L'arrivé!

Hello friends,

An absurdly long/epic journey will begin with a modest post. Before I get to that, I will sum it up. I begin a frivolous post-graduation summer in Europe with a two-week return to Paris. Three nights with an American friend who spent the year abroad, 5 nights in a hostel, visiting a few French friends, and 5 nights in a rented studio, with an American friend traveling abroad. With the latter, we blaze through Belgium to Amsterdam for several nights. We part ways, I fly to Rome, to be joined by Kate D. and Amulya, also just-graduates. We will tear apart Italy (Rome, Venice, Florence, and Naples, to be exact), fly to Berlin, train to Prague and Budapest, and finally fly to our final destination: Istanbul. Kate Berner's parents informed us that while we are there, on the very cusp of the European border, we simply must have dinner one night in Asia. I suspect that will be a satisfying end to a 7 week-journey.

And so! I flew O'Hare to Charlotte to Paris and arrived this morning. From my carnet:

Arrivée! Déjà. A bright, sun-lit morning--my first pre-Paris experience: a belaboring reminder that American credit cards ne marchent pas in the transit ticket vending machines. My first glimpse in the city, off the RER: a worn basketball court, framed in green leaves and a chain-link fence. Above the city on the ligne 2, the streets course with round, French cars and I catch myself surprised, having foolishly thought the city simply stopped when I left it two falls ago. I exit at Anvers, complicit (overjoyed) to flow again among les foules parisens. Kate Schnakenberg (there are a lot of Kate's in this narrative) really does live a block from the Sacre Coeur--the t-shirt shops and the half-block up the cobble-stoned hill confirm what has sounded to good to be true these past few months. I am beneath the church on the hill now, aside a carousel as I watch an impossibly small boy kicking at the air, alternating apparent targets between a soccer ball and city pigeons. I guess that sense of power derived from scattering resting birds spans all ages and countries. The sun beats down warmly and I am considering my first Parisian purchase: a crêpe, almost certainly.

[UPDATE: the view from Kate's room, to the right.]
[technical difficulties with the camera. a sick view of the sacre coeur from Kate S's bedroom, among other sites, to follow!]

J