Would you like some cheese with that wine?

L'CAVEAT D'JOUR:  The French have spent many decades creating a language composed of words that are seemingly impossible for me to pronounce or spell.  So I’ve just forgone the spell check on this one.  Good luck.  If you don’t understand what I’m talking about, you are just experiencing what the Parisians had to go through when I opened my mouth.

They say (at least someone famous said because I’ve heard it several times) that every (hu)man has two homelands: his own, and Paris.  For all the wonderful things that the city is, it does not feel like home.  Instead it feels like a beautiful city, set with beautiful buildings and beautiful people, who walk around acting beautiful all day.  You could hardly pick a greater contrast to Dhaka.  Perhaps the only commonality is the amount of leisure time.  The French are keen on enjoying themselves.  They scoff at us Americans that hustle and bustle, and complain about animal rights (I tried foi gras, and it was tasty.  Let the tomato throwing begin).  They drink wine with lunch quite naturally, and don’t think it decadent to order a coffee after they finish that foix gras, wine, wonderfully crunchy bagette, etc.  No hurry.  I had forgotten my watch and really had nowhere to be, so that suited my agenda just fine.  But I can’t imagine trying to work there.  It would be like taking my laptop to the opera or something—you just know it’s wrong.  So I think fears about the health of their economy are founded, but on a deeper cultural level.

Sidewalks are one of those things that you probably don’t really appreciate until you live in a city like Dhaka, where every time you walk somewhere, it’s like a 3-D, intense video game of avoiding cars, rickshaws, three-wheeled motorized rickshaws (CNGs), piles of trash, puddles of who-knows-what, goats, beggars, and anything else that happens to be on your path that day.  Walking is possible, but it is not particularly relaxing.  I wanted to walk on peaceful sidewalks, enjoy the anonymity that the city allows, and just look at pretty things.  A good friend of my parents, Dorothee, had graciously invited me to stay with her, so I threw my bags down at her place, had lunch with her daughter Anne-Marie (topped off with a coffee and some delicious chocolate, of course), and then headed out to take in Paris.

Dorothee had thoughtfully directed me to a formagerie (cheese store) to get some cheese to bring back with me (the US $10 Australian cheddar is just not up to the mark these days).  She even drew me a map.  I went out the door, and spotted a cheese store.  That was not it.  A few blocks later, another cheese store!  Still not it.  I passed a patisserie (bakery).  I pause.  My parents were always talking about these things called macarons.  But when they started raving about the raspberry or the passionfruit or some other thing that didn’t involve chocolate, I always tuned it out.  Homesickness is weird though; often I want to do things that normally I would roll my eyes about because I know that someone I love would want to do this if they were there.  In this case, I decided to buy macarons and give it a shot. 

OH MY GOD THEY ARE AWESOME.  EVEN THE RASPBERRY ONES.  I am not sure I could ever eat an oreo again; this is so light, so crispy, and the filling is just the perfect burst of super sweet.  It was like heroin; with one bite, I was a full fledged junkie.   And since I seemed to be in a neighborhood filled with speciality shops selling wine or meat or cheese or sweets, there with plenty of opportunities to take another hit.  Eventually I found the cheese store, and feeling really inadequate in my cheese knowledge prowess and French, I stared at all the cheeses for a while before feigning confidence and ordering a few “sous vide” (no idea what it means, but Dorothee included it on her note with the map and they sealed the cheeses in plastic; sweet!).  Chomping on my 3^rd or 4^th macaron I stop back by the apartment to put my cheese in the fridge, and then hop on the metro to the famed Champ L-Esye.  Not because I really want to go shopping, but I have a strong aversion to transferring subway lines.  I hop out and head away from the Arc D’Triomphe and towards the obelisk.  I’m going to sound really pretentious for two seconds and just say it: I’ve only been in Paris during the summer before; I had no idea that the fall could be so beautiful.  People complain about gray weather that frequently hangs over Paris, but I love it.  In my mind, the dim sky allows all the colors of the buildings, streets, and today, amber leaves to just pop.  The leaves against these off-white buildings, the Louvre and all the statues and fountains that greet you on your way in; breathtaking.  Also, Christmas decorations are already creeping in; strings of lights are everywhere.  I also find myself oddly happy at all the lovey dovey couples that are everywhere—there are few displays of romantic intimacy in Dhaka—men can and do hold hands with each other, but rarely, unless you sneak around the parks on Friday afternoon or camp out in one of the posh coffee shops (I do!), will you see a couple clasp fingers, let alone some of the stunts that are commonplace in Paris (like K-I-S-S-I-N-G).

My dad’s brother’s family went to Paris this summer, and when I was home in August my sweet cousin Stephen showed me all the photos from trip.  When I get to the bridge in front of the Palais de Justice with all the locks on it, I suddenly miss my North Carolina crew quite strongly.  The rational side of me laughs that here I am in this foreign land reminded of details of a home thousands of miles away.  I suppose I should say “homesickness” but it wasn’t NC that I missed, it was the people (peoplesickness?  Doesn’t have the right ring to it).  Luckily the emotional side of me settles for continuing my walk along the Seine, though as I start to see posters by Mucha, a Czech artists who is one of my favorite, that evokes memories of my grandmother.  I console myself in another macaron.

I meet Anne-Marie to head to dinner at Dorothee son Lorent’s house and meet his wife Camille and adorable son Enri (not to imply that his wife is not adorable).  I am grateful that they treat me with a familiarity akin to family.  We’ve known each other forever, and through our parents have a fairly deep knowledge or at least timeline of our lives.  I stayed at their house in southern France when I came through with a eurorail pass in 2004.  Lorent spent Thanksgiving with us when he was studying in Virginia, and I taught Anne Marie how to make chocolate chip cookies in the kitchen at my parents house.  Enri is dressed in a one-piece with monkeys that my mom had picked out (and it looked like something my mom would pick out!).  This was not a dinner with strangers, stilted and formal.  There were memories, networks of relationships, references, personal questions to ask and jokes to make at each other’s expense.  It was fun, and cathartic in an unexpected way.  And the food is delicious!  We even casually work in a cheese course.  With currant jam.  I don’t really feel actively deprived in Dhaka most days, but the range of food and its deviation from my norm are both a bit overwhelming.  Or maybe that ‘s just the wine.

On my final day in Paris, Dorothee is back to enjoy a day of sightseeing with me.  We head to St. German, where she spent her first days as an au pair, when she first came from Germany.  She can understand my sense of wonder with everything the city offers because she felt that once too, and having lived in many countries (including Venezuela, where she met my parents and me!), she can empathize with and give sagacious advice on the ex-pat life.  Great to have in a walking companion, but even better is her sweet tooth seems as overactive as mine.  We set off to a place we think might have the best macarons in the city.  We get there, and it’s out of control.   The desserts are beautiful (evidently they’ve forbidden photography, but I got a few snaps in), there is a line out the door, and they have dozens of flavors of beautiful, petite macarons.  We get a full box for me to take back to Dhaka with me (the ones with truffle oil get their own bag; the rest go in an appropriately stylish box).  And then some truffles too because we’ve been standing there starting at them for long enough that they’ve trapped us with their silent sirens’ call.  Enter these stores at your own peril.  And yet, we keep coming across them!  We peep in just to look around, but usually find ourselves walking out with a little treat to nibble on and compare to the other chocolate shops.  We weave through narrow streets, popping into shops here and then, Dorothee telling stories from earlier days in Paris and elsewhere.  As the afternoon grows late, we head to one of my favorite spots in Paris—Mont Marte.  Perched up on a hill, it seems to sit at the top of the world.  We arrive just before sunset and settle in for a cup of tea at the base of Sacre Coure, looking at how the colors change across it as the sun slowly sets (it is quite slow, if you’re used to the sunset in the tropics).  This is a vision of Paris I want to take with me.  Only once dark has truly set do we ascend.  One can see the city—pick out Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tour, and a few other landmarks (or rather, Dorothee can pick them out and show them to me).  There are shops and yet more chocolate shops (by now we are regrettably full) up at the top to explore.  We wander contentedly, watching the artists in the square sketch out portraits.  The whole scene, with the artists, shops, and people, is itself postcard perfect.

Dorothee cooks a nice dinner for us (complete with a robust bottle of red wine and several tasty desserts, because we had not had enough sugar for one day).  It’s a peaceful ending to a peaceful day.  I feel rejuvenated, TB is the last thing on my mind, I’m having trouble fitting into my jeans so can go back to the shapeless salwar kameez (I’m just kidding!  I was only in Paris for 2 days and even with my best attempts I can’t eat that much!).  My suitcase, which shuttled 30 books for the launch in Lille is now filled with wine  and cosmetics that friends in Dhaka have asked me to buy (yes, people trusted me to know how to buy cosmetics.  In French at that), and a new carry-on of cheese, chocolate, the box of macarons and the bag of truffle macarons (full disclosure: the bag didn’t make it home.  I was really worried about it getting crushed during the journey.  Or I just couldn’t wait any longer to get back to my chosen homeland #2)

When I was heading to Dhaka the first time, my dad commented that with my French press, etc. I was really taking a lot of creature comforts with me.  I think my appreciation for creature comforts has only increased—I’d rather enjoy the things that Dhaka does well (recently I’ve been loving all the eggplant and pumpkin dishes), and be picky about everything else .  Polenta delivered from an Italian friend.  Masala from India.  Macarons from Paris.  Hopefully I will never get desperate enough to eat the “Mexico nacho chips” that I found at the Korean store (Korean Mexican food in Dhaka.  Nacho average culinary experience).  

 Also I just got to say, since I’ve already been pretentious once in this blog, The Game (i.e. Harvard-Yale football to those of you who don’t live in the ivory tower) is on Saturday and obviously Yale is going DOWN.