First Day à Paris!

What a whirlwind first day in Paris!

Once I got to Paris and survived a train change at Châtlet (Julie G, you know how much of a nightmare this is with luggage), I easily found a bank across from the hostel and checked in. 

The hostel is really…hip. Clean and hip. As long as it’s clean, I’m happy, and the Montmartre-worthy décor is an added bonus. The hostel, Oops! (which I highly recommend) is located just off of Place d’Italie at Les Gobelins. It is in one of the more quiet neighborhoods, and it has really good métro connections: les lignes 5, 7, and 8.

I am rooming with a guy named Cole, who is an accounting major at the University of Oregon. He is from Idaho (wonder if he like potatoes), and he is teaching English to elementary-aged children as part of a camp in the French countryside this summer. He is also a French minor.

My other two roommates are some of the sweetest people I have ever met: Allie and Will, a couple from Australia. They’re on a six-month long backpacking extravaganza: 3 months in Europe and 3 months in South America. Will said he quit his job to take the trip (a celebration for Allie becoming a CPA); it was either make a down-payment for a house or take the trip. So they took the trip and plan to move to London and live with friends for awhile in order to save $ once all’s said and done. (I definitely wouldn’t have the courage to walk away from a job like that, but it seems to be a pretty normal thing Down Undah.) Nevertheless, they are both kind-hearted and have a gentle, yet warm sense of humor.

As I quickly discovered, the shower in our room floods. Big Time. As in I-might-need-to-give-Noah-a-call-big-time. Note to self: for future showers, only turn the shower on half-way in order to avoid 1” of water on the 3’x3’ bathroom floor. (I also discovered that my shower shoes don’t exactly cut it as squeegees….

…..Oops!.....

Nevertheless, I am exhausted after my rollercoaster travel adventures. I can’t remember where I spent the night last night—oh yeah, the plane!--, nor can I tell when one day rolled over to the next. Maybe jet lag has a side effect of brain lag. I seem to have a severe case.

After I got settled in at the hostel, bags safely bike-locked to my bed frame, I wandered around Place d’Italie at one end of the street all the way down to Les Jardins des Plantes at the other end, and then some.

For those of you who have heard of my previous Paris excursion, wandering the city is one of my favorite things to do. You never know what you’re going to find! On my daily meander, it is as if Paris becomes this magical toy chest of mysterious streets, all capable of taking you on a marvelous adventure. You never know what you’re going to find (but you know it’s going to be something grand), so all you have to do is choose one and begin walking.

On the way to Jardins des Plantes, I took a side-street/shortcut (and got lost) and found a mosque/Hamam school tucked away beside the garden. Part of it was closed for construction, but there was a really neat little café tucked in one corner. Graced with Arabian arches and mosaic-clad tables, the café seemed to add spice the otherwise Haussmanian surroundings.

But the gardens. Oh, the gardens. I might have found a new (additional—not exclusive—) favorite spot in Paris.

There was a rose garden.

With climbing roses dotting walkway arches.

And white marble statues.

And birds splashing around in puddles.

And cooing doves.

It was literally postcard perfect.

Needless to say, I took a few pictures. ;) (Only 500 from today alone…)

There was also a museum of some sort in the gardens, in addition to a very expansive greenhouse, a bird exhibit, and a section that showed various stages of plant development. It seemed to be a botanial garden of sorts, but whatever it is or was meant to be, it was the runner hangout in Paris. Some were literally running circles around me as I stood there looking every bit the tourist.

But I did get some good people-watching in. Turns out many French wear normal clothes for running. Not jeans, of course, but sweat pants and a baggy tank top, or something along those lines. And very few of those fancy running shoes I’ve been looking at recently. Many seemed to just wear whatever old sneakers they had. Of the ones who did have technical shoes, most of them were Mizuno, followed by Asics. Good choices, both ;)

Afterwards, I left through the front gate of the garden, looked up, and saw the Bastille over the rooftops! It was naturally a very exciting moment, as I had waited all year to go back to ma petite Bastille.

It’s no surprise, then, that I walked there next. It was a really emotional moment walking up to la Place de la Bastille for the first time that I just sat there on a bench for awhile just to appreciate being there, seeing the familiar cafés, the familiar sidewalks, the familiar swarms of rogue teenagers drinking on the Opéra Bastille steps (who were closely watched by armed policemen), and the familiar neighborhood itself.

I got some groceries (Camembert, baguette, Le Petit Beurre cookies, Nutella, and a Galette for dinner) and headed back to the hostel for the night.

My feet are tired from the travel and walking, and my brain is foggy with exhaustion. So I’m off to bed for some sweet shut-eye on my first night in Paris!

City Smarts

Is it possible to fall in love with something all over again, even when you never stopped loving it?

I think so.

Because today, I fell in love with Paris all over again.

When I first arrived in the city, I felt a little disjointed, as if I didn’t belong. Or as if I didn’t quite have my ‘city smarts’ anymore.

I realized on the train to le centre de Paris that one of the things I love so much about metropolitan life, especially in Paris, is that it challenges your pre-conceived assumptions about people. I found myself wary of many of the men belonging to a minority at the train station, I had to laugh at myself. Here I was, a short white girl from Myrtle Beach, SC (needless to say, NOT a big city in any sense of the word) in one of the most dangerous parts of Paris. And I had to laugh at myself because I realized that in order to survive in the city, you have to let go of those hesitations and co-exist with everyone, regardless of nationality, orientation, religion, or skin color. Otherwise you’ll drive yourself mad.

Ironically, it wasn’t one of the men of whom I was initially suspicious who tried to steal my luggage.

Luckily, I still had my city smarts about me, for I was sitting on the now-crowded train with my suitcase sitting parallel to me, close to my body, my purse strung across me and sitting on my lap, with my bookbag on the outside of my lap, with the zippers locked resting in my hand, and pulled tightly shut.

To kill the suspense, nothing ended up happening, but I noticed two men get on the train together; one stood in front of me, and the other went to sit down about two rows behind me. By a stroke of luck, I saw the man standing in front of me make eye contact with someone behind me, lower his eyes, and ever so slightly shake his head. It was as if he was saying, “Nope, we can’t get this one."

Damn right you can’t get this one. I’m not stupid enough for that.

Nevertheless, it was an eye-opener (and reminder) that I was in a large metropolitan area, and it kickstarted my hypervigilance into full gear. So thank you, would-be robber for my ‘Bienvenue à Paris.’

People-Peering in Paris and Other Ogling in Oxford

Salut de Frankfurt!

I just finished freshening up in the toiletten (I’m never too vain to brush my teeth or put on deodorant in public), and I’ve found my gate for my Paris departure.

As I told ma meilleure amie Julie G last night (?—It’s 5am US time here now) before I flew out of Charlotte, “there are men wearing scarves and women wearing parachute pants….move to Europe with me?” Even sitting in the Charlotte airport, I could sense le certain je ne sais quoi européen bubbling around me. Maybe it was the track jackets worn with skinny jeans and puma-type shoes (as I type this, an Orthodox jew glides by, coasting on a luggage cart as a five-year-old would on any Bi-Lo shopping cart!) or the lady with the loafers, white socks, coral skinny jeans and cream sweater and pearl necklace worn over a white t-shirt with her hair in a bun, carrying both a langchamp purse and a tote. Or maybe it was the girl my age wearing a white bomber jacket with a scarf, black parachute pants, and high-tops. Or maybe it was the French family sitting across from me (on whose conversations I may or may not have been eavesdropping…)

Il y a just un chose certain sur européens. Its as if they still have some sense of inner pride, as if they carry themselves taller, with more grace, than Americans. Frankly it’s quite embarrassing to think of the 300 lb women waddling their way around Wal-Mart. Meanwhile, there is a teenage German boy sitting across from me wearing a black uber-tacky Miami, Florida neon-embroidered t-shirt with Wrangler cargo shorts and converses. Yet as he crosses his legs to thumb through a magazine (I wonder if he’s as excited about Paris as I am—doubt it!), nowhere else could anyone pull that off. Perhaps its because any American teenage boy wouldn’t have their hair freshly combed to the side or dare to sport a black pleather with white piping messenger bag as the German boy. (There are people riding bicycles in the airport. Win.)

If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m a people watcher. Almost to a fault. I never noticed it until my friend Cora told me it creeped some of our other friends out. Now, I hide my gaze behind my people goggles—my darkly tinted faux Ray Bans—to observe the world around me without causing suspicion.

O well.

I love observing people: their movements, their interactions with others, their appearance (the most obvious to the casual observer and my favorite), and their language.

Despite being a welcome and accidental French bad habit, people-watching is an essential part of my everyday life (I dare not study in the library for all of the distractions), and in my life it is there to stay because for me, the people are the biggest travel attraction of them all.

A Side Trip to the Vaterland

I. Am. Furious. After waiting for 2 hours for my flight to Philly (which was supposed to leave at 11:30), I was finally put on a 2:30 flight to Charlotte. Apparently there were some mechanical issues on the Philly-bound plane, and it would’nt be ready for flight until 6:30 or 7, if at all.  Then, at 2:00 when the Charlotte plane landed, it hit a flock of birds and wouldn’t be flying either.

Great.

So I’m currently sitting in the back seat of a mini-van taxi en route to Florence (about 1.5 hours away from Myrtle and an even smaller airport), in order to catch a short 6:08 flight to Charlottte. From there I’ll fly from Charlotte to Frankfurt (departure: 8:45), and from there to Paris in the morning, arriving in Paris about 3 tomorrow afternoon.

Those of us in the taxi just got word that the flight from Charlotte has been delayed 40 minutes (again, due to maintenance), so now we leave at 6:50. Luckily, that’s enough time to catch my yet again connecting flight to Frankfurt.

I’m furious that now THREE maintenance issues have caused me to lose half a day in Paris. Don’t they understand??? I have so many things—so much living—left to do there, that I need to squeeze every hour I can out of the trip. It’s not as if I can just stay an extra night or easily go back the next weekend.

This is Paris. (And not the idealized, romantic Paris, either. It’s the grimy, smelly, noisy Paris that I love.)

There hasn’t been a single day out of the past 390-something days that I haven’t gotten homesick for Paris. And how that it’s so close I can almost (literally) taste it, the now 110ish hours I have to spend there are all the more dear.

US Air, you have a very unhappy camper on your hands. Wish I could start a grève.

Brb while I brush up my German…


(Next-day afterthoughts: Ok, so maybe I over-reacted. I mean, its not like US Air caused the birds to fly into my CLT plane, right? Plus, I got to wake up to the vaterland this morning! Couldn’t ask for a better ‘Welcome to Germany’, huh? Danke, Germany. Danke.)

A New Beginning

After months of planning, I’m sitting in the Myrtle Beach airport waiting for my flight to depart for Philly before heading onto Charles de Gaulle. I can’t believe this day is finally here! Over my past three years at Clemson, I have dreamed of becoming a Duckenfield scholar, and now that the time has come to depart for a summer at Oxford, this accumulated anticipation makes the moment feel surreal.

As you, dear reader, probably know, I was fortunate enough to study in Paris last summer, and although I did not realize it at the time, I was changed forever. I had been bitten by the travel bug with and felt the delicious itch to see the world, experience new cultures, new languages, and new paradigms for living life. More importantly, I changed as a person. I became more confident in myself, and I learned to trust my intuition and ability to operate under combined mental and physical pressure. (Lugging two 40lb+ suitcases, a duffel, and a book bag while running one of the world’s biggest cities is no small feat for anyone, much less a person of my stature.)

I learned to see others in a different light. It was as if Paris let me peek into the personal lives around me. One day on the metro towards Montmartre—the city’s most eclectic arrondissement, full of Northern African immigrants and baba-cools (the French term for “hippie”)—a Nigerian family stuffed themselves into an already over-crowded car. Dressed in traditional African robes, one of the women had a six-month-old strapped to her back with a baby sling made from a knotted piece of cloth. The metro was so crowded that the baby was sandwiched between its mother and my chest. I will never forget the feeling of that complete stranger’s baby wriggling in its fabric cocoon, staring at me with its brown, almond-shaped eyes, and grinning that drooling, bubbling smile that is unique to babies around the world. It was as if, for that moment, I was as if I was included in that baby’s life in a sort of extended Parisian family that enveloped the city.

Similar experiences occurred when I helped a dad carry his toddler’s stroller up a flight of stairs, telling him of my studies. Or when I met the most darling grandmother at the metro stop on the Champs-Élysées.  Or when a middle-aged painter kissed my hand at Place de Voges. Or when I ran my first 10K with 1,000 of my closest Parisian neighbors in the 11e arrondissement. Or when I made friends with the security guard at the top of Notre Dame. Or when I sat across from a homeless woman on the métro. Or…

Really, Paris helped me see people for what they are: people. Their individualities, their similarities. Their preferences, their distastes. In such a big city (or in Paris, anyways), there is no room for judgment, no time for pettiness. People just live. And its contagious.

As I reflect on my Parisian summer, I have to laugh at my pre-Paris self, at how completely unawares of the life changes and personal growth ahead of me. Now, as I sit waiting to depart for now Charlotte and then Charles-de-Gaulle flights (my flight to Philly was delayed 7(!) hours due to mechanical issues on the plane, so I’m now on a different flight), I am aware of the magnitude of the life-altering experiences that lie ahead of my at Oxford, yet I can only dream as to what they will be. I know I will experience an academic revival, a rebirth of sorts, in the ways in which I think about literature, about Shakespeare, and about England. I will be inducted into a great lineage (both literary and otherwise) of those who have studied at Oxford, and with that membership I will receive my Bod Card for the Bodelian Library system.

As for the academic experience itself, beyond a basic understanding of the concoction of tutorials, lectures, and class (vs. entirely lecture or discussion-based education), I honestly feel as if I have no idea what to expect. I imagine that the experience will be far different than anything else.

Some associate going to Oxford with a sort of real-life Hogwarts experience, of attending school in an architecturally rich setting full of magic and mischief. Yet for me, I feel as if Oxford will be more of a Narnia type of experience, where everything holds a different sense of magic, where the magic emanates from the place itself, rather than the people there.

I’ve fortunately spent three days in Oxford before on a high school choir trip to England, but I spent most of the time in rehearsals, rather than perusing the town. I do distinctly remember High Street, though, and the famous Sheldonian Theatre and Radcliffe Camera Library. One of my favorite memories from Oxford, however, was when my mom and I went to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream performed in one of the college courtyards. It was one of the most enchanting experiences of my life.  Although it was raining and cold (i.e. miserable), I enjoyed every minute of the play. I can only hope that I can catch some more of those performances this summer.

But before I head to Oxford, I’m off to my beloved Paris. As I told my best friend, ma mailleure amie Julie G, it feels like I’m going home, in a sense. It feels like I’m headed back to Clemson after a long summer, only in this case, the break has lasted for more than a year. Nevertheless, I can’t wait to smell the French air, gorge myself in Camembert and baguette, submerge myself in the language, and lose myself in la patrie de mon coeur, the country of my heart.

Toujours,
Meredith