Paris, the Grand Damme of expatriate havens, has held a place at the top of my shopping list for almost three years. I began my search for a country south of the border, thinking that the ideal expat escape for me would be a remote Spanish-speaking village. Two decades of living in a small mountain town, however, left me with a thirst for anonymity and a desire to live in an environment that was a mixture of races, creeds, and beliefs. I wanted to be pressed in on all sides by art and culture.
And I wanted to be surrounded by creative thinkers with whom I could converse about something deeper than the latest skis on the market or the most challenging hikes in the area.
There are certainly worse places to raise one’s children than a small mountain community. I loved looking over the faces in my daughter’s highschool graduating class, and realizing that I’d known most of them since kindergarten. But times and circumstances change, so I recently planted myself anew in San Francisco. It will be from this polyglot soup, where diversity of thought and expression are encouraged (unless you smoke, are anti-gay, or a Republican), where I will continue my search for a country.
As the thought of city life grew more attractive to me, Paris began to loom larger as a possibility. I pulled out my French language tapes in an attempt to learn the language I’d forsaken for Spanish many years earlier. I read Henry Miller and Hemingway’s accounts of the bohemian lifes of expats who lived in Paris during the 1920’s and 30’s. I read Diane Johnson’s recently released book Le Divorce. My Paris file grew fat.
As fate would have it, I fell in love with a Frenchman last year — in San Francisco. In the whirlwind love affair that ensued, I traveled to Paris three times in three months. I fell in love not only WITH the city that inspires love but IN love with one of its natives.
I set out to “know” Paris in my favorite way — by blending in and pretending to be one of its residents. I negotiated Paris via the Metro. I sipped kirs at Les Deux Maggots (OK, so I did hit one or two tourist spots). At en plein aire caf