 A
French friend of mine, Roget, once said to me that to experience France
to its fullest, you must live there, and not temporarily, but through each
season of one year to see how the country, the
people and the language change. Witnessing change is an important, if not
imminent, facet of travel.
We don’t often
recognize that culture changes with the seasons, and why would we? Most
of our travel is temporary and those places where we choose make our homes
are often dulled by the unfortunate opiate of permanence.
To a European,
the notion of making a home elsewhere, as an experiment in adventure or
romance, isn’t as daunting as it is for an American.
A great deal
of commitment and a certain blind leap of faith toward the eventualities
of living abroad, good and bad, accompany any decision be it rash and impetuous
or pragmatic and planned. |
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For
many, this leap simply isn’t possible.
However, there
are ways to experience the world in brief glimpses, to roll your sleeves
up and see first hand what it’s like to wake each day not to a vacation
but to those binding first moments of normalcy that compose routine of
living versus touring. All you need is a little time and the right space.
I say right, because it is possible to travel and find accommodation in
the wrong places, those that are cramped and drab; merely dwellings for
exhausted sleep, not bastions for immersion and discovery. For we often
forget that internal discovery is equally important external experience
when we travel.
So, what
is it to merely visit Paris versus the experience of living there and how
does anyone ever hope to find out without picking up and moving?
The answer is easier than you may think.
You can live
in Paris during a vacation by abandoning the usual notion of staying in
a hotel, resort or guest suite and finding a home or an apartment to rent
for your stay.
I recently
took this plunge for the first time on a hunch that it would be superior
to my past experiences.
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In
my several previous visits, I hadn’t been able to take full advantage of
the produce markets, the famous patisseries and charcuteries in the second,
seventh and eighth arrondissements, the deals on the cases of wine picked
up during the weekend jaunts to Champagne and Burgundy.
Cooking,
eating and drinking are never as intimate as when they become products
of intimate creation and while Paris is not without its endless bistros,
cafes and fine dining restaurants, which should
be patronized to the fullest, I felt cheated by the lack of intricacy in
my tourist life.
Those around
me were wandering the markets with bags in hand, cooking with fresh ingredients
and taking up the great French national sport of sitting on le terrace,
with a cup of fresh brewed coffee, a warm croissant and a freshly printed
Le Monde while watching the grand procession of Parisian foot traffic.
This cannot be recreated in a hotel room, no matter the number of stars
associated with the establishment. It comes from lingering where life exists,
in homes, in dwellings, in building and neighbourhoods where those who
are not on vacation live.
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Two
colleagues and I were conscious of this when we first began looking into
staying in Paris for a two-week journalism seminar. Hotel prices in late
autumn were affordable but when we factored in that we’d be eating out
every meal and that we’d have no way to wash clothes or store all the cheese
we wanted to buy, or cook bitter garlicky endive gratins to eat over crusty
fresh baguettes and chilled bottles of Rose for Sunday lunch, the cost
of beds and proximity alone seemed prohibitive.
In Paris,
temporary housing is endless and the prices fluctuate wildly in neighbourhoods
throughout the city.
It can be difficult
to know where to start and disconcerting, often booking a continent away,
to be comfortable regarding where you end up. Luckily we stumbled
upon an advertisement for a house swap, placed by Erica Berman, an American
living in Paris for the past twelve years. While none among us had homes
with which to use as currency, we discovered that Ms. Berman operates a
business that provides apartment living, from bohemian to belle époque,
for extended stays in Paris.
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The
prices were reasonable, the accoutrements of home casually integrated into
each property, and the chance to live in Paris as Parisians do,
enticingly possible. Ms. Berman was a model of professionalism, treating
us as personal guests rather than clients. We were made instantly at home
and provided with a local’s of glimpse of the best bistros, markets and
shops to patronize during our stay. In our first day, we felt as though
we’d integrated into the city, far from hotels and postcards, distant from
the uncomfortable notion of tourists.
It was
possible, I know now, due to the nature of our accommodation.
The first day
in the apartment, I woke to a cool breeze and the sounds of church bells
ringing in a Parisian Sunday morning high above Montmartre. I rose quickly
in order to beat the morning rush to the patisserie, Au Levain D'antan,
at the top of the street, where the best baguettes and pain au chocolate
in Paris are still warm from the oven during the early hours of the day.
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The
weather was changing, and the wind picking up, blowing the last gasps of
the summer from the city and I clung tightly to my warm baked goods and
stopped at the market for fresh orange juice, a bit of goat cheese and
freshly ground coffee before rushing back to the flat
to watch the sun rise fully over the city. The rays shimmered off
the golden dome of Les Invalides in the distance, and the fresh herbs from
the balcony garden swayed in the warming wind. I knew then we’d made the
right decision for our stay.
All of Paris;
the cafes, the food shops, the bistros, and the creperies winding through
the historic city suddenly came alive as cities do when you sacrifice yourself
to the intimate initiations of slowness.
Wandering through
the endless espaces vertes and magical arrondissements, pressure to be
or to do anything loosened, language came easier, and my cadences slowed
toward a home that didn’t feel temporary. Two weeks felt like a year and
as the leaves indeed began to fall on late September and the nights grew
noticeably chilly, I thought of my friend Roget and realized I was seeing
a true glimpse of one piece of the expatriate puzzle. For once you’ve lived
abroad for a time and learned to fall in love with foreign lands, the sensation
never fades and you consciously and unconsciously seek it in every alley
and avenue, of every destination.
I’m still intoxicated
by Autumn in Paris, the narrow streets, the clatter of activity, men in
suits and scarves with shopping bags in one hand and baguettes and purple
endive in the other; models, smoking at cafes in the fifth; beautiful women,
students of the esteemed university Sciences Po stopping into a store around
the corner from the school’s entrance to try on lingerie during a lunch
break; the caramel coloured leaves on green grass; and the smell of fresh
roasted coffee wafting above the cobblestones streets of Les Halles.
The
French do not say, I miss you, they say, Tu ma
manqué, which means you are missing to me. Thus, it is essence of
nostalgia perfected in language. For I rarely miss Paris, but it is, and
always will be, missing to me. Yet now that I’ve accessed it from a new
perspective, that love and longing have grown deeper. Like those
pieces of the heart that you leave behind when you’ve been in love, the
empty spaces where memories were created and linger within a spirit as
fresh and clean as fountain spray in le jardin du Luxembourg on a crisp
autumn day, Paris is the heart of the quixotic wanderer’s soul. I’ve left
a piece of myself in the City of Light. I plan to return to it as often
as I’m able.
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Index ~ France
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