Bordeaux and Palmiers

Happy (belated) Thanksgiving everyone! I know, Thanksgiving was yesterday, but here in Paris, it’s not a national holiday, so I was in school all day yesterday and I had no time to make pie. We’re doing a Thanksgiving today, which is going to be made up of a hodgepodge of expat Americans, French and one Scot who is quite proud of the fact that she took a plane “for a large meal.”

If you’re interested in what a Parisian Thanksgiving looks like, head over to my food blog and check it out. I’ll have all the photos and recipes up by tomorrow.

I have to admit that this post has a bit of an ulterior motive… you may be able to guess it from the title. I’m heading home to NYC! Not permanently, of course, but because I’m graduating, I decided to allow myself an extra long vacation before starting at my new job here in Paris, and as of December 20th, I’m going to be home for a whole month! The weird part? I don’t really know what to do with myself.

New York is always changing, and it’s hard to know what to do when it’s been so long since you’ve been back. Most of my old favorite hangouts (DTUT, Alt Café) are closed, and the only place I’m sure to hit is the Strand bookstore downtown. I’ve been perusing some of your blogs and have made a short list of new places to hit, but I need some recommendations. I love coffee shops, used bookstores, dive bars, good restaurants… anyone want to help out a displaced New Yorker? Leave a comment here!

Here’s my list so far:

Pinche Taqueria- 227 Mott Street, New York NY 10012 (between Prince and Spring streets) for fish tacos

The Redhead- 349 East 13th Street (between 1st and 2nd), it’s a bar

When I was younger, I thought that the word “niente” was English. I think I may have heard my mother use it once or twice, but otherwise, it just floated around in the air whenever my father’s family was around. It wasn’t until much later that it even occurred to me that it might not be English, that other people might not understand that “niente” actually just meant “nothing.”

There are a lot of little things like that that enter our consciousness when we’re young and don’t come to the front of our brains until much later, under certain circumstances. The word “stoop,” for example, is one that I thought everyone used. Not “stoop,” to bend over, but the part of your apartment building where you could sit and watch the world go by.

“Stoop” is actually a word that came into New York English from the Dutch, back when New York was still called New Amsterdam, yet another fact I always sort of knew, somewhere in the fuzziness of the back of my brain, but that didn’t come to the forefront until I visited it and realized how similar the two cities are, and yet how different.

Amsterdam is a city where everyone gets lost: even my friend Emese, who has an uncanny ability to manoeuver her way around any city, even one she’s never visited before, cannot seem to find her way around the curving city. I, with no sense of direction, usually manage in cities by going the opposite way of the way I’m sure I’m meant to be going. In Amsterdam, my first instinct is right. Maybe Amsterdam operates under a certain kind of logic that only I understand. Or maybe it just doesn’t make any sense.

At any rate, there’s no doubt about the fact that Amsterdam is quaint and sweet and European, three things that New York is not. And yet, there’s something about the way the buildings look, the stoops, the streets… there’s something about Old Amsterdam that reminds me of a sleepy sort of version of New Amsterdam, and I think it’s lovely.

I often feel as though I’m caught halfway between being a tourist and a local.

Tonight, I was sitting on the metro on the way home from the movies when a huge tour group of Canadian students  got on board. They sat down and talked, loudly. Like Americans. I spent most of the ride pretending to be French, pretending not to listen to them talk about their lives: what one got her niece for Christmas, what perfume a boy got for his girlfriend and the exorbitant price he paid for it. When they suddenly realized that they didn’t know which stop they were supposed to get off at, I finally shed my disguise and asked them where they were headed and got off at the next stop. I don’t know what they thought of me: I know they knew my accent was American, but I also knew exactly where they were headed.

When I walk down the streets in Paris, I doubt anyone points at me and thinks to themselves, “She’s American. She doesn’t belong here.”

And yet, when I see little things like this, I’m still struck with the desire to stand awhile. To look. To smile. Even to take a picture, for the benefit of anyone who reads this blog. And I know that this doesn’t make me a local.

But sometimes I wonder if I will ever be a local. If I will ever be able to walk my usual walk down the boulevard St. Germain, see this wall, and not smile. Not appreciate it. Not adore being in Paris.

Somehow, I doubt it.

I’ve lived and visited a lot of places, but ever since I arrived in Paris, I’ve never doubted that it’s the place for me. Everywhere else I’ve been, there’s always been something missing, something that reminded me that I was still searching for somewhere to call home. Paris never did that.

Sure, Paris has its quirks… I’m not going to list them, because everyone has their own prejudices against France, and there’s no reason to keep talking about waiting in lines. There’s enough out there in the blogosphere about that, and that’s not what I wanted to talk about today anyway.

What I want to talk about is surprises. That’s why Paris has stolen and kept my heart.

I’m a person famous for changing my mind. About every year to year and a half, I suddenly feel the need for a complete overhaul in my life for no reason other than the fact that I crave change. I crave surprises. And surprises in Paris are around every corner.

One evening, I was walking home from my favorite sushi place in the 16th, which involves crossing the Bir Hakeim bridge. I was walking along, listening to my iPod, when I looked up and saw this.

I’m still not exactly sure what struck me so much, but there was just so much beauty in the symmetry. I’m lucky my camera captured it as well as it did at night.

I’m thinking now that I write about this that maybe this isn’t about Paris, necessarily: these sorts of shots are probably lingering around corners in every city, if you want to see them. Maybe it just came down to me being ready to settle somewhere, to be somewhere for more than just my usual year and a half. Maybe it was me who chose Paris, and not Paris who chose me.

Then again, maybe not.

The European Union is headed by the Council of the European Union, whose leader is decided on a rotating basis based upon who is the leader of the European member countries. Right now, the president of the Council of the European Union is President Nicolas Sarkozy, the president of France.

This means that the Eiffel Tower has been glowing blue for the past few months, and also that a huge map of Europe was installed in the French capital, my home of Paris, right on the Champ de Mars.

The map is opened for visitors to walk on. Lots of tourists like to walk across it and take pictures of themselves standing in different countries. It’s a little bit kitschy, and it’s usually the kind of thing that I would stay as far as possible from, but for some reason, one sunny day this fall, I decided to wander around Europe for awhile.

It’s funny to see all of my travels, everywhere I’ve gone that’s felt so far and foreign, reduced to just a few colored blobs on a map. The island of Mallorca, which was my home for weeks and that felt so huge I would never see the whole thing, was hardly large enough to contain both my feet. The distance from Cannes to Paris, one that is actually five hours and, when I moved from one to the other, felt like so much longer, is just the length of a normal step.

There are so many countries I have left to visit. I stood in Vienna, the furthest east I’ve travelled, and looked at all of the other countries: Hungary, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, that I’ve never even seen.

Nothing like a kitschy map to put your seemingly worldwide travels in perspective.

Champ de Mars

RER C: Champ de Mars

Métro: Bir Hakeim