Paris Observations

Paris Observations

      Let me start by saying the I've never been to Paris before; well, let's say that I've landed in Paris and continued on through Paris (well, Charles De Gaulle airport, anyway), but actually visiting and staying in Paris...never.  But suddenly here we were, our jet lagged bodies now back at CDG airport and we had what amounted to a free day, well, just under a day to explore this famous City of Lights.  A quick nap and off we went.  Now I must add that when you tell anyone, but especially someone who lives and works in Paris, that you have only about 8 or so hours to see the city, you will get a look first of "really?," followed by a resigned but determined effort to get you started as soon as possible.  Why? Because as everyone knows, there is much to see in Paris.  

      Now if you've never been to Paris, as was the case with us, just getting IN to the city is quite the adventure.  As with New York, London, and many other large transportation hubs with rail and subway connections, you're a bit groggy and sleepy from a long flight, and at that point, just attempting to figure out the maze of signs that will get you to the next section of your trip is alone a bit of a challenge.  But have patience.  One must remember that so many passengers arrive from all over the world, that trying to please them all and trying to do so in so many languages is a demanding task for anyone, much less for a giant facility like an international airport.  But in this case, once you get over your initial frustrations and tiredness, the navigation is tolerable...not simple, mind you, but once you do it, you'll realize that it wasn't as bad as you first thought (at least as compared to the travails of being a foreign traveler in the U.S., one who speaks no English...and onthat note, it's something we take for granted, isn't it, assuming that everyone speaks a little English; but arrive in even a city as cosmopolitan as Paris and be lost and not find someone who can help, well, it sort of opens your eyes a bit).

     To begin with, the train stations in Paris CDG are conveniently located more or less just below the airport (why can't we have that in the U.S?).  You will very likely already need to board an underground tram to go between concourses anyway, so you are thus rapidly introduced to what you'll soon encounter later (however, unlike domestic airports such as Atlanta or Dallas in the U.S., the concourses in Paris are rather far apart; this can take some getting use to for as in London's Heathrow airport, one of the shuttle BUS rides we took between two of the concourses took nearly 15 minutes).  That size and breadth alone is dazzling, perhaps not to the frequent or business traveler, but to the average domestic traveler used to smaller cities such as San Francisco or Seattle; the sheer size of such airport complexes is alone a marvel of moving people from place to place.  There are so many aircraft, broken into international and local flying, bringing so many people, all of them coming into a place excitedly and suddenly realizing that they have another hour-long journey ahead of them before actually being in the city (another example of this is one's arrival into Milan, Italy, for the city itself is nearly an hour away from your international arrival); add to this the many people simply arriving home, and one is mystified at where all the food and water and workers come from, and where all the waste and rubbish and poop all goes.  This is only one such city, in one part of the world, and already you can imagine city planners scratching their heads and resigning themselves to "just keep them moving," don't want no blockages, no backlogs (for they certainly realize that once that mass of people stop, it will be a mess).  Patience, already thin, will fray, and tempers will steadily reach the breaking point.  But luckily, not now for today is only the usual hundreds of thousands of tired and anxious and excited travelers, each moving to their next stop, which (at least for the planners of CDG airport) is not here in the airport...and for that there are the trains.

      It is here, at the trains, that you are shuttled into another massive group of people, equally anxious and excited and weary.  But the trains, or rather the train system, is ready, both high speed express and local, departing and arriving pretty much exactly on schedule (don't experiment with this in Japan, for their train system is the height of efficiency and timeliness).  Signs are relatively clear, even though a train map proves close to essential (they're provided free with your ticket purchase) and if all else is lost, you have a map, sometimes a lighted one, on board, one telling you which stop is next).  And make note of this miniaturized map for once you arrive in downtown Paris, your signs will basically disappear.  The station stop for Notre Dame says St. Michelle/Notre Dame; but the Eiffel Tower ( Gustav Eiffel also designed and built the Statue of Liberty) has no such designation.  Walk along one side of the Seine River from Notre Dame and you'll pass the Louve Museum, and can see the Eiffel Tower all along your walk; but cross over and have your view blocked by the buildings and well, good luck, for you will be puzzled at how something so tall and dramatically lit up at night (complete with rotating laser beam at the top) could be so invisible (perhaps this is why city planners decided not to erect any signs, thinking that the tower was impossible to not see).  But for you first time visitors, trust me on this.  Walk on the wrong side of the Seine and you'll miss the dang thing entirely.

     But I'm getting ahead of myself.  The walk along the river, past crowds and crowds of people and the seemingly endless stalls of vendors selling old books and posters, is itself a stroll of discovery.  These stalls of fold-down wooden hutches clamped to the river's concrete walls, are each about six feet long and house hundreds of torn and worn books, many of them seemingly on subjects you'd find in an outdated thrift store, the subjects ranging from a young Marlon Brando to an endless parade of French historical figures; and to see one such stall is interesting, but to see 50, then a hundred, then even more of them, each with its own vendor and each drawing quite a throng of interested viewers and buyers, well, that alone was an interesting peek into the city.  Were all the people looking earnestly at those books that interested in reading, or were these books simply that much more affordable (they weren't).  Or was this simply a piece of French or Paris culture that an outsider would simply not understand (much as the books on tables that line parts of Manhattan)?  Perhaps it was all those things, and perhaps none of them.  But the weathered stalls and vendors seemed to have had a history hidden in their life along the river, and for me, provided an interesting preview of what was to come.  

     Another puzzling thing one cannot help but notice were the chain link fences of bridges filled with padlocks.  You may have read about this once-new trend, only I got the impression that it's popularity had died down a bit.  This was not the case as the fences are filled, and I mean filled as in unable to find an opening to attach another lock.  So the lovers and such (for that was original rumor of how this started, the practice of writing one's names or message onto a lock, attaching it to bridge for all to see, then tossing away the key into the river) move on to the next fence.  The fence before the bridge, the fence around the bridge; in certain areas, you begin to wonder at the sheer weight of the thousands of locks now decorating the railings of the walking bridges, all of them reflecting in the sunset like large pieces of glitter.  But as interesting as this was, we couldn't help but still wonder where the heck was the Eiffel Tower?

     Which brought me to another discovery....the friendliness of the people.  Despite the rumors and the jokes I had heard about the French rudeness, we saw virtually the opposite. People of all ages proved helpful, perhaps overly so at times, directing us, encouraging us, making way for us (although one person, seemingly of Cuban descent and perhaps a visitor himself, sent us in the totally wrong direction; of course, we couldn't see the Eiffel Tower, nor did we know where it was --on the rail map, it looks quite near Notre Dame, which of course it isn't, especially if you're walking-- so it didn't matter).  Lovers on the bridges ignored us (yes, there were many a romantic couple doing the classic don't-bother-me extended kissing on the bridges), and gendarmes who gave us long,skeptical glances.  But all in all, it seemed to us that the people tried as best they could to help, even when we asked for the bathroom from the occasional shop owner (normally no, she told us in her broken English, but for you...), perhaps a reflection of what must have been our pitifully frustrated and tired faces.

    What also proved interesting was the many races and ethnic faces we saw, from refugees (two of the people we spoke to later told us that it wasn't as large a problem as the media portrays, although we got handed virtually the same "help, I have no money" card on each train we took into Paris).  The problem, we were told, was homelessness.  Jobs are very difficult to come by, so people don't, almost can't, quit.  Expecting to have to work until 70, especially in the more remote areas, seemed to be the norm.  And large populations of Tunisians and Asians had settled into enclaves in the city, the Tunisians in the north and the Asians in the south.  So said the woman from Montpellier waiting at the train ststion, her lawyer daughter leaving for Canada to better her odds of more favorable eork.  We chatted (her mother) and I for over an hour, each of us struggling to be understood but laughing all the while, figuring out words such as "dream" and "random" as we covered our respective countries.  By the time she left to catch her train (also having a long political discussion with a man from Martinique), we felt that the beautiful lights of the city were not so much the actual lights themselves, but rather the twinkling glimpses of so many of the people there, each giving a new spark to an ever growing culture.

    Alas, our time was up; it had indeed gone by too quickly.  Our next stop, Zurich, Switzerland, awaited, a casual 4-hour high speed rail trip away (getting your ticket for that train is another entirely new adventure...don't be like us and wing it; if you know that you're going, buy your tickets online in advance; it'll be half the price and twice as efficient, but that's for the next post).  And yes, we did finally make it to the Eiffel Tower, arriving rather exhausted and catching a pedicab back...now that is an interesting way to see Paris.