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Traveling With The Infidel
Reminiscences of the Road

Still Searching For Satori in Paris

"In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did  succeed in making those idiots understand their own language."  Mark Twain

I've been to Paris a few times before this visit.  In fact, those are my shoes in this picture.  It was my first time in Paris.  The year was 1974 (no, that's not a rain coat, those are bell bottom pants).  Notice the condition of the shoes.  That wasn't from miles and miles of Paris, but from a long stretch of restaurant kitchen work in Switzerland before getting to Paris.  If you've ever worked in a restaurant kitchen you know it's hell on shoes . . . grease, water, dirt, falling food . . . but anyway, after nine months of "down and out in Switzerland", there I was having a grand time pounding the pavement in Paris and taking a picture of my shoes in the shadow of Notre Dame just to prove I'd been there. Most of the other pictures from that first time in Paris, other that the obligatory Eifel, Arc and sidewalk cafe, are of Parisians:  pretty Parisian women;  elegant Parisian women; exotic Parisian women, and many of them, for some reason, seem to be scowling at the scruffy, wide-eyed and wistful photographer.  

We had arrived from Basel on the overnight train (my traveling buddy, Big-J,  was a hometown friend and fellow scruffian), and although we were tired, we wandered around for a long time until we found a hotel that perfectly fitted our demanding expectations -- it was the cheapest room we could find.  We were on the 6th floor, there was only one bed, the walls were insulated with old newspapers, there were no fire escapes that I could locate, the toilette down the hall was the scene of a nightly gathering of empty wine bottles, the immediate view from the mini-balcony was of a graveyard, many of the rooms may well have been rented by the hour, and we totally dug it.  The room was  was cheap and the hotel was well located.  We were in Place Clichy, according to Big-J, the old stomping grounds of Henry Miller, and a vibrant and somewhat seedy neighborhood that was well suited to the needs of two young scruffians exploring Paris for the first time.  We were there for three or four days, and we walked all over that town, up and down and all around.  We didn't see the inside of the Metro once, but we saw Paris.

We found our way into Paris proper and stayed just long enough to say we'd been there.  E & C had full batteries, but I was needing a recharge.  We made our way back to the campground to find J-Bo gone.   He'd had a good long nap and decided to do some exploring himself.  We went to the campground store looking for a quick dinner and found canned lentils with sausage, baguettes & butter, fruit and red wine.  We took the supplies back to E & C's and heated the lentils.  The emptied lentil can became the hobo cooking pot for the rest of the trip, used for heating coffee water and making soup (see the artsy-fartsy pic).  After dinner I went straight to my tent.  It was almost 8:00 PM Paris time.

The next morning broke bright and beautiful.  After, baguette, butter, fruit, All-Bran and coffee at the sugar shack we were ready to hit the town.  But where to go?  We decided to go to the Louvre Museum.  I'm not a big museum rat -- I like the sidewalks more than most museums -- but that's just me, and I still go and enjoy looking around for awhile.  Getting into the Louvre meant passing through more security that the average American airport.  There were two metal detector checks, and highly visible, well-armed police all over the place.  We started out in the sculptures collection, then saw the Greek, Etruscan and Roman antiquities, and finally made our way to the paintings.  For some reason I tire easily in museums, maybe it's the air,  but it's the same every time I've been to the Louvre.  I like the sculptures, but there's only so many Renaissance paintings I can handle. . .  I get Bible scene overload and need to get outside for fresh air.  But I'm not the only one.  Most of the people politely nod and admire painting after painting, and go faster and faster the closer they get to the real attraction, the Mona Lisa.  Then once they've seen her, the pressure's off and they start looking for the exit, and I'm right behind 'em.  Once we left the Louvre and got back outside to the sidewalks, sunshine and fresh air my energy returned and the quest continued.   

We bounced around Paris for a couple of days, seeing the sights, figuring out our group dynamic, and searching for that elusive satori.  On day two we visited Notre Dame under gorgeous, sunny skies and thirty minutes later made our way up to the Montmartre and Sacre Couer in the middle of a downpour.  After a look around and a good soaking we decided to jump on the Metro and head back toward Port Maillot and the campground.  As we got on the Metro we all managed to find a place to sit down, but we weren't all sitting together.  E&C were, and they commenced to play googly-googly games with each other, J-Bo consulted his Metro map, and I  checked out a recently acquired copy of the International Herald Tribune.  I like to read the Tribune when I'm traveling in Europe, even when there's not a war just about to cut loose in Afghanistan.  And I like to read in public places like cafes, trains, and subways . . . but let's just say that I've always been a little discreet about it because on the road you are what you read, and while the normal style for reading a newspaper is holding it high for the world to see, when I'm traveling in foreign lands I hold it a bit lower and keep it folded in half.  

So we're settled in and heading for home when all of a sudden at one of the stops a crowd of about a dozen young Algerian men rushed into our car with fire in their eyes.  They had matching scarves on, and some had their faces painted with the same color as the scarves, or with 'Algeria' written on their foreheads, and I thought they were all on a weekend soccer team.  But if they were, they must have lost because they were carrying some heavy angst and anger.  They were darting glances around the car and outside the car and breathing hard, I mean they were juiced up on adrenaline.  All the seats on our car were taken, so they stood as the train started moving again.  My internal warning sirens were sounding loud and clear, I was doing some serious ethnic profiling.  Although I continued to look at my paper, I wasn't reading.  I was keeping an eye on the dudes.  J-Bo had picked up on them, too, but E&C just went right on playing googly-googly in plain old American English as if they hadn't noticed a thing . . . and they hadn't.  A couple of stops later the dudes and other riders got off, and J-Bo was able to move over by me.  "Did you see those guys?", asked.  "What do you think that was all about?"  We mulled it over but all we could do was guess as what had fired them up.  Whatever it was though, we knew it was a very weird thing we'd just seen.

E&C on top of the Arc

The next day I read that there had been a riot going on, and we had seen just one small part of the dispersing crowd.  There had been a soccer game between France and Algeria at Stade France, but, as the Tribune reported,  "When hordes of fanatics overwhelmed the security forces in the 80,000 capacity crowd, which was predominantly (French) Algerian . . . the game was over prematurely."  In that same edition, a headline on the front page read, "Allies Urge Their Citizens to Keep a Low Profile".  So maybe that was the enlightenment I'd been looking for . . .  watch your ass or you'll be satori.

Chapter III -- An Interlude of Tips, Hints and Trivia