I am drinking Dunkin Donuts coffee at Alexanderplatz in Berlin. It tastes like a little piece of New England and I am in love with this city. After stops in Belgium and Amsterdam, I´m loving being in a place I´ve never visited before. I don´t speak the language, hardly know how to take the U and S Bahns, or even the difference between them, and we´ve been getting lost constantly. This place is beautiful-- old & new buildings, the glass-domed Reichstag, sites where construction is going on and will be for a long time, it seems, modern buildings, a huge TV tower, open spaces, wide roads, people who seem warm and open and friendly without any of the pretensions of Paris. Berlin wears its scars well, without covering them. If you had its history, you would have a lot of scars too. The Holocaust memorial, over 1000 slabs of concrete on an open square, took up most of our day. The memorial is beautiful and simple and disorienting to walk through. The information center is intense. I was completely overwhelmed and drawn in by the information at hand. Mostly I just found myself wondering why it took until 1945 for the allies to intervene. We found the double line of cobblestones that marks where the Berlin wall used to be. There are so many markers of the atrocities this city has experienced. But this place feels so in the present too, not clinging to some mythical past, but acknowledging its history and living in a place in between acknowledgment and recovery. We´re staying in Mitte, the trendy part of Berlin, where people sit in coffee shops and are so cool-looking without the jeans-boots-black uniform of Paris. I don´t know what I love so much about Berlin, but maybe after so many years of chaos and violence--or maybe because this place is just different--people here don´t seem as willing to waste their time being shallow or pretentious as they are in Paris. And everything is in flux, reminding me that the other side of uncertainty is always possibility.
Ich bin ein Berliner. I don´t even know what that means, but it´s the only German I know. I feel like I´m cheating on Paris a litte, but I also am happy to have discovered a new city I already love this much.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Embarcation
I'm working on my BU application at Centre Pompidou, one of the few places in Paris where there's coffee and free wifi in one place, but I'm feeling pretty antsy. Because tomorrow, I'm going to get up painfully early, take the RER to CDG, and meet one of my oldest friends from Seattle. On Saturday, we are leaving Paris for an adventure across Europe, that's going to go something like this: Paris --> Amsterdam --> Berlin --> Prague --> Salzburg --> Paris. We're backpacking across Europe. But we both have train passes, so we can change our plans at any moment. I'm really looking forward to this. I picked up my interrail pass (like the Eurail, but for residents of the EU, and I am one of those!) today at the Montparnasse train station, and we're slowly making hostel reservations, reading up on the cities we're going to, and trying to connect with anyone who will let us stay with them while we're traveling. I've already been to Amsterdam, so that will be familiar -- part of the plan, so we don't get lost and confused immediately -- but I'm so excited to be in the cities I've never visited, unable to speak the local language, and having some adventures. It's just a lovely feeling and really exciting. I love traveling. Well, obviously. And when you live in Paris, it's a mix of awesome and terrible, but the feeling of newness that you get from being a tourist dissipates after a while. Reality sets in. I still love Paris, but I love ordinary things about it. I'm less enchanted by the things that caught my attention the first time I came here. I love getting a cheap coffee and pastry at the bar at my favorite boulangerie after work, and reading some James Joyce for a good hour. I love my friends. I love knowing exactly where to go on the metro. I love knowing I can go to Centre Pompidou to look at art whenever I want, and then not going very often. I love the rare sunny days when I can wear my obnoxiously American knockoff Ray-Bans, and I love getting to know the city beyond what originally drew me to it. On some level, I even love knowing that there are things about Paris that I actually really dislike. That's what makes it feel like home, I suppose.
But that said, I'm looking forward to going somewhere new, with one of my oldest friends, and not-too-well-laid plans and an open-ended train pass, and a backpack, and some books, and my camera.
Sometimes I still wonder what I'm doing here. I have those moments of utter confusion and uncertainty. Sometimes I really miss being at Smith, where the feeling of being productive and using time well came from getting the reading done or finishing papers. But that's a cheap way of assessing success. It's a limited way of measuring what it means to be a good person, which, ultimately, isn't something that needs to be measured, it isn't possible to measure. So I think what I'm doing here is pretty simple, when it all comes down to it. I'm just living my life, however scary and strange that may feel. But I think that's why we have things like friends and James Joyce and 1 euro espressos and sunny days in Paris and petite tartes au sucre and knockoff Ray-Bans and public libraries and mix CDs sent across the Atlantic by close friends that are far away and Interrail passes and soft American Apparel v-neck t-shirts and postcards of Sonia Delauney paintings and crepes with Nutella and banana and black beans and Wes Anderson movies and Bikram's yoga and and Skype and bookstores and window-shopping and adventures across Europe with old friends and, very occasionally, interactions with strangers that leave us feeling better rather than worse about the world.
Calls to mind something from one of my favorite movies, Stranger Than Fiction:
As Harold took a bite of Bavarian sugar cookie, he finally felt as if everything was going to be ok. Sometimes, when we lose ourselves in fear and despair, in routine and constancy, in hopelessness and tragedy, we can thank God for Bavarian sugar cookies. And, fortunately, when there aren't any cookies, we can still find reassurance in a familiar hand on our skin, or a kind and loving gesture, or subtle encouragement, or a loving embrace, or an offer of comfort, not to mention hospital gurneys and nose plugs, an uneaten Danish, soft-spoken secrets, and Fender Stratocasters, and maybe the occasional piece of fiction. And we must remember that all these things, the nuances, the anomalies, the subtleties, which we assume only accessorize our days, are effective for a much larger and nobler cause. They are here to save our lives. I know the idea seems strange, but I also know that it just so happens to be true. And, so it was, a wristwatch saved Harold Crick.
When all of this freedom gets daunting, these are the things I like to remember. In the meantime, away we go to Amsterdam.
But that said, I'm looking forward to going somewhere new, with one of my oldest friends, and not-too-well-laid plans and an open-ended train pass, and a backpack, and some books, and my camera.
Sometimes I still wonder what I'm doing here. I have those moments of utter confusion and uncertainty. Sometimes I really miss being at Smith, where the feeling of being productive and using time well came from getting the reading done or finishing papers. But that's a cheap way of assessing success. It's a limited way of measuring what it means to be a good person, which, ultimately, isn't something that needs to be measured, it isn't possible to measure. So I think what I'm doing here is pretty simple, when it all comes down to it. I'm just living my life, however scary and strange that may feel. But I think that's why we have things like friends and James Joyce and 1 euro espressos and sunny days in Paris and petite tartes au sucre and knockoff Ray-Bans and public libraries and mix CDs sent across the Atlantic by close friends that are far away and Interrail passes and soft American Apparel v-neck t-shirts and postcards of Sonia Delauney paintings and crepes with Nutella and banana and black beans and Wes Anderson movies and Bikram's yoga and and Skype and bookstores and window-shopping and adventures across Europe with old friends and, very occasionally, interactions with strangers that leave us feeling better rather than worse about the world.
Calls to mind something from one of my favorite movies, Stranger Than Fiction:
As Harold took a bite of Bavarian sugar cookie, he finally felt as if everything was going to be ok. Sometimes, when we lose ourselves in fear and despair, in routine and constancy, in hopelessness and tragedy, we can thank God for Bavarian sugar cookies. And, fortunately, when there aren't any cookies, we can still find reassurance in a familiar hand on our skin, or a kind and loving gesture, or subtle encouragement, or a loving embrace, or an offer of comfort, not to mention hospital gurneys and nose plugs, an uneaten Danish, soft-spoken secrets, and Fender Stratocasters, and maybe the occasional piece of fiction. And we must remember that all these things, the nuances, the anomalies, the subtleties, which we assume only accessorize our days, are effective for a much larger and nobler cause. They are here to save our lives. I know the idea seems strange, but I also know that it just so happens to be true. And, so it was, a wristwatch saved Harold Crick.
When all of this freedom gets daunting, these are the things I like to remember. In the meantime, away we go to Amsterdam.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Etonnez-Moi, Francoise!
The French will never get over the sixties, I don't think. And I can't blame them. They have a lot of icons from that period, but while most people have heard of Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin and Brigitte Bardot, my favorite is Francoise Hardy. I mean, just look at her. Where do you think Cat Power got her look from?
She's a contemporary of Jane Birkin, but while Jane Birkin has always just been too breathy for me to take, Francoise Hardy has this complicated old school charm. She sings about the sensation of being a single woman surrounded by happy couples, and wanting to be astonished by Benoit, and she does an awesome cover of Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne." Paris has a massive history of style icons and actresses like Catherine Deneuve and Brigitte Bardot (I love Brigitte Bardot too, more on that later), but Francoise Hardy just epitomizes this smart, kind of badass, laid-back style that I really love. She's complicated and interesting. Which I think is a big difference between the United States and France. I get the sense that women like Francoise Hardy are more likely to be popular in France than in the United States, where we can't really seem to get more creative than Audrey Hepburn. And no offense to Audrey Hepburn, but Francoise Hardy isn't cute. There's no aiming to please or adhering to a preconceived notion of femininity going on here. And yet, Francoise Hardy was and still is a huge popstar.
Anyway, I love Francoise Hardy. Her music, her leather jackets and striped t-shirts, her style. And I think that Cat Power, Jenny Lewis, and any woman in indie rock with bangs and angst is pretty indebted to her. And I love them too, but you can't really dispute this:
Monday was crazy as per usual. Bikram yoga in Montmartre was just right though. Maybe if this writing thing doesn't work out, I'll just become a yoga instructor. I can just see it -- shouting "Tirez! Tirez! Tirez!" to a room full of suffering French and American yogis and yoginis trying to balance their entire bodies on one foot. Or I could just have two professions that pay terribly.
In the words of Francoise Hardy, je suis bien perplexe.
She's a contemporary of Jane Birkin, but while Jane Birkin has always just been too breathy for me to take, Francoise Hardy has this complicated old school charm. She sings about the sensation of being a single woman surrounded by happy couples, and wanting to be astonished by Benoit, and she does an awesome cover of Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne." Paris has a massive history of style icons and actresses like Catherine Deneuve and Brigitte Bardot (I love Brigitte Bardot too, more on that later), but Francoise Hardy just epitomizes this smart, kind of badass, laid-back style that I really love. She's complicated and interesting. Which I think is a big difference between the United States and France. I get the sense that women like Francoise Hardy are more likely to be popular in France than in the United States, where we can't really seem to get more creative than Audrey Hepburn. And no offense to Audrey Hepburn, but Francoise Hardy isn't cute. There's no aiming to please or adhering to a preconceived notion of femininity going on here. And yet, Francoise Hardy was and still is a huge popstar.
Anyway, I love Francoise Hardy. Her music, her leather jackets and striped t-shirts, her style. And I think that Cat Power, Jenny Lewis, and any woman in indie rock with bangs and angst is pretty indebted to her. And I love them too, but you can't really dispute this:
Monday was crazy as per usual. Bikram yoga in Montmartre was just right though. Maybe if this writing thing doesn't work out, I'll just become a yoga instructor. I can just see it -- shouting "Tirez! Tirez! Tirez!" to a room full of suffering French and American yogis and yoginis trying to balance their entire bodies on one foot. Or I could just have two professions that pay terribly.
In the words of Francoise Hardy, je suis bien perplexe.
Friday, February 5, 2010
This Is Just To Say
I don't know how this happened. It really makes very little sense to me. But I think I might kind of like teaching.
Also. A cheap way to enjoy Paris is to share a bottle of wine with a friend whilst wandering through the city. It's like 4 euros and there aren't any open-container laws for pedestrians.
Also. A cheap way to enjoy Paris is to share a bottle of wine with a friend whilst wandering through the city. It's like 4 euros and there aren't any open-container laws for pedestrians.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
J'habite Ici
I don't like Mondays. I'm up at 6, on the metro by 7, in Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois at 8, where I wait in the cold for a bus to take me to school. This is normally not a very fun thing to do, but it being Monday, I'm invariably on a totally different schedule from staying up incredibly late on the weekends. My friends and I all do this -- sometimes we're actually out, other times we are on Skype. Gotta love that time difference. So anyway, by Monday morning, I'm a zombie, and that's when I get to go teach children. I then have two days off and it's back to work on Thursday and Friday. It's a strange schedule. However, yesterday afternoon I got on the metro to go to my yoga class, and when I got off in Montmartre, an unexpected feeling came over me. There wasn't anything special about that moment -- really, not at all, I was bleary-eyed from going out the preceding two nights, and shuffling around in my sweatshirt, and I had taken that route so many times, but as I walked out of the metro, I realized that that was exactly the point. Paris is just where I live now. When I first got here, I had visions of never dressing down, and flitting around the city having deep thoughts and being serendipitous. But this is not something you can keep up perpetually. Not if you actually live here. It becomes more of something you do when you have time for it. Sooner or later, you find yourself wearing a sweatshirt in public on your way to yoga class. Harried. Not smooth. And it was a weird feeling, because I was rushing to my class in Montmartre passing these Haussman buildings and the costume shops you see in "Amelie," and it felt like such an unspecial, ordinary, commonplace moment that could have happened anywhere, except it was in Paris. And that in itself was good to know. I am never going to be Parisian, and living in a different culture means tiny frustrations every day, and the missing people and feeling the distance from home never really goes away, but it was a moment where I just caught myself comfortable, and thought, Okay. This is home. I live here. There was nothing glamorous or stereotypically Parisian about that moment, and in a way, that was the beauty of it.
On Saturday night, one of my friends and I watched "Paris Je T'Aime" and made a huge salade nicoise. On Sunday, post-yoga, over cafe au lait, we started talking about these small moments where you really do feel comfortable here. Like maybe you're in love with Paris and it loves you back. They're so mundane. Perhaps because in a city so full of elegance and history, the real surprises come from ordinary things.
On Saturday night, one of my friends and I watched "Paris Je T'Aime" and made a huge salade nicoise. On Sunday, post-yoga, over cafe au lait, we started talking about these small moments where you really do feel comfortable here. Like maybe you're in love with Paris and it loves you back. They're so mundane. Perhaps because in a city so full of elegance and history, the real surprises come from ordinary things.
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