Paris was looking good last week, but then it always does. It is full of Parisians, of course, and most them speak French in that annoying way they have. There's also the diabolical traffic, the wall-to-wall tourists and the combative restaurant waiters. Every successive French government launches a campaign to encourage waiters to be nice to their customers. This has been about as successful as the campaign to encourage Congressmen to be nice to their political rivals.
You can't expect French waiters to smile at you, and say "Bonjour, my name is Jacques, I will be your server today." Paris is not Disneyland and France is not Iowa. That's precisely why so many Americans go there every year. Oscar Wilde said: "When good Americans die, they go to Paris," which probably explains the long lines of elderly Midwesterners outside the Louvre. They just booked their flights in advance, to get the extra discount. When the sun shines there is no place like Paris. Nowhere are there more places to eat and drink outdoors, right in the middle of street life. Nowhere can you find more art and architectural treasures so beautifully displayed.
I always feel slightly inferior in Paris, which is another good reason for going there. It's such a cultural and intellectual powerhouse, and the people have such style. Who can compete with them? Certainly not I. This inferiority complex began when I went to live there as a young man, with the intention of hanging out in cafés, meeting famous literary figures and becoming a great writer, in the traditional fashion. It didn't work, of course, and my favorite left-bank café is now a MacDonald's. But the magic – or at least the conjuring trick - is still there and, when I walk down the Boulevard Saint Michel it is always déjà vu all over again. Paris is a place of imaginary romantic memories as much as a place of real boulevards and galleries and insane taxi drivers.
But Paris has been oversold by the tourist industry. Many visitors are disappointed because it is a real city and not the glittering fantasy land that they had been told to expect. There is even a condition called "Paris Syndrome" that affects particularly Chinese and Japanese tourists, who arrive convinced that Paris is just one gigantic luxury shopping mall and find that it is a city like any other, with crowds, dirt, pickpockets, and of course those waiters. The symptoms are depression, disorientation, anxiety, and a feeling of persecution, all very familiar to those of us who have spent time in Paris.
The City of Lights most definitely has a dark side. If you wander far from the tourist center you may find yourself in areas that are neither picturesque nor safe. These areas offer a social and even a sociological experience, but don't expect to find any welcoming little bistros or avant garde art galleries there. If you explore still farther, out beyond the great peripheral highway, you will find yourself in the world of towering HLMs or public housing projects that surround the city like a besieging army. Here poverty prevails, along with forty percent youth unemployment. You won't find these in the tourist brochures either.
So by all means take that trip to Paris you have always planned. It is beautiful, spectacular, and everyone should see it. But in so many ways it's just like home.
Copyright: David Bouchier
