Only in Paris

THE FALL OF COMMUNISM, AS TOLD BY TALIA CARNER

Yesterday at Après Midi, Talia Carner gave a stunning presentation about her experience teaching entrepreneurial skills to Women in Moscow just after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early ’90s. She tells a similar story in her most recent book, Hotel Moscow, her fourth novel, obviously a result of her life-changing experience there.

Talia Carner speaks at Après Midi Eckhart Tolle

She had the large group of attendees mesmerized, with no PowerPoint presentation—just her own skill as a speaker and story-teller. She shared “her experiences of being caught in the 1993 Russian parliament uprising against president Boris Yeltsin, about the plight of women when this world-superpower went through a transition, and the realities of teaching entrepreneurship to people with a child’s grasp of managing newly privatized cooperatives.

Both her own tale and the book’s are riveting stories that shed light on what it was really like when Moscow was discovering its democratic independence.

Read more about it and see the photos by visiting Après Midi. 

DON’T BURN IT, TOSS IT!

It’s that time of year again…for those in Paris, rendez-vous with us May 13th at 3 p.m. on the Esplanade Trocadéro. For all those living elsewhere, it’s now a global event, so you can toss your bra wherever you are!

The Global Pink Bra Toss raises awareness for breast cancer prevention. The principle is simple. On Sunday May 13, 2018 post a photo of you tossing a bra in the air on social media with the tag #pinkbratoss.

This global initiative is organized by Pink Bra Bazaar, a charity dedicated to breast health education and supporting for women with breast cancer. With your help, we will fill the skies with bras and show our shared commitment to fighting breast cancer.

Invite your friends, neighbors, colleagues, mothers, daughters, sisters, fathers, husbands, and sons to join the celebration. They/we need your support! Here are some helpful links:

Website
Instagram: @pinkbrabazaar
Twitter: @pinkbrabazaar
Facebook

GET THE POWER OF NOW

Very often, during a personal consultation with someone interested in moving to France, but who is naturally nervous about what the future will bring, I give a reading assignment: The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. If you don’t already know the book, then you should. It could change your life, as it did mine.

Eckhart Tolle was born in Germany and educated at the Universities of London and Cambridge. At the age of 29, a profound inner transformation radically changed the course of his life. The next few years were devoted to understanding, integrating, and deepening that transformation, which marked the beginning of an intense inward journey. Later, he worked in London as a counselor and spiritual teacher. Eckhart’s written works include two New York Times bestsellers, both widely regarded as among the most influential spiritual books of our time: the Oprah’s Book Club selection A New Earth, and The Power of Now, which has been translated into more than 30 languages.” The Power of Now has now sold more than eight million copies (last reported figure from August 2016).

I’ve seen and heard him in person in London and in Paris. Now he’s offering eight transformational weeks that began May 3rd, with his first online course Sounds True: The Power of Presence – a free Video Teaching Series and Live Webinar!

If you are about to make such an important life change and have any fear or trepidations, then learn more and sign up now! 

Or read The Power of Now!

FAIRE LE PONT

There are four bank holidays in France in the month of May: Tuesday, May 1: Labor Day
Tuesday, May 8: V-E Day    
Thursday, May 10: Ascension Day, 40 days after Easter
Monday, May 21: Whit Monday or Pentecost

Sunday, May 27 is Mother’s Day, but it doesn’t count!

If a holiday falls on anything but Wednesday, Saturday or Sunday, then it’s traditional to “faire le pont”—meaning that not only is the holiday a day off, but so are the days between the weekend plus the weekend, providing a very long little vacation. If the public holiday falls on Wednesday, then one could take off either Monday and Tuesday or Thursday and Friday. So, if you’re trying to accomplish anything in France in the month of May, forget it. Only us crazy workaholic Americans are at our desks or computers working away while the rest of France is…doing whatever.

NAKED TO THE WORLD…OF ART

There’s the expression “only in L.A.” which usually describes some obscure event that could only happen in a city like L.A. where anything and everything goes. But this time Paris has L.A. beat. On May 7th, the New York Times reported a very special tour group in the Palais de Tokyo—a group of naturists from the Paris Naturist Association who wanted to be “exposed” to contemporary art. It was the the first of its kind in France and could be the last, now that the nudists discovered that naked wasn’t so nice – it was just cold! (I bet all sorts of things we don’t normally see were at attention!)

The article will amaze you, since according to the story, 30,000 people wanted to experience being nudie-cazoodie while wandering the museum in search of experiencing the art with a kind of “openness.” I was not one of them.

Only in Paris…is my motto.

Be sure to read the article.

A la prochaine…

Adrian Leeds
Adrian Leeds Group

(with Talia Carner)

Respond to Adrian

 

P.S. As I write this, I am on route to Bordeaux on the TGV (2 hours and 4 minutes) to film our 33rd House Hunters International episode. So, stay tuned for lots of scoop on what it’s like to live in Bordeaux in Monday’s Parler Paris Nouvellettre®!