"Sometimes I get the feeling that Paris is a city built for tourists," an acquaintance of mine told me the other day. I don't think that he's exaggerating.
I see more visitors than Parisians in this city. I've realized that as a study abroad student, I live in a gray dimension, an odd landscape where I am not quite a tourist and not quite a local.
I pretend that I'm superior to the tourists who come here for a few days, see the main sights and then return home, having won the right to brag, "Paris, yeah, I've been there. It is a pretty nice city."
The student abroad is a different breed. We live with French families and we attend class every day to improve our fran?ais. We like to think of ourselves as more hip and savvy than Joe and Jane sitting across from us on the bus fumbling with maps and books and trying to figure out if it stops by Notre Dame.
I must admit that as much as I try to set myself apart from the rank-and-file visitor, I really enjoyed snapping pictures of the Eiffel Tower. Clich?s aside, there is almost nothing in the City of Light as impressive as the Champs-Elys?es at night.
Emerging from the quiet side streets lined with expensive boutiques it hits you, first with its five-lane wide ribbon of red and white lights, then with the intense rumble of ceaseless traffic stretching from the Place de la Concorde (where the guillotine once stood) to Napoleon's mighty Arc de Triomphe at the other end.
Standing on a tiny traffic island, I felt overwhelmed by the majesty and grandeur of this boulevard. No photograph or postcard can do the place justice. Now that I've stood on France's main street I fear that any other avenue will seem like a sleepy country road.
While in Paris I've also tried to "soak up some culture," which I find to be a very amusing expression.
It makes culture into something tangible, like a vitamin or a mineral that needs to be absorbed regularly.
For some, I'm sure that the words "culture" and "Paris" in combination bring to mind images of socialites looking at paintings while sipping champagne with their pinkies held in the air.
Yet you don't have to own a Rolls Royce and a private gallery in order to appreciate the arts here.
I really enjoyed a performance that was part of the Paris Jazz Festival. For a very modest sum, I listened to a talented American vocalist amid the sumptuous decor of the China Club, apparently one of Paris' most elite and exclusive venues.
Having seen ballets and opera, there should be enough culture in my system for now. Or at least enough to last me until the next concert or museum visit, which in Paris is never too far off.
This weekend I visited some of the area's more sober monuments. La Conciergerie, where Marie Antoinette spent her final days before being sent to the guillotine, was appropriately gloomy and imposing, although I thought the tacky plastic dummies of Revolutionary-era guards and prisoners gave it a really cheap haunted house vibe.
Yet where one can really feel the weight of the centuries is among the tombs and stones of La Basilique de St. Denis. Located in the gritty northern outskirts of Paris, this Gothic cathedral was the burial place of France's kings and other royalty.
I walked among the elaborately chiseled tombs in the cathedral's crypt, some of which feature life-like sculptures of the kings and queens lying down, their faces frozen forever in melodramatic agony and suffering. Others looked like large, three-dimensional, meticulously detailed chess pieces placed in a horizontal position. Some of these dated back to the 10th century.
What I find remarkable about France is this enduring presence of the ancient alongside the modern. At the station for the regional express train to St. Denis, the massive, newly built stadium, Stade de France, was within walking distance, and further on, gray 30-story apartment buildings rose against the gray sky.
That afternoon, I left the musty gloom of the cathedral after taking a few pictures, just token reminders of another brief encounter with the past.
