I think it’s a sign of a good study
abroad experience if a blog has no posts for over two weeks, because clearly I’m
much too busy to bother with sitting down for one second and write down what’s
been happening. Or at least that’s what I’ve been telling myself, as the days
after Paris slipped away one by one and I continued to tell myself, Tomorrow. I’ll write it tomorrow. I’ve
been informed that maybe I should try writing shorter posts, but let’s get
real. When my English teacher in middle school asked our class to write a
three-page mystery story, mine was a walloping ten pages…with editing. Since then, I’ve started a long and terrible habit of
no self-control—whether it’s in the number of pages in my papers, the details
in the stories that I tell in person, or in my blog posts. So bear with me
through the length in the blog posts that will continue to follow this one and
I’m so very sorry that it has been such a long since I’ve written on here. I’m
going to promise that it will never happen again, but I think we all know
there’s a good chance that I’ll get caught up in this study abroad adventure of
mine and forget to reach out to the other side of the ocean sometime in the
near future.
So
the answer to the question in the title of this post is: a lot. I got on the plane to Paris expecting to sing a lot of the Les Miserables soundtrack, sit on a
gargoyle hanging off the side of Notre Dame like Quasimodo, be yelled at my
French people for my complete lack of French language skills, and eat a lot of
pastries.
Singing Do
You Hear the People Sing? on repeat: Check!
Sitting on a gargoyle Quasimodo-style:
Sadly, no.
Getting yelled at by stereotypically-mean
French people: No, thank goodness! More
on this later.
Eating a lot of pastries: OF COURSE.
We left for Paris early in the
morning two Friday’s ago. Megan, Krystal, Lily and I all shared a taxi to
Bologna’s airport. Upon getting dropped off, we had to find RyanAir’s check-in
booth, which ended up being an “eight-minute” walk, according to the extremely
accurate signs outside of the airport building, which led us through a parking
lot and in what looked like a warehouse building. There, we checked in and
walked back to the central terminal
and waited—barely awake—for our flight.
For
those of you who don’t know, RyanAir is basically the answer to every student’s
dreams: affordable flights to most primary cities throughout Europe and beyond.
It also means that you only bring one carry-on piece of luggage that fits their
very stringent requirements and you have to be okay with being bombarded by
advertisements for their on-flight menu of food and delicate perfumes available
for your purchase.
An
hour and a half later, we were in a tiny little airport about an hour and a
half outside of Paris, from which we took a bus into the city. From here on
out, I was relying entirely on Lily, who had lived/visited in France multiple
times and the only words that I know in French are yes and water. Lily tried
to teach us a few words but my brain seemed completely incapable of absorbing
anything. Whereas in Italian I feel relatively comfortable and I’ve actually
become relatively talented at imitating Viola’s Albanian when she yells on the
phone, French is this mysterious entity that intimidates me probably more than
it should. I think it has something to do with that weird hacking noise they
make in the back of their throat…when I try to imitate it, I sound like a cat
with hairball. Native French speakers, on the other hand, sound like they’re
trying to seduce the bus driver when asking how long the drive will be.
Once
we got to Paris, we found our beautiful hotel, which we got thanks to Krystal’s
mom’s connections (thanks Krystal’s mom!) and it was very nice (no sketchy
hostel stories here). After taking a few minutes to regroup and realize that
our television included Cartoon Network in English, we went out to explore the
city.
Sadly,
with this blog being written two weeks after my fateful weekend in Paris, my
memories aren’t as fresh as they were that Monday after. But I can try to
describe how incredibly lucky I felt
as I walked down the Champs-Élysées.
The streets are just so wide, lined with trees and glittering windows filled
with pastries and designer clothes. The people I brushed by ranged anywhere between
American tourists wearing that stereotypical uniform of sneakers, jeans, and
baseball hat to stunning French women who somehow managed to embody the 1940’s
in modern fashion with exquisite class and grace, clearing a path with each
decisive stride in those black leather boots.
We
got our first wave of pastries and let me just say that Italy has nothing on
France. Oh my lord. The pastries. So
buttery and flaky and golden and oh my gosh I miss it and I was only there for
less than three days. We walked all over the center of the city and then
stopped for lunch, which included for me a baguette with ham, cheese, and
mustard (I HAVE MISSED MUSTARD SO MUCH) which was a classic French meal, according
to my Dad, who was texting me food recommendations while I was at the table.
After lunch…well, more pastries. And then more walking! We saw so much. The Arc
de Triomphe (which was right by our hotel), museums, palaces, the Louvre, the
Pont Alexandre III—which gave us a spectacular view of the Eiffel Tower—and
more side-streets and the bridge filled with couples’ bike locks that they’ve
attached to the fence…there are street vendors along the Seine who are selling
old schoolbooks in French or postcards from the 1950’s or pictures of people
who have now passed on, but for 1 Euro you can take home a bundle of their
family memories, captured in blurred black and white photos and tied together
neatly with a rubber band.
That
afternoon/early evening of walking and exploring was just…wonderful.
Afterwards, we met up with some of Lily’s friends who are studying in Paris for
drinks and then dinner, which included three huge pots of mussels accompanied
by plates of frites (French fries). Following
the Paris students blindly, we traveled through the metro system (in which
everyone clutched their purses as if in preparation of getting mugged) and we
then found ourselves at this bar/club in which we dealt with somewhat creepy
French young men with some really excellent live music and a very enthusiastic
crowd. With the help of a taxi and, again, Lily’s French, we made it back to
the hotel and watched a little Cartoon Network before crashing.
The
next morning we got kind of a late start to the day, which made me antsy. I’m
so used to traveling with my parents, in which every vacation day begins
approximately at 8 am and we are out the door and ready for adventures and
sightseeing almost immediately. There are, admittedly, many different ways to
travel. I’m a fan of a balance between sightseeing and experiencing and
although Saturday was not exactly the rigorous tourist day I had imagined, I
left Paris feeling like I had a real feel for the city.
We walked
for what felt like forever up to the Basilique
du Sacré-Cœur (near Moulin Rouge-ish area). The sun was
lighting up all the buildings (most of them a white/grey color) as we hiked up
the hill. The area surrounding the massive cathedral at the top of the hill was
out of a storybook—exactly how I imagined what the little town that Belle from
Beauty & The Beast would look like. It was filled with tourists, but if you
could look past the fact that we were tourists too, it was really beautiful.
There was an art fair, street music, and sweet sweet lemon and sugar crepes, which
we ordered out of a window and ate while continuing our trek up to the church.
Once
reaching the top of the hill, we reached the Basilique
du Sacré-Cœur and the top of Paris. You
can see almost the entire city from up there and the pictures I took will never
do it justice. The sunlight and the clear blue skies and the chattering of
the people milling about the steps, where a man sang Over the Rainbow with a microphone and behind him a guy was
doing soccer tricks while standing on top of a meters-high lamp-post…it was
just amazing. I didn’t actually go inside the church. Outside was much too
beautiful and although I appreciate a good Baroque painting when I see one, I
think the sunlight lighting up Paris, the city stretched out beneath me, was
infinitely more beautiful than any sculpture could be.
Afterwards,
we made our way back down into the city and met Lily’s friends for lunch, where
we ate at a quiet little café. We then navigated the metro (again) and found
cool things like a vintage clothing store that sells clothes by the kilo and
also the famous bookstore, Shakespeare&Co.. This had been on my list
and I am so glad we made it there.
It’s this beautiful little bookstore, originally run by the woman who first
published Ulysses, and one-third of
the store is filled with all sorts of modern or classic books that made me want
to spend all my money and attempt to lug 15 new volumes back on RyanAir. The
second-third of the store is upstairs, in which there are such special,
one-of-a-kind books that you are only allowed to go up there to read them, but
to never take them out of the store. Some of those are first-editions or signed
by the authors or maybe even the possession of famous authors themselves.
Regardless, that quiet little nook upstairs, with the bookshelves leaning into
each other like stooped old men, and the worn leather chairs made me want to
never leave. The other third of the store sells old, used, and rare books, all
of the drool-worthy. I ended up treating myself to an old edition of Victor
Hugo’s Les Miserables, leather-bound
and illustrated, translated into English. This was, after all, just a few days
before my 21st birthday.
Throughout
my time in Paris, I was also constantly (and pleasantly) surprised by how nice
everyone was. Although you can’t make assumptions about an entire country (not
all Americans, for example, are obnoxiously loud and wear socks with their
sandals to historical monuments in Europe), there has certainly been a
prolonged stereotype in the States of the “snobby French.” And although there
is no doubt in my mind that there is the occasional snobby person in Paris,
just as in any city, I did not encounter the amount of French hostility that I
had been expecting. Everyone was perfectly patient with my utter lack of French
and most were even nicer than some of the encounters I’ve had in Bologna. I
really shouldn’t have been worried, in all reality. Having lived in UMW’s
International house this past semester, I had the opportunity to live with
Hugo, Emmanuelle and Matthieu: all three of them wonderful French students who
I miss and talk about a lot here in Bologna. Hugo, in particular, because I
think he’d be proud of me for no longer eating Velveeta instant
mac&cheese—I have now graduated to cooking real lunches with real food! And
I have also been shown that my assumption of French snobbiness is not
necessarily true.
We
explored the ruins of an ancient city that was Paris’ predecessor (France’s own lost
city of Atlantis, in a way), which is directly below Notre Dame. The ruins were
really interesting and we had some nice historical discussion down there
amongst the former homes of Ancient Romans. We didn’t end up going in Notre
Dame because the line would’ve taken us hours.
Notre Dame!
Ironically,
we ended up standing in line for dinner, though. We met Krystal’s cousin, who
is also studying in Paris, at this famous little restaurant that has a fixed
menu of steak frite, which is indeed
steak and French fries. But as simple as that sounds, I assure you that it was
marvelous. It was also fun to get dressed up and go to fancy restaurant,
meeting even more people who were willing to show us around beautiful,
wonderful Paris.
After
dinner, Megan and Lily were tired so they headed back to the hotel. Krystal and
I navigated the Paris metro system alone until the wee hours of the morning,
during which we saw the Eiffel Tower lit up at night and then promptly
decided to leave after taking our touristy pictures because some nice man came
up behind Krystal and whispered in her ear, asking if she’d like some cocaine.
We then explored the center of Paris a bit, gallivanting around the Louvre and
singing Les Miserables songs, before
we somehow (miraculously) managed to hail a cab and tell him the name of our
hotel with a decent French accent (hacking in the back of the throat included).
Me, Megan, Lily and Krystal
The
next morning was somber: we ate what must’ve been about our eleventh pastry of
the weekend before buying some for the road, in addition to stocking up on an
entire loaf of bread and three different types of cheese. We snuck these into
Italy in our backpacks: there was one harrowing moment in which the French TSA
man at the airport demanded that I open my bag and as he was going through my
things, he held up the vacuum-sealed package and inquired, “Cheese?” I gave him
my brightest smile and nodded, and he sort of shrugged and put it back into my
backpack. I think he understood.
It
was hard to describe such a beautiful weekend and so I delayed writing this post
for far too long. Tomorrow I will have to write another one, bringing you back
under the porticoes of Bologna to tell you how my classes are going, how I’m
planning trip after trip around Europe, how I’m now teaching English at an
Italian elementary school, and how with each day, I keep reminding myself to
indulge and get that extra gelato or stay up late to watch How I Met Your Mother with my Albanian roommate because it’s just
going by way too fast. Paris doesn’t even seem real, sometimes. I look at the
pictures and try to remember the smells and the sounds of French and the
sunlight blazing down on white walls. But all I can really remember is how our cab driver was wearing a fedora and playing jazz
music that night Krystal and I explored Paris until two or three in the
morning. As we drove up the Champs-Élysées,
the city was still lit up with its big golden globes and car headlights. At the
end of the long stretch of cobblestone road stood the Arc de Triomphe and for a
brief moment, Krystal grabbed my hand and squeezed, only letting out a shrill
giggle beside me. It’s hard to describe little moments like those, but I think
those are the moments that I like most about studying abroad. Those brief
flashes in which you turn to the person next to you and grin like a maniac
because you’re here, you’re in Paris, the city is ablaze with light—a show,
just for you. The jazz music continues to roll out of the car stereo as you’re
jostled from side-to-side, the cobblestones making the ride less-than-smooth,
and you crane your neck to catch one last glimpse of that golden glow and the
shadows on the marble faces of the Greek statues before the cab turns a corner
and it’s all gone.
© Copyright Danielle DeSimone. 2013.
Lovely.
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