by Ric Erickson

Number 1.37:- Metropole Paris - Monday, 4. November 1996:- Here is the hypothetical situation: you have planned the 'trip of a lifetime' and this has involved maybe years of planning and dreaming, and it has involved some fairly serious financial planning - plus the willful decision to have a 'foreign adventure' instead of staying safely at home.

Finally all the plans are settled, the arrangements are booked, the nut is paid and the day arrives and you get yourself to the airport and onto the machine, and you fly through the high blue skies to your destination.

On arrival, probably beat, you do the last formalities - which involve getting from the airport to where you are staying, signing in there and settling into your room, exhausted. A good night's sleep, a good breakfast (I hope!) in the morning, and you are ready to start your 'once-in-a-lifetime' vacation, in, let's say, Paris.

For 20 years you have heard of the Centre Cultural Georges Pompidou - known locally as Beaubourg - so this is your first target. You figure out the métro route, but gaze anxiously all the same at the route map over the doorway, and you get to the stop and you get out, lost at first on the street; but you get straightened out and then there you are - in front of this cultural monument. It is semi-closed for renovations. You are shattered.

Twenty years ago when it opened, Beaubourg was conceived to handle 10,000 visitors a day. Instead,it has received an average of 30,000 - which has totalled 160 million since it opened. A program of maintenance was proposed at the time, but it was rejected by finance ministry officials, on the grounds that the cultural centre would have no more than 3,000 visitors a day. The museum is worn out today and the only remedy is radical.

The consequences have just been announced. The popular museum will close for a complete renovation, to cost 600 million francs, at the end of 1997 for two years - the planned re-opening is the 31. December 1999.

The means that 12,000 daily visitors - mostly residents - to the library alone, will have to find some other place - and there is none. At present rates, the two-year closing will cost 16 million visitors. The question is: will they come back after the re-opening? The answer to the hypothetical question posed in the first paragraph is more problematical - how many foreign visitors will skip Paris?

The Rest of the Bad News

Besides Beaubourg, other grand operations of maintenance or restoration are taking place in Paris. Notre-Dame is less than half-way through a renovation, expected to last until 2003. A part of the Grand Palais has been 'under re-construction' since 1994. 35,000 pieces of marble have to be replaced on the Grande Arche at Le Défense. Same thing with the Opéra Bastille; the stone facade is falling off. The Cité de la Musique at La Villette is leaking, and has been since the day it opened.

The odd thing is, Notre-Dame, built between 1163 and 1245, is more solid than monuments of modern construction. Although its renovation program is long - 10 years - the cost is only estimated at 130 million francs, a fraction of Beaubourg's. The 107 year-old iron Tour Eiffel doesn't even fall into the category of renovation, as it benefits from continual maintenance.

And don't worry too much about being brained by a big piece of Carrera marble - safety nets have already been installed. If you have already seen them - at the Opéra Bastille, for example - they are not an integral part of the architecture - they have been added at the insistence of the insurers. A photo of the monument - without safety nets - can probably be purchased at the site's boutique.

The 'Art' Channel - Generation 'X' Street Fashion

The TV program 'Arte,' formerly 'Le Sept,' has a French-German program, that is a little bit like you would expect from a European television channel that treats culture with a capital 'C,' but seems to be without nationality - or perhaps, truly trans-national.

Arte shows German documentaries with French sub-titles - in France, and French documentaries with German sub-titles - in Germany. Sometimes the programs are dubbed, and the sub-titles change languages. Arte also shows documentaries filmed in other countries like the USA or in Spain, and then the viewer gets the original sound, the sound with voice-over or original sound with voice-over in German and sub-titles in French.

This can be real fog if you understand German, French and English, because you can try to hear the English or Spanish buried under the voice-over and read the sub-titles to try and pick up the bits that get lost, squished or squelched. Of course there is a video part too, and this is usually worth the trouble.

In my quest for Generation 'X' in Paris, I think I overheard somewhere that Arte has a program, or a series, devoted to this subject - but I have not seen it. Instead I have found their Web site, which has the TV-series' theme: 'Kiss the Future' and it features something called 'S, M, L, XXL,' which is supposed to be about street fashion. When I tried it on Friday, which was a holiday here, I got very slow loads but here are the Web URLs all the same:

Arte in French: http://www.sdv.fr/arte/ftext/program/thema/

Arte in German: http://www.sdv.fr/arte/dtext/program/thema/

Arte's 'Kiss the Future /'S, M, L, XXL'/ links page only had two obviously French sites and one UK site, so if you are interested in this subject, you will probably already have more hotlinks than you'll find here.

Still Looking for Generation 'X' - But Not Hard

Last Wednesday I found myself accidently in the office of a 'Generation Xer' so I asked if there was anything in particular about 'French' Generation Xers. This caused a certain amount of reflection as Rap, Techno, Raves, Drugs, and Clothing were all mentioned and discarded - because these are common worldwide.

What might be unique to Parisian Generation Xers is that they were described as being aggressive, nervous and pretentious - but this describes the well-dressed BCBG, Left Bank-Right Bank crowd as well, so it is probably the same thing but with a bit of chic grunge. 'In' clubs - this week only! - are supposed to be the Folies Pig'As, La Comédie, the 'Rex' cinema, Le Globo and Le Gibus.

A few weeks ago I read, in an article about the fashion business, that there are a couple of people in town who organise parties and these move from location to location nightly. I think this is all held together by portable telephones, so there are no addresses and no names for this - you have to be in some network here to have an entry.

Plus ça change... Instead of using the rare telephones that used to be only in tabac-cafés, now everybody has a portable. What seemed to me to be pretty spontaneous and fluid 15 years ago, must be much more so today. With the access to instant communications, a party involving hundreds of people can form in 15 minutes, dissolve in two, reform with another destination and theme, and change a couple more times; all before the cocktail after work.

If you are not 'in' any of these five, ten, twenty-five or fifty networks, you can look in the movie guide. Except for Arte, there's not much reason to look in the TV-guide.