Living in Paris (photo: flowers at the market near my apartment)

Where do I begin to describe what it is like to live in Paris? France is the most visited country in the world, which I assume makes Paris the most visited city. So how to avoid the innumerable clichés: city of love, city of light, city of Amélie?

After seven months here, I realise that as I discover more of this beautiful city, I am slowly falling in love with it (as melodramatic as that may sound). Paris has often been compared to a moody lover, who seduces you at one moment and frustrates you the next. I think this is an apt description – as anyone who has ever experienced the horrors of the French administrative system will tell you, Paris can be pretty damn frustrating. But cross the Pont des Arts at sunset, or lounge under the Eiffel Tower for a picnic, or mingle with the crowds on a Saturday night in the Latin Quarter or the Marais… and you will see how Paris can be seductive as well.

Maybe I’ll start with the people. Parisians are usually characterised as being rude and obnoxious, as unwilling to talk in English or help tourists. Whilst this may be true of some waiters in tourist restaurants, on the whole I’ve found that Parisians can be quite… nice, to use a neutral term. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that they are warm or outgoing. Even amongst young people, there is a level of detachment (a lack of desire to make new friends) that is quite discouraging. Perhaps this is a reflection of the university that I am attending, which has a reputation for producing the future political leaders of France – and thus the students are very intellectual, very serious, and not particularly friendly. If I make the effort to start a conversation, it won’t last outside the classroom. But, I do live with two lovely French girls, which has helped me to not be totally discouraged! When I ask French people about this seeming coldness, the only explanation they can come up with is that it is ‘just the French way’. What I find particularly stifling is the attitude of my teachers. As I said, the atmosphere at my university is quite formal, and whilst last semester my teachers were all quite friendly, this time around it is very structured. We only ever use the formal manner of speech, and teachers never call me by my first name. Frankly, being called ‘Mademoiselle Moore’ makes me… uncomfortable. But that’s just part of the academic culture – very different from Australia, where you’d be more likely to share a beer with your tutor at the end of the semester!

Speaking of ‘culture’: Paris may also like to claim that it is the most cultured city in the world. The wealth of art here is certainly amazing, and I have taken full advantage of free student evenings at the Louvre. I have to say that the Mona Lisa is rather disappointing, and I much prefer the Michelangelo sculptures or the Middle Eastern art. The Louvre is absolutely immense and very daunting: it has been said that if you just glanced at every piece of artwork, it would take nine months! So I have been taking it in more manageable pieces. Of course there are many other museums and galleries, my favourite of which so far is the Musée Rodin. Rodin was an incredible sculptor (‘The Thinker’ is his most famous work), and his works are set in landscaped gardens around a beautiful old house which also acts as a gallery. These tranquil gardens are amongst my favourite in Paris, as you can relax in the presence of some beautiful artwork and the golden dome of Les Invalides rising up above the hedges which cut you off from the outside world.

I have also been to the theatre and the ballet. The play that I saw was a bit boring (about Napoleon, and how he was forced to leave his first wife who was his one true love etc), but I went for the experience. It was a very small and intimate theatre, so you really felt close to the actors, and they did pretty well with a minimal amount of props. I went to see the American Ballet Theatre Company (amongst the best dancers in the world) perform at Châtelet Theatre. I had been inside this theatre once before, and its ornate beauty struck me so much that I was determined to go and see something there. The ballet was beautiful – the first time that I had ever been to one. After seeing those ballerinas perform, I cannot imagine the amount of training and skill it takes to perfect their moves, and I admire this dedication.

But of course, I don’t go to the theatre and ballet very often! Even my museum visits are confined to once every two weeks or so. Most of my time is simply consumed in living a normal life. The rhythm of life here is not different to any other city: people go to work, do the grocery shopping, the laundry, the gardening, take their dog for a walk, run in the parks… the only difference is the surroundings. I have to say that even when I walk down to the supermarket or the metro station, I am always struck by the beauty of the old Parisian apartment buildings. I think there is something about the light in Paris that is different to other cities… the way it catches buildings and strikes the Eiffel Tower in the late afternoon is something I can’t really describe. I feel like every second that I am outside, I am trying to absorb everything that I see, every aspect of light and shadow and beauty, and keep it in my memory for when I have left. Naturally, I take a lot of photos (I have put up some on Flickr of the places that I have mentioned), and I hope that I can catch the essence of the city. I realise now that I only have about three full months left in Paris, and I feel the need to see every part of this city…

Travels in February (photo: in the gardens of the Monte Carlo Casino, Monaco)


So, where have I been in the last two months you
may be wondering?
After returning from Prague and having a great NYE party at my apartment, followed by random drunkenness on the metro and at the Eiffel Tower, and NO FIREWORKS at midnight, I settled back into the rhythm of Sciences Po…
January passed in a flash, not too cold and disappointingly lacking in snow. All of a sudden it was February, and exams, and the arrival of Beth and then my brother….
Dean and I went travelling together from the 11th to the 22nd of Feb, and in true Aussie backpacker tradition managed to ‘visit’ 4 countries in 11 days! It would be more accurate to say that we went to four cities, which gave us at least a taste of each country…

We began with BARCELONA:
My favourite city on the trip, and definitely up amongst my favourites out of all the places that I have seen since July. Maybe it was the fact that the sun was shining, that the streets were broad and lined with trees (not narrow and covered in dog shit like in Paris), that there was a real beach with boardwalk and palm trees, maybe it was the waterfront that reminded me of both Cape Town and Sydney… I really loved Barcelona, and one day I’m going to learn Spanish or Catalan and go and live there! At least for a while. That’s the dream.
We started at La Sagrada Familia, the infamous church designed by Gaudi. Construction began in 1882, and is still going! I think their target is to finish it within the next 30 years…The building is quite amazing, and certainly a bizarre introduction to Gaudi’s work. I liked the interior, which let in a lot of light (maybe because it was only half finished!). Gaudi drew inspiration for the columns that support the roof from tree trunks, it’s pretty cool, almost as if you are standing in a forest and the tree tops form the roof. You can see some of the stonemasons at work, and when you see the work that goes into each intricate piece of mosaic you can understand why it is taking so long!
Over the three and half days that we were in Barcelona, we explored the narrow streets of the Gothic quarter – home to the city’s cathedral as well as many fashionable stores, but still retaining its charm… We visited Park Guell in the north of the city. This is an entire park designed by Gaudi, sitting on a hilltop. I really liked the design of the park, in particular the huge terrace which looks out over Barcelona and is surrounded by a low, undulating wall covered in colourful mosaics (see my photos on Flickr). There were a couple of pretty odd buildings at the entrance, and as I read somewhere, Dr Seuss would have felt at home here! The park was lovely, and as we walked down through the residential area surrounding it I decided that I could quite easily live in Barcelona…
We went to the Picasso museum, the biggest in the world, which is housed in a beautiful building. It was pretty interesting and Dean discovered a hidden passion for Picasso!

NICE / MONACO
From Barcelona we caught a train (all day!) to Nice in the south of France, with a short stop-over in the pretty town of Montpellier. Thankfully the perfect weather continued, and we had a nice stroll along the beachfront in Nice. However, despite it being the off-season, you can still tell that Nice is very much a tourist town, which I didn’t like much. It is pretty though, but not unique.
But of course, Nice wasn’t the real reason we had come to the south coast… the real reason was the tiny, impossibly rich principality of Monaco situated next door. A 40 minute bus ride along the coast, with glimpses of beautiful villas and the azure Mediterranean (reminded me of the Amalfi coast… sigh), brought us to the capital of ostentatious wealth. And I have to say… I quite liked it! Everything is perfectly clean, perfectly laid out… the gardens of the casino Monte Carlo were beautiful, and the views of the ocean and the coast were stunning. The town of Monaco itself is nothing special, just a few shops and lots of yachts, although the old part of the town (up on the hill near the castle) was lovely. And of course, the cars… Dean was practically hyperventilating. Every second car was some impossibly expensive Porsche/Bentley/Rolls Royce, which you couldn’t even buy in Australia.
We also ventured into a huge underground shopping centre, complete with chandeliers and marble staircases, but didn’t actual go into any stores. In the end we only spent about 4 hours in Monaco, before heading back to Nice for the afternoon.

ROME
Yes, back to Rome! I had loved Rome so much when I went in August last year, despite the throngs of tourists, and I wanted to see things that I had missed out on last time – in particular, the inside of the Colosseum and the cupola of St Peters in the Vatican. We caught an overnight train from Nice to Rome, the first time that I had been on one: it was a bit weird, and the ‘bed’ was really narrow, but I managed to grab a few hours of sleep. We arrived in Rome at about 9.30am, and headed straight out to the Colosseum to make the most of our short time there (2 days). What a disappointment! The queue to go inside was as long, if not longer, than when I was there in August. We decided to skip it, as the weather was quite miserable anyway.
After wandering around the Colosseum and Roman Forum a bit, we caught the metro to the Vatican, and queued for a total of TWO HOURS to get up inside the cupola of St Peters. It was worth it though: the interior of the cupola is absolutely beautiful, and you can’t appreciate the grandeur of it from on the ground (although you do experience the grandeur of the sheer size of St Peters, which is incredible). We also climbed up on the outside of the dome, with some panoramic views of Rome.
Otherwise, we just wandered around the city, eating copious amounts of gelati (despite the cold). We saw the Trevi Fountain (still swarming with the damn rose sellers and bubble blowers and all other kinds of dodgy con artists), and the Spanish steps… and then Dean discovered the Ferrari store, and the sightseeing was over!

BERLIN
From Rome we caught a flight to Berlin: only €13.50 including taxes! Praise to Easyjet. Berlin, like Barcelona, is a city that everyone has raved about to me. And it was pretty cool (although I still prefer Barcelona). Unfortunately we were too exhausted to experience much of the legendary night life, but we did go on a fantastic walking tour of the city which showed us many things that we would never know otherwise. For example, we stood just above the bunker where Hitler committed suicide: it is now covered by a parking lot… We also saw the (in)famous “Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe”. As you notice in the photo, the memorial consists of a large number of concrete blocks (they are actually different heights, it’s quite deceptive). Anyway, Berlin has a “slight” graffiti problem, and of course these blocks were like blank canvases. So the council commissioned a chemicals company to supply them with a repellent, which means that any paint/water just slides off the surface of the blocks. Pretty cool. BUT, if you take a look back at the history of this company… it is the very same one that supplied poison gas to the concentration camps under the Nazi regime. Needless to say, this didn’t go down well with the Jewish community… who weren’t too impressed with the monument in the first place. The information centre underneath the memorial was very interesting and of course the stories were very harrowing.
We climbed up inside the glass dome that is on top of the Reichstag, and saw the Brandenburg Gate, and the funky shops around near the zoo… and we saw Condoleeza Rice! She was arriving at a famous hotel (Adler? Astor?) – the very same one where Michael Jackson did his baby-over-the-balcony stint. The security convoy accompanying Rice was incredible. Dean and I were just trying to walk down the street, but since the police stopped us halfway we though that we would hang around and see. Unfortunately, because Dean doesn’t like museums and we didn’t have much time, I didn’t get to visit any of Berlin’s famous museums. Next time…

More to follow soon on Paris and my second semester at Sciences Po!