"...It’s music rage, which is like road rage, only more righteous. When you get road rage, a tiny part of you knows that you’re being a jerk, but when you get music rage, you are carrying out the will of God, and God wants these people dead."
~Nick Hornby, A Long Way Down


I start classes tomorrow, which should be interesting, since two of my classes are upper-level classes at the French university.
Also, all my classes this semester will be at the French U.– last semester I had a grammar class with other Americans, taught in French, but still– it felt like a copout to me. This semester, though, I am rolling hardcore.
Somehow I managed to schedule my four classes not only in four different buildings in Paris, but in four different arrondissements. Arrondissements (Awhh-roan-deese-mon) are districts– they are the ZIP CODES of Paris, which means I am going to be doing an awful lot of commuting throughout the day on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. But this semester I only have to go to Tolbiac (the third-world internment-camp-looking university still littered with remnants of last year’s riots) once a week for one class, instead of almost every day like last semester. This does two things in my life: 1) improves my general sense of well-being and outlook on life, since I no longer have to look at that disgusting place every day and 2) cuts my time on the Metro by nearly half. Furthermore, instead of taking classes there, my classes this semester are at:
1) The Sorbonne. Can words express how cool that is? The Sorbonne. Say it, let it roll off your tongue. The oldest U. in Europe. I’m going from studying in a building built in the 1970's by the lowest bidder, with nicotine-coated windows and graffiti on the walls that says things like "THE REVOLUTION BEGINS WITH YOU" and "MUSIC WILL ROCK THE NATION" to a building that no one even dares mess with because the place is, oh, you know, on par with Notre Dame on the list of Oldest Buildings In Paris. The Sorbonne is basically the most beautiful building I have ever seen. It’s around the corner from the Pantheon, which is awesome, in the heart of the Quartier Latin, surrounded by libraries, bookstores, papeterie, and panini bars that all have student discounts to the nth degree. It’s a giant square building, with a huge courtyard in the middle, all cobbled. Standing in the courtyard at this time of year is like stepping back into another century. Imagine it– I’m trying to check the room of my classes, so I have to find an obscure hallway on the fourth floor of the Hugo wing (named after guess who?) where the fliers are posted on the wall. I have to show ID to get in; it’s how they keep tourists out, which means that the doors are guarded by 2 or 3 gendarmerie, the policemen with the round flat hats and the old-fashioned looking rifles. The doors to the place are wood, at least ten inches thick, with iron hinges and designs across them that stretch twice as tall as me. Through the doors is the courtyard, all the wings look into this central area, paved with round gray cobblestones. To enter the actual building, I choose my door, each marked with the name of a famous Frenchman– "Hugo" or "Dumas" or "Richelieu." Climbing the ten or so marble steps to the (smaller this time) door, I realize that this was what I always envisioned studying in France would be. Winding marble staircase with a wrought iron banister on my left, window looking out to the Pantheon on the right, inlaid wood hallway laid out before me. I have never seen anything more beautiful or more academic in my life. It just begs me to get out my ballpoint pens and square French paper and prepare myself for notes and lectures and being astute, collegiate, scholastical, and educated. I wish I wore glasses, just to add to the feeling of academia. The hallways glow golden with the soft light, so different from the harsh, often-burned out fluorescent bulbs at Tolbiac, in the center of Chinatown, where I studied last semester. It’s warm inside, enough that I ditch my scarf and coat while I meander the halls, until a professorial-looking man stops me to ask if I need directions. Forgetting that feeling educated does not mean being educated, I asked for directions to the bureau I needed, and he helped me out in true professorial form. I checked my class times, then walked back downstairs and into the courtyard. I had re-bundled up just before exiting the building, but stepping back into the courtyard with the wind whipping my hair into a panic and the grey Paris sky over me, all I could think was that this is what all University campuses everywhere ought to look like, because if they did, the world would be an awful lot more stoked to be educated. And this is coming from a girl who goes to Emory University, Atlanta, GA– arguably THE most beautiful college campus in the US.
2) Michelet Building. This is an archaeology library on Rue Michelet somewhere just on the Sixieme side of the Latin Quarter, the place where I took the oral exam the day I returned to Paris in January, with the winding halls and the hardwood floors and the cracked plaster walls. It looks like the Egyptian library from the new version of The Mummy– the one with Brendan Frasier. (Which reminds me that I love that movie and have realized of late that I have a penchant for B-rate movies with B-rate actors, but that is neither here nor there.) It’s next to the jardin de Marco Polo, which is this beautiful hidden little island of green in the middle of the Quartier Latin. No one pays any attention to it because the expansive Jardins du Luxembourg are so close, which makes it even cooler because this one is so unknown. One of my favorite fountains (a far distant second to the Fontaine des Medicis) is in the center of the jardin, which is really more like a median that has been highly decorated and beautified. Anyway, the Michelet building looks out onto that. The Michelet building also exemplifies Frenchness quite well. The second time I was there (just to check my class times), the stairwell doors were shut (of course, there is no elevator) and there was a sign on the door that read "Escalier Interdit au Public"– stairs forbidden to the public. Great, now how am I supposed to get off the rez-de-chaussee, the bottom floor? I stood there staring at the door for a moment, wondering what to do, then went to the welcome desk, this terribly unwelcoming corner of the foyer where you have to speak and listen through a glass window to the person on the other side. I have a hard enough time making myself understood, I don’t need glass to further inhibit the process, thanks. Anyway, I ask the old man how to get to the second floor, and he looks at my like I am crazy, and then says (in French), "Why Mademoiselle, it is just through that door!" and points to the one I had been standing in front of, the one marked, "forbidden." Either the forbidden was just a suggestion, or I am not the public... But either way, it was so typically French.
3) Maison des Mines. A part of the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussees (School of Bridges and Roadways), the premiere architectural school of France. The Ecole des Ponts et Chaussees is a school I studied in art history classes back in the US... it’s kind of a big deal, and rather ironic given my predilection for jumping off bridges.
4)Tolbiac. In the heart of Chinatown, far away from everything except sketchy men at fruit stands and discount shoe stores. This should not be considered Paris. The building, as previously mentioned, has a metal gate at the front that can (and has been) rolled shut to lock students in... or out... during riots, sit-ins, and protests. It’s where I got gum on my jeans and had to cut a 4-inch square out of the left ankle of my favorite pair of pants. It’s where the student riots of 1968 (basically the French equivalent of Kent State, only WAY WAY more hardcore) were centered. It’s where I was asked to join the Communist party. And the Socialist party. In the same day.
If I seem a little hostile, it’s because I can’t stand the place. Although in December, during my last week of classes, three days before Christmas, I sat in my archaeology class on the corner of the top floor of that building (number 13), and we could, quite literally, hear the wind howling around the building. There’s no word for it but howling... it was amazing. And then one leaf lazed by the window, floating upwards on the wind instead of falling downwards as leaves are supposed to do when they leave a tree. I will say, other than the floating leaves, the view from the top floor is pretty good... Invalides, Notre-Dame, and Saint-Chappelle... BUT not nearly as cool as the Pantheon outside the Sorbonne, and thus the building still all around bites.
After all, Miss, this is France...
~B