By the afternoon of July 15, the weather had turned rainy and unseasonably cool. It would continue to rain for the remainder of my time in Paris. I waited in line at the Louvre in the rain. I climbed the steps of the Eiffel Tower in the rain. I wandered through Pere Lachaise cemetery in the rain.
I had a three-course lunch in the Latin Quarter at a beautiful little restaurant that had a clear canopy over the courtyard where I sat. The filet of salmon was delicious. The Coke was warm and served without ice. The waiter called me Shakespeare because I read as I ate. I had just visited Shakespeare & Co., and couldn’t wait to dive into the book I’d gotten there.
Meanwhile, back at the D’Artagnan Hostel, things weren’t going so well. The bathroom was tiny, the shower was gross, and sharing it with eight other people was a bit of a challenge. Some of my roommates were also using the bathroom as their personal laundry room. So I stood there morning and night, brushing my teeth amongst the drying unmentionables of my cohorts. I took showers in the middle of the night, when no one else was vying for the bathroom.
I also walked into the drama of someone else’s life, simply because I spoke English. It all started out innocuously enough. I was sitting on my bunk, writing postcards on the evening of July 15. A couple of people had already gone to sleep. Two women I hadn’t met yet came in. We started talking for a few minutes, when a third woman came in. We all introduced ourselves, and went back to our respective tasks. About 15 minutes later the last woman that came in started asking us where we were from. I told her I was from the states, and went back to writing.
The quiet lasted for about ten more minutes. Then Ms. M started a soliloquy that was a bit difficult to follow. Part of it was about how scary and violent the United States are. Part of it was about serial killers. Part of it was about the appropriate age for one to lose their virginity. The other three of us traded looks, tried to be polite but non-committal, and tried to go about our business. But Ms. M was not going to be denied. She kept talking and talking. Finally I couldn’t handle it any more, so I went and took a shower.
By the time I came back, Ms. M had pretty thoroughly freaked out the other two that were awake. It turns out Ms. M had set out for Paris from Krakow 14 days previously. She didn’t really have a plan, and she didn’t really have much money. She had slept on the couch in another hostel’s reception area for a few days before a friend had wired her some money. Now she didn’t know what to do. She was running low on funds, but didn’t want to go back to Krakow. None of us had any great suggestions, so we all went to bed.
The fire alarm went off at 4 a.m. that morning. Most of the women in my room got up and left the building. Ms. M didn’t even wake up until someone turned the light on as she left the room. I was putting on my shoes and helping another roommate find her glasses. Ms. M didn’t want to leave the room, but I insisted that she come downstairs with us. We stood outside for an hour while the alarm continued tripping every time they shut it off. The fire department finally came (French firefighters wear helmets that make them look like Apollo astronauts). Ms. M talked the entire time. I was only partially paying attention, and sort of nodding along. Eventually we got the all clear, and went back to bed.
I woke to find that I’d unwittingly made a Paris friend. Ms. M was determined that we should be besties. The more I learned about her situation, the more confused I became. I couldn’t get a straight answer out of her, and she seemed to think that as long as she went to the Polish or American Embassy (she was a dual citizen) and explained her situation, she’d get whatever assistance she needed to go home or someplace else. I tried to explain that you only get help from an embassy if you’ve been robbed or lost your passport or something. Going on vacation and not having sufficient funds wasn’t a diplomatic issue. Ms. M was undeterred, and decided to go visit the Eiffel Tower again, and then visit the Louvre the next day. She told me she’d go to the embassy on Monday and get everything taken care of. That was the day she had to leave the hostel anyway.
When I got back to the hostel on Monday, July 18, Ms. M was waiting for me in the lobby. She’d been to both embassies. She was told at the Polish embassy that they couldn’t do anything for her. The Americans had let her send an e-mail to her family. We walked up the street to McDonald’s so she could check her e-mail on my iPad. There was no word from her family. I gave her the €15 I had on me, as well as all the food I had just bought for dinner and lunch the next day. She went to go find a different hostel to stay in.
The next day, I got back to ye old D’Artagnan, and who was there but Ms. M. She’d heard from her family. They were going to wire her some more money to go back to Poland, but she’d decided that she wanted to go to England instead. I showed her what the exchange rate was in Britain at the moment ($1=£.62). She suggested she could come with me to Edinburgh if I’d just front the money for her plane tickets. This is where Ms. M and I parted company. I told her I wasn’t going to pay for someone I didn’t really know to come with me. Thus ended my Parisian friendship.
The thing is, I wasn’t mad or upset. I could only imagine how difficult it would be to find yourself in a place where you didn’t speak the language and had very few resources. I would have been relieved to talk to anyone who would have been willing to listen to me and understood what I was saying. It’s one of those situations that I will probably ruminate over for a while. I don’t know if I should have done anything differently. Maybe so.
Paris is not the place I’d expected to find from all I’d read about it. I think I’d romanticized the place so much in my head that it was never going to be what I’d imagined. Of course, I’m also 90 years too late for the whole Lost Generation vibe to still be hanging around. I will say this: my favorite part of Paris was the musicians and poets on the Metro. These writers and musicians will jump into the train car with you, recite a poem or play a song, take a quick collection up, and head for the next car at the next stop. While I was in Paris, I heard 13 poems this way. I also heard a great a violinist, a cheeky accordion player, two guitarists, a guy with a steel drum, and a man who played the hammer dulcimer while riding along under the streets of Paris. All of these words and music gave me a sense that the artistic Paris I’d imagined wasn’t gone so much as transfigured for the 21st century.
