Old Friends and New Friends

You know those people you’re friends with on Facebook who you haven’t actually talked to in years, but you like each other’s pictures and statuses all the time?

Well, Sara Davis and I hadn’t had a conversation that wasn’t via Facebook picture comments in about seven years. We were friends from the time I was around 11 until I was 14 or 15, when our families stopped going to the same church. I have photos of us playing ice hockey with broomsticks at a church picnic where we’re wearing long skirts over our snow pants.

Seven years later, Sara commented on one of my photos from my recent road trip in Croatia and Italy; she said that she was about to embark on a Euro trip for seven weeks and was a little nervous, but when she saw my photos her inspiration was rebooted. I was so happy that photos of my life were inspiring for someone! And, of course, I asked if she was coming through here, and she was, and that’s how we decided that after seven years we’d meet each other face-to-face again – in Paris.

We met at Sacre-Coeur, since it was right by her hostel. It’s always weird to me seeing someone I haven’t seen in a long time because for some reason I always expect them to unrecognizable, and it’s always surprising how much they look the same. This is silly because it’s not like people’s feature can really change that much, and it’s especially silly since now you can see people’s photos on the internet every day; still, I was shocked at how much Sara looked like she did when we were 13. Older and prettier, definitely, but still…Sara. I don’t know why that’s so weird for me. I guess because it transports me back to where I was as a person at the time I last looked at their face.

Sara was travelling with her friend Gwen, a sweet, bubbly girl from Cambridge, N.Y. I loved the feeling of being in Paris with people who knew my hometown, especially after always having to explain to European people that I’m not from New York City when I say I’m from New York.

Again, thanks to Facebook catching up was just a matter of filling the spaces between statuses and photo albums while we wandered around Montmartre. I made a list of all the places I’d want to see if I were spending only a day in Paris, so the girls could get as much out of the city as possible before moving on.

Playing tour guide in Paris was one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done. I loved that I had been to each of these places multiple times and could give cool tidbits of information and know exactly where I was on a map of the city without looking. It felt like Paris was my city, and I was overwhelmed with love for this place that felt like home as soon as my flight landed; and now I know it well enough to show people around! It’s so exciting.

Sacre-Coeur, Montmartre area, Jardin des Plantes, tea and middle-eastern baked goods at La Grande Mosquee, Le Marais, Champs-Elyeeses, the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe….Many metros later we made it to the Passy market by my apartment and bought a baguette, cheese, fresh figs, cantaloupe, and some other things and sat at my table in the sunshine eating dinner. After, we drank our coffee, and they got their first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower from my rooftop. At dusk we walked to Trocadero and bought nutella crepes and then walked to sit in front of the Tower. Walking underneath it with them I was filled with the same sensation I had the first time I walked beneath it. While we took our time searching for a good spot to sit, Gwen and Sara said that of all the cities they’d been to and all the tourist attractions they’d seen, that was the most amazing, and it was the first time they experienced the feeling of, “Oh, that’s why people travel all around the world to come here.” And then they said that Paris was one of their absolute best moments yet. And then they said it was hugely because of me and my energy and excitement about the city, and I was so incredibly happy to hear them say that because I wanted more than anything for them to have a good time and to fall in love with the city as I had, and knowing I’d shared that with them made me incandescent.

Gwen, me, Sara with our crepes

At 9 p.m., the Tower glittered, and we sat in silence watching it as though it were a movie screen. Afterward, Gwen was wiping tears from her face, and I thought that was a perfect finale for their day in Paris.

The whole day I kept thinking about my 12-year-old self being told, “Hey, you know your friend Sara? Well, pretty soon you guys aren’t going to see each other anymore, but it’s cool. You’ll meet up again in 7 years. In Paris. You’ll eat crepes under the Eiffel Tower together. Oh, and you’ll be the one showing them around, since you’ll be living there.” I would have looked at the poster of the Eiffel Tower I had hanging in my bedroom when I was that age and known I was having a whacky dream.

I wonder when I’ll see Sara again. For all I know it could be in 20 years in Hong Kong. Life is so weird.

Metro selfies with Daria

I’ve been getting together a lot with the girls I met at the picnic. They’re so fun. This past weekend was a highlight. On Friday ,Vera, Daria, Sara, and I met at Chatelet and went to a couple bars on Rue de Rivoli, right by Sara’s place. We spent a huge chunk of the night chatting with a gay couple sitting near us. One guy was Israeli and very beautiful and had a nose ring, and the other guy was French and bald and said hardly two words, but he smiled a lot. The Israeli guy convinced me I have to go to his home city of Tel-Aviv someday. I never would have even considered that a travel destination before, but apparently it’s lovely and active, and every other person is gay. Obviously, I found this extremely surprising, but it’s just another testament to how bleached our media is. Of course, I only know the Israel I read about in the news. I never would’ve known any of the cool things he told me about Tel-Aviv. He said he missed it there because he has a lot of energy and Paris is too sedated for him. He likes the action involved with the problems in Israel, he said. His boyfriend (not the guy he was sitting with) is black, he told me, and after gauging his personality I joked about how he and his boyfriend, a black Jewish gay couple, had all the reasons in the world to protest, so it was perfect for him. He thought it was the funniest thing in the world that I had the gall to say that to him.

The next morning, I woke up at 8 a.m. to the sound of rain on my moon roof window, so I sat up to shut it, but I noticed the sun was shining; so, I stuck my head outside and the sky was pink and the sun was shining, but it was sprinkling, so I knew there was a rainbow somewhere. Directly opposite the Eiffel Tower I spotted it – a perfect rainbow arching across the buildings on the other side of my street. I fell back asleep with that image in my mind.

At 5 p.m., or 17h, I met the girls at Vera’s place. They were reading a recipe for “American style pancakes” and putting the ingredients in one by one. Daria was reading the recipe to Sara, who was putting everything in the bowl. “Ok, now do I put the milk in?”

“No, you do that last, I think,” Daria said.

“You said that about the last thing. ‘Do I put this in now?’ ‘No, you do that last.’ Should I just put it all in at once?!”

It was so cute to walk into that. When I make pancakes back home I barely measure anything – I just throw together the ingredients and whip them up. I took a photo that I like to call “How Many Foreign Girls Does it Take to Make an American Pancake?”

They came out pretty good. They were half as thick as pancakes you’d get at a diner in the U.S., but still Sara kept remarking on how fluffy they were. I guess in Belgium pancakes are in between the size of a French crepe and an American pancake. Pancake culture.

Germany, England, USA

Sara had to go home to babysit, but she was replaced by another Sara, who is from London. (I swear I’m not making people up and just calling them all Sara.) We had some drinks before leaving for the metro to a boat party in the 7^th. We were cutting it really close for time before the boat left, so when we got off at our station we started running through the streets of Paris. I got to play guide again, since we were on Avenue de New York right by the Eiffel Tower, which I walk all the time. We arrived just as the boat was leaving. It was already coasting along. We were too late. That didn’t deplete our happiness for an instant, though. We were still drunk in Paris at night. We found a bar with fun music, flashing lights, and people dancing on the bar. The bartender was wearing pink suspenders and motor boating the female bartender’s boobs while he poured my whiskey. We danced the night away without spilling any drinks.

I was sure the second bar we went to was a gay bar. It was filled with men, the walls were pink, the ceilings were painted with fluffy clouds and hung with disco balls of all different sizes, and the decorations were what seemed to be random souvenirs – a Statue of Liberty Lamp, postcards from Russia, a longboard, an enormous Shrek mask with an anarchy symbol on the forehead. 

When I told Vera I thought it was a gay bar she asked the guy closest to us, and he gave us the strangest look when he said no. “It’s not a gay bar,” she said to me smilingly, even though I had heard the guy.

We hadn’t been there two minutes before a guy came up to me and asked in French what me and my friends wanted to drink, and that’s when I knew it definitely wasn’t a gay bar. “Are you a bartender?” I asked. “No, I just want to buy you a drink and I know the workers.” Honestly, I don’t remember what I ordered, but he came back and handed Daria a beer, Vera a something or other, and me a perfect mojito, and said, “Have a good night.” Sara and Keeleigh, the two English girls, missed out because they were up at the bar trying desperately to order a drink through the crowd up there, and when they came back they asked how on Earth we got drinks. “Someone’s in love with Flea,” Vera said, pointing at the guy who had walked back to his friend and was now looking over at us smiling. We drank our drinks way too fast. Still, I remembered how to get back to the metro after without using my phone.