PARIS LETTER:Staying in the capital in July to fulfil a pledge to brush up my rusty French reminded me of of the many places and qualities that make it my favourite city, writes FRANK McDONALD
I HAD the extraordinary privilege of living in Paris for the whole month of July, staying at the old Irish College near the Panthéon and cycling every weekday to French classes at the Institut Catholique de Paris – known as “la Catho”. It has long been my favourite city, and I was fulfilling an old pledge to brush up my rusty French.
No matter how many times you visit a city, it’s only by living there, even for just a month, that you really get to know it. The first surprise was that Paris has become a cycling-friendly city, probably because of the success of its Vélib scheme, which we have since copied in Dublin. It was truly a joy to cycle in – though I steered well clear of Étoile.
Motorists were unfailingly considerate, and not one beeped his or her car horn in that aggressive “out of my way!” fashion we’re all so used to in Dublin. Pedestrians didn’t jaywalk either. They don’t need to in Paris; every junction has a marked pedestrian crossing and walkers have the right of way, even where there are no traffic signals.
Every morning as I cycled along rue de Vaugirard, past the Odéon theatre and the Palais du Luxembourg, the Mairie de Paris had street cleaners and green-painted propretévehicles out in force.
Water valves were being opened to flush the gutters as sweepers whisked away litter. Incredibly, every street in the city is cleaned once a day.
On rue Cassette, near the Catho, Gaz de France had a free-standing poster heralding works to upgrade the local gas distribution network. It not only had the start and finish dates, but also the name of the chargé d'affaireand his telephone number, together with computer-generated images giving explanations of what the work would involve.
Within the Catho's immediate vicinity, there were numerous places to have lunch, such as Le Petit Luxe, on rue de Vaugirard, where I had a lovely côte de veauwith tagliatelle one day for only €12.50, or the Restaurant Luxembourg, which offers a different two-course table d'hôtedaily for €19, and has a tout Parisambience about it.
After dining out at the very trendy Les Fines Gueules, near Place des Victoires, there was a rather inebriated foreigner carousing very loudly at one of the outdoor tables around midnight, and a waiter came out to ask him to calm down. He politely explained to the chap that this was necessary pour ne pas troubler la tranquillité de nos voisins.
Late night bars or nightclubs are acoustically insulated to ensure that the music being played inside, often at high volume, doesn’t blast out all over the street – by contrast with Dublin, where this is par for the course. Staff also ensure that patrons going outside for a smoke, or dispersing after the club closes, continue to behave themselves.
It is very rare to see people drunk or raucous in the street. In general, the French are not given to binge-drinking. Most of them drink wine or 33cl glasses of beer; they tend to blanch at the sheer volume of a pint.
Neither did I see anyone urinating in the street. Unlike Dublin, Paris has its sanisettes, modern versions of the familiar old pissoirs.
The old Irish College, now the Centre Culturel Irlandais, couldn’t be in a more peaceful location. Now secularised, though there’s still Mass on Sundays, it houses a diverse collection of residents, including eight of us on the French language programme for July.
There is plenty of activity nearby, particularly in and around the Place de la Contrescarpe and rue Mouffetard, made famous by Ernest Hemingway – and there are Hemingway walking tours, usually taken by Americans. I didn't bother, seeking out instead the apartment building at 71 rue du Cardinal Lemoine, where Joyce finished writing Ulysses.
I read Edmund White's Paris book, The Flâneur, which is essentially a collection of evocative stories about the city, as I watched them laying out Paris Plage, the summer beach along the Seine that's so popular with Parisians and tourists; it was one of numerous initiatives by Socialist mayor Bertrand Delanoë to make the city more civilised.
One of our teachers at the Catho took us to the Place de la Concorde on July 13th to see the preparations for Bastille Day. French flags hung everywhere, including the huge drapeaususpended within the arch of the Arc de Triomphe. On the day itself, at Pont Marie, I took a photo of nine French fighter jets streaming the colours in a cloudy sky.
We waited patiently at Place Saint Michel for the Tour de France on July 24th. The crowd was six deep behind crash barriers on either side of the Quai des Grands Augustins, some waiting for up to three hours, and the city was split in two for the duration. Finally, the cyclists arrived in a tightly bunched peleton and – whoosh! – they were gone.
Back in Dublin, I was beeped at twice by impatient motorists within the first half-hour of reacquainting myself with my trusty old bike.
“Va t’en!” I half-yelled at them, but I don’t think they heard me. Still, I think our phonetics teacher Marianne, who used to tweak our faces if we didn’t get the vowel sounds right, would have been proud.