I’ve been in Paris a few times. The first time, many years ago with my mom and this was a one-week tour which was rather standard at the time. Still, I don’t remember at all either the group we were with or anything that has to do with them. The reason? First, I had already started to organize myself a good portion of my stay in foreign places I would visit with a group, not waiting for others to do it for me and somehow it has always turned out to be better. Perhaps I join the group for a locally organized bus tour around a city, but from that moment on I arrange the rest of my stay myself and it seems to me I have always seen sights better and more in that way. The other, very important reason this time, was that a friend of my mom had three sons who lived in Paris. One of them, Dule, whom all of the French in his life call Micky for some reason, was particularly ready to hang around with us. Not only to hang around with us, but also to take us around Paris showing us places less frequently visited by tourists. We were also invited for a dinner prepared by his wife Jacqueline, a great chef who had been managing her own restaurant for years.
Eiffel Tower
Off the top of my head, there are a few things that have remained in my memory from that first visit to Paris. The hotel I was at was around Pigalle, at Montmartre, and that was the first time I couldn’t sleep because of the noise levels. I could hear some sirens the whole night and I realized then that Paris was indeed a city that never sleeps. Not only that the city didn’t sleep, but it also couldn’t care less if its visitors did not sleep either. The visitors were not amused.
Paris, Sacre Coeur church at Montmartre
Still, during that first stay I managed to see a lot. It was May, traditionally the best month to be in Paris and I generally managed to visit most of the places frequented by a typical tourist, including a visit to Versailles and going to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Although there have always been lots of tourists in Paris, the crowds were smaller then and the lines significantly shorter. Admittedly, there were no security check-ups that are inevitable today and that considerably slow down the through-flow, but they are certainly necessary.
Eiffel Tower
In all of these quests and visits, my mom kept up with me without any comment or complaint and now when I’m the age she was at the time, I realize she must have been very tired, but she never voiced it out. Still, we did find ourselves in a “situation.” All the time I kept telling her in details about where we were going, what we were doing and what our plan was. She just kept nodding her head and followed my lead. One time, as we were entering an underground station, I saw from the stairs that the train had arrived, so I cried out to my mum to hurry up and dashed down the stairs and into the train. By the time she reached the train, we could hear the sound signal and the door started to close. It was all happening in a matter of seconds. As I watched from within the train her panic-stricken face on the other side, she moved forward, the door hit her and stopped. Then the door opened again and she entered. With the insolence of light-footed haughty youth, I doubled up with laughter mentioning her puzzled and scared face before deciding to fight her way into the train, while she reproached me saying it was not funny. Then we started talking about what would have happened if she hadn’t made it. And there I finally realized that indeed there was nothing funny in the situation. Namely, since I kept telling her which station we were going to and by which line, in case we had split, I would have gone to that station and waited for her to come by the next train there. As it turn out, however, the nodding of my mom’s head was a question of politeness and in fact she had no clue where we were heading. If we had gotten separated, she told me, she would have tried to get out to the street and to the hotel that was nearby, as she didn’t speak foreign languages and wouldn’t know what else to do. Today, at the time of mobile phones, such general discrepancy would be significantly buffered, but I’m still mentioning this situation because it is important when travelling with someone to have an agreement about "the procedure in case we get separated.” Extraordinary situations may and do happen (that’s why they are called “extraordinary”) and then it is important to have a good contingency plan with the people you are travelling with. My mom and I had a clear rule from then on: she stays where we last saw each other and waits for me to come back. Still, nothing similar has ever happened to us again. I guess because we were ready.
During this stay I went to the Louvre for the first time. As far as those huge museums are concerned, I had already been to the British Museum, but it was at the time when I lived in England working as an au-pair, so I had more time and was somehow more relaxed when visiting it. Usually people say that one needs a few days to visit those museums. I don’t do this. And this was also the case with the Louvre. Since a week in Paris was hardly enough to visit all I wanted, there was no way I was to spend an entire day at the museum, let alone two or more. Before going to Paris I got a great guide that listed precisely which of the most famous masterpieces were in which room. Before getting to the museum, I made a plan so that I would visit only what I was truly interested in. And that’s what I did, while just rushing by the rest of the exhibits. It took me less than two hours to make the tour, but these were great and very successful two hours.
Louvre, Venus de Milo
While talking about museums, let me say that this was also the first time I went to the Museum d'Orsay. Just a year before my first visit to Paris (1987), the exhibit of the impressionists and postimpressionists was moved from the National Gallery Jeu de Paume which is located at the Tuileries Gardens into a new museum created within the former railway station that rests along the Quai d’Orsay street. Ever since then the museum has contained the largest collection in the world of the masterpieces created by these two artistic styles. This was an exceptionally successful reconstruction and for me the Museum d’Orsay remains to this very date one of the most beautiful museum spaces. I find it interesting that as some point the building was due to be demolished with a plan to build a hotel instead!
Museum d'Orsay
And yet, comparatively the strongest and most durable impression I had at the time was from a significantly smaller museum. It is right near the Hôtel des Invalides. However, before saying something about the museum, let me just say a few things about The Invalides. It’s a large complex of buildings that were constructed at the order of King Louis XIV for the needs of placing war veterans. Even today, a lot of activities taking place here are linked with the military and there is also the Army Museum founded at the beginning of the 20th century. The complex includes practically two churches that used to be linked in the past by a joint sanctuary. One church was intended for soldiers and the other one for the king, and although they entered at different gates, the idea was that the king prayed together with his soldiers, with full respect of all court formalities. Over time, the churches have been separated and the so-called Soldiers’ Church has grown into the Cathedral of Saint-Louis Des Invalides, while the royal chapel is simply called the Dome des Invalides. There is a large number of tombs where different war heroes of France have been buried, as well as some other important individuals, but the central place certainly belongs to the sarcophagus with the mortal remains of Napoleon. Actually, these are six sarcophagi placed one into the other. Napoleon, i.e., his remains were taken from the island of St. Helena where he died in 1821 and moved to France 19 years later, in 1840. The crypt within the royal chapel of the Invalides was finally completed in 1861 and it was only then that Napoleon could be placed there to rest in peace.
And now let me say a few words about that smaller museum which I liked so much. It is the Rodin’s Museum and as it can be guessed from its name it is dedicated to August Rodin and his art. The place was not crowded and I could enjoy at leisure the pieces of one of the greatest sculptors of France. I went to the museum in the first place at a recommendation of a friend without knowing too much about Rodin’s opus. That did not prevent me from falling in love at first sight with the Kiss (still one of my favourite sculptures) and the Cathedral, while the Thinker adorning the garden had already been among my favourite pieces of art.
One other thing happened to me for the first time in Paris. It was here that I bought my first avocado, since we didn’t have them in former Yugoslavia, and I wanted to try it. Of course, at the time I had no knowledge about avocado and whether it was ripe or not, but now I know that I actually bought a still unripe avocado. When my mom and I returned to our hotel room, we tried it and it was – awful! So much so that we simply threw it away. As a matter of coincidence, that very evening we went to the home of Jaqueline and Dule for dinner. The starter was no more no less than avocado filled with shrimps in some sauce. I felt horror when I saw that green pear-like shape in front of me. But, I felt embarrassed to say anything lest I insulted my kind hosts, so with trepidation I took a small bite. This time, it was obviously a ripe avocado in question and the impression was completely opposite – a wonderful, creamy texture of the avocado, built upon with the taste of the shrimps and the sauce. That dinner was very good for broadening my culinary knowledge for other reasons as well. The main course was a meat fondue. I found it great that we chatted, had fun and laughter, while each one of us fried their pieces of meat at individual pace. I loved it so much, that the next day I went to buy the metal pot with accessories for fondue as a souvenir from Paris. Still, I use it very rarely. As it has turned out, when hanging out with friends, we, the Serbs, like to have a large quantity of food prepared upfront and then we just dive into it without any need to wait for a bite of meat to fry. It doesn’t even help if we get two special metal forks and we fry one piece while eating the other one. Perhaps, this is psychologically healthy. Give me all the food here and now. Right now!