Americans in Paris, Part III: Still crazy after all these years...

Not long after I started posting from Paris, my friend A contacted me: “We’ll be in Paris in early July,” said she. “When can we see you?” The more short-term visits I make here (and I do count this 10 weeks as short-term, for various reasons), the better I appreciate the need to make plans and fast with any and all friends and colleagues I want to see. The time (theirs and/or mine) goes by too quickly otherwise and opportunities are lost. For example, I messed up the day of the week in June and was therefore unable to see a former student with whom I’d been making vague plans for some time (another time, V, c’est promis!). Anyway, A & I booked July 4th well in advance and exchanged phone numbers for further plan-making.

A little history: I have known J since 1984, A since 1990, and I am mostly responsible for their meeting one another. A had been an RA on my staff; J, her husband, and I raised a certain amount of H-E-double hockey sticks with the Columbia Band back in the day. In a bizarre twist of fate, J answered a classified ad for an apartment in Brooklyn that was the home of my then-beau. He and I fixed J and A up at a dinner for four in my apartment and the rest is, well, history. With almost 30 years of marriage and 4 kids between us, here we were, getting together in Paris after about a 9-year hiatus. About time, too!

On the 4th of July, we met at the Stravinksy fountain, which is adjacent to the Pompidou center in what the Parisians call Beaubourg. Their kids are 13 and 10, the younger being a girl, so Meredith was instantly pleased; girls were holding hands like old friends after about 20 minutes. Turns out, their son B (age 13) loves little kids and is a certified Red Cross babysitter – he soon had Thayer on his back and was galloping around the plaza. We enjoyed some ice cream (some of us were happier than others with our choices, but oh well). And we were entertained by break dancers (a genre that never went out of style here!), Mongolian throat singers (J thought their melodies resembled Appalachian tunes), a jewelry-maker, and a blower of big bubbles before heading inside the Centre Pompidou itself – the Art Museum is free on the first Sunday of the month, so we took the “habitrail” elevators up to the top and admired some cubist art (lots more Picassos and Braques in the collection than I had remembered, including Picasso’s plaintive Harlequin). We were greeted by large “buttons” on the wall with feminized names of male artists: Annie Warhol, Marcelle Duchamp, Jacqueline Pollack, etc. And we looked at a canvas that was painted completely black. The kids smartly asked about these “artistic” efforts and we had a good time discussing them. Also enjoyed a photo exhibit from Gaza, not something that would easily come to the States.

Plus, the views are just terrific!

After popping into the gift shop, a stroll through the Marais brought us to the As (or Ace, as in a deck of cards) de Felafel for my second meal there with the kids. I sampled a Maccabee beer with my sandwich this time, and the kids enjoyed their pasta as we talked about how much Paris has and has not changed in the 25 years or so since J spent some of his junior year abroad here. Much more diverse, yes, I would agree. He found it more open to tourists, which pleases me, but I find hard to gauge. My students like to tell me that the reason I like Parisians and get along with them so well is because I can communicate with them easily and fully. This may be partly true, but I was heartened by J’s impression. He did also express concern that the city not become a caricature of itself, locked in the Belle Epoque for tourism’s sake.



I have to say that while there are some extremely touristy parts of the city that borderline on precious, there is still a great deal of Paris that remains largely untouched by outsiders and moves with the times. Well, as much as Old Europe moves with the times! Hence say hello to Direct Matin et Soir, Paris Plage, Vélibs, Wifi in the parks, et cetera. These are all possible blog topics, although it would seem that I will be blogging well into December at the rate I’m going, months after my return to the States!



We stopped at a chocolate shop for treats and then made our way back to the metro. We said our good-byes on the train and I had some sad moments later in the day, as I wished we could have had more time together.