I hate to make posts about more than one day at a time, but I could not help it today: my impressions from the past few days have blurred together, and I am too tired to remember them in especial detail. I did a lot of walking today and got a lot of sun. Also, My face is covered in grit,which might be crystallized sweat, grime from the city, or a combination of both. More on that later.
I was apprehensive prior to leaving for Paris. I suppose that, because of its worldwide reputation as a city of culture and refinement, one develops unrealistic expectations for it. I would hazard to say that one knows more or less what one is looking to see when one visits, say, Rome or Istanbul; certain, small parts of the city contain invaluable cultural relics that one is going to photograph. The cities themselves, as ever-changing beings, are not of much interest. Paris, on the other hand, is a living city, so to speak, and one approaches it with the expectation of being drenched in culture with every step that one takes. This may be entirely wrong, but it is my way of explaining why I may have felt nervous prior to going: it is a place, I thought, so surreal that one can barely believe that one is there, and one is behooved, as a result, to sail into the empyrean of higher thought and art appreciation as soon as one gets there.
I could not sleep on my red-eye from Montreal to Paris, which surprised me, as I usually sleep well on flights. I struck up a conversation with the girl next to me and started to rediscover both my love for the French language and my strong preference for Russian over any language other than English. I have discussed this with my brother, who agrees with my general viewpoint, before: whenever I have to speak any non-English language, I reach into my grab-bag of foreign languages and come up with the one that I speak best. It is probably foolish to generalize from this example, as plenty of people seem to speak three or more languages, but my experience is still that I only have room in my head for one foreign language (Given that I hope to learn Mandarin Chinese, I hope that this is wrong.). Whenever I have to speak French, I get frustrated at my interlocutor's not speaking Russian, as much as I enjoy using the language. The girl next to me in the plane laughed when I said that one of my goals was to meet as many Russian speakers in France as I could.
It took me four hours, from arriving in Paris, to get checked into my hostel and start exploring the city. The baggage claim was slow; it took me awhile to figure out how to get to the train station near my hostel; and check-in time at the hostel itself was abominable. I did enjoy my walk from the train station to my hostel, though. A lover of cliches, I am tempted to say that Paris oozes history, by which I mean that everything here looks old. Streets are lined with four- or five-storey buildings of identical height that have white-framed windows; wooden, slatted shutters; iron railings outside of their windows; doors that are unnecessarily tall and directly abut the street; and exceedingly-ornate facades, as though their exteriors were made of freshly-whipped cream. Interspersed with these - often, integrated by them, as though they had been swallowed by the whipped-cream buildings and only their first floors remained - were greengrocers, cafes, and patisseries. I stopped off at one of the latter and ordered a section of flan, as it looked the most filling of everything for its cost. It turned out to be both mediocre and the only food that I ate for the rest of the afternoon; I had enough stuff to keep me busy that I forgot about eating until later that evening.
I am dying to make a generalization here rather than jump into a play-by-play description of my activities: Paris is the Shanghai of Europe. (I apologize to those of you who do not get this inside joke; it would take awhile to explain.) It seems like a city that was extraordinarily rich a few hundred years ago, suffered a major blow with Napoleon's defeats in 1812 and 1815, and commenced to suck thereafter. It is chock full of hobos; its streets are strewn with garbage; everything is at least twofold two expensive; it is incredibly noisy because of all of its car and motorcycle traffic; and it has fewer trees than any given square mile of Vancouver. It is a city of polar opposites, of beggars and kings; just a few hundred meters from famous churches are markets like in Russia, where people sell cloth, rubber boots, ball bearings, suitcases, mugs, and lamps, bumping into one another and shuffling as one great mass through narrow streets, oblivious to the life outside of their own few blocks.
I was apprehensive prior to leaving for Paris. I suppose that, because of its worldwide reputation as a city of culture and refinement, one develops unrealistic expectations for it. I would hazard to say that one knows more or less what one is looking to see when one visits, say, Rome or Istanbul; certain, small parts of the city contain invaluable cultural relics that one is going to photograph. The cities themselves, as ever-changing beings, are not of much interest. Paris, on the other hand, is a living city, so to speak, and one approaches it with the expectation of being drenched in culture with every step that one takes. This may be entirely wrong, but it is my way of explaining why I may have felt nervous prior to going: it is a place, I thought, so surreal that one can barely believe that one is there, and one is behooved, as a result, to sail into the empyrean of higher thought and art appreciation as soon as one gets there.
I could not sleep on my red-eye from Montreal to Paris, which surprised me, as I usually sleep well on flights. I struck up a conversation with the girl next to me and started to rediscover both my love for the French language and my strong preference for Russian over any language other than English. I have discussed this with my brother, who agrees with my general viewpoint, before: whenever I have to speak any non-English language, I reach into my grab-bag of foreign languages and come up with the one that I speak best. It is probably foolish to generalize from this example, as plenty of people seem to speak three or more languages, but my experience is still that I only have room in my head for one foreign language (Given that I hope to learn Mandarin Chinese, I hope that this is wrong.). Whenever I have to speak French, I get frustrated at my interlocutor's not speaking Russian, as much as I enjoy using the language. The girl next to me in the plane laughed when I said that one of my goals was to meet as many Russian speakers in France as I could.
It took me four hours, from arriving in Paris, to get checked into my hostel and start exploring the city. The baggage claim was slow; it took me awhile to figure out how to get to the train station near my hostel; and check-in time at the hostel itself was abominable. I did enjoy my walk from the train station to my hostel, though. A lover of cliches, I am tempted to say that Paris oozes history, by which I mean that everything here looks old. Streets are lined with four- or five-storey buildings of identical height that have white-framed windows; wooden, slatted shutters; iron railings outside of their windows; doors that are unnecessarily tall and directly abut the street; and exceedingly-ornate facades, as though their exteriors were made of freshly-whipped cream. Interspersed with these - often, integrated by them, as though they had been swallowed by the whipped-cream buildings and only their first floors remained - were greengrocers, cafes, and patisseries. I stopped off at one of the latter and ordered a section of flan, as it looked the most filling of everything for its cost. It turned out to be both mediocre and the only food that I ate for the rest of the afternoon; I had enough stuff to keep me busy that I forgot about eating until later that evening.
I am dying to make a generalization here rather than jump into a play-by-play description of my activities: Paris is the Shanghai of Europe. (I apologize to those of you who do not get this inside joke; it would take awhile to explain.) It seems like a city that was extraordinarily rich a few hundred years ago, suffered a major blow with Napoleon's defeats in 1812 and 1815, and commenced to suck thereafter. It is chock full of hobos; its streets are strewn with garbage; everything is at least twofold two expensive; it is incredibly noisy because of all of its car and motorcycle traffic; and it has fewer trees than any given square mile of Vancouver. It is a city of polar opposites, of beggars and kings; just a few hundred meters from famous churches are markets like in Russia, where people sell cloth, rubber boots, ball bearings, suitcases, mugs, and lamps, bumping into one another and shuffling as one great mass through narrow streets, oblivious to the life outside of their own few blocks.
The most interesting cultural monument that I saw was the Cathedrale de Sacre Coeur, which is just a few blocks away from the hostel in which I am staying. Sacre Coeur impressed me, appropriately, as did the hordes of people going to see it. Schoolchildren, tourists, locals, old women, young men, and people of indeterminate age or gender all crowded around its entrance or on the steps leading up to it. It was at Sacre Coeur that I was first struck by Parisians' desperateness to sell things. Outside of the cathedral stood magicians, men with cold water, people selling postcards, and dozens of touts, or seemingly-idle people who try to strike up conversation with other people in order to fleece them. Parisians, or the people living in Paris, turn every one of its tourist attractions into business schemes, and, while this happens in other cities, I have never seen it on such a scale as in Paris.
My next tourist venture was to walk from Sacre Coeur to the Eiffel Tower. During my walk, I passed the opera house, the Madeleine, and the Arc de Triomphe, all of which seemed to outdo one another in splendor and reinforced my sense of Paris' former wealth. I saw some similarities between Paris' architecture and that of Vienna, in fact, probably because of some particular architectural style's having been popular when both cities were at the height of their power. I took the metro from the Eiffel Tower back to Montmartre, the part of Paris in which I am staying, shortly after dinnertime to get groceries. I also discovered that my fly was down, and probably had been all afternoon, due to the zipper's being weak enough that it unzips itself under the slightest tension. There is not much that I can do about this, as the shorts that I was wearing have a fantastical number of pockets, as a result of which I am going to keep wearing them. I apologized inwardly to anyone who had suffered undue discomfiture due to my sartorial shortcomings, bought enough groceries for dinner for the next few nights, and, shortly after that, went to bed.
I would have had a hard time calling France a first-world country on the basis of what I saw after my first day in Paris. A great example of its appearing great but actually being poor is my hotel room. I was checked into a studio apartment for the next five days due to a booking error that was partly my fault and partly the hostel's, and this is giving me a chance to see how Parisians might live. My bed is the top half of a bunk bed with a ladder and is so close to the ceiling that I cannot sit up in it. Beneath my bed are an ironing board, a sofa chair, a space heater, and, I just noticed, a reading lamp. I have a dresser that prevents my window from fully opening, a rack for hanging clothes, a little pantry, some sort of water heater, a mini-kitchen, and even a sink and shower of my own. The problems with my room are mostly of size and quantity, not of what I have. My fridge leaks; my whole room reeks of cigarette smoke; my bathroom sink looks like it was made for a baby; my shower is so small that I cannot turn around in it without bumping the handle that controls its temperature, and it does not seal properly, causing water to leak into the kitchen; there are no electrical outlets in the bathroom, and the sink is too small to use anyway, so I have to shave in the kitchen, which is only a step away regardless (but has no mirror and is not really made for shaving); the hostel had no soap or toilet paper; and it is clear that everything in it has been done to a bare minimum. While readers might suspect me of complaining about my situation and failing to understand that space is at a minimum in a city like Paris, I am trying to highlight conditions that could not possibly exist in a similarly-priced accommodation in a developed country, like Germany, Austria, or the Netherlands; while it is a delight to be in Paris despite its sucking so much, it is also interesting to see how far France is behind other countries in western Europe. I expect that many of Paris' gorgeous old buildings are in a state like this one: they look fantastic from the outside, but they are so hopelessly old as to be almost unusable, ad nobody has done anything to refurbish their interiors while leaving their facades the same, as can be done trivially these days. I forgot to mention, by the way, that the bathroom itself is little more than a literal water-closet, and it is so small that I cannot close the door when I have my backpack on.
I think that I have fairly aptly summed up my experiences from the eighth day of my trip: Paris is a hideous city with world-class historical attractions. If you are willing to put up with its unpleasantness, then you will not regret having come, as some of its buildings are among the most impressive that I have ever seen. If you would prefer, however, to visit a city with world-class historical attractions that does not suck, try Berlin or Vienna, both of which are a blast to visit and have been very important in the development of their respective countries', and the world's, culture. For more on Paris, how much it sucks, and how interesting it is to visit, tune in to my coming post!
My next tourist venture was to walk from Sacre Coeur to the Eiffel Tower. During my walk, I passed the opera house, the Madeleine, and the Arc de Triomphe, all of which seemed to outdo one another in splendor and reinforced my sense of Paris' former wealth. I saw some similarities between Paris' architecture and that of Vienna, in fact, probably because of some particular architectural style's having been popular when both cities were at the height of their power. I took the metro from the Eiffel Tower back to Montmartre, the part of Paris in which I am staying, shortly after dinnertime to get groceries. I also discovered that my fly was down, and probably had been all afternoon, due to the zipper's being weak enough that it unzips itself under the slightest tension. There is not much that I can do about this, as the shorts that I was wearing have a fantastical number of pockets, as a result of which I am going to keep wearing them. I apologized inwardly to anyone who had suffered undue discomfiture due to my sartorial shortcomings, bought enough groceries for dinner for the next few nights, and, shortly after that, went to bed.
I would have had a hard time calling France a first-world country on the basis of what I saw after my first day in Paris. A great example of its appearing great but actually being poor is my hotel room. I was checked into a studio apartment for the next five days due to a booking error that was partly my fault and partly the hostel's, and this is giving me a chance to see how Parisians might live. My bed is the top half of a bunk bed with a ladder and is so close to the ceiling that I cannot sit up in it. Beneath my bed are an ironing board, a sofa chair, a space heater, and, I just noticed, a reading lamp. I have a dresser that prevents my window from fully opening, a rack for hanging clothes, a little pantry, some sort of water heater, a mini-kitchen, and even a sink and shower of my own. The problems with my room are mostly of size and quantity, not of what I have. My fridge leaks; my whole room reeks of cigarette smoke; my bathroom sink looks like it was made for a baby; my shower is so small that I cannot turn around in it without bumping the handle that controls its temperature, and it does not seal properly, causing water to leak into the kitchen; there are no electrical outlets in the bathroom, and the sink is too small to use anyway, so I have to shave in the kitchen, which is only a step away regardless (but has no mirror and is not really made for shaving); the hostel had no soap or toilet paper; and it is clear that everything in it has been done to a bare minimum. While readers might suspect me of complaining about my situation and failing to understand that space is at a minimum in a city like Paris, I am trying to highlight conditions that could not possibly exist in a similarly-priced accommodation in a developed country, like Germany, Austria, or the Netherlands; while it is a delight to be in Paris despite its sucking so much, it is also interesting to see how far France is behind other countries in western Europe. I expect that many of Paris' gorgeous old buildings are in a state like this one: they look fantastic from the outside, but they are so hopelessly old as to be almost unusable, ad nobody has done anything to refurbish their interiors while leaving their facades the same, as can be done trivially these days. I forgot to mention, by the way, that the bathroom itself is little more than a literal water-closet, and it is so small that I cannot close the door when I have my backpack on.
I think that I have fairly aptly summed up my experiences from the eighth day of my trip: Paris is a hideous city with world-class historical attractions. If you are willing to put up with its unpleasantness, then you will not regret having come, as some of its buildings are among the most impressive that I have ever seen. If you would prefer, however, to visit a city with world-class historical attractions that does not suck, try Berlin or Vienna, both of which are a blast to visit and have been very important in the development of their respective countries', and the world's, culture. For more on Paris, how much it sucks, and how interesting it is to visit, tune in to my coming post!
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| This is what the Cathedrale de Sacree Coeur looks like. |
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