Raphael Schweitzer: Luxembourgish Hero

I'll be honest. When I talked to my mom on the phone this evening, I had every intention of telling her what happened over the course of the past week. But I couldn't remember.

I am still on vacation, by the way.

I blame this fact for the way the past seven days have blurred together.

This week was filled with wandering down narrow streets on the left bank and large boulevards on the right.

I learned that when a gallery purchases a piece of art for 50,000 euros or more (an occurance which happens often, apparently) and has the intent to sell it, possibly overseas, it is necessary to register it with the museums bureau to ensure that it is not a national treasure. If it is not a national treasure, the bureau will give the gallery what is essentially a passport for the piece of art in question. It was my duty on Tuesday to go and retrieve three such passports. "You can take Faubourg St. Honore. Look at the boutiques," Anais said as she handed me an envelope. "But not too much," Yannick added. Here's what's new on the Faubourg: Lanvin's got clowns in suits and Christian Dior has designed a triangle bikini for your 18-month-year-old.When it rains in Paris it doesn't seem to last longer than 15 minutes. I find that a good way to make it stop is to get on the metro when it starts raining and ride it for two stops. And when you exit the metro and are above ground, you can silently reflect on this and that makes the sun come out. I swear it works.

Here's a list of people I met this week: DJ People's Champion, an Australian backpacker, a large group of students from Luxembourg, two French girls who condemned all Frenchmen, a Swede, and a woman who wore green mascara and sold me some sausage. It was a good week for meeting people.

I also started reading Harry Potter in French.

Paris has a sort of "First Friday" of its own, but it's a First Sunday, and all that entails is free admission to many museums and monuments. Selene and I took advantage of this today and visited Sainte Chapelle and climbed the towers of Notre Dame. The Paris Roofline is slowly inching its way up the list of My Favorite Things








There's this photo exhibit at Le Bon Marche right now in which actors, models, fashion designers, photographers, and other People Of Note were asked to submit a self-portrait. Cindy Sherman dressed up as Madame Pompadour and screenprinted herself onto a Limoges turine. Afterward Selene and I contemplated the benefits of purchasing matching Paul Ka dresses (and let me tell you, there are a lot of benefits). There was a dress that reminded me of a birthday cake that I liked a lot.


We had a picnic dinner on the steps of a church, during which two men and their dog hid some groceries behind the ballustrade.

Yea, honestly this week wasn't too eventful. The weather's nice again, though. You can rent boats in the Luxembourg and go for a ride in a carriage pulled by ponies. And don't think I won't.