the floor. That seemed odd, until I inspected the shower. The shower head, which consisted of of those movable wands stuck in a broken wall holder, was pointed as to spray horizontally, and was at least six inches above the top of the shower curtain. To get any water on me at all I needed to flatten myself against the far wall of the tub surround. The floor got more water than I did.

But hey, we were young and in Paris.

On our way back into the hotel that first evening we told the boy at the desk that we could use some more towels. We also mentioned in passing that the room was pretty dirty. A few moments later Madame thundered up the crooked stairway and pounded on our door. She demanded to know what was dirty.

My French was pretty undeveloped at the time, so I couldn't summon the words for "bedspread", “sheets”, "pillows", "lampshade", "carpet", "furniture", "tile", "walls", "drapes", “light bulbs”, “shower curtain” and "ceiling" quickly enough to convey the proper attitude.

"Tout est sale!" I barked. (Everything's dirty)

On that trip our previous stop was in Brussels, where we had been served fresh, warm croissants and rolls on white linen in an airy sunlit dining room. The Crapp's petit dejeuner was in the basement. Madame served what were apparently yesterday's pastries, scowling as she let the plates drop the last inch or so onto the bare tables.

We had been told that the French don't like Americans, but Madame had an admirable consistency with regard to other people; she treated the Germans, Brits and Italians with equal disdain, and the few French guests a little worse.



Even on that first visit, we took the Metro everywhere. We were a little older (a few months on either side of 30) and lifelong New Yorkers. Have multicolored map, will travel. In fact, when asked by an elderly Frenchman for directions on our second day in Paris, we attempted to help him. That, my friends, is a New Yorker.



Riding the trains around Europe on our first two trips was not merely transportation; it was part of the adventure. So as I mentioned above, we decided that Amy should get a taste of it also. Like Robin, we took the Thalys. But what arrived on the platform that morning in Amsterdam was decidedly less space-age than you'd hope for in a vehicle that was to hurtle along at 180 mph. It was a faded shade of red and frankly looked a little run down.

We had been on the TGV (French for "Trains of Big Speed") on our second Europe trip. It allegedly went as fast as 130 mph, but seemed from inside like every other train. I comforted myself that the Thalys would be similar.

It wasn't.

In the Netherlands and in Belgium it made lots of stops and was on tracks that had frequent curves; hence the "pokiness" Robin mentioned. But just after Brussels the track straightened out. We were passing reckless French drivers on wide-open highways as if they were in Deux-Chevaux, or possibly riding actual chevaux. And when another Thalys passed in the opposite direction I'd swear I could see Higgs Bosons being created before my eyes.

On that trip we stayed in what I believe was the 142nd Arondissment; Cincinnati is about the same distance from Notre Dame. My daughter's first few minutes in Paris were straight out of a madcap '60s movie. A French-speaking cab driver of North-African descent jerked the car into motion before we had completely closed the doors, and before he had any idea where the hotel was. It was on what was likely the least-known street in Paris, perhaps 150' in length.

He was simultaneously steering, thumbing through the Paris Atlas on the passenger seat and yelling at other drivers. All the while the New Yorkers in the back seat were shouting directions, naturellement. We got a ten-minute tour of just about everything in Paris, but again at CERN-like velocities. We saw the Louvre, the Musee d’Orsay, Notre Dame and many other famous monuments, seeing them as they were a few minutes in the past, if I’ve got my General Relativity right. And all of it set to an Afro-Pop soundtrack.



I guess certain sorts of experiences are universal. Despite the time-warp velocity of the Thalys (and the African cab), it had been a long day by the time we got settled in our hotel room. We opted to try the local 142nd arondissment cuisine rather than venture closer to the center of town.

The room, by the way, was much more "European" than our Amsterdam hotel. It was on the top floor of a narrow attached building and could be reached by a tight spiral staircase or a phone-booth sized elevator that came at irregular intervals. It's oddest feature flummoxed us for a while.

When we got to the room, nothing electrical worked; not even the lights. Amy finally found the answer. The power for the entire room was controlled by the key-card for the door lock. You had to leave the card in a little slot-device on the wall or nothing worked. This was apparently a power-saving measure. But we had only been given one card, so if one of us went out, the others had to sit in the dark. We quickly figured out that a postcard cut to the same shape worked just as well.

We walked outside in for an early dinner. Our street, tiny as it was, had a sidewalk cafe right in front of the hotel; two actually, as it turned out. We checked the menu. It looked suitably familiar and reasonably priced.

Upon sitting down we were presented with entirely different menus. Apparently the tiny sidewalk restaurant of twelve tables was actually two entirely unaffiliated restaurants with six tables each.

Still, we were tired, already seated, and there was pub food on this menu as well. In a risk-averse mood, it was Burgers and Cokes (real ones) all around. We had been having an enjoyable conversation with a Canadian couple at the next table, but eventually felt we’d probably occupied one of those six tables in the fully filled café for long enough.

I called over the waitress. "L'addition, sil-vous-plait?" The waitress brought the check. 65 Euros. The Cokes, which were not listed anywhere on the menu, were 8 Euros each, even though we were several lines of latitude away from the center of town. Eleven-dollar Cokes assuaged our guilt about Bogarting the table. We whiled the evening away chatting amiably by candlelight with the Canadians, whose bottle of wine came in at a little over two Cokes.

Being from New York, we were not unfamiliar with street musicians. So the bearded guitarist singing Bob Dylan songs on the commuter train we took from the airport on our second trip was no surprise. But we were unprepared for an entire 12 piece chamber ensemble in the lower level of the Gare Du Nord, featuring quite high-caliber playing.



The Bateaux Mouches are possibly the most touristy activity I can think of, but they are magical, especially at sunset. And reasonably priced too. By our new standard metric of cost-comparison, the tickets were a mere one-Coke expense. The bridges are a marvel and there are many of them, owing to the narrow span they cross.



We made that walk once as well, up the north side. Strenuous, but as you say, worth it. But on our 2009 trip we took the Metro directly to the nearest stop to Sacre Coeur. This may have been the deepest underground station I have ever encountered; well, in NYC there's one that involves several long escalator rides, but this one was a walk-up.

[quote
We visit the Louvre and Musée D’Orsay. [/quote]

The Musee d'Orsay may have been our biggest omission. I wish we'd managed to get there. Maybe someday.



I have it on good authority that the faux 7-Up was what really padded the check.


Once we had jury-rigged the electricity in our 142nd arondissment room, we flipped on the TV and found "The Love Boat", dubbed in French. My life is now complete. (We also once saw "Speedy Gonzales" in Montreal, dubbed in a spicy Mexican-French accent).



Like Robin, I also had to fetch a cold remedy from the local Pharmacie. But I went "seul". (alone)

"Difference" is what I love most about travel. I love the myriad little details that tell you you're not at home. The toilets flush with a button. The street signs are on the buildings. The little lighted silhouette that signals "walk" has a jaunty Gallic gait about him.

But sometimes I prefer familiarity.

My wife awoke after our first night there in a bad way. My French in general has perhaps progressed to "intermediate", but my “tourist French” is quite good. I can navigate transactions involving hotels, restaurants, directions and transportation without difficulty. But finding the appropriate formulation of Robitussin (of the dozen or so they make) is difficult enough at home, in English, so I boned up on some of the relevant words before I went out.

I saw a green cross sign just a few blocks from the hotel; apparently all Pharmacies have them. But as I approached the place I could see that it was nothing like I had envisioned. There were no aisles, no displays, nothing to pick from, just a counter with a pharmacist behind it. That looked a little daunting; I kept walking up what was a busy commercial avenue.

By the third similar Pharmacie I decided that that must simply be the arrangement in France. I went in. It was a Mom and Pop operation; Papa summoned Maman so the two of them could grill me together on my wife’s symptoms. They wondered aloud if what I described as "rhume" might actually be "la grippe"

After they were satisfied with their diagnosis, Maman went to the back of the store and returned with a package that contained several tear-open bags of powder. Maman explained that it was to be mixed with warm water into a drink.

On the way back to the hotel I hoped that getting warm water from the sink did not involve finding another secret contraption that made the plumbing work.

As it turned out, that powder was a wonder drug. By the afternoon Kim was up and about. Amy and I spent the morning finding someplace to go that was not on our list. We ended up at La Grande Arche in La Defense, a western suburb. It's a truly impressive building that resembles two narrow thirty-story skyscrapers spanned by a roof in between them.


I often wonder what it would be like to try to exist in a foreign language day in and day out. I imagine it's a daunting task. But I can say with confidence that speaking a foreign language as a tourist is always welcomed by the locals, and nearly always successful, no matter how poorly you do it.

I have spoken fairly-correct French and occasionally-correct Italian, have strung together a few phrases (learned from subway signs in NYC) en espagnol and have even tossed some phrase-book German in the direction of waiters and hotel clerks, all without detecting any visible annoyance in return.

My French has really improved over the years, mostly through frequent visits to Quebec. But what's changed even more is my attitude about it. I've become much less self-conscious about making mistakes. On our last trip to Quebec (in February), I had a couple of the longest conversations I have ever attempted, knowing full well that I was making errors all the time. But the people I was talking to got the message just fine. Humans will communicate, whatever the obstacle.



One of the first things we noticed, even back in 1987, was military (or military-equipped) personnel in security posts. This was unknown at home at the time. I had never seen police with "long guns" in NYC, and certainly had never seen them holding guns of any kind at the ready. Terrorism came to Europe earlier, I guess. In the days after 9/11/01, I thought about that as I saw similarly-outfitted personnel at Penn Station at home. That has mostly gone away, or at least become less visible on the years since.

We're planning a trip to the Gaspe peninsula this summer. I hear that besides some spectacular natural beauty, we should expect most of the people we meet to be monolingual in French. Sounds like fun.

We decided before we left Germany, the children must see one real Oktoberfest in Munich.

And we might as well do it on the train.

So we bought the weekend excursion ticket, the Schoeneswochenende. On the weekend that's unlimited travel for the family.

We were about to board the right train, then we found out there was a special Oktoberfest dedicated train, so we took that. Got there 3 hours after the regular train arrived.

At the end of the night we returned to the train station (Hauptbahnhof) only to find the last train heading to Kitzingen leaving, with over 100 passengers including us still unable to board.

Oops. Well, no problem, we have unlimited travel, we can get home somehow. And we did it, like a sailboat heading directly into the wind. You can't get there from here! But you can go left, and right, and past it, and back, making transfers in empty train stations in the middle of the night, hoping the speakers work in your traincar and you correctly translate the garbled auf Deutsch announcements. I don't know how much of Bavaria we crisscrossed but it must have been most of it by the time we got home.

Piano Girl,

Do you have a recipe for Nestle Quik crepes?

Tim, trains in Germany are great, except when they're not. Love the idea of you zig-zagging through Bavaria.

Greg, thanks for sharing all your Paris thoughts. Glad you took your daughter! I do speak French, but it is Haitian French, which to a Parisian, makes me sound like a hillbilly (personally, I LOVE Creole—it's got quite the musical lilt to it). I give upscale French my best Piano Girl try each time I visit, but with all the German wafting through my overworked brain, I tend to fold after a few days. My kids, who grew up multi-lingual, are much more relaxed than I am. I'll take French Tenses for 100 Alex (there are 14 of them!).

Plowboy—I have no idea how Parisian street vendors make their crepe batter, but I do know they pour the batter into a pan, then sprinkle a spoonful of Quik into it before they roll it up. Easy. The chocolate melds with the hot oil or butter or whatever it is and melts. I was appalled by this when I first visited, because I thought of Quik as being so American and so not-French, but then discovered the company's Swiss roots (Vevey).

Next stop: Steinway Haus in Munich on April 30. No, I will not be wearing a dirndl. They look great on some women, but I'm not one of them.

[A pre-post note: there will indeed be something like On-Topic content in this post]

Over the past several years the NY City Subway system has embarked on a program to make more of the stations handicapped-accessible. But the route from the street to the platforms is seldom straightforward, often involving several elevators, corridors and ramps. This is to be expected, considering that the mechanisms are being retrofitted into a system that was built a hundred years ago without accessibility in mind.

One common reason for this is that many of our subway stations have a mezzanine level that has what used to be called the "token booth" and the turnstiles that collect your fare, these days in the form of a card swipe. So at the least, you'd need an elevator from the street to the mezzanine, and another from the mezzanine to the platform.

But it gets more complicated, as clear space above-ground and (especially) below-ground to sink an elevator shaft is hard to come by. Dig anywhere in Manhattan and you'll find an absolute maze of cables, pipes, pilings and beams. The result is that the elevator from the street to the mezzanine may not be anywhere near the one from there to the train platform.

One of the stations I frequent is now accessible. Fairly often there are street musicians on the platforms. Over the years I have seen a violin-viola duo, a brass quartet and the occasional trio that includes drums, this in addition to the numerous solo performers.

A couple of weeks ago I was walking down one of the platforms. My ears perked up. I heard something "live". Despite the fact that the sound was still distant and in a noisy and extremely reverberant space, I knew it wasn't coming from speakers. I think that "live sense" is common among musicians, but uncommon among "civilians".

I walked down the platform, trying to find the source. Around the back side of one of the staircases was a fellow playing pretty impressive old-timey sounding piano, but what was more surprising was his instrument: An acoustic spinet piano.

Just imagine the dedication of a person who would roll a piano through the streets of Manhattan - up and down curbs, over potholes, dodging traffic - and then down the labyrinth that is the "accessible" route to the platform, paying a fare in the process.

That guy definitely gets one of our medals.