Paris je t'aime

 

First of all, thanks for your kind comments and messages. I haven't been around here much simply because I've been travelling quite a bit and the past few weeks have seemed like a whirlwind of activity, packing and unpacking my suitcase in between. I have so much to tell you but first, let's start with Paris...

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 I'm usually awake before the alarm clock rings at a few minutes to six, surprised by the morning chill as I throw back the covers. After a couple of stretches the kettle has boiled and I settle down to that all important first cup of tea. Sometimes I switch on the radio to hear the shipping forecast live before the demolition work begins opposite but other days I open my Moleskine exercise book and begin revising the vocabulary from yesterday's Finnish lesson. The words are often long and unlike anything I've heard before, those long vowels, the tiny break between the 'h' and the following consonant, sentences which seem so simple yet are full of unending complexity. I try to get my mind around some of the fifteen cases that I know whose names are also beautiful and complex, the inessive, the partitive, the ablative;  and wonder if I will ever be able to fully grasp this wonderful language.

At the restaurant of the Musée d'Orsay I found that same fascinating mixture of apparent simplicity and complexity in each course of the Finnish menu. A savoury malt pudding with marinated vegetables and crème fraîche with dill, cucumber soup with buttermilk and topped with a crispy cheese lattice, the most tender piece of smoked salmon, wamed and served with just the right amount of mashed potato and cauliflower flavoured with truffles and finally, vanilla cream mixed with lingonberry  puree with just a slightest crunch of a few flakes of oat crumble. All had names from paintings by Akseli Gallen Kallela; the Defense of Sampo, the Songs of Kalevala and my favourite, Les roses blanches for the dessert. The people sharing our table looked fascinated by what we were eating. The older woman started telling us about her life; the eleven children she had had, how everyone had encouraged her to return to university to take a German degree afterwards, how she spends most of her time travelling round the world visitng her family because she believes Americans are often too insular.

I rediscovered the métro and it distinctive smell I've always loved and which I can only try and describe as a little like warm sawdust, along with the posters of plays and events I will never go to. There was the joy of seeing the places that I love again; the book stands of the bouquinistes down by the Seine, Notre Dame, the little park behind the Institut de France with its cherry blossom, the hotel in the rue de Buci where Simone de Beauvoir used to live, that first evening strolling down the Champs de Mars. As much as I love Berlin, I somehow returned here wishing it could be more of a city for walkers and inexhaustably beautiful like Paris. I'm already thinking about how to get back there as soon as possible.