The Panthéon and French Accents

July 4, 2016:

After years of considering myself superior because I had managed to pick up a mostly France-French accent during my various exchanges, I was surprised to learn I have somehow managed to generate an original accent. Described by Arthur (fearless leader of the Caen excursion during my last month on my exchange) as a "sexy" blend of France-French, English, and Franco-ontarian, I felt slightly reassured. It wasn't a simple answer when the man selling tickets at the metro asked me where my accent was from. Maybe "Ontario" can be counted on to cover the fact that my French education in an Anglophone province was provided by professors from Switzerland, Northern Africa, the south of France, Québec, Manitoba, Western Africa, and Ontario, in addition to my two exchanges to the Bourgogne and Rhone-Alpes regions.

Arriving in Paris doesn't feel like going on a trip to me anymore. I am so familiar with the train stations, metro system and map, and the language that it is not a great effort to get around. I think this sense of security in a country so far from home has created some false expectations for me when I travel to new places, but I will explore this in my posts about Germany. And even though I haven't seen everything, this trip constitutes my seventh visit to Paris.

I found my way to Arthur without asking for directions or consulting any local maps. It was part wandering around aimlessly hoping to stumble across the proper street, and part memory of having been to his apartment once before. I remembered that I ought to look for the steps made famous by Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen is a horrible person child molester, so I may have watched this scene without financially supporting him).

After a lunch from the extremely cool frozen food store (get it?!), Picard's, we met up with Arthur's friends at the cafe in the picture above for a Coke, and convinced them to join us on a tour of the Panthéon.

Highlights for me included the tombs of Aimé Césaire, Victor Hugo, Voltaire, all of whom featured extensively in my literature degree. Césaire in particular had a huge impact on my understanding of the French Caribbean and concepts of Negritude in poetry. His work is seriously awesome. Hugo is also incredibly cool, and if you didn't know, he was a painter in addition to writing plays and poems. His daughter died after her marriage and the depth of emotion in his poetry is something I connected deeply with even before my sister died. I was also interested to learn that there are only 4 women interred at the Pantheon, two of which were added because there husbands were being included. Marie Curie is one of these two.

Arthur, as a member of the Parti Socialiste in France was eager to show me the tomb of Jean Jaures, the father of the socialist party in France, and he explained the history of the building with the help of his friends Alexandre, David, and Rafael (a fellow Canadian).

Photo Credit: Alexandre Demandrille

I bid Arthur farewell and made my way to the neighbourhood of my former exchange partner. The impetus for this trip was my reconnection with her after nearly 9 years out of touch. Marie and I shared homes and families for a month each in the summer of 2005 when I was 14 years old. Two years later, I visited her again for two weeks before beginning university, and we attempted to stay in touch, but lost each other somewhere along the way. She tracked me down and reached out on Facebook, letting me know that she now had an apartment in Paris and asking me when I would visit. That is not the kind of invitation you leave until next summer, so I somewhat impetuously booked my flight based on the best prices and started dreaming about Europe.

I managed to make it the full 14 hours of travel without injuring myself, so naturally I missed a step before the turnstile on my way out of the RER train station and the weight of my backpack propelled me into the it, causing a massive bruise on my knee and ripping a hole in the side pocket of my backpack. All of the Parisians were very kind, offering me help, but besides the throbbing in my knee, only my ego was bruised. I'd just like to say that I have always met kind Parisians on my travels (special shout-out to all six of the men who thought I was struggling with my suitcases because I was weak, and offered to help me carry them up the stairs in the Paris metro that time I decided to live here!)

What a relief, then, to see Marie, to meet her boyfriend Julien and her sweet dog Jango, to put down my backpack, and to ice my bruised knee with chicken (we laughed because I am vegetarian but it was the only thing they had!). I Skyped with Marie's parents who I also hadn't seen in 9 years and who were as kind and lovely as ever. Finally, I took a blissful shower and fell directly to sleep.