rectrectrectrectrectrect
Picture
Picture
shopping | newsbites | commentary | style
Picture

Get lost: reflections on being a Paris tourist
by David Applefield

It’s “Paris season” in the world again, and we who live here can feel it in the kind of emails we’re getting this month. Friends and relatives are heading this way and the idea of replacing smooth macadam with bumpy cobblestones seems to get Paree-bound travelers all giddy with delight.
It’s like a trip to France is a chance to go back in time when things were, well, authentic. Cobbles were not put there to enchant visitors with historic decor; they were chosen as the most technologically advanced building material of the day. Not a stylistic touch, but “the way things were.” And that excites those who are obliged to live close to the way things will be.
Many visitors are coming to Paris to re-charge their glands with a nostalgia that we don’t necessarily share. They come to Paris to momentarily desert lives of “Store 24ness,” lives of Real Time Audio and streaming video, of total accessibility... They come to Paris to find themselves in the historical attraction of the past.
That’s what Paris is — a way station for re-filling lungs with oxygen before submerging again into the evasive world of the invented, of the extended workstation, where the human mind is a piece of the network. A college buddy of mine recently in France for a trade show in Cannes sent me an email upon returning: “Sorry I missed you in France. Had meetings every 30 minutes for ten hours a day followed by business dinners. Delicious!” How many business dinners can one swallow per night? I wonder.
A business trip to Paris is a total contradiction in terms. I rather spend three days cooped up in a Motel 6 on the New York Thruway than travel on business in any part of France. One lawyer friend from New York was in Paris 11 times last year and claims to have only eaten food that had been “ordered in.” These are not the travelers we’re interested in. Get these souls back here without their briefcases and pocket organizers and watch them lap up the Béarnaise sauce and bra-less sundresses.
There may be curiosity about how the French are gung-ho on new technology, but the stampede of the Nouveau Marché and the emergence of WAP-equipped cell phones, just can’t cut the moutarde when compared to the pleasure of hanging out at a café terrace — with small, round tables — sipping cool glasses of slowly-brewed Kronenbourg, or an overpriced grand crème. Marveling at an Art Deco façade is far more romantic than riding an elevator to the 36th floor. Essentially it’s a lot more fun NOT working in the aesthetic illusion of the 17th century than working your butt off and following Wednesday’s schedule.
Mass interest in originality creates the paradox of conformity. That seems to sum up the tourist industry’s relationship with one of their most popular destinations. Everyone is pitching “Hidden Paris” these days. Well-kept secrets definitely sell travelers Paris package trips, guidebooks and magazines, but what do you call a well-kept secret that everyone and his sister’s boyfriend can find on page 89 of an Insight Guide? How do you reveal tips and have them remain secret? Simple. You don’t — a truth which should tell you something about how to really explore a city. Do it yourself.
The best thing that writers can do for travelers is ignite curiosity. The second best thing is to help set in place a travel “attitude,” a process for making your own decisions. A guidebook can help you understand the areas of the city you’ll want to explore, but if enough people start asking for the same mousse au chocolat at a particular bistro, you can bet your bottom euro that the greatness of that mousse will start to fade. Without sounding cruel or cynical, the problem remains that for many Anglo-Saxon tourists even fair mousse will taste a whole lot better than Mighty Fine chocolate-flavored pudding.
Recently, I decided to dine with an out-of-town guest in a quirky old bistro I used to frequent on the rue des Grands-Augustins. New owners I noticed had taken over, redecorated the joint, replaced the Turkish toilet in the alley, retired the notorious and well-loved waitress with a wart on her nose, translated the menu, hired a publicist who got the place listed in every guidebook in English and Japanese, and upped the price by 30%. The place moved from being “genuine quaint” to “stylized quaint.” What had once been original now became packaged. The tables were filled with foreign visitors seduced by the description and the chocolate-flavored decor. The food was fine and the evening perfectly enjoyable, and most of the guests probably found the address to be an ideal example of hidden and authentic Paris, but those of you who still aspire to tasting the real thing, must be far more discerning.
Not long ago, the inflight magazine for a major American airline published an article of mine that they’d commissioned on, of all things, “Hidden Paris.” The concept is clear ad nauseam: no one wants to feel like a dumb tourist. No one wants to be perceived as belonging to a flock of blind sheep huddling together in tourist traps, everyone wants to at least enjoy the illusion of being independent and partaking in Parisians Paris, and yet the editors and publishers are terrified that real experiences are too real for mass market American habits and values. My editor overrode the descriptive adjective when I mentioned gay bookstores in the Marais. The story now refers to “specialized” bookstores. I warned readers that the Champs-Elysées was overrun with American fast-food establishments, but the piece came out ordering visitors to stroll down the world’s most celebrated avenue.
Keep this as your guiding light as you experience this city: to insist on the real thing you have to get lost! Eat in neighborhood bistros that have never been in a guidebook, offer a plat du jour at 32 F, and are characterized by service that is good old-fashioned Parisian surly. (You can actually learn to enjoy poor service, if you see it as a way of slowing down the bulldozer of globalization, and the self-lobotomy of sanitized voice mail options which remove the cultural distinctions and insist that credit card use is secure. I tell my best friends who love to wander through back streets: Don’t unfold your citymap and “look lost” when you can become the “real thing.” Just turn left. Or right.

David Applefield (david@paris-anglo.com) is the author of Paris Inside-Out and The Unofficial Guide to Paris. He also edits the popular website www.paris-anglo.com, which is compiling readers comments and a list of restaurants, cafés, and other Paris establishments that are non-smoker friendly. So send in your smoking stories!