H. Hsu Word Salad

Bonne Anee! Paris 2005

I never did write about the fiasco(s) P & I had in Paris for New Year.  Let’s just say that I hadn’t planned on running for life and limb during our sojourn, and the year started off with adventure.

Travel Tip: www.go-today.com is a fabulous website for international travel bargains, P & I used them to visit Argentina/Uraguay last year, and to spend New Year’s Eve in Paris the year before. 

Sound romantic? Let me warn you about going bonkers Paris-style.   

First of all, approx 6 days in Paris for accomodations plus air at under $700 is a steal, even if it is the cold season. Thus, we packed all our cold weather gear-taking care not to look too much like unkempt Americans.  Although my efforts to look tres chic on vacation merely meant that we wound up having to buy a cheap pair of athletic/casual shoes in Paris because my boots meeting cobblestones and the like rendered a lot of pain.

New year’s day we are touring the city on the Metro and notice someone handing out flyers.  I have a habit of collecting random information, and much to the annoyance of P and attested to by the drifts of paper all over our home, I also collect random reading materials everywhere I go.

P hurries me along, and does not take a flyer. "what if that’s important?", I ask. He scoffs. I read less French than he does, so, we walk on and board our Metro.

We do a whirlwind tour of the fabulous Louvre, and are dissapointed that it closes early due to the holiday.  P also seems thoroughly unimpressed by that grand dame, Mona Lisa. I just wish I had bought a better camera to do this place justice.

We wander about the Champs Elysses taking giant self portraits of our own heads blocking the scenery, and pretty much give up on communicating intelligibly in French. Now we accost random Parisians and fellow tourists to find out who we CAN communicate with. "excuse me, do you speak English?" "Hablas Espanol?" P beckons me over "Hey, these guys speak Chinese!". During this trip we chat with a lovely couple from Spain and some Chinese people, but they seem as clueless as we are. No luck dredging up any Thai people.

New year’s Eve night falls and we station ourselves next to the river Seine and befriend some New Yorkers, married 11 years and here enjoying vacation with their kids tucked in at home with family. We are facing the Eiffel Tower which looms before us and sparkles with extra-festive scintillating lights.

Some dude walks up and picks up our camera case and starts moving it away. We’re a bit shocked at the brazeness, but he scuttles away when confronted.

At midnight the Eiffel Tower is….sort of anticlimatic.  Apparently any actual fireworks are being held over at the Ferris Wheel this year, not the Eiffel. Didn’t get the memo.  So everyone’s watches go off at different times and there is a chaotic wave of uncoordinated "Bon Anee"’s!  Now the crowd is moving along in rivulets, shouting and noisemaking and pickpocketing merrily.  People are drinking champagne out of bottles in the street.

Several large young lads come up cheerfully pounding people on the back "Bon Anee!", I notice them way to close to P and his backpack and steer him away-the dudes notice my confused dippy tourist face change into a "back off man, I’m from Oakland" wariness and they move on - as P spins around to check his bag and finds the zipper pulled more than halfway open.

P & I are fanatical recyclers. Paris has ginormous green recycling depositories in the streets that are  big enough to live in. I love it.  There were 2 or 3 empty water bottles in our backpack which we were saving up until we reached the next recyling blob.  All the Bonne Anee Thieves got away with was a water bottle, not even a full one at that. (recylers get good karma?)  Both cameras were safe & sound. Whew.

As we are talking about being more careful, "Can you believe these guys?", we walk past Paris cops manhandling other Bonne Anee thieves, shoving them onto the ground in cuffs amidst the crowd. "whoa, don’t mess with these cops" I joke, and then suddenly my beloved exclaims: "My eyes! My eyes are burning!" I don’t get the "Wha…?" out of my mouth before I feel the sting in my throat and we both realize that those cops have just pepper sprayed in the middle of a New Year’s throng.

P grabs my arm and takes off running. This is the type of running that occurs when your body takes off and leaves the head back at the starting block.  The kind when your eyes are burning, your throat is closing, 30 or more people have set off running beside you, all are jumping over and past landscaping on instinct, and panicking about not being able to outrun this danger.  If ever I felt like one amidst a pack of fleeing animals, this was it. 

We find ourselves finally in clear air. Laughing (only a little) about what in hell kind of Paris story is that gonna be?!  We start to breathe again, and the efficient Parisians have started driving all the street cleaning machines. Champagne bottles are being swept aside, and we are all being herded away from the square. It’s now probably almost 2 am and we are about ready for this jaunt to end.

P waits 20 minutes in a queque to use a stupid loo. Two drunk ass cute girls cut, or beg their way into line.  Meanwhile, I am standing outside watching all the locals line up and pee against a wall in a busy street facing the bar where P is waiting.

Then, we are almost mushed for the 2nd time that night in a wall of bodies at the Metro station. Apparently, that memo we failed to collect in the morning, was to inform riders of the various stations that would be closed for New Year’s.  We claw our way out of that crowd, and dash down the street to the next Metro stop. No dice. Start racing toward the NEXT Metro stop, (I am distracted by a series of tables where folks are selling gummy candy in the street near the Opera House) P is on a mission to get us outta here.

In sum, we braved 3 or 4 Metro stops that night before I pretty much gave up. We sat on a park bench in Paris, watching the reveler stragglers run by. Hmm. I pondered how interesting that we would sleep in the street for New Year in Paris since we can’t get on the proper Metro to our boonie hotel until 6am.

P was doggedly determined. There simply had to be a way.

My brain was out. Somehow that night P figured out the sole Metro line that would connect us to one that was at least vaguely in the vicinity of the hotel.  I was getting delirious. I was sitting next to a Metro ad of a little girl gleefully picking her nose. That was funny, and I made him take a photo.

We got off the Metro, and proceeded to almost get lost (yet again)but finally muddled our way through a scary ass warehouse type area toward our hotel. P was wary, alert, and paranoid. I was intellectualizing to myself that statistically we were quite likely to get mugged, but actually I was not afraid of getting shot as I would be back in the U.S…So assault seemed imminent but homicide probably no.

Miraculously, no additional muggings or gassings occurrred that night, or for that matter, for the whole year. We got to bed at…maybe 4, maybe later.  Poor P was dead to the world the next day.

I went downstairs to eat endless baguette and write down my recollections. Came to the room, P was still dead to the world. Night fell again. It’s 2005. P finally recovered, barely in time as we almost missed the bus to the infamous Moulin Rouge.

Beautiful? Absolutely. Sexy? Hmmm…He said, "they dance like white people".  Have to admit that was true… 

I loved the petite horses and the crepes poulet that we ate in the street.  Paris was not the postcard city of romance we have always seen, but it sure was another adventure in our life together-and more excitement than we had bargained for in a night’s celebration. 

Bonne Anee.

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