After my mini-Gainsbourg tour, I decided to continue my little rive gauche vacation since I'm never on this side of town for pleasure and hunt down a glass of wine and something to nibble on to curb my hunger before dinner. I have the habit of staying in my nook of the 3rd, 4th and 11th and neglecting what this city has to offer outside of "Boboland".
I was planning to go to one of my favorite left bank haunts, Les Editeurs, when I walked by the darling little wine and cheese shop La Crèmerie. I had always wanted to go here back when I was frequenting this neighborhood but was always too shy to take on what seemed like an authentic French establishment and feared that my communication skills would have been inadequate.
I walked in and was practically hit in the face by the delicious smell of fresh, unpasteurized cheese and nestled in the only available table in between two groups of American tourists who also had the same idea of a late-afternoon snack.
I was enjoying a festive glass of beaujolais nouveau and a goat cheese plate drizzled in seasoned olive oil and being alone, I couldn't help but listen in on the conversations of my neighbors. I miss the days of Paris being new, exciting, funny, weird and exhilarating that I like to hear the observations of visitors.
I'd like to say that this is my first time eavesdropping on American tourists but having spent a lot of time alone here and having an addiction to coffee, wine and books, the odds are that I have done this before and amongst the insightful conversations about the city without fail there's always one of these characters thrown in the group.
There's the pretentious one in a group thirty-somethings taking a vacation together who took French in high school and insists on upstaging his friends by speaking in broken and out-dated French while his friends carry on more efficiently with the server who is fluent in English. There's the loudmouth who speaks octaves above everyone else who compares everything to back home; the service, the prices, the decor. These people are typically New Yorkers where the comment "If we were in New York, this guy would have been fired!" always manages to come up in reference to the slow service. There's the teenager who is tapping away on his iPhone and would rather be playing Call of Duty on Playstation than enjoying a cultural vacation with his parents who have maps, cameras and tour books sprawled out on the table. There's the teenage girl who is wearing pounds of make-up and wants pictures of herself taken in front of the Chanel store to be uploaded immediately as her facebook profile pic. There's the single girl who seems terrified by the menu, the waitstaff and fears that if she doesn't speak perfect French then she will get slaughtered. She speak in whispers so no one knows she's a tourist which then makes the exchange even more uncomfortable when she has to repeat herself. This one actually used to be me. And then my favorite, the boyfriend who is taking his girlfriend to Paris as a romantic gesture because she's always wanted to come here. He is way too big for the tiny brasserie chairs and has the look on his face that says "I don't get what the big deal is with this place. Everything is small, we keep getting lost, it's expensive and all the men here are gay."
Like all places after a couple of years, Paris has become my home, part of the norm where I'm desensitized by the town's little nuances and find myself reminiscing on my early days where this place could do no wrong and everyday was an adventure not a struggle.
Séb recently asked me if I regretted leaving my stable life of a good job, salary and apartment in New York to coming here, learning another language and taking many steps back. I admit that I find myself asking this question from time to time and the answer is no, not at all. This experience has added another facet of who I am. Like the Fellini quote "A different language is a different vision of life."
La Crèmerie9, rue des Quatre Vents75006 Paris
