Earthly delight and otherworldy horror

Long time no post, I know... it has been a busy few weeks with classes starting and friends from BC visiting.

Something that Paris does very well: this city is full of cafes and restaurants in which time seems to stand still, in the best possible way. Though this means there really isn't such a thing as a quick bite to eat (with the delightful exception of crepe stands), it lends itself to everything from epic steak-frites dinners to perfect lazy afternoons with a glass of wine. This time-and-calories-don't-exist phenomenon most recently manifested itself on Saturday morning. My friend and I wandered to a restaurant in the Marais called "Le Loir dans la Theiere" -- The Dormouse in the Teapot. This place was so cozy, with big leather chairs and wooden tables, walls plastered with posters, and retro toys hanging from the walls...the perfect place to spend a languorous Saturday morning. (For those of you who have been to Sydney: this is like Gertrude and Alice, sans books). Kristen and I ordered the prix fixe brunch and proceeded to spend three hours eating, chatting, and people watching. It's a fantastic country where three-hour meals are considered a birthright, not an indulgence.

After brunch, Kristen proposed that we check out the catacombs. Quick history lesson: Paris quarried much of the limestone used for the city's construction from beneath its own streets, largely on the left bank. While some Parisians were busy building monuments to their country/emperor/monarch's greatness, other Parisians were dying and being buried in the middle of the city, causing major public health problems and cemetery overcrowding. When important Parisians realized that if they quarried any more limestone the buildings above the quarries might collapse, they decided that -- voila! -- they could make efficient use of space by moving the other Parisians' remains to the quarries. (Apparently, this was ethical in the 18th century, but frankly, I'm surprised someone in Paris didn't protest this decision). And so it came to pass that there are 1.7 kilometers of subterranean, human-boned-lined passages in Paris.

An aside: I've always had a soft spot for Indiana Jones. Adventure, history, travel... really, it has it all. So suffice to say I was pretty excited about the catacombs -- an urban Indiana Jones experience, how cool!

...Or terrifying. You enter the catacombs via a staircase and a long set of dark, low-ceilinged tunnels. The staircase is circular, very steep, and goes on forever, so by the time you reach the bottom of the stairs you've completely lost your sense of direction. The tunnels twist back and forth, with no sources of light save the occasional overhead lamp. Even scarier than the flickering lamps, however, are the barred-off side tunnels that recede into darkness: we hurried past each one, fully expecting poisonous darts to shoot past or a skeleton to reach out and grab us. You see, when Indiana Jones does something like this, it's adventurous; when I do it, I feel like I'm in a horror movie. The catacombs themselves are simply unreal... all the walls are literally covered in closely-stacked human bones, which are sometimes arranged into designs (not sure why -- the bones aren't going to get cuter if you put the skulls in a circle and surround them with femurs). And, since this is France, the bones are supplemented by tablets inscribed with philosophical quotes on death. For those of you who are so inclined, here's a link to a picture on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DJJ_1_Catacombes_de_Paris.jpg


So, I'm back in the world of the living. My classes (which I'm taking in French and English) are a bit hit-or-miss, but I am taking one class, The Origins of American Identity, in which Benjamin Franklin's "Advice to a Young Man on the Choice of a Mistress" is assigned reading. Ben suggests that young men look for older women because, unlike young women, "they are so grateful!!" Politics, architecture, science, agriculture, and illicit relationships -- The Founding Fathers really were experts on everything. Gotta love history.

A bientot!