Paris

I know it's a cliche, but I LOVE PARIS. LOVE IT. I just got back from the land of delicious crispy croissants and cute shoes to 100 degree temperatures in Bucharest. It's hotter outside than it is inside, so I have a choice of opening the windows to let the hot, smelly, heavy heat waft in (less like a breeze than a wooly wet blanket) or keeping the doors shut and blinds down and recircling the stuffy air with the grimy fan I just discovered on the balcony. When I returned from my week of Parisian living, my apartment in Bucharest had been sealed shut during a week of record-breaking heat, which allowed the distinctive smell of moth-killing spray my landlady doused the place with three months ago to be released from the fibers of the rugs and furniture. I wonder how many years it has taken off my life to live here.

I know it gets hot in France sometimes too, and that no city is perfect, but then why am I so happy whenever I go to Paris? Is it just the lingering positive associations I had with France from my early twenties, when I studied abroad? Is it the wide selection of paper supplies in the ubiquitous papeteries, the cafe culture, the language that was my first love? I never developed the interest in Romanian or Bosnian or spanish verb conjugations that I had for the French ones; I never fell for another culture quite the same way. The thing is, only visiting from time to time allows me to retain my romantic feelings for the city--like dating long-distance. I never get to know it well enough to discover its real flaws. All my French friends tell me that if I lived there, I would get over the infatuation. They point out how expensive it is, how it also gets too hot in the summer, how the traffic and noise wear them down. There are only so many paper supplies one can have, they insist. But I am not sure about that.

People also say, "Well why don't you move there?" It's that tricky work permit issue. Not so easy as a non-EU citizen. I could live on the lam, renewing my tourist visa every three months and doing work under the table...My camera is NTSC, so I'd have to trade it for a PAL model...But I don't think I have the energy for that kind of life right now. No, I'm afraid I'm going to have to return to the good old US of A. It's a big country; surely I'll find somewhere bearable to live, until I save up enough money to move to Paris.