Europeans don’t use bedsheets. Have I mentioned that? It no longer seems weird to me, which is the really bizarre part. In hotels (and DEFINITELY in my apartment), you get a fitted sheet and then a duvet.

The thing about Paris is that no matter what the weather is, it has the power to immediately convince you that THIS is the exact way Paris is meant to be– when it was Living Nativity cold here, I wandered about in my knee-length coat, wool scarf, gloves, and knee high boots, it seemed like Paris could never be anything else... that it would never be as beautiful as it was then, with the gray sky and the wind whipping through my hair.
In the fall, when I walked around being hit in the head with chestnut hulls hurled from the trees that line every boulevard in the city, when the leaves were changing and everywhere I went I could smell the roasted nuts sold by street vendors in paper cups, it seemed that the city was just designed to be seen that way, in golds and reds, with the smell of smoke and the light fog that came from the Seine after it got dark...
And now it’s printemps here, and I’ve never seen anything quite so amazing in my life.

Today I went to Paris Plage– the "Paris Beach." When the weather is good, Parisians flock to the banks of the Seine to soak it up while it lasts, because it doesn’t always last long. The "banks" of the Seine, just for the record, are not like the banks of a regular river. The Seine is... paved. I don’t really know how to describe it other than that. The only other river I have ever spent significant time around (though never in) is the Kentucky River, which is not even like a cousin of the Seine. The Seine is probably just as dirty but looks much cleaner because it runs clearish black, whereas the KY River is generally opaque milky green with refrigerators floating down it.

Anyway, the "banks" are concrete walls that rise on each side of the river, leveling out about 4 meters above the water to a flat concrete space about 3 meters wide, then rising again to street level, where cars drive. BUT you can go down to that intermediate level (along most of the river), which is where gypsies and Americans who are more hardcore than I am sleep in the summers, in makeshift gypsy/American camps, where everyone wears their hair in dreads and cooks dinner over a campfire under a bridge, but somehow it is SO COOL and not sketchy. Probably because after dinner they always get out their acoustic guitars and tambourines and have a party. But during the day in the spring, the banks are full of REAL Parisians– the river’s edge becomes a haven for Parisians to get away from the tourists that drive them all crazy.

Today it was just cool enough that I was comfortable in a short-sleeved shirt and skirt– I had the sense not to wear tights in hopes of getting sun on my legs, and I think it might have worked. I brought my book, nestled up against the wall on the Right Bank (the north bank, if you really want to know) where the sun was shining best, and began to read my book through my tractor sunglasses, the ones that make me feel so ridiculously chic and rockstar. On one side of me was a guy about my age asleep on his skateboard with his feet dangling over the water, and on the other side a group of rowdy topless teenage guys speaking a mixture of French and Italian, waving and shouting at all the boats that passed. I read for awhile and sipped my sparkling water, then fluffed my purse and went to sleep with it under my head– the French equivalent of napping on the Quad. I jerked awake when a tourist boat riding by honked at a steamer in its way, and the guy next to me said, "Oh, don’t worry, you can go back to sleep, they weren’t honking at you."

In other news, I’ve heard (through the foreign college student grapevine) that there is talk back in the US of impeaching Bush as a formal censure. I don’t know if this is a LEGIT rumor, or just wishful thinking on the part of the French the way everyone rumored about impeaching Clinton years before it happened, and to be honest I don’t really care. You know how they say "Fool me once..."? Well, shouldn’t it be the same with presidents? Elect one that turns out to be a bad egg, shame on him; elect another IMMEDIATELY AFTER THAT, shame on YOU. You can’t just start impeaching every lame duck president we have; the world would go to hell in a handbasket, or at least the price of gas would.

I was at the Musee Nationale du Moyen Age today (the biggest Middle Ages museum in the world, I think...), where the Lady and the Unicorn tapestry series is hung, and I came across a narwhal tooth in a forgotten display somewhere in the basement frigidarium. I don’t know exactly what a narwhal IS except that it’s not exactly a whale, but something close to it... Anyway, the narwhal tooth on display was very nearly as tall as me, probably slightly over five feet (ok, so still like 8 inches shorter than me, but whatever), and displayed with a plaque that said in the Middle Ages it was treated as a sacred object because everyone thought it was the horn of a unicorn. How weird is that?
Also on display: a reliquary (the fancy boxes that pieces of saints were stored in to be worshipped) containing Jesus’ umbilical cord.

I have no idea how people decided which relics went with which saint, and if something was a relic at all (most common are fragments of bone; pieces of the shroud Jesus was buried in; locks of hair of saints, etc.) but I do know that there was a Renaissance priest quoted in a book I read for class one time as saying that "if you could compile all the relics of the cross in France, you would have enough to build the ark." Which is to say that even back then there was a certain degree of skepticism that went with the collection and authenticity of relics– but a BELLY BUTTON? I mean, really– EWW.

Wasting away,
~B

P.S. I discovered that if I lie down on the futon in my room while it is unfolded, I can see the whole top viewing deck of the Eiffel Tower, whereas usually it is just a piece of it.