Paris, A City for all SeasonsPrepared by Harold Stephens
Travel Correspondent for Thai Airways International
When is the best time, the best season that is, to go to Paris? The answer––any time.
In 1950, author Ernest Hemingway wrote to a friend: “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a movable feast."
Later, before he died, Hemingway published a book called The Movable Feast, his last publication. In it he reveals the secrets of Paris as he understood them.
I was fortunate to have lived in Paris during those post-war years when the French were still grateful and Paris was an inexpensive place to live. And Hemingway was right, for when I left Paris, part of it did stay with me.
“There is never any ending to Paris," Hemingway wrote, "and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached. Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it."
But what makes Paris so different? Maybe it's because Paris is in the hearts of all men. (I know people who will defend Paris, and they have never been there.) Or maybe it's just that Paris is an inspiration. It nurtures ideas and proud feelings. It makes us want to write a poem, paint a canvas, compose a song, even if we never have before. Paris makes us want to love, and be in love. Paris is forever.
As Hemingway wrote, people react in different ways when they visit Paris, and not always do we find answers to their behaviour. Why, for example, during World War II had General Von Sholtitz spared the city against Hitler's orders?
After leaving Paris, and with the passing of time, I had no desire to go back for I knew once I did, the romance would start again. But I did go back, and now I can't get Paris out of my mind. But why Paris?
Change, for one thing. I did find Paris different, but not bound within any limited concept of the word. The changes I found were mostly in my mind, in my own way of thinking and in my interpretation of what I saw.
We are forever preoccupied with the idea of change. How much does a place change over the years? We seldom realise that maybe it is we who change and not the place.
Even Hemingway hinted at this—“But this was how Paris was in the early days, when we were very poor and very happy." We naturally assume by this that Paris changes and those who come now will never know Paris as it truly was, and that you have to be poor to be happy in Paris.
I think I could be just as happy in Paris being rich as being poor. And sure, Paris changes as all cities do. But in Paris the basic elements remain: it's a city of beauty, it inspires great feeling in one, and Paris will go on and on, forever, without Hemingway, without de Gaulle, and even, may I dare say, without the French.
When I returned this time to Paris, I expected changes. There were. Gendarmes don't wear black capes any more, nor the kepi, those rounded hats with flat tops that gave French police, and the Legionnaires their character. Les Hales, the famous central food market, the belly of Paris, where at 4 a.m. everyone went to Le Pied-de-Cochon to have onion soup and champagne, has moved. And the Eiffel Tower, which was to be pulled down after the Paris Exhibition of 1889, has lost its famous La Tour de Eiffel Restaurant that occupied the first floor and was so popular for so many years. It has been sold and moved piece by piece and is now in New Orleans in America.
And those Paris taxis, they look like ordinary cars now, and they don't go about honking their horns like in the old days, as we knew they did from the song “The Last Time I Saw Paris."
And I couldn't get near the American Embassy, where I once worked. The building is the same, opposite the Hotel Crillon, but now there were heavy chains across the way and a French policeman in blue uniform, paratroop boots and a bulletproof vest stopped me from taking a photo. The Uzi machine gun slung over his shoulder and a grey armoured van standing by made me think twice. Okay, no photos.
Everything else in Paris is basically unchanged. When I walked down rue des Saints-Peres on the Left Bank to the bookstalls along the Seine River, and crossed Pont-Neuf to the Isle de Cite, I could have been back in the Paris I knew 30 years before. I found this gratifying.
Another thing I realised when I went back this time is that you don't have to search for beauty in Paris; it's everywhere you turn. Most cities around the world have pockets of beauty, areas that visitors might find interesting, and you have to search these places out. Not in Paris where every street, every avenue, every plaza—at each turn you make—you find beauty. Sometimes you want to stop and drink it all in. And often you want to remember those particular areas and return later, but you can never find them for instead you have found other places equally or even more affixing.
What I never thought would happen did happen. I expected some things to remain as they were, the taxi drivers and the waiters, and they hadn't. I was prepared to fight the taxi drivers when I arrived, those nasty, individual, ill-tempered taxi drivers with walrus mustaches and Gitane cigarette stubs dangling from their lips; and I expected to do battle with the waiters, with their equally as bad ill tempers. What a surprise!
I caught a taxi from De Gaulle International Airport into town and found the driver was actually pleasant. Not only that, he tolerated my speaking French and didn't sneer at me. "Vous parlez tres bien, monsieur," he said. And he wasn't angry when I didn't give him a big tip.
And without exception, the waiters that served me in the cafes and restaurants were pleasant and a few even cheerful. Some even made jokes. That never happened before. I know there will be those who disagree, but that was my recent experience.
For some reason Paris seemed to be smaller than I remembered. But then as I walked through the Tuileries Garden at the Louvre, I realised why. It's because in Paris you can see so far.
No other city in the world has the vistas that Paris does. Stand in front of the Louvre and look up the Champs Elysees, across the Petite Arc de Triomphe, the Oblique in the Place de la Concorde, all the way to the Arc de Triomphe at the top of the avenue, and there is a view that has been patterned and copied in many of the world's capitals but which has never been equalled. Yet to walk that seemingly short distance will take you hours and if you were to stop at each of the cafes en route and have one drink, just one, you might never make it.
They say that Paris is a city of love; you have to be there to realise it is true. Paris is love. You know when you see French couples strolling along the streets and in the cafes, embracing, kissing. And in Paris everyone kisses, wherever and whenever the mood strikes them. Even in the middle of the busy, congested Champs Elysees you have to sidestep couples who are arm-in-arm, lips glued, immobile as statues. Walk up the avenue and look back ten minutes later and they will still be here; they will not have moved. And no one seems to take notice of them, or cares.
When is the best time to go to Paris? You hear that spring is best, and when you listen to "April in Paris" being sung, you want to be there in April. But I don't agree that spring is best. Paris is great anytime, when it's raining, when it’s cloudy, when it's snowing—especially when it's snowing. You then have Paris to yourself. I mean it. You don't have to share the city with anyone. Tourists don't come when it's cold and miserable, because they wait for perfect weather; and the French, or those who live in Paris, are all at home or else huddling behind glass fronts in the cafes.
I remember one cold night, years before, when I was coming down the Champs Elysees in a taxi and it began to snow. It was late and hardly anyone was about. I had the driver stop the taxi and I got out, right there; the driver thought I was mad, but I knew what I was doing. I was having Paris to myself.
I walked out into the very centre of the Place de la Concord, to the Obelisque, where the guillotine once stood (and lobbed off the heads of Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette and 1,343 others). The wind blew the snow and the glare from the street lamps gave a ghostly appearance. Even the traffic seemed to have stopped—it was deathly still.
But Paris was mine. A million people, maybe a billion, at that very instant of time around the world, must have had Paris on their minds, and longed to be here, but they weren't. There was only me with the wind blowing snow and the lonely street lamps in the Place de la Concord standing defiant. I was jubilant, exhilarated, and felt it right down to my numbed toes and frozen fingertips. I think I caught a cold that night, but it was worth it.
Paris is worth it, summer or winter. When I was there I heard that the year before all you could hear in Paris was talk about the Gare d'Orsay. They still talk about the place, the old Victorian-style train station on the left bank of the Seine that has been turned into a modern-art museum. It's well worth a visit, and something to talk about.
For those who plan to go to Paris, a book that I suggest is Mort Rosenblum's Mission to Civilise, the French Way. Through history and wit, Mort explains the French and why they act as they do. For a love story centered in Paris read The Tower & The River. It’s a great book, and to prove it, read the by-line––Harold Stephens
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
Q. Dear Mr. Stephens, I enjoyed your stories on China. I wrote to you once before asking if you were glossing over the facts about travel in China. There are so many conflicting stories about China that I don’t know what to believe any more. What is the political situation? —Hazel Copenfield, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
A. Dear Ms. Copenfield, if you are looking at a political analysis of China, I don’t want to disappoint you. I will leave that up to the political pundits, politicians and economists. I write stories about travel to bring the world closer together. I like to write about the romance of travel. I want to point out to readers that we live in a very beautiful world and let’s take advantage of the world that we live in, and enjoy it. I found when I travelled though China, if I smiled, people would smile in return. —HS
Harold Stephens
Bangkok
E-mail: ROH Weekly Travel (booking@inet.co.th)
Note: The article is the personal view of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the view of Thai Airways International Public Company Limited. | 
