true life planet

This is a journal entry from when I was in Paris a few weeks ago. I still feel the same today…

I finally went to an internet cafe today. I found one that was insanely cheap by the office where I had to pick up my visa for India. I was just walking around trying to decide which falafel place looked the best for  a splurge when I found what must eb the cheapest internet cafe in Paris, at one euro an hour.

Fantastic. Unfortunately, they were closed for prayer, so I waited around on the street.

It was a weird street, full of..furriers, of all things.

Furriers and falafel. Go figure.

I was starting to enjoy myself when they opened up shop and I began reading my emails.

There were loads, as usual, but most of them dealt with a recent flood in Panama. The damage was hard to assess, and the emails were a little frantic. I felt a big loss for the communities that had been hardest hit-many were washed away.

If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, then you know that I worked with an indigenous group called the Ngobe in Panama. It was this particular group of people that were hit the hardest by the flooding.

More than half a dozen people died.
My friend Plinio died…he had seen several children inside of a wooden house, and he was going back and forth to rescue each one..he rescued almost all of them, and then he made the last rescue attempt for a 8 month old baby, and the rescue failed when the wooden house collapsed on Plinio and the baby. He could not rescue the baby and he was caught under the house, unable to get out. They found his body down the river later on.

I am so affected by this loss and this news. This friend of mine was making a significant difference in the world-in his world and in ours. He was well traveled, had friends all over the world, was teaching his people about plants and horticulture, and he was supposed to come stay with me for a few months when I was done with my trip. I had arranged for an internship for him at a  university near my home town.

I left the cafe and blindly walked to the metro.

I could hardly handle looking at the metro map to figure out how to get back to my apartment I was staying at-let alone eye contact with anyone on the street.

Paris felt ridiculous. All these people, with everything they could want, so much wealth, and on the other side of the earth a man dies trying to save children from drowning in a flash flood. The government did not have adequate resources to warn or to rescue the Ngobe, many of who found themselves suddenly taking refuge in trees as everything they owned washed away.

They died because they  were poor and powerless.

It was really hard for me to get home, back to the apartment. I finally made it back and then just sat on the couch for hours, in shock. It’s such a wake up call to me. It’s such a major wake up call to everyone but no one is listening. Everyone is involved in whatever they are involved in, and I wonder if he died for nothing. I wonder if anyone cares.

I am so sad I can hardly move.

It’s not just him dying that makes me feel this way..it’s the gross injustice of it. It’s that more than 1000 people, all poor Ngobe people, lost their homes in this flood. It’s that it’s not in the news-the news only covers the areas the rich expats are living in and a few tribal areas which are the homes to richer, more socially prominent tribes in Panama.

It’s all wrong. All of it.

I feel this even more strongly when I finally get up the energy to go visit Marie-Louise, the local baker. I am in line behind a woman who is very well dressed and spends an awesome 43 euros on cakes for a party. I am happy for Marie-Louise, I am happy for the woman..but I think about how much those 43 euros would buy an Ngobe person, and I lose my appetite, leaving the shop empty handed.

The whole day goes by in a blur. I’m supposed to see my friend Sonia tonight, but I can’t bear it, and tell her so when she kindly calls to check in on me. I’m all tears and I can’t stop.

It’s my last night in Paris and all I want is to go to the jungle in Panama and help my friends and their families. I don’t care about anything other than that.

The apartment I am staying in belongs to her brother, and we arrange that I will give her the key back in the morning. I hang up the telephone and start sobbing.

I hardly sleep, and when I wake up, I realize it’s my last day in Paris.

In spite having seen and done more stuff in Paris than almost anyone I have ever met who visited this place, I still have a last day “to-do-and-see” list. But I don’t really care. None of it seems that interesting anymore.

I drag myself around,  until I end up at the Basilica Sacre Coeur. Its up a steep bunch of steps and I decide to avoid the guys selling stuff and take the side stairs. I am assaulted by the strong, overwhelming smell of urine.

I hate Paris right  now. I hate how I’m near or at something spectacularly beautiful, and all of a sudden, it’s just an assault on my senses, that strong smell of urine. Disgusted, I almost throw up.

Luckily, I am able to hold my breath and make it to the top of the stairs.

I enter the Basilica. God, it’s beautiful. It’s full of mosaics. Really beautiful ones. You could stare at them for hours.

And that’s exactly what I do. I sit in a pew and let my mind go blank. It’s a relief.

My friend who died so senselessly was not a religious person, but I find myself praying him and his family anyway. I don’t really know what else to do. I’m just kneeling there crying.

The mass starts and it goes by in a blur. It’s over before I even realize it’s started.

Then a nun comes out, and she begins to sing beautiful music in French. Shortly, she is joined by about a dozen more nuns, all singing. They proceed to sing for about 45 minutes, and I stop being sad and angry and frustrated about Plinio dying and the Ngobe suffering and I just listen.

It was the most peaceful 45 minutes of my entire trip. More peaceful than anything on the Camino de Santiago, even.

After the nuns are finished, I’m still sitting there for about an hour. I don’t want to go outside, in to the world. I don’t want to battle the metro, find my way around the city…I just want peace of mind, somehow.

I’m sitting there when I happen to read a little brochure on the place, that says that if you have  a prayer request or a concern that there are nuns waitng in the rectory to hear your needs and pray for you. I decide to go talk to one of them.

I forget that they only speak French. I’m in line when I realize this and I almost step out of line, feeling silly.

I suddenly feel very alone in this enormous city and I wish I was home with my boyfriend and my friends and my parents and my dog. I don’t want to feel how I’m feeling all by myself. An overwhelming homesickness sets in and I fight it off.

It’s my turn, and I get the nun with the beautiful voice who was the main singer when they were all singing. It’s hard for me to imagine her speaking-her voice seems like it’s just meant for singing. She turns out to have  a deep voice, which surprises me. She knows I don’t speak any French, and she talks to me with her deep soothing voice in French as I listen and say nothing.

She’s got beautiful ivory skin and very dark unruly hair, and I can see bits of it peeking out. She’s got very dark brown eyes, almost black, and she’s kind of chubby with a comfortable pair of shoes on. I find myself staring at her shoes, because it’s difficult for me to look at any one in the face right now. I feel like if I do, I will start and never stop– crying.

I start talking to her in English about how I’m feeling and my state of mind, and she stops me and hugs me. I am so taken aback that she is hugging me that it jolts me into back into reality and out of my gloominess. I feel alot more relaxed and clear headed.

She talks to me for about 15 minutes, and I’ve no idea what she’s saying, but I know that she understands me somehow.

I leave the Basilica feeling significantly lighter. I feel like I can actually enjoy my last day here, and I think about Plinio and what he would’ve done, had he been here today. He would’ve loved this place and he would’ve wanted to see as much of it as he could.

All thru the day, as I walk around, I never feel alone.

I’m also accompanied by my thoughts. When terrible things happen, it often is the impetus for people to make significant changes in their life.

I feel my commitment to helping the Ngobe growing. Not only that… I feel my commitment to helping people in the world, period, growing. It’s larger than life. It’s larger than me. This feeling is like a plane above  a vast ocean. Its exhilarating and at the same time it’s kind of scary. But it’s wonderful.

I realize I can never make sense of Plinio’s death.

I realize I can never make sense of how the Ngobe continue to barely have enough to survive, while others have so much they don’t even realize it-and I see that I don’t have to make sense of it.

What I have to do is take responsibility and come up with solutions.

What I have to do is take responsibility for what is happening in the world-even when it’s not happening to me, or to people close to me, but to people I may not even know and may never meet.

I thought..in my small way..I was doing that, until this happened. And then somehow, tonight, as I was writing this journal entry, I felt as though a bomb went off in my brain, flooding me with ideas and courage and possibilities that I never thought of before. I find myself looking at what the meaning of my life is, and how I can make it a life of value-I mean, really use it-in a way that I never thought of before.

Now, I want to do more than just volunteer around the world.

I want to do more than just start a charity for the Ngobe.

I still want-and am doing those things-but now I want to be of service to the world.

Forever, my whole life.

I want to learn all the skills I need and share all the knowledge I have with any person, anywhere who is suffering from injustice, poverty, and lack of education and information.

I was thinking these kinds of thoughts before, but now I find myself strangely attracted to learning more about

Medicine. Agriculture. Industry. Economics.

All kinds of practical things, too-that before never interested me.

But now I don’t feel like my life is for just me.

I started out thinking that I was going to make a difference on this trip.

What I didn’t realize is that the difference I’m making is within myself.

Much of this trip is about gaining awareness of what it’s really actually like for the majority of most people on the Earth. It’s not easy for most people, and most people on the planet are suffering, hungry, homeless, poor, and lack human rights and basic health care. Only some of us have privileges, like a house, education, choices. I think I knew this, before I started off on this around the world trip..but I didn’t really know it. I’ve never known people who were just trying to survive before.

It makes me look at life in a whole different way.

It’s turning everything upside down in my mind, and at the same time making me appreciate deeply the privileges I’ve got. I realize how many choices I have–something I never really fully appreciated before.

I don’t want those choices I have to go for naught. I want to make some choices that end some of that suffering that have seen.

And..I’m not just feeling this way because I want to help people. I’m feeling this way because their destiny is wrapped up in mine. We are the same. What happens to them is happening to me. We have a profound effect on the destiny of everyone on Earth-just by what we do each day. Our most basic decisions impact someone, somewhere.

There’s a whole revolution going on in my brain right now, and I can’t stop it. I don’t even want to.

I owe part to of this revolution to my friend, Plinio. His death was in part an impetus for my to think outside the box even more and for me to see an example of what it means to be committed.

Thank you, my friend-you’ve helped me become a revolutionary, of sorts.

You will be remembered.

gigi

” If you have come to help me, then you are wasting your time. If you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then we can work together. “- Lilla Watson

Postscript: A friend read this post and told me that I would lose readers over it, because it’s too personal? Or too save the world ish? Or too …? I’m interested in knowing what you think. I guess, if I lose readers over it, well, then so be it. I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do, and be who I am. If I’m willing to not put this entry up, just because it might make some people uncomfortable for whatever reason, that doesn’t say alot about my strength of conviction or my character….

Postscript no 2: This entry has caused someone I have never met to send money to disaster relief efforts in Panama for the Ngobe. To read more about current efforts and a place you can donate a tax deductible donation, go about 7 entries back to the entry on this blog called “First Things First-Tragedy Hits The Ngobe Of Panama” and you will get all the info you need.

Part three of a very long list of free things to do in Paris. Buy your ticket, hop a plane….

41.Walk along the Seine. Yeah, it really is romantic. Really. There are lots of bridges and canals to explore too. And it’s beautiful by night, with the Eiffel Tower in the background, lighting up the sky. The Pont Neuf bridge is also not to be missed.

42. Sweet solitude in the middle of the city..at Place Dauphine, a tiny square off of Pont Neuf, which is calm, quiet, and quintessentially French.

43. Learn about living on a barge..hey, it’s not as romantic as it looks, afterall! Plenty of expats live on barges along the Seine, and walking along the river and admiring them got me an invite for lunch and a short ride, too.

44. Watch the rollerblade parade, every Friday night. Some of the outfits get pretty crazy. Go to www.pari-roller.com for more info.

45. If you like clubbing, or- if you don’t, but like me, you dance in your kitchen while no one is else is home- try to time your visit for the Paris Techno-Parade, a six hour long dance-a -thon in the streets of Paris. I missed it, having just left before it took place this year, but I would’ve done it had I been there. It’s all for a good cause, usually has a theme of world hunger or something like that. The music is all techno and electronic music, and half a million people gather to dance for 6 hours. Wow. Sorry I missed it. go to www.technoparade.com for more info.

46. Like rockclimbing? Well, there’s no actual rockclimbing involved, but you can scale a big wall if you want to. It’s at Au Vix Camper on the Rue des Ecoles. They give you the stuff to climb except shoes (those tevas or hiking boots you’re wearing around Paris will be handy after all!)..oh, and you have to have someone spot you who isn’t one of the staff. I found a guy from Germany there who was also traveling alone, and we spotted each other. I loved this! And of course..it’s free!

47. If you are outdoorsy, you need to go to the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont. This is a bit out of your way, in the 20th e., but so worth it. It’s got everything..a bridge, mountains, a grotto, a temple..and what is really cool is that it was all designed by Baron Haussman and Napoleon the Third from an old trash heap and a bunch of no longer used quarries. A good lesson for today’s world on how recycling really does make sense.

48. The Paris History Museum is free, and it’s amazing. You could spend a whole day there and not see everything. It’s got alot on urban planning and the creation of Paris itself , and you’ll know more about Paris than most Parisians after a day here.

49. Become a Picasso groupie. There’s a very nice museum devoted to him here, which is worth looking at..when it’s free, of course, which is on the first Sunday of the month. But there are also 6 studios of Picasso’s in Paris, as well as the houses of all of his friends, lovers, and groupies to find.

50. Visit the Foundation le Courbusier in the 16th e., and walk around the neighborhood, which has many building he designed. Incredible. There are alot of Art Noveau buildings here, too.

51. Walk to La Defense. This area has some of the most strange, refined, modern architecture I’ve ever seen.

52.Take the metro to a Parisian secret-the Parc Andre Citroen. Small, pretty, and quiet, this park is for families and lovers, and shows you just how good Parisians are at designing and making use of public spaces. Very pretty.

53. Get literary, literally. Numerous bookshops sell English language books, have book readings, and events, the latter of which are free. My favorite was the famous Shakespeare and Co, which has a book reading every Monday night. I got to hear 7 poets read their work, which was amazing. They also have a group that meets once a week to read from their own work to one another, with a focus on creative writing. Walk -ins welcome.

54. Poetry..it’s everywhere in Paris. I went to a free Poetry reading which I heard about from a writer. Poetry readings-and art performances-are free, and they are all over town, usually on a weekend(but not always). When you stop be Shakespeare and Co, ask around for what’s happening in the City. The Sorbonne is also a good place to check.

55. Loved the Hunchback of Notre Dame? So did I. Visit Maison Victor Hugo, and learn a bit more about the writer’s life. The permanent collections are all free..the temporary ones aren’t. But the permanent collections are wonderful, so who cares?

56. Balzac, a French institution. You can visit Balzac’s house free, too. It’s a very good museum, and you won’t walk away disappointed.

57. The Museum of the Modern Life is free- and so cool if you love George Sand. Plus, it’s got lots on other artists and writers of her time too. But you will love the George Sand exhibit-it will make you want to run back to Shakespeare and Co and buy some of her books!

58. Walk thru the center of Paris, without the traffic..on the Promenade plantee, along stretch of grass and parks running thru the city from Bastille to Vicenne Wood. Bring your walking shoes, because it’s almost 3 miles long.

59. hey, the Bastille’s pretty cool too-and makes an especially pretty sight by night. It’s history is sad, though..and you can learn all about it right in front of the Bastille itself.

60. A crazy place to go and take a look around-which I guarantee you won’t forget, and is world famous, is the taxidermy shop, Desrolles, which is in the 7th e. on Rue du Bac. Seriously, if you like strange things, this is not to be missed.

This list was originally supposed to be about 100 free things to do in Paris, but quite frankly, I’m bored writing it by now and besides, it’s pretty clear that it’s possible to go to Paris and do plenty for free. I could continue..almost every  museum has a free day…ride a bike for free around town…and so on.

A lack of money when traveling has very little to do with how good of a time you have. It’s all relative.

gigi

Part two of a long list of things to do in Paris, when you’re either broke or don’t want go broke visiting the City of Lights…

21.  Learn about African-American history in Paris. Paris attracted loads of African Americans in the past, who were artists, musicians, and painters. The Latin Quarter is a good place to start, or St Germain des Pres. Some African-Americans who had a vital role in the artistic and intellectual scene and lived there were: James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Henry Tanner, Miles Davis, and L. Mailou Jones. Josephine Baker was an American, too..you can visit where she danced and had Paris at her feet.

22. Find a piece of Africa in Paris. Can’t afford a trip to Africa? Fine-Africa is in Paris! The more upscale African boutiques and neighborhood is around Chateau Rouge,  where North African and Senegalese neighborhoods abound. Good places to wander are from the metro station Barbes/Rochchouart to the metro Marcadet/Poissonnier, along the Blvd Barbes. There are great neighborhoods all over town, actually. Another favorite is from the metro stop Poissonniere (different stop than above) walking up towards Rochenchouart Metro.These are great neighborhoods to find authentic African food at a very low price, African crafts, African fabrics..the window shopping is great. And the women, in there beautiful dresses and headwraps, are the most beautiful women in Paris.

23.  While you are in the neighborhood, walk up the steps to the Sacre Coeur Basilica, and listen to a free concert-there is one every single day. The Basilica itself is beautiful, once you make it up all the steps. (Hint: walk up the middle set of stairs, not the side stairs,which seem to be used as restrooms by men). The Basilica is full of tourists taking photos, outdoors and in, but it’s a peaceful place and the mosaics are going to leave you speechless. Plus, nuns sing beautiful music in French every single day. Something you don’t want to miss.

24. Speaking of churches, put a visit to the American Church of Paris. Yes, even if you aren’t religious, this place is a must see. This is the place to meet expats from around the world-it serves as a community center for people from 50 countries. They have bulletin boards there and tons of info on free stuff to do in Paris. An expat tradition.

25.  Go to a concert at the American Church of Paris. They host international music celebrities as well as religious music, and most of it’s free.

26. Volunteer at a soup kitchen. Alot of churches have free meal programs for the homeless(of which there are thousands in the city). The American Church of Paris serves a very good hot lunch to homeless people on Friday afternoons..just show up to either set up or clean up. The Anglican Church of St. George also has a program.

27. Eat lunch with Parisians. The St. George Church has mass at 10:30 am Sunday, and afterwards they have a big lunch for people. You sign up beforehand, and they pair you up with Parisians for the meal. Non religious people are welcome, and you will find the conversations you have open up more doors of cool things to do in Paris.

28. More free music! You can literally hear music for free everyday of the week while you are in Paris. If you like classical music and chamber music in particular, you’ll love the free concerts at the St. Chapelle church, which is located across from the Notre Dame cathedral. Concert times are posted just as you enter.

29. Notre Dame cathedral. It’s huge, it’s beautiful, and it’s free. Forget going up the towers, though. it’s crowded and you can get a much better, free view of the city, at…

30. Georges Pompidou National Centre Of Art and Culture. You have to pay to get in the museum (and it’s worth the ticket price), but you can go straight up to the top and look at an amazing view of the city fro free , by taking the escalators up as far as you can go. You can look at free art, too. Look down towards the building itself and you will see a water and sculpture garden on the floor directly below you, and you’ve got the best view to see it properly. There’s more free art around the building itself. Go around the side of the building, to the right of the front entrance, and you will see a big sculpture garden, and all the sculptures are moving around using water and solar power. So cool. There’s also art performances/exhibits  that are free, right in front of the entrance, and they are interactive. The entire museum is free on the first Sunday of the month and for anyone under 18 years old everyday.

31. The above center has a free library, and unlike other libraries in Paris that you have to pay to use, it’s totally free. It’s full of students, too-so be prepared for a line if it’s a weekend. Good English books and magazines.

32. Free art films. The Centre hosts several free art films a year. I saw one when I was there which was in French, but I loved it. And I’d never have the chance to see that at home. Look at the program online for times and dates.

33. Get a loaf of bread and cheese and have a picnic while watching the buskers and street entertainers in front of the Centre above. It’s free, and you’ll be joined by hundreds of other people doing the same thing. I watched a clown act and a magician with a dog when I was there. Wonderful.

33. Free theatre. Go to a play-for free. The Comedie Francaise is Paris’ oldest theatre, and they not only sell discount tickets, but they let people in free after the play has just started if they have empty seats. There are lots of free plays at all the universities, too.

34.If you just want to hear opera, and don’t mind not actually seeing the performers, you can attend the opera for free. The largest opera house in Paris actually sells tickets very cheap to sit in seats you can’t see the opera itself in-but the acoustics are fantastic. They give away tickets after the first part of the opera. Best part is-other than free opera- and no one cares if you are wearing Birkenstocks or your Tevas to the opera because no one can see you! This was one of my favorite things I did in Paris.

35. Free jazz..for 10 days! If you time your visit for September, as I did, you’ll be able to catch free jazz concerts, with well known jazz musicians from all over the world, for ten nights in a row. The concerts are all at or around the Villette Park. There are smaller venues at local bars in the center of the city, too. I went to  three jazz concerts for free when I was in Paris. Check it out on www.villette.com.

36. Get into Buddhism. A little known place to visit is the Kagyu-Dzong Temple, which is a Tibetan Buddhist Temple on the Rue la Centure du Lac Daumesnil. It’s gorgeous, and they have retreats, classes, and intro to meditation classes there. But you can visit the temple for free, and it’s a very colorful and tranquil place. Look them up online to make sure you show up at an hour they will let you in. www.kagyu-dzong.com

37. If you like Buddhist imagery and art, then you can’t afford to miss the  free Buddhist Pantheon Galleries of Japan and China, housed in a wing of the Guimet museum of Asian Art. The Guimet museum costs money, except for on the first Sunday of the month when it is free-but the Buddhist Pantheon Galleries are always free.

38. Gasp in awe at the tidiness and beauty of a free Japanese garden. It’s located in the Hotel Heidelbach near the Guimet museum, and it’s free. You can just sit around and hang out in there and meditate.

39. No trip to Paris is complete without a trip to Chinatown. You’ll be surprised how the neighborhood suddenly changes, if you walk there from a neighborhood next door. It’s cheap, colorful, and makes for surprising window shopping. There are people from Asian cultures from all over the world-Thailand, Phillipines, Korea…the list goes on and on. You can find anything there. But even if you just walk around and look, it’s worth the trip. There are two Chinatowns-but I liked them both. One is in the 13th e. and one is in the 3rd e. The 13th e. is more expensive and has more stuff geared to people with more to spend. The 3rd e. is more authentic, with traditional food shops and all the sights-and smells-than come along with them.

40.  Celebrate the New Year in style- Chinese style, that is! I  didn’t time my trip to Paris for this, but from what I heard while there, I wished I had. The date of the Chinese New Year changes every year, but it’s usually in Jan. or Feb.  There are the usual parades, parties, special foods, fireworks, and public performances.

gg

So, alot of people told me it was impossible to spend two weeks in Paris on a budget of 12 dollars a day. Well, guess what? You guys were wrong. I managed to be there for two weeks-and had a wonderful time-by doing almost everything on this list. Read it and weep- or go buy a plane ticket to the City of Lights and try it out for yourself.

60 Free Things to do in Paris, in no particular order whatsoever: Number 1-20:

1. Listen to country music. You’ll hear it..eerily enough, right by the famous ferris wheel in near the Tuileries garden.

2.Learn all about gardening-and appreciate a few of the world’s most beautiful gardens. Tuleries,Luxemburg, and the Botanical and Alpine gardens are good places to start.

3. While you are in the Tuleries, keep on walking..and looking around at all the free sculpture, by everyone from Rodin to Moore to Roy Lichenstein. Yes, the Rodin museum is great-but there are loads and loads of his sculptures here, too-all for free.

4. Come to think of it. while you are at the Botanical gardens, keep walking towards the Seine and you’ll find a wonderful Plein Air Museum, full of outdoor sculpture.

5, If you time your visit to Paris between May and September, you can walk just below the Plein Air Museum and watch tango dancers every night of the week, dancing on the Quai St. Bernard. Or, if  you show up at 7pm, you can get free dance lessons.

6. Go hunting for antiques. It’s still fun if you can’t actually afford to buy them. Good antique shops-over a hundred-line the Rive Gauche. One of my favorite antique shops was off the Place de Palais Royal, called the Louvre des Antiques.

7. Meet Parisians. I can’t tell you how friendly and nice most Parisians are. Their crabby reputation is undeserved. Be nice and make an effort and they will generally go out of their way for you in return. I made alot of friends in cafes, in art museums, in parks, in bakeries..you name it. But the city also has a program for tourists where you can wander around and meet Parisians where they work-for free. Go to www.parisinfo.com and scroll to the “meet the Parisians” page, and it will tell you how. I suggest the “Parisians at Work” program.

8. Be an art snob. You don’t have to have money to like-or not like-art. There are loads of free art galleries around all of the museums, some more friendly to tourists than others. My favorite one is called La Maison Rouge, and it’s in the Marias district. It’s wacky and modern, and changed  the shows hanging twice in the two weeks I was there.

9. Hang out with students. One of my favorite places I went was the Sorbonne University. It’s beautiful, it’s walkable, it’s full of interesting people..and there are many interesting things to do, all for free-like free art, for example. Students also will know about things to do in the city that are free.

10. Go where students hang out-visit the Latin Quarter. 

11. Discover Arabic culture, which is thriving in Paris. The Latin Quarter is a good place to start, but there are other places around Paris with a Middle Eastern feel. The Latin Quarter has some wonderful Arabic bookshops to browse in, which have many interesting books, artwork, and so on. The Arabic Institute in the neighborhood, is beautiful, and you can see some of the things for free. There are free Arabic music concerts and events-, which are advertised in the bookstores and cafes-particularly at the end of Ramadan. the view from the top of the Institute is one of the nicest in Paris, with out the crowds-or the hefty ticket price-it’s free, of course!

12. Walk around the Pletzl. This Jewish neighborhood, sometimes referred to as the Marais neighborhood, is my favorite neighborhood in Paris. It’s the closest thing you will find to what Paris kind of looked like in Medieval times, and it has some lovely old timbered buildings. It also has beautiful temples and the oldest synogague in Paris.It’s also a wonderful glimpse into Jewish culture in Paris today..full of shops, bakeries, and great people watching.

13. While you are in the Pletzl neighborhood, visit the Memorial de la Shoah. This fantastic memorial to the Holocaust will be something you never forget. It’s informative and well thought out, and you will end up knowing more about the Vichy government than you ever thought you could. A valuable history lesson for every visitor to Paris.

14. The neighborhood of Montmarte is another favorite of mine. It’s got a seedy side, but get past that, and you’ll fall in love with it’s buildings and history. It’s very walkable, too.

15. Cemeteries. There are loads of them, from the Montmarte Cemetery, which was my favorite, to the enormous Pere Lachaise Cemetery, to the smaller ones on the outskirts of town. They all have maps for free, and they all have famous people buried in them.

16. Visit the markets. There are so many, from the famous flea markets, to the smaller, more intimate farmer’s markets. My favorite two markets in Paris are quite small (not so many pickpockets there, either! ). One is a small farmer’s market near the Rue Monge metro station (open Mon, Wed, Sun) because its cheap and there’s a lot to look at, without it being overwhelming; and I love,love, love the bird market which is on Sundays at la St. Chapelle. A must if you love animals.

17. Take a 1/2 day and visit Parc de la Villette. This amazing place is free, and it only costs the cost of a metro ticket to get you there. There’s a canal splitting it into two, but all the free stuff is in the part called the City of Sciences and Industry. This place is amazing-and, it’s not just for kids. It’s got a beautiful free aquarium and an excellent multimedia exhibit that is free, and that changes all the time. The park itself is incredible-a huge, open green space, which comes as a welcome relief after a few days in the city. It’s a fanciful park, full of art and crazy outdoor furniture to lounge on.

18.  The Cite de la Musique, or Music Museum..isn’t free, unfortunately. But what is, is the awesome Mediatheque, a free media center,  with loads of computers waiting for you to ask any question about music in the world, from rap to indigenous music.

19. Or, maybe a  catch a film… And if you want to watch a movie for free-a good one, because the French love films and are real film buffs-with thousands of Parisians in the summer months, you can do that at Villette Park, too. Go to the Villette website above for films and times.

20. Have another  1/2 day? use another metro ticket and get yourself over to the Vincennes Wood, a breathtaking, beautiful woodland that you won’t believe is just a metro ride away from the city center. Most people go there to go visit the chateau, but..I just walked around, looked at the moat, and thought it was wonderful without paying to go inside. The Paris Floral Park is almost free, at 1 euro to get in, so I’ll list it here. It’s supposed to be for kids, but I enjoyed it tremendously-it has a puppetry, a nature library, and a gorgeous butterfly garden. But even if you don’t pay the euro for this, and just stick to the woods, you’ll love it. It feels like the past.

gigi

This is part of a series,  from when I recently spent several weeks in Paris, on a shoestring budget.

Things done/cost:

Buy a loaf of bead from my favorite bakery: 1.00 usd

Take a long early morning walk to the Latin Quarter: free

Eat an enormous breakfast at ” Breakfast In America”: 7.00 usd

Metro to the American  Church In Paris: 1.40 usd

Walk along the Siene and look at barges: free

Have lunch on a barge: free

Walk around the Hotel de Invalides: free

Visit Napoleon no 1’s tomb: free

Visit St. Sulpice Church (popular due to Dan Brown’s Da Vinci code): free

Time with Delacroix, in the Delacroix museum: (with discount) 4.00 usd

A walk-and nap-in Luxemberg Gardens: free

Metro to Shakespeare and Company Bookstore: 1.40 usd

A very enjoyable hour browsing: free

Attend an impromtu book reading along the Seine: free

End up going to a book reading at Shakespeare and Co.: free

Walk home: free

Total spent: 14.80 usd …oh, I’m so over budget, today! Thats  almost 3 usd over what I am supposed to stick to! But..it’s still pretty good. It was eating that big breakfast that did it. I don’t regret it, though.

Today, I’m an American in Paris. I really am an American in Paris, of course-but today I want to do things that are particularly of interest to Americans. It just sounds interesting to me-and besides, I need a slightly more touristy day.

I start off by heading to a famous restaurant called “Breakfast In America”, which is in the Latin Quarter. It serves huge breakfasts, and best of all, it’s quintessentially American. It’s a huge diner, complete with formica countertops and waitresses sloshing around coffeepots and everyone ordering bacon and eggs. I love it. It makes me want to go on a road trip across the States. It’s like Route 66 in Paris.

I eat more than I should, and drink too much coffee(free refills!) before taking the metro to a famous center of activity for American expats in Paris-the American Church of Paris.

It’s a very pretty church, of course, but that’s not why I am going there, exactly. I’m going there because the American Church serves as the community center for Americans in the city. Actually, not just Americans, but expats from all different countries around the world.

It was the first American church built outside the USA, and it was built in 1857. It’s not one single denomination either, but a mix of over thirty different ones. This kind of gives it an international flair-and that’s why it calls itself “the UN church of Paris”.

This place is the place to go if you’re looking for connections in Paris, a place to live, a job..whatever. But it’s also a great place to meet other people, which is why I’m there.

(note: you can volunteer there as well, at their soup kitchen, which serves meals on Friday afternoons and needs help setting up and cleaning up. I suppose if you were really broke you could eat the food, too. It’s supposed to be delicious…)

I do end up meeting a few interesting characters there in the first few minutes I am walking around the place-two guys who are Americans living in Paris, and are looking for an American au pair.

Too bad I can’t try out being an au pair, I don’t have much time in Paris! But the conversation turns to barges and barge living, and we end up talking about famous people who lived on barges.

Anais Nin, one of my favorite French authors, lived on a barge for awhile. She wrote about it like it was this very romantic life but later admitted it was difficult and not always a bed of roses.

My two new friends knew some people who had decided to live on a barge. We walked along the Seine until we found them.

Americans, they had given up on the American dream, sold everything off, and taken to barge living-which was turning out not to be so romantic as it sounded. The barge needed constant work, the weather conditions made things uncomfortable, and safety/security was an issue-which is why they had a dog.

They offered lunch, and in spite of being incredibly full from my ample American breakfast earlier, I did not turn them down. Their barge was so pretty,painted blue and green and white, with pots of geraniums and so on, the dog running around happily..lunch was very simple, but set out on the deck with a tablecloth and everything!

The general consensus among the Americans was that Paris was a magical place, a hot bed of intellectualism and art, and a place where..anything goes.

They’re not the first Americans to think so. Americans began to be very attracted to Paris after the Civil War. They were attracted to it’s organization, it’s model of politics and urban planning…but they were also attracted to it’s artistic leanings, it’s intellectual atmosphere, and it’s somewhat loose morality(compared to the Puritan ethic in the States at the time-and this still rings true for some people ).

Some Americans that came to Paris and thrived there are Josephine Baker, who made loads of money dancing naked except a banana skirt; Edith Wharton, who wrote copious amounts and had a famous salon; and Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, who also wrote, had a salon, and supported many French artists.

After the lunch, I feel like I’ve made a few new friends. They are impressed that I’m managing on my tiny budget, and impressed at my worldly travels. I feel like Paris just got a whole lot bigger-and friendlier.

I decided to walk to the Hotel de Invalides, which is close by and in view. I’m not alone-the place is full of tourists from all over the world. If I wanted a touristy experience, this is the right place to be. The Hotel was built as a hospital for disabled war vets, in the 17th century. Apparently 4,000 of them lived here, which must of been complete chaos.

There’s an army museum in the square, too-and loads of tourists are in line to look at all the tools and ways people killed people over the years. This is not attractive to me so I don’t visit it.

Instead, I head to the very pretty Eglise du Dome, a beautiful church which besides being very pretty also is the home to Napoleon the first’s body. Not that you would know it, as it’s hard to see the thing, as it’s surrounded by tourists taking elicit photographs, and it’s in the center of 5 or more coffins.

In spite of all the historical places they could visit, it seems most people are interested in visiting a totally different church-the Church of St. Sulpice, famous from the book by Dan Brown, the Da Vinci Code. It’s in walking distance so I decide to visit it.

The church used to be just another church, but with great architecture-a pretty, tranquil place in the big city-but now it is full of tourists, and I mean packed. The fact that Dan Brown got all the facts wrong for his book seems to make little difference-what seems to be of greater importance is that everyone read the book, and so they can shout out ” Here’s where the murder was! Here’s where the this/that was!”

The church was built by 1780 or so, and I wouldn’t say it was my favorite church in France…but it does have something no other church has, and that’s several large murals by Eugene Delacroix.

Delacroix actually lived near the church, and he compromised his health a great deal by standing on scaffolding to paint the murals in very dangerous and drafty conditions.

The tourists visiting there irritated me to no end, snapping photos of everything they could (I had given up carrying my camera everyday, as not having one forced me to actually look at stuff!). However, to counterbalance this, they were eagerly buying up loads of Da Vinci Code themed items, thereby supporting the Parisian economy.

Delacroix’s studio was nearby, so I decided to visit it. If you are a teacher, they give you a discount, so  I got in for 2/3  price.  The museum was actually in the apartment he lived in until he died, although he didn’t live there long-he had moved there to be closer to his work on the St. Sulpice church.

Some time after he died, some idiot had the bright idea of turning the area he had lived into into a parking lot, and knocking the whole building down. A group of Delacroix art lovers came to the rescue, and that’s how the museum was created.

Alot of his stuff had been given away at that part or sold off to who knows whom, so when they set about creating  a museum for him, they weren’t able to exactly recreate it exactly as it hd been when he lived there. But it does have an amazing collection of his drawings, sketches, and paintings, including one of my favorites, ” Mary Magdalen In The Wilderness”.

Delacroix was insanely prolific and very talented, although he strangely thought that Rubens was the best artist of all time and modeled his work on Rubens’. I saw lots of Delacroix and Rubens work at the Prado in Madrid, and I think Delacroix was so much better-he is more profound, and his work looks more real and emotive to me than Rubens’ pink swirls and cherubs and plump ladies.

I am tired after looking at all of his art. It is phenomenal, the amount he produced and the way he lived his life- he literally worked himself to the bone, I mean this guy was driven. He subjected himself to terrible conditions to work on huge projects- for example, the murals in the Louvre and Versaille. I feel silly being tired, but I guess I am lazy compared to Delacroix.

I decide to walk over to Luxemburg Gardens-it’s close by and the weather is nice.

Luxemburg Gardens are very pretty, very formal, full of trees..and lots of tourists. But it’s a relaxing place to sit, and space out. Lots of people are doing the same thing.

I decide to take the metro over to Shakespeare and Co, the bookstore to visit in Paris. It’s been around forever, and it’s books are in English. No settling for Jackie Collin’s steamy paperbacks here-this is the real thing, with books by everyone from Beat authors to Cocteau to Hugo to ee cummings.

It’s a bookstore for people who love books, and it shows. People are just standing around reading books when I enter the shop, which makes me love the place already. There are couches and nooks and piles of books everywhere. Apparently the couches are used in the evenings by poor trying-to make-it  authors who are visiting the city, and trading for tidying up. (Another thing to look into, if you are a writer and broke in Paris).

I spend a good hour browsing. They’ve got everything, everything. I don’t buy anything, because who wants to carry all that to India and so forth, but it’s really cheap-used paperbacks abound, and you can buy quite a few books at once for under ten dollars. Good to know.

I end up talking to some young kids outside, who are all writers and are from around the world. One offers to read me some of the story he’s writing, and I get an impromtu reading right then and there. It’s good. I feel lucky and somewhat amazed that it is easy for me to make friends so quickly, when I’ll I’ve done is smile.

It turns out that there is a reading that night-there’s one almost every Monday night at the bookshop-and I go.

It’s a whole bunch of authors reading, all from an anthology of Oxford poets. I decide to become a poet, in spite of the fact that I don’t know how I will fit it into my busy life when I return to the States. All the poets seem so interesting..and I am just completely taken in by them when they read their poems.

I walk home, full of the words of the poets, the paintings of Delacroix, the feeling..of being an American in Paris. It’s been a wonderful day.

Gigi

 This is part five of a series about several weeks I recently spent in Paris.

Things done/Cost:

I go to the Tobacco Museum: free

Then to the Pere Lachaise cemetery: free

Eat bread and cheese at the grave of Proust:1.00 usd

Take part in a political protest march: free

Have a cup of mint tea at a North African cafe: I.30 usd

Head to Montmarte: 1.40 usd on the metro

and do a walking tour: free

Visit the Montmarte cemetery: free

Eat bread and cheese in the cemetery: 1.oo  usd

Visit the Museum of Romantic Life: free

Take the metro to the 13th arr. and walk around Chinatown: 1.40 for the metro

Buy an amazing Vietnamese meal/go to a poetry reading: 3.00 usd

Metro, but get lost, ending up at free jazz concert: (metro): 1.40 usd, (concert): free

Metro back home, getting off early at the Bastille stop, to look at the Bastille by night: 1.40 usd

Walk home a few blocks: free

Total spent for the day: 11.90 usd

Paris has a reputation-and a history-for being bohemian. It is this wonderful history that has inspired and sparked the interest of countless tourists and visitors, eager for the bohemian vibe and romantic notions that come along with it. I suppose people hope some of this will rub off on them and they will write the next great novel or meet a Henry Miller like character to tell great stories about later on.

I am no different. I remember when I was a young teenager being enticed by the very idea of Paris. I was addicted to reading the works of people who lived, wrote, and painted in this great city. I was fascinated by the idea of “salons” where writers, intellectuals, and just plain interesting people came together and talked, wrote, painted, argued, drank and smoked.

So today I set out to discover some of this Paris of the past, and try to find that current of Bohemian culture that was hopefully still running thru it’s center-somewhere.

What better way to start than at the Tobacco Museum? And lucky for me, it’s right downstairs. It is actually almost below my apartment.

The whole idea..of people sitting at cafes..all day..arguing, talking, reading, writing..and smoking is such a part of the history of  the avant garde, intellectual history of Paris, that it’s hard to imagine a Parisian without a cigarette.(and ..it’s rare to meet a Parisian who doesn’t smoke).

But things are changing. In January of 2007, Paris passed a law changing the smoking regulations at all public places, effectively banning it from cafes and restaurants. You still see people doing it-but it’s going to change, and possibly the whole mystique of cafe life will change along with it.

This has the curators of the Tobacco Museum quite frustrated, yet at the same time, it’s making their museum quite popular.

It’s a tiny place, filled with everything about smoking you can possibly imagine. The curators seem to want to point out that smoking, in moderation, is actually good for your health. Hmmm.

But they have a great selection of artifacts from around the world having to do with smoking-and I’m not just talking about tobacco, here. They have an amazing selection of bongs you can look at (not use, sorry) and lots of history and photos of the famous folks of France lighting up. (Note: apparently the country is slowly removing the cigarettes from the hands of famous writers and so on in photographs. Apparently this will help end smoking in France.)

One of the most celebrated smokers was George Sand. She walked around in men’s clothes and smoking big fat cigars, as if to say, “Who cares?”… this at a time when women didn’t do that (although they still don’t, actually!) . I decided after looking at pictures of her smoking that I will go visit the museum about her today. She certainly fits the bohemian ideal.

But before I do this, I head to my favorite bakery in my neighborhood, where they know me and – even better -one of them speaks English. This is such a relief to me, because I speak no French. This is strange, as I have discovered on this trip that I am quite good with languages, and yet I can’t seem to learn any French. It’s like -I have a block or something. It’s probably that it’s not really needed. It’s not like I’m in the jungle with a tribe, or trying to catch a chicken bus in Guatemala.

I buy some bread, and Marie-Louise (she’s the one who speaks English at the bakery) gives me a tiny little cheese, from the cheese shop across the street. She tells me she got for me so I would try French cheese. I have told her what my daily budget is and she’s astonished that I am eating on that in Paris (but I am and quite well!). Is it so terrible to live on a tiny budget in Paris, that Parisians feel sorry for me and charitiably provide me with cheeses? I thank her for the cheese, but tell her I am not starving by any means. Her bread is keeping me quite full and happy, thankyou very much!

I decide to bring her flowers before I leave the city. She’s been wonderful to me.

I head first to the Pere Lachaise cemetery.

I love cemeteries, but this one is beyond any cemetery-lover’s wildest dream.

For one thing, it’s huge. It’s got 70,000 people buried there, and you literally need a map to find your way around the place. Unfortunately the office is out of maps so I’m on my own.

It doesn’t take long to spot some of the more famous graves. Jim Morrison’s grave has an armed guard standing watch over it and loads of people hanging around it, all looking very serious and talking about the “energy”.

Other graves that already seem to have drawn visitors at this early hour are the graves of Edith Piaf, Oscar Wilde, and Gertrude Stein.

I wander around for awhile and find loads more interesting people buried there, including Proust, who I feel a certain affinity for after seeing the room he wrote his best work in, now housed in the Paris History Museum. I sit down with Proust and eat some of the bread (delicious) and the cheese (good, but somewhat smelly) and ponder why I like cemeteries so much.

I think what’s most interesting about this place is that it is so huge and so visited, by people all over the world. As I am sitting with Proust, a group of Japanese tourists come and ask to take my picture. Either it’s because they can’t believe I’m eating breakfast while sitting on a Proust’s grave, or it’s for some other mysterious reason.

They turn out to be students on vacation and they have come here to see the grave of Chopin, among others. They’re still there when I leave an hour later.

After I leave the cemetery, I hop on the metro and head to the Latin Quarter.

Anyway, I go to the Latin Quarter because I the first few days I was here I found myself in the middle of a political protest march by “illegal immigrants” from around the world. They had taken over  a church and were on strike.

One of the organizers, a student from the Sorbonne, told me there was going to be another march and asked if I wanted to march with them. Normally, since I am traveling and need to continue with my trip, I’d give a resounding no as an answer-not a good time in my life to get deported! However, this time I said yes, as protests in France , including this one, are very well organized and actually have police escorts. It’s legal and it’s fine with the French government if I join in for a peaceful march.

I met up with the group, this time quite large. Most protesters were men, but there were a few women. I was the only white woman, except for a few people representing different international human rights watch groups. Most of the people were from Africa and the Middle East. We walked together for over an hour, chanting for worker’s rights and human rights. It was an amazing experience. Everyone was so kind to me and came up and talked to me, told me where they were from and a bit about their lives here in Paris.

Some of the things they told me had me wanting to know more, so when we were done marching and they asked me if I wanted to go to a cafe with a group of them and talk more, I did not refuse. One of the students from the university went with us and he translated everything for me.

Many of the “illegals” were extremely educated, well spoken people. They were all doing low paying, menial work in Paris, though- as they could not get any job which matched their qualifications.

Interestingly, the most “bohemian” people I had met in Paris were probably these people (other than students in the universities). They were activists, they were bright, they were arguing, discussing, and philosphizing about everything from the meaning of life to what defines human rights. I found being around them energizing and intellectually challenging.

As we sat drinking very hot, tiny glasses of tea in a North African restaurant, I learned more about the hardships these people are facing.

The issue of immigration -“illegal” and otherwise- is a very charged issue for native Parisians. It is, in fact, a very charged issue in all of Europe. It’s a very charged issue in the United States as well.

The difference in Europe is that European countries are small, while the USA is big. European countries don’t have the space, the infrastructure, the resources, or the jobs to support this huge influx of people crossing their borders everyday.

That’s one side of the story. I wonder if that is actually true.

The protester’s side is much different. They leave terrible situations in their homelands, take dangerous risks to come to Europe, take low paying jobs with minimal benefit, live below the poverty line, and are at the mercy of someone reporting them and being deported at any moment. Many of the people had arrived and found themselves in a situation of being a servant without pay, or working in the sex trade without pay.

I was interested in this last scenario, as I have always had strong views on the sex trade, and how it takes advantage of poor women thruout the world. Many people I have discussed this topic with in the past have defended this industry and it’s practice of giving poor women income. I continue to strongly feel that it is a negative industry and that it does not have a positive end result, no matter how people try to justify it.

I asked one of the women from Senegal if she would be willing to talk to me about her experience in detail for this blog, and she agreed. For my part, I had to agree to let her cut my hair at the salon she was working at, because she needed clients. I agreed, and we set a date for a week later for the interview/haircut!

One of the students was working with Amnesty International, and told me some of the horror stories he had heard in his work. Stories of women, getting a much needed job as a maid in a wealthy Parisian household, but forced to sleep on the floor in a tiny room, without more than one meal a day. Women being beaten if they didn’t bring in enough clients when working the streets. Men getting jobs in construction and the boss not paying them.

I think what most affected me was that, just like the “illegals” coming over our borders in the USA, these people from Northern Africa, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, and so on, are facing tremendous risk to come here-and when they finally do come into our countries, all we can say to them is “not in my backyard”. Oh, we feel for them , we do. And we want the best for them. But we don’t want to share our resources. Many of them, if they are deported, face certain death.

It was a real learning experience, spending my morning with them. I felt so..lucky..that I come from a country where-at least at the moment-I can have certain freedoms, that many people in the world simply don’t have.

I told them I was heading to Montmarte next, and wondered if they had visited the Pigalle neighborhood? (Pigalle is a famous neighborhood for tourists picking up prostitutes). They told me many of the women they had worked with were working there or had  worked there.

I took the metro to Montmarte, getting off at the Pigalle station. It was everything I expected it to be-in spite of the time of day, there were plenty of prostitutes around and the place was pretty much low cost eateries, fancy strip clubs, and sex toy/porn shops. The name “Pigalle” comes from the name soldiers coined for the place in WW two, “Pig Alley”.

But I was after bohemian Paris, so I kept looking. Montmarte was a famous neighborhood at one time-for more than just a place to find sex. It was the center of intellectual and artistic life. Until everyone up and moved to Montparnasse, another neighborhood in Paris.

Most people go to Montparnasse to experience a bit of bohemian history, as everyone lived and frequented the place from Hemingway to Cocteau to Beckett. But Montparnasse was actually too touristy for me-I had visited it a few days before and found any remnant of that old Bohemian life gone, given over to tourists buying totebags  saying “I love Paris” and overpriced cafes, charging you more because Hemingway sat there once with his cronies and drank coffee.

I think today..that I was looking more for  a piece of the past of Paris’ celebrated  Bohemian history, but also..where are the Bohemians of today? Are they all sitting around in cafes still, discussing the meaning of life, or are they..elsewhere?

This is what led me to Montmarte..and to Pigalle.

Pigalle itself is a famous place, mostly made famous by Toulouse-Latrec, a tiny man with tremendous talent whose subjects of his paintings tended to be prostitutes. He lived  in the area and I walked by his house.

Always broke, he couldn’t afford models and some say he couldn’t be intimate, either-ergo his obsession with prostitutes, absinthe, and dancers from the Moulin Rouge.

The Moulin Rouge looked exactly as I pictured it in my mind-bright, red windmills, neon lights..and prostitutes standing outside the door.

Across the street from the Moulin Rouge is The Museum of Erotic Art, whose literature outside promises that it’s museum is “a very tasteful collection of educational art” . This didn’t cause me to go inside, as the thought of standing around looking at sex toys and drawings of people in strange positions I did not find particularly interesting.  How tasteful could it actually be? Besides, I was told by several Parisian women that it was not a good idea to go to the place alone. Apparently lonely men wander around in it, hoping for companionship! ( Also hoping for companionship were several prostitutes waiting around nearby, hoping museum-goers would be more interested in them after their visit to the museum).

I walked by the museum of Montmarte -a kind of interesting museum on the neighborhood itself and it’s history of writers and artists who had lived there. I thought it was overpriced though, costing ten dollars to get in. I already knew alot about the history of the neighborhood and it’s colorful characters by my fascination with the place in my early twenties-I read everything I could get my hands on about it back then- so I skipped going in.

The outside of the museum is perhaps more interesting, anyway, as it’s the oldest structure still standing in the neighborhood. Of course, like any old structure, they have gutted it and replaced it all, so it just..seems old..even though it’s mostly brand, spanking new.

I continued on my walk.

I found Picasso’s house and studio, which wasn’t hard, due to the crowd of tourists. It’s actually only one of one of his many studios in Paris-I think there are six-although this is the only one promoted and that tourists seem to know about. It’s called the “Laundry Boat” but I’m not sure why. Picasso lived there with a mix of other artists. groupies, and women. What’s strange it’s not the real building he lived in..the real one actually burnt down in the 1970’s and the French government built a new one on the same spot. Strange.

Van Gogh lived here, too, in total abject poverty. Although he kept to himself and wasn’t as flamboyant as many of the other famous artists who lived here.

I was getting depressed. All the sex workers, white guys driving by in nice cars and picking women up (and it wasn’t even 1 oclock yet!) , and the smell of urine combined with thinking about poor artists was depressing me.

Luckily, it wasn’t for long, as as I kept walking, the Pigalle neighborhood began to change. It suddenly seemed entirely devoted to music and musicians. Instead of prostitutes, the streets were lined with music shops selling every kind of instrument you can think of. I walked into one that had a wonderful collection of sitars, and instrument they play in India, Turkey, and the Middle East. As I tried to play it, the clerk, who was from India, talked to me in English about the next stop on my trip, Calcutta, India.

Apparently Calcutta is the place to buy sitars. (Note to self: buy sitar in Calcutta.)

It’s also the cultural capitol of India, with one of the largest book fairs in the world taking place while I will be there.

There are more writers in India-and particularly Calcutta-than any other place in the world.

My new friend was a writer, as well. There are lots of writers in Paris, and there are lots of places to read your work, as well. I jotted down some info on where to go to a free poetry reading that night, and then headed to what would turn out to be one of my favorite  museums, which was close by, called ” The Museum of the Romantic Life”.

It’s a long name, but it aptly describes what it is -a museum devoted to several of the key players in the Romantic movement.

The museum is in the house of Romantic painter Ary Scheffer, who died in the 1850’s, leaving behind quite a collection of paintings, writings, and objects from his life and those of his friends, who included George Sand, Chopin, and so on. And..the museum is free!

The entire first floor of the museum is devoted to George Sand.

Sand wasn’t a man-she was a woman, who went by a man’s name to get her books published. At least at first anyway, until she started liking going by a man’s name, wearing men’s clothes, and going around doing things men do so much that it became more than a pen name. It became who she was.

Born with the lengthy burdensome name fo Amandine Aurore Lucile Dupin, Sand was born into a life of wealth and prestige-she was related to Louis the XVI, and her life came along with all the golden carrots any young woman could ask for. She eventually married well, took on a title, had a couple of children..and then decided, along with her husband, to have an open marriage, for about five years or so.

During this time, her affairs and her lifestyle became quite public, and her reputation developed for being quite a different sort of woman than the women of her time. She  believed in-and practiced-“free love”. Partnered with this, she was an astounding intellectual thinker, able to debate and discuss ideas with anyone. In fact, she was one of the few women who was able to be on equal and easy footing with men, at a time when women of her class did little but needlepoint. At about this time in her life, she took to mostly dressing in men’s clothes, walking around smoking cigars, writing and acting in plays, and in general, seducing any men-or women-she wanted.

She was interested in all sorts of creative pursuits, especially writing, and during her lifetime wrote prodigiously, well, and is unmatched in how she writes about the human condition and it’s foibles.

Ary considered Sand one of his closest friends, and the museum is devoted to items of Sand’s that she either gave him or that were collected from Sand’s estate for the museum. The most interesting room is an actual room of Sand’s, where she wrote and lived and worked. It has many strange things in it, including a creepy plaster cast of Sand’s right forearm..and a plaster cast of Chopin’s left hand.

Chopin’s music plays the whole time in the museum, which gives it a eerie quality. I sort of felt like..I was in someone’s actual house that was being lived in, not just a museum.

Chopin was Sand’s main squeeze. He managed to tolerate her strange ways and wild life until about two years before he died, when he decided to disagree with her about the choice of husband her daughter had made. Sand had already disowned her daughter over it, and Chopin liked the guy, so he gave the match his blessing, and in doing so bid adieu to Sand.

Just reading all the stuff about Sand and looking at her photos made me admire her-but she must have been an incredibly hard character to live with! She was kind of…self centered…

Ary himself was a  very good artist, with his work-and that of his friends-all displayed on the second floor.

The museum had a giftshop and a tearoom, but both were outside my budget, so I moved on.

The next stop was the cemetery of Montmarte. It was somewhat of a nasty walk to get there, as it gets more and more downtrodden the closer one gets to it. There seemed to be alot of underworld action happening near the cemetery..more homeless people, more drug addicts, that sort of thing.

There were also alot of interesting old guys playing chess. I stopped and watched a game, being played by two French men who looked so old I couldn’t even guess their ages. They were being watch by a large crowd of equally old men, one of whom spoke a little English, which he learned in World War Two. He was in his twenties when the war ended, so that would make him..old!

He told me that these two guys had been playing this same game for months. Things were at a standstill.

Meanwhile, he told me he was a painter. Or had been, anyway, when he was young. He told me he had known quite a few of the big artists, long ago. Everyone struggled alot during the war and many artists gave up art. Pretty much all the men got conscripted and everyone was scared to death. People ran out of food and cafes stopped giving out credits for coffee and food, except to the most well known artists and writers, who ended up in terrible debt.There were alot of Jewish artists,writers, and thinkers in the city and the government shipped them all out. Making art became less important than the day to day things in life. So, he stopped painting and never painted again.

Whether of not all of this was true didn’t seem to make much difference,because he wanted me to believe it and I wanted to believe his stories, too. He told me a few more stories about how Paris used to be, back in it’s bohemian days, and I loved Paris in this moment-that I could happen to run into this old, wizened man and that he could give my a memory of Paris no museum could ever give me.

I said goodbye, and kept walking to the cemetery.

The Montmarte cemetery is not as big as the Pere Lachaise cemetery-but it’s still huge. It’s got lots of interesting people buried there, and the cemetery office actually had maps to find them all. Getting in was of course..free!

The Montmarte cemetery..is my favorite cemetery in the world, I think.

I say this because..it feels so untouristy, is so beautiful, and it’s so… French.

Unlike the Pere Lachaise cemetery, which is the most visited cemetery in the world (something to do with the cult status of Jim Morrison), the Montmarte cemetery mostly has French people buried there, not just some famous person who was renting an apartment in Paris and then happened to overdose in it. It’s full of the history of Paris-especially the artistic history of the place.

Some of the graves I found while walking around in it were those of: Alexander Dumas, writer; Gustave Moreau, painter; Stendal, writer; Edgar Degas, painter; and Truffant, film maker.

The cemetery itself is fantasy-like. It’s built in an old quarry, and it’s full of rocks, magical statues, and outlandish memorials that made me feel like I was in a cross between Alice in Wonderland and a Harry Potter book.

One of the most beautiful graves and statues in the entire place was for an Egyptian-born actress named “Dailida”, whose grave was marked by an enormous headstone and  a white, beautiful statue of a woman in front of it. Behind the statue was a radiating sun, in color, and this was surrounded by precise, elegant landscaping.

(You can find a photograph of her grave-and almost any important person’s grave in Paris-by going to the website www.pariscemeteries.com)

I ate my lunch in with Dailida, and wondered about her and her life. She must have been quite an actress to have such a shrine as this built in her honor.

But it was time to go, as I still had a few more things to do today.

I took the metro to Chinatown.

I had a couple of reasons for going there. For one thing, one thing I had noticed today that my search for bohemian culture, the current climate of Paris, seemed…leaning more towards finding it in ethnic, poorer neighborhoods..than elsewhere. Secondly, my new Indian friend had invited me to a poetry reading at a cafe there.

Finding Chinatown wasn’t hard. It’s a bit surreal, and looks like a bit of China plunked down in the middle of what is otherwise a comparatively bland part of Paris. It was full of incredibly cheap shops, kind of like dollar stores, and roasted chickens and ducks with their heads still on them hanging in shop windows.

Finding the cafe for the reading was hard. I got lost about six times before I finally figured out where it was, and when I finally found the place and walked in and sat down I was absolutely worn out!

It actually was a Vietnamese coffee shop..Chinatown, although called Chinatown, is more of a All-of Asian-Cultures-Town than any one culture. It’s certainly not Chinese. When I think Chinatown, I think of the Chinatown of San Francisco, which is clearly Chinatown. Paris’ Chinatown had everyone from Koreans to Thai to who knows who else. Which was nice, actually..everyone getting along.

The Vietnamese place had no name on the door, just a number and a display of rap cd’s and noodles.

Inside, it was full of students of every race and background, sitting around drinking coffee and slurping noodles and talking. I ordered a big bowl of noodles with some chili and some coffee. It was so cheap I was shocked.

This must be where all the poor Parisians eat out, I thought.

The reading began and… I loved it, even though I understood not a word of it. It was all done in a certain style, kind of a rapid-fire almost rapping style. Someone even sang their poetry. It was art performance. It was an amazing night. I finally felt like I had at least come in to contact with the bohemian spirit in Paris. It went on for hours!

At 8pm, I thought I’d better go home-in spite of the fact that the reading/art performance seemed like it was going to go on into the wee hours of the night.

I decided to take the metro home, but I took a couple of wrong turns on the metro and keep trying to guess where to go next, somehow getting fed up and ending up at the Porte de la Villette. I needed to get off the train for awhile and get my bearings..get some air. So I left the station and decided to walk around a little bit.

This turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because the station was right by the Parc de la Villette, a huge park that is kind of fantasy like and hosts free concerts and events sometimes.

Every September, the city of Paris actually has something that is really cool and it’s actually free, too. It’s called the Jazz a la Villette, and it’s a free jazz festival that lasts for about a week and a half. There are lots of really great jazz musicians that play at the park, and it’s a wonderful, relaxing scene as well. The weather was nice-it was a clear starry night. I sat in the park and listened to the music, and thought about how wonderful it was to be in Paris on my own.

I’ve never liked big cities, in spite of having lived in them several times. The fact that I have been able to be in this huge city alone-and manage to see some of the best of what it has to offer, alone, speaks to how much I have grown from traveling by myself in the past year. I can handle situations-and find opportunities-I would have never been able to even think about in the past.

As for bohemian Paris, I think it lives in my fantasy of the past, more than it does in the present. But it’s nice to know that there is a culture of students, writers, activists, and artists living here, that are finding ways to keep the intellectual landscape of Paris alive and thriving.

I ended up taking the metro to the Bastille station, where I got off and looked at the very beautiful Bastille monument by night-all lit up-and walked home, past all the sidewalk cafes full of smoking Parisians, past the closed up cheese shops, fishmongers, flower-sellers and newstands…and breathed in a big sign of relief when I made all the right turns to end up on the right street where my apartment was.

It’s nice to have a place to go home to in a big city like this.

Gigi

This is part of a series, written when I was in Paris for two weeks recently. Budget goal per day: 12.00 usd.

Things done/Total Money Spent:

Pack a lunch of bread and some cheese, an apple: 3.00 usd

Metro ride to local gallery with free exhibit on the architectural history of Paris: 1.40 usd

Walk to  the Paris Sewers Museum: free

Paris Sewers Museum: 7.00 usd

A look at the Flame Of Liberty Memorial: free

Finding my way to Notre Dame Cathedral: free

Concert in Notre Dame: free

Memorial of The Holocaust: free

Wander around the Pletzl, the Jewish neighborhood: free

Buy some  cheesecake for lunch: 1.00 usd

Visit the Paris History Museum: free

Visit the Victor Hugo House: free

End with a whirlwind tour of the European House of Photography: free

Buy a baguette: 1.00 usd

Total spent: 12.40 (40 cents over budget!)

Today I’ve decided to focus on the history of the city, with some special emphasis on the Jewish history of the city in particular.

The day started out a bit late-my friend offered to meet me to go look at an exhibit on the history of architecture in Paris. It was free, so I was definitely interested. There are alot of moving exhibits and temporary exhibits thruout the city-you can check any of the magazines you will find in the Metro for listings of free stuff, or you can stop by a cafe that is frequented by English speakers-they’ll know what’s going on around the city.

The exhibit was interesting-kind of exhausting though, because it was alot of information to take in. Luckily some smart person had decided to translate it all into English, so I was able to follow along.

I learned alot about the history of Paris itself, and that the city has gone thru many changes.

Originally called Lutetia, it was the capitol of a Celtic tribe who called themselves the Parisii. That’s where the name of the city comes from. It changed it’s name to Paris at the end of the 4th century B.C.

The city was charged by Attila the Hun in 451, but for some reason he changed his mind and stopped at the city walls, which was a miracle attributed to St. Genevieve, who is still the patron saint of the city.

By 1185, Paris was not only the capitol of France, but had over 25,000 people living in it or it’s vicinity. Not only that, it was already a model in Europe for urban planning. They had built an aqueduct,  paved streets, and they had rules and regulations on how and where to build.

What was most interesting was learning about how the ideas of early urban planning took shape and put into practice.  I never thought of urban planning as interesting before but now I was looking at it as high art. Everything the urban planner does (or did, in this case), sets the tone for the entire city for centuries. It affects how buildings are built, how streets and neighborhoods are created, people’s professions, health and relationships. It sets up a whole social construct that-in Paris-continues to thrive to this day.

After awhile I had some much information swimming in my head, I decided to take the metro to a different sight-the Museum of the Sewers. After seeing a big exhibit on the history of urban planning in Paris, I knew that the sewers where an important part of the cities history. I decided to go underground.

I took leave of my friend, and was about to get a train when I realized I could walk there. Besides, I needed to clear my head.

The Paris Sewers Museum is not a good place to go if you want to clear your head-or your nostrils, anyway! Yet thousands of tourists go there to take a tour of the sewer, as they have since the sewers were first created.

The current sewers were actually dreamt up and created by Eugene Belgrand in 1850. For about 40 years after that, folks continued to let their poop fill the streets and the Seine, until finally the urban planners mandated it all had to go to the sewers and that Parisians had to change their ways or else.

Tourists used to ride the sewers on a toy train of sorts, and at one point they could even hop on a boat and sail thru the underground canals of sewage. What people will pay for…!

You don’t get to sail on a boat or paddle your way thru sewage these days. Instead, you go on an organized tour, walking over a metal grating while sewage sloshes around under your feet. There area lot of displays explaining how it all works, and the whole exhibit is really more about how the sewers were created and how the mechanics of it all works.

What was most interesting about the sewers is that they are an exact replica of the streets below, complete with street signs.

But after awhile, the smell was overwhelming, and I had to leave, feeling..nauseated. No surprise, there.

I decided to head to the elusive Notre Dame cathedral. Elusive because it had been on my list of things to do for ages, but I never seemed to get there, somehow.

Walking there, I passed the Flame of Liberty Memorial. It’s a small replica of the torch of the Statue of Liberty ..kind of strange to see such an American icon on a Parisian street. Right next to it is where Lady Di died, although there are no signs of flowers and so on like there were a few years ago. Strangely, lots of tourists were posing for pictures on the exact site, though. How morbid.

Managing my way thru Parisian streets is getting easier. I can tell that I am getting a better sense of the city, and it isn’t overwhelming me as much. I finally glimpse a bit of the Notre Dame and realize that I’m actually going to see it today.

The Notre Dame is amazing. I didn’t even bother to photograph it, as I knew my camera couldn’t do it justice.

It was, however, insanely crowded. It didn’t feel-to me, anyway-so much like a spiritual place as a monument to history. There were so many people there that it was quite noisy, and I did not find it a particularly restful or contemplative place.

Just as I was thinking these thoughts, a few nuns came out and began to sing beautiful songs in French, for about half an hour. During that half hour, I felt..transported..back to another time, and the Notre Dame itself began to look very different to me. I tried to imagine what it must have been like for people long ago to visit this place. At one time it was very colorful, with all the statues brightly painted, and the whole place telling biblical stories on it’s walls to the people who visited it. They call this kind of story telling “Biblia Pauperum”, which means “Bible of the Poor”.

I think one thing that was hard for me at first when I first entered the building was that it is enormous. It’s huge, and it can hold over 5,000 people at a time.Everything about it speaks to this largess, from the amazing rose windows to the choir.

You can pay for a tour thru the treasury, which supposedly has the crown of thorns Jesus wore and lots of jewels and gold and statues..but I felt no need to see those things. You can pay to go to the top and look at the view, but it was a dreary day, and I figured I’d find a perfectly good free view elsewhere, so I skipped that too.

My goal today was in part to get to know more about the Jewish history of the city, and one thing that I noticed when walking away from the Cathedral were two statues that are opposite one another on the Cathedral’s face-and they speak mountains about the conflict between Jews and Christians thru the centuries.

On one side is a famous statue called “Ecclesia”, and she is a beautiful elegant woman, wearing a crown. She is the symbol of Christianity. On the opposite side of her is another statue of a woman, not as famous, named “Synagoga”, and she is hanging her head, which is wrapped by a snake, the ten commandments broken in half at her feet. She is the symbol of Judaism. Makes one think, doesn’t it?

Next on my list was to see something I had wanted to see since I had arrived in Paris-the Memorial of the Holocaust.

It’s actually called Memorial de la Shoah, and the word, “Shoah” doesn’t mean Holocaust, it actually means “catastrophe”. This word refers to the catastrophe of the Vichy government, which warmly cooperated with the Nazis to not only make life in France impossible for Jews living there(by creating laws that made it impossible  for them to find employment, live most neighborhoods and kept them away from mainstream society), but helped the Nazis round up all Jewish people in France and put them in camps. The Vichy government looked at Jewish people not as people but as “a stain on French soil”.

The role of France during WW Two was an terrible one, and one which the French government has only very recently acknowledged and publicly apologized for-the result of which is this memorial and museum.

76,000 thousand Jewish people were deported from France to interment camps in France and Germany. Among these 76,000 people, 11,000 were children. The interment camps were disgusting, filthy, flimsy and many people died and starved to death there. But most of the Jews sent there were only there temporarily before being sent to camps like Auschwitz, Birkenou, and others..where they were starved, beaten, tortured, and killed.

Out of all the Jews deported, only 2,500 survived.

The Holocaust exterminated 6 million people. That’s a hard thing to even begin to grasp, and that’s why I wanted to go to the memorial. I thought that by going there I could get more of a sense of what happened and understand it more.

Walking into the memorial was strange. I couldn’t find anyone around to let me in so I asked a guard. Yes, he said, you have to ask me to be let in. He opened the gates, and I went into a tiny room, where I was stripped of my belongings and they were searched. (The memorial has had bomb threats and terrorist threats in the last few years.)

Once in the memorial itself, I wa so overwhelmed with feeling. I mostly felt profoundly uncomfortable, because when they let you in, it’s thru these metal grated gates, so you feel..trapped..like you get out. It feel ominous and like a prison-yet you can see the city over the walls, and you know it’s there.

The wall had a profound effect on me. I have never seen a wall of names like that, name after name, after name. It was hard to believe all these people had died the way they did. It was hard to believe that the world let that happen, and so very recently.

I would say the thing I thought about the most while looking at the wall was how recently this had happened, and how humanity has this horrible potential to make others suffer and to destroy, and how quickly we forget this when we get wrapped in our silly selfish lives. We still vote for politicians that kill people, eradicate them, and erase them. We don’t care about other people that believe different things than we do as long as we have our comforts and our beliefs. “Catastrophes” are happening right now in the world, many of them due to people’s desire for more, more, more. I wondered what we have really actually learned from the Holocaust.

I ran my hand over the names, and as I did, I touched the name of a woman who had my first name. I began looking for people with my names, first and last, and found over fifty. I forgot to breathe, I just stood there, blankly, not moving. It was very moving and I felt even more clarity on my commitment to live ethically and devote my life to service. It felt like time stopped for a moment and I thought about the revolution that needs to happen in each of us so that we can look at this history and alter our lives and purpose so that it never happens again.

Walking into the museum itself, they had computers where you can look up any relative or person of Jewish ancestry and find out what happened to them. There were people on the computers, crying.

I had to walk past them to go to the crypt, an aptly named display, which is downstairs. It’s kind of hard to describe, except that its dark large room, with only light coming from above, and it’s windowless and charcoal gray in color. In the center of the room in a large star, which is black, and in the middle of this is a flame which always burning. Underneath are buried the ashes of Jewish people who died in the catastrophe. It’s an oppressive feeling room, but at same time, it’s not, because of the skylight and the flame.

The room that was actually the hardest room for me to be in was a tiny room off of the crypt room.

It was full of files-tiny boxes, one after the other, filling the walls-all with one slip of paper for every Jewish person in France, tracking all of their movements and so on, all notes and files made by the French government form 1940 to 1944.  It’s really a frightening room, because you see tangible evidence that the Vichy government was participating in extermination. And all of those names on those slips of paper-they were people. It was hard to grasp, to think about.

I decided to get a little air. I felt overwhelmed. I went down to the bookstore, which has coffee and many thousands of books on Jewish history, the Holocaust, and art and literature by Jewish people. It’s a wonderful resource, a good break from the somewhat overwhelming and heady museum itself. It’s not all photographs of people in concentration camps, although you can find that sort of thing there. There are many other things they have there, such as history, childrens books, poetry, and philosophy.

I felt ready to go look at the other exhibit I wanted to see. This ws an unusual exhibit, all about these ships that left Europe for Palestine after the end of WW two. The ships were filled with Jewsih people who wanted to escape Europe because they didn’t feel like they could live there anymore. In France this was certainly true, because the Vichy government had instituted the “Status of Jews Act” in 1940, which allowed the government to seize all of their property, exclude them from most employment and neighborhoods, and took away all of their human rights.

So those who were able to return to France after the war, returned to nothing.

Even after the Holocaust, Jews in Europe were treated with derision and people were very prejudiced against them.

So, why would they stick around?

Thousands made these very dangerous sea voyages to Palestine. Some died. Conditions were incredibly dangerous and crowded on these ships.

One ship boasted the banner, ” We survived Hitler/Death Is No Stranger To Us/Nothing Can keep Us From Our Jewish Homeland/The Blood Is On Your Head If You Fire on This Unarmed Ship”.

I had never really understood the mass exodus to Palestine-how it happened, how they got there-until I saw this exhibit. It was like a whole part of history, which had been blank and fuzzy to me before , became crystal clear.

To leave the museum, someone has to let you out. You have to push a series of buzzers and then suddenly, you find yourself out of the street. It’s strange.

Facing the street you leave on is a long wall of names, all French people who collaborated against the Nazis and the Vichy regime. Many, many French people died to help others. This is a very moving wall of names, and it’s inspiring that they chose to think for themselves and do what was right, in spite of the fact that they suffered and died as well.

Feeling like I needed to walk around a little, I decided to walk thru the Pletzl neighborhood. Its also called the Marais neighborhood by the French. Pletzl is Yiddish for “Little Place”, and Marais is French for “Swamp”. The neighborhood actually was a swamp at one point, although it’s obviously not anymore! Now it’s a wonderful Jewish neighborhood-and it’s actually the center of the gay community as well. This means it’s a delightful combination of shops, bookstores, temples, reading rooms, prayer rooms,and bakeries..with some very good people watching thrown in.

There were alot of old houses there – in fact, the Pletzl is the only neighborhood in Paris that looks like it originally did back in the medieval days. If you walk around you will see quite a few old timbered houses, still standing and being lived in.

There was also a fabulous bead shop which was very cheap and had everything you can imagine. If I was just going to Paris-and not on a trip around the world(making purchases rare) I would have bought some beads there as a souvenir. It’s called “Tout a Loisirs”, and it’s no 50 between Rue de Archives and Rue Ramboleau.

There was also a wonderful Jewish gift shop I wandered into called, ” Diasporama”, which had everything Jewish you can imagine-from postcards to jewelry to Jewish music. It was an interesting place, full of students and artists.

I stopped off at a Jewish bakery, and looked in the window. There were piles of rolls, bread, pastries..and something the neighborhood is famous for, cheesecake. It’s either precut, or they’ll cut the size of piece you want.

I went in the bakery and waited for my turn, watching the people in line. There were Hasidic Jewish men, wearing their long frock coats with their black hats and long beards. There were little old ladies with flowered dresses and shopping carts. There were young students with skullcaps and cell phones.

When it finally was my turn I had to communicate by hand gesture to show the how big of a piece of cheesecake I wanted them to cut-big! They put it into a brown paper bag and everyone smiled. A woman spoke English and told me to go look at the Agudath Hakehilot Synagogue, which was nearby.

I found it and sat down with my lunch and cheesecake to admire it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t go inside. Due to terrorist activities and threats, temples and synagogues are closed to outsiders these days. Additionally worship is separate, and Hasidic Jews would not find it appropriate for a woman to suddenly pop in.

This was ok though, as the outside is remarkable. A feat of Art Noveau style, it soars with beautiful designs over the street. It was built in 1914, bombed by the Nazis in 1940 (unsuccessfully) and now has been completely restored. It’s the largest synagogue in Paris.

Thinking about what to do next, my mind wandered to the Notre Dame again. Victor Hugo had written copious amounts about the Cathedral-and come to think of it, the sewers as well. I decided to head to his house, which was located in the Place du Vosges, which is actually a bunch of houses grouped altogether. Hugo lived there from when he was thirty, and did most of his best writing there. And, I knew the museum  was free.

When Hugo moved there with his wife, all of his friends complained the place was too small, and that the neighborhood wasn’t good enough for him. But they all ended up hanging out there all the time anyway, from Balzac to Dumas to Musset. He even got visited by Dickens and Lizst there.

But they were right-it was very small indeed. The whole apartment was dinky, and some what”stage set” like. At firstI thought this was because it was a museum, and whoever ran the place had a theatrical bent, but it turned out Hugo himself really decorated it that way, kind of like a small crowded stage. He worked in stage set design at some point, and it was obvious it had stayed with him.

Maybe he didn’t mind the small apartment because he spent alot of time with his mistress, who he had conveniently installed in a larger apartment nearby. Leaving his poor wife Adele to entertain Balzac for hours.

There was a museum shop on the ground floor. It had many interesting things, including alot of information on how Hugo researched for his books. He was friends with many of the people involved in early urban planning of the city and their minute descriptions of the underground canals, sewers and neighborhoods contributed greatly to his books.

Victor Hugo is Paris, in alot of ways. He symbolizes Paris.

After this, I decided to walk to the Paris History Museum, to kind of “round out” my history lesson for the day.

This interesting museum charges for the temporary exhibits but the permanent collections are free.

I learned even more than I ever thought I could about Paris while there(and I had thought my brain was already filled to capacity!).

Here are a few interesting facts about Paris you may not know:

The first map of Paris was made in 1467.

The first time any  European city had a “welfare” program set up was in Paris, in 1544.

Paris was actually designed scientifically, using professionals from the fields of engineering, science and health to create the city as the most livable city in Europe.

Paris had things like streets that were paved, running water, free public fountains, public housing, trash collection, gas lighting, and heating before any other city in Europe. They were ahead of their time.

The Paris History Museum also had loads of exhibits on wars and politicians and the French revolution. This last one gutted the spoils of many other nations and cultures, and all of these items are displayed in room after dazzling room.

What I found most interesting, outside of early history, was Proust’s bedroom, a lovely room with a pretty bed that he spent most of his time in, feeling sorry for himself and being a hypochondriac while writing his best work. They’ve moved the entire bedroom into the museum, walls and all- so it’s really the room he lived in. Fabulous.

After this, you’d think I was exhausted, but I decided to head to one last sight-the European House Of Photography, a famous museum devoted exclusively to the art of photography. It was free, for some reason, although it’s normally about 9 dollars to get in.(Note it turns out they are free Wed from 5 to 8 pm, or sometimes they will let you in free if you come at an hour before closing.) They were going to close in an hour or less, so I didn’t have much time, but I had enough.

There was so much to look at that , and I had so little time, that I decided to stick to my guns about my history themed day, and look exclusively at the photos and exhibits having to do with the history of France. This is one of their largest exhibits, and one of the most interesting. France was a center for advancement in the art of photography and they have many original early photographs, as well as equipment and explanations on the science and mechanics behind early photography. They also have excellent photos of old Paris.

When I left the museum and walked out onto the sidewalk, the sky was beginning to darken and I could see the Eiffel Tower lit up in the distance. I’ll have to save that for another day!

I walked home in about 30 minutes, stopping off to buy a few things for dinner.

I feel as thought I know more about the history of this city than most people ever will. The history of place makes it more interesting-somehow more vital and alive, more connected to you and to everything, because you can see the past when you are walking around looking at everything in the present.

gigi

This is Part Three of a series from when I was staying in Paris for two weeks.

Sights seen/Things done, and cost: 

1. Bought Arabic sweetmeats: 50 cents

2. Took the metro to a station near the mosque: 1.40

3. Bought two figs at the outdoor market: 40 cents

4. Visited 3 Islamic bookstores along the way to the mosque: free

5. Visited the mosque: 3 dollars

6. Walked thru the Latin Quarter: free

7. Visited the University. Art Exhibit. : free

8. Visited the Arabic Institute: went to exhibit; went to top of building to look at one of the best views of Paris: free

9. Spent time in bookstore in Arabic Institute, bought two postcards: 2.oo

10. Ate lunch in front of the Arabic Institute: free

11. Walked along the Seine, and looked at all the outdoor art along the river: free

12. Ended up in the Botanical Gardens: free

13. Walked home, bought a loaf of bread and some cheese and fruit: 4.00

Total cost for the day: $ 11.40 usd

Today I got up pretty early and decided to head to the Paris Mosque. It is near quite a few other things I wanted to see, including the Arabic World Institute and the Latin Quarter.

The idea of today was to make it a day where I experience a different side of Paris-not just the cookie cutter Eiffel Tower experience, but more multicultural. I decided to have my focus today be on Arabic and Islamic culture, as I know nothing about it whatsoever. It’s very easy to not know much about it, since I am American and we Americans are not exactly encouraged to learn more.

I stopped off at the falafel place near my apartment. Ahbib, the guy who runs the place spoke excellent English and I told him about my plans for the day. He was very kind and very happy that I was taking an interest in his traditions. He sold me some little sweetmeats, a kind of little roll soaked in honey and then covered in sesame seeds. I got a whole parcel for just 50 cents! And he told me that the same sweets would cost me at several dollars at the Arabic Institute or the Mosque.

I head to the metro station near my house. It’s a zoo, as everyone is going to work at this hour. Next time, I will avoid this rush and leave the house a little later. I’ve heard that people get pick pocketed on the metro when it’s crowded, and it’s definitely crowded enough for that to easily happen, but it doesn’t. I somehow manage to make all the right train changes and realize that the metro is fantastically well organized and much easier than I was previously making it out to be. (It’s a funny thing: when you are with other people, who know where they are going-as I was when I arrived and the following few days afterwaards in Paris-you don’t pay any attention to anything on the metro, so it seems overwhelming. Then after few tries on your own, it seems so simple!)

I get off at the stop by the mosque. It turns out there is a farmers market that day. I want to take pictures of all the cheese sellers, vegetable and fruit stands, and the other things but it seems like the people won’t like the idea. There are also some amazing pashimas and Indian goods there , sold very cheaply. I buy some figs from a man from Jordan and he gives me directions to the mosque. He also suggests an Islamic bookshop along the way.

I find the bookshop. It seems to be called, “Al. Bustane.”, and it’s run by this old, extremely tidy looking man, who is very friendly. There are loads of books on Islam, prayer beads, little caps, prayer rugs…there is also an adjoining room, with all titles in English and French. He speaks English so we talk for awhile and he knows all about the history of the Paris Mosque. I visit a few other bookshops along the way, and everyone is always very nice and friendly.

I keep walking, hit by new sights, smells, flavors. It smells of Indian food, incense, and another smell I can’t place-kind of like candy. It’s a sweet smell.

I discover the source of the smell just as the mosque comes into view-a shop is making honey candy.

The mosque itself, from my view at first, doesn’t look like much. Then I round the corner and see the tall tower. it’s beautiful.

I walk up to the front of the mosque, which is across the street from a small park. The park and the steps of the mosque are filled by beggars, all women. One woman passerby has given a beggarwoman a shawl, and the beggar woman doesn’t want it. She seems to know the woman who has given her the shawl and so she doesn’t want it. She spits on it and throws it into the street. Another beggar woman runs out across the street and takes the shawl, gently placing it back in the first beggar woman’s hands. The woman cradles it in her arms.

Along with this strange scene is another one stranger still-white women tourists wearing miniskirts and tank tops, being wrapped in gray cloth so that they can enter the mosque. They look tan, fit, healthy-out of place next to these beggar women, who look somehow lumpy and nondescript in their ample clothes. The tourists also look embarrassed, like they don’t like having to be all covered up by the gray sheets.

I walk up the steps and go in. No one stops me to cover up-I’m wearing a long black skirt that comes almost to my ankles and a tshirt. While I’m getting directions about where to go to pay the admission fee, the tourists have decided they can’t take walking around in sheets and have given up entering the mosque. They take off their sheets and carefully fold them, handing them back to the men at the doorway, who look off into the horizon or stare into the garden at some distant speck of dust. The girls leave red faced and in a huff.

The office is run by Mohamed the day I am there. He is a volunteer, as they all are. He speaks some English and has been to, of all places, Las Vegas. But he dreams of going to Montana. I learn this while chatting about the mosques history and looking at badly photographed pictures of the mosque they are selling as postcards. Mohamed also teaches me to say thankyou in Arabic.

I wander around the mosque for over an hour. It’s beautiful. There is something about the style of Arabic architecture, tile work, and even gardens that are perfectly pleasing to the eye. Every color, design, pattern and shape is all thought out ahead of time, to make it the most pleasing possible. It’s a joy of blues, greens and cool white.

I sit in the garden and imagine I am somewhere in the Middle East. This is probably the closest I will ever get.

They are going to close for prayer. People, in particular men, have begun to arrive and have entered the prayer hall. Outside the prayer hall are hundreds of pairs of shoes, all neatly lined up. I’m not allowed in the prayer hall, of course, but I glance in and it’s stunningly beautiful, with every available space being taken up by woodwork, tile work, and carpets.

I decide it’s time to go and start to head towards my next stop, the Arabic World Institute, which means wandering thru the Latin Quarter. When I first read the words “Latin Quarter”, I thought it meant Latin like Latino! But the name actually comes from the fact that students and their teachers all spoke in only Latin here until around the Revolution.

The Latin Quarter is fantastic-it’s full of used bookstores, cheap eateries, and loads of students. It’s very laid back and casual, and it’s fun to wander thru the streets. I finally end up in front of the Sorbonne, Paris’ most famous university.

It looks interesting, so I decided to take a look. It turns out there is a big exhibit of students art there today, as well as a famous painter. The students all speak English, and they smile and point the way to the exhibit. It turns out it’s free, too. Perfect. Not only that, there is free coffee!

I leave the Sorbonne and make my way to the Arabic World Institute. This is actually something I have been wanting to see since I read about it. Of course, I wanted to see the inside of the place , but I have to admit that I was equally interested in seeing the outside of it as well.

The building is hard to describe, but I will try: it’s like a huge silver box, made up of squares, each square being a bunch of metal bits that are mechanized and open and close. It gives the effect of a Borg ship from Star Trek or something like that,all in glass and aluminum. The squares are all slowly opening and closing at different times, so the building never looks quite the same.The building was designed by the famous architects Nouvel and Soria.

Once inside the building, things are a bit tricky. No doubt because it’s the Arabic World Institute, you have quite a screening process to get thru. The museum is quite pricey for what you get, so I skipped it and instead looked at a free temporary exhibit of Arabic scientific artifacts. Arabic culture was remarkably advanced and had much more scientific knowledge than anyone else did for much of history. Afterwards I went up to the 9th floor, which has a fancy place to spend alot of money for a cup of mint tea..but I skipped that and just looked at the fantastic view of the city.

The bookstore inside the Institute is amazing-it’s the biggest Arabic bookstore in Europe and it has loads of music, too. My favorite thing were all these postcards written in Arabic script of famous quotes. I bought I a few of these as I thought they would make nice gifts.

After a lunch of or figs and sweetmeats, I wandered down to the Seine. This river truly is romantic, filled with barges and tourists paying for somewhat overpriced ferry rides, with the banks of the river lined with people out walking their dogs and young couples holding hands.

This particular part of the Seine is also lined with a a really fabulous collection of outdoor sculpture-and it’s free, too. Some of it I really liked, and some of it I thought was  extremely ugly-but either way, I enjoyed looking at most of it and the walk led me to the entrance of the enormous Botanical Gardens.

Wow. These were insanely beautiful, and full of Parisians as well, who  were out enjoying the nice sunny weather.

I just walked around for hours!! I thought to myself, ” If everyday in Paris is like this, I will be in love with this city!”

The gardens have been described by some as Eden like, and I would have to agree. However, breaking up all this beautiful monotony are these annoying uniformed people who walk around and tell you to get off the grass. Apparently, it’s just for show. Odd.

There are also a fair share of scam artists, pickpockets and so on around, so that made photgraphing difficult when I had to grip my bag the whole time. And, in spite of looking like the perfect garden to stare off into space into while dreamily reading a novel, it’s not really possible due to the number of undesirables waiting for you to let your guard down so they can steal your camera and cheese sandwich.

But, nonetheless, the garden is spectacular. French people think so, too- they would much rather spend their days off in these beautiful gardens than their tiny apartments, and they walked around exclaiming over the size of the dinner plate dahlias as much as I was.

I realized I had to walk home still, although I could have taken the metro. I decided to walk and pick up a few things for a light dinner on the way back.

I actually found my apartment! Made it up the skinny flights of stairs! Made myself a cup of coffee and flopped on the couch!

A beautiful, full, and exciting day. What will tomorrow bring, I wonder?

gigi

This is Part two of a series, written while I was in Paris. 

I’ve been in Paris for a few days now, and the main impression I have is that it is nothing like what I thought it would be like.

I, like countless other people in the world, have held a rather over romantisized view of this city all of my adult life.

It turns out it’s a big cultural melting pot, full of people from around the world, from all different income levels. There are alot of poor people here-many people living on shoestring budgets themselves.

I find this strangely refreshing.

While part of me wants to go museum hopping and go to the top of the Effiel Tower, the rest of me is more interested in eating couscous in an African neighborhood or visiting the local mosque.

I’m interested in the fact that there are so many cultures living here. It makes Paris so much less homogenous.

It also makes it alot easier to plan my time here-and my budget.

I’ve decided to really shoestring it. I have a free place to stay, so why not? Besides that, it’s very difficult for me to validate spending loads of money on useless things after living with some of the poorest people in the world. A few decadent things are ok, but not as a lifestyle for two weeks. It just..doesn’t really make sense to me anymore, living that kind of lifestyle.

Ok, so back to the shoestring lifestyle.

My plan is to spend an average of twelve dollars a day. (That’s an overall average.)

Here’s my game plan:

1. Buy a bunch of metro tickets, because the metro goes everywhere. Use only two a day.

2.  Walk the rest of the time.

3. Plan out each day carefully, so I’m grouping the sights I want to see together.

4. Spend my money on the the big museums that have alot of exhibits and things to do-enough to spend the entire day there.

5. Go to the museums I don’t really desperately want to see everything at on the free day.

6. See if I can find any free events going on in the city.

7. Buy everything I eat in the market. Except for things at bakeries-they seem inexpensive.

8. Seek out ethnic neighborhoods.

9. Find free art and beautiful outdoor public spaces.

10. Pack a lunch.

11. Keep track of every cent spent, and if I spend too much, make up for it the following day.

12. Photographs and stories make the best souvenirs. Forget buying cheesy stuff, and enjoy the experience itself.

Ok, this is my pep talk to myself. For anyone reading along, you’ll just have to follow my progress and cheer for my victory when I’m done!

gigi

This entry, along with all of the “Notes From Paris” entries that follow it, were written while I spent two weeks in Paris, biding my time while waiting for the Indian Embassy to give me a visa.

I write this from my apartment in Paris. Well, it’s not actually my apartment, but it’s temporarily mine for the next few weeks.  It actually belongs to my friend’s brother, and luckily for me he is out of town at the moment.

Paris is big. It’s huge, with a big city feel.

It’s also the most walkable city I have ever been in, except for perhaps Chigago. I have been walking everywhere.

One of the reasons I have been walking around is that I have been avoiding the metro. The first few days here my friend assigned me a “helper” of sorts, to take me around and so on. We got lost on the metro several times, and this kind of turned me off of riding it so far.

Walking around the city has it’s own distinct advantages.

For one thing, you get lost alot. This has been great for me because I have figured out where my apartment is in relation to everything else in my neighborhood. Every time I get lost I discover some new treasure that is definitely not mentioned in my guidebook-like the neighborhood falafel place, the different bakeries, little churches, and art galleries.

You also end the day positively exhausted. All that walking around tires one out.

Unfortunately, being tired of walking around combined with my natural ability to get easily lost results in me getting lost constantly here.

I have taken to asking people for directions.

Actually I should say, I have taken to asking men for directions. Frenchwomen are..unfortunately..seemingly short tempered and have no time for lost tourists who do not speak a word of French.

Frenchmen, on the other hand, do not mind helping me at all. Even if they do not understand me and I do not understand them. Even if they have somewhere else to go, or if they are buying fish at the fish shop-they will stop whatever they are doing and give me their full attention.

They will never  just point and wave me on my way-oh no. They will insist on walking with me, at least part of the way, at least to the next corner. They will stop and squeeze my arm and nod alot at whatever I say. They will point out attractions along the way, and talk to me in French, although I tell them I do not understand them whatsoever.

Any chance for a meal or a cup of coffee? They would love to show me love in the City of Lights.

I have a boyfriend, I say.

This doesn’t matter whatsoever. Good, they say. So what about the coffee?

I finally pretend I understand where the hell I am and motion goodbye. Frenchmen use this opportunity to kiss me three times on the cheek, even though we will never meet again.

One Frenchman told me that many American women come to Paris for..romance. Especially “women of a certain age”. So, now that I’m forty, I guess I’m an easy target!

It’s not just when I’m on the street, wandering around lost with a pathetic expression, that men in Paris take interest.

Yesterday I was at the Indian Embassy. I had gone there with the friend of a friend, who spoke French and was exceedingly helpful. She was going to translate for me in case they didn’t speak any English there.

We were stopped by the guard at the front door, and before we could continue, he began talking to my friend rather excitedly and staring at me.

It seemed to me that he had taken an interest in my friend; perhaps he was looking at me, trying to give me a not so subtle hint to disappear? I had no way of knowing as the entire conversation was in French and my friend wasn’t translating.

My friend began to blush, causing me to say: ” Oh, he likes you. That’s sweet.”

No, my friend informed me. He likes you. He wants to know all about you. He wants to see you again. He is asking when he can he see you again. He wants to see you tomorrow.

” But I don’t speak French. He doesn’t speak English!”

“Exactly!”( Ah..the city of Paris..I am beginning to understand it’s reputation as a place for a quick romance.)

I tell her to tell him I have a boyfriend, am engaged, am..actually on my way to meet my fiance in India.

He finds this incredibly sad. But, he says, this is not a reason why we should not meet. We should still meet. Tomorrow.

On the way home, I get lost again, as I’m on my own. Three men ask me to coffee and one man asks me to have dinner while I am buying a can opener in the hardware store down the street from my apartment.

It’s going to be an amusing two weeks, struggling to stay single in this city.

gigi