I miss the US. I haven't been back in two years and many of my American friends who have expatriated themselves to France can't understand why, but I miss it. I miss NY. Sadly there isn't a t-shirt for that, but lately I've been missing New York City and to rub it in, a girlfriend of mine just announced she's off to NYC for a couple of weeks.
Since I supplied her with an extensive list of places to eat, drink, and be merry, she has nicely offered to bring me back 10 things I miss most about NYC that aren't perishable or likely to have her detained as she tries to fly out of JFK back to France. I've give this some solid thought because once she said non-perishable, the list I had in my head like a cheesecake from Junior's, a pastrami sandwich from Katz's, and a pizza from Grimaldi's needed revision. So here is my current list. I have until June 8th to sort it out entirely.
1. Old-fashioned metal biscuit cutters.
For the past six years I've been cutting biscuits with improvised objects and it's been a very messy affair - like Tiger and Elin Woods messy. My biscuits haven't been perfect since I moved to France and now that I'm determined to master baking, I'll be needing these for biscuits, cookies, and pastries.
2. Metal measuring cups and spoons.
While I grew up with the metric system most of my cookbooks are non-metric and while I have found measuring cups in France, they're always plastic and break when I need to measure out butter. Plus, I am pretty sick of measuring out exactly 123.47 grams of flour. Cooking is already complicated enough without having to measure dry and liquid ingredients to the second decimal place. Though kudos to recipe sites that allow you to convert to metric like http://www.allrecipes.com/.
3. Burt's Bees Honey Lip Balm
I have literally tried every type of lip balm I have found in France and none work as well as Burt's Bees. Last winter was a particularly harsh one here in France and I got a bad case of chapped lips. I haven't had lips that chapped since I first discovered making out as a teenager and not a single of the products I bought (I lost count after 12) really helped much. I knew somehow that if I could get my hands on some Burt's it'd take care of it, but I simply couldn't find Burt's in Paris. I went to organic health food stores and pharmacies and even to the stores that carry American products. In the end I rubbed coccoa butter on my lips, but it was so disgusting I couldn't bring myself to do it more than a few times. My doctor here told me to stop licking my lips and it'd go away. Thanks for the advice Doc. As if I didn't know that. It's not exactly an easy thing not to do given it's a natural instinct to do so when your lips are chapped. It's not my fault that no French cosmetics company has been able to make a decent lip balm.
4. Dr. Scholl's Fast Flats
You can find Dr. Scholl's products in France, if you're willing to pay 3x as much for them, but those of us who love heels know one cannot wear them without some kind of miracle gel insert. I used to buy mine at Dwayne Reade for a couple dollars, so imagine my sticker shock when the same gel inserts here cost around 12,00 euros ($14). In NYC where I wore high heels pretty much even when I was in bed asleep, I always carried a pair of "fast flats" in my purse that could be rolled up and didn't take up much space. I've never seen a pair in France, but contrary to what Louboutin and Pierre Hardy would have you believe, French women aren't crazy about skyscraper high heels. Now in Italy wearing flats probably has some article in their penal code, but the truth is French women wear flats or very low heels most of the time. Given that I used to wear heels so often that people were amazed at my actual height (5'5) when I was barefoot, I got into the habit of wearing flats and now only wear heels when I have money for a taxi because it's still cheaper than buying gel inserts.
5. Towels
Yes you can buy towels in France - if you have a lot of money to spend you can even buy nice towels in France. The last time I was in the US I bought about 10 fluffy, extra large bath towels at Wal-mart for about $80. To buy similar quality towels in France would cost me about 250,00 euros. Since I don't see the point of taking a shower unless you can get out out and wrap yourself in an instantly absorbent and soft fluffy towel, I can always use more. If I spent 80,00 on towels in France I'd emerge from my steamy shower only to rub off one layer of skin no matter how much fabric softener I used in the washing cycle.
6. Sheet music for guitar
Since most of the sheet music sold in France is imported from elsewhere, by the time it's in the shops the price is marked up by at least double. I bought sheet music for The Smiths and it cost me 52,00 euros. The same book of sheet music is only $17 at the most expensive music store in NYC.
So what sheet music will I ask her for? The Beatles songbook (72,00 euros vs. $30.00), Radiohead (45,00 euros vs $21.00), and The Bob Dylan songbook (35,00 euros vs. $18.00).
Whether or not I will ever master guitar well enough to play anything beyond the first four chords of Karma Police or the beginning of The Clash's Should I Stay or Should I Go (it's just D and G) remains to be seen, but I'd like to see the actual guitar tabs and give it a go and for the price I can actually afford to.
7. Ingredients for baking yummy American desserts.
To make 2 dozen Nestle Tollhouse cookies buying the ingredients from an American grocery store in Paris (minus eggs, flour, and regular sugar that I can buy at any French grocery store) costs about 25,00 euros. The Nestle Tollhouse chips alone are 9,00 for a 1lb bag and I like a lot of chips in my cookies because I make them fairly big. So I've asked for as many boxes of Domino's Light Brown Sugar, jars of molasses, bags of Hershey's Kisses, and bags of Nestle Tollhouse milk chocolate chips she can carry. She said she'd do her best as long as of course, some of those cookies were to make it her way. I've promised that at least a few would. But just a few because I really love chocolate chip cookies. Too much actually.
8. A Black & Decker Dustbuster
While there are a few similar products here in France, vacuum cleaners in general leave little to be desired here. I'm not sure why this is, but perhaps it's due to the fact that very few French appartments have carpets.
9. Secret Deodorant
It's a myth that French women don't shave their legs or armpits. Actually I think French women are very fastidious about body hair. Any trip to a department store here will amaze you with the amount of epilators on sale. French people also for the most part wear deordorant. The problem is deodorant brands here aren't as good as Secret. I've tried everything and nothing compares and nothing is worse than holding on to the pole in the Metro and realising that the stank you smell is coming from your own armpit. Unless you're on Line 4 from April - October. Then your stank is merely combining with everyone else's stank to make a super stank. I try not to ride the Line 4 in the summer months if I can avoid it and suggest you take my advice on this as well.
10. As many notebooks as she feels fit to carry.
I used to think that I was the only one who felt French stationary was inferior to American stationary, but I'm not. The last time I went back to the US I came back with 10 notebooks for a friend who also hates French stationary. As a writer I need notebooks. Henry Miller suggested writing in notebooks and ignoring what you wrote, but I use my notebooks religiously and while I love the medium sized format of the soft cover Moleskins, they're really quite expensive. What I want are some cheap CVS single subject spiral bound notebooks. I can buy 18 of those for the price of one Moleskin (16,00 euros) here in France. As long as they're college ruled.
I've already been told I won't get everything on my Americancentric Wish List because she'll likely be bringing things back to France for herself, but since I'm hoping to make it back to NYC in the fall I'll pick up the rest myself. So if you see a girl in October buying massive quantities of gel inserts, Secret deodorant, and notebooks at a Dwayne Reade come over and say hello.
I'll be making a similar list of things a lady should buy while in France, once I can narrow it down to less than 40 things because despite my complaints, there are some really great things here as well. Like the very best shampoo in all the world. Screw Bumble & Bumble!
Since I supplied her with an extensive list of places to eat, drink, and be merry, she has nicely offered to bring me back 10 things I miss most about NYC that aren't perishable or likely to have her detained as she tries to fly out of JFK back to France. I've give this some solid thought because once she said non-perishable, the list I had in my head like a cheesecake from Junior's, a pastrami sandwich from Katz's, and a pizza from Grimaldi's needed revision. So here is my current list. I have until June 8th to sort it out entirely.
For the past six years I've been cutting biscuits with improvised objects and it's been a very messy affair - like Tiger and Elin Woods messy. My biscuits haven't been perfect since I moved to France and now that I'm determined to master baking, I'll be needing these for biscuits, cookies, and pastries.
While I grew up with the metric system most of my cookbooks are non-metric and while I have found measuring cups in France, they're always plastic and break when I need to measure out butter. Plus, I am pretty sick of measuring out exactly 123.47 grams of flour. Cooking is already complicated enough without having to measure dry and liquid ingredients to the second decimal place. Though kudos to recipe sites that allow you to convert to metric like http://www.allrecipes.com/.
I have literally tried every type of lip balm I have found in France and none work as well as Burt's Bees. Last winter was a particularly harsh one here in France and I got a bad case of chapped lips. I haven't had lips that chapped since I first discovered making out as a teenager and not a single of the products I bought (I lost count after 12) really helped much. I knew somehow that if I could get my hands on some Burt's it'd take care of it, but I simply couldn't find Burt's in Paris. I went to organic health food stores and pharmacies and even to the stores that carry American products. In the end I rubbed coccoa butter on my lips, but it was so disgusting I couldn't bring myself to do it more than a few times. My doctor here told me to stop licking my lips and it'd go away. Thanks for the advice Doc. As if I didn't know that. It's not exactly an easy thing not to do given it's a natural instinct to do so when your lips are chapped. It's not my fault that no French cosmetics company has been able to make a decent lip balm.
4. Dr. Scholl's Fast Flats
You can find Dr. Scholl's products in France, if you're willing to pay 3x as much for them, but those of us who love heels know one cannot wear them without some kind of miracle gel insert. I used to buy mine at Dwayne Reade for a couple dollars, so imagine my sticker shock when the same gel inserts here cost around 12,00 euros ($14). In NYC where I wore high heels pretty much even when I was in bed asleep, I always carried a pair of "fast flats" in my purse that could be rolled up and didn't take up much space. I've never seen a pair in France, but contrary to what Louboutin and Pierre Hardy would have you believe, French women aren't crazy about skyscraper high heels. Now in Italy wearing flats probably has some article in their penal code, but the truth is French women wear flats or very low heels most of the time. Given that I used to wear heels so often that people were amazed at my actual height (5'5) when I was barefoot, I got into the habit of wearing flats and now only wear heels when I have money for a taxi because it's still cheaper than buying gel inserts.
5. Towels
Yes you can buy towels in France - if you have a lot of money to spend you can even buy nice towels in France. The last time I was in the US I bought about 10 fluffy, extra large bath towels at Wal-mart for about $80. To buy similar quality towels in France would cost me about 250,00 euros. Since I don't see the point of taking a shower unless you can get out out and wrap yourself in an instantly absorbent and soft fluffy towel, I can always use more. If I spent 80,00 on towels in France I'd emerge from my steamy shower only to rub off one layer of skin no matter how much fabric softener I used in the washing cycle.
6. Sheet music for guitar
Since most of the sheet music sold in France is imported from elsewhere, by the time it's in the shops the price is marked up by at least double. I bought sheet music for The Smiths and it cost me 52,00 euros. The same book of sheet music is only $17 at the most expensive music store in NYC.
So what sheet music will I ask her for? The Beatles songbook (72,00 euros vs. $30.00), Radiohead (45,00 euros vs $21.00), and The Bob Dylan songbook (35,00 euros vs. $18.00).
Whether or not I will ever master guitar well enough to play anything beyond the first four chords of Karma Police or the beginning of The Clash's Should I Stay or Should I Go (it's just D and G) remains to be seen, but I'd like to see the actual guitar tabs and give it a go and for the price I can actually afford to.
7. Ingredients for baking yummy American desserts.
To make 2 dozen Nestle Tollhouse cookies buying the ingredients from an American grocery store in Paris (minus eggs, flour, and regular sugar that I can buy at any French grocery store) costs about 25,00 euros. The Nestle Tollhouse chips alone are 9,00 for a 1lb bag and I like a lot of chips in my cookies because I make them fairly big. So I've asked for as many boxes of Domino's Light Brown Sugar, jars of molasses, bags of Hershey's Kisses, and bags of Nestle Tollhouse milk chocolate chips she can carry. She said she'd do her best as long as of course, some of those cookies were to make it her way. I've promised that at least a few would. But just a few because I really love chocolate chip cookies. Too much actually.
While there are a few similar products here in France, vacuum cleaners in general leave little to be desired here. I'm not sure why this is, but perhaps it's due to the fact that very few French appartments have carpets.
9. Secret Deodorant
It's a myth that French women don't shave their legs or armpits. Actually I think French women are very fastidious about body hair. Any trip to a department store here will amaze you with the amount of epilators on sale. French people also for the most part wear deordorant. The problem is deodorant brands here aren't as good as Secret. I've tried everything and nothing compares and nothing is worse than holding on to the pole in the Metro and realising that the stank you smell is coming from your own armpit. Unless you're on Line 4 from April - October. Then your stank is merely combining with everyone else's stank to make a super stank. I try not to ride the Line 4 in the summer months if I can avoid it and suggest you take my advice on this as well.
10. As many notebooks as she feels fit to carry.
I used to think that I was the only one who felt French stationary was inferior to American stationary, but I'm not. The last time I went back to the US I came back with 10 notebooks for a friend who also hates French stationary. As a writer I need notebooks. Henry Miller suggested writing in notebooks and ignoring what you wrote, but I use my notebooks religiously and while I love the medium sized format of the soft cover Moleskins, they're really quite expensive. What I want are some cheap CVS single subject spiral bound notebooks. I can buy 18 of those for the price of one Moleskin (16,00 euros) here in France. As long as they're college ruled.
I've already been told I won't get everything on my Americancentric Wish List because she'll likely be bringing things back to France for herself, but since I'm hoping to make it back to NYC in the fall I'll pick up the rest myself. So if you see a girl in October buying massive quantities of gel inserts, Secret deodorant, and notebooks at a Dwayne Reade come over and say hello.
I'll be making a similar list of things a lady should buy while in France, once I can narrow it down to less than 40 things because despite my complaints, there are some really great things here as well. Like the very best shampoo in all the world. Screw Bumble & Bumble!
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