París a pie
It is Thursday, which means that it was just last week at this time that I found myself groggily lolling my head to one side on the early morning train to Lisboa. The night before had ended with a film, conversation and smoky hair, red wine and nervous flutters in my stomach. Off to Paris for me, on a whim, sponsored of course by parental units, to see my big bro, who I hadn´t seen for, we suddenly realized, something like three years.
The number 5 bus, just outside of the Estação Oriente takes you straight to the airport in about 20 minutes, and there I was, checking in to AirFrance, direct service to Charles DeGaulle. Everything went so smoothly that I knew there would have to be some sort of problem, and it was this: Ari and I were supposed to meet around 8 at the RER (rail into centre ville) bcause supposedly there was only one entrance. Alas, there were 2 entrances, one at terminal 1 where his international flight arrived, and one at 2 where my EU flight arrived. Add to that that his flight was a charter and therefore did not appear on any screens and one with similar numbers and letters appeared to be cancelled, by 10:45 I was in a bit of a panic. Had his plane been shot down? Had he been detained? Where would I sleep that night? Would my feeble French serve me in anything at all? So, just as my father was once again going to save my skin by booking a room at the Sheraton upstairs from me, Ari realized that he was at the other RER and found his way over to a very tired, very hungry me who was trying not to look too pathetic curled up in a ball on the floor, hugging my one and only overnight back to my chest and rocking myself on the cool marble floor.
After that, all was fabulous. We somehow managed to find ourselves on a free bus into town due to service on one of the metro lines, or the lack of service on the RER or I am not quite sure what. His French was decidedly rustier than he expected, but it was great to sit at midnight and catch eachother up on our lives in English, with no regard whatsoever for our linguistic vulgarity. I have decided that because I can now safely say that I speak three languages well and a fourth one meagerly, but learning, and that my crass Americanness will be a given regardless of how much or how little I attempt to dissimulate (I refuse to lie outright about my origin in most cases), I will allow myself to speak whichever language is the most efficient for communication with the largest number of people present.
Sigh. I got to see a very divy neighborhood somewhere in the banlieu, at 1 in the morning, the police officers with muzzled dogs inscribed large circles around the lighted metro stop, closed below, but peopled with a majority of African immigrants in brightly patterned shirts. Then on to another bus that the authority sent us on to the Gare du nord. Contents of stomach: small bottle of Bordeaux, and two cheese baguettes. We wandered about until we found a food-serving establishment and by three am, caught a cab to the decidedly two star hotel that AJ had booked us for 70€ a night. There was no air conditioning, nor fan, but a window that only opened a few inches from the top, and two miniature beds whose springs threatened to bounce me off upon any simple lateral movement. It was perfect!
In the morning, we decided to walk around, eat some pain au chocolate, and have the city be our museum. We walked from the 20ieme arrondissement all the way to the center, winding our way about, place de la nation, Bastille, along the Seine, Notre Dame, of course stopping for a photo op on the Ponte Neuf, Arc de Triomphe, past the Louvre and the Obelisk, to the Champs Elysees and finally to the Tour Eiffel at dusk just before they lit the sparkling lights that make it just a bit chintzier than it needs be. It was wonderful to see all the lugares comunes that I have come to know through years of French cinema, and while I behaved in no other way than that of a tourist, I tried to find the broken spaces too. The ugliness that makes a place real, the homeless lying listlessly behind the metro, the cracked and chipping wood, the famelic dogs. In contrast with Lisboa and Coimbra, in which the indigent animal population reserves itself mostly to the feline species, with a few notable exceptions, Paris was like most other cities I have known, canines ravaged by the elements and wizened by their years of scrap hunting, skulked about the underbelly of the city, hovering about the perimeter of the most widely peopled areas. The Seine had a terribly tacky and marvelous set up in which sun bathers lounged about and were offered fountains and misting machines with which to cool themselves. Food was far overpriced, and sadly, also not terribly exquisite. Granted, were I willing to spend hundreds of euros that I don´t have, I am quite certain that I could have had a wonderful meal, but I had to be satisfied with meat and potatoes, or salad, which, while different in presentation, is, sadly, not far from that to which I have been subject over the last month.
We talked, and talked, and walked and narrowly danced about arguments on politics and ethics, in which our views on the righteousness of violence in self defense differed, to say the least. When we finally took the metro back from Trocadero, found a late night meal which was decidedly unmemorable (as I can no longer remember it) and crashed around 2am, to be up in the morning for what he pleaded to be a day of less walking. We took the metro this time, over to Pigalle, to see the red light district, but he wouldn´t go into the Museum of Erotica with me. Ah well. We walked up to Montmartre, stopped for him to nap in a park while I listened to a street performer and was the only one who clapped, as the audience was mostly captive lunchers. I visited the Basilique de Sacre Coeur, and several other churches on the way, not because of any religious pilgrimage (let´s be honest) but because I wanted to see, and quite confirmed, that the French, for all their exuberance in l´amour, are a much more culturally staid (they would say refined) people. When we finally tired of winding our way back down through fake art, opting to eat in lieu of the Dalí museum, we found a restaurant (after multiple attempts to eat, hors de horaire, it would seem, because everywhere we went they told us that the chef had already left. Aside, AJ kept hearing them say that there was no chevre so they could not make anything but croque monsieurs, and it wasn´t until I pointed out that it was a "chef" that was missing and not a "goat" that it made much more sense). There we drank too much house wine and finally got into a full blown debate which was bound to end badly had we not both been more invested in reconstructing our relationship than destroying it. I insisted that he was a bigot, and he that I was incapable of taking care of myself, but strangely, it was ok, because we agreed to disagree, only to find ourselves smack in the middle of a manisfestation against Israel the US and all other nameable evils by an amalgamation of Libanese, Hamas and Socialist flag-bearing protesters. At this point, I just wanted to talk to I. which is exactly what I did, avoiding further argument about the duties of a government with relation to free speech.
At this point we were looking for a public bathroom, all of which seemed to be defunct, and a pleasant man from Morocco, tried to help, and then apologized by saying that Paris was shit, to which I smilingly replied, "just like the rest of the world" (of course this was in French). So, as we were all out of ideas, and in urgence of a toilette, we stopped at a café and met a couple from California, Jennifer and Jim, osha coordinator and aerospace engineer respectively, with whom we spent the rest of the afternoon drinking (not exactly heavily, but steadily). After they had several Kir´s, and I iced tea, we headed for the Quartier Latin, and started with tapas and red wine, at a small Spanish Tasca. I was highly pleased with myself because I got to speak all four languages in one place, as the owner was Spanish, and he sent me to talk to the bartender who was from Leiria, Portugal and somehow spilled the story of how he almost lost his arm, but due to his experience as a firefighter and the doctor who was formed in Coimbra, it was reattached and fully functional. I was privvy to a display of scars and then, politely excused myself. We then took it upon ourselves to cause three different bars to shut down, as we sampled several more bottles of vin rouge. By 2 when we were wandering home, thinking it might be a good idea to walk home to walk off the heady drunkennes, we stopped for the requisite midnight crepe with nutella. Ari let me download my 600 photos and burn them, along with a few other things to a DVD so that I could continue taking pictures, and he left for the airport at 5 am, at which point I went back to sleep until 9.
My last day in Paris was, admittedly, a bit lonely, but lovely nonetheless. And, as I tend to enjoy my solitude, it was just what I needed. I spent several hours in the Louvre, and saw the large format Italian, French and Spanish paintings that of course have been part of my cultural repertoire for years, and with which I felt I was having a happy recontre. There was a relatively small, but interesting collection of artifacts from Oceania and the Americas, and it was decidedly less crowded in that wing of the building. I was shocked (because I do no prior research) to learn that there is absolutely no modern art, nor impressionist work at the Louvre, but rather those things are housed in other places, so I felt no real need to spend my afternoon ogling classical statues, of adonnises, and instead headed, quite accidentally, for the closing of the Tour de France. In fact I might not have been inclined to stay for the grand entrance, were it not that I was avoiding an Egyptian man who had sidled up to me on my soiltary exit form the Louvre and who was quite vigorously insisting upon taking me to eat by the Opera house. I declined, in French, by determining, "Je vais rester ici. Tu partes." at which point I found an empty spot along the rail, to listen happily to my ipod, and watch the crowd, the floats, and then finally, in, quite literally, a blaze of glory, the bikers, flanked by motorcycles and cars.
After that I managed to find a way back across to the other side, and ended up eating at a small neighborhood restaurant, in which the waiters, cooks, and regulars, all intermingled, and coexisted with the tourists. St. Germaine, I think it was called. I had gratinee a l´oignon, poulet frite (that wasn´t really, but rather in a light brown sauce, edible but not fabulous) and after several caraffes of cool water, I felt ready for my last caraffe of red wine, which I sipped slowly over a mousse au chocolat, that took me two hours to finish, as I read, and was thoroughly amused by my waiter´s antics. I read a bit, and pondered their behaviour, imagining a short story whose setting would be there, or somewhere like it, and watching the character development unfold. I still might write that story, I spent a good deal of time watching, and in fact, I think it might have been the closest glimpse I got of actual French culture.
The metro was just in front (which, of course, is why I chose this as my final resting spot), and I managed to buy a ticket back to the airport, learn that I had to switch at Concorde, and get on with no problem. It was only once I was at Concorde that I realized that A) I was far more tipsy than I had initially realized, and B) I had no fucking clue as to what I had to take to get to the airport. Mostly this confusion stemmed from the fact that I didn´t know, or wasn´t certain, at least, that my metro ticket could be reused to get me into the RER station, which, I was informed by the gendarme that was making his rounds, was in fact possible. After that, all was well. I checked in to the Airport Sheraton, had a cup of decaf coffee, took a bubble bath and fell promptly to sleep. By 10 the next morning (having stolen back an extra hour) I was in Lisbon, on the bus 5, headed for Oriente, and back to Coimbra by 1.
After that, it was far less eventful until the evening, and my day consisted of washing my clothing in the bathroom and trying not to have it drip into pools on the floor (practically impossible), and then to film class at five where we saw «Recordações Da Casa Amarela» which I fully enjoyed in all of its quirkiness (imagine if Woody Allen had been born and raised in Portugal, perhaps more on this later). Kristina and I went out to dinner at the Indopaquistani restaurant down by the river, which ended up being far more amusing than we had expected, because our Brasilian waiter, who was certainly obsequious, ended up turning up the charm ten notches, ending in a marriage proposal to me (only partially in jest) and warm, hilarious conversation about the Portuguese and his view of their behaviour after living here for 7 years.
In the morning I had my last day of classes, and in the afternoon, I cooked a pseudo-Mexican dinner, at the program director´s mother´s house for Juli, Kristina, Sara, Gorauv and him. They were busily studying while I was enjoying the glory of a fully equipped kitchen and my own hand´s season. Yesterday the day was spent in language exams, for which I obviously spent no time studying, but which were fine. And after drinking (surprise surprise) red wine down by the river at our favorite Italian restaurant with Matthieu, Juli and Kristina, I wandered back to a café, read over my history notes, and meandered back to the Teatro Gil Vicente, where I watched «Lisboetas» a really spectacular documentary by SErge Trefault on immigration over the last decade into Portugal.
The number 5 bus, just outside of the Estação Oriente takes you straight to the airport in about 20 minutes, and there I was, checking in to AirFrance, direct service to Charles DeGaulle. Everything went so smoothly that I knew there would have to be some sort of problem, and it was this: Ari and I were supposed to meet around 8 at the RER (rail into centre ville) bcause supposedly there was only one entrance. Alas, there were 2 entrances, one at terminal 1 where his international flight arrived, and one at 2 where my EU flight arrived. Add to that that his flight was a charter and therefore did not appear on any screens and one with similar numbers and letters appeared to be cancelled, by 10:45 I was in a bit of a panic. Had his plane been shot down? Had he been detained? Where would I sleep that night? Would my feeble French serve me in anything at all? So, just as my father was once again going to save my skin by booking a room at the Sheraton upstairs from me, Ari realized that he was at the other RER and found his way over to a very tired, very hungry me who was trying not to look too pathetic curled up in a ball on the floor, hugging my one and only overnight back to my chest and rocking myself on the cool marble floor.
After that, all was fabulous. We somehow managed to find ourselves on a free bus into town due to service on one of the metro lines, or the lack of service on the RER or I am not quite sure what. His French was decidedly rustier than he expected, but it was great to sit at midnight and catch eachother up on our lives in English, with no regard whatsoever for our linguistic vulgarity. I have decided that because I can now safely say that I speak three languages well and a fourth one meagerly, but learning, and that my crass Americanness will be a given regardless of how much or how little I attempt to dissimulate (I refuse to lie outright about my origin in most cases), I will allow myself to speak whichever language is the most efficient for communication with the largest number of people present.
Sigh. I got to see a very divy neighborhood somewhere in the banlieu, at 1 in the morning, the police officers with muzzled dogs inscribed large circles around the lighted metro stop, closed below, but peopled with a majority of African immigrants in brightly patterned shirts. Then on to another bus that the authority sent us on to the Gare du nord. Contents of stomach: small bottle of Bordeaux, and two cheese baguettes. We wandered about until we found a food-serving establishment and by three am, caught a cab to the decidedly two star hotel that AJ had booked us for 70€ a night. There was no air conditioning, nor fan, but a window that only opened a few inches from the top, and two miniature beds whose springs threatened to bounce me off upon any simple lateral movement. It was perfect!
In the morning, we decided to walk around, eat some pain au chocolate, and have the city be our museum. We walked from the 20ieme arrondissement all the way to the center, winding our way about, place de la nation, Bastille, along the Seine, Notre Dame, of course stopping for a photo op on the Ponte Neuf, Arc de Triomphe, past the Louvre and the Obelisk, to the Champs Elysees and finally to the Tour Eiffel at dusk just before they lit the sparkling lights that make it just a bit chintzier than it needs be. It was wonderful to see all the lugares comunes that I have come to know through years of French cinema, and while I behaved in no other way than that of a tourist, I tried to find the broken spaces too. The ugliness that makes a place real, the homeless lying listlessly behind the metro, the cracked and chipping wood, the famelic dogs. In contrast with Lisboa and Coimbra, in which the indigent animal population reserves itself mostly to the feline species, with a few notable exceptions, Paris was like most other cities I have known, canines ravaged by the elements and wizened by their years of scrap hunting, skulked about the underbelly of the city, hovering about the perimeter of the most widely peopled areas. The Seine had a terribly tacky and marvelous set up in which sun bathers lounged about and were offered fountains and misting machines with which to cool themselves. Food was far overpriced, and sadly, also not terribly exquisite. Granted, were I willing to spend hundreds of euros that I don´t have, I am quite certain that I could have had a wonderful meal, but I had to be satisfied with meat and potatoes, or salad, which, while different in presentation, is, sadly, not far from that to which I have been subject over the last month.
We talked, and talked, and walked and narrowly danced about arguments on politics and ethics, in which our views on the righteousness of violence in self defense differed, to say the least. When we finally took the metro back from Trocadero, found a late night meal which was decidedly unmemorable (as I can no longer remember it) and crashed around 2am, to be up in the morning for what he pleaded to be a day of less walking. We took the metro this time, over to Pigalle, to see the red light district, but he wouldn´t go into the Museum of Erotica with me. Ah well. We walked up to Montmartre, stopped for him to nap in a park while I listened to a street performer and was the only one who clapped, as the audience was mostly captive lunchers. I visited the Basilique de Sacre Coeur, and several other churches on the way, not because of any religious pilgrimage (let´s be honest) but because I wanted to see, and quite confirmed, that the French, for all their exuberance in l´amour, are a much more culturally staid (they would say refined) people. When we finally tired of winding our way back down through fake art, opting to eat in lieu of the Dalí museum, we found a restaurant (after multiple attempts to eat, hors de horaire, it would seem, because everywhere we went they told us that the chef had already left. Aside, AJ kept hearing them say that there was no chevre so they could not make anything but croque monsieurs, and it wasn´t until I pointed out that it was a "chef" that was missing and not a "goat" that it made much more sense). There we drank too much house wine and finally got into a full blown debate which was bound to end badly had we not both been more invested in reconstructing our relationship than destroying it. I insisted that he was a bigot, and he that I was incapable of taking care of myself, but strangely, it was ok, because we agreed to disagree, only to find ourselves smack in the middle of a manisfestation against Israel the US and all other nameable evils by an amalgamation of Libanese, Hamas and Socialist flag-bearing protesters. At this point, I just wanted to talk to I. which is exactly what I did, avoiding further argument about the duties of a government with relation to free speech.
At this point we were looking for a public bathroom, all of which seemed to be defunct, and a pleasant man from Morocco, tried to help, and then apologized by saying that Paris was shit, to which I smilingly replied, "just like the rest of the world" (of course this was in French). So, as we were all out of ideas, and in urgence of a toilette, we stopped at a café and met a couple from California, Jennifer and Jim, osha coordinator and aerospace engineer respectively, with whom we spent the rest of the afternoon drinking (not exactly heavily, but steadily). After they had several Kir´s, and I iced tea, we headed for the Quartier Latin, and started with tapas and red wine, at a small Spanish Tasca. I was highly pleased with myself because I got to speak all four languages in one place, as the owner was Spanish, and he sent me to talk to the bartender who was from Leiria, Portugal and somehow spilled the story of how he almost lost his arm, but due to his experience as a firefighter and the doctor who was formed in Coimbra, it was reattached and fully functional. I was privvy to a display of scars and then, politely excused myself. We then took it upon ourselves to cause three different bars to shut down, as we sampled several more bottles of vin rouge. By 2 when we were wandering home, thinking it might be a good idea to walk home to walk off the heady drunkennes, we stopped for the requisite midnight crepe with nutella. Ari let me download my 600 photos and burn them, along with a few other things to a DVD so that I could continue taking pictures, and he left for the airport at 5 am, at which point I went back to sleep until 9.
My last day in Paris was, admittedly, a bit lonely, but lovely nonetheless. And, as I tend to enjoy my solitude, it was just what I needed. I spent several hours in the Louvre, and saw the large format Italian, French and Spanish paintings that of course have been part of my cultural repertoire for years, and with which I felt I was having a happy recontre. There was a relatively small, but interesting collection of artifacts from Oceania and the Americas, and it was decidedly less crowded in that wing of the building. I was shocked (because I do no prior research) to learn that there is absolutely no modern art, nor impressionist work at the Louvre, but rather those things are housed in other places, so I felt no real need to spend my afternoon ogling classical statues, of adonnises, and instead headed, quite accidentally, for the closing of the Tour de France. In fact I might not have been inclined to stay for the grand entrance, were it not that I was avoiding an Egyptian man who had sidled up to me on my soiltary exit form the Louvre and who was quite vigorously insisting upon taking me to eat by the Opera house. I declined, in French, by determining, "Je vais rester ici. Tu partes." at which point I found an empty spot along the rail, to listen happily to my ipod, and watch the crowd, the floats, and then finally, in, quite literally, a blaze of glory, the bikers, flanked by motorcycles and cars.
After that I managed to find a way back across to the other side, and ended up eating at a small neighborhood restaurant, in which the waiters, cooks, and regulars, all intermingled, and coexisted with the tourists. St. Germaine, I think it was called. I had gratinee a l´oignon, poulet frite (that wasn´t really, but rather in a light brown sauce, edible but not fabulous) and after several caraffes of cool water, I felt ready for my last caraffe of red wine, which I sipped slowly over a mousse au chocolat, that took me two hours to finish, as I read, and was thoroughly amused by my waiter´s antics. I read a bit, and pondered their behaviour, imagining a short story whose setting would be there, or somewhere like it, and watching the character development unfold. I still might write that story, I spent a good deal of time watching, and in fact, I think it might have been the closest glimpse I got of actual French culture.
The metro was just in front (which, of course, is why I chose this as my final resting spot), and I managed to buy a ticket back to the airport, learn that I had to switch at Concorde, and get on with no problem. It was only once I was at Concorde that I realized that A) I was far more tipsy than I had initially realized, and B) I had no fucking clue as to what I had to take to get to the airport. Mostly this confusion stemmed from the fact that I didn´t know, or wasn´t certain, at least, that my metro ticket could be reused to get me into the RER station, which, I was informed by the gendarme that was making his rounds, was in fact possible. After that, all was well. I checked in to the Airport Sheraton, had a cup of decaf coffee, took a bubble bath and fell promptly to sleep. By 10 the next morning (having stolen back an extra hour) I was in Lisbon, on the bus 5, headed for Oriente, and back to Coimbra by 1.
After that, it was far less eventful until the evening, and my day consisted of washing my clothing in the bathroom and trying not to have it drip into pools on the floor (practically impossible), and then to film class at five where we saw «Recordações Da Casa Amarela» which I fully enjoyed in all of its quirkiness (imagine if Woody Allen had been born and raised in Portugal, perhaps more on this later). Kristina and I went out to dinner at the Indopaquistani restaurant down by the river, which ended up being far more amusing than we had expected, because our Brasilian waiter, who was certainly obsequious, ended up turning up the charm ten notches, ending in a marriage proposal to me (only partially in jest) and warm, hilarious conversation about the Portuguese and his view of their behaviour after living here for 7 years.
In the morning I had my last day of classes, and in the afternoon, I cooked a pseudo-Mexican dinner, at the program director´s mother´s house for Juli, Kristina, Sara, Gorauv and him. They were busily studying while I was enjoying the glory of a fully equipped kitchen and my own hand´s season. Yesterday the day was spent in language exams, for which I obviously spent no time studying, but which were fine. And after drinking (surprise surprise) red wine down by the river at our favorite Italian restaurant with Matthieu, Juli and Kristina, I wandered back to a café, read over my history notes, and meandered back to the Teatro Gil Vicente, where I watched «Lisboetas» a really spectacular documentary by SErge Trefault on immigration over the last decade into Portugal.
posted by ilana at 10:47 a.m.
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