Friday was my last full day in Paris. I spent the morning at Starbucks, writing about 4,000 words. (My trick at Starbucks has been to buy their drip coffee, which is around $3.60 for a grande, and bring a croissant or other pastry from a boulangerie. I don't feel bad about this because (a) their pastries are so cheap - almost as cheap as at boulangeries - that I think margin has to be largely in the coffee, and (b) the place is so empty in the morning that it's not like I'm taking up valuable real estate... it gets crowded in the afternoon and stays so until evening, which makes the 9 p.m. closure even weirder.) In the afternoon, I met up with my British running buddy for a very un-aerobic afternoon of sitting at a cafe, sitting in a park, and discussing how her fiance proposed to her (yes, it involved Russian nesting dolls, although not in the obvious ring-in-the-small-one way). In the evening, we continued our un-aerobicness with wine, cheese, and tartallettes. So, on the one hand, a highly unproductive day. On the other hand, highly Parisian, and the kind of day I need help having.
Saturday morning I woke up early (the inevitable result of too much wine the night before) and walked around a bit. I got breakfast from the boulangerie on Ile St. Louis (where I bought the almond tuile... I discovered, a bit too late, that this is the best pain au chocolat of my whole trip, although perhaps this is partly b/c I ate it so early in the day. Then I picked up a sandwich for lunch and headed to the airport, with plenty of time to spare before my flight.
Ha ha ha. Those are the thoughts of an American. Since lines and lateness are such a big part of life in Paris, I will tell you what happened next. First, of course, I had to get on the train to the airport, in a train station roughly the size and annoyance level of Penn Station (although not, actually, a major train station of Paris). Then I had to sit on the train as we trundled through endless rail yards and came to endless unexplained stops, of course becoming increasingly concerned. But I told myself I was still in plenty of time; when I got to the airport, even after taking the shuttle to the correct terminal and figuring out where to check in for my flight, I still had almost two hours before takeoff. I figured I'd check in, go through security, then spend my last 12 euros or so on souvenirs and snacks for the flight (from first takeoff to second landing was scheduled to be eleven hours and I generally can't sleep on planes, so a sandwich was not exactly sufficient).
Until I saw the line. Basically, there were around 240 people on the plane, about 2/3 of them had gotten to the airport before me, and they were all standing in line. I did some investigating and discovered that they were being serviced by ONE man at ONE counter (in Europe, the thing seems to be to have separate counters for each flight, rather than having everyone flying on a given airline check in at the same counters; this means you also can't check in before they open the counter for that flight) while meanwhile the man next to him, manning the counter for a flight to Athens, had no line and nothing to do. So I waited in that line for one hour and forty-five minutes, much of which I spent in a state of anxiety that I would not get checked in on time, which would have been far more intense if any of the French or other European people around me had been remotely concerned (they weren't).
There were no restrooms or stores in the check-in area, so after checking in I hoped to see one... nope... just long hallways, moving walkways, and no people anywhere. I proceeded to my gate, where they had, about ten minutes before, started boarding the plane, by which I mean letting people through security - which they have a separate instance of at each gate. The line for security was pretty short, however, since they don't particularly care if you take off your shoes or have liquids or computers. One through, I managed to locate a restroom, but of course the gate agent told me to hurry. There was a coffee shop, but it didn't sell anything packaged and I was hurrying, so after I'd gotten some water I got on the plane.
Where, of course, there was no action. About half the passengers were on the plane already, with the rest dribbling on, and they periodically made announcements that we were delayed for an unpredictable amount of time due to a "computer problem". Which is interesting terminology for "poor allocation of labor". Fortunately, I wasn't at all worried about missing my connection, since Iceland Air, which I think does most of its business through (rather than to or from) Iceland holds its connections until incoming passengers can get on.
And, also, even though we landed an hour late, fifteen minutes after my flight to JFK was supposed to start boarding, there had been no activity. Everyone was standing in line at the gate, which is the only thing there is to do at that airport as there is almost nowhere to sit and or buy things. Seeing the giant line, I knew I had plenty of time and was hoping to buy something else to eat (although of course I wouldn't be able to spend my euros... they took them on the flight to Reykjavik, and I bought an interesting "wafer bar", but am just going to have to be stuck with $15 or so of unspendable money now, and no crappy airport souvenirs) but this turned out to be not really possible; my options were the Duty Free Shop (chocolate in large packages and alcohol) and the Iceland Souvenir Shop, where I ended up buying an Icelandic chocolate bar. Being in Iceland, looking at Icelandic souvenirs, felt strange; it seemed a long time since I was in Reykjavik. Very weirdly, there were no nuts or crackers or chips or protein bars or individual candies (i.e. that last forever, useful when you're on your second many-hour flight) or any of the many foods that you can buy in the newstand of even the tiniest American airport. There was a cafe, but even though it was 5 p.m. it was closed.
Anyway, that was the end of the interestingness. The second flight was not bad at all, for a six-hour flight on which my seatmate did not wear shoes and had clearly never washed his feet, and my across-the-aisle neighbors had a child who was pushing the upper limits of lap-babyness. I watched a movie called Stay, which was quite good.
And now I am back in New York. My apartment seems huge, and my non-netbook computer seems huge, and I can make my own coffee, and I can converse easily with people around me (i.e. in English). It seems a bit sudden. I was sad to leave Paris, and (as is typical for me) often felt like I wasn't doing a good enough job, whatever that is, of properly experiencing and appreciating Paris, whatever that would mean. But I saw many museums, took many pictures, did a lot of writing, and ate several pounds of cheese and butter and pastry. And, most importantly, I was somewhere else, somewhere very different, and for a month I had a very different life. The last time I did a big trip like this, I think I changed a lot as a person, grew up a lot, which I don't think happened this time - but I'm also a lot older now. I do feel, however, more myself than I did before I went, if that makes any sense, which is maybe one of the primary purposes of travel.
Paris was a great place to spend a largely-idle month because it is so much about idleness. While I was very active for much of the trip, the things I was active with were fundamentally leisure pursuits: walking, eating, writing, going to art museums, looking at architecture, and people watching. Those are all things I enjoy doing, and all things I do to some degree in my life in New York - but Paris is a place, and one of the few places, I think - where it's easy to do those things full time. The city is set up for it. I relearned, to the extent I had forgotten, how much I appreciate these things, how much I like art museums, how the reason I don't write much fiction anymore is mostly lack of dedicated time and laziness (rather than lack of inclination or ability), how much I can enjoy unscheduled wanderings. The whole month was an unscheduled wandering, and while scheduling would have optimized it in many ways, in its unscheduledness it was pretty damn cool.
In two weeks I will start my new job, and who knows what life will be like then? In my passport, there are quotations on all the stamp pages. One is by Lyndon B. Johnson:
For this is what America is all about. It is the uncrossed desert and the unclimbed ridge. It is the star that is not reached and the harvest sleeping in the unplowed ground. Is our world gone? We say "Farewell." Is a new world coming? We welcome it - and we will bend it to the hopes of [wo]man."
Sunday, August 1, 2010
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