Why is it so wonderful here, I wondered, walking through the streets of Paris. Because that’s what it is, every time. The time is long gone when I, like everyone back then, was infatuated with everything French. In the 1970s, half of the Netherlands played chansons and shouted oh lala. I went one step further, I’m afraid; I followed French tourists humming songs by Michel Fugain in the hope that they would want to talk to me about Zola.
Love has now long been reduced to normal proportion. Yet. Paris.
In the wonderful book and my new Bible Bon appétit Paris I read from Mara Grimm that she always dreamed of living in Paris when she grew up. Like me! I thought, but she did do it. This time I had written down addresses that she recommended, oh just a few because there are so many, but such addresses give direction to your walks and in Paris the walks are at least as important as the destination.
Actually, that is always the case, unless the goal is very important, but then you usually don’t call the journey to it a walk but simply ‘on the way to’.
During such walks, thanks to Mara Grimm, I now suddenly wisely talked about the language battle between ‘pain au chocolat’ sayers and ‘chocolatine’ supporters, even though I had never even heard of chocolatine before reading her book.
Despite the many good indications, we once again ate in a place where Mara Grimm would never go, Le grand jacket.
But it is so beautiful there with brass and mirrors and French scents, in a large high room full of festive lights and Americans. Yes. The food is mehh, the prices spectacular. So this was the last time.
It is very nice to have a guide. This means that you know, for example, what you are doing at food paradise La grande epicerie. Don’t just walk around and think that you would like to have a truck with you to carry the delicious truffle chips, the thousand types of cheese or the radiant lettuce heads. Now I knew what I wanted: Jambon Prince de Paris. You should really put this on a simple ham sandwich, with butter from Bordier fleur de sel.
And also the one with piment d’espelette or the one with smoked salt you definitely want to try. You have to skip all other options this time because you even have to make choices in butter.
The appetite in Paris is not only focused on the food, the whole life seems like something to bite into when you look at the beautiful ever-changing facades, the elegantly landscaped parks, the wide bridges in the cold winter sun. Well, for two lucky Dutch visitors. For the homeless and the poor, the cripples who beg in the metro, the woman with the scuffed shoes, the man who cleans the dirty platforms at eleven o’clock at night – it is different for them.
“There is everything in the world,” wrote Lucebert. Everything simply exists at the same time.
Sometimes life is just something you would like to eat. You don’t have to throw ashes on your head all the time because you happen to be doing well.
“And do you know why it was so nice in Paris now?” my father asked when I got back. I thought: now I’m going to hear it. He lived in Paris himself for years, so he should know. “Because there were two of you,” he said.
That’s true. Also in Paris.