"Running around like a clown on purpose..."

We spent Laura and Jason's last night in Paris seeing Mika, a bubble gum pop star/gay icon whose songs are dangerously catchy, sung in falsetto and always a lot of fun. His show was somewhere between Freddie Mercury and an acid trip--he's all about bright colors, outrageous costumes and lavish sets. Spectacle, baby.

The concert itself was in the 'omnisports palace' in Bercy, an arena built into a grassy hill in a way that must have been really futuristic in the 80's. It was packed with a young, energetic crowd. We opted for the floor, so we spent our pre-concert time enjoying one of the perks of European venues: cheap, plentiful beer.
Mika's biggest fan base is in France, so he goes all out for his Paris shows--I think we must have cycled through about 7 set and costume changes, not to mention a collection of puppets and a back-up opera singer. The concert started with a bizarre video intro from Sir Ian McKellan (otherwise known as Gandolf or Magneto) announcing Mika's participation in a space expedition. When Mika came out on stage, it was in anti-gravity slow-motion as an astronaut among glowing celestial orbs:
Mika changed costumes every couple songs, rotating through hats, tail coats, t-shirts with tails (which I'm convinced are going to be the next hipster trend) and my favorite, a long "fur" coat that looked like it was made from muppets:
I was also impressed by the fact that Mika did all of his talking in French, and even translated the first verse of Grace Kelly into French for the live performance. We dug it. Here we are dancing and singing along (awkwardly, of course...)
The encore was ridiculous, with huge balloons tumbling down from the top of the bleachers to be bounced around by the crowd, while the entire crew of back-up singers, musicians and puppeteers joined Mika beneath streamers and confetti on stage.

Touring friends 'round the Tour Eiffel

Having guests in Paris is a good excuse to get out and take advantage of all the cool things the city has to offer that I generally ignore as a resident. It's also a cool way to get reinfected with the awe of a first-timer. Laura is the world's perfect tourist: she is eternally curious, easily amazed and all about photographs and souvenirs (LOTS of souvenirs). And she had never been to Paris before. Hearing her gasps as we wound through Montmartre or the hallways of the Louvre made me remember how ecstatic I was the first time I came to Paris. And walking through France with Jason once again just felt natural, in a comforting sort of way.

Their first day here was a beautiful day to be outdoors. We started with lunch in the garden terrace at one of my favorite crêperies, and then we just walked around--through Notre-Dame, along the Seine, past the Hôtel de Ville to Tuleries, the Palais du Louvre and the Opera House. We stopped for mid-afternoon cocktails in sunny, curbside cafés and finally ended up in the multicultural Bastille area for dinner.
The next day took us to the Jewish/Gay district of the Marais--one of the only Parisian districts that doesn't shut down on a Sunday.
In fact, the Marais was so hoppin' that we had to queue to get our hands on a pita from the legendary L'as du Fallafel. It was worth the wait, though, as Lenny Kravitz knows...
Just our luck!--an old man Jewish street band started up just across from the curb where we were sitting munching our falafel.
And then, of course, we had to take Laura to see the Eiffel Tower...
...and climb it...(Apologies for this unflattering view. Laura was my designated ass photographer for most of our trip, as she has a knack for lagging behind and taking "action" (stalker) photos)
...and only a million stairs later, voilà! Can you tell it was windy?
Monday was our day for Museum-ing, which meant that I got to see the Italian Renaissance, Greek and Roman sculptures and Egyptian wing of the Louvre for the nth time. (I really need to make it back there someday when I don't have tourists in tow to see the other parts). I amused myself by imitating artwork. Here I am, posing with Ms. de Milo and a girl who is totally jealous of my mangled limbs/torso:
And now I'm paying patty cake with an Egyptian bear.
And then, of course, we couldn't let Laura leave France without trying escargot. Delish.

Dépaysée with friends: a retrospective

I met Jason on the first day of my first college class: French 206, introduction to French literature. At that point neither of us had any plans of majoring in French and we had both signed up for the course on a whim: he, because he saw language learning as a sort of brainteaser but had run out of intro levels to take; me, because French had always been easy (and fun) in high school, where I had effortlessly been the best in an elective no one took seriously. We were both a little intimidated by the end of that first day; we were going to be expected to read whole books--plural!--in French, and in the company of upperclassmen, no less. We ended up thriving, however, becoming friends, and eventually, French majors. We were on our way.

I got my first taste of Eurotripping the summer after that year: 2006, the summer of the European heatwave. I spent a week in Paris on an embassy scholarship while Jason finished a summer semester in Montpelier. When we were done, we met up for a crazy series of sleeper car trains, hostels and managed to backpack around most of Venice and Rome before we traded gelatto and tuscan wines for air conditioning and laundry machines and came home.


Here's us, in a bar in Montpelier. Stripes were in that year, apparently. Note our skill at covering each other's sweaty pits for the sake of the photo.

We both found ourselves back in Europe two years later, in the spring of 2008. I was on my junior year of study abroad, first in Oxford, then in Nice. Recently graduated, Jason was working as an English teaching assistant in a little French town in the Lorraine. He visited me in Oxford for a taste of England and Ireland, then again in the spring, when we added a new member to our traveling team: Laura. A good friend and roommate of mine, Laura jetted over after her own semester in Oxford to join us on a backpacking trip through Amsterdam, the Rhine valley, Munich and Prague.

Here we all are in Prague. Between the grooming, the scarves and the pea coats, you can tell that we're learning to be European.

A teacher who saw this picture at the time told me to treasure it. This is the last time this picture is possible, she said. The next time you go back to Europe, even if it's soon, it'll be different--you won't have quite the same ceaseless energy, the same wide-eyed wonder. You'll be adults.

I've been thinking about this because I saw Laura and Jason off at the airport this morning. Both graduated and working full time on the East Coast, they took a week of vacation during my spring break to come see Paris and travel with me. And so here Jason and I are now, 2010, four years later:

(Stripes are still in, apparently, or rather any variety on white and blue patterns)

And here we all are overlooking Athens on our last night in Greece:


Some things are the same: I haven't lost my love of weird earrings, nor Laura her love of purple purses, and Jason still rocks at striking an awesome pose and highlighting my awkwardness in comparison. We definitely look older, though, and the trip overall felt much more adult than our previous adventures. Hostels and night trains having somewhat lost their charm, we opted for private rooms with en suite bathrooms and cheap but direct flights. We also indulged ourselves more and ate out more often: full meals with appetizers, wine and dessert--not the budget kebab stand fare and pasta cooked in a shared kitchen that we had sought out in college.

There's something to be said for the wonder of salaries and the take-things-as-they-come travel Zen that only comes with experience. There's also something to be said for the company of old friends, and the easily remembered travel rhythm of a group you know well. I never really did decide if I agree with the teacher's comment, but one thing definitely didn't change: I had an amazing time traveling with Jason and Laura. Details to follow in this week's posts...

Hyde and seek with French littérature

Knowing I needed to get some reading done in London but reluctant to miss out on playing tourist, I compromised with a leisurely morning in Hyde Park and its neighboring Kensington gardens. After roaming the grounds, I bought a latté at a lakeside café and dove into Maupassant (a 19th century book I really enjoyed, about a man from humble origins who takes advantage of the fact that he has an irrisistable moustache--seriously!--to seduce numerous rich/powerful women).

The park itself was nice; a little less manicured than Parisian parks and but still full of fountains and memorials, and even memorial fountains! My favorite find was a Peter Pan statue that was apparently commissioned by J. M. Barrie and installed in the middle of the night to appear as if by magic for children in the morning.





Later in the day I wandered through some posh neighborhoods and past a pub frequented by Voltaire (I suppose during his post-Candide exile?) over to the Victoria and Albert Museum. Like D.C.'s Smithsonian, all London museums are free, so I went on in and began browsing their collections of British artifacts. The museum itself was pretty interesting, housed in a building that mixed the old and the new, with a traditional dome in the lobby paired with a strange modern glass sculpture. Its open, two-story wings allowed you to look down onto the exhibition floors of castings from above, which was a cool perspective. The museum's contents were a strange mix as well, ranging from European antiques and artwork to less traditional museum fare like ironworks, early digital art, and even a wing celebrating theater via a collection of costumes, props and lighting. The definite highlight was the impressively lifelike rhino costume (but is it an Asiatic or and African?) used in Ionesco's Rhinocéros, which has remained my favorite absurd theatre piece since I read it for a course a few years ago. Brilliant.

Eye spy, musicals and markets

Our first real day in London was devoted to the more standard tourist fare. Luckily, since I'd been there before, Tom was spared the Parliament/Buckingham Palace/Westminster Abbey part of the itinerary, but he was appalled that I had neglected to ride the London Eye. We rectified that pretty quickly, and I have to admit that the view of the Thames and Parliament and the crescent-shaped aquarium from the Ferris wheel pod was totally worth it.



The other big thing I hadn't done last time was go to see a show in West End. Buying half-price last minute tickets was much easier than in New York, and the area was much cuter, more compact and more pedestrian friendly than Broadway but with no less energy or neon. Despite my reservations about seeing a show set in New York whilst in London, we settled on Avenue Q, a parody of Sesame Street complete with muppets, songs and animation, that chronicles the quarter-life crisis following college graduation. I thought the vocalist that played Nickie/Princeton was a little weak, but overall it was a good production and a hilarious show.

Saturday was market day, so we headed first to Notting Hill to browse the antiques and other wares for sale on Portobello road. (In case you're wondering, the picture is of a collection of antique sewing machines). We listened to street musicians as we noshed on a vendor picnic of chorizo sandwhiches, marinated olives and dried fruit, then headed over to the more counter-culture markets of Camden. The crowd there was an odd mix of hippies and goths, dreadlocks and mohawks, but overall a very friendly, easygoing group. With its squat, waterside brick buildings, Camden reminded me a lot of Baltimore (I wonder if B-more's look was inspired by Camden?) We bought a pint of ale from a lock-side pub and drank it under the willow trees beside countless other 20-something couples and friends.

We met up with a couple of Tom's college friends just as the sun was setting for a stroll along the Thames, followed by dinner and cocktails. Perfect weather, perfect day.

A lovely time in the English countryside

We spent Sunday on a day trip an hour's train ride North to the idyllic town of Saffron Waldon, in the East Anglia region on the outskirts of Cambridge. To me, the address (and on Mt. Pleasant Road, no less) sounded almost unbelievably quaint, and I had remarked to Tom before we arrived that the lit nerd in me was half expecting to find either a dystopic paradise à la Stepford wives or the isolated spiritual retreat of Thoreau's Walden. Of course, it turned out to be exactly as Tom had described: nothing more or less than a cute countryside town.

Tom's family entertained and fed us all afternoon. The menu was exquisite--it's easy to see where Tom gets his kitchen expertise--and his parents were warm and welcoming in an adorably British way (which is to say so calm and understated that I might have apprehensively misinterpreted their reaction as kind boredom if I hadn't had several months with Tom and various friends to prepare me). Tom's dad is a former literary nerd and both mum and dad are internationally-minded and well-traveled, so we were never short of conversation topics. On top of that, Tom's house was pretty amazing--an ancient, fairly narrow building that spans four floors and has all the quirks you'd expect from an English country house: a bell system to alert the kitchen help, a dinner gong, a garden with a bridge and pond, sloped-ceiling attic bedrooms, bathrooms with sliding doors hidden in the middle of staircases and multiple sets of stairs leading to a single floor. It's furnished with a mix of objects picked up on various international vacations and the childhood remnants of raising two boys (example: all the doors are propped open by plastic dinosaur toys), all of which makes for a fascinating place to explore. It was also fun, as it always is meeting friends' parents, to see Tom nagged in his "son" role and laugh at the childhood photos on display, and entertaining to watch him stoop to hug his mother in the same way that he has to with me.

Tom took me out for a between-meals walk around the local manor house and through the surrounding forests and sunny fields. The town and its residents seemed cheery but rather sleepy. After a day, I could see how Saffron Walden would have been a pleasant place to grow up (I kept picturing Anne of Green Gables skipping about) but I could also understand why both Tom and his brother feel drawn to urban life as adults. And me too, apparently--I used to fancy myself more of a rural-person, but exposure to Paris has changed my mind. A vacation in the country is definitely relaxing (and part of me will always mourn the absence of pine trees and the ocean when they're not in my life) but there's something to be said for having food, drink, entertainment and people always at your disposal, and after a happy dose of family time I was content to return to London.

I'm back, ol' chap

So I'm just back from our trip to London, which was (happily) unaffected by all the chaos surrounding English travel after the Eyjafjallajokull volcano grounded flights (I totally copy-and-pasted that from another site...I bet news rooms all over the world have reference notes posted on the wall reminding reporters how to spell and pronounce that ridiculous Icelandic name). I had a jolly old time across the Channel, and have revised my opinion of London from a sort of "meh" European city to "I would totally live there some day". I'll be making a few more posts this week to give some pictures and recap of various experiences I had, but for this first one I'll just give my general impressions of the city.

Let's start with the basics: the London Underground (or "Londerground," as it should really be called). If you read this blog often you'll know how much I both love and am critical of public transportation. The last time I was in London I found their system overpriced, run-down and not at all user-friendly. The improvements between then and now blew my mind. The Tube is undergoing major construction (or, for the Brits, "improvement works") and it is now cleaner, brighter and more efficient than the Paris metro. Stations don't smell like piss, ads come in flatscreen TV form, and "Oyster" cards facilitate the day-pass payment process in a way that ends up being pretty cheap (at least if you ride the metro a lot in one day). Trains have also come a long way towards being more accessible--"lifts" (elevators) are still few and far between, but their availability is well-marked on maps, and all trains have a clear voiceover reading out the direction and stops. The downsides: it's still unnecessarily confusing, with line transfers often poorly marked and maps not at all to scale. All the works also mean that they take advantage of commuter weekends to essentially shut the whole system down, leaving you without many alternatives other than the iconic if slow double-deckers to get around town. Whenever I started to get frustrated, though, I was able to find humour in the utter Englishness of it all--from the "mind the gap" and "this train will wait on the platform to even out the gaps in the line" warnings, to the strange names the lines carry. Rather than using colors (like D.C.) or numbers (like Paris), the English opted for rather more arbitrary system of names, some self-explanatory ("Central", "District", "Northern") and some place-based but hilarious ("Bakerloo", "Jubilee", "Hammersmith and City").


The stereotype of the polite Englishman is all too true, and it was charming to be apologized to instead of trampled during rush-hour. London is also delightfully diverse, however, and while it's easy to find pasties, meat pies, fish and chips and tea, they might well be served with a foreign accent. The number of French-speaking Londoners everywhere was incredible; language-wise it didn't feel that different than Paris. Judging purely by accents heard on the street, there also seemed to be a pretty sizable American population (which I suppose explains why the English don't find my accent nearly as 'exotic' as I do theirs). The availability and quality of foreign cuisine was also great, and we had delicious, non-English dinners pretty much every night.

Food and clothing seemed much cheaper in general in London than in Paris (although hotels and housing are apparently much more expensive). Since the pound is at a record low against the dollar right now I spent some of my time while Tom attended his conference on London's famous Oxford street, a shopping mecca with all the major chain stores represented (sometimes multiple times!). I bought some new summer wardrobe fare and also picked up a few choice items that are either non-existent or exorbitantly-priced in Paris (cheddar cheese, Crunchie chocolate bars, sunscreen, toiletries...)

Overall, my favorite part of London was the literary/film/theater associations it brought to my arts-minded brain. Passing through Paddington (the bear) or King's Cross (Harry Potter) stations made me smile, and walking around Fleet Street (Sweeney Todd), Portobello Road (Bednobs and Broomsticks), Notting Hill (the movie) and Baker Street (Sherlock Holmes) put me in the same sort of fantasy world (albeit not that of Madeline, Notre Dame's Hunchback, and Amelie) that Paris used to evoke before it became so quotidienne. Parliament had me pondering Guy Fawkes, and Big Ben Peter Pan, and I found myself chanting "oranges and lemons..." and "London bridge..." and other nursery rhymes under my breath almost constantly. I'm slowly realizing that I must be a little bit crazy to constantly be zoning out and making the connections that I'm so apt to. No matter, though--it's cosy in here.


(That odd-shaped building is affectionately known as "the Gherkin." Tee hee hee)