Paris sketches-Parking a car in Paris and Baron Haussmann

Paris dining world!!!!

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The most conspicuous blockade these days is the parked car in Paris. It is the centre of that European continental sport (I don’t think the British are practizing this one), the nudging forwards and backwards of the cars that prevent you having a space to park. One of the three signs you might see sometimes (take care of it!) is the one which warns of the risk of being towed away. The towing standards are if you are considered to be “genant”, meaning mildly annoying. Throughout the streets you will also come upon evidence of this essentially Napoleonic taste fro edicts, simple instructions backed up by the date of the relevant law, like the sinister citation of a law preventing sticking posters, dating from April 1943 when Paris was occupied by some eastern neighbors. And the folkloristic prohibition against drunkenness displayed in every bar “Protection des mineurs et repression de l’ivresse publique”. Paris is full of that sort of funny contradictions.
Haussmann is the architect of how Paris looks today. Appointed prefect of the Seine, he was ordered half the 19th century to rebuild the city. If boulevards were very popular for over 100 years, the Parisians would find their champion inn Haussmann. He set to his task like a boy in a train-set, and with a blank cheque he modeled boulevards, squares, streets, avenues, lanes, parks, bridges and sewers with French taste and German system (he was of German descent). A lot of historical architects and researchers deplore that sometimes, since Haussmann pulled a great deal of old Paris down  (the Marais was next in line to go!). He looked at no expense to fulfill his goal and his buying prices were such that people would readily give up their homes:
“How d’you afford your carriage, those clothes?” said Jean to Paul. “Oh, I’ve been dispossessed!” answered Paul.
Never a city map was redrawn so hugely. Small, narrow and winding streets, where revolutionaries and other protesters could easily put up barricades and create chaos, were torn wide open, without any mercy.He wanted and got a city with splintering geometry of longavenues that meet in star-burst junctions (place des Ternes, Place Victor Hugo) or round a great building like an exuberant but organised dance (Opera Garnier, Madeleine, even the gare Saint Lazare).
Paris is also a city to be seen on the move. Try by any luck (they almost disappeared but I saw some new ones lately) to hop on a bus that has an open balcony at the back, and lean out to see Haussmann’s drama unfurl behind you, a tremendous vantage point upon the world’s busiest stage.