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PARIS _ Pictured above is the tartare de veau pastry appetizer from Petrus, a Michelin 1-star spot on the Rue de Villiers, side-by-side with the millefeuille de vanille for desert. Needless to say, it is not the kind of thing you find in Moshi, and you certainly wouldn’t eat raw beef there if you did. It cost me enough Euros to rescue Greece. I don’t care. It was worth it. It is the sort of the thing you dream about in Africa, and if you thought about it too much might make you feel too guilty to eat. Anticipating such a problem, I resolved not to think about it. So, recipe for exploding your own brain: live for four months in a small city in rural East Africa, slowly growing accustomed to muddy roads, ubiquitous incompetence and dysfunction, and a diet of rice, beans and the occasional scrawny chicken. Then, eat dinner with your wife on a Wednesday, drive to the airport and board a plane for Paris, arriving before lunch the next day. The last four days have been a multi-sensory overload. So many things you notice. Sirens. The sound of a place where the police actually respond to things, rather than just sitting around a checkpoints while the world cracks up around them. A place where it can rain, and yet life goes on. Mirabilu dictu! Pavement! You nearly weep with joy at the most seemingly trivial example of functioning infrastructure. Nor even one mosquito to bother me in sidewalk cafes, on any one of the average 5.2 meals I have been eating per day. And yes, you do wonder how it’s possible that two countries on the same planet at the same time could provide such utterly and almost unimaginably different experiences to their citizens. I am further than ever from answering that question, though I am certainly glad to now be gathering data and observations vis-à-vis the European side of the issue. As promised, this will not devolve into another European travel blog, as the world has enough of those. I will note for the record the rediscovered joys stated above, plus a few others: fat, neigbhorhood cafes with a cup of cofee and a newspaper, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons at the Sainte Chappelle, a jazz band on the Left Bank, the Impressionists at the Musee d’Orsay, the smell of the fromageries, a rainy weekday afternoon movie, confit de canard, drug stores. I will also commend to anyone the experience of stepping out from your life to travel alone for a few weeks. It is of course not always feasible, and probably won’t be for me again anytime soon. But happily it is feasible for me now, and that’s exactly why I did it. Time is the ultimate depreciating asset, so it is irrational not to spend it.
As for the alone part, it isn’t for everyone, and I wasn’t sure it would be for me. And in a few weeks that might prove the case. Certainly, I was sorry Maria had to stay behind and work in Africa, as everything is always more interesting and fun when she is there to laugh at it with me. That said, there is something delightful in being answerable to know one, simply strolling wherever you wish around the city, stopping to eat when you feel like it and going as fast or as slow as you like. It was definitely a good call to start my month of travels with an extended stay in one spot. Now comes a bit more travel - to Prague tonight, then Vienna and across Bavaria and eventually to Munich, where I fly to the U.K. to meet my family. I promise to post occasional entries if I think of anything interesting to say — and equally important not to post if I do not.
