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Americans generally think of Europe as a small
place where international borders come quickly and languages and
dialects change even more quickly. There are so many world
capitals in close proximity to each other. Yet when one lives here,
other places don’t seem quite so close. According to
this
site
which gives the "as the crow flies" miles between cities, it’s 888 miles from here to
Madrid, 795 miles from here to Rome, and 1347 miles from here to
Athens. That’s not terribly close.
Paris, though, is another story.
Concorde, the supersonic aircraft, came into
existence in 1969. It was able to make a trip from New York to Paris
in three hours. That meant that if desired, one could go and return
in a single day, not so different than driving from Philadelphia to
Washington (except that the price of the ticket was a year’s salary
but that’s not what this is about). I remember thinking then that it
was conceivable to go to Paris for lunch. That phrase, Paris for
lunch, rolled around in my head for many years. This past Friday,
Lynn and I went to Paris for lunch.
Paris is about 235 miles from here, 280 or so to
drive, less than
from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. It’s about a five hour drive but on
the Thalys, the so-called
bullet train, it was just a shade more than three hours. Until about
Antwerp, Belgium, the train moves like any other, but after that it
really opens up. For a while, there is a highway next to the tracks.
Presumably, traffic is moving at about 70 mph or so. The train
passes cars and trucks like they’re standing still but the ride is
as smooth as could be. Unfortunately, they served a free lunch on
the train so that by the time we got to Paris, we didn’t want to eat
anymore. We were then forced to wait for dinner and to stay for a
couple days.
We did a lot of touristy things that everyone
knows about. I won’t go into all that except for the Eiffel Tower.
We saw it on a previous visit (it’s hard NOT to see it from almost
anywhere in Paris) but did not go to the top. This time we did. Talk
about Paris at your feet. The view is spectacular and even if one is
only a little familiar with the city, there are many landmarks to be
easily picked out. From the time we got in line until we got back to
the ground, it was two hours but well worth the wait. The people who
run the show there have a sense of humor. They allow people to climb
up and down stairs to the second level instead of using the
elevator, maybe four hundred feet high. Along the way, closer to the
bottom, there are figures of maintenance people
painting and doing
other chores. At first glance, they appeared real and it seemed
crazy that they would be in those positions working. It made a weary
stair climber laugh and forget for a moment the pain in his legs.
As usual when we go to new places, Lynn and I
spent a lot of time walking around. We think that in the two and a
half days we were there that we walked about 15 miles or so. We
walked through the afternoon, found a place for dinner, walked some
more until we found a café for some wine, and walked some more until
we found another café for desert. We walked down the Champs-Elysée
from the Arc de Triomphe, in the left bank area of St. Germain, on
the Ile St. Louis, and in more residential areas in Montparnasse,
and others. If you’ve ever been to these places, you know that you
can’t forget them. If you haven’t been there, you don’t know what
you’re missing. In the sixties, the
Kingston Trio did a song
called "Raspberries,
Strawberries." There is a line spoken in the song that goes like
this: "A young man goes to Paris, as every young man should. There’s
something in the air of France that does a young man good." This is
something which I can’t explain how I know it, but I know it’s true.
Perhaps Paris is not just a place but rather a frame of mind. It’s a
great place to be. If you have never been there, go. Every young,
and not-so-young man, and woman, should.
The above is written totally from the perspective
of a tourist. We know from living in the Netherlands that being here
as a tourist and living here are not the same. Tourists don’t see
the garbage, don’t have to deal with immigration, etc. The same is
true in Paris. While on these long, slow walks, we came across a
couple of real estate offices. Having just gone through this
exercise in Delft, we were curious as to what it cost to buy a home
in Paris. We were somewhere around Montparnasse, a very nice area,
but by location and the look of the place, a good area but not the
primo Parisian neighborhood. We saw a 135 sq ft apartment (that
amounts to one room, 13.5 x 10 feet) for €600/month and a 450 sq ft
apartment for €800,000. This is not a cheap place to live.
We frequently hear that the French are rude and
won’t speak English to you even if they know it. This may or may not
be true among the general populace, but the people catering to
tourists and people who deal with the public are usually very
courteous. I have learned enough French to say, "I don’t speak
French. Do you speak English?" It’s so weird that people understand
what to me sounds like junk syllables. But there was one clown who
didn’t care. He was the cashier in a metro stop. We ran out of
carnet tickets, the ten strip discount metro fares. We needed one
regular ticket. There was an automated machine that probably sold
what I wanted, but I now have a lot of experience in dealing with
machines that I can’t read and I know for sure it’s a bad idea and
is to be avoided if at all possible. I approached the cashier and
gave him my total French knowledge and he said yes, he spoke
English. I asked to buy a ticket. "Use the machine." "I can’t read
the machine." "Use the machine." So much for hospitality. No wonder
this guy had a job underground. See my pictures of
Paris. See my videos of
Paris |
