More Food, Merde Alors!
It’s been a while since I last checked in, but there’s a good reason why; Anna and myself have both spent a reasonable amount of time in Europe, I’ve made several trips here, Anna comes here two or three times a year and has lived in London for two extended periods, but for some inexplicable reason, neither of us have ever been to France. Our first weekend since we had moved to Germany was the Easter long weekend so what better way to spend it than catching the train down to Paris and spending three nights there? Sure, a common response from people who had been to France was “Don’t bother with Paris, go somewhere else, like Marseilles”, but this was just a weekend away, let’s eat, drink, and be merry. Here’s how it all went down:
Friday, April 3, 2015
The Arc de Triomphe. If it were in any other part of Paris it would have been stolen by now
We had first-class seats booked on the 8:45am train out of Cologne, which is about half an hour from Bonn. We caught a taxi to the station in Cologne and arrived about half an hour early for our train, something that never happens. Regardless of how early we are for planes, trains, buses, boats, ferries, monorails, etc. we somehow always manage to find a way to make ourselves late. Always, but for some reason, not this time. Eerie. Our three-hour train ride would take us up through Belgium and into France, stopping at our destination at midday. Our first impression of Paris? What an absolute shithole! Upon arrival at the Gare du Nord, Paris’ main international train station, we were accosted on separate occasions by two of the fattest beggars I’ve ever seen. People that big aren’t starving. We had to take a 10 minute walk under grey skies, from Gare du Nord to La Chapelle station to catch the metro train that would eventually lead us to our hotel. I put my wallet and phone in my front pockets, clutched my bag as tightly as possible, and we were on our way to the metro, doing the bum gauntlet as we went, dodging the homeless, the drunks, and the greasy, be-tracksuited scum selling stolen iPhones and watches, in much the same way Pac-Man dodges ghosts. I would have loved to have taken a photo to show that side of Paris, the side that has forced the Japanese embassy to have a 24-hour hotline for people suffering extreme culture shock (more on that later), but I didn’t want my phone to be stolen. Eventually, we made it onto the train, unscathed but for the fragrant aroma of urine and cigarettes, despite neither smoking, nor pissing ourselves. Anna and myself shared a smirk that said “this could be an interesting weekend if all of Paris is like this, but boy, I sure hope it isn’t…”
We emerged from the metro at Ternes into what was seemingly a different city, one where the sky was a lighter shade of grey, moustachioed waiters were bursting into song, and the streets smelled like Chanel No. 5… well, at least that’s how it appeared in comparison to where we had just come from. Anna had booked our hotel on L’avenue de Wagram, just a block down from the Arc de Triomphe, but, upon arrival our room wasn’t ready and wouldn’t be for another hour and a half. No problem, we left our bags and went to grab lunch: Crêpes and escargot with a special local cider at Crêperie A l’Etoile d’Or.
I’ll never understand people who make up their mind and form a completely unchangeable opinion based on perception, as opposed to experience. Case in point; escargot. They are one of the most delicious things you could ever eat, but as soon as most people find out they are snails, their instant reaction is “Blecch!”. I’ve had them many times before, but these ones, cooked in a butter sauce with garlic, were unbelievable! Our crêpes were pretty decent too, and the cider was beautiful, mine was a dry, Anna’s was sweet. After this little feast our room was ready so we checked in. We’ve heard that a lot of hotels in Paris are painfully small so we were prepared, but the main problem, however, was the shower. Trouble with the shower seems to be a continuing theme during our travels, but this was also yet another occasion where we required instructions on how to operate the unit. Furthermore, the cubicle was so small that, when I showered later that night, I had to open the doors so I could bend over far enough to wash my legs. Oh well, first world problems.
We went out again for a bit, this time to see the Arc de Triomphe:
The Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile is one of the most famous monuments in Paris, France, standing at the western end of the Champs-Élysées at the centre of Place Charles de Gaulle, formerly named Place de l’Étoile — the étoile or “star” of the juncture formed by its twelve radiating avenues. The location of the arc and the plaza is shared between three arrondissements, 16th (south and west), 17th (north) and 8th (east). The Arc de Triomphe honours those who fought and died for France in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, with the names of all French victories and generals inscribed on its inner and outer surfaces. Beneath its vault lies the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier from World War I.
We decided to view it from across the road, as opposed to getting up close and personal for several reasons, the main ones being that we can’t read what is written on it because neither of us speak any French, plus there were just too many narcissists with selfie-sticks to deal with. We viewed it from across the road and then went on a stroll in the drizzle down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées. Anna bought four Pierre Herme macarons, which are considered to be the world’s best, then it was time for dinner. We went to Brasserie Lorraine where we had swordfish soup, steak tartare, and a platter of four different oysters, followed by an extremely large soufflé. What I said about escargot applies to steak tartare as well; Raw beef is delicious, it just gets a bit heavy after a while:
After all of this, we went for a few quiet drinks, but we’d been up a long time so we decided to catch a relatively early night. Let’s have more fun tomorrow.
Saturday, April 4, 2015
We started the day with breakfast croissants at a cafe next to our hotel and then it was off to the Paris Flea Market. An old friend of mine, Saveth To, and her husband, Duy, were staying in that general area and was saying how horrible it was. Anna and I just figured it would be the same as La Chapelle. We were wrong. Dead wrong. We walked in the general direction of the Charles de Gaulle Etoile metro station, because it was closer to our hotel and in doing so ended up cutting through an amazing food market, however, we had no way of storing anything we bought and still had a couple of days remaining before we returned home to Bonn so we decided to opt against purchasing anything. We found out about the Paris Flea Market from our friend, Pat Lee, who is a fashion writer in Singapore and as soon as we disembarked from the metro at Porte de Clignancourt station we could never imagine such a fragile woman entering a place like this. My first experience here was having a rather large man push me from behind through the turnstile so he could exit the station together with me to avoid buying a ticket. An elderly woman just crawled under it. We exited, held our valuables inside our pockets and once again tried to avoid the gangs, the homeless, the junkies, and the multitude of exceptionally dodgy people trying to sell us stolen phones and watches, as well as counterfeit designer goods. All of the people trying to make a buck there looked very, very dangerous.
We grabbed a quick lunch at La REcylcerie, a funky cafe in an abandoned train station and then decided to brave it and wander in. What we originally thought was just your average market that sold knock-off belts, wallets, and sneakers alongside t-shirts of Bob Marley and Che Guevara turned out to be the most amazing market I’ve ever been to. There are some cool stalls outside, but you need to venture inside to find the truly good stuff, a lot of which consists of clothing, records, and collectables. I couldn’t buy everything I wanted, but if I did I would have come out with a trailer-load of stuff. Instead, all I bought were two Monster Magnet records, one of which turned out to be worth a lot more than the €22 I paid for it. All of this, except perhaps for the futuristic house, was for sale:
We braved the train ride back, avoided the junkies, and relaxed in our room for a bit before going out for fondue at Le Brasier des Ternes with Saveth and Duy, and then drinks to try to push the stress of a day spent dealing with the great unwashed to the backs of our minds.
Sunday, April 5, 2015
Our last full day here and time to get into the touristy stuff. It was Easter Sunday and Anna is a Christian so it meant a lot to her to go to Notre Dame. We decided to walk there as it was a nice day and Notre Dame is about 5km from where we stay. Plus, we got to see some more interesting sights along the way. Our walk began by going the entire length of the Avenue des Champs-Élysées and down to the Seine for a stroll along the river. As we walked to the Seine, one of the first major structures we passed was the Grand Palais art museum. The queue to get in was endless, at least that’s what we originally thought, but it turned out we hadn’t seen anything resembling a long line yet. Continuing along the Seine there was a market that ran for a substantial length of the river, but unfortunately most of it was closed as it was a public holiday weekend. This market was mostly books, but it did have gramophones and human skulls. Seriously, they’d be a bitch to get through customs!
The Pont de l’Archevêché, a bridge covered entirely in padlocks
We continued down the river and noticed that several of the bridges, most conspicuously the Pont de l’Archevêché, were covered in padlocks. We had previously noticed them on the chain surrounding the statue of the Flame of Liberty, which it turns out is an unofficial memorial for Princess Diana. There aren’t just a couple of these padlocks either, the are MILLIONS of them. A little research and I found out they are love locks, placed there by couples and lovers and naturally there are people there constantly annoying you to buy padlocks off them. We forged ahead further upstream, past the Louvre, until we finally reached Notre Dame:
Notre-Dame de Paris; meaning “Our Lady of Paris”, often referred to simply as Notre-Dame is a medieval Catholic cathedral on the Île de la Cité in the 4th arrondissement of Paris. The cathedral is consecrated to the Virgin Mary and considered to be one of the finest examples of French Gothic architecture. Its pioneering use of the rib vault and flying buttress, its enormous and colourful rose windows, as well as the naturalism and abundance of its sculptural decoration set it apart from the earlier Romanesque style. Major components that make Notre Dame stand out include one of the world’s largest organs and its immense church bells.
The cathedral has been progressively stripped of its original decoration and works of art. Several noteworthy examples of Gothic, Baroque, and 19th-century sculptures and a group of 17th- and early 18th-century altarpieces remain in the cathedral’s collection. The most important relics in Christendom, including the Crown of Thorns, a sliver of the true cross and a nail from the true cross, are preserved at Notre-Dame.
Again, the queue was seemingly infinite, but it was important to Anna to go inside and the line moved surprisingly fast. There were two queues, one for those who were there for the service and one for the others that just wanted to go in for a look. We fit into the latter and, as long as you didn’t make too much noise, you were free to do essentially whatever you liked once you had entered. It’s quite surreal being inside a crowded cathedral that’s almost 1000 years old and having a little girl ride past you on a scooter.
Following our time in Notre Dame, we headed out for another exceptional lunch, this time croissants at Laduree. Usually I don’t take photos of food unless it is something particularly spectacular, but I had the opposite conundrum in Paris; everything we ate was exceptional and I have to pick and choose which food pictures I want to post. I think I am doing a reasonable job so far. Our lunch was followed by a couple of hours of shopping in Le Marais, then it was on to the Louvre:
The Louvre, or the Louvre Museum, is the world’s largest art museum and a historic monument in Paris, France. A central landmark of the city, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the city’s 1st arrondissement (district or ward). Approximately 38,000 objects from prehistory to the 21st century are exhibited over an area of 72,735 square metres (782,910 square feet).
We arrived at around 3:30pm and the museum was due to close at 6:00pm. There was yet another intimidating queue to get through, but why not? I love art, especially Renaissance art, and I doubt I’m going to have many chances like this again. Out the front of the Louvre are countless people trying to pose for forced-perspective pictures of themselves touching the top of the glass pyramids, while inside are some of the most timeless and priceless works of art, as well as some of the most narcissistic people you will ever encounter, with their selfie-sticks and trout pouts. When you’re in that type of environment, why would you want pictures of yourself? Maybe it’s just the generation gap showing, but this is something I’ll never understand as long as I live. I would rather take the opportunity to capture the subject, as opposed to sticking my head in front of it just to prove to nobody in particular that I was there. Oh well. After we had seen what we could fit in we moved on from the Louvre to Le Dôme du Marais for yet another astounding dinner. Again, I’m trying to carefully choose the food I post in here, so I will skip this one and show tomorrow’s lunch instead.
Monday, April 6, 2015
Our train back to Germany was scheduled to leave at 5:55pm and it was a half hour trip from where we were staying to Gare du Nord station. This gave us a few hours to walk around and eat all the good stuff we could fit in during that time. Rather than bore you further with the details, I’ll just let the pictures do the talking:
Once we were done eating it was time to brave the human faecal matter and jump on the metro to get to the international train station again. We arrived about an hour early for our ride so we booked our tickets for our trip to Brussels in two weeks to kill time. When the train arrived, we boarded and watched as a drunk fell between the platform and a train whilst trying to retrieve a cigarette he could see in the gap, only to emerge bleeding and laughing. Our train departed on time, but we were delayed in Brussels for 40 minutes due to another train being delayed. I guess that’s our reward for our constant punctuality on this trip. By the time we got back to Cologne we had missed our connecting train and would have had to wait another hour for a train back to Bonn so instead we took another €65.00 taxi ride and called it a night.
All in all we had a great trip and I would happily return again any day, even if it were just for the cheese.
Expectation vs. Reality
In my last post I mentioned something called ‘Paris Syndrome’. A Japanese man called Yoji, a former adult student of mine, brought this up in class one time and, having majored in psychology in university, it instantly piqued my interest so although I am not Japanese, I wanted to see if Paris Syndrome could truly be a legitimate condition. Firstly, what is Paris Syndrome? Wikipedia describes it as:
Paris syndrome (French: Syndrome de Paris, Japanese: パリ症候群, Pari shōkōgun) is a transient psychological disorder encountered by some individuals visiting or vacationing in Paris or elsewhere in Western Europe. It is characterised by a number of psychiatric symptoms such as acute delusional states, hallucinations, feelings of persecution (perceptions of being a victim of prejudice, aggression, or hostility from others), derealisation, depersonalisation, anxiety, and also psychosomatic manifestations such as dizziness, tachycardia, sweating, and others. Similar syndromes include Jerusalem syndrome and Stendhal syndrome. Japanese visitors are observed to be especially susceptible. It was first noted in Nervure, the French journal of psychiatry in 2004. From the estimated six million yearly visitors, the number of reported cases is not significant: according to an administrator at the Japanese embassy in France, around twenty Japanese tourists a year are affected by the syndrome. The susceptibility of Japanese people may be linked to the popularity of Paris in Japanese culture, notably the idealised image of Paris prevalent in Japanese advertising. Mario Renoux, the president of the Franco-Japanese Medical Association, states in Libération: “Des Japonais entre mal du pays et mal de Paris” (“The Japanese are caught between homesickness and Paris sickness”), and that Japanese magazines are primarily responsible for creating this syndrome. Renoux indicates that Japanese media, magazines in particular, often depict Paris as a place where most people on the street look like fashion models and most women dress in high-fashion brands.
So why does this happen? If you looked at the Wikipedia link the main reasons given are the language barrier, cultural difference, and exhaustion, but there are two more interesting possibilities:
- Idealised image of Paris – It is also speculated as manifesting from an individual’s inability to reconcile a disparity between the Japanese popular image and the reality of Paris.
- Contradiction – The Japanese often picture Paris as a land of dreams, of beauty, culture, and romance. However, they soon find out the contrary when they visit Paris for the first time, discovering it to be a very regular place, the facilities are disorganised, many areas are unclean, and life is characterised by noise, nothing like what was in their imagination.
In a nutshell, it just isn’t what they expected. Although neither of us showed physical symptoms, there were several situations where what we encountered wasn’t what we had anticipated and several where we saw both sides. Let’s take a look at some of those situations here with some photos I took during our trip. In each case, expectation is on the left, reality on the right:
Buildings and the City
When people picture Paris, their thoughts more than likely resemble the opening scenes of Team America: World Police; A beautiful city where the Eiffel Tower is visible from every angle, mimes on each corner, children singing Frere Jacques while eating croissants. The reality is that most areas are rough ghettos of council flats. If you are not fortunate enough to find accommodation in the city centre you will more than likely end up in one of these locations and you will not want to leave your hotel, as Saveth and Duy found out. The picture on the left was taken on the Pont Alexandre III, the one on the right was just outside Porte de Clignacourt metro station.
People
Firstly, this must be said: French waiters and shop assistants get an extremely bad rap. We found them to be exceptionally friendly, helpful, and clean, but the average Joe on the street is a different story. Sure, there are the people in stripy sweaters and berets carrying french sticks, but there is also a ludicrous amount of drunks and homeless people. Walk the length of any block, whether it be in the most beautiful city street or the grimiest neighbourhood, and you’ll see at least one vagrant. For some reason they all have dogs, too. This might sound horrible, but toward the end I started to think in some cases it might be a bit of a scam, as quite a few looked like they were using clean blankets, their shoes were a little too white, or they might have shaved a day or two previously. Just a point of interest, I took the picture of the inebriated man on the right as we were having breakfast at 10:30am.
Tourist Traps
This one is quite simple and applies to most countries that have anything that resembles a global icon — Go anywhere near it and you’re going to have people try to sell you something and 95% of the time they aren’t licensed vendors. Paris has many such structures so when you’re anywhere in the city, after you get tired of constantly saying “No, thanks” politely and eventually snap, a fun game to play is to count the amount of times you end up saying, “Piss off, I don’t want a ____ing keyring / postcard / magnet / padlock!” or something to that extent. It will surprise even the most mild-mannered octogenarian. These pictures were taken outside of the Louvre, however, the picture on the right with the man trying to sell me an Eiffel Tower keyring comes first chronologically, just before I used one of the aforementioned phrases toward him.
The Mona Lisa
For a lot of people traveling to France, going to see the Mona Lisa is close to the top of their bucket lists. The staff at the Louvre understand this and let you take photos, as long as you stay behind a barrier. The problem is there is constantly a crowd about 50 people deep and this may have always been the case, but it takes an extremely long time for them to move on. In the past, they were probably studying the work, trying to link an emotion to the cheeky smirk on her face, “What is she thinking?”, but now the area is packed with throngs of people trying to get the perfect selfie or 10 in front of her. After I had finally made my way to the front and was walking away, Anna and I heard a lot of commotion. We went back and saw that some douche-nozzle had jumped the barrier and was dancing on the ledge in front of her for attention while the easily impressed, youthful onlookers took photos in awe. It didn’t take long for security to tackle him to the ground, though.
In closing, after spending four days and three nights in Paris, although I did not feel the physical effects, I strongly believe that Paris Syndrome is alive and well.
Great post, Tim! Yes, I’ve heard from friends who’ve gone to Paris that it is a VERY Reality vs Expectations experience. I would go to Paris only for 3 things personally:
1. See the Eiffel Tower from the same spot Hitler did in a famous photograph.
2. Explore the catacombs and sewers underneath.
3. Eat a croissant and buy a beret haha.
Totally agree on escargot; I had my first and only dish of escargot with butter sauce and it was fucking divine. Cider is slowly making its way out west so it’s becoming mainstream in North America finally.
I’ve always loved cider, I’ve been drinking it for years with my best mate.
I completely forgot about the sewers, didn’t even cross my mind!