Paris

I haven’t forgotten how beautiful this city is, but being here is different from remembering what it’s like. Like yesterday, when I was in the Metro, I found myself reverting to the old habits, like automatically boarding the second carriage, and taking the foldable seat next to the door. I realised how nice it was to people watch, wondering what people were thinking, making up stories of where this person was going and what kind of book he/she liked to read. Or like yesterday, at the bus stop, some people were smoking and stamping their feet to shrug off the cold, and the smell of the cold and the smoke reminded me of those winters when Julien and I would walk to the nearest tabac in the snow to buy cigs.

It started to rain as I walked to the metro station from Julien’s grandmother’s flat. I passed that little store that sells second-hand Japanese goods, then turned the corner and passed the Korean store, and looked over the building tops to see the Eiffel Tower against a backdrop of gray clouds.

I walked all the way to Rue du Commerce and had lunch at a Chinese traiteur. I sort of missed the taste of the Frenchified Chinese food, which is what I used to eat all the time when I was living in Paris and couldn’t be bothered to cook.

And then I went to a local Monoprix, where I made a tour of the aisles and found myself remembering our usual grocery list… the grilled chicken that come in those paper packs, the jambon cru, the saucisson, the crab sticks.

Browsing the alcohol section, I marveled at how different countries and cultures can be, and how we slowly adapt to wherever it is we find ourselves in, no matter how hard we try to resist. I guess that when you move around quite a bit like we do, you don’t really lose a home, but end up adding a new one to the list.