Paris, Je t'aime?

[You can see the Eiffel Tower from almost every part of the city. It became my compass needle, considering I lack any natural sense of direction.]

Paris. The City of Lights. The City of Love. The City that wouldn't let me in.


When I was 18, as a high school graduation and a "welcome to adulthood!" gift, I went on a trip to Paris with my parents. After eleven years of learning French in school, I was ready to test out those skills. Surely, I had absorbed some conversational French from watching "Muzzy" in class (never mind, that the French aren't fuzzy clock munching monsters). What I didn't know linguistically, I tried to make up for in culture. I created my own Parisian culture syllabi before the trip: reading Hemingway's A Moveable Feast and a biography of Coco Chanel and watching "Paris, Je t'aime","Amélie", and "Marie Antoinette" more than stills of those films are reblogged on tumblr. I understood the language and I had done my "research"; I was ready for Paris to welcome me.

[Sacré Coeur as viewed through a sculpture at the Centre Pompidou.]
However, when I was actually in Paris, I felt snubbed. Treating me like an under-dressed party guest, Paris let me into the fête, but totally ignored me when I was there. Whenever I tried to speak French, I would be quickly dressed down to English. As if the humble crêpe I wanted didn't deserve to be ordered in butchered French. Nevertheless, I persevered to see as much as the city as quickly as they did in "Paris, Je t'aime", consequently, by the end of the trip my exhausted parents resented me as much as the city seemed to. I had tried too hard and no one appreciated it, especially Paris.

[My attitude towards Paris after my first visit when I was 18 was similar to this Rodin statue.]
[Four years ago, Paris was like a sphinx's riddle, something I couldn't unravel.]

However, last year, I found myself smitten with Paris again and have Woody Allen to blame. I'm not going to yammer on about why "Midnight in Paris" is amazing, but it's proof enough that I saw it three times in theaters. It was pure fantasy that allowed me to fall in love with Paris again, while realizing it was all a romance, something I failed to do with other French films. So when my mother suggested we travel there for my Easter break last week, I said "oui!" She knew I needed an escape after the craziest two months of my college career (2 essays, 2 visitors, 2 sinus infections, 2 balls, 8 issues of the newspaper to edit as editor in chief, and 1 dissertation- add it all up and that explains why I haven't been blogging) and what's more of an diversion than a country where a cookie is a macaroon?

[Cafe de Flore's chocolate tart, which I ordered on top of their decadent famous hot chocolate, but as Edith Piaf would sing, "Non, je ne regrette rien!"]


I had no expectations for the trip other than eating my weight in pastry and attempting to take a non-cliche photo (achieved the former with daily chausson aux pommes from Angelina and you can judge the latter). I wasn't trying to woo Paris this time, but contrarily, it wooed me. As Andrea, one of my two visitors this past semester, said, "Edinburgh is very gray," so seeing the rainbow in Ladurée's macaroons or cherry blossoms punctuating the Parisian architecture cheered me and opened my eyes to how beautiful the rest of the city is.

I became as fanciful and cliche as Gil Pender: feeling inspired as I walked by Haussmann buildings, drinking wine with lunch, people watching in the Tuileries- in short, giving myself permission to just sit back and enjoy, something that was nearly impossible this semester when I existed from deadline to deadline. Paris reminded me it's okay to take pleasure in the little things instead of panicking over the big things.
And weirdly enough, I seemed to be getting respect from the Parisians for it. No one ever assumed I was American by default; maybe my trench coat, also sported by the so-chic-it's-annoying Parisians, helped. I had "un peu" of my high school French intact, certainly enough to competently order at a restaurant (and considering how much food vocab we studied in my French classes, that's really all that matters anyway). Even if they eventually switched to English, waiters approved of me trying and sometimes let me interact with them totally in French. This encouraged me to order dessert more frequently than I should've.
Navigating the city was less forgiving. I always used to find Paris's arrondissements confusing, but maybe that was just because I couldn't pronounce the word. However, once I discovered every street sign has the arrondissement in the corner, I felt let in on a city secret. And even when I got lost (let's be honest here, about 5 times a day), there was always the metro, which was surprisingly easy to use. Once I master a city's metro, I feel less like a tourist. Paradoxically, feeling less like a tourist is always my goal as a tourist, but thankfully, Paris, a city of contradictions, understood that and indulged me.

With my new found ability to get my way around Paris linguistically and geographically, Paris opened up for me like it never had before. I may not have understood all the French I heard around me, but I was starting to understand the lifestyle. Like the ridiculously whimsical Chagall painting at the Pompidou, I was enjoying the romance and escapism of it all. And as Julia Robert's says in "Notting Hill", "Happiness isn't happiness without a violin-playing goat."
I've fallen in love with Paris, as you should see from the next few posts!