Clothes and how to clean them

The title of this post refers to the theme of my two activities today: a morning visit to the laundromat, and an afternoon at the Museum of Fashion and Costume.

The laundromat, or laverie automatique, proved to be a more mystifying locale than one would assume. There was first the question of finding one; I had noted the presence of what looked like a combination laundromat/dry-cleaning shop on the street of the Institut Catholique, but when I got there it appeared closed. Following the vague directions of my host mother, I then set off in the opposite direction and ended up on Rue Cherche-Midi ("looking for noon" street?), which did, in fact, have an operational laundrette. I laughed out loud when I noticed that the name of the establishment was the "Lav' Club." Hey guys, I'm going down to the Lav' Club. All the cool kids wash their delicates there.

The smirk was quickly wiped off my face, though, when I couldn't figure out how to get into the building-- it turned out that there was a little black button that you had to press as you pushed open on the door, but some French men on the inside had to let me in before I figured this out for myself. Once inside I stood dumbly aside, clutching my three grocery bags full of clothes as I stared blankly at the directions on the wall. The only public laundry situation I'm familiar with is the washing machine setup in the U of M dorms, which merely require that you deposit three quarters, add detergent, and press "Start." Here, though, there were at least four buttons on the machines, all with indistinguishable pictorial symbols. Eventually I figured out the process: load the clothes, pour detergent into the upper-left of four compartments, then proceed to a central pay station near the door of the laundromat, which signals the machine to start after you select the appropriate number and pay for the load. Speaking of paying, I was not amused that the total cost to do one load of laundry was roughly $8, especially since the dryer left the denser articles mostly damp and they are now spread out on my bed to air out.

So that was my laundry adventure. After that I met up with Lena at the Musée de la Mode et du Costume de la Ville de Paris (Museum of Fashion and Costume of the City of Paris). After some crafty finagling with the man behind the ticket counter, I got us in for free with our Art History student ID cards. The museum has over 90,000 articles of clothing that span centuries of history, but due to the delicacy of the fabrics they only display them for a few months at a time in themed, rotating exhibitions. The collection on display right now is from the 1920s, which Lena (who by the way is a costume design major at UM) really enjoyed, but I tend to think that the flapper decade is second only to the 1980s in terms of bad 20th-century fashions. Nonetheless it was fun to peruse the various styles of day dresses, evening wear, knitted bathing suits, shoes, outerwear and accessories presented for viewing. Photography was not allowed, so the only visuals I can provide from the day are this exterior shot of the museum, which is, like many other Paris sites, a former palace:

Three things of note in this picture: the actual museum, the cute/funny little car, and if you look really hard, the Eiffel Tower behind that tree on the right. Oh and Lena. I guess she's interesting.

And the only other visual for today, the picture of my first French fries in France!

In unrelated news, I had another mini victory today in that no less than THREE French people asked me for directions, and this time I knew what to say. The first woman stopped me on the street in front of my apartment and asked me if she was close to the St. Placide Métro stop (which in fact she was, and I directed her down the street and to the left); the second person was a French dad with his approximately four year old son, who asked me if the Bir-Hakeim station was really closed (yes, it really is, I was just there last week and had to get off at Dupleix); and the last was a man at Trocadéro, who wanted to know if he was going the right way toward Charles de Gaulle airport (indeed Monsieur, you are). So those encounters made me happy. I am beginning to truly connais Paris, as my host dad would say.

Until my next small-scale adventure, au revoir.