Paris Mosaic

A series on Water in Paris. Part 3: Non-Drinking water In the 19th century, Baron Haussmann, who was in charge of reorganizing Paris to make it more sanitary hired Eugène Belgrand as Director of Water and Sewers. Mr Belgrand with great foresight created not one but two water systems. One of course for treated drinking water which is expensively processed stuff and the other a network of non-potable from the canal Saint Martin and the Seine. The less expensive untreated water is used for watering parks, decorative fountains and cleaning the streets. There are 12,000  bouches de lavage from which water flows into the gutter. They are turned on by sanitation workers with green brooms and directed by soggy rolls of old carpet. The water flow and the green broom push the accumulated debris along to the sewer openings. Tout un système! The non-potable water is also used in the high pressure sprayers that clean up after markets and festivals. 1 600 kilometers of streets are sp…

A series on Water in Paris Part 2: Drinking water The Seine furnishes half of the drinking water to Paris and the region. Other water comes from aquifers and aqueducts. One of the aqueducts, the aqueduct de l'Avre, brings water, using just the force of gravity, to Paris from the Avre river in Normandy 102 kilometers away. The chief engineer for the project was Fulgence Bienvenüe who was also the creator of the Paris metro. The aqueduct entered into service in 1893. The aqueduct flows mostly underground before crossing the Seine on a bridge designed by Gustave Eiffel between Saint Cloud and the Bois de Boulogne. The bridge is a footbridge and an interesting destination for an outing. See our article. There has been indoor running water in Paris since 1781, albiet there were only 125 houses connected at that point. The great strides in indoor water came under Baron Haussmann in the mid 19th century and by 1884 two-thirds of Paris was connected. There are multiple water tr…

A series on Water in Paris Part 1: La Seine We all associate the Seine with Paris even though this river only runs 13 of its 776 kilometers in Paris. In fact La Seine starts not too far from Dijon on a plateau at a place called Source-Seine. Its origins are several springs of clear ground water that flow together on the surface forming a small stream. A spring has always been an important place throughout history and in this particular case the source of the Seine was known and revered back in the time of Gaul. This spring was the kingdom of the goddess or nymphe Séquanna and she gave her name to the river in about the 1st century. The Seine, in French, is called a fleuve. We don't have a specific word for this in English. A fleuve is different than a rivière. A fleuve flows into the ocean and a rivière flows into an inland body of water. France has 5 major fleuves and many, many rivières. Today the Seine's flow is controlled by a series of lakes and canals upstream tha…

Hints for Newcomers – Hindsights for Old-Timers French Anglo cultural differences Us vs Them

by Shari Leslie Segall

You’ve heard of speed-dating. You’ve heard of speed-networking. Welcome to speed-cultural differences! Although many of these French Anglo cultural differences are being obliterated at breakneck speed by globalization (see our earlier post of Hints-Hindsights), and many didn’t exist in the first place (yes, the French really are friendly at heart), below is an extremely incomplete quick-and-dirty list of the at times inaccurate, at times truer-than-true judgments that are at times fiercely hurled, at times gently tossed at each other by Anglos and Francos. EMOTIONS/ATTITUDE – the negative Them: Anglos-especially Americans-are big babies. Even grown women jump up and down and screech and hug when they run into each other on the street. Anglos thank you a million times for the slightest thing. How can ever…

"Current" Events: Paris flood 2016 Current events never was a more appropriate term. Here are a few photos from past years juxatposed with photos from the last few days of the Paris flood 2016. We watched daily as the water crept up on the Zouave, the quais, the Pont Mirabeau. The water was very brown, as one French lady said "marronnâtre" and that seemed to sum up the Paris flood 2016. Feel free to send us your own photos, expecially if you have some from outside Paris. submissions@fusac.org   Pont Mirabeau's statues that represent navigation on the river are really navigating it right now. Read more about the bridge here. Or maybe just trying to climb to safety. Does anyone know what the pompiers were up to here on Friday afternoon? We couldn't figure it out. How can a piece of a bridge look so big one day and so small the next? The photos give perspective. Read more about what a Zouave is and why this particular statue is famous in Paris …

Water in Paris, Part 6: Tidbits Continuing our series of articles on water in Paris here we present a list of odds and ends or tidbits about and around water in Paris. The motto of Paris « Fluctuat nec mergitur » is closely linked to the Seine. It is a Latin phrase which means  Tossed by the waves, but never sinks. In French Il est battu par les flots, mais ne sombre pas. The motto dates from antiquity and was used, along with a ship, on the arms of the corporation des Nautes (the water merchants). The first recorded flood of Paris was in 585. The original bateaux-mouches dating from the 19th century were named for Mouche, a section of the city of Lyon where they were built. Bathhouses were first created along the Seine in 1688. The first warm baths were available in 1761 and in 1785 the first swimming area was created along with the first swimming school in the world. The quays of the Seine are a UNESCO World Heritage site from pont de Sully to pont d'Iéna. …