What I Did Last Summer

After spending 14 hours on the plane, I was too cross and jetlagged to drag my horribly heavy luggage to the metro, on top of the very likely possibility of getting lost, therefore I wasted no time (I wish I can say the same for money) and flagged the first taxi I saw. I was to spend the first night in an HI Hostel at the edge of Paris since my flight arrived a day early. Despite the borderline cheapskate fare of 17 Euros per night and the tiny 4-bedded dorms, it was spotless and the breakfast was as hearty as any. The crowd was eclectic and the people were very helpful and informative. The next morning I found my way to the rendezvous spot at the Latin Quarter BVJ on the left bank of the river Seine, where I’d be staying in for three nights during the pre-session. It was much more decent than the hostel (for 10 Euros more) and I shared a two bedded room with Raysha, a participant from India. By the end of the session she was the closest friend I’ve had among the group. She told me she didn’t get to choose her session; India sent the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners to France for separate sessions and this session was the 1st prize. So I guess I made the right choice. Our room had a stunning view from the balcony overlooking a small Church and chic apartments with red flowers lining their ornamented windows, and if you look to the far right you’d see the domed top of the Pantheon and to your right was the Seine and with a little squint you can make out the gargoyles perching perpetually over Notre-Dame’s ancient crevices. No wonder in French movies people were so fussy when their bosses gave them offices “sans fenêtre”. As Virginia Woolf had put it, one could always use a room with a view. When I stepped out of my balcony, listening to the sound of flute playing from the apartment across the street, I thought to myself, I am so in Paris.
I went around the area with Raysha on the first day and snapped pictures at every corner. I actually saw a travel souvenir shop selling bits and pieces from Indonesia just around the corner. The guide, Cécile (très jolie, looked like a Parisian version of Jennifer Aniston), gave us coupons for travels, lunch coupons and allowance for three days so we could buy ourselves nice meals during the free nights and a sandwich for the long train ride to the South at the end of the pre-session. I went to lunch on the first day at Flunch (short for French Lunch, perhaps?), a restaurant next to the Centre Pompidou that looked a lot like Marchё Mövenpick, with Raysha and three participants from Brazil: Deborah, Cristina and Émilie. All of my four companions were apparently French teachers and have been speaking French half if not their entire lives. I cowered slightly thinking that my six-month old acquaintance with the French language will never be on par. J’étais vraiment nerveuse. But soon another participant arrived from Japan, Yukari, who spoke very little French and no English, and my (wicked) spirit was lifted a little. One by one the participants arrived and the entire group of twelve (eleven girls and one guy, le pauvre…) comprised of: Raysha, Deborah, Cristina, Émilie, Yukari, Natasha (Bosnia), Maria (Lebanon), Marwa (Egypt), Léon (Latvia), Dulce (Mexico), Sandra (German) and yours truly. In the afternoon Cécile gave us a guided tour around the Latin Quarter: Ile de la Cité, Notre-Dame, Hotel Du Ville (the town hall), Pantheon, some Museums, Paris Plages, Place St. Michel, and I couldn’t believe that just behind the hotel was Sorbonne! I took it as good karma. The first night I went to Place St. Michel with Raysha to have dinner at some Italian restaurant and we got to see street performers, artists, a row of Greek joints with heaps of broken white plates at their entrances, and the whole bustling night scene at St. Michel that kept me coming back again and again during my stay in Paris. We were back at the hotel at almost midnight, but it felt early since in Paris it doesn’t get dark until ten.
The reason we couldn’t stay up late the first night was that because the next day we would be leaving for Montmartre bright and early. By seven a.m. I was taking breakfast downstairs and had, for the first time in my life, a bowl of chocolate for breakfast. I was astonished at the size of the serving, I mean, a bowl! Not a cup, not a glass, but an entire bowl! I thought they were pranking tourists or something. Apparently, explained my German friend understandingly with just the right dose of pity, it was perfectly normal in Europe to drink hot beverages from bowls. I guess it was simply one more thing citizens of third world countries are missing out on besides food, healthcare, educated politicians and proper internet access. We took a metro to Montmartre where I went souvenir shopping like crazy. Seriously, I entered shops saying things like, “Can you pack me fifty of those key chains?” If I knew I had a long climb ahead of me I would have shopped after I visited the Sacré-Coeur. We got to the foot of the church and climbed the stairs – pilgrim style and all, and reached the entrance drenched in rain. When I entered the church, a certain sentiment overcame me and it was not just the high ceilings or the dimly lit interiors, but the entire atmosphere of the place was purely enchanting. I thought I’d feel the same way, or even more, when I enter Notre-Dame or other famous cathedrals they certainly had in store for us, but it was in the modest sagacity of ancient Sacré-Coeur where I felt most humbled. In the words of my lit teacher: it was a pathos-evoking, cathartic episode.
After another lunch at Flunch (where we sat in a bunch to munch and had a bar of Crunch) we went to the Louvre. There were so many paintings to appreciate, sculptures to marvel at, ceilings to crane upon, and frankly, as much as I tried to timely ponder the important ones or the ones I liked, it was not easy with only a few hours and the gazillion tourists swarming inside. La Joconde, otherwise known as the Mona Lisa, kind of reminded me of my last Sum 41 concert (back in my groupie days…) where people line up to ask the band members’ autographs and there were bodyguards with earpieces all around. They actually put up lines for people to queue to stare at the chubby face for a rationed time. You stare too long; the guard will shove you aside unceremoniously as though you, les tourists, unlike the Mona Lisa, are dispensable trivialities. I did see, however, some wicked sculptures like the goddess Victory, Venus di Milo, Hermes and Eros, the opulent Galerie d’Apollon and ancient Titian paintings so old that you can see the contrast between their standards of beauty and the contemporary ones. I mean if Kate Moss and Rosie O’Donnell walked into a party in the year 1532, no one would even talk, let alone dance, with Kate while bachelors would rest at nothing to get Rosie’s attention. At night I went with Raysha, Émilie and Natasha to the Champs-Élysées avenue which was the shopping hub in Paris, if not the world. Orchard Road felt like a poser-ish tiny alley, and the MRT network looked amateur compared to the convoluted flower-shaped metro network. I lost the girls when I was shopping for perfumes at Marrionaud and ended up having to find my way back alone. The girls wouldn’t worry since I already got lost that morning at Sacré-Coeur, when I lost track of time and everyone had exited the church long before I realized that I got lost. But I managed fine, surprisingly, as I did at Champs-Élysées. My only worry was that the girls might be looking for me and I would trouble them plenty. Fortunately they had learned of my tendencies to wander off and gone straight home. That day I had my first ever Nutella crepe in a sandwich shop around the corner of the nearest metro station from the hotel, which would later lead to a Nutella crepe addiction that led me to do the craziest, and yet also the most unforgettable, things over the summer.