When in Paris…

This evening, after returning home from school, I received a little package from my mother. Enclosed was a letter and a book on “Charming Inns and Itineraries” in France that she thought might be useful for our upcoming trip to Nice. At one point in her letter she commented on how Lisa and I were probably busy with school and recalled her own educational experience in Europe. “When I was living in Bergamo,” she wrote, “I was living in paradise, but my reality was lectures, projects, exams, etc…” As I was reading those words, still exhausted from a full-day of studying and a three-hour lecture, Lisa was having a telephone conversation with her mother and telling her about our plans to travel through Sicily and Tuscany over our Christmas vacation. That moment crystallized perfectly what the last few weeks have been like for us. Monday through Friday Lisa comes home after 9-12 hours in the Kitchen learning dough rolling techniques from a heavy accented Frenchman whose highest praise is, “C’est pal mal” or “that’s not bad,” and I come home from a day full of studying and lectures. But on the weekends we’re zipping off to Chateau country or Bruges or the French Riviera. Just in the last three weeks alone, I’ve spent three days at Chateau Just and two days in Amboise in the Loire valley where Leonardo de Vinci spent the last three years of his life. In three days time, I will be on a train again to Evian, France to attend a global conference on sustainability and then I’ll be home for two days home before setting off to Belgium with Lisa for the weekend. It’s been surreal and life-changing to say the least. But perhaps stranger than doing homework on a train bound for Amsterdam or flight to Milan is the little everyday changes to my behavior that I’ve noticed occurring right here in Paris.

For example, since I’ve been here I’ve stopped wearing khaki pants or shorts of any kind, regardless of how hot it is. As in other major cities throughout the world, in Paris being a tourist is not a good thing…unless you’re buying something or over tipping and then it’s fine. American tourist, I fear, now occupy a lower rung on the preferred tourist scale as far as Parisians are concerned and, for men, there’s no “tell” (as in poker) greater that says “I am an American tourist” than looking like you’re about to go play golf. It’s not that I am ashamed of being an American or wearing khakis for that matter, it’s a city survival thing. Not knowing the language, the culture, or your way around a city makes you not only vulnerable but a target. It’s as true in New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago as it is in Paris. As I try to minimize my “tourist look” by uncomfortably wearing jeans in 80 degree weather or using the map on my phone rather than a fold-out one, I am astounded at how many people bury their faces in paper maps while on the street and how many money-belt bulges I see hidden under sweater-vests. It like these people are wearing signs saying, “Please come rob me or, at very least, be rude to me.” I’ve been pretty successful camouflaging myself as a Parisian. I’m rarely bothered by the gypsies who work the tourist crowds and on several occasions I’ve been asked for directions by people on the street. Any pride I had for blending in, however, is immediately taken away when the person asks for the directions in French and I am forced to admit that I don’t understand what they are saying.

While the change in dress is a device I reluctantly use to avoid being annoyed on the street and I cannot see foresee myself adopting it long term, there are other changes that I actually enjoy and hope to continue. One such change is bringing my own grocery bags with me while shopping. It’s something I noticed straight away here. Nearly everyone uses their own canvas shopping bags. In some stores they actually charge you extra for the plastic ones. At first bringing bags with me to the grocery was sort of awkward and I only did it to avoid looking like a tourist. But now I like it.

The last little change is that I have started riding a bike to and from school. For years in Chicago friends of mine preached at length on the virtues and freedom of riding a bike in the city. But whenever I was near converting to religion of cycling, I would hear a story of someone getting hit by a car or someone’s bike getting stolen and that was enough to keep me faithful to public transportation and taxis. Here it’s different. First of all, I didn’t have to invest in a bike but rather paid the equivalent of $40 for a year’s subscription to barrow bikes when I need them. Velib is what they call it and in Paris you are never more than 300 meters away from one of their green stands. You press your little card to the machine, punch in your code, pick your bike, and you’re on your way. No more smelly homeless people sitting next to me on the bus, no more suffocating train cars packed to the brim with commuters. Navigating traffic, I admit, is a little scary. A few times I took the wrong road, was faced with an onslaught of vehicles bearing down on me and was forced to quickly pick my bike up and physically carry it over the curb and onto the sidewalk where I embarrassingly walked it to a calmer street. There are few things more humiliating or ungainly than carrying a bicycle onto a median in the midst of traffic and whenever I’ve had to do it I always imagine a unified fit of laughter coming from the cars passing by. But despite some inelegant growing-pains while learning which roads to take and which to avoid, I’ve done pretty well here on two wheels. The trick, I have found, is to follow a real bike riding Parisian and do as they do. If they feel comfortable going around a stopped bus, then you go around the bus. If they suddenly stop at an intersection, they you stop too. When they yell at a car and look back at you for collaboration, you nod approvingly in solidarity and shrug your shoulders as if to say, “what a dick!” By following the Parisians and doing as they do, I’ve become a convert to city cycling.

As Lisa and I continue to punctuate our hectic school weeks with weekend trips all over Europe, there’s little doubt that the places we visit will widen the scope of the our worldview and leave us forever changed. But perhaps more impactful to our lives are the tiny day-to-day changes that are occurring as we engage in what the French call “metro, boulot, dodo” and what we call the daily grind. Whether our aim is to avoid the hassle of street-gypsies or to get from point-A to point-B without having to squeeze in under someone’s armpit in order to fit into the train, the result is slight incremental changes to the way we live. In anthropology, they call this type of change, acculturation. It happens when one goes through first-hand and prolonged exposure to a different culture. Having gone through a little acculturation myself I cannot help but be reminded of the old adage, “When in Rome…,” or, in my case, “When in Paris…”