Montrouge

I woke up this morning in a horrible state of anxiety. The kind where your lizard brain thinks your house is on fire and you need to flee immediately. Sometimes this happens to me during high-stress periods (applying to internships, planning travel, meeting school deadlines etc. etc), but I’ve recently been trying to put more of an effort into healthy coping. So instead of pulling the covers over my head and drawing my curtains to block any ray of sunshine from entering the room, I pulled myself together, got dressed, and took a walk outside.

These are some of the pictures that resulted. Saturdays are a lively time in France where parents, kids, old couples, and randos who haven’t done their grocery shopping for the week emerge from their apartments and fill the streets with bustling activity. I love the 13th because of the endless number local businesses that line the narrow streets, affording it a delightfully crowded and communitarian vibe. The corner only a step away from my apartment represents a microcosm of the middle class arrondissement in Paris. We may all come from different walks of life, but we all need to grocery shop.

France fact #1: France is the epitome of the phrase «parts sold separately ». French people are notoriously suspicious of big business, « la grande distribution », and supermarkets have only recently come into fashion because of their convenience. However, even convenience has its drawbacks. Who wants to buy imported pomegranates from India and ham packaged in plastic when you could get a juicy slab of « jambon de Paris » from your local butcher and cheap, delicious apples grown in the south of France at a market. In the second photo you can even see the business had won a gold medal for their sauerkraut in 2012, giving their products extra credibility.

So instead, we have a poissonneries (seafood store), boucheries (butchers), fromageries (cheese shops), épiceries (local grocers), and traiteurs (vendors of cooked food). The traiteurs in the 13th are particularly diverse, encompassing Lebanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Greek, and Italian cuisine, to name a few. All of these stores are a bit more expensive than standard grocery prices but always come with the benefit of better quality and support for local businesses. I don’t shop there often, but when I do it’s worth it.

Enjoy these pictures of my lovely neighborhood everyone. I hope you feel as charmed as I do, especially by the last photo of the lady in the blue coat with her husband. I tried extra hard not to violate their data privacy.

A bientôt :)

- LeahOkumaya devam et