Then suddenly, a man arrived. Casually dressed and carrying in his left hand a large, torn, brown envelope upon which a name was illegibly scrawled. He had to be Irish, he had to be a friend of Marks… he had to be Aengus.

As he led me (via bus) to the train that would bring us to the centre of Paris, Aengus explained the reason for his delay. Put simply, he’d been in a pub watching a match that he just couldn’t pull himself away from, I just sat there nodding, too exhausted from dragging my luggage around to fully process anything he was saying. ‘But first’ he informed me, we would have to stop at Luxemburg Station and get out for something to eat as he was ‘starving’.

I was starting to worry, I was supposed to be meeting up with the French end of the volunteer group, that I’d be living and working with, at a specific place and already it was dark, and getting late. In the end, Aengus also realised how late it was getting – too late, in fact for him to travel with me to the area where my meeting was supposed to take place. 

I decided to take my leave of Aengus. His help was appreciated, but I had no intention of following him around all night with my baggage in tow. So after some hasty directions regarding which trains to take and the offer to give him a call if I had any problems, Aengus jumped on his train and was gone.

This was how I found myself in the position I described at the beginning of this article. Alone, tired, aching and utterly confused. The Metro layout was completely alien to me (we don’t have one in Dublin) and it was here, beneath the city itself, that I was going to have to learn to adapt to life in Paris.

The Metro was my first obstacle during my stay there, but eventually it would become my first love.

To most people Paris is, the Musee du Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, Champs-Elysees, Arc de Triomphe etc, or any other number of deliberately beautiful objects, structures or places. And indeed all these things prove just why this city is itself a work of art. But my Paris is perfectly encapsulated in the routes and curves of the Metro. 

A human construction of chasms and networks scooped out of the earth, originally at the hands of engineer Fulgence Bienvenue. Inside the scenes vary from station to station: Brazen colours; deep blues, heavy reds, vagrant greens and browns, tiles, mosaics and billboards advertising everything from blockbuster movies to rare exhibits. Some stations are a thing of splendour in themselves; soft lights easing marble walls to accentuate the contours of glass covered imitation artworks in one of the stations by the Louvre, the select Hector Guimard designed entrances of certain stations or of course Luxemburg station, exceptional to me for entirely personal reasons.

Understandably though; on my first night in Paris none of these things were important to me. My only concern was to get to the meeting place before it got too late. 

When I finally reached my rendezvous point, the whole street was quiet but for the odd bar or shop. I had this uncomfortable feeling that when I arrived at the meeting place everyone would be gone. The feeling proved prescient. When I reached the address I’d been given, the building was closed up for the night and everyone was gone. I had no intention of hanging around that area for long, so I retreated back down into the Metro-world from whence I came.

I jumped on and off different trains, trying to get back to Luxemburg Station. The area outside the station was the only one I was in anyway familiar with. I knew that outside there were phone booths and cafes, shops and kiosks, all of which I would be able to move to and from and still find my way back to the station.

I tried contacting the support numbers that the organisation in Ireland had given me. I also tried calling Aengus but no luck. So I just moved from station to station, train to train. I was getting desperate. It was a bonesplittingly cold night, I had foolishly over packed and the weight of my possessions was really putting a strain on me. Probably for the first time in my adult life I felt truly vulnerable.

In a way I was my own worst enemy. Like many people I had preconceived notions about what the French would be like. My reluctance in approaching people to ask for help was the result of a misguided presumption that the French were aloof and condescending and that I would be held in contempt for being too ignorant to learn their language. This presumption was not only a handicap to me; it was also untrue. My suspicion is that the English speaking people who regularly illicit this kind of derisive response when they visit another country, do so as a result of their own ignorance. People who refuse to make any effort to be respectful to another language, worse still, crudely expect everyone to accommodate them by speaking English, are bound to arouse negative reactions. A little bit of respect and a little effort go a long way. The French like most other nations respond to courtesy in kind.

Necessity meant that I would have to overcome my own reluctance in this regard. I did so and found most people very helpful. 

But Paris is a metropolis, and although people were polite and accommodating, they could only give me seconds of their time. I was so tired I found it almost impossible to understand what was being explained to me or even to articulate what I wanted to say… I absolutely had to find a hotel or hostel to stay in for the night.

Finally I got lucky. My approach was to wait by the exit to the station to catch people on their way out. A French woman had stopped to try to help me but progress was slow, when (just as I’m sure she was beginning to regret her kindness) a voice came from the crowd exiting the most recent train to pull into the station.

“Excuse me, can I help?” the voice asked. “Yes” I replied “I hope you can.”  A wave of relief spread over my body.

I can’t remember the woman’s name now. I was only in her company for about fifteen minutes. But her intervention marked a turning point in my Parisian adventure. She was American but had been living in Paris for three years now, having spent a college semester studying there previously. She told me that she knew of a “small, basic but clean and comfortable hotel” which she offered to show me to, as she was going in that direction anyway.

My intervening angel had been right. The hotel was perfect. Cheap and comfortable… and warm. I took the backpack off my shoulders and felt like an astronaut on the moon, one leap and I’d float away.

I bore two huge, swollen lumps on my shoulders from the straps of my backpack. I didn’t care. All that mattered was that there were two soft beds for me to choose between and either one would be a winner. I turned on one of the bedside lamps, moved toward the window and looked out into the small pretty courtyard below, then up, above the roof-tops of Paris, to the stars blinking in the brisk winter sky. I turned back toward my bed of choice, pulled back the old fashioned, square patterned blanket covering the cool, clean white sheets and slipped contentedly into bed.

The adventures I had during my time in Paris are too numerous and complex to go into in any real detail. But needless to say, I had all the traditional expectations of the city: sophistication, elegance, beauty and romance. The fantasy Paris offered to us in books and movies. Somewhere, in the back of my mind I imagined that maybe it could be all these things. But I knew that few things in life that we have such high expectations of can deliver.

Paris delivered. Paris the reality makes Paris the fantasy a pale comparison. I had the romance (a foreign girl who also spoke little French), I was surrounded by elegance and beauty (both the girl and the city), I was bewitched by the whole experience.

Along with my partner in crime (the Girl), I got to experience a Paris that was uniquely mine/ours. In our short time together we seemed to attract absurd incidents. Such as the time we found ourselves watching an all night showing of David Lynch movies at a local cinema, or opening a bottle of wine with a power drill, or one particular night having missed our curfew we found ourselves locked out of our lodgings. Neither of us was willing to awaken the family we lodged with. So, we decided to take a 3am stroll around our foster neighbourhood where we discovered, every few yards, as we passed maybe two or three apartment entrances, a miscellany of discarded furniture. Until finally, both of us still too stubborn to wake the family, fell asleep, on a freezing winter night, at an empty bus stop, only to be awakened later by two very large transvestites looking for a cigarette. This was the city as it revealed itself to us. And for my part it was more than I could’ve ever expected.

All of which was fine, until it came time to leave Paris. Once the volunteer work was finished I decided to leave the lodgings we’d all been staying in, in such close quarters (nine people, on inflatable beds in a small room behind a psychiatrists office) and spend my final nights in a wood-beamed room of another cheap hotel I’d found. I awoke late on my final morning there to a loud knock on my room door; it was the woman who ran the hotel, informing me that I’d overslept and should be checking out by now. I made my apologies and began readying myself. Most of my stuff was packed so I needed only to shower and dress and I would be gone. Twenty minuets later, there was another knock: I was only half dressed, so I shouted through the door “sorry! – nearly ready, five minutes.” But the voice that replied wasn’t that of the hotel landlady. “Are you coming for breakfast?” I was asked.

It was ‘the girl’. We’d parted on friendly, but drunken and hurried terms the previous night, an inadequate goodbye having been through so many shared adventures.

The Girl had managed to find my hotel and we would spend the first half of my last day in Paris together, before finally parting forever.

By late afternoon we were saying our goodbyes. It was far harder sober, in the cold light of day, than it had been the blurry night before. Within a couple of stunning minutes I was alone. I’d said goodbye to the girl, now it was time to say goodbye to the city.

The remainder of that day felt so strange. It was an almost ‘out of time’ experience. I finally managed to visit the Eiffel Tower and as with all things in Paris it was more impressive than I’d expected. But I wasn’t really with it; I wasn’t really there. I was sad. I missed my companion, my partner in crime and her red winter nose. I was also acutely aware that these were my last hours in this city that had had such an impact on me. For the first time since I’d arrived I felt like a tourist. Unfortunately a tourist who’d managed to miss his stop on the way to C.D.G. airport and found himself once again late and potentially stranded at some suburban hinterland station. 

Eventually another train came and once again I miraculously made it to my flight on time. We took off. I sat staring out the window at Paris, a map of exquisite neon sinking lower and lower into the December night. And I wondered how long it would be before I returned to the city and to the city beneath the city. 

Three years went by; during which time I’d become significantly more experienced with life in other countries. Some of those countries I just visited. Others, I lived and worked in.

I’d experienced life on the other side of the world in Sydney, Australia, seen the stunning vistas of Hong Kong at night. And, after a prolonged period of living back home in Ireland, without so much as a weekend away outside Dublin, I finally found myself living in the breathtaking region of Murcia in Spain. Yet through all these things I’d carried a longing for that first experience in Paris; a residual heat that had to be tended. I needed resolution.

Last year as I was leaving my life in Spain to return to Dublin, I decided to take a couple of day’s holiday (a kind of time out for re-adjustment) between countries. I couldn’t just move from life in Spain to life in Ireland in the time it takes to fly from one place to the other. I needed to spend a couple of day’s somewhere else.  And, deciding it was time I resolved my Parisian attachment I boarded a flight bound for France.

The intervening years since that first time in Paris had been full of change for me. I felt nothing like the man I’d been. I had to know how this city would feel to me, in my new skin.

My arrival was completely different; Orly airport this time. And I had no reservations about asking for directions or information. I took the train from Orly to the centre of Paris to get to my hostel in Square Caulaincourt, and it was here, once I was back on the Metro again, that things started to feel familiar.

I was once again squeezing myself, my guitar and my backpack (the same sturdy backpack) onto an overcrowded train. Once again fairly tired (having spent the previous night sleeping in Alicante airport) however this time I was very self-assured and had little trouble finding the hostel. 

The hostel itself was certainly not a disappointment being much more a hotel than hostel. I had a twin room (dorm price) ensuite, with remote control T.V. which I shared with an American fisherman who spent six months of the year working on trawlers and the other six months travelling. As soon as I’d secured my bags I was off for stroll, to lose myself amidst the streets of Paris, knowing that if I became too disorientated all I had to do was drift down one of those Metro tunnels and reappear later in an area more familiar to me. 

Just walking around, reabsorbing some of that unique Parisian atmosphere, stopping off in cafes or finding heights to pan the city from, was my pleasure. The view from the Sacre Coeur was magnificent. Bright winter filled the expanse, which sprawled out below me. Even the journey up to the Sacre Coeur was classic, as little squares filled with tourist artists, revealed themselves around hidden corners. Actually the Sacre Coeur was the only tourist site I visited as I’d seen what I wished of such sights on my previous visit. And besides, as I mentioned earlier, what had captivated me about Paris was it’s everyday experience. The city hadn’t changed; four years did nothing to diminish its spellbinding impression on me. It was still the same enchanting city I’d left, which was exactly what I wanted it to be.

Now, four years later I was once again exploring streets, munching crepes from my favourite kiosk and dipping in and out of the Metro, so enthralled that for most of one particular day, I’d forgotten it was my birthday. I mentioned this to my roommate and we decided to go out for a celebratory pint or two. We enjoyed ourselves so much that we decided to repeat the experience the following night, as it would be my last night there. 

That final night we found ourselves in a cheap Irish (esque) bar where the staff and customers were celebrating their Christmas with a good old-fashioned knees up. Unfortunately I joined in on the celebrations a little too heavily. Which, for the sake of my own dignity, I’ll avoid recounting, needless to say I awoke on my final morning in Paris, a little the worse for ware. 

After maybe one hours sleep I dragged my wrecked body out of bed, showered and joined my bemused but always calm roommate for breakfast. The conversation was limited but I was green enough in the face to convey my suffering whilst just articulate enough to offer my apologies and thanks to said roommate for getting me back to the hostel in one piece. It was at this point that I checked my watch, and it was at this point, I realised that: surprise, surprise I was late again!

Hangover forgotten; I was out the door, bags on the street desperately trying to hail a taxi. I would be flying out of Beauvais Airport outside Paris and I had to get to the pickup point where the bus to the airport would be waiting. Arriving there too late, I (along with a handful of others) missed my bus. Luckily there was a bus for another flight from Beauvais, which had a few empty seats and we were all accommodated. 

No longer stressed about missing my flight I was able to return to the business of being hung over. I lay my drowsy head against the window as the bus rolled out of Paris and the December sun made the Seine and all about it brilliant. We left the metropolis and moved quietly into some countryside, the crisp morning light intensifying the landscape reeling by me. Eventually we arrived at Beauvais airport, one of the most basic airports I’ve ever been to. I was leaving Paris for the second time. 

Again I found myself sitting in a plane, looking out the window as we pulled away from the earth. Below me this time wasn’t the night lit cartography of a shimmering metropolis, but quiet fields under a pristine day. Greens and rustic brown scenery which gave way to the English channel, to Britain, to the Irish sea, which finally gave way to Ireland itself, no less serene in all its shining day time glory than the land I’d left.

So I’d done it, I’d returned to Paris. I’d resolved whatever it was I had to resolve yet lost none of my affection for the city. Still I willingly retain the strongest of those wistful attachments: my amazement at the Metro. 

The feeling of being a part of that real subterranean organ. Where deep breaths of people were inhaled and exhaled through vast contrary networks of a living, pulsating domain. Where sweet detergent odours linger faintly in the shifting air, and I sat on benches under curving walls that cross the rail track divide, while trains like mechanical serpents wind through burrowed voids. Or in the larger stations where kiosks emit luscious smells which permeate the underground air. And the sheer sprawl of Paris to-ing and fro-ing in live flesh all about me, whilst I pick a point on the map, slip onto a train, and, arriving at my destination, I leave the warmth of the Metro to surface into the crisp Parisian day. That feeling, that effect, is enduring.

That was the distinction Paris held for me. It is, along with such places as New York, Rome and increasingly Barcelona, one of those precious world cities that it seems everyone wants to experience in their own intimate way. It’s one of those cities everyone should experience in their own way. And I believe that no two people will fall in love with the city in the same way. Everyone will have their own particular romance. Everyone will have their own particular adventure. And this… was mine.

To read Hugh's previous article about living in Spain click below:

• Living In Caravaca De La Cruz In Murcia, Spain ~ The Beauty Of Spain