Recent Week in France

(7/3)

Tomorrow is the final day of a week long trip that I spent in France with my girlfriend. We met in Geneva, once she finished up what can only be described as “Swiss Army Search and Rescue Robotics Boot Camp” - a weeklong robotics workshop and competition where she slept in Swiss Army barracks, shared communal showers, worked a billion hours, and slept not enough.

We swam in Lake Geneva before taking a train directly to Paris, arriving in the evening. The next day was chill - cafes, shops, lots of walking, ending with a cabaret show. After the show we walked the streets late into the evening, high on the Parisian atmosphere. The next few days included climbing the Eiffel Tower, mass at Notre Dame, a tour of Sacré-Coeur, walking through the Pantheon, visiting Napoleon Bonaparte’s tomb, wandering through the Palace of Versailles and its gardens, and then finally exploring Le Louvre. We took a train to Annecy after 5 days and explored the town, waded in the lake, bussed to and hiked in Mont Blanc, and are finishing up tomorrow with paddle boarding. The only hiccup was that we were really excited to take a scenic train up to the top of a mountain where we could explore ice caves, but the workers went on strike the same morning. We did make the most of the day regardless, and it’s been wonderful.

I’ve found myself wondering about how many times “I’m not a city person” has come from my mouth, and my partner thinks it might be more about our cities at home rather than cities generally. Of course Paris isn’t like most cities in the world, but it was clean, the architecture was beautiful, everyone generally minded their own businesses, and it felt designed for the people rather than for making money quickly. There were many small businesses with only a few noticeable chains, public transportation was intuitive, and I felt safe everywhere we went regardless of the time.

The mountains have been beautiful, but it was people that made an impact on me this time. I consider French culture to be more feminine than US culture, and I wonder how this is reflected in their art, fashion, architecture, and etiquette. Regardless, I feel positively about it. I also realized how much more at home we prioritize convenience in our food, how we spend money, how we design cities and homes, and also potentially in how we experience love in our lives. There’s a line in Porco Rosso (a wonderful Studio Ghibli movie) where a wealthy American pilot professes his love to a beautiful woman, asking why she continues to love a different pilot who was cursed to have the face of a pig. She responds, “You don’t get it, you’re an American. You fall in love all the time.”

(7/4)

Anyway, I started writing this before our last day, before our train from Annecy to Geneva broke down in a tunnel for 3 hours. We were surrounded by French-only speakers. The air conditioning was off, and the conductor restarted the train many times (watching the screens boot up like 90s PCs was hilarious). Aside from the heat and poor timing, waiting was pretty manageable until a French woman (that I think did theater in grade school) ran down the aisle screaming in French, which gathered attention from everybody. I felt real fear for half a minute before I saw all the people around us relax. She freaked out because the bathroom flooded - someone decided to smoke in there, setting off a sprinkler system. She must’ve made at least 50 people think their lives were endangered. It was all pretty dramatic.

We were told the train would be fixed a few times, and eventually we were evacuated into the tunnel, across some rocks, and onto another train which eventually got us to what was supposed to be our first stop. Three trains later we made it to Geneva, slept about 5 hours, and then Ubered to the airport. I would love to speak more in depth about some of the individual experiences, and maybe I will later. All and all it was a wonderful and unique adventure to say the least.