by Oliver Gee
One of the best parts of our new apartment was that it came with free drinks at the bar downstairs. Our landlady had made a deal with the bar owner so that he could store his beer in her basement, and in return, the apartment tenant would never pay for a drink. She told us that we had the choice: an empty basement or free booze. And we decided quickly. Realizing the lack of basement space probably explained her cluttered home, we decided to live as minimalists to avoid the same fate. And free drinks would come in handy after the wedding, honeymoon, and gargantuan deposit on the apartment had left us broke once again.
So, one winter evening after the final box was unpacked, we headed downstairs to introduce ourselves at the bar. And, as promised, the bartender said we didn’t need to pay. For anything. Ever. He introduced us to all the regulars, topped up our drinks on repeat, and slid us bar snacks. We felt like celebrities that night and traded stories with our new neighbours. When eventually it was time for something more substantial to eat, we asked the bartender if he could recommend a restaurant in the area.
“Sure, there’s a great one nearby. Do you want to eat now? OK, leave it with me,” he said.
He promptly left the bar and walked out onto the street, leaving customers with change in their hands and wondering what was happening. When he returned, he said there was a table waiting for us just up the road. Slightly puzzled, we thanked him and headed for a meal, discussing on the way what was possibly in store. What could the bartender have said?
As we walked into the restaurant, a charming and authentic French spot, the waitress took us to the best table in the house. Two glasses of champagne appeared and the head chef came to introduce himself.
“I understand you’re new to the neighbourhood, welcome,” he said with a smile. “Allow me to recommend the magret de canard and the Pinot Noir.”
We accepted the recommendation, but the chef had put us in a tight spot. The meal was among the most expensive on the menu and so was the wine, and our bank accounts were flatlining.
The good wine eased the pain. And so did the duck, which was succulent and served with a sweet potato purée. The chef, taking great pleasure in our visit, insisted on a dessert and produced a crème brûlée for two. I’m not ashamed to admit I was feeling more than a little tipsy. That first bartender had been refilling our glasses, there was the champagne… and what’s this? The waitress had left the full bottle of Pinot Noir on the table. A full bottle? Good lord. I thought it was expensive just for a glass. Lina politely told the waitress that we’d only ordered two glasses, but the waitress just smiled, left the bottle, and moved on. I started to have flashbacks to Le Meurice hotel where the gin and tonics had left a hole in my pocket for weeks.
When the dessert was done, the waitress passed our table again. I decided enough was enough and nervously asked for l’addition, s’il vous plaît?
And she just smiled.
“Ah, mais non, monsieur,” she said. “Welcome to the neighbourhood. This one is on the house.”
Over the counter in the kitchen, the head chef gave us a wink and a wave before returning to his work. We couldn’t believe our luck.
As we headed home we popped back into the bar to thank the bartender for setting us up for such a marvellous experience.
“Ah oui, mais c’est normale,” he said with a smile. “That’s what neighbours are for. Welcome to Montmartre.”
9.3 Life in Montmartre
I love Montmartre. I never really had much time for it before, it always seemed too touristy, too far from all the action. And it was certainly too far to get to on foot because once you arrived, you were at the bottom of the hill and probably done with walking for the day. And it was even worse on a bicycle. But on the days we did make it there in the past, we were lost on arrival. We didn’t know how to avoid the tourists, where to find the best bars and the quiet spots. It was only the locals and the tour guides who knew those secrets.
Despite the cold of our first winter in Montmartre, I was determined to learn the neighbourhood for myself. I walked endlessly. Even in the snow. Especially in the snow, actually. Snow in Paris is rare and made Montmartre look magical. I was there, filming live as dare devils took their snowboards down the hill of Sacre-Coeur. Gradually, I came to know every cobblestone in those empty streets near our apartment and beyond. In fact, Lina and I couldn’t believe how deserted Montmartre was that winter. The tourists, of course, would return as the weather improved, but we felt like we’d discovered a secret part of Paris and we loved it.
By the time spring came around, I was an expert.
I had re-embraced my inner flâneur - heading deeper into Montmartre, over the hill and in every direction. Just like in my first days in Paris, back in the 2nd arrondissement, I couldn’t walk enough. I had devoured the fascinating Montmartre cemetery, with its 70 stray cats and its unusual road-bridge ceiling. I found Picasso’s studio, and knew which street to follow to find his old apartment. I stumbled upon hidden gardens and parks, a seemingly abandoned arena, and a fantastically empty cafe garden in the Montmartre Museum. And I found residential streets, like rue Félix-Ziem, with such breathtaking architecture that I’d wonder why anyone would want to be anywhere else. I raved about the neighbourhood on the podcast and developed a little tour route if listeners wanted to join me for a walk.
But it wasn’t just the history, the tourist hotspots, and the hidden secrets that I liked. I made a special effort to introduce myself as a neighbour in all the nearby restaurants, bars, and cafes, and it had a wonderful effect. There are so many tourists in Montmartre that the locals often don’t care much for first-time customers. But a neighbour? Why, a neighbour is a friend and should be treated as such. As the months passed, we found our favourite bakery, cheese shop, deli, cafe, and bar. And if the staff at a new place had no time for my neighbourly conversation, then au revoir to them. There were simply too many other places to try.
And I found my favourite street. Author Elaine Sciolino says that the only street in Paris is rue des Martyrs, but she’s wrong. In fact, she went so far as to capitalize the words and make a book out of it, The Only Street in Paris, but it doesn’t matter, she’s still wrong. The only street in Paris is rue des Abbesses, which is around the corner from Elaine and by my doorstep. But why is it the best? Well, let me paint a picture.
The perfect Paris street must have all of the following things. At least one fantastic bakery. At least one good outdoor terrace for coffee or an evening drink. At least one decent restaurant. Plus, it must be gobsmackingly beautiful, with a sprinkling of interesting visual trinkets to keep your wandering eyes satisfied.
Rue des Abbesses had all of these things, often fivefold.
The street runs right through the heart of Montmartre, with one-way traffic heading from west to east. This means the street is fairly flat, as opposed to the north-south streets, which are mostly hilly. There are seemingly endless bars, restaurants, and shops at ground level, with a hodgepodge of vaguely Haussmannian apartment blocks above. Haussmann, who is responsible for the uniform beauty of Parisian buildings, never really got his teeth into Montmartre because the hill made it too tricky to raze and develop. Nowadays, the street is a goldmine for people-watching as it attracts all the locals for their daily fruits, vegetables, fish, cheese, and shoe repairs. Halfway along the street, there is a bakery that’s famed for making the city’s best baguettes, meaning they had the honour of providing the president with his daily bread.
And sure, there are scores of tourists keeping everyone on their toes, buying the overpriced ice cream, standing in the middle of the street and taking photos, and clogging up the sidewalks. But it’s not like some of the other streets in Montmartre, where the shops sell tacky Eiffel Tower T-shirts and keyrings. There’s an undeniable charm to Abbesses; it’s like a classy village street and everyone knows it.
There is a definite community feel to the surrounding area too, the kind
I’d heard about in Paris but hadn’t experienced over my early years in the city. One day I popped into the local bakery for my daily delights and the baker trumpeted “And he’s back from les vacances!” I hadn’t even told her I was going away. The Moroccan guy at our local corner shop greets me by saying “Salut l’australien” as I walk past, which always makes me smile. “Salut le marocain,” I respond. I still don’t know his name. When my local cafe closed for the summer, the staff members took a photo with me for their social media accounts. “We’re doing it with all our regular customers, our true customers,” one of them said. And sometimes, when we pass our local restaurants in the late evening, the waiters invite us in for a nightcap at the bar.
Yes, there is a real community vibe, and it thrives because of the flood of tourists. The changing faces visiting all these cafes, bars, and restaurants has made it all-the-more important to value the friendship of the locals. Surely helped by my incessant nattering away about being new to the neighbourhood, mixed with the locals’ interest in an Australian-Swedish duo, Montmartre welcomed us and tucked us away in the fold. While elsewhere in Paris, I sometimes felt like I’d been chewed up and spat out, now it felt like I’d found my place.
And to be honest, it wasn’t just Montmartre. Living halfway up the hill meant we were faced with a delightful daily choice. We could walk out the front door and turn right, up into the heart of Montmartre with all its cobblestone charm, or turn left and head down into Pigalle with its neon sins. I always thought it was funny to see how, at the top of our street, young women would parade along the charming rue des Abbesses, posing in front of the flower-laden restaurants. Meanwhile at the bottom of the hill young men with smirks on their faces would snap photos of the sex shops.
I preferred Pigalle for an evening stroll, among the young Parisians gathered on the bar terraces. The grittier streets, the raw personality, the vibrant nightlife. Montmartre was much better in the morning, with the bustle of the butchers and bakers, the cafe owners jostling between tables, and tourists walking around with mouths agape, experiencing the Paris of their dreams. It might sound strange, but I even liked seeing those tourists, especially when you could see how happy they were to be walking through the streets from their dreams.
But it wasn’t all fun and games in our new lives. As our friends had predicted, Montmartre changed our habits. It truly was like a village and we didn’t feel the need to venture into the rest of the city as much. Gone were the days of playing basketball in that wonderful covered market in the Marais. And the Canal Saint-Martin, which had hosted countless soirées over those early years, took a back seat as we preferred exploring new corners of Montmartre. I was no longer a regular at Le Peloton cafe, which was now on the far side of town as far as I was concerned. And, to my great chagrin, gone were the days of Lina’s banana bread as our new kitchen wasn’t equipped with an oven. Even our scooter, our beloved red scooter, retired from daily driving and only came out to cross town. We’d gone full Montmartrois; and we didn’t mind at all.
9.4 The podcaster
Summer hit Paris hard that year. We suffered as the temperature reached 42.6 C (or 108.7 F), the hottest day in almost 70 years. And I can tell you, we were glad to see the end of the heatwave, not least after learning that zinc rooftops are apparently excellent at storing heat in top-floor apartments. But who was I to complain? It was some time during that summer that I had an important turning point.
Someone asked me what I did for a living and I answered, without hesitation, that I was a podcaster. Now that might seem quite a natural thing for me to answer, seeming it’s true. But it was the first time I’d said it with absolute confidence. The first time I’d said it and meant it.
It was incredibly humbling that over 300 people were Earful Tower members. It was because of them that I kept doing it, and they gave me the faith to keep pushing forward. And they allowed me to have a salary. A job. My own job. Living my dream.
Besides the luxury of being able to pay for a lunch without searching my pockets for extra coins, having my own job changed me as a person. I wasn’t chained to the rhythm of the news. I didn’t have to work Monday to Friday, 9-6. And I could finally appreciate Paris for what it really was. I knew which cafes were empty during the week and perfect for holing up in a corner to write. I knew when the baguettes at the local bakery were still warm. And if there was a new exhibition in town, I didn’t have to compete with all the Parisians to see it. I could stroll in on a Tuesday morning before even the tourists had arrived.
And all the while, the podcast was improving. As it grew ever closer to a million downloads, it became easier to attract guests. I didn’t have to beg them for their time because they knew their message would be heard. The mayor of the fourth arrondissement in the Marais shared the chilling story of watching Notre Dame burn from up close. The mayor of Montmartre revealed for the listeners the hidden bar in the basement of his Town Hall. Supermodel and ultimate Parisienne Caroline de Maigret took us all for a whirlwind walk around Pigalle. Author Cara Black jumped on the back of the scooter for a video, and the lead dancer of the Moulin Rouge invited us backstage. I was lucky enough to eat fresh biscuits in the kitchen of chef David Lebovitz and I almost fell off my chair to learn that John Baxter wrote the crocodile story into one of his own books.
And the real highlight was still on the horizon. Imagine my surprise when the Australian embassy agreed to let me host a live talk show at the ambassador’s residence. I could bring 100 guests into his living room, in the most luxurious penthouse I’d ever seen, a stone’s throw from the Eiffel Tower. The very thought made me tingle with fear and excitement.
But more on that later.
It seemed like I had come so far from when I arrived in Paris almost five years earlier, clueless and sorely lacking context. Now, radio stations and newspapers from around the world would ring me for the inside word on Paris. A radio host at the ABC in Australia became convinced that our honeymoon trip should be a movie and would call regularly. And somewhere along the way I even got my first sponsor for the podcast.
All this was a wild ride, but my favourite interactions have always been with the listeners. The lovely listeners. I heard that a table full of strangers met in Melbourne for an Earful Tower dinner at a French restaurant. Others have said they’ve listened to every show, which believe it or not would take longer than watching all the episodes of Seinfeld.
I hardly recognized myself compared to the man I was when I arrived. Then, I was too timid to speak French, to meet new people, to walk into restaurants. I didn’t feel like I belonged and resigned myself to life as a curious observer on the sidelines. I knew no one, had no regular haunts in the city, and couldn’t have pointed you in the right direction if I tried. Where once I was nervous to walk onto the basketball court, I now counted some of those mecs among my closest friends. I’d made Paris my home. I’d explored it so thoroughly that French friends asked me to take them on walking tours. I knew the history of the city but delighted in finding great new cafes. I’d seen Paris change a lot over those years too. I’d witnessed a coffee revolution, I’d seen the gentrification before my very eyes. And on a recent flight into Paris I’d noticed that they’d finally got rid of the telephone booths at Charles de Gaulle airport, which had stuck out so prominently on my arrival. Yes, I’d come to Paris on a one-way ticket and I managed, against the odds, to stay.
Long after we had settled in to our home in Montmartre, we decided to host a little soirée. A few hours before the guests arrived, Lina and I went to get some supplies from rue des Abbesses. We started with the champagne, ducking into our local wine store and asking for the shopkeeper’s recommendation. We got chatting with him, in French of course, and said we were looking for two bottles of champagne. We traded stories about where we were from in the world and he said he was from Brittany. We surprised him when we said we’d scooted through his hometown. Our honeymoon story, now so well-pract
iced, left him shaking his head in disbelief. He had a scooter too.
When we got to the cheese shop, the fromageur was equally friendly. He shared his own stories about Sweden and Australia. He gave us a few samples, and laughed when I told him about my fear of cheese shops from years before. When we explained that we lived around the corner, he pulled out a loyalty card, stamped a few boxes, and said he hoped to see us again. We walked back home laden with the champagne and a haul of new cheeses to taste.
As we approached our little home on the hill, I had a major epiphany. I was reliving that night back in Montorgueil, when I’d invited my neighbour, Stephane, for cheese and wine. That first night, I’d been brushed off by the local merchants, had taken my cheese and wine back to an unimpressed neighbour, and we had eaten off a table made from a vintage suitcase. Now, I’d joined forces with the love of my life (Lina, not Stephane); we had picked good drinks and cheeses thanks to the lessons from the basketball mecs, and we lived in an apartment big enough to actually accommodate guests. And believe it or not, we had a proper table too. Yes, after years of being a struggling Australian in Paris, I finally felt like I was in sync with the rhythm of the city.
Later that evening, our friends arrived from their respective Paris neighbourhoods. Many of them hadn’t been to our place yet, so we gave them the grand tour, which took all of 45 seconds. But still, we were proud that we had enough space and enough chairs for everyone. We popped the corks of the champagne and treated it like a housewarming party.
The highlight of the evening for our friends was the view of the Eiffel Tower. There’s no denying it, the Iron Lady - especially at night - is a show stealer. At one point I was telling them all what I thought was a particularly funny story when the clock struck 10 pm and the tower lit up behind me with its twinkling light show, as it does every hour. The group ignored my punchline and pressed their faces to the window to watch. These were Parisians, mind you. They’d seen the lights. Probably many times. But they were drawn in like moths to this dizzying flame. Yes, the Eiffel Tower and its lights stole my thunder that night; but it gave me a cunning plan. A plan for how maybe, just maybe, I could use that tower to my advantage when the big event at the Australian embassy rolled around...