Meet Me in Micronesia: You Can't Be A Wimp on the Paris Metro

9/15 - 9/22

What a crazy, crazy week it has been. Paris in the fall is spectacular. It was exactly what I hoped it would be, nothing like I thought it would be, and so much more all in one. It’s cliché to love Paris, but I can’t help myself. Accordion players playing La Vie En Rose on street corners or metro stops, old French men with their cigarettes and tiny dogs perched in café windows, kebab stands and the crepes, don’t even get me started on the crepes. Sugar, nutella, crème de marron, chocolate, nutella and banana, banana and jam, the combinations are endless. You can never go wrong with a good crepe.

All this makes Paris sound like a breeze, but the week was more trial by fire than leisurely stroll down the Champs Elysee. But it was good, It was good and hard and tiring and exactly right all at the same time.

Sometimes, finding a balance on Europe Semester is hard. A balance of schoolwork and sleep, of exploring the city 12+ hours at a time and knowing when to call it a night. We’re all trying to find that balance, and Paris was the perfect opportunity to test our skills. We split sightseeing and nights out with seven museums and ten hours of class this week. I debated stricter immigration laws in our Contemporary Challenges class and tried (somewhat successfully) to keep sickness at bay.

Was I prepared for the week and it’s crazy glory? No, not particularly. But I was open and willing, willing to persevere and experience and let Paris teach me through each little moment, each conversation, and each incident. Good thing, too. Here’s a little taste of the past week:

We kept our eyes peeled and thankfully, no one fell prey to pickpockets or gypsies this week, despite how insane the Paris metro is. First, let me just boast for a second about how good we are at navigating the metro. I may be directionally challenged when operating a motorized vehicle, but my metro skills are way above par. Second, it is certifiably insane how packed the metro gets. On more occasions that not, we packed in like sardines and hoped for the best. Never before have I pushed so hard to fight my way on to or out of public transportation.

You can’t be a wimp on the Paris metro, that’s for sure. Elizabeth and I learned that fact very quickly when, on our first (and most crowded) metro ride, we got left behind, zooming onto the next station while the rest of our group watched with shocked expressions. Trying to get 44 people off the metro on the same stop is a big task, and we fought our hardest, but the metro won. I laughed at our luck, and we doubled back at the next station only to meet up with 3 other Westmont kids who hadn’t gotten off, either. Later on in the week two girls and I were accosted while exploring the city (on three separate occasions in one day), and concluded that not only had we found the sketchy areas of Paris, but for safe measure we should probably go places with guys.

I went to my first opera this week, and what an experience that was. The Marriage of Figaro is a Spanish opera written by an Austrian man, sung in Italian with French subtitles…and we speak English. It was 4 hours of confusion and song and drama and craziness that I wouldn’t change for the world. Staying awake the whole time was a major, major accomplishment.

Versailles was amazing. It lived up to my sky-high expectations of grandiose and gaudy - I can’t imagine living in a place with so much marble and gold and mirrors. Whatever you do, don’t get me started on those gardens. Beautiful and vast and oh so pristine. I could’ve spent a week wandering and biking and row boating the waterways and grounds of Versailles.

My perfect French moment: stumbling upon a foie gras festival after going to mass at Notre Dame. Picture crowds of people sitting on the banks of The Seine, drinking wine and eating cheese and buttery baguette sandwiches and cantaloupe. We joined them with our sandwiches and crepes, and I felt very, very French.

Friday after class, we enjoyed lunch at the upscale Café de Flore, only to find ourselves caught in a storm on the way to The Louvre. So we did what we could, we embraced Paris in the rain, sans jackets and with two umbrellas for six girls. Sufficiently wet and slightly overwhelmed, I clutched my handy map and set out to conquer the Louvre. Fifteen minutes later, I threw in my invisible white flag of surrender, tossed my list of paintings and room numbers aside, popped my ear buds in, and wandered. I pondered angelic faces, men in armor, babies with chubby legs, and lots and lots of nakedness. Would I have gotten more out of The Louvre had my visit been narrated by an academic audio guide instead of my country crooners? Probably. But I’m ok with that. I’m hoping to cultivate a new appreciation of art and art museums this semester. So far, it’s not looking so hot, considering I did more people watching than art watching in The Louvre. My ‘room for improvement’ category is wide open.

Besides climbing the Eiffel Tower and Arc De Triumph for beautiful views of Paris by night, some of my favorite times were spent in the Latin Quarter and the Left Bank. I bought a watercolor print and browsed the green stalls of the Left Bank, stopping to gaze at Notre Dame or the boats passing through The Seine. I balanced these quiet moments with time in the Latin Quarter, lively and full of good food and laugher. In between these two places was my new favorite bookstore: Shakespeare and Company. It’s a safe haven of books and creative juices and struggling writers living upstairs. It has a piano and mismatched seating squeezed between shelves and shelves of old books for reading, not for sale. Upstairs in Shakespeare and Co., I plopped down on a window seat to take a breath trying to wait out the rain. I did the only thing that made sense in that moment: I picked up a book off the shelf, only to find that I’d grabbed The New Ambassadors by Edwin Gilbert, a book about contemporary Americans in Paris. Fitting, since that’s what I was last week. I saw the good and the bad, the homeless gypsies begging by ATMs, soldiers walking through the train station or the Eiffel Tower, their fingers on semi-automatic weapons. It’s an interesting time to be in Europe, with the euro crisis unfolding and the latest riots thanks to a recent American film critical of Islam and a similar French cartoon.

You win some and you lose some, and that was especially true of Paris. I won some, and I lost some. We only made it up to the second floor of the Eiffel Tower because the top was closed. I barely put a dent in The Louvre. As we drove further and further from Paris, I could hear the Versailles gardens calling me back. There are still so many museums to learn from and streets to wander and crepes to eat. My conclusion? I’ll have to come back to Paris again, no questions asked. I’m content with the week I spent there, and ready for what’s ahead on this grand adventure. But Paris, we will meet again, of that you can be sure.

A few pictures to balance out my lengthy prose: