On The Outside Looking In

Thoughts on Europe by an American

I recently spent some time in France and Germany, visiting friends and family that I hadn’t seen for several years. It was a two week trip, with at least two nights spent anywhere we stopped, and was spent less in popular tourist destinations than in smaller towns and villages. There will be more than one post, mostly chronological.

Arrival

We landed in Paris and went through passport control. With typical French efficiency, most of the semi-automated checkin kiosks, usable by EU citizens as well as those from the US, Mexico, Japan, and Canada, were mostly offline filtering the line to just one booth each. Otherwise, it was fairly smooth. Of course, it was in the middle of the series of heat waves early in the month.

Our first experience with the local subway and train system was mixed. Getting tickets was fairly simple, once you understood the model (flat fare, with two hours of transfers, vice the per distance model in Tokyo), and the subways themselves well signed and easy to navigate. There were lots of stairs, and very few elevators or ramps. The halls and tunnels were cleaner than I’d seen in New York though not to Tokyo standards, but the bathrooms…. well, they are better avoided. All in all, it was easy, convenient, stations were well placed, and the cars were clean. I didn’t have to deal with idiots dancing around or beggars accosting me, though a lot of that may have to do with sticking to the central quarters of Paris where the museums and monuments were.

All in all, I can see why people who love Paris, love Paris. The part where we stayed and walked was beautiful, and clean - though again, being in the main tourist areas likely contributed to that, and everywhere you look there are monuments and incredible architecture. Moreso than almost anywhere I’ve been, excepting Tokyo, there were fit and attractive men and women - and the women looked like women - who were well put together. Yes, I’m including L.A., Colombia, and many other places I’ve spent time in. Of course, being the cosmopolitan city it is, it’s easy to spot a lot of people who are not French, even if they’re well put together, some of them because they were just trying too hard.

In part because European food standards, the food was excellent. Grabbing a sandwich or dinner was in the same league as dining out stateside, pricewise, perhaps a bit more, but groceries were cheaper, and often better quality when it came to things like bread and yogurt.

And of course there was an amazing bakery within a block of the hotel. Several, actually.

Walkabout

Having dealt with the jet lag fairly easily via a quick nap (If you’re shifting time zones more than a few hours, start acting like you’re in that time zone for at least the last 8 hours insomuch as you can. i.e. sleep, and minimize the alcohol or avoid it entirely), we did a walking tour of the center of Paris via one of the guide companies. It was a pleasant few hours and gave us an idea of what we wanted to visit in depth the next day. The guide was knowledgeable, the walk pleasant, and between that and stepping into a boulangerie for coffee and sandwiches, gave me a lot of food for thought on common underlying assumptions - namely those of the modern west regarding the trendy modern causes and the sins of colonialism.

I swear, almost everything from the hotel checkin to the payment for the coffee and food, a message reminded me of how much CO2 we were using or saving compared to other options. Ditto the main train stations when we headed to Nantes later, or came back through to go to Germany. You are constantly beat over the head with it. Swing Thoughts and Roundabouts told me that a Frenchman would rather contemplate facing the apocalypse than consider installing A/C. Fortunately, our hotel had air conditioning, and we were in a lull in the heat waves.

There was also a common casual assumption that everyone bought into the progressive “colonialist” narrative. This was most telling in how the collection of art in the Louvre was obtained, or the framing of it as “stealing” by the guide. I declined to ask if anyone would see or know of them if they hadn’t been collected, especially given the penchant for destroying historic artifacts or cannibalizing them by many of the cultures. There was also a casual atheism strangely at odds with their love of the old churches. The rise and primacy of secular powers, even in controlling religion, was framed favorably, while things like the authenticity of relics were mocked. I get that not every church and cathedral that claims to have a piece of the cross could possibly have an authentic one, but you don’t have to tell a story about how “there would be enough wood to build several ships.”

Finally, of course, is the celebration of Brotherhood, liberty, and egalitarianism everywhere. I get it, it’s the founding myth in many ways of the modern cultural and intellectual french, and was the cry of said revolution, but the French revolution was but the first of many massacres and terrors in the name of said egalitarianism. And no, those dots are not connected by many.

The Louvre

A beautiful building marred by a hideous entrance pyramid-thing. The museum itself is staggeringly huge, with multiple large wings, and multiple floors in each wing, of art, statues, all well organized and curated, with explanatory text. From the english translations available, the explanations were more academic than not, sans a heaping of guilt.

The Mona Lisa is actually bigger than I was led to expect from the “it’s a small painting” stereotype, but the crowd about it is such that it’s difficult to get a good view. It’s not as large as most of the paintings on the walls, and some of them, like the Wedding at Cana in the very same space at over 20ft by 30 feet, are huge.

Getting in required tickets with a reservation for a specific time slot. There was no limit on how long you could stay, though.

Notre Dame

Wonderfully restored - a job still in progress, and stunning. Unsurprisingly, there were bag inspections. Reservations are advised, again, for specific half-hour time slots, as the walk-ins line was huge, and security checked bags, etc.

I wonder if two and two is put together by anyone at bag checks and such are needed when they used to be unnecessary.

Sainte-Chapelle

This one requires a reservation, the guards are standing around with submachine guns, and bags get screened through an x-ray, because it’s adjacent to several government buildings. It’s also stunning. Part of it was being reconstructed, but inside, they put up a mirrored wall to make it much less obvious. You can spot it below.

And of course, the Eiffel Tower

We hung out at a park near where we had dinner, and watched the sun set.

The next day, we were on our way to see friends on the western side of France.

Meet Our Friends

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