Helena Zukowski
PUBLISHED IN: HolidayMaker; Westworld; Vancouver Province; Globe&Mail; Doctor's Review; Calgary Living; LA Times; Westways; Toronto Star; NUVO; Prestige.
SPECIALTIES: Adventure destinations (hiking, scuba, sailing, etc.); Eastern Europe; learning vacations (cooking, etc.); offbeat destinations.
BOOKS: International Golf Guide; International Tennis Guide; Leisureguide/Victoria; Thomas Cook guidebooks: Vancouver, BC & the Rockies.
AWARDS: 1997 Leonardo for best Italian feature by a Canadian writer; Travel Writer of the Year (1997), ANTOUR.
(250) 339-1733 Phone
(250) 331-1278 Cell
2431 Seabank Road
Courtenay, BC, V9J 1X6
Canada
» zukowski@shaw.ca
How I learned to Stop Hating Paris
by Helena Zukowski
Article text to be placed here. The first time I saw Paris was through sleet-encrusted eyelashes. It was a particularly harsh winter with bitterly cold winds and freezing rain, an unseasonable mess for which it seemed the Parisians held me directly responsible. (Mon Dieu, is bad weather all those Canadians ever manage to export?)
As I walked alone through the Tuileries, even the stone statues seemed to shiver and hunch over in the wind and the ducks had their heads buried so deeply into their plumage, they looked like decapitated decoys. The leaden clouds hung at shoulder level and the City of Light seemed more like a city mourning a lost summer.
Over the years, I had built up an image of Paris as a place so perfect in every detail that when Judgment Day came it would be lifted up to the Pearly Gates, every monument, historical building and restaurant intact. Paris to me was Elysium itself, a city for thinkers, artists, lovers and anyone with who saw beauty as necessary food for the soul. And of course when I finally got there, Paris would love me back as I had loved it in my mind for so many years.
My first stop after arriving on a particularly rainy and cold November day was at a tourist bureau on the Champs-Elyssees to find accommodation. A smartly dressed woman sat behind a high counter totally immersed in a phone conversation that was obviously more important than the wet tourist dripping all over her pristine Parisian floor. After shuffling and coughing several times, I flashed my most fetching smile and said, “Excusez-moi, s’il vous plait,” as politely as I could manage.
Looking at me as if I had just spit on her shoes, she said in heavily accented English: “Madam. If you please. I am engaged “ and then returned immediately to her disembodied companion. While I created little puddles in her office I could hear her telling her phone-friend that she had this rustic, mal eleve (bad-mannered) person she had to contend with: “You know how little class these Americans have.” It was obvious to her a rustic “American” could not possibly understand the nuances of the French language.
When she finally ended her call she curtly asked me what I wanted. While I explained that I needed a room but could not afford anything very expensive, I could see her instant analysis confirmed in her mind—Mon Dieu, not only a rustic, but a lower class one to boot. She made a quick phone call and pushed a piece of paper and a circled map across the desk at me.
The room, when I finally found it, was a nightmare. The only window looked out into a gloomy air well and the only light was a bare bulb on a long cord hanging from the middle of the ceiling. The sheets looked as if they had been around since the French Revolution and the bathroom was down the hall. By this time, my clothes were soaked through, I was starting to get a sore throat and I didn’t have the strength to start looking elsewhere.
It was downhill from there. It rained seemingly non-stop for ten days, the dollar was low against the franc making everything even more expensive than I expected and I was totally alone the entire time, marching from one hallowed site to another trying to find a glimmer of magic. By the time I slunk onto my plane going home, angst must have been etched onto my face deeper than the rivulets on Notre Dame’s gargoyles. A French woman going to visit her sister was sympathetic: “But my dear, Paris is not a city that you should see for the first time alone, especially in the winter. It’s a city to be shared with a friend, a lover or a companion.”
In the ensuing years, I discovered that whenever I mentioned I hated Paris, there were those who agreed vigorously and those who disagreed. When one of my oldest and dearest friends, Keith Spicer, who was visiting from Paris asked me to give his beloved city another chance I agreed.
On my return to Paris, we started my conversion with a stroll along the immense avenue of chestnut trees in the Luxembourg Gardens. The 60-acre 17th century jardin was filled with people enjoying the fountains, flowers, ponds, tennis courts, concerts, open-air café and sculptures. Spicer explained that this was a place that connected Parisians of all ages—it was where mothers brought babies in strollers and then when the babies became old people they would sit on benches feeding pigeons. Even though sitting on the grass is normally prohibited, when I came here alone on Bastille Day, July 14, I found Parisians sitting on special Bastille Day blankets with their wine and cheese enjoying a day of specially sanctioned law-breaking.
any of the city’s famous expats shared Spicer’s love for this amazing park: Isadora Duncan was said to come here to dance at 5AM and in his most destitute, rejection-slip period, Ernest Hemingway always gave thanks to the pigeons he captured to provide Hadly, his wife, with a decent dinner. The garden also has a sweeping arc of statues of famous French women underscoring the point that in France women of all ages are respected.
As we scrambled along at a quick pace, every block seemed to have an ancient alley or hidden courtyard, each with its own small surprise. At #12 Rue d’Odeon, Spicer pointed to where Sylvia Beach once ran the original Shakespeare & Company that published Ulysses in 1922 as well as many other works by the “lost generation” of writers. (The new store with the same name has just as legendary a proprietor at 37 Rue de la Bucherie.) On the Rue de la Huchette at #10, I saw the house in which a poverty-stricken Napoleon Bonaparte lived just before he met Josephine. On the Cours du Commerce Saint-Andre, Spicer showed me some windows at #4 behind which were the remains of one of the old walled city’s medieval towers—this was just down the street from Le Procope, the city’s oldest café. People like Voltaire, Bonaparte and Thomas Jefferson dined here and the likes of Robspierre and Danton plotted the deaths of aristocrats.
One day we stopped at the Bon Marche, a fantasy grocery store for anyone who loves to cook and eat. Everything is here, immaculately presented in huge displays of every kind that take up separate islands—islands of just olive oil or well-aged balsamic vinegar; displays of produce that look as if they leapt an instant before from some perfect garden; others with mustards, jams and exotic sauces.
Since it was almost lunch, we orchestrated sandwiches from another island where a chef in a white hat layered sliced meats, cheeses, pickles, wild mushrooms, olives, artichokes, sun-dried tomatoes and tender ham onto a warm baguette. We took our creations and a bottle of wine to a small park where we munched and watched children play in the sunshine.
It’s said everyone eats well in Paris, whether it’s a baguette in the park or dinner at Taillevent. A simple pat of butter on a dinner roll is the best butter you’ve ever tasted; fish is cooked not one second too long and even a modest soup is a medley of just the right herbs. One day as I strolled along the Seine, I saw a homeless person sleeping on the bank and beside his sleeping bag were the remnants of lunch—smoked salmon, olives and a good French wine. My daughter-in-law told me about a friend of hers who gave a panhandler a baguette and some cheese from her pack.. The panhandler took one mouthful and spit it out saying, “Mais Madam, ce n’est pas frais,” (But Madam, this is not fresh!)
One Sunday afternoon, Spicer and I strolled to the Marais district, where men in black wearing yarmulkes were engaged in vigorous commerce and the fragrance of bagels hung in the air. We found a small bistro where we lingered for hours over a lunch of delicately flavoured soup, perfectly prepared penne gorgonzola and a bottle of Beaujolais. No one rushed us to leave and our afternoon conversation wrapped itself around world politics, French politics, life, old friends, human values and why I had such a terrible time in Paris the first time around.
When I raised the subject of Parisian hauteur, Spicer pointed out that it was not really arrogance but simply a different way of responding to strangers. While I’ve managed quite nicely around the world when I couldn’t communicate (in whatever native language) by smiling my head off at strangers, the codes are different here in Paris. If you approach a Parisian grinning inanely, he’ll either think a) you’re trying to trick him into something or b) you’re a few eggs short of an omelet.
Over the centuries, Parisians have acquired a “don’t trust strangers” gene based on their long history of being deceived by invaders. (As one author points out, “etranger” <stranger> and “danger” <danger> rhyme.) What you must do to win the Parisian over is convince him that you are “us” (Parisians) rather than “them” (the strangers).
On my last morning in Paris, we finally managed to hit the empty streets before sunrise. It was a totally different Paris at 5AM—with no distractions on the streets, I noticed a sensual stone figure I must have passed a dozen times and I heard sounds along the Seine obscured before by traffic noise. Our destination was St. Gervais, a Gothic church that dates back to the 6th century, has the oldest classical façade in Paris and has long been renowned for its religious music. As we sat on the wooden pews with a few others, young priests and novices wearing blue cassocks and habits with long white hooded capes over their shoulders walked silently to a small chapel. After prayers, they began to sing hymns of praise and joy a cappella as they probably have since St. Gervais was built, their voices rising like doves into the heavens and transporting us back centuries.
Leaving St. Gervais we sat at a small sidewalk café right on the Seine that had just opened for a breakfast of hot croissants and café au lait. The croissants were flaky and as delicious as the light that washed over Notre Dame on the opposite bank. Paris has always been known for its special light, a luminescence that inspired artists and photographers to capture its magic in a hundred ways. But Paris is also known as the City of Love and this is a much more complicated—and endearing—matter. For hundreds of years, the French have perfected what they call coquetterie or seduction a la francaise, a uniquely French wayfor men and women to relate to one another. It’s flirting but done to enhance the simple pleasure of being alive without all the negative nuances it seems to have in North America. And most important, it is ageless. I think often of the statues in the Jardin du Luxembourg and all the French women throughout history who were loved and admired as they aged. As a North American woman over 50, it makes me a little sad and envious.
The day I left Paris, the sky was cloudless and the world seemed to be painted in Technicolor. I found myself envying Spicer’s long love affair with Paris and think I now understand why he and other expats choose to live here despite the pollution, expense and dog excrement on the streets. On my first visit, I was looking at Paris from a postcard I had carried around in my mind rather than through the eyes of someone who understood the city. The woman on the plane was right—a passion for Paris, like any meaningful love, cannot develop alone. On the plane back to Canada, I had a flash of Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains in the last scene of Casablanca. As Bogart puts his arm around the gendarme’s shoulder, he says, “You know, Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
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