Au revoir Paris

30-06-10

After almost year, I’ll take the train tonight. Adieu Paris, time has come to say goodbye. I remember cycling in May’s drizzle along the majestic Seine quays. All along from the squeaky wooden floor of the natural history museum, past the bouquinistes selling their plastic wrapped books from green stalls, to the green fields facing Napoleon’s golden dome and finally turning left in the shadow of Eiffel’s towering construction.

Paris surprised me in April with days so hot it seemed like the end of August. Boulevards even more cramped than the months before, now growing numbers of tourists are added to the crowd. I realized I no longer feel alien in this city now I really know my way around. When I eat with friends in bistros I’ve been to before, I sometimes sit on the same chair.
The gardens of the Rodin Museum became the host of beautiful sun-drenched Sunday afternoons. I could sit for hours on of the wooden benches facing the impressive collection of sculptures, reading a book or awaiting inspiration for a next column.

Paris’ constant noise only came to a temporary stop when I travelled back and forth between Paris and Holland in February and March. It’s difficult to escape the never-ending drone of voices, the infinite roar of car engines and penetrating noise of accelerating motorcycles. Paris never sleeps. The sight of this vibrant city from one of the bridges across the Seine is magnificent. The city of light, of romance. I almost drowned in the silence of the Dutch forests that hosted a congress on immunology.

Snowflakes whirling down onto Pasteur’s statue gave the city a new sight. A cheerful note toning down the stern look of Parisians dressed in only black and grey to offer resistance to the freezing, short days.  The matter falling down from the skies seemed to make a vast difference; autumn had been cheerful in all its shades of yellow, brown and red. During that time though, everything seemed a little brighter as I just started building a life in the city that had attracted me for years.

I came to live in Paris, I came to work in Paris. Both have been rewarding and inspiring. I’ve been here long enough to see the downsides of this metropolis too, but I don’t want to say farewell yet. I’m happy that my supervisors in Rotterdam and Paris both see the advantages of bringing two worlds together in a PhD project in which Paris and Rotterdam collaborate. Mesdames, Messieurs, au revoir!