It’s now 3 people who’ve struggled for the English words, looked at my jacket, and told me I “look rock & roll.”
This is good, I guess, being rock ‘n roll, as I’ve been both rocking and rolling my way around Paris. Last Thursday was my first St. Valentine’s Day experience in the Most Romantic City in the World, and leading up to it I somewhat expected to be overwhelmed. But except for getting trapped on the Metro behind a couple exploring each other’s tonsils, and needing to physically elbow them aside so that I could exit the car, St Valentine’s was surprisingly uneventful, given its reputation. In retrospect, it makes sense — and not just because Valentine’s Day is kind of a silly overmarketed holiday in the first place. For me, the Paris that I’m seeing, that I live in for such a brief little moment, isn’t really romantic at all. The idea of Paris has that sepia glow that we associate with old photographs. Paris is romantic in its nostalgia, but the Paris of today and now is hard to live in. The number of people who sleep on the streets here is staggering; it’s a rare day that you don’t have someone on the metro telling the whole car that they haven’t eaten for three days could you spare anything even a cigarette; it’s hard to find work and even harder to find somewhere to live, thanks to strict regulations on renting houses. Of course Paris isn’t devoid of romance, and certainly there is an elegance to Paris that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world. I’ve certainly dreamed of sitting on the steps of Sacre Coeur with a bottle of wine and a boy at sunset. But I think l’amour de Paree is a marketing tool, just like the Eiffel Tower, and everyone here knows it, and as much as I would like to believe in that special type of heady romance, I know it too. Paris can certainly be romantic. But really no more than any other large city can be romantic, and I think to only see the romance you have to ignore all the ugliness that’s right in front of your eyes.
Despite this, I spent an absolutely lovely Valentine’s Day, in large part due to the fact that my friend Nicole was in town. She rolled in on Thursday evening and then we rocked our way over to Chatelet, where we had a very romantic dinner of steak-frites in a gilted restaurant where the waiter told us his life dream of owning his own restaurant, which he then announced he had just found a name for — Brasserie Emilie. So when that gets like 12 Michelin stars, y’all, you know where the inspiration came from. Then we rondled over to McBride’s Irish Pub to watch some friends of mine play in a band, and then we climbed all over fountains and went home. Over the next few days, we raced around everywhere. I finally visited the Louvre (where we were sniffy about the Mona Lisa and shot it a perfunctory glance as we walked by the hall, “overrated”), we had Angelina’s hot chocolate and I flirted with the counter man, we wandered through the sun-soaked Tuileries and gaped a little at the Concorde, sat on the steps of Sacre Coeur (my favorite place in Paris) and ate candied nuts and watched a man climb a lamppost, and came home to make homemade risotto and vegetables on a hot plate. That night we raced to see the Eiffel Tower, running out of the station and banking a hard left just in time to see it explode in twinkles, and though neither of us wanted to we gasped a little. The rest of that night was spent dancing in a tiny living room with a guitarist from Martinique and watching another sing to us in a circle, our faces lit up by a tray of tealights, French and broken English (for Nicole, of course) swirling around us like water rushes over your bare feet in a stream.
This is the Paris that I like — good people, interesting people, who won’t be eating in Les Deux Magots or taking me to l’Opera Garnier, but who will correct my French and ask me questions and play me music when I’m quiet. Even the clubs have worn off their appeal, partly because they are impoverishing, and partly because they’re coated in expats who don’t speak French and aren’t interested in talking with you anyway — both things that bore me. I’m very excited to start my internship in the next few weeks, at URACA, an organization that works with African immigrants, because that will give me an entirely new view of Paris, a view that is more real and (selon moi) more important that le tour Eiffel or any of the beautiful museums. It’s going to be difficult, because of both the work and the language barrier (made worse by African accents), but it’s important, and I’m excited about it, and I think that it will stretch me and pummel me, and these are all good things.
But before that, Croatia for a week 🙂 rock ‘n roll, ladies and gents.
Emily Wolfteich 