Memories from Paris: the taxi driver prophecy
On my very first day moving to Paris (age 19) I got a cab from the airport to my teeny 20th arrondissement apartment (la di da, didn’t want to take the bus). And I got the taxi driver from hell.
‘People here don’t care about each other Miss, it’s every man for himself. People just walk all over each other. Why, people don’t even know their neighbours; you know, people die in their homes all the time and aren’t found for weeks.’
Awesome.
Skip 2 years later, and Christian and I are living in a teeny and old apartment in the 11th. Around Christmas time the mailman comes to sell us a calendar (like every year, everywhere in France) and blurts out that the previous tenant, who had been there for 50 years – you’ll never guess – well she died in our apartment, and she wasn’t found for a few weeks.
After dropping that bomb he said ‘Merry Christmas’, turned around and just walked down the stairs.
That story makes me chuckle now, but you can bet it didn’t at the time. I don’t think I went to bed quite the same that night. Oh, and I decided I also had no intention of buying a calendar again from that mailman.
(Image is from here).
Just lovely
Let me close my eyes and revel in the magic that is Le Dernier Métro.
Seriously, watch it (if I hadn’t yet managed to convince you). You will even see Catherine Deneuve knock her husband out by bashing his head with a little statue.
From Somewhere in the Depths of Cinema, via Nerd Boyfriend.
Caroline, stop showing me things I want
Seriously, just stop*.
I love the Paris métro map, I love the colours representing the different lines, the names of the stops, and remembering what is on the surface at my favourite ones. Oh, and which ones are decked in a really clever way (a copper submarine interior anyone? Or how about a steamship?).
And I am the biggest sucker for stripes, and anything with blue white and red excites me no end.
And! On the detail image I can spot two métro stops I lived at: Rome (blue line) and Poissonière (pink line).
This was clearly meant to be mine.
*You know I love you and I don’t mean it right?
Paris sous la neige
Pretty no?
Taken in 1948 by a certain Mr Kessel. I love me some Paris in the snow!
PS: I have been sick as a dog for the last few days. And you know what? My father, the subject of my last post, just got over a similar nasty bug that robbed him of his voice. I know I said I missed him, but not to the point of being empathetically sick at the same time! Darn it.
PPS: I also have no voice. I have a faint cackle. Sounds great.
PPPS: Mr Kessel’s image, via Frogsmoke.
Memories of Paris: the opposite compass
I mastered the Paris métro and RER quickly when I first moved there. A small victory, except things usually went pear shaped back on the street when time came to orientate myself again. I cannot count the number of times I went right while I needed to go left (or left when I needed to go right) – and always after pondering the street map too! (Very handily placed right by the street exits).
By yourself, mildly embarrassing – but it gets better. After Christian and I met and he moved from Melbourne to Paris, he made it clear he trusted me in the métro but back on the street he would do the orientating. Often by going the opposite direction I suggested.
How vexing is that? Two years head start living there and my Australian husband knows his way around Paris better than me within weeks. And dubs me his reliable opposite compass. Well it’s very vexing (trust me).
Image is from here.
Looking for excuses
To buy Little Brown Pen’s Paris perpetual calendar. Want to hear them?
I love beautiful things, and it’s beautiful.
I don’t buy calendars because I never find any I like, and I don’t like throwing them out when the year has finished. Too existential in a mundane way (time gone by, trash). This one is reusable forever.
I lived in Paris for three and a bit years and I miss it very much. It contains 49 little pieces of Paris.
I love the number 17 (which is my birthday coincidentally), and this one has the 7 penned the way it should be: with a bar across it. So it satisfies one of my little manias (while stomping across it for ’7′ and ’27′, but you can’t have it all).
I want it and I have picked out a wall for it. It’s already got its own reserved spot.
In the spirit of prioritising hair over tooth, do I now prioritise Paris calendar over further tooth surgery?
The chicken explorer
Here is a funny thing about me: I am a clean neat-freak. I love bleach, pine disinfectant, eucalyptus spray (kills 99.9% of germs!). But show me an abandoned building, a derelict house, architectural neglect and ‘It-a makes-a my heart-a go boom-a ticky boom’ (the Italian captain from ‘Allo allo‘, yes?).
I start to jump up and down, my mind busy with the pictures I could take and thoughts of what could possibly be in there. Except:
- These types of places can be dangerous (asbestos, structural weaknesses and collapsing floors).
- These types of places are patrolled, or very clearly marked as private property. Did someone say ‘breaking and entering’? I like my blank criminal record too much.
On occasion I have asked for access – and gotten it (the legal way, yay!), but mostly I have a mental inventory of places around Melbourne and around the world I would kill to have a look at, and probably never will.
Being the chicken that I am, pictures of others’ daring forbidden urban explorations are as close as I will get to certain places, and are often enough to give me a thrilling fix. I don’t know the name of this person, but I am really grateful he risked his life by walking on (in use!) Parisian métro tracks to the abandoned St Martin stop, closed for the last 40 or 50 years. Just knowing it exists (not exactly sure where it is though) and that these gorgeous painted ads are still intact makes my day.
Boom-a ticky boom.
(St Martin article originally via Frogsmoke).
Memories of Paris: Feng Shui
When I moved with my sister to the 17th arrondissement (métro stop Rome to be exact – a bit too close to the Place de Clichy for comfort, which at night is a seedy dump), she decided to do things well and draw a Feng Shui map of our apartment. (So we could arrange things around in the optimal way – thus attracting wealth, happiness, and gorgeous men into our lives while feeling completely balanced and zen – from what I understand).
About half an hour into it she stumbled into my room, half horrified and half giggling. According to her calculations, the centre of our apartment, the energetic hotspot (the one place that really matters) was (drumroll!) the toilet.
That’s right, the toilet.
So we hung a small crystal ball above it, and chanted every time we flushed. Or something to that effect.
Now you know what to do if your toilet is in the way of your energetic hotspot. As for me, I have one of the funniest memories of my life rolling into one the 17th arrondissement, Feng Shui and a toilet (and the expression on my sister’s face telling me all about it). Classic.
(Image is from here).
Before and after
Paris public transport
If you’re in Paris (or are going to be) before October 4th, you might like to go to the photographic exhibition organised by the RATP (‘Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens’ or ‘Autonomous Operator of Parisian Transports’). It’s a great opportunity to go back 60 years and see some gorgeous old Paris shots, non?
For a laugh you might also like to know most people in Paris joke RATP stands for ‘Rentre Avec Tes Pieds’ (Go Home with Your Feet), given its low service records and high frequency of strikes.
See more photos here.
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