Open and Closed

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DAY 267: “Attention, s’il vous plaît.  Nous arrivons à Paris-Austerlitz en vingt minutes!” came the cry over the PA system, telling us we had twenty minutes before arrival.  I woke up in my train bunk all confused.  Huh?  Where am I?  Was that just in French?

It was my abrupt awakening to the hustle and bustle of Paris, France’s capital city, a modern metropolis that seems to be perpetually giving homage to his rich historical past.  It is one of the great world cities, a place characterized by its classical architecture, its cuisine, its art, its lights, its romance and its people who laugh all nasally.  I had been to Paris before and seen most of its monuments already, but this time around I had a different raison d’être: to sort out my visas for upcoming travel on the Trans-Siberian and Trans-Mongolian Railways from Moscow to Beijing.  After some research I saw that Paris was the most convenient place to do such a thing since both the Russian and Chinese governments had embassies there—and the fact that since I’d been there already, I wouldn’t feel so bad if I didn’t get to see much in terms of sights.

After getting a bed in a hostel three blocks from the Louvre, I head out to the Russian embassy in the quiet outskirts of the city center, near the Bois de Bologne—only to find out it had closed for visa applications at noon.  I went off to find the Chinese embassy a couple of blocks off the famous Avenue des Champs Elysées—only to find out that it too was closed, but would reopen at 2:30 in the afternoon.  In the interim, I dashed back and forth through town to check into my now-ready bed back at the hostel.

Back on Chinese ground I asked about visa applications.  The Chinese guard spoke neither French nor English but recognized the word “visa” and gave me a flyer for the Chinese consulate in the suburbs, which closed at five.  The train there took longer than I thought and I didn’t arrive until ten minutes past.  They wouldn’t deal with visa in the afternoon, only in the morning between 9:30 and noon.

SO I PRETTY MUCH SPENT ALL DAY running errands like I thought I would.  However, walking around Paris and taking its Metro, you cover a lot of ground anyway.  On my way, I saw the Arc de Triomphe (picture above), the Place de la Concorde (whose central obelisk was taken from the Temple of Luxor in Egypt), the Eiffel Tower, the Seine, and Notre Dame.  Even the train platform at the Louvre-Rivoli Metro stop had classical sculptures on display for people on the go.  As much running around as I did around town, I didn’t neglect to make the obligatory stop as a Pulp Fiction fan to get a beer at McDonald’s.  In lieu of a “Royale with cheese” to have it with, I got a Happy Meal instead. 

I was planning to spend the rest of the day writing, but realized it was Monday, one of the two days the Louvre Museum was open late, so I decided to take advantage.  On the way, I made the obligatory stop as an admirer of Ernest Hemingway to the Shakespeare & Co. bookstore, whose original store Hemingway often frequented during his days in Paris.  It is a place that some call “the world’s most celebrated English book shop.”

Inspired by the original Shakespeare & Co. run by Sylvia Beach in the early 20th century, “Shakespeare & Co.” has been the literary embassy for many of the great writers, from Hemingway to Joyce.  A tiny store about the size of two The Body Shops stacked on top of each other, it is home of tens of thousands of books in English prose and poetry and a few small beds amidst the bookshelves on the second floor.  Sylvia Beach always saw her store as a haven for writers—the tradition is continued in the new store—letting writers crash (Hemingway amongst them) for a night or two.  In the new store, there is even a typewriter in a small writing room (the size of a closet) that the great writers tapped away on.  With my copy of Hyenas Laughed At Me and Now I Know Why... in my bag, I went to investigate if I could get a free home stay, or rather, store stay.

“Are you one of the people that stays here?” I asked a Swedish girl retrieving items from her bag in the storage closet.

“Yes.”

“How does it work?”

“Well, you just sort of show up and ask him if you can stay,” she said.  “Are you thinking of doing it?”

“Maybe.”

“You have to work two hours a day.”

Two hours?  Whoa.  Did this qualify for medical and dental?  Was there a 401k plan? Two hours?  I was already thinking of asking for time off.  Between having to run around to get visas and catching up on The Blog and seeing stuff, I really couldn’t spare the time.  Besides, the store wasn’t a place conducive to write anyway (for me); open until midnight seven days a week, the place was packed with people coming and going in the summer (including Bohemian types sitting on the beds and singing Beatles tunes with an acoustic guitar).  According to the Swede, “quiet time” didn’t come until about 3 a.m. 

Even with that idea gone, I paid my respects to the owner anyway, a distinguished-looking laid back old American named George Whitman, the grandson of great American writer Walt Whitman, who kept the original spirit of Shakespeare & Co. alive.  He was in a small back room in a suit, reading the paper.

“Are you George Whitman?”

“That’s me.  Where are you from?”

“New York.”

“What brings you here?”

“Well, this place is famous.  I’m sort of making my pilgrimage.”

“Well, you’re always welcome.”

“I remember seeing you on the Michael Palin show,” I said, referring to the former Monty Python’s travel mini-series that followed the trail of Ernest Hemingway.

“Oh, that was years ago.”

“So,” I said, trying to think of something to say.  I had met Mr. Whitman’s one-time interviewer Michael Palin himself at a signing of one of his travel books in a New York bookstore and drew a blank when I finally got to speak with him one on one and I didn’t want the same thing to happen again.  “So, do you just sort of sit here and, uh...” thinking, thinking, “...read?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“Well nice to meet you.”

“You’re always welcome.”

I left, happy to know that while the embassies of Russia and China maybe closed, the literary American one would be open to me.

THE LOUVRE, without a doubt, is the world’s most famous art museum, housing some of the world’s most famous classical works of art, most prominently Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.  I had missed out on the Louvre on my last visit to Paris and so this time around, I made the obligatory stop as an American tourist to visit it, camera in hand.

Trying to cover four floors in three wings of a tremendous museum is impossible in three hours, so I sort of just went to see the more prominent things pointed out by my floor plan map, in a sort of photographic scavenger hunt.  Most of the things that weren’t so significant I just skipped over, knowing that I could see similar works anytime back home in the New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (and at a lower price).  I wondered through the galleries and halls of French, Spanish, Italian, Greek, Etruscan, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Levantian, Iranian, Coptic, Islamic and medieval artifacts, paintings and sculptures.  Halfway through my scavenger hunt I discovered that about a third of the museum was closed for the Monday night extended hours, which was okay because there was too much available to see anyway. 

Amongst the highlights of my photographic scavenger hunt of prominent works (and others that just caught my attention) were:


Down the long hallway of Italian paintings (including Da Vinci’s Madonna of the Rocks), I saved the most famous for last, the Mona Lisa herself (chick with no eyebrows) and managed to get a fairly decent shot without a flash after working my way through a small crowd.  (Flash photography only gets you a photo of your reflected flash.)

THE LOUVRE CLOSED shortly after, leaving me to wander the lively Place de St. Michel, amongst other places.  While that neighborhood was open late, the neighborhood I was in closed relatively early—which was fine because I’d have to get up early and beat the morning rush when the Russian embassy opened in the morning.


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This blog entry about the events of Monday, July 12, 2004 was originally posted on July 17, 2004 on the blog, "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World (Or Until Money Runs Out, Whichever Comes First)," hosted by BootsnAll.com. It is one of over 500 entries that chronicled a trip around the world from October 2003 to March 2005, encompassing travel through thirty-seven countries in North America, South America, Africa, Europe, and Asia. It was this blog that "started it all," where Erik evolved and honed his style of travel blogging. (It starts to come into focus around the time he arrives in Africa.)

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