44. Open Your Eyes - Snow Patrol

“Oh, no, I don’t like it at all.“

“It’s filthy, there’s just rubbish everywhere. “

“They’re so rude. “

“The gangs, there’s huge parts of the city you can’t even go near. “

“Horrible place, I hated it.”

Clearly, these people went to a different Paris than I did.

After university, and after much scrimping, saving plus an insurance payout from a fortuitously timed car accident, I went on a ‘big trip’.

The USA, then London, Ireland, Paris, down to Italy, Singapore and home.

The kind of whirlwind, 6-week trip you plan when you’re 21 and excited to go, but also foolish enough to have made plans back home.

It was incredible.

When I think about how I’ve complained about my ‘limited travels’ in the time since, I compare where I went and what I saw, with the travels my parents never took.

And I wise up pretty quickly.

We spent a few nights in Paris. Not enough to be satisfied, but enough to be intoxicated.

I’d heard the warnings beforehand, the complaints, the slights. And I wasn’t yet aware of the yawning chasm between the food I was used to and the proud, exquisite craft that underpins French food.

So it wasn’t a part of the trip I was anticipating with great desire or need. We’ll see the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, scoff down some snails, go see what Quasimodo is up to.

It was a pitstop, though, between the night of the cousins and Italy.

My initial impressions after landing in Charles De Gaulle didn’t help.

I assume it’s changed – maybe? – but it was ugly. I mean, even the ‘best’ airports are sanitised hallways mocking the idea of humanity.

But this was a plasticised rendition of cubism, designed by somebody with a one bad eye and a deep loathing of being touched.  

Or so it seemed.

It might have had to do with the cheap seats we had on the cheap flight that took off in the cheap hours. Or the accumulation of convivial pints in cosy pubs in recent days.

But it’s ok, we had transfers booked.

(A quick note on transfers. I’ve travelled with people obsessed with ensuring there’s a transfer waiting for them at the airport. I guess I kind of get the appeal of the little sign, the hat and the indentured driver hoisting your bags into the boot of a leased van. But it is literally the last consideration I would ever have. I mean, taxis are a thing. Public transport is, in most countries, a thing. To this day, ‘free transfers’ triggers an involuntary roll of my eyes and exhalation of mild, but unreasonable, irritation.)

We walked right past the driver holding the sign with my travelling partner’s surname.

Once we realised our mistake and double-backed in a frenzy of nervous laughter and semi-professional disinterest, we made it to his van. In the bags went, up we climbed, and we were off.

Now, I imagine there’s a direct way from the airport to Paris. Something along a freeway, perhaps, or a highway through a series of small, charming little towns.

This is not the way we went.

Instead, our driver took us along a route that grew increasingly industrial, yet oddly inactive.

Somehow, he’d managed to take us through the area of France dedicated to capturing pollution – airborne and ground based – without any of the attendant employment people use to support such defacing of the planet.

It was smoggy, wet, smoky, and – above all – grim.

On we went, my companions and I talking freely at first, then slowly letting the conversation die off as we watched the landscape change around us and find ourselves in the odd position of pining for the humane views of the airport carparks.

By the time we were into the second hour of a trip I now know should have been less than an hour, the nervous glances were starting to bounce around the cabin.

The driver, silent and not indicating any comprehension of English, kept his eyes straight ahead, brow knitted as he ploughed onwards.

Eventually we found ourselves pulling down a winding, dirt driveway heading up towards a house grimly comfortable in its surroundings. Lacking the sensitivity I’m sure she now possesses, one of us declared her fervent hope that we wouldn’t be staying in this place for the night.

Rolling to a stop and hopping out with the park brake teetering on the edge of engagement, our drive jogged to the front door of the house. We waited in the van, ready to swing open the doors and make a break for the phone booth we passed back in the post office and dumpsters of a town we’d passed through.

Nervous, we peered through the dirty windows, wet from the smoggy damp in the air, silently waiting for some indication that our fears were correct, and we were about to be attacked, beaten and strung up from the reedy tree struggling to stay upright by the side of the driveway.

Minutes passed.

And then a woman came to the door and passed our driver a package wrapped in brown paper.

“What is going on?!”, we mouthed at each other.

Then she turned her back, reached back inside and grabbed something. She went to hand it to our driver when we realised what it was.

It was a thermos.

She gave him a peck on the cheek and he turned and jogged back to the van.

“My wife” he said, climbing into the van.

“Dinner”, he told me as he tucked the parcel into the centre console.

With a wave and a toot on the horn, we were back on our way.

* * *

It still took an extra hour to get to Paris, so my guilt at my misguided assumptions and nose-in-the-air snobbery is filtered through the frustration of being forced into a two hour detour for the bloke to pick up his dinner.

But had he not done that, we wouldn’t have been pulling into Paris as dusk came to an end.

We wouldn’t have come in along the Seine, driving towards the central arrondissement we’d read, or been told, or heard, we should stay in.

And my first glance of the Eiffel Tower wouldn’t have been to see it brightly illuminated with rich, golden yellow light.

Look at it, just hiding back there.

Sneaking in between the taller buildings as the river and the road curled up and back between them, I could see this icon who’s ubiquity had dulled its magic.

It’s not as if the buildings I was looking past were horrible, not at all.

But this tower, this damned construction of iron and rivets and lights and shape, I couldn’t stop chasing after it.

Then the flashing cycle started, strobing up and down the girders. In just about any other situation I’d have loathed that tacky, cheap display, thinking it a pointless affectation for tourists.

But it seemed right for that tower, for some reason.

Perhaps it was the time I saw it, perhaps it was my low expectations, perhaps it was the hunger-making scent of whatever he had in that brown paper package, but either way, I was, all of a sudden, very excited to see Paris.  

* * * 

We were your prototypical Parisian tourist.

We lined up at the Louvre to see the small smiling woman and the guy missing his arms.

We walked under the Eiffel Tower the next night, rugged up against the un-Australian cold, staring up from beneath.

We strolled up the Champs Elysee, as my girlfriend’s sister gawked at stores I’d never heard of and we didn’t have in Australia (yet).

We went beneath that bananas roundabout and popped up under the Arc De Triomphe. Even then, late in the evening, the traffic was a terrifying demonstration of nonchalance and aggression.

We ate snails, we bought pastries, we trundled up to Sacre Coeur, we observed mimes and we caught the Metro (after descending a Dante-esque number of escalators to the actual platform).

We saw Notre Dame, we did the tour, climbed the tower, bought the postcard.

So far, so good.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable, tick-a-box way to see a city I wasn’t really falling in love with.

The day before we were due to leave, two of my companions were keen to stay in the hotel for a bit. We’d set a brisk pace since leaving Ireland the week before, so some downtime had real appeal.

But my girlfriend and I thought we’d go out for another walk. I was feeling a little stir crazy and figured we were, after all, in Paris. So let’s go for a walk.

Now, I can’t remember exactly why – I probably read it in the hard copy Lonely Planet guidebook we were lugging around – but I wanted to check out this Latin Quarter area.

Off we went, I think we caught the Metro from our not-as-central-as-we’d-been-told hotel south, over the river.

And we walked.

And talked, but mostly walked.

It was cold, but dry. Jacket weather, not raincoat.

We walked down small laneways with apartment buildings towering over them. But not in that intimidating way we let them build them in Australia to support our bloated cadre of developers.

This wasn’t as gross as that - it felt right. As though it’s been like that for centuries. Which, of course, it has been.

We walked past café’s and boulangeries and patisseries and gallery’s and bistros.

We walked over cobble stones, past dog poo, over flagstones, past benches and parks and outrageously well-dressed locals.

We headed towards the river, watching the sky to make sure we weren’t about to get drenched.

We stopped to take photos on my unwieldy film camera.

We reached the river and turned towards Notre Dame. We crossed over to the Ile De Cite, past that grand cathedral.

Along those broad paths that take you under the bridges, and past the painters and the locals not immune to the sheer romance of that place, at that time, with that person.

Down the river, over the bridge, back down the road to the Ile Saint-Louis.

More paths, less busy now as you head away from the view to the cathedral.

Some vendors, some tourists looking mildly dazed to find themselves here, walking this path and seeing this view.

The bridge back to the left bank.

It was cold by now, the wind was coming down the river. I was regretting my lack of a jacket, but refused to go and buy one because we were doing this on the cheap.

(Little did I realise blowing the backside out of my pants two hours later would necessitate a trip to a clothing store anyway).

We held hands, then linked arms, as we strolled past the green vendors sheds.

The secondhand paperbacks, bound by elastic to fight that chilling wind, caught my eye. And my girlfriend caught my arm to keep us moving.

It started getting darker. Not dark, just…darker the way it does late in a European autumn.

We came across Shakespeare and Company and went in, more for a brief heating respite than anything else.

I felt that I wanted to remember this afternoon, and felt compelled – like I’m sure many, many tourists do – to buy a few Hemingway paperbacks before leaving.

Bastard he might have been, but damned if A Moveable Feast doesn’t still make my heart ache when I read it.

We took our time walking back to the Metro station. Then the walk back to the hotel – via a clothing store staffed entirely by professionals capable of not laughing the face of this pant-bursting Australian – took a while too.

It was dark by now, and the streets were shiny from the rain we’d missed while underground, but I was truly, utterly captivated by this city now.  

I’ve never been back.

* * * 

Five years later I was laying on my couch, watching Rage early one Saturday morning (or it might have been late one Friday night), when the clip for Snow Patrol’s Open Your Eyes started.

I love music clips, but I’ve tried avoiding them in this series because it’s a different medium and very few of them have the sort of resonant meaning I’m trying to talk about.

But this one opens with a car driving through Paris in the very early hours of the morning.

The camera is mounted on the bumper of the car (I’ve since learned it’s from a cult classic French film – it’s not surprising. It’s a beautiful piece of film) and it shows the driver navigating their way through this magical city.

Over cobblestones, down narrow streets, past garbage trucks and restaurant workers and the various other inhabitants of a city lucky enough to see it wake up.

The song itself is nice enough, though I’ve seen it described as life support music because of how often it’s soundtracked a ‘sad moment’ in a ‘dramatic’ series.

Steady guitar, rising drums, basic melody, soaring vocals calmly building to a frantic crescendo – these are all things I love in a song, so I quite like the music.

But it’s the visuals that made me sit straight up, put the remote down, lean forward and concentrate on the screen.

That car, racing around those streets of a city I’d long given up on seeing again.

The memory of that day walking around the Latin Quarter.

Those paths along the river, those green sheds, that bookstore, those cafes…that tower.

All of these memories were punched to the front of my brain, forcing tears into my eyes.

It still has quite the impact on me, seeing this clip. No tears, I’m happy to say, but it brings a smile to my face every time.

I’m really fortunate to have had that trip, to have seen those places, to have visited that city.

To have had that afternoon, walking around that city.

Seeing this clip reminds me of those feelings and that moment in time.

Which is, at it’s very core, what this whole series is all about.

Still, he could’ve told us he’d forgotten his dinner.