September 3rd, rainy day, Charles de Gaulle Airport.
I stumbled off the plane after having barely slept, stumbled through customs, and stumbled through one of the most chaotic baggage claim experiences ever before stepping out into the open air where the sidewalks shine from rainwater and people are yelling at me to hurry up and get a taxi.
It’s a grey day, but I’m in Paris so who cares?
Now it’s October 13th, equally rainy night, and an equally tired me in my Cité Universitaire bed pumping out slightly incoherent but slightly substantial thoughts at 3:30 in the morning.
Where’s the time gone? The time’s gone into rained-on cobblestones in Montmartre, hours upon hours at the Center, the crammed trains of the RER B, and day after day of cold rain and sunshine hitting my face every time I step out to start the day anew.
Actually, I tram it. Forget the RER.
Forget the RER, but don’t forget those nights where we step out at 8PM only to return at 5 or 6 in the morning when everything is dark and Paris is asleep but all lights. Lights on the Seine, lights at Chatelet, and lights from the Eiffel Tower illuminating the sky.
Not that we see those lights half the time in dark bars and clubs where people don’t dance (strange) and spend the whole time trying to look cool (stranger).
Or they’re just sitting for hours in cafés watching cars and people go by, which I do, too, since my umbrella’s collapsed under the rain and that just makes me not want to walk. So instead I sit, talk, and laugh along Oberkampf and in and around Belleville with the best company around, not really caring.
It’s Girls’ Night every Thursday, Friday, Saturday, sometimes Wednesday. My body’s admittedly thrashed from a month and a half of it, but you do what you can to not miss out on giggling at random people and things at the Hôtel de Ville.
What were those kids doing jumping in the fountain anyway?
Who knows, they were probably Nuit Blanche-ing like the rest of us before that long walk home because we couldn’t get a taxi.
Lesson learned: never try to get a taxi at 4AM on a rainy, windy Parisian night. It’s cold.
But it’s that coldness that describes so much of Paris and so much of the people here, constantly giving you the hot and cold treatment until the city just kind of confuses you. What’s it trying to be?
What am I trying to be here, actually?
It’s 4AM, I should probably sleep now. On m’attends pour tout recommencer.
Â