Emily Wolfteich

After a good long petulant curl-up in bed, I have rallied and graciously decided to give Paris a chance to redeem itself.

Because I am too lazy to write a big long post, I shall post pictures instead.

Yesterday, I discovered the Marche d’Aligre, the cheapest and best open air market in Paris. I bought a kilo of clementines for 1euro50 and this made me a VERY happy camper.

Then we went to the Memorial for the Shoah, which is the Holocaust museum here in the Marais. It was very moving, although we were hurrying through it so quickly due to our guide that we missed an entire couple of sections. The moving part, for me, were the names on the wall outside of all the people who had been taken from Paris. The names were according to the (meticulous) records kept by the Nazis of who had been arrested, but there were mistakes here and there–one such example was of a father giving his son’s name when deported, so that the Nazis would stop looking for his son. These mistakes are corrected, along with a list of children, at the end of the wall.

I actually preferred the Holocaust Museum in DC in terms of layout and design, but I liked many aspects of the museum, especially the Crypt, and of course the proximity to the actual event. It’s one thing to be in Washington, an ocean away from the physical memories of the Holocaust. But here it’s called the Shoah, the Catastrophe, which seems more appropriate in a quartier that was literally ripped out by the roots, everyone who lived here somehow touched. Nearly every school in this district has a memorial to the Jewish students who were taken, and there are plaques scattered around remembering person after person after person who lived there once, before the Catastrophe swept them away.

After the Memorial, some of us decided to go find Shakespeare & Company. We crossed over to Ile de la Cite, and found crowds and crowds of people in front of Notre Dame. My friend, who was tall, gave a small gasp. “There’s bells!” And so we stumbled upon the replacement of the bells of Notre Dame.

We didn’t stay very long because it was a little wet, and we had another goal in mind after that — the famous Berthillon ice cream. I don’t have a photo of that because I was too busy drowning in a creamy succulent cone of salted butter pecan, but suffice it to say that we will be going back to work our way down the flavor list (blackberry??)

Then — glory of glories. I’ve been a little bit homesick lately, but now I know exactly how to cure it.

It’s not Parisian (except that they sell wine at the counter), but sometimes there are just those days when a burrito will pull you out of a dark place, and you walk out knowing that nothing is really too far from home. We were reminded of this later in the night, at an Irish pub, when a bunch of French singers announced a competition — they would play a snippet of a song, and whoever could name all the artists and song titles would win a bottle of champagne. And so commenced some of the most bizzarely pronounced versions of “Wild Thing,” “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay” and “House of the Rising Sun” that I have ever seen. After they were done, the lead singer came over and asked if we Americans had approved of the renditions.

Today we didn’t have our afternoon classes, so after a very difficult (and rainy) morning for everyone, a couple friends and I set off for the Concept Car show at Les Invalides. After wandering around most of the museum trying to find it (and griping about not being European citizens and thus getting free entry) we finally walked out the back towards Napoleon’s tomb and found it — a giant tent full of the most amazing cars (and motorcycles) that I have ever seen.

They’re concept cars, so most of them aren’t designed to actually go anywhere, but they were amazing. There was one that went 100 km on 1 euro; there was the gorgeous BMW i8 Spyder, a new, sleek, shiny electric car; there was the KTM-X Bow, orange and black and almost entirely made of carbon fiber, so it was less than 800 kg. I lusted after all of them.

There were even some that were built for beauty, and not for speed or just to prove it could be done.

But my absolute favorite were the motorcycles. I was looking at a mahogany-colored Avinton, not too big and almost retro-looking but with monster speed, when the man in the Avinton shirt stopped chewing his sandwich, came around and said, “A picture with it?” Joy! So I skittered around the rope and grinned next to it. “Non non, laisse tes affaires la,” you can get up on it, he said.

The three men around him looked faintly surprised, but he nodded encouragingly so, needing no further encouragement, up I hopped. Bliss, my friends, even stationary inside a tent I could tell we were meant for each other. I tried not to let my childish joy shine through my teeth.

The man introduced himself as the owner of Avinton, and told me to ask for one for Christmas. So, Mom&Dad, if you’re reading this….

We left Les Invalides awash in afterglow. And even though it was raining and I had forgotten an umbrella, Paris seemed much better somehow. And it still does, in my room–I have a tartiflette aux pommes avec poulet from the creperie next door, and Olivier knows me by now because I wave to him every time I pass. Once he gave me a free crepe with butter and citron, and the orange seller next to the Wagram metro stop tossed me a free clementine once, and all I can say is that people like this, who are needlessly kind and effortlessly generous to confused and lost Americans, are really and truly the best part of Paris.