Let's go to Paris!

By David Charles Burke

Let's go to Paris! is a collection of stories of my travels to the Paris region over thirty-five years beginning in 1978 through 2015. Historical commentary is included. There are also hundreds of my photographs of mostly Paris as well as some photographs of France.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Charles Burke
• Release date: Dec 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393108658

Book preview

Let’s go to Paris!

SAM_0825

David Charles Burke

March 1978

1

The petite, tidy, Parisian, left-bank hotel room was quiet and the early spring daylight just after dawn worked hard to find cracks in the tract-fixed, closed, metal Venetian blinds. My college roommate and traveling companion, Tom, was either still asleep or just too tired to move. Our spring break voyage to France in nineteen-seventy-eight was his grand idea.

As twenty-year-old French students of Boo-Boo, or more respectfully, of Father Poirier, in college, Tom and I were in different sections of the same level one course. However, we did attend the required ‘language lab’ once a week together, making darn sure Prof Poirier checked our name in the lab-attendance book as two language lab skips a semester meant an automatic incomplete on the transcript. An incomplete was not an academic failure but certainly a waste of time and money.

With antiquated listening devices wrapped atop of our long-haired heads, we sat at our own little cubicle-desk for fifty minutes listening to a model voice and we needed to respond on cue, never knowing when Boo Boo would switch his headset to our cubicle and listen to us individually. Répondez, s’il vous plaît, was Père Poirier’s verbal command to wake up, literally, and get with the monotone, dusty, reel to reel program.

One bright, cold and sunny northern Vermont (Green Mountain in French) afternoon following a sub-exhilarating French lab early in the second semester, late January, we returned to our humble off-campus abode and Tom suggested to me, Let’s go to Paris.

Are you kidding? My high school French class had gone to Paris a few years earlier but I had opted out as the fee of four- hundred-fifty dollars was prohibitively expensive for this unemployed high school student with five siblings.

I’m serious. Tom replied. I know a family living near Paris and we can stay with them. It won’t cost much, we just need to get there. We can fly New York to London on Laker Airways and then on to Paris by train, ferry boat, and train.

The Chunnel connecting England to mainland Europe hadn’t been dug yet and those days saw the English airline entrepreneur Sir Frederick Alfred ‘Freddie’ Laker offer low-cost/no-frills trans-Atlantic flights for a hundred-thirty-five US bucks, BYOB and provisions, one-way. As a business administration student, I quickly calculated that I had one-hundred-seventy dollars in earnings from my part-time campus food service job, and then pondered for less than a minute. 

I always thought that international travel was for rich people, and it probably was, until now, and I excitedly responded: If only another hundred bucks separates me from Paris, then I can afford that. So when, mon ami Tom?

During spring break in March. We can get passport applications at the Post Office in Burlington.

So, on March seventeenth, St. Patrick’s Day, the day after the Italian politician Aldo Moro was violently kidnapped by the Red Brigade on Via Fani in Rome, Italy, Tom and I headed to France. A Trailways bus from Albany, New York to mid-town Manhattan, and another Cary Bus to John Fitzgerald Kennedy International Airport got us there in the early evening. Sadly and understandably, there were no Laker Airline seats to London available that day so we spent an interesting, mostly uncomfortable night in the international departure terminal at JFK Airport. However, Tom’s dad was a frequent flier and a member of the Pan-Am Clipper Club at JFK and Tom’s credit card as ID got us in. I had never flown in my life yet I was swilling complimentary Michelobs in the posh Clipper Club penthouse lounge at JFK on St. Patty’s Day. Touché.

The adventure had already begun as many people from the world over, also all dressed up, had nowhere to go on that Irish holiday. In the same boat, so to speak, were Mark, the eighteen year old, bat-dung crazy Liverpudlian; George, the chatterbox Jamaican en route to visit his Caucasian grandpa in England and Mark, the young, twenty-something North Carolinian who invited us to step outside and assist in the incineration of a little St. Patrick’s Day green contraband. Erin go bragh dude.

At four in the morning, the boarding passes were acquired for our nine AM flight to London, England on a British Airway flight at a similar price to Laker’s. Before taking off, a wonderful British chap with a charming voice gave us a short update on the British pound sterling and its relation to the American dollar. One British pound equaled roughly one US dollar and a half, and forty years hence, it was about the same, give a penny or take a pence.

This British pound currency exchange is designed to obviously benefit the holders of pounds, mostly English people. If an Englishman or woman wants to visit Las Vegas, for example, and gets an inexpensive hotel/flight package, it’s financially easy as they’re getting a dollar for seventy-five pence. Throw in the included buffet breakfast and they’ve struck it rich. The Bank of London controls the world’s banking, at least the Euro-American system. The Bank of London is located in the privately owned, city-state of The City of London, in center London. 

The City of London, also known as the Square Mile, is an independent city surrounded by greater London, as the independent Vatican city-state is surrounded by Rome, and as the independent, privately-owned city-state of Washington, District of Columbia is surrounded by (The) VIRGINia and MARYland. The City of London is so private, the Queen of England needs an invitation to visit and must be met at the gate upon arrival.

To be compensated in English pounds is jolly good as it’s a hometown perk for subjects earning Bank of England issued pounds. The Bank of England is a private, for-profit corporation, like the US Federal Reserve and neither is officially connected to its host government. These parasitic corporations create capital out of thin air and taxpayers must pay interest on the borrowed money.

Aboard the jet plane at last and for my very first time, the demonstration of how to use the emergency personal flotation device reminded me that there was a chance, however remote, that this flight may not end as planned. Allons-y! Let’s go! Up, up and away. A salmon salad-cream cheese with chive sandwich and The Good-bye Girl on the overhead screen kept us air passengers busy until lights out. Then on channel seven, with headphones, I listened to The Temptations song: Papa was a rolling stone, wherever he laid his hat was his home, and when he died, all he left us was alone... many times at 30,000 feet. 

A few hours in, light turbulence shook the plane and the flotation device application came to mind. The Captain interrupted the Temptations’ tune to tell us that this turbulence was typical, nothing to fret and that we would arrive at Gatwick Airport a bit earlier than the estimated time of arrival. At nine-thirty post meridian local time, we were finally abroad and, according to Tom, the trip leader, we needed to go from London to the southeastern port city of Dover in Kent. Tonight? Yup.

Two one-way, second class passenger railroad tickets to Dover, please. Aboard the train, another friendly chap who spoke English, reminded us to be sure and change trains in Orpington, which we did, arriving under the white chalky cliffs of Dover, just after midnight. A couple hundred meters up from the Dover train station was a row of homes, and one house had a light on.

As we approached the home with the light on, a woman in her fifties, with her hair in a bun, emerged as if waiting for us, and we asked where we might stay the night. She replied that we could stay there, a bed and breakfast that was expecting the mid-night train. One room with a large, king-size bed for four pounds each, or around fourteen US dollars total, was the only deal offered, a good one at that, to which we gladly accepted. With a bit of jet-lag and without much sleep, we were mentally fatigued. The continental breakfast of corn flakes, milk and coffee was included the next morning and off we went to board the ferry boat going to Calais, France.

The white cliffs of Dover looked surprisingly smaller than their reputation, and the defensive, now unmanned pill boxes from the world wars were still dotting the steep, fast elevating coast. Without anyone checking our tickets, Tom and I boarded a large boat via the massive gang plank along with some cars and a line of tractor-trailer lorries. We helped ourselves to window seats in the passenger cabin and the boat embarked on the relatively short, twenty-one mile trip across the Dover Strait to France.

After about an hour or so, the coast of France was easily visible but the boat kept clear and seemed to have no intention of stopping. Curiosity soon became venial concern and a small inquiry to a ship attendant revealed the unfortunate yet comical truth that the next port of call was Ostend, Belgium, and not Calais, France. Ostend is a small yet busy North Sea port, very dense with commercial and private marine vessels of small and medium sizes. 

On the way to Brussels from Ostend, the train was relatively empty until we entered this small town station with hundreds of screaming football (soccer) fanatics in red and white, ten deep on the platform. Zé-ro, zé-ro, zé-ro, zé-ro.... they were chanting roughly to the tune of ‘Auld Lang Syne’.

Once on the train, the football followers quieted down and the nicest, young Belgians shared our seats. We chatted, with incomplete comprehension, in friendly broken French and English and the fear of being caught up in hooligan mischief quickly dissipated and on to Brussels we all went. One teenager lit a cigarette which ignited a strong reaction from a middle-aged bald gentleman who insisted the youth extinguish the butt as the car was clearly marked ‘Non-fumeur".

Surrounded by majestic, old-style buildings in center Brussels, we had a couple hours before the first-class (our only option) train to Paris’ Gare du Nord was to depart. Brussels was rainy and damp on this early spring Sunday and well-dressed locals and business people moved about with random efficiency. A small café offered us refuge and le garçon was most gracious accepting a modest sum of American cash pour deux sandwichs et deux cafés.

Sleeping was easy aboard the smooth-riding express rail, arriving in north Paris just after midnight, March twenty-one, nineteen-seventy-eight. Tom knew that we needed to stay in south Paris, on the left bank. A taxi took us to Montparnasse, south central Paris. The Hotel Miramar was right there, open for business and accepted us, even though we had no French francs with which to pay the fare or le tarif. Instead, the hotel clerk held Tom’s camera as a deposit until the following morning.

Paris, la ville lumière, or the city of lights, was really difficult to enjoy in the back of the Mercedes Benz taxi at midnight. It was raining and I took this opportunity to speak French in France, asking the driver if it rains a lot in Paris, not really caring about the answer as much as asking the question: Est-ce qu’il pleut souvent à Paris?

The first morning in Paris was magical, at least for me it was. We took needed and earned showers, and descended to le rez-de-chausée (ray-de-show-say) or the ground floor. The second floor in France, and in many places, is the first floor. Voilà la différence. In a small room opposite the front desk we took our petit déjeuner or continental breakfast. Simple with French elegance, we enjoyed coffee, small croissants, fresh fruit salad and a yogurt cup. It wasn’t much but we eat with our eyes and the presentation was delicious and satisfying. My journal notes that the waitress was rather cute as well; a perfectly proportioned pretty Parisienne she was. Hey, we were college guys on spring break humming rugby songs.

In less than one hour, I fell in love with Paris too. Our first chore was to visit le bureau de change and exchange some hard American fiat currency for French francs, so we could pay the hotel bill and recover Tom’s Japanese-made, photographic apparatus. Many credit the Frenchmen Nicéphore Niépce and Louis Daguerre with inventing the modern camera in the early eighteen-hundreds.

Everything we did seemed like a fun, small adventure and we then contacted our host mom, Geneviève, from the hotel and with the friendly help of the Hotel Miramar staff. It was established that we’d rendez-vous in the hotel at half-one post meridian.

With a few hours to kill, we slowly walked the streets around La Tour Montparnasse, entering several of the small shops that dominated the street level in this busy, dense neighborhood. I knew very little about Paris at this time, but this initial encounter provided me the incentive to study the French language and learn it. I wanted to better appreciate this hustle, bustle urban Bohemia. All the heavily stocked shops: stationary, art supply, book, food, photography, musical instruments, records, tabacs and cafés seduced my curiosity, beckoned my browse, and instilled my absolute resolve to return in the years to follow with a more fluent gift of the Gallic gab.

The buildings of Paris are generally about six floors and it’s said there’s a law maintaining this city with edifices scaled to human proportions, mandating the magnificent views from the north side Montmartre hill, the Eiffel Tower and the then, decade-old Montparnasse Tower. When this not-really-so-tall skyscraper was built in the nineteen-sixties, it caused quite a stir among the Parisians. Having fifty-six floors and standing two hundred ten meters, the Monparnasse Tower is the highest open-air observatory in Paris and on a clear day one can see up to twenty miles away, oo, la la.

We window shopped, tried to blend in and not appear as tourists, until we were hungry. Around noon, Tom and I entered a busy cafeteria-style restaurant and loaded our trays with many French culinary delights only to arrive at the cashier and noticed everyone paying with a blue ticket. Faux pas. Uh oh, let’s get out of here. So we ditched our loaded trays and went to browse the record albums in the then high-end department store, Les Galaries LaFayette at the base of the tower. But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there. - Ernest Hemingway

We hadn’t yet met anyone who spoke English but there were so many English and American single records and long playing albums on sale that it left us slightly bewildered. The Beatles, the Stones, Led Zeppelin, Simon and Garfunkel were a few of the many vinyl records on sale. And one of my pop music favorites, Petula Don’t Sleep in the Subway darling Clark, had many recordings for sale only to learn years later that Ms. Clark recorded songs not only in English but also in French, German, Spanish and Italian. And McCartney’s lyrics are replaying in my head: Michelle, ma belle, sont les mots qui vont très bien ensemble, très bien ensemble. 

Our host mom came to the Hotel Miramar at one-thirty to collect us and take us to their home in Auffargis, a small, quaint, upscale-rural village in the area of les Essarts-le-roi (the king’s fields), just down the road from Versailles (ver-sigh). Geneviève, a blue-eyed, pretty brunette, originally from Marseilles, was married to Claude, a blue-eyed, blond commercial Air Inter pilot from the north of France. Air Inter was a semi-public, French domestic airline that had merged with Air France. Geneviève and Claude had been to New Jersey and were informally hosted by Tom’s parents. 

Claude and Geneviève had three children, and all in their late teens at the time. Son Patrick and daughter Brigitte were finishing their high school studies aimed at health care professions. Dominique, another daughter was a high school sophomore who would also become a pharmacist like her sister. Patrick became an orthodontist, straightening teeth and improving the smiles of many  French youngsters. They all credited papa Claude with pushing them into useful and profitable professions in a socialized land of universal health care.

Their schooling content was mostly microscopic, organic chemistry and posed them quite the challenge. The head bone’s connected to the neck bone,...it probably wasn’t so simple and involved learning tomes and tomes of mostly big physiological Latin words.

I had studied French starting in the eighth grade with Sister Mary Coons and continued French for four years in high school, mostly with Monsieur Vincent Gramm, an Italian man who was a native French speaker having grown up in the French-speaking North African country of Algeria. Years later, I coincidentally taught school with Vince’s daughter Nicole and she told me her dad’s real surname was Grammático, or teacher of grammar. How appropriate! If I was a semi-serious French student, Tom was not so serious, leaving most translations to me.

Geneviève absolutely insisted on carrying our travel bags to the train. From la Gare Montparnasse, we took the thirty minute ride to the station at Versailles where we hopped into the small Renault four-speed automobile. The gear shift was like an umbrella handle coming from the lower-middle of the dashboard and it was a good thing our French mom did the driving.

The village of Auffargis, with a population of just under two thousand, is less than ten miles to the south-west of Versailles. The host family home was in the woods and although there were neighbors, none were visible. The house was newly constructed and lovely, and the multiple car garage was below the house. The cars needed to be parked in single file with the last car in being the first car out. Above the garage, the main floor included the kitchen, dining room, living room and three bedrooms.

Tom and I had the second floor to ourselves; the upstairs had two or three bedrooms, a toilet, a bathroom, and a game room with a pool table, dart board and full-service bar. The family didn’t really drink alcohol, however, there was some wine with dinner (for us guests) and papa Claude would have an occasional beer with dinner.

The backyard, in-ground swimming pool was covered and not yet in service but the tennis court was open for business in late March. Of course, the French didn’t invent swimming, but most historians believe that tennis originated in the monastic cloisters of northern France in the late 12th century. Two French kings died from tennis related episodes - Louis X of a severe chill after playing and Charles VIII after hitting his head during a game. The tennis scoring expression love means zero as in 15-love, 30-love, 40-love and comes from the French word l’oeuf, which means egg. Americans say goose egg at times for zero, but not in tennis.

We had our first lunch (déjeuner) in Auffargis as Tom and I conversed in broken English and French for almost three hours with Geneviève. My conversation skills were weak although my general vocabulary was pretty good. Tom was of no help other than relaying his family news to Geneviève who was sincerely interested. International exchanges are wonderful in many ways and merit the participation and efforts of the hosting families, those able and willing to accommodate them. Formal classes help to learn French but on-the-spot engagement in a francophone place is the training most required. From that moment forward, when necessity was the mother of invention, not only did my French skills improve but also, as mentioned, my resolve to learn more. 

At five o’clock, we were off to the nearby, historic town of Rambouillet (rom-boo-yeh) to fetch Dominique, the daughter from high school. Dominique spoke some English and our communication instantly improved. At about six o’clock, the father Claude got home and we had a very informal chat in the living room, while tending a small fire in the stone hearth. Papa Claude wore the