C'est quoi cette ville, cette Paris?

As the days get longer, and as time grows shorter (especially as my leisure-time approaches zero like a limit out of hell), I think it would be appropriate to begin the reflection phase, in order to not leave everything until the day I'm leaving and the 12 hour flight home. Granted, 12 hours is a lot of time to think about something, but there are movies to watch and "sleep" to catch, so, why bother thinking?

In any case, there are only three more weeks left here in the city of lights, the city of Sartre and de Beauvoir, of the Bastille and of the Grands Boulevards. In the city of me. I mean, you never know until you start thinking about it how much you're going to miss a place, and perhaps I should take heed that I've started to feel homesick. After all, my homesickness is not so much homesickness as it is a sense of hyper-regularity and total normalcy that has become life in Paris. Weird, right, that life can become "normal" even in a city as unusual, as cutting-edge, as vivante as Paris. And ultimately the wanderlust inside of me I think has caught up with me, to such an extent that Orange County seems almost exotic (I have been away from it for forever), or at least comfortable. But the point is, when you start to feel homesick, that's a sign that you're going to miss the place your in infinately more than you know.

That in mind, I have been doing my best to go out and see the city, to see the museums and the cafes and the people and all the things that I idealized in my mind before coming here but never really got to know. Mostly, this means an attempt to find good food. Because there is no better way to experience a foreign place than through it's food, even if that food is decidedly foreign from that place itself. So, the highlights of me week thus far? Well, yesterday was pretty amazing: dinner at a classy Indian restaurant in Montmartre for 28 euro, which really is quite affordable when it includes a bottle of wine. On top of that there was this morning's "American breakfast" at Coffee parisien (a sort of a mix between everything Franglish and a New York diner)...there were pancakes, which is really all that matters. (For future reference to French people learning English: A crèpe is not a pancake, it is a crepe! We know what crepes are in America, and in England, so...you know, stop calling them pancakes!!!) So yeah, good eats. I also saw La Vie des autres (Das Leben der Anderen, The Lives of Others) avec Colleen on Friday night. That was exceedingly, uh, "cute." Shut up, cute is a totally masculine word. It was fun to watch a German movie subtitled in French though, without any English context at all. I love German, I wish I spoke it.


Right, so back to the point. It's about time I start compiling a list of the things I will miss most/the things I love most about Paris. So, with that in mind, entry number one: les courses. For the English-speaking public out there, this means grocery shopping. Granted, I didn't get to go shopping that often, since dinner is provided for me and I'm not supposed to use (read: I don't really feel comfortable using) my host mother's cookware. But what I do know is this: if I had an apartment on my own in Paris, grocery shopping would be so much more enjoyable than it would be stateside, even in New York or any other walkable city. For one people cart around their little grocery bags on wheels, or if you spend over 50 euro you can have the menial labor at the super market take your groceries to your door (supposing you live within like a reasonable walking distance). And, once you've bought the meat (that you need to cook today or else it will literally expire...no freezing will help), the milk (which on the contrary will last in your cabinet until March 2029), the flour (which is heavily sifted and very pure), and the fruits and vegetables (which you had to weigh yourself and print out your own label for...cheating? never!) at the supermarket, you then have to go out and get the carbs and fats! So, off to the boulangerie at the corner (which happens to make the best bread in Paris according to Fromer's 2006), to the patisserie next store (sorry, the former shop was not a boulanger/patissier, like so many places), and to the fromagerie for some nice Camembert to go with the pain de tradition. If you were really hardcore you actually would have bought your meat at the boucherie too, but that is a frightful place, so you stick to the supermarche. Then you can whip up a quick dinner of potage, chicken and rice (whoops, gotta get that too), cheese & bread, and finally tarte au noix de coco or some sliced fruit or that patisserie for dessert. And of course there's wine on the side, which you picked up at Nicolas a couple days ago. Life is really hard in Paris.

So yeah, if I were to do this again, I'd get my own apartment. It'd be expensive, but really it's the only way to function when so much is at your fingertips. So what will I miss first about Paris, even though I didn't get to do it that often? Les courses, plain and simple. You have to go shopping everyday, but that way you aren't oversupplied with food. It's a clever concept really. It would never sell in the US.

But that's why they are two different cultures, is it not? Alright, off to paper-writing...