But how to get across? For a moment I consider dashing through traffic, but I don’t want to die today. It turns out you have to go underneath the road. I scurry down the stairs, past the signs I’d missed at first, along the passage, and then up up up again.
We were given instructions in our orientation booklet. I’m looking for Toby, the coordinator, and I spot him among a group of people who kind of look my age. I can tell it’s Toby on account of him clearly being an adult. An adult wearing a tweed cap, standing in the middle of a group of teenagers. He is also holding a big red umbrella, folded up.
Bonjour or hello? I wonder. I decide to wave.
‘Hello!’ says Toby, in English. In fact he has an English accent. This is not what I expected. The information pack said our exchange coordinator would speak English, but I had imagined him differently (with a French accent and whatnot).
‘Hi. I’m Sofie.’
He looks down at his list. ‘Excellent – one of our Australians. It’s nice to meet you.’ Then three more new people show up and he ticks them off his list too.
There are about thirty of us students altogether, and I know from the orientation booklet that we come from twelve different countries and between us speak nine different languages. French is supposed to be our common tongue, though there’s a lot of English flying around, thank goodness.
Before leaving Australia, I thought I’d developed a pretty good command of French. But now I am feeling much less sure of myself and much more tongue-tied. Vocabulary just tumbles out of my head.
Toby gathers us and waves us through the underpass and back up to the wide boulevard that is the Avenue des Champs-Élysées.
I am about to walk down the Champs-Élysées.
And so begins my first real walk in Paris.
Even in the cold, even with the trees all bare, even as part of a giant group led by a man holding a red umbrella above his head, I feel dizzy with dreams coming true.
‘Hi,’ a girl’s voice says, pulling me out of my dream. I hadn’t noticed her standing next to me. She has long black hair and an Australian accent. ‘I’m Rupa.’
‘I’m Sofie,’ I reply, holding out my hand, which she awkwardly shakes.
‘You’ll notice that most people “faire la bise” here,’ says Toby, looming over us. ‘Get used to being closer to strangers than you normally would. Right cheek, then left cheek.’ He mimes giving air kisses. Mwah mwah.
It’s even more awkward now, as we look at each other. Is he expecting us to re-greet each other? I feel myself blush. It had been an automatic action to extend my hand – Hana had drilled me on shaking hands to be polite, but she clearly failed to factor in les bises.
‘We’re good,’ says Rupa in a dry tone. The expression on her face is so funny that we both burst out laughing.
Toby smiles goofily and moves away, calling out, ‘Allons-y! Let’s go!’
We set off as a group. For a moment I wish I was setting out to explore by myself. It feels rude that all of these people are in my city as I am introducing myself to it. But Rupa seems nice and she is gazing around with an appropriate amount of wonder.
‘I love how wide these footpaths are,’ I say aloud. The footpaths are flat concrete blocks, and they’re so wide – metres and metres between the shops and the road.
Rupa reaches out her hand. ‘Want me to take a photo of you?’
‘Sure.’ I pass her my phone and stand at the edge of the footpath, staring down the wide, wide boulevard. ‘Thanks,’ I say as she gives me back my phone. ‘This will be perfect to send home to my parents.’
For my Insta feed I focus on the smaller details. Cobbles. A shopfront with a wooden board across its window. Video, photo, boomerang of cars driving past.
Renoir or Monet, or even Coco Chanel probably walked down this very street at least once, just as I am walking down it now.
‘It’s interesting to think about how much damage the gilets jaunes did to this place,’ says Toby to the group. ‘And how even now you can’t really tell.’
‘What’s gilets jaunes?’ I ask in English.
‘The yellow vests?’ says an American guy in a black puffer jacket, in a prompting kind of tone.
‘Oh yes!’ I try to be quick to cover my ignorance. Crow had talked at length about the yellow vests. It had been on the news at home a lot in the last month or so, since the first explosive protests in November. I know that it all started over the proposed increase of petrol prices and quickly grew to protests all across the country.
‘Is it just me or do all the world’s problems seem to start over petrol and oil?’ I say out loud.
The guy nods. ‘Yeah, pretty much.’
‘I’m a bit confused,’ Crow had said. ‘I can’t tell if the protesters are left-wing or right-wing. It seems like they’re both.’ Whatever their political leaning, they all wear yellow hi-vis jackets for a uniform, and they’ve been blockading freeways, villages, and Parisian streets. ‘Setting shit on fire,’ Crow said. (Fire is Crow’s not-so-secret fascination. Not that she’s a pyromaniac or anything. But ‘Burn it down!’ is usually what she says when anything is going wrong.)
Toby’s voice booms over my thoughts. ‘The lights are still up from Christmas, so if you come down after dark you’ll see something really pretty.’
I look up at the strings of lights, unlit for now, and find I much prefer thinking about Christmas lights than people in yellow vests kicking in windows.
We walk to the Louvre, but we don’t go in. ‘You’ll all get a chance to visit while you’re here,’ says Toby. ‘Today is just an introduction to the city.’
But there goes my heart again, jumping at the sight of those iconic glass pyramids.
‘I’ve been here already,’ a red-headed girl with an English accent says to me. ‘On holidays with my family. But it was so big we couldn’t see it all. Do you like art?’
I can’t formulate words to express the scope of my love for art. About getting lost in something beautiful, made by someone who has thought about beauty and wonder, whether it be in paint or pencil or clay. How I can stare at brushstrokes and colour and line for hours, and the shiver it sends through me. How it makes me feel like everything is as it should be.
So I just say, ‘Yes, yes I do.’
Toby tells us about how during World War II the French took the art out of the museums and moved it to places it would be safe. I guess I haven’t thought about art in times of war very much.
We walk across a bridge, le Pont Notre Dame, and then there is another icon: the cathedral. I am not from a churchy family, but I have thought almost religiously about Paris, and the Notre Dame is one of the things that embodies the city for me.
I am desperate to walk around the back, where I know from photos that the building is extra-interesting with its flying buttresses (I think it was the term ‘flying buttresses’ that first took my fancy), but Toby herds us across the next bridge and onto the Left Bank. It’s okay, I think. I’ll come back. I’ve got time.
Things I already know about the Left Bank:
In French you say rive gauche.
It’s where all the artists and writers have hung out through history.
It’s a site of bohemian Paris.
‘Over there is Shakespeare and Company,’ says Toby, pointing. ‘It’s maybe the most famous English-language bookshop in the city. Worth a visit.’
I already know about Shakespeare and Company, so I feel pretty smug.
‘They published Ulysses by James Joyce,’ says the red-haired girl, and her tone brings my previous smugness down a notch. Now I am thinking, Who cares who knows what?
‘Have you read it?’ I ask.
‘Not yet. But I will,’ she says and pushes ahead of me.
We wind through some narrow, busy streets in the Latin Quarter, where Toby points out all the pla
ces to get food and explains about la formule – a meal plan that might include a drink, a panini and a dessert. The places are tiny hole-in-the-wall sandwich and kebab restaurants, where you can sit at one of two or three small tables inside or order takeaway through a big window counter. I choose a cheese and tomato panini, and a drink. It’s a cheaper option than the one with dessert so I save one euro and fifty cents.
We follow Toby across a large intersection to eat our lunch on the freezing banks of the Seine.
‘It’s actually not so cold at the moment,’ says Toby. ‘We might have snow in the coming weeks though.’
Snow! My teeth chatter as I drink a Coca-light.
After lunch we continue along the river and visit the exchange program’s office in the 7th arrondissement. The roads are wider here and it feels more modern, in spite of the iconic Haussmann buildings.
Toby reminds us about the rules for the exchange. ‘Attend school,’ he says. ‘That’s why you’re here. Keep curfew. Don’t break laws. Keep away from the gilets jaunes. Check in with your coordinator – that’s me. Engage with the culture and especially the language. Don’t drink alcohol.’
I hadn’t thought about alcohol. I will definitely be trying wine if it’s offered. Preferably served by the woman in Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère.
There is a large world map on one of the walls with pins and a basket of string, and Toby encourages us to mark our path in getting here. I wind a green string around the pin sitting in Melbourne (it’s quite fat with string already) and I stretch it in a straight line to Dubai (but is it the same line as my flight path?), where I wind it just once, before stretching it again to Paris and hooking it to the big peg that anchors all our lines in place.
‘Do you like your host family?’ I ask the guy standing by me. It’s the American puffer jacket guy from earlier. Dan, I think he said his name was.
He shakes his head. ‘I haven’t met them. We’re still at the hostel. But I get the train tomorrow and they’re going to pick me up. I think it’s four hours away or something.’
‘Oh! I’m staying in Paris.’ I hadn’t really thought about the students not based in Paris. ‘What’s the town you’re staying in called?’
‘Um, I think it’s Sou-il-lack or something. I can’t actually pronounce it. Not a very good sign, probably. It’s in the southwest region.’
He is nervous! I feel braver thanks to his nerves. Is that terrible? But I’ve already survived my first night with my host family and they seem happy to have me. I try not to think about Delphine, my host sister, who I haven’t met yet and am already intimidated by.
I’m not sure if the floaty, dazed feeling in me is jet lag or if I am Paris-drunk.
To end the day’s tour, we walk along the Seine, and as the Eiffel Tower comes into view, I am suddenly present again. The feel of the footpath under my feet is, literally and comfortingly, grounding.
Some of the group are complaining about how sore their feet are, that they are cold, that they’d walked further today than ever before.
I have always been a wanderer. When I was a toddler I wandered off and ended up in a duck pond at the Botanical Gardens. It was fortunate I didn’t drown, especially since my sister just stood and shouted for our parents instead of dragging me out.
I wander now, still. Sometimes it frustrates my parents. They say, ‘But where do you go?’ and I just say, ‘Oh, here and there.’ I get lost a lot, but I always find my way back eventually.
My heart leaps again and again as I walk along the Seine, the Eiffel Tower just eiffeling away. This is exactly what I had been hoping for! I lag behind the group and rewind my scarf.
The stone buildings cry out for me to touch them. To run my hand across their smooth surfaces and fall into history through them.
I feel a nudge at my elbow. Dan is grinning across at me, the delight on his face surely mirroring my own, and he says, ‘I can’t believe we’re here.’
I hadn’t needed to worry about the metro door handles. I get off the train successfully – clu-clunk goes the funny little handle as I twist it up.
As I step out of the metro at Belleville and start the walk back to the apartment, I have a sudden and strange flash: This is where I live. I suppose I’ve been concentrating so much on getting back without getting lost that I haven’t been thinking about the bigger picture.
In Belleville there is graffiti everywhere, and run-down shops and pawnbrokers. Most things look a bit grimy – and there is a rotten smell. I vaguely remember Claudette saying something last night about an open-air market (marché being one of the easiest French words to remember thanks to years of Mum, Dad and Hana pretending to be posh: ‘Just popping out to the supermarché!’). The streets are strewn with rubbish – food scraps and cardboard and drink cans are everywhere. I feel as though reality is smacking me in the face, and I don’t like it.
This is not what I expected.
It’s not often that I can’t disappear into my dreamscape, but now is one of those times – even after the day I’ve had. I grit my teeth and try to recapture the feeling of standing beneath the Eiffel Tower.
I remember all the ‘left then right then right agains’ and arrive back at the flat without any navigational problems, but with heavy feet and jet-lagged confusion.
I enter the code on the gate and then the second code at the door. I stare at the two elevators in the lobby because a little voice inside me is saying, What had Claudette explained about the lifts? One stops at all the odd-numbered floors and one at all the even-numbered. What even is this, France?
By chance more than good memory, I enter the correct one and go up in a lift that clangs. The Durants’ flat is number forty-four on the fourth floor. I like the symmetry and neatness of the numbers.
Because I don’t have a key yet, I knock on the door and hope someone is home. Claudette and Léon had promised one of them would be there by 5 pm – and it’s 5.45 pm now – but I don’t know yet if they are people of their word.
The door is opened by a stranger. Have I knocked on the right door? Dread runs through me. But no, there is the ‘44’ on the door.
It’s a girl – tall and slender, in jeans and a soft woollen jumper and sock feet – and I’m nearly sure I know who she is. Her face is similar to Claudette’s, but not quite.
‘Bonjour?’ I say, and touch my hand to my chest. ‘Sofie?’ It comes out like I’m not sure of my own identity.
The girl smiles. ‘Bien sûr. Of course.’
I realise that this is the mystery daughter of Léon and Claudette – the elusive Delphine – despite the fact that she doesn’t look like a teenager, or any teenagers I’ve known in real life. In the photo the Durants emailed through, Delphine’s hair was shorter and her face rounder, but between then and now her face has changed. She looks older, and her hair hangs shiny and soft to her waist.
She moves back and I step inside. There’s a space (as I was shown yesterday) to put outdoor shoes and hang coats, and I do these things and try to think of how to begin a conversation with this new stranger.
Delphine at first glance (and second glance) is stunningly beautiful, with her long dark brown hair and a way of moving that makes it look like each muscle of her body is engaged at all times. I know from the emails exchanged with her parents that we are about the same age, but now I’m seeing her in real life, Delphine is a grown-up. She is sophisticated and put together, prim and proper. I feel like the opposite of all those things, and I am intimidated all over again.
‘It’s nice to meet you, Sofie,’ she says in English. Her voice is rich and mature. She leans in and kisses me on one cheek – mwah – and the other – mwah – and I can feel my face going a bit pink. ‘My parents are late at work.’
‘Okay,’ is all I say.
So this is my host family. It feels very strange to have a new family all of a sudden.
&n
bsp; ‘So why did you decide to come to France?’ asks Delphine, in English. She takes a Tupperware container out of the fridge, opens it and sniffs the contents.
Trying to explain about art and dreams and the quest for beauty and the shape of leaves, gumnuts and cracks turns out to be really hard. So I just simplify things. ‘I like the language. And it is a good opportunity.’
She scoops rice salad from the container into a bowl. Takes some roast chicken from another container and places a piece on each of the two plates she has laid on the table. ‘I did an exchange to England.’
‘Oh, yes?’ I say. ‘Did you enjoy it?’
‘I did. It really helped my English. I was in York last year. It’s still strange being back.’
She places half a baguette on the table and sits down behind one of the plates. ‘Bon appétit.’
I sit and follow Delphine’s lead, taking a spoonful of rice salad, breaking off a chunk of baguette with my hands.
Claudette is apologetic when she arrives back at the house. ‘I’m sorry I am late, Sofie,’ she says in French. ‘I had a reunion. Next time I will send you a message.’
I nod, and smile to show I don’t mind, and wonder what kind of reunion she had been at. When my mum went to her high school reunion she had (allegedly) ‘just one too many wines’ and (fact) went dancing until 2 am.
‘Réunion means meeting,’ Delphine explains, like she can see into my brain.
Claudette puts her coat away in the hall cupboard and boils the kettle. Delphine brings out a selection of cheeses from the fridge, and I watch as she cuts slivers of each type and places them on her dinner plate – no separate cheese plate – and slowly eats them with bits of bread left over from her dinner.
I copy her, though I am fearful of the wedge of blue, crumbly and mouldy, so I choose not to try it.
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