Americans on French Soil (Part I - Paris)

La Tour D' Eiffel
As the winter wind whips through the narrow streets of the highest point in Paris, Montemarte, a young artist dips his head into a local pub and seats himself near the frosted window, dripping with the rain pattering on the thatch roof. He whips out a pad and pencil and as the waitress approaches, quickly jots down a portrait of the young dame. Before he orders a meal, he explains that though he does not have any money, he will pay the girl for the wine and dine with the picture in his pocket. Blushing, she takes the picture and with a wink, slips it into her apron. And that is how it began.

The artist frequented the pub, and soon enough the waitresses pockets were overflowing with sketches and drawings. Eventually, with these pictures pouring out of all of his waitresses’ pockets, the owner finally confronts the young man, explaining that his business cannot afford to keep feeding the man for free. With that, the artist makes one last plea: “Let me paint the inside of your pub,” the artist pleaded, “one day I will be famous all over the world, and your paintings will be worth more than money can buy.”

The owner laments, and allows the young man to work for his meals. However, he wouldn’t fret for too long because as he would eventually discover, the artist was right. The man was Pablo Picasso.

Picasso’s Restaurant where he first started.

Bonjour from France! I hope that this story entertained you--or at least got you to this point in my blog--because here is where I tell you about my week long trek through France, from Paris to Normandy, and a couple of places in between. I heard this story while walking around Montemarte, the highest point in Paris which overlooks the rest of the city and is famous for its early 20th Century artists, of course I wasn't on a tour there, but I followed around a group that was on a tour and listened in on a couple of highlights (when you’re a college student you have to find ways to be economical). This was one of my favorite days in Paris, and seeing as how this entry will be devoted just to just Paris (and I’ll fill you on the rest of the trip later) I thought it was fitting to start the blog with it.

The second-week trip to France has been a staple of the Leuven program for quite some time. And so we departed on week two, as a group of 24 American students, Professor Forni (our director), and her family (husband Wess and son’s Jesse and Jack). So the 28 of us set out on a bus headed for Paris on August 29th. We arrived in Paris roughly 4 hours later and settled in at our Hotel Alhambra, located right next to the Oberkampf subway stop on the number 9 line in Paris. We were just about 10 minutes from any spot in Paris whether by subway or by foot.

We did a lot of the traditional French touristy stuff throughout the week in Paris. The first day we were a little tired, but went to see the Eiffel Tower - or “Tour d’Eiffel” as I mocked in my Pepe le Pew French accent. We also saw the Ecole Militaire, which was the military school for poor French children--Napoleon studied there--and the Peace Memorial which has “Peace” written in 50 different languages on it, which were both in the same area as the Eiffel Tower. On the second day, we went to Mass at Notre Dame in the morning, toured the Consiergerie (the old Palace that was used as a prison and execution chamber during the French Revolution), and spent time in the Latin Corridor in the afternoon. The Latin Corridor is the old section of the city that used to hold all of the students from the University, therefore it became known as the Latin Corridor because the students would speak Latin to one another. It’s also relatively cheap to get a meal because students still reside there today--so that made it a favorite for lunch multiple times on the trip.
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Matt and I outside the Eiffel Tower

Keeping with the spirit of doing things that everyone in Paris does, we spent the morning and afternoon of day 3 at the Louvre. However, one of the things that not every American gets the privilege of doing, is meeting Judd Apatow outside the Monalisa--one of the coolest experiences of my life. Matt, Chase, Tim, and I went back to the Louvre in the afternoon and saw Judd Apatow there. We got up the courage and walked over and talked to the director of Funny People, Knocked Up, and 40 Year Old Virgin (comedy favorites of mine) and he was great in answering a couple of questions, chatting with us, and then going on his way. We didn’t want to bother him, because he looked relatively content, and I only wish we got a picture because most of the group thinks Matt and I are lying.

Since I had already been to Paris once, the most exciting part of the trip for me was the things I did outside of the big group tours. I spent one afternoon up in Montemarte – where Picasso painted the restaurant. The old narrow streets were what I always imagine Paris would look like in my head. I went with a small group and we found our way over the stone roads and pathways and into a small market. Slowly we navigated ourselves through narrow streets (most of which we slowly learned were not on our, free give-away hotel maps) until we found the Salvatore Dali Museum, a fascinating museum filled with inspirational quotes and bountiful artwork. After the Dali exhibit, we worked our way over to Sacre Coeur, the church in Montemarte that overlooks the city. Then we spent the night climbing the Eiffel tower and smoking cigars at the base.

Sacre Coeur and the view

Keeping in the spirit of doing things I hadn’t seen before, one of the days, when the group went up to Versailles, I stayed back with a smaller group of people and did my own touring of Paris. I toured the Modern Museum of Art (not really my thing but it was free), the Musee di Armee (where I spent two hours in just the WWI and WWII exhibits--pretty cool) and Napoleon’s tomb. However, that night I experienced one of the largest culture shocks since I’ve been here, when I ordered beef Tartar for dinner--which for those of you uneducated folk (like me at the time that I ordered it) is basically a raw hamburger patty. It was that day I developed the concept that Tartar = badbad, and came up with the quip: Tartar, the food so bad the French named it twice.

Besides this minor hiccup in my relatively successful trip through Paris, I found this trip to be very eye-opening for me. I went to Paris with a very different mentality than the last time I was there. Having been in Belgium for 3 days before we left, and knowing absolutely no Dutch, I almost felt helpless. So when my professor offered us common French phrases before we left, I actually looked them over and studied them, and storing that with the little bit of French I knew from 6th grade, I sought to at least attempt to speak the language when I was making my way around the city and then throughout the country side. Just the idea of making an effort to say thank you or hello in the native tongue was exciting for me. I wanted to be able to show at least that much respect to a people whose culture I knew very little about and would only be exploring for less than a week.

That desire, that need to integrate into the society and not be the American talking in English (and when they don’t understand getting louder and slower) was something different for me. Yes, I had studied Italian, but when I went to Italy, I had done just that – known and studied Italian. When I went to France this time, I actually made an effort to learn a couple of phrases, if even so few, so that I could at least present myself in a respectable manner when I tried to converse and interact. And that same attitude actually has me a little bit excited to take the 5 hour a day Dutch course for the next week, because I have a desire to understand the people around me, their culture, and the most importantly, their language. That revelation for me was one of the greatest things I took away from this trip. Something I think I’ll carry into the rest of my year here in Leuven.

Gentlemen smoking cigars outside the Eiffel Tower

Sorry for the long blog, but there was a lot to tell, keep tuned for Part II of the France Trip: Charte, San Malo, Monte Sainte Michael, and Normandy.