I now realize why they call them blonde bombshells. They explode into your life with long lasting effects. Though I say this with the fondest regards for Lauren, I think it took me all week to recover from her visit. Monday after I breakfasted with her and saw her off, I went back to my apartment and worked on the report I have to do to validate my internship experience academically. It’s coming along but I really hate doing it since my internship is providing little substance to make it interesting. It’s just a formality. My host mom returned Monday night from a weekend at her country house and we talked about Barcelona and she made fun of me for leaving Paris so much. She asked me to count how many weekends I have spent in Paris. I came up with 5 or 6. She knows as well as I do that the weekends I have spent here have not been wasted. I have been at museums and seeing the town as much as I can. I guess I was just so focused on travel this semester. There are places in Paris that I don’t really know very well, Montparnasse and Montmartre specifically. But I’d say I’ve got a pretty good handle on the rest. My host mom and I were talking about how time passes really quickly and I told her that with other trips and things, I only have one full weekend left in Paris. This weekend I was in Amsterdam, next weekend I will be in Normandy, and the weekend after that my brother arrives. We will be hanging out in Paris all week, I’ll finish with the program on Wednesday, have two days to explore with Ben, then we leave for Egypt on Saturday. I can’t believe how fast it’s all gone by.
Anyway, my host mom and I were talking about this and I could see it started her thinking. Then the next morning at breakfast she came up to me while I was drinking my tea before I left for work and asked me if I had ever taken the Bateux Mouches at night. I told her I had and that I plan on taking my brother when he comes again. Then she sat silent for a minute and said, “would you like to go out driving one night this week? I’d like to show you how beautiful Paris is at night.” I readily agreed and we set the date for Thursday night.
The week passed quickly as Monday was a bank holiday and Friday I was taking off to go to Amsterdam. Tuesday night I went to bed at 10pm and caught up on sleep. Wednesday I cooked with some friends at an apartment on the opposite side of town so after dinner it took me an hour to get home. It was worth it though because we made a killer stir fry and then we caramelized apples and bananas for dessert. My friend’s host mom is very friendly and she came in after dinner and hung out with us in the kitchen chatting until close to 11:30.
Thursday came quickly and I was really looking forward to spending some time with Mme Arnal. I went home after work and we both made our dinners and sat down together talking. We traded stories, talked about my family, traveling, lots of things. I felt like a friend, and not an arrangement. She suggested we have a farewell party my last week in Paris when my brother is here, complete with Berthillon ice cream and champagne. She said “pas de regime ce soirée-là”. (No diet that night.)
After dinner we got into her car and headed off on our nighttime joyride through the streets of Paris. We started on the Peripherique and drove across town on it to Bois de Boulogne. That is the other wooded park area, slightly larger than Vincennes, on the western side of the city. We then exited the Peripherique and drove by the Eiffel Tower, Place Trocadero, the Louvre, Musée d’Orsay, all the chic quarters, all the time with Mme Arnal narrating and telling me about what’s cool and asking me what I had already seen. Most of what we had passed I had already seen, and at night, but it was so fun to zoom past in a car and have a personal tour guide. Place Trocadero was the most impressive. Directly across from the Eiffel tower it has long, wide flights of steps and walkways leading up to the grand spread of buildings at the top, and an artfully lit array of fountains and pools in front of it.*
We drove over to Ile St. Louis next because Gérard, her boyfriend, had invited us over. He lives in an apartment on the island, actually on the Seine. You can see the back of Notre Dame, the Institut du Monde Arabe, and throw a stone into the St. Germain quarter all from his gorgeous balcony. Needless to say, his apartment was amazing. It was palatial in size and immediately gave off an “eclectic bachelor” vibe. He has traveled to six continents and the place is full, floor to 12-foot ceiling, of books and remnants of his voyages. He has antelope skulls with horns on the walls from hunting in Africa. He has piles of maps from India, Morocco, California, Borneo, and Japan just to name a few. To get there you walk up the original stairs from the turn of the century that are so warped you walk up on a slant. Madame Arnal, with that arch, sophisticated air remarked as we were getting out of the car, “it’s not the greatest place in the world, but it’s nice”. I, upon stepping over the threshold, was totally impressed. So this is how the other half lives. He pulled out a bottle of really nice port and poured us each a glass. It was a little too strong for me and I did what I could, thinking it polite and also a shame to waste what was probably pretty expensive alcohol. They noticed that I was having a little trouble getting it down and offered me an alternative whic
We walked out on to the balcony, sipping our drinks and watching the tourist boats pass. I couldn’t believe where I was. I was looking at one of Gérald’s coffee-table books called “The Encyclopedia of Taste” and it was explaining pretty much everything that is edible - how, why and when it is used. I came across the meat section and the lamb page particularly caught my eye. I knew that people voluntarily ate tongue of cow, horse, lamb brain and pig chitterlings here, but I did not know before this that they ate lamb testicle. They must have seen the look on my face because they asked me what I was reading. Apparently it is called “a white kidney” to sound more appealing and is roasted and eaten with garlic and spices. So if you ever see “rognon blanc” on a menu in France, I suggest that you avoid it unless you are a truly adventurous eater.
We finished our evening and on our drive home Madame Arnal told me that she was going to be gone the whole next week until Sunday and that she was entrusting to me the apartment. I was leaving for Amsterdam the next day but I am looking forward to pretending that I am the proud owner of a Parisian flat.
I suppose I should throw in a few details about my weekend in Amsterdam.
I left Friday morning on the train. It took about four and a half hours to get there because I took the cheapest, and therefore slowest, one. The trip was quick and quiet and I arrived in Centraal Station to be met with a gigantic throng of people. I had been warned how touristy the city was, but I didn’t expect it to be so crowded. I walked into the main square outside the station and the city felt like an amusement park. There were flashing lights and rides and cotton candy stands everywhere. I will forever associate the main streets of Amsterdam with that fun-house, over-the-top entertainment feel. George met me at the hostel. I had mentioned I wanted to go to Amsterdam one night when we were all hanging out with Lauren and he had already been once but wanted to go back. He had taken the overnight bus and had arrived at 6:30 that morning. The place was run by extremely sketchy characters, overpriced, and not at all consistent with their advertisements. The rooms and beds were shabby and thrown together, but it was warm, not horribly uncomfortable, and pretty clean. I had had a hard time finding anything available so I was glad to have a place to stay but the owners set me on edge and I felt like I was getting ripped off. A number of times I had to fight to get the things that were advertised as included. Breakfast (another supposedly included amenity) didn’t show up on either morning. We spent very little time at the hostel in reality, but I was still pretty disappointed with my booking.
As soon as I had dropped off my stuff, I went to the Anne Frank House. It was a quick walk from the hostel (one of its only good points was its incredibly convenient location) and I didn’t have to wait very long in line to get it. It was eerie walking through the rooms where she and the other 7 hid for so long, never being able to leave, hardly ever even seeing the sun. They had emotional and moving testimonies from Otto Frank and Miep Gies (one of the assistants in hiding them). The wall decorations she put up in her room are still hanging; they have the real red plaid diary that she wrote in. They have the card that was made for her when she arrived at Bergen-Belsen. Sometimes it’s hard for me to believe that some of the things that have happened in history are real. Versailles is a palace of such opulence and fantasy that when walking through, I pictured Marie Antoinette in the finest silk and satin and 10 attendants at her beck and call, and it was hard to believe that it actually was true, that someone actually lived in that palace and led that kind of life. Of course, the Anne Frank House makes tangible a much harsher reality: the Holocaust. Not quite as pleasant to visualize as “let them eat cake”. It also brings to life the incredible story of this young girl. I did a project on it in 5th grade EPP class with my two best friends at the time, Julie and Kathleen. We wrote a play about finding Anne Frank’s Diary and we did a radio show set in the time of World War and I kept thinking of reading the diary and our discussion groups. The whole time walking through I remembered all the stuff we learned and how we were all so shocked to hear of some of the horrors of that time. This museum made it all that much more real.
 |
| Canals of Amsterdam |
After the Red Light District we went to a famed coffeehouse and hung out. All the coffee houses are great because everyone is always stoned, so there are no obnoxious guys trying to hit on you over blaring electronic techno, the music is actually really good, and you always have interesting decor. They also have incredible fruit juice which they fresh-squeeze right in front of you. The smoke, if still bothersome, at least smells better than just regular cigarette smoke and the people are generally much friendlier and interesting. I enjoyed myself.
The next morning I went running in Vondelpaark and in getting there, took a tour of the city. Amsterdam really is a beautiful town outside of the lurid Red Light District and all the drugs. The people are incredibly nice and the city is so charming with all its flowers and canals. Certain streets are lined with Smart Shops which are full with any kind of drug paraphernalia and drug that you can think of, and certain streets are noticeably touristy, but when you go through the inner canals, and outside of the center city area, there are some lovely, quaint places. I really enjoyed my run in the park and almost didn’t want to go back to my sketchy hostel in the sketchy city center. But necessity dictated my actions more than my desires, and so I returned to eat the non-existent breakfast and start the day. George wanted to sleep late so I told him I would meet him at 1 back at the hostel and I went off to see Rembrandt’s house and studio, an old monastery, and the old church. I first tried Oude Kerk (old church) but they were having a service and I couldn’t get in. Plus, it is right in the middle of the Red Light District, I was by myself, and even at 10am in broad daylight, perhaps because of that hour, the girls in the windows made me so much sadder.**
I gave up on the church pretty quickly so I could get out of there and then walked to Rembrandt’s old house and studio on the south side of town. What a worthwhile trip. His house was very large for the time in which he bought it and he apparently led an extravagant lifestyle, spending large sums of money collecting objets d’art and even overspending to the point where he was forced to move to a smaller home to pay his debts. He slept in a box bed which is literally a cabinet, just big enough for someone to sleep in if they were curled up in a ball. I saw his room where he made his etchings and they did a demonstration of the printing process which I loved. Upstairs where his studio was they showed how he made his pigment for the paint. The etchings were what surprised me the most. Every one is so different and so detailed. Rembrandt was always noted for the freedom of his style and etchings are a surprisingly forgiving and easily workable media. I never knew that about him before.
After Rembrandt’s house I spent a long time walking a long way to find a historic convent which reportedly held some pretty gardens and a quiet seclusion I found myself yearning for. It was a very small courtyard with perfect rose gardens and little nun’s quarters in Dutch wooden houses all in a row. It’s not much to see but it was nice and I’m glad I went. The oldest house in Amsterdam is here, built in 1420 and still standing!
 |
| Begijnhof courtyard |
Next we went to the Rijksmuseum which holds the world’s biggest collection of Dutch masters and a large collection of decorative art pieces. We explored the thoughtfully curated museum and enjoyed rehashing our respective art history classes and what we had learned about this painter and that technique. It didn’t take us long to get through the museum though, and we were both really worn out from walking so much, so we decided to get an early dinner. I hate to admit this, but we went to the Hard Rock Café in Amsterdam. George had a craving for a huge bacon cheeseburger and when he saw it, his mind was made up. It’s in a fantastic location right in the middle of a lively square with a gigantic chessboard and tons of street performers which made for a fun, if very cliché and kitschy dinner. We had fun comparing our schools (his being Villanova) and making fun of the others football or basketball teams. After dinner we walked back to the hostel to get our coats as the sun went down and decided to take a canal cruise. Very touristy, but even my host mom said it was a good idea. I liked going past all the monuments at night and hearing about the history. After it, I was completely resolved in my feelings that Amsterdam is a lovely and charming city. The lights on the bridges and the boats in the canals, the gorgeous architecture and the old hauling systems that are still used today all made for a picturesque evening.
It had started to rain a little and turned very cold, and I was exhausted from doing so much in one day. I called it in around 10pm and went back to the hostel.
 |
| Bad photo of a Dutch master still life in the Rijksmuseum |
And now I am back in Paris enjoying the empty apartment and being able to eat dinner whenever I want and not having to worry about the boyfriend's snoring for a whole week. Amsterdam was an eye-opening experience and I am glad I saw both sides: the seedy underbelly and the more hidden, quaint beauty.
Next weekend is Normandy. I can’t believe I only have one weekend left in Paris. It’s just unreal how fast everything has gone by. I have begun to think of what my final entry will be like… but then I don’t really want to think about writing it. So much to recap, so many loose-ends to tie up. It seems like a daunting task. I think I better try and finish the semester first. I hope this finds everyone well. Until next time.
*Reminds me of the WWII memorial in DC.
** I think, now, that maybe these girls wouldn't want me to be sad for them. Some of them may even say that they chose this, they want this for themselves, they earn a great living, etc. Whatever your views on feminism are, or a woman's right to whatever, it still makes me deeply sad that this happens.
No comments:
Post a Comment