The World Is Smallish

5:09 pm. Boston Logan Airport.

So, once again I heralded a promise to update you on my travels, and I give myself a big red F for effort. I’m back in the US, and here is the saddest excuse for a detailed rundown of my journey since I last left you.

Since I am too cheap to spend $4 on the Wifi here at Boston Logan, I will assume I told you about getting to Paris and Versailles, which was our first day out being tourists. The next day we saw the Notre Dame, and a little of the Latin Quartier on the Left Bank. We were so tired from walking around Versailles the day before we sat at a café near Montparnasse and sipped espressos (anything more than a sip and it’s gone) and watched pretty people go by for most of the afternoon. We all dreamed we’d be those fashionable ladies with hats that match our shoes and sunglasses with a smart haircut as they floated by on their chic Vélib’s, Paris’s free public bicycle service. Meghan and I were the two very proud and out art and museum nerds of the group, so we opted to go to the Musée D’Orsay the next day and dragged our couchsurfing hosts, the super nice Sébastien, Ludovic, and Luic with us. They bailed early, but Meg and I spent an impressive five hours and saw literally everything. I could go on for an entire post about the Musée D’Orsay, so all I’ll say is that it was stellar. Check out my album on Facebook.

That night our hosts took us to a party in the neighborhood, and we met their really awesome friends. A quick note about our hosts is that two out of the three are engineers of some sort, so it was a huge, French-nerd-housewarming-COSTUME party. I wish I could throw a party with that theme. Imagine that if you can. No, you can’t. It was that epic. And that’s all I’ll say about that.

The next day Meghan and I earned our stripes and made it out to the Louvre at 10am and immediately felt like we were punched in the face by the enormity of history and culture our own country lacks. I knew it was immense, but was not prepared for the veritable zoo it was. It probably didn’t help that it was the first Sunday of the month, and hence free free free to the world, but we didn’t care. Albeit tired, we trudged through hall after hall, passing up enormously important works of art to go seek out others, and we were still never sated. And then, providence smiled down on my travel-weary soul as I heard from across a gallery (of very large and very important paintings) “CHELSEA??!?!” in the prettiest Milwaukeean accent you could imagine. And yes, it was the one and only Matt Warner and Jenny Hauf duo, travel-seasoned themselves and the most incredible forms of all I viewed that day. We had a glorious reunion in the middle of the Louvre, hugging and “I cannot BELIEVE it!!” ing and “oh man you look so great!” ing. Jenny and Matt and I worked on the Heifer farm in Massachusetts last summer. We were actually hoping to meet up to go visit another friend from the farm who’s studying in Cambridge, England, but it didn’t work out. To top it off, the number I gave them to meet me in Paris didn’t work, so it was completely au hazard that we met. The four of us split for lunch, ate some mediocre pitas, and made plans to hang the next day. It really was super cool, and we could not stop cheesin’ the whole time. Matt and Jenny are in Europe with WWOOF (WorldWide Opportunities on Organic Farms) and recently came from Italy and France before they move on to Ireland and England. They are also blogging about their experiences (www.beautyandthecheese.blogspot.com). They’re great writers, so if you’re looking to live vicariously through someone else now that I’m back to reality, I liberally give their blog my recommendations.

The next day I left the girls to do their own thing and I spend the day with Matt and Jenny. We started out in Père LaChaise, the really large and famous cemetery in East Paris. We visited the graves of Gertrude Stein, Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, and Edith Piaf. It was tight. The graves themselves were pieces of art- some family crypts were literally tiny churches, some were so old the names were completely erased, but no two were alike. I felt like I was in another museum. The weather was overcast and drizzled slowly and deliberately all morning, creating perfect cemetery-viewing weather. After spending a moment in thought at Jim Morrison’s grave (“Do you think he broke on through to the other side?”) we went back to where they’re couchsurfing in the Marais. Jenny shared some of the sausage and cheese they took from their last farm, both of which knocked my socks off, and we spent a few moments talking about organic farming, shepherding sheep (Jenny’s a pro now, for reals) and cheesemaking. We had de-lish falafels for lunch, purportedly the best in Paris, and then moved on to Shakespeare and Company. S&C is the beacon for practically all young expats, and has been for years; Hemingway, Miller, Stein, and Joyce all visited or worked or lived or wrote there for a time. Nowadays, you have to practically ooze chic-nerd to be even looked in the eye. I felt like I was not cool enough to ask them for a certain title because 1) I was an American tourist and 2) ugggh why can’t you just find it yourself? I’m clearly focusing on keeping my cool new jagged haircut out of my eyes to help you find something you probably will never understand. Okay, so I’m kind of exaggerating. But still-- I mean, just think of all of those authors, organizing on those same shelves, sitting in the same armchairs to edit a fellow’s manuscript, or stomping up the deep-step 16th century stairs to retire to their rooms for some bedtime reading. We killed the day off with a visit to Kandinsky’s exhibit at the Centre Pompidou and I found a new love for an artist I hadn’t really known about before.

The next day Meghan, Katie and Steph left for Munich to begin their Eurotrip to see Reunion friends and Germany, Amsterdam, Italy, and southern France. I spent the better part of the morning lugging my shit across town to meet my Mom and Dad as they arrived in Paris to celebrate their first ever vacation and 30th wedding anniversary. They were luggageless thanks to Air Canada, but smiling like kids on their first day of school with the sheer giddiness that the unknown adventure brings. Even though they fell asleep while I was talking to them, it was still great to see them. That night I left Paris to visit Le Mans and see my friend Chloé, with whom I studied this fall semester at Maryville.

Ach, sorry for the length. Actually, no, I’m not; this is one of the last exciting things I do, so soak it up, people. Laugh and cry with me one more time. In Le Mans with Chloé I had a great time, and I really felt like I was in France for the first time. I was with a French family in a French home. I slid easily into their home life. My French was workable to participate in some conversation and TV watching, but man, was it hard to keep up! I began to feel some remorse, actually. I know I’ve spent the last four months in Réunion, but it became very clear that Reunion was NOT France. The culture, the food, the language all were different. I got used to the Laborde’s dialect towards the end of the week, and the food was amazing. It just came down to promising myself I’d return to mainland France to get a good feel of it. I kind of wish I could have stayed with a family in Reunion. Anyway, Le Mans was buzzing on this particular week, as it was their famous 24 Hours of Le Mans car race. We went to the parade and I even saw Patrick Dempsey, who was on a team this year. It was really cool, because once the race started, you could hear the cars shifting gears from Chloe’s house, which was about 2 km away.

On Sunday, Mom and Dad came to Chloe’s and we had a proper French lunch. It started at 1pm and we didn’t get up from the table until 3:45pm. Three bottles of wine, four courses (including foie gras), lamb from Madame Laborde’s sister’s farm, and fresh cherry clofutis. It was melt-your-face, give-you-a-new-stomach good.

Then, the Barkers Three embarked in their shiny Peugeot minivan on a tour of Normandy. There was much merrymaking, many a sumptuous supper, and general jocularity. The Mont Saint Michel: too impressive to capture in photos, a true labyrinth of ancient halls and rooms and such. They started building that bad boy in the 8th century. Things all ran together, too—the Debarquement Beaches, Honfleurs (a port fishing village in the North that inspired the Impressionist movement), and Giverny, Monet’s hand-crafted and personally designed Eden where he birthed many of his most famous paintings. The return to Paris was a blur—Le Sacre-Coeur and Place des Vosges (where Victor Hugo lived and wrote Les Miserables) before a lovely last dinner with my generous benefactors of good food, Mom and Dad.

I was riding on the RER B to Charles de Gaule this morning, as bizarre as that is to write, and I felt like I should have been filming what I saw. I was sitting in one of the last cars, facing the city as the train bumbled north. I had my luggage stacked neatly to my left, and I was watching carefully out the window on my right as the landscape turned from urban to dirty urban to industrial to not even slightly Parisian, and in fact, rather like every small town the economy’s forgotten in the US. It made the world seem small to me. It doesn’t matter where you go, because on some level, it’s all the same. A pretty businesswoman gracefully sprung off the platform, the older woman across the aisle conversed with a smile in her voice to her daughter on the phone, and a young man with an accordion swayed and played as his sounds poured into each corner and rounded out the seats and walls with its gaiety. Then, a glimpse of the beige sprawl of Paris through the trees of a park- but only for a moment. I smiled to myself, closed my eyes, allowed a little ha! to escape my mouth. Was I really listening to accordion music as I left Paris to return to my predictable North American life? Ha! indeed, someone roll the credits! It was somewhat surreal, to be honest.

Now I’m on a plane in Boston, waiting to be told to turn my computer off. I’m off on my second to last flight for my near future. My cousin Ben is getting married this Saturday in DC, and I’ll be seeing nearly all of my extended family there. I can’t wait, to be honest. It feels very weird to be back in the US. My voice when I speak to strangers sounds funny- do I always sound like that when I speak English, I wonder? More nuances to come, I’m sure. If you read all of that, email me and I’ll send you a gold star for being a wonderful follower of my experiences.




If you believed that even for just a second, go pinch yourself. It was too good to be true.