Three midnights in Paris

Last Thursday I took a train to Paris and Sunday I came back to Aix.

I saw a fistfight on the metro. A group of Italian tourists started to loudly chant “pickpocket! pickpocket!” at the end of the car opposite mine. A young man took it deeply personally and started hitting and kicking anyone around him. His French was thick and fast, so I didn’t catch much, but I know he yelled “How dare you accuse me, you [expletive] [expletive] [expletive]!” I got off on the next stop, even though it wasn’t mine.

Some of you may know that I’ve been to Paris once before for a handful of rigidly-scheduled days. I was sixteen and terrified and barely knew how to order food. I was with thirty other similarly-minded teenagers and two French-speaking adults. It was confusing, smelly, awkward, and exhausting. I saw so much and did so much that I thought my head would explode. I might as well have been on the moon.

So coming back scared me a little. I’m not an urban person; I’m comfortable when the tallest things in my periphery are mountains, not buildings. Parisian French is the fastest and most difficult of the various breeds, so whiplash was inevitable. Besides, Paris has a reputation for thieves and scoundrels. I was even robbed of fifty euros the first time I went. For this prodigal return, I was prepared for the worst.

My Airbnb was a block from the Eiffel Tower. It had a small kitchen and big windows on the top floor. The shower was next to the stove-top. My neighbor was the Ethiopian embassy. As soon as I got in and settled, I went for an orientation walk. It was around 10pm, but I wasn’t keeping track, so as soon as I turned the corner onto the Champs de Mars, the sky exploded and people screamed.

You see, every hour on the hour after the sun goes down, the tower illuminates. It silently erupts into blinding flashes of white light from base to tip. People plan enter vacations around this. I forgot about it until it left spots in my vision.

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I wasn’t alone. My friend Leeah (who is studying abroad in Ireland) was with me. It was her first time in Paris and she doesn’t know any French, so I was looking forward to flexing. And flex I did. Oh, hey, let me order that for you. Yeah, that guy just said this-and-that. The subject of this prayer song is so-and-so. There was one moment when a security guard stopped me to ask why I had a French student ID, and I explained that I’m studying the language here. We had a full-blown conversation at a till, holding up a line of about thirty people. I felt very hoity-toity and French.

The city is no different, but I really am. I navigate the metro. I order food and ask questions. I read signs. I pause to look at things, without fear of being too noticeable. I relax my gaze and steady my pace. I’m not afraid like I once was, and I find myself walking avenues I went down a hundred years ago as an entirely different person.

We did all the highlights: Eiffel Tower, Sacred Heart, Notre Dame, Versailles, Marie Antoinette’s hamlet, the Louvre, the Arc d Triomphe. I think we walked the length of the city. We even got locked out of our apartment, which is an extremely Parisian activity, and had to call a locksmith. We ate a baguette with cheese in the hallway for dinner that night.

This trip was a great measuring stick. You can’t realize how much you grow until you return to the places where you were at your most vulnerable and frightened. There’s nothing like a pot of tea in the shade of Notre Dame, ordered casually in a mutual local tongue.

Cordialement,

Allison

P.S.: The French government, in response to an epidemic of public urination, has placed free pee boxes strategically around Paris. They are bright red and have stick figures to indicate their purpose. To be clear, they are not toilets. You just aim at an opening in the box. Look it up, I swear.