I think that I am finally ready to leave Paris. I came here with the knowledge that sometimes the Parisians are less than helpful to Americans, and that knowledge has not been contradicted. I have had some very good experiences here in the City of Lights, and some not so good ones. It is easy to remember the nasty people, and the people who "work to order", which makes doing business in a language that you do not speak interesting. With the others though, you always have to sort of "prove" yourself. And to some extent, I can see why. This city is just crawling with tourists. You have Americans who travel with their list of "must see" items that they check off one by one. (We saw a young couple, perhaps on their honeymoon, with a four page, single spaced e-mail. They had a pencil, and were checking sights off the list. We were at the Opera, and they pulled out the dog-eared list and said, "OK. That was the Opera. What is next?" The list was mostly checked off. I doubt that "The Soul of the Lost Generation" was on the list.) You have Japanese tourists that travel in herds and take pictures of OTHER tour groups going through the city. (Videotaping Easter Mass at Notre Dame? Why not, the folks back home might want to see how the round eyes worship.) You have Brits coming for the cheap clothes and wine, Danes and Swedes coming for the cheap beer, and Germans coming because Germans go everywhere these days..

I can’t fault the natives too much for being short. Even the nasty Picasso Woman (about whom Doreen has written in an earlier story) She had NO reason to believe that I was in the market for a $100,000 piece of art. People just don’t wander in off the street to buy Picasso Linoprints (As opposed to LinoCUTS, which we DID wander in off the street and buy). So she was qualifying us. AND, they probably have all the business they need. They certainly have all the business they WANT, judging by their attitude. The French economy does not produce Internet Billionaires, so they do not have to be nice to people they do not know, on the off chance that they will be insulting some kid who had a fortune bigger than the cost of all the real estate in Corsica.

I don’t want to leave the impression that we didn’t have some nice experiences as well. The guy who has some art we are buying was quite interesting, and patient. But I made a big mistake - He is probably in his early 60s, and there is a gallery assistant there who is probably in her early 30s. While talking one day, she said that she did not want to take over the gallery. I inferred from this that she was his daughter. Later, when she was not around, I asked if that was his daughter. He just stared at me for a few minutes, and said, "She sometimes SAYS that she is my daughter, but she is my ‘friend’". Yipes! No discount for ME, I thought! Doreen has talked about him in her "Stalking Art" piece, but I think that I will elaborate some.

The gallery owner’s name is Lucien Desalmand, and the gallery is called Arenthon. It is located at 3 Quai Malaquai, and has been around for a long time. (As an aside, I just finished one of Balzac’s books, and one of the characters is named Lucien and lives on Quai Malaquai. I mentioned this to Lucien D. and he said he forgot that was the case, but he would have to go back and reread the book to see exactly where the other Lucien lived. He then told a story about how that book has a chapter entitled sometime like "Finding love in old age" and that he was reading it on a bus in Paris, and all the young girls around him were reading over his shoulder. Maybe that is where he met his "friend"). Lucien is large (not fat, but large) for a Frenchman, and has Beethoven style hair – all wild and all white. He speaks English, but sometimes I think he chooses not to understand. (But that is a problem dealing in two languages. He certainly knows what he says when he says it. He does not necessarily know what I say when I say it.). This leads to some funny conversations, and Doreen always ends up speaking in French to these folks anyway, while I sit there looking pretty.

Lucien has also shooed us out of his gallery when he wanted us to leave, but generally with more grace and dignity than other gallery owners. One time we were there expecting to see a book he had promised us (It never DID appear) and he just said, "OK, well I will see you tomorrow!" as he swept us out of his shop. Oddly enough, he is also one of the few gallery owners who has encouraged us to stay and browse. On one of our first days here, he was in the back, and the above mentioned gallery assistant was following us around in his shop. (It is not very big) waiting for us to leave, asking every five minutes what we were looking for. Lucien came out, we talked briefly, and he told us that we should stay as long as we wanted. We were still followed around, but this time without the commentary.

I need to give an example of the other Paris, though: We walked into the American Express office to get some help with train tickets, theatre tickets, and some traveler’s checks. I have an American Express Platinum Card. (Not bragging, I got it because it helped us save a bunch of money on some tickets over the past couple of years. But based on this experience I doubt that I will renew) First, the lady we asked for train reservations thought that we were total fools. At one point, we were asking for tickets to Rheim (Reims is how they spell it here) I said "Ream" Doreen said "Rheeeem" and she kept on saying "What? I don’t understand you." FINALLY she said, "Oh, you mean ccchhahhehahhhennn. We pronounce it ccchhahhehahhhennn here." I was waiting for her to spit in the floor after she said it, either because she was clearing her throat (Which is what ccchhahhehahhhennn sounds like) or because of her opinion of us. Then we asked about tickets to La Scala in Milan. She said, "I only handle Travel. You have to go over there." She nodded with a casual air at another counter.

So we walked the three yards to the other table, where the two people working there were busy chatting with each other. When they decided that we had waited long enough, one of them decided he would acknowledge that we existed, and asked what we wanted. We told him, and his first response was to say he could not help. I showed him that I had the Platinum Card, and it was STILL no big deal to him, but he did make a phone call to someone, who told him that he could indeed make reservations. We waited for about 20 minutes while he took our particulars, and then he said that he could not make the reservations until three weeks before the performance! He said he would call. We then asked about getting traveler’s checks, and he said, no that was handled downstairs.

So we went downstairs, and talked with a Chinese French girl behind the counter She was about as helpful as all the rest of them. It ultimately came down to the fact that Doreen could not use her card to get the traveler’s checks, and she CLOSED THE WINDOW! It was time for her to go home. Luckily, I was there to give the cash needed, but this chirpy was ready to WALK OUT without even offering an alternate option.

Away from Paris we had some very nice experiences. In Chartres we stopped at a small restaurant called St Hillaire’s and had a GREAT meal, after the waitress initially said that if we did not have a reservation, we could not sit down. The owner came by (I guess not that many tourists get to this part of Chartres) and found us a table. It was a delightful time, with a French family sitting behind us, including Grandpa who laughed just like Maurice Chevalier. (Uh huh huh!)

But the appeal to me of Paris lies in its food, art, and architecture. You need to be able to get over the lack of service. The city is dirty, full of dog droppings, pigeons, and trash on the streets. The weather has been bad, and parts of it have been expensive. And yet...

I want to spend more time here. I think that once you strip away the tourists, the filth, and the attitude, it is one of the world’s great cities. Where else can you walk into an area that has hundreds of art galleries, any one of which may have a Picasso, a Miro, a Braque, or a 200 year old print from an obscure artist you have been searching for your whole life? Where else can you walk into a small restaurant, first be told that there were no available seats with out a reservations, and then be taken in and served one of the best meals that you have ever had? Where else can you buy designer clothes at half the price they are in the US, from any number of tiny boutiques that line numerous streets? Where else can you see the Mona Lisa, and several other equally stirring Leonardo’s in one day? Go to a museum dedicated to Picasso? Rodin? Sewers?

My Paris is a city for dreaming, a city of dreams, and a city that probably doesn’t exist and never has existed. My initial impressions of Paris were formed many years ago, years before I ever set foot in France. I had the dreams of Humphry Bogart in Casablanca, of Ernest Hemingway in A Moveable Feast, of Lucien de Rubempré (dit Chardon) and Rastignac in Lost Illusions, Old Goriot, A Harlot High and Low. Of Quasimodo and Esmerelda in The Catherdral of Norte Dame de Paris. Jean Val Jean and Javert in Les Miserables, Picasso, Braque, Matisse and the whole artistic and literary scene with the lost generation. People who where making changes to the world they knew, and they were making them in Paris. That dream for me will not disappear, it is just getting harder to find. Occasionally on the small streets with small cafes that are not over run by tourists (I never loose site of the fact that I am an outsider here as well), you get an idea of a city that was different than it is now.

On our last full day here, we thought that we would just take it easy, take a walk in the Bois de Boulogne (so we can sing Thank Heaven for Little Girls) maybe metro up to St Denis, trade in some English language books at Shakespeare’s bookstore so we wouldn’t be carrying dead weight. Feed the birds the rest of our bread, come home and pack.

It all sounds simple, but Paris was not done with us yet. Our first stop was to Shakespeare & Company Bookstore, so we would not have to carry the books around town with us. We walked in, and a young (say, mid-20s) American was behind the counter. I told him I wanted to trade some books, and he said that I would have to talk to George. I said, OK, where is George? Upstairs. So I walk up these VERY narrow stairs to a room that is still lined with books, but also three small beds. I wander around a while, and then the kid (Sean) comes up and says, "I came up to help. I thought that you would be wandering around you look like an adventurer". We he leads me to a locked door, tries to open it, and then starts pounding on the door shouting "George! George! You locked us out! George!" He turns to us and says that he knows he is there – he was awakened by him that morning.

So we run downstairs, and outside the store. Sean stands on a bench and starts shouting, "George!" and then he starts whistling! Not the wolf call loud whistle, but like a tune! (I think it was something from "My Fair Lady") He says to me, "You have to help whistle!" But I didn’t. He wouldn’t make me an offer of trade on the books (He approved of the books – Flaubert, Camus, Maughm, Hemingway, McMurtry) and offered to let us leave the books there and return later. I said that we would just get a cup of coffee and return.

We had our coffee (SWARMED by a million tour busses dropping people off to visit Notre Dame. This was the first nice day in a week and it showed) and walked back to the store just as Sean was coming to tell us they found George. We were told he was on the third floor, and that we should go up.

Back at the store, there were two young women (mid-20s again) behind the counter. Counter is sort of a misnomer, I would call it more like a pit, around which books are piled. I said I was going to see George, and they said fine. So, UP again the narrow stairs. The locked door was open, so we went through to a typical French curling stairwell. Up two more flight of stairs, into a room (With several more beds) and there is George, a Brit, late 70s cooking his lunch or breakfast. I said I had come earlier, and he said, "Oh yes. You are the adventurer. If you need a place to stay, you are welcome to one of these beds." Frankly, I was shocked by the kindness of the offer, and said that I was leaving Paris tomorrow, and was just trying to trade some books. He said fine, looked at the books, and made a deal. We went down and selected a couple of replacement books, and headed back to the apartment to drop them off.

But I was really wondering, what did he mean by "adventurer" and would have really let us stay there for a while? It is fodder for some interesting thought.

The rest of the day was less intriguing. Kicked out of an ice cream place and one outdoor café, Saw two guys carrying a bookshelf kit onto the subway, Watched what looked like a quinceniera (Sweet Fifteen) party at St Denis Church (It was probably the religious half of a wedding ceremony, which they spilt here) and finally came home to drink a cold beer.

I am not done with Paris. Not on these pages, nor in real life. The great things here (From Mephistos to Art to Food) outweigh the bad. It is just that the bad make better stories. But for now, so long from Paris.

Next stop – Venice!

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