Older than you look

I just finished reading Friend or Foe by Alistair Horne, the perfect Christmas present for an expat. It's a well-written, broad-brush history of France since Paris was a Roman outpost. Sometimes the brush is a little too broad, the pace a bit too rushed, but that's to be expected in a book that covers so much ground in just 400 pages. It's a fair tradeoff.

I thought I knew at least the broad outline of French history, but it turns out I'd failed to take note of several revolts and revolutions, and one of the wars with the Germans. Those French used to be a feisty bunch, and if they weren't after some of la gloire in foreign lands, they were squabbling amongst themselves ... mounting barricades, trashing the Palais-Royal, or parading around the streets with someone's head on a stick.

And while I knew Paris was old, I didn't really appreciate how old. One of its streets (near the Palais-Royal, in fact) is rue des Mauvais Garçons. Turns out this refers not to the 1995 movie with Martin Lawrence and Will Smith, but to a band of ruffians that were operating in the neighborhood in the 1500s. They'd still recognize a lot of the buildings.