Already October and already feeling like a lot has changed. For one my cooking has improved markedly, though that’s my diligent budgeting so I can afford a weekly meal at the sceney juice bar du jour near Sciences Po and an occasional trip to Chercheminippes, my favorite consignment shop on rue du Cherche-Midi.
It’s my birthday! In Paris!
I now officially know which are the allocated enter and exit doors of 27 rue Saint-Guillaume (the red-tie guards are very fussy about that), and have miraculously sprouted a sense of direction. Figures that I can’t wrap my head around New York’s grid system, but in a city where a street’s name is subject to change depending on where you happen to be standing on the street, all of a sudden I’m Magellan.
I have also developed a rather modest level of patience, which is very against my nature. I cannot tell you the amount of times it has been 59 after the hour and I’ve been stuck in a traffic jam on the stairs because god forbid we fail to double-kiss each and every friend we happen to pass on the stair. But I’ve somehow found that, no matter how endless the delay seems to be, I still manage to arrive to class on time. A study on actual versus perceived time in France to follow.
Delightful non-sequitur: this is what they’re actually called here
Perhaps most notably, I’ve become accustomed to pushing aside fear in favor of blind attempts. Sciences Po is an institution steeped in principles of rhetoric and holds debate so dear that it’s nearly a vice, so much so that most of the time I’m inclined say it’s argument for the sake of argument. What this means for me? That I’ve gotta suck up my urge to disappear into the cracks in the paint and observe quietly. I am quite forced to offer myself up as non-francophone sacrifice in front of a bunch of extremely fast-talking and articulate Sciencespistes who have one major advantage (being the only one that truly matters). They wield the French language like assassins with a silencer and I’m sitting there like an idiot holding (at best) a switchblade; on a bad day, a fork. It’s just never a fair fight. But though part of me screams at the defeat or embarrassment over verbal clumsiness, another part whoops in private victory. I have debated a French person in French about philosophy in front of an audience of at least 40 and no one laughed at me. There may have been a snort or two but that hardly counts. These are the kind of heady poignant moments that make this experience most rewarding; there are ups and downs of varying intensity, but among these only a few seem like real “moments of truth”.
I’ve also begun an exploration into the lesser-known museums and exhibits in this wonderful, and as I’ve discovered very odd, city. Turns out there are plenty of diversion for those with various perverse fascinations, and a main one of mine happens to be taxidermy. Not sure how much of this is common knowledge, but it turns out that taxidermy is to Paris as wind is to Chicago. To those who may be interested, the best of the best—haute-couturier of stuffed specimens—is a beautiful old shop called Deyrolle, which happens to be in the 6ème very near school. What a wonderland! Weird in the most luxurious of ways, it’s a historical nook stuffed to the brim with absolutely beautiful things (beautiful whether or not you’re readily willing to admit a preserved animal corpse could be beautiful). Cabinets are teeming with things from land and sea, jarred things, geological specimens, bugs, mammals, bones, etc. The walls are painted in this decayingly chic pistachio green, and the employees watch you gape at their stuff with a pleasant sort of superiority that reminds you you’re still in Paris and not, as it might seem, deep down in the rabbit hole. They aren’t a team of creeps and draculas either, more like perfumed Brooklyn hipsters.
Stuffed bats hung from the chandelier at Deyrolle: I snagged this before they shook a finger at me
The elegant way Parisian museums kindly remind you not to sit on the antique chairs
I’ve seen the carefully hidden Musée d’histoire de la médecine, certainly not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach but in a really beautiful old room in the massive medical school building of the University of Paris Descartes. I think it was worth the visit if only for the charm of the warm old smell of stone and books (and the table made of petrified human parts, but that’s probably just me). Musée de la chasse et de la nature (Museum of Hunting and Nature) has got to be my favorite; it’s like visiting a nobleman’s estate in the countryside. A little less odd and much more substantial in collection is the Musée des arts décoratifs, which you can spend hours roaming for absolutely zero money, and which has a really awesome gift shop if you care about that sort of thing. Okay I’m stopping because I really don’t want this to read like a travel guide.
Your antitourist,
Savannah