Paris 2017, part 8
The church I didn’t manage to visit when I was in a hurry to get to the Louvre is the church of St Germain l’Auxerrois. As it is literally across the street from the front of the Louvre, a former royal palace, it used to serve for a long period of time as the parish church of the rulers of France. On 24 August 1572, it was precisely from the belfry of this church that by ringing the bell a signal was given for the slaughter of the Huguenots, the French Protestants, the event remembered in history as the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. The carnage aside, it is a very nice church, both from the outside and the inside, and it represents a mixture of several styles. Still, regardless of its beauty and a certain historic significance, it was rather empty, which was, as far as I was concerned, quite all right.
With this I decided to finish with my visits to the famous sites of Paris. Needless to say, in this part of the city in particular, wherever you turn you see some place of interest, but for me now it all came down to superficial looking on my way back to the part of the city where I lived. This afternoon I decided to focus more on the local gastronomy, so I went to a pastry shop which makes some famous cakes. As Jacqueline told me once, many make them today, but this pastry stop near the church of St Germain des Pres makes the originals. No, I’m not talking about macaroons, which one can find all over Paris, but I’m talking about the Tarte Tropezienne. The dessert pastry was invented at Saint-Tropez back in 1955 and it was named by no less than famous Brigitte Bardot when she was shooting a film there. This time I took three smaller, but different versions of the cake in order to try them. They were fine, but for some unknown reason all the cakes I tried those days seemed just too sweet. On the other hand, I thought it would be interesting if I tried to find some version of the recipe on the internet and then make it myself. I love it when travelling inspires me to be creative.
I walked for a while more and then I realized that a lot of restaurants in the neighbourhood offered oysters. I had already planned to have a light lunch somewhere, so as this was my last day, I decided to give myself a treat. I just thought why eat some light salad which I can also eat at home. It was better to pay slightly more and have half a dozen oysters which I certainly cannot find at home or at least not as fresh as they may be here (Serbia has no access to sea). So, oysters are served in dozens, which means 12 a portion. If somebody is really hungry they may order two dozen or 24 pieces. I opted for half a dozen, i.e., 6 oysters. They also come in different sizes and I chose medium one, i.e., no. 3, thinking that in this way I could not get it wrong, as I actually don’t know much about oysters, but I generally love sea food. Other than by size, oysters may also be designated by the beach at which they were produced, as well as the region of their origin. This time I chose Fine de Bretagne.
I also took a glass of wine, which went smoothly with my meal, but was slightly problematic as I normally rarely drink alcohol during the day since it impacts me in such a way that it makes me sleepy. And although my flat was very close, I felt it would be silly to sleep during the day while in Paris.
I enjoyed greatly this slow rhythm of passing my time, but at one point I realized I had to go back to the flat in order to wash my hair for I had an agreement to meet up with Natalia and Alexandre that evening in order to go to a concert. It was a private concert of soul music. Natasha works for a large agency dealing with different kinds of music artists and she occasionally gets invitations and tickets to various events. Thus it happened that she had a couple of passes for a concert while I was still in Paris. We agreed to meet in the evening near the Les Halles underground station which in turn was near the place where the concert was to be held. First I met with Natasha. To start with we were looking for each other, as there are several station entrances/exits, but we eventually managed and first went to have a drink. There is a myriad of bars and restaurants around Les Halles and they were all full. The crowds were particularly pronounced as it was Friday evening. We went along the Rue Montorgueil and barely managed to find a free table, although there is one bar next to the other there. As it was still early spring and the temperatures were low even during the day, and particularly in the evening, all the tables that stood on the pavement were covered by systems of heaters, so it was quite pleasant to sit outside. Again I opted for a bottle of panache which had somehow turned into a traditional drink of this trip. Natasha speaks quite a lot of Serbian, so our conversation went mostly in Serbian, with some French and occasionally we would drop in an English word if there was no other way out. Afterwards we went to the Centre Hip-Hop which is situated within the Les Halles complex.
When speaking about this part of Paris, until some 40 or 50 years ago, at the place where the modern Les Halles complex is today, there used to be a huge wholesale market with enormous quantities of food arriving every day. As it was established that such quantity of easily perishable goods in the centre of the city is not a good thing for hygienic reasons, the wholesale market was moved out and a large underground shopping mall was built instead, while the old name stuck and it simply means “covered markets” or “the halls.” Over time, it was also established that at the site where Les Halles are there used to be an ancient burial ground. During the construction works at the site, the bones that were found were cleared and moved to another place, while this new mall was built thereafter. A couple of years ago, the centre was renovated and reconstructed, and now it has a new, more modern appearance. Later that evening, Alexandre told me that the renovation was extremely expensive, but that the job was very poorly done for the roof construction leaks and as we walked along the central passage we could see water puddles made by the morning rain. Sloppiness, to put it mildly, seems to be on the rise in the western civilization. Unfortunately.
At the Centre Hip-Hop, we attended the concert of a musician from Guinea, Soul Bang's, organized by the RFI (French International Radio). First we had to pass two detailed controls and then the entrance into the bar area in front of the concert hall was possible only with invitations and if you were on the list. In the bar area, champagne was served in unlimited quantities, but I decided to continue with panache. This is where we met with Alexandre and in order to make the communication easy, we opted for Serbian with occasional visits to the other languages. At some point, the organizers invited us all to go to the concert hall. There were some introductory speeches and the concert was also a good occasion for the RFI to present an award for the year 2016 to Soul Bang’s. The concert was quite ok, there were a few songs I liked and everything was broadcasted live and through the Facebook. It is unavoidable nowadays. Afterwards we went to another bar in the area and then I finally moved on to beer. With a lively conversation with Natasha and Alexandre, I stayed there until midnight, but since the underground system works until 1am, I soon found myself at the flat with no problems at all.
The next morning greeted me with a radiant blue sky and the sunshine. As I had to head for the airport by half past 10 at the latest, my original plan was to go to a nearby place and have a morning coffee while enjoying this beautiful city. However, when I saw the cloudless sky, I simply could not resist and headed straight for the Seine. And then, at a fast pace, I made a small circle walking along the quay on the left bank of the Seine, passing onto the other side of the river at the Louvre, walking in parallel with the Tuileries Gardens up to the Place de la Concorde, then over the bridge to the left bank at the Palais Bourbon and finally along the Boulevard St Germain, when I headed for the flat where I got my things and left for the airport on time.
On my way to the airport I started talking with a gentleman from Stari Banovci (Serbia) and this was quite pleasant. At the airport we even had coffee together, as we both came far too early and had to do something with the surplus time. I love that spontaneous “socializing” of my nation, although I personally can sometimes be a whimsical, unsociable crank (more about this when I write about one of my summer holidays in Turkey). I guess this is because there are not many of us, plus I hope that this is because we have not become too alienated one from the other. Not yet at least. Whatever the reason, it does happen quite often that on a plane or at an airport I chat to my heart’s content with somebody I will never see again.
Still, I will not close my story of Paris with the airport, but with an additional account of how I thought of starting mlogs in the first place. The idea of mlog has its roots precisely in this morning as I walked briskly along Boulevard St Germain. All of a sudden I became aware that a song was playing in my head, while I softly hummed it. I didn’t know the lyrics, I didn’t even know exactly which song it was or who performed it, but I thought it could be Yves Montand and some song of Paris, for it was certainly a well known French melody. Even if it were not about Paris, it would be a shame for it truly becomes it. When I returned home, I worked on this again and thanks to the modern technology I found out that it is indeed a song about Paris, Sous le ciel de Paris, and that there is a version sung by Yves Montand, although it was also recorded by Edith Piaf and was written for a film of the same title.
So, here is the song, as I hummed it that morning, under the dazzling blue sky of Paris.