Ian Signing Off

Now that a week’s gone by, and that I’ve now been in Marseille, Frankfurt, and Salzburg, I have a little bit of reflection and comparison to do on Paris. (Pictures here will mostly be an assortment of pictures from the last week, not necessarily related to the text)

I was sitting at Bastille eating a crêpe with a friend the other night, and I had said, “God I’m gonna miss Paris.” We cross the street but almost get hit by a car, a scooter, a bike, and then another scooter. We both looked at each other and said, “Can’t wait to get out of here.” Kind of a funny interaction. But of course that got me thinking about what I’ll miss and what I won’t.

I’ll miss the beauty of the city and the quick access to so many historical museums, societies, and buildings. I’ll miss my little crêpe stand where I’d used to stop by every morning, and where I felt like a regular. And can I add that I’ll miss the French pastries! And of course, I’m getting a little nostalgic about all the Eiffel Tower picknicks we took and French food we tried under the sparkling light show.

Anyone who was with me on the trip knows that I’m really gonna miss the metro. That I could be anywhere in the city and know exactly how to get back home, to CEA, or the Eiffel Tower from there. You hardly ever need a GPS in Paris once you’re familiar with the system. I’ll miss the little jingle that plays over the loudspeaker when you’re sitting and waiting, and imitating the voices that come on afterwards to a T. Towards the end, I was walking down the stairs to the platform, and the jingle played. I whistled it, and then said « chers voyageurs » with the same inflection and timing as the recording. I made the guy next to me chuckle! The Parisians are notoriously stern, and I had hardly ever heard a local laugh, let alone make one laugh. I felt, well, rather proud in that moment.

Leaving my room for the last time

See, there is a politeness in France. I learned how to great people in a store or in a restaurant, what facial expressions to make, and how to wish someone a goodbye when we left. Being in Germany now, I feel a need to relearn that all, and I greatly dislike feeling rude or like a naïve tourist (which I suppose I am).

Train ride through the German countryside was beautiful!

I won’t miss, though, that the metro closes at ~12:45–1:00 AM every weekday morning, and an hour later on weekends. I felt like we were always rushing to beat the metro’s close. Especially with the Eiffel Tower picknicks, as the tower is just so far from anywhere we would regularly be at. It takes less time by taking more express lines like Ligne 1, but we were never willing to take the chance of needing to transfer so late at night, for fear that we’d get off and that would be it. I won’t miss, too, the always-packed trains of my home line, Ligne 8. When I was coming home from the Loire Valley excursion, I was so tired. All I was hoping was for a spot on the metro, but when the Ligne 8 train came into the station, it was nearly packed to the brim. I’ve taken the metro (U-Bahn and S-Bahn) in Germany now, and the trains are significantly cleaner, they announce the stops better, including approximate arrival times at all stations and which side of the tracks to exit, on all lines I’ve been on (only true of some in Paris, and even then, no trains compare to how nice and not-overcrowded Paris’s are). I won’t miss the homeless people and buskers around either…

Very clean German S-Bahn, equivalent to the RER in Paris

I also won’t miss just the utter chaos of living in a city as large and crazy as Paris. There was almost too much to do there—I never got to the Rodin Museum, nor Napoleon’s Tomb (Les Invalides) despite them being in the city like everything else. So forget me wanting to go to the Debussy museum or the Louis Braille museum, which were both an hour outside of the city. There just wasn’t enough time, which is funny, since I was worried that six weeks would be too much. I’m excited to get back to the hustle and bustle of Ann Arbor, which, for me, is mostly concentrated in the Grad Library during the week, and my friends’ houses on the weekends.

About the coolest site we visited in Frankfurt: Römerberg, the Innenstadt (inner city)

Parisians have a stereotype of being rude, and though I feel like that’s not too far from the truth, maybe it’s based on a little more misunderstanding that people like to chalk it up to be. Just in Paris, the American “smile and nod” is replaced with a quiet “bonjour.” Maybe it was because I could speak French that I ended up with not too many people thinking of me as a stupid American, as we liked to joke. But here in Germany, I feel like the people are, if not ruder, because I think that’s an unfair term, more direct. They’re not afraid to tell you that you’re doing something wrong, or going in the wrong direction. They are probably more friendly, in terms of more willing to talk to Americans and help us out, but they’ll do so very directly. I find it even funny to compare the languages. I took German last semester, so communicating has been possible for me. But comparing the languages has been especially amusing for me. In English, you’d say “please push the button to open the door.” In French, it’d be “Thank you for using the button to open the door,” and in German, just simply, “opendoorpushbutton” in a single word (based on a real example I saw yesterday). In French, when ordering in a restaurant, you’d add “for me, I’d like…” in German, it’s just “I want…” They save little room for formalities and extra words—straight and to the point. There are also few words in the German language. Most all of the words are made by gluing on prefixes and roots together to make those classically long words that the world likes to make fun of German for. There’s the classic idea of German efficiency, but it’s real, I promise. The French, on the other hand, prefer to add some spice and class to their life.

Dinner in Marseille; my friend, my sister, and I atop Notre Dame de la Garde in Marseille and the Eurobank Tower in Frankfurt

I’m so glad that I was able to speak French. The day I arrived in Marseille, I spoke nearly entirely French. My friend spoke English, but none of his family really did. So for everyone to understand, I threw myself into French. By the end of the short few days, I was understanding everything, and it felt absolutely great. My German is significantly worse than my French, and though I could hold a solid conversation for a while at the end of last semester, the time I spent in France took much of that away. I have very much missed being able to speak to near fluency the language of the place I’m in.

Thank you all for coming along with me on my journey in Paris. It’s been a pleasure and an honor to share it! I have more to say, but this is getting long, so I’ll leave it here. For one last time, signing off,

Ian