it’s 3am central european or romantic summer time and i sincerely feel like im suffering from summer time lag. wtf. but seriously, i’m wide awake, and Paris bothers me.
something is seriously crazy about this city, this Paris that is the Paris the world knows. As I have read, it’s seriously stuck. Proper Paris, the little area with the 20 arrondissements, covers an area of less than 87 square kilometres. which is evidently tiny. it’s bounded within this 87 sq km by the peripherique, this entouring expressway. this is the Paris of ppl’s dreams. for the last i dunno how many years this has been the essence of Paris. everywhere (almost) within this 20 neighbourhoods are the same 6 story + ground floor façades. sure they all look similar, there are no (almost) shiny new buildings appearing every month, there’s no grand Sydney Opera House, Esplanade, grand hotel building, tall skyscraper, huge shopping mall. none of these modern city showoffs. but what does it have? sweeping boulevards of lovely timeless architecture, every single building in the first 10 arrondissements possess it, and most of the 2nd 10 too. the rich, the poor-er, the poor, all live within these lovely buildings. in a way it’s magical. like a castle you know, except that your castle is 87 sq km big. and all your streets have the same lovely terrible cobblestones. quaint.
but why, why not the clean modern concrete, the shiny glassware (buildings), the metallic trains, why is Paris this insanely traditional place. 87 sq km. singapore is 693 sq km. if now someone tells me that sg is a city, i would laugh. it’s humongous. sg is a country, the city is the CBD (ok bit more than that), the rest are like crappy suburbs. sure the entire Paris urban area is 14500 sq km, freaking lot bigger, but why doesnt anyone call that PARIS. it’s been in the news here for some time, the plan to increase actual Paris to include some of the nearby suburbs. why, simply because there’s just no more space in here, no more space within the coveted 750xx postal code. the CBD area, La Defense has moved out long ago, some ministries have their buildings outside, the main food produce market is outside, the airport is at Roissy, Orly, Chateau de Versailles is also outside Paris, Versailles’ land area would occupy an entire arrondissement, and many other buildings are on the fringe. the RER was created coz the Metro was too slow to be extended outwards, it is seriously crappy, but it’s a miracle they can fit 14 lines, 85 stops, and a few RER lines into this small space.
but Paris, no matter it’s size, is like the heart of the nation. Nothing can survive just inside here, all the companies have factories and production outside of Paris, not many big offices either, and also it’s so crammed with museums.., and a few big train stations. It’s like if you take New York + Washington + Chicago all crammed into Paris. It’s like all the culture of France all crammed into this small place, is it a wonder that it’s so rich, so thick. Few countries are so concentrated upon one city. Lille, Lyon, Marseille, the 3 other big cities in France all have little impact on the world. Even Bordeaux is more important. By the way Bordeaux is having a tasting session of the 2007 vintage, which is last season’s wine, unmatured wine, meaning it’s not ready to be sold yet, but you can pre-order it for the coming years, buying wine before it’s ready, insanity.
And so one walks in Paris, and what do you see, the Eiffel, the Louvre pyramid, Elysées, Notre-Dame, Seine, the Obelisk, the shops. The freaking Obelisk is the only real Obelisk outside Egypt, and it was freaking carted here all the way from Egypt (because someone felt like giving a present), it took 2 years to cart it here. Even these days it’s too expensive and far for me to fly there on a budget airline. Eiffel was a temporary exhibition. the Louvre pyramid was designed i dunno what for, anyway the pyramid metro stop has nothing to do with it, it was more to do with Napoleon and Egypt. I dunno why the museums here have such insane collections of paintings, Mona Lisa was completed here and bought by a French King, the Victoire de Samothrace (the armless winged statue of victory in the louvre) was sortof taken from Turkey when they were a colony (i think).
When I walk, I see people, I see little shops, or at least little shopfronts. Little shopfronts and little doors hide big things, be wary. The angled roads makes you forget that there are big spaces between them. Where is a good place to be seen? the cafés at Bastille? Republique? Elysees? St-Germain? Montparnasse? Montmatre? Vosges? your own neighbourhood? and so often you’ll see the great Fromageries, Epiceries, Poissoneries, Charcuteries that offer high quality gourmet cheeses(+dairy products), veggies, fishies, meats. many countries claim to be great in food, sure it’s easy to just say let’s pop into a restaurant and dine well. but it’s a helluva different matter when you’re born into it, when you grow up with a stock of wine in the cellar, with learning the different regions of wine, the different regions of cheese, with knowing that different cheeses need to be cut differently, a cheese plate needs to have different cheeses, with prefering to buy local produce coz it just bloody comes from their home region, with shopping at the neighbourhood stores frequently (like >once a week) to get freshhh food, and going to the wine shop to get a wine that will go correctly with what you’ve bought. savoir vivre? if i was born like this i would detest macdo too. but seriously fresh baguette is fantastic. it’s so fresh it’s like baked an hour before (coz they sell so many anyway), and especially if you’re going home and starting to get hungry, wah the soft fluffy inside and the thin crispy crust. i can eat half a baguette before actually getting to eat my dinner. and it’s not supposed to be kept coz they use like flour and salt and water or something and no chemicals no preservatives. very pure. and also the price is controlled. by the government.
what’s with this city where there are so many events you cannot even attend 1/4 of them, where people sit down at the roadside and write books that change the world, where they learn to prove all of mathematics so that they can change the world, where they can debate nonstop about anything, where the president can say casse-toi and speak verlan. where they speak their language with such fierce pride. it’s so real because there is so little economic and functional use in sticking to a non universal language AND refusing to also speak proper english.
they can’t care less about technology, they are not interested in having jaw-dropping buildings in Paris, and you can really feel their emphasis on substance, on the soul and the meaning. they have an respectable TGV network, they have 80% electricty from nuclear power, they are a nuclear power, they have got an equally powerful aircraft industry as USA (why? i dunno), they are going to have the experimental nuclear fusion reactor, but despite all that they’re also equally concerned about this year’s Bordeaux vintage and how the weather would affect the harvest. they also have the Arianne rocket which works, better than the Russian one.
they have got powerful human rights, they clamour over Beijing-Tibet, they rank one of the worst in career equality and homemaking equality for women. did you know there are two statues of liberty in paris? small ones, but it is the same thing.
what gives?