Roy Gantz

Time Moves Differently

How was this last month real?

I’m sitting on the plane home to Chicago reflecting on my experience. For one month, I dedicated my life to this class, committing myself to the study of a specific period of history, walking in the shoes of those who lived during the period of the French revolution.

I was with the same people every day learning specific material; free from distractions, happily dedicating a small chunk of our lives to the task of bookpacking. It’s rare that we get a chance to home in on one thing for an extended period. At USC, I feel like I’m constantly juggling my various off-the-wall, unrelated interests, so I’m very grateful for having the privilege to commit myself to one topic in this manner. There’s something so special about focusing on one thing in this way—it allows you to immerse yourself in a different world fully.

I was talking to a classmate about how time had felt so weird on this trip. Somehow, it felt like it went by so fast—but when I stop and think about it I really do feel fulfilled. We packed so much into our time, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s been a month, but it feels like a week and a year at the same time.

Something I loved about this trip was the fact that I was exposed to USC students I would have otherwise never known. Last year, doing mostly theatre classes, I didn’t meet that many people outside my major, and even then, I didn’t put in as much time as I could have to cultivate relationships with those who didn’t share my interests. On this trip, I could make connections with people whose interests lie far from my own, and I loved seeing new perspectives. In class, I had moments of awe as my classmates shared pearls of wisdom, and it’s so cool seeing how our individual interests translate to the topic at hand.

Connecting with my classmates on this trip has also brought me new experiences I would have never had like going to niche restaurants, enriching museums, and interesting boutiques. Opening myself up to these new experiences made my time in both cities all the more enjoyable, and I’m so grateful that everyone shared themselves with each other. There were so many times when I felt directionless, and if it wasn’t for my classmates’ spreadsheets and wish lists who knows what I would have missed!

But I think what has felt the most unreal about this trip was simply the feeling of walking the streets in London and Paris. The curvy twists and turns of Paris’ boulevards felt like a hug as I wandered aimlessly; never bored and always looking for the next thing to do. It really felt like surprises lay in every corner. On our excursions, it was always so fun when we’d have a goal to find, then when we reached it we’d simply wander the area. Knowing the history behind the streets I was walking made the shops and restaurants I went to feel all the more special, as I imagined what those same places may have looked like centuries ago.

Bookpacking requires an active imagination. When you go outside looking for the real life settings of fictional novels, you have to be creative as you fill in the gaps. This was a fun challenge for me, and although at times it was difficult, the moments where I really “got it” were extremely rewarding.

I had one of those moments in Paris outside of a church, where a tree was placed right where Hugo described it in Les Misérables. Using the tree as a starting point, I could fill the rest of the street using my imagination—filling in the blanks to see it as Hugo described.  At times, you feel silly— getting excited about a tree—but once you give into the geekiness it’s such a fun experience.

With this class now done, I want to take the curious, imaginative nature of backpacking with me to my everyday life. Whether I use a novel, a movie, or a song as my reference, I want to go on little scavenger hunts around the world. I’m already thinking about the countless places I can go in LA that are mentioned in my favorite pieces of media, and I’m excited to geek out over them. This class has encouraged me to experience the world without the need for action. A simple stroll can be exciting if you make it that way. Bookpacking is about experiencing the world as it is while comparing it to what it’s been to those before you.

The Marvelous Paris Sewers

He may not look so friendly here… but believe me, “Old Grandpa Hugo” is filled with wonderful knowledge.

Victor Hugo loves a tangent.

Reading Les Miserables is kind of like listening to a wise grandfather tell you a convoluted story— sometimes he'll trail off and go into detail about what seems like nothing, but it's always welcome because you know he has so much to say. So, I sit back and listen, trusting that “Old Grandpa Hugo” is going to help me see life a little differently.

Hugo’s tangents can be about anything. Sometimes it's about the human condition— poetry about the universal experience of falling in love. Other times, it's in-depth summaries of French military battles and political history. But weirdly enough, I think one of my favorite parts of Les Miserables was the tangent about the Paris sewers.

In the climax of the novel, Marius is severely wounded and unable to get out of the barricade. In this moment of extreme peril, Jean Valjean heroically saves his life by carrying his body through the Paris sewers. It's this epic, biblical-Esque moment where against all odds, Jean Valjean navigates a maze of disgust to emerge at the other side a new man.

During this epic moment, Hugo goes on tangents galore. He spends a good chunk of pages just describing the history of the Paris sewers; going into deep detail about their construction and how they have changed over time. Suprisingly to me, this tangent wasn’t just bearable— it was genuinely enthralling.

So, prior to leaving for this trip, when I received the syllabus, I was thrilled to see we were going to the Musée des Égouts de Paris: The Paris Museum of Sewers. When people asked me what I was most excited to see in Paris, I liked telling them “the sewer museum” just to see how they’d react. I found it fun to be excited about something so odd— and I really was thrilled to see the “underbelly of Paris” that Hugo so eloquently described.

There were in Paris at that time two thousand two hundred streets. Imagine, underneath them, that forest of shadowy branches called the sewer.
— Les Miserables; Victor Hugo (1145)

As we descended down the stairs, I first noticed the smell. It was distinctly sulfurous, only increasing in disgusting intensity as we ventured further through the sewers. The sewers were a maze of dark twists and turns, just as Hugo described them. Certain turns were blocked off, and through the bars, you could see dark tunnels oozing with dirt and grime and rats scampering about.

The museum began with an overview of the history of the sewers, providing us with a moving map that showed how the sewers grew over time. It was very rewarding to see Hugo’s information backed up by the museum, and the visual helped greatly.


Looking below me, through the grates I could see a rushing stream of sewer water, bubbling its way along the floor. It was so difficult to look at (and smell), but it was also fascinating.

As we made our way through, this thrilling portion of Les Miserables came to life. I imagined Jean Valjean in these same sewers, tiredly laboring his way through with no end in sight. Marius on his back, with sweat and blood dripping down his face; I saw his boots, heavy with the waters that had infiltrated them, and I saw his clothes soaking wet.

Throughout the section, there’s an emphasis on rebirth as Jean Valjean goes to the lowest of places both literally and figuratively to emerge in the light. Visiting the sewers helped me understand the urgency and perilousness of this section of Les Miserables, as I understood the depth of just how low Jean Valjean had to go in order to emerge as a new man.


A sewer-rat-monster-creature. Beware!

The sewers may have not been the most glamorous thing to see in Paris, but for the purposes of this class, they ended up being one of the most memorable. Walking the same vile pathways that Hugo wrote about in the 19th century was deeply impactful, and experiencing it all first-hand made it all the more fun. Through Bookpacking, as we experience our novels, we’re flexing our empathy skills. There’s a sense of understanding that comes from experiencing exactly what our characters are experiencing— taking in the sights and smells as they do in the novels. I’ve loved using my imagination to see the characters all around me, inhabiting each space as they would have in their time. It makes even spaces as bleak and stinky as the Paris sewers a marvel to experience.

The Little Things

As we waltz around Paris, I like to think about what the Parisans we pass are thinking of us…

“Why are they staring at a random building?”


“Did they just gasp at the name of a street sign?”


“Am I hallucinating or does it look like that map they’re using is from the 16th century?”

“Americans…”


But, what might make a typical Parisian say “sacre bleu!” make us Bookpackers squeal with delight.


For example, part of our excursions have included locating Jean Valjean’s various hideouts throughout Les Miserables. One that particularly struck me was Jean Valjean and Cosette’s home on Rue Plumet. To prep for this excursion, we first mapped the exact location we thought the house would be. Before class, I created a side-by-side of the same location using Apple Maps and the Girard map of 1823.

I was thrilled while finding this location— pinpointing exactly where we believed Jean Valjean’s house would be today, and seeing how the shapes of the streets of Paris haven’t changed much over the years. In this side by side, you can really see a strong example of this, as the trapezoid shape of the streets stays largely the same!

Finding Jean Valjean’s house on the map proved to be an interesting challenge, as certain street names have changed over time. Particularly, the street where the house was located is called Rue Blomet in the book, but today has been changed to Rue Plumet. It’s a pretty simple change, so I guess it wasn’t that challenging… haha.

Still, there’s something really gratifying about this process— seeing visually how little things have changed in so much time.

Arriving at the house, we looked for evidence of our period in each corner. Being one of the places where Jean Valjean hid, it was appropriately remote. Not many people were walking around, there weren’t many interesting shops or restaurants, and the streets were calm. You could feel how this location was a perfect place for Jean Valjean to hide in plain sight. Curiously, we found that the Chinese consulate happened to be right on that same street where Jean Valjean lived, so it seems that this place has always been a secure, semi-remote location and continues to be to this day. As we trace the locations of various events in our novels, it’s so rewarding to see how areas keep their essences over time, and it makes it all the more interesting when we can see ripples of the past in the present.


As we explore Paris, the little things stand out to us bookpackers. The names of streets, shops, and cafes make us gasp as we watch the influence of our novels on Parisian life.

We pass a bar called “Le Gamin”, with an image of a young boy— reminiscent of Gavroche from Les Miserables.




Or a home where Victor Hugo once lived in, three decades before he writes Les Miserables…



And during our excursion in the 5th arrondissement, among the beauty of the area, we find a building ornately painted with scenes of provincial life.


On another excursion, we take a stop by Nicolas Flamel’s home, the oldest house in Paris, and we learn about his quest for the Philosopher’s Stone. Suddenly, as I learn about medieval Paris, I’m also bookpacking Harry Potter! I especially loved looking at the intricate designs on the building. I love medieval art and iconography, so I was enthralled by the home. Looking inside, we saw that what was once a place where Flanel welcomed the homeless for free meals was now a Michelin star restaurant with absurd prices… maybe the middle ages weren’t so bad after all.


I’ve been loving our excursions because they challenge me to look at Paris through a different set of eyes. During our excursions, I’m looking at the Paris of our period— walking through the contemporary streets but living in the Paris of old. When our excursions end and we’re free to explore on our own terms, I’m seeing the same areas through a contemporary lens. I feel this switching of lenses has really given me a holistic view of Paris; both what it was then and what it is today.

Bookpacking is about the little things. It’s about going to a random location in a random place, not because it’s number one on a list of “must-sees” in Paris, but because we’re on a citywide scavenger hunt. Using the books, we look for geographical clues leading us around Paris. The feeling of finding the exact location you were searching for is so rewarding, and even more so when the book we’re referencing is from the 19th century. It feels like we’re on a mission; looking for clues around contemporary Paris that reveal the past. The people around us may be scratching their heads as to why we’re so excited about such small details, but we know exactly what we’re here for.

“Flâneur-ing” Around Paris

Humor me for a moment and let me describe what my typical day this summer back in the Chicago suburbs (where I live) would look like.

It starts at around 9 or 10 AM when I’ve woken up without an alarm by the sheer power of sunlight. I get up on my own time, slowly making my way to the shower, and then get ready for the day ahead. What exactly I’m going to do today, I don’t know, but I know I will be leaving the house. My family, already awake and similarly aimless in their direction for the day, are ready to go, so we leave the house and walk. We’re not sure where we want to go, but we walk around knowing we want to be anywhere but home. On our walk, we pass through Starbucks and grab a coffee. We sit around for a bit, enjoying each other’s company while feeling the breeze of a well-earned Chicago summer. My stomach begins to growl at around 12 PM and I realize the only thing I’ve put in my stomach today is an iced coffee. We get up from our seats and go across the street to the local market, grabbing a semi-fresh baguette to take home. On the walk home, we give into the temptation that the smell of bread exudes, eating a third of the baguette before we’ve reached the front door of our house. After eating our midday brunch concoction, we get in the car to do pretty much the same thing in a new area. I enjoy this sense of aimlessness at home during the summer, as there’s not much that I need to get done, and it’s always a needed dose of quality time spent together.

A photo I took earlier this year of my mom and older brother at Starbucks. Can you tell I’m a little homesick?


A silly Tiktok I made in June exactly describes my wish to live “like a Parisian”.

This week, one of our assigned texts, The Flâneur by Edmund White, caught me by surprise as it seemed to describe my family’s silly pastime back home as a quintessential Parisian ideal. So much so in fact, that as I read it I laughed audibly to myself. I find it so funny that my family and I walk around our American, un-walkable suburb pretending we’re Parisians. I mean, how hilariously pathetic is that image?

I like poking fun at my family for how we make our American lives as “European” as we can and find it especially comical that as much as we try to get fresh bread, or sit in cute coffee shops, at the end of the day we are in America, and the best we’re gonna get is Starbucks and some semi-stale baguettes.


“The flâneur is in search of experience, not knowledge. Most experience ends up interpreted as – and replaced by – knowledge, but for the flâneur the experience remains somehow pure, useless, raw.”
— Edmund White

In the text, White describes a flâneur as a Parisian who walks around with no goal in mind, taking in the sights and smells of Paris as they come.

So, with the spirit of a natural American flâneur, I’m making it a goal to experience Paris in this unique way. After each of our excursions, I’ve been exploring the area we end in as a flâneur. So much so, that my fellow bookpackers and I have dubbed the experience as “flâneur-ing”. It may be sacrilege to the Academie de Francais, but “flâneur-ing” has now become a verb among us bookpackers. For example, I’ll say to someone, “Do you wanna go flâneur-ing around a bit?” and they’ll know exactly what I mean.

After class on Thursday, Ian and I went “flâneur-ing” in the 6th arrondissement for a bit, and it’s been one of my favorite experiences in our travels so far. We simply went wherever our eyes took us, letting our curiosities take the front seat. We walked into some of the most eclectic boutiques I’ve ever seen— everything from trendy cashmere sweaters to jewelry stores to calligraphy shops hiding in every corner.

My fake definition for “flâneur-ing”

A Jewellery shop we found which was featured in the TV show Bridgerton!

We “flâneur-ed” exactly as Edmund White described, so much so that we even forgot to eat during the several hours we were exploring. The text references a “great literary flâneur” named Walter Benjamin. He says that “‘Frequently the flâneur is tired, having forgotten to eat despite the myriad cafes inviting him or her to come in, relax and partake of a drink or a snack: Like an ascetic animal he roams through unknown neighbourhoods until he collapses, totally exhausted, in the foreign, cold room that awaits him.’”

I can assure you that our stomachs were aching as we walked around— yet it didn’t matter to us. The chance of discovery and surprise at every corner was enough to keep us motivated beyond our natural instincts. The city of Paris can sometimes be too exciting to stop at a café!


For those who do sit and stop at cafés, though, it seems that wasting time is a non-issue. I think what has surprised me the most about Paris is just how much it is like everything it’s made out to be. You look at cafés and people are just sitting there—no laptops open, phones out—and I’m not even talking about technology—people aren’t even reading. They’re simply looking out at the street, taking in the world around them while conversing with whoever’s around. There’s an air of leisure here that is rare back home. As an American, it’s quite baffling.

I assume Parisians just know how to balance their work and their free time— giving each aspect of life its own moment to shine. I’d like to take that philosophy back to USC with me. In college, I’ve struggled with partitioning my time so that I can relax and get work done separately. I bring my homework with me everywhere, and it creates an atmosphere that makes work loom over me at all times. When I get back to USC, I’d like to set time away for leisure; a time where I can connect with others and the world around me— without having the stress of homework surrounding me at all times.

And in time, when I can’t remember my time in Paris as clearly, I can always think of my family— “flâneur-ing” around our suburb, living life like Parisians no matter where we are.

In the Streets of London

In the streets of London, I see a group of girls about my age, dressed in some of the most out-there, “Instagram worthy” fashion I’ve ever seen. They pass in front of a church that was built in the Middle Ages, standing proud among the cosmopolitan wonderland below. I hear them chattering, as they plan what club they want to visit on this Thursday night. On this same street, for centuries prior, young people our age have done the same in different forms—whether they were going to a ball in the 19th century or a rock concert in the 1980’s—London nights seem to have always been and always be lively.

In the streets of London, I see an immigrant family walk down steps to the London bridge. They speak in a language that isn’t English, yet it’s obvious through their body language that they’re locals, going on a stroll. Above them is a blue plaque which tells me the steps we’ve passed are the steps where the character Nancy from Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist was murdered. Plaques like these are everywhere in town, marking important historical sights. Some tell you the sites of historical events, while others show you where influential Londoners have lived. In the house where Charles Dickens once lived now lies a branch of the British Medical Association. As time passes who knows what it’ll be next!

In the streets of London, art lives in every corner. On my free nights, I take the tube around town to see last-minute shows for cheap. I see my favorite musical, Wicked for the first time and bawl my eyes out; taking in the surreal experience of giving myself a gift I’ve wanted since I was a kid. As I watch the show, its storyline about the corrupt, bourgeoise government of Oz reminds me of Victor Hugo’s descriptions of France in Les Misérables, and through my experience, so far in seminar, I discover new things about the show I’ve loved for so long. The next day, I visit Camden Town for a concert. I explore the town and geek out over its historical significance to London’s music scene, as I see the streets where one of my favorite artists, Amy Winehouse once lived. At night I go see another artist I love, Yola, perform. I hear her voice soar over the disco-soul and country sounds of her music. Between songs, she tells jokes that involve British politicians I know nothing about, and I feel like a foreigner in a sea of British culture—I love every minute. The day after, I see the musical version of Les Misérables, feeling like an expert on the plot of the show after having read the behemoth of a novel. 

In the streets of London, a stone’s through away from our hotel and across from a Korean restaurant is the British Museum—a treasure trove of artifacts from across the world. As I walk through the various rooms of the museum, I see art from ancient Greece next to statues from the Assyrian Empire and get excited when I see Japanese Noh theatre masks, which I learned about in a class at USC. As I look around this museum where admission is free, I see people from all walks of life—lots of tourists and some school groups, but everyone united to revere history. History is alive in this museum, and it lives on through everyone who comes to visit. It certainly lived in me as I saw the content covered over the years of history classes I’ve taken come to life before me.

Image Courtesy of Dennis Severs

In the streets of London, a man wearing a rainbow flag pride pin welcomes me to an artist’s recreation of an 18th-century home, and as I take in the sights and smells that lie within, I see an 80’s home computer tucked in the corner just behind an authentic 18th-century tea set. As I look through the “Dickens Room”, I see in my mind’s eye the characters of our novel A Tale of Two Cities, running through the author’s mind. As I walk the house; I hear the sounds of a fictional family fill the halls, and I imagine what Charles Dickens’ childhood must have sounded like, looked like, and felt like. Suddenly, the people who inhabit A Tale of Two Cities become living breathing humans, as their lives took physical form right in front of me.


Here, it seems the past and the future coexist in a symbiotic way. Somehow, Londoners seem to have not just made peace with their past but celebrate it while still welcoming the future. London is high rises among buildings that date as far back as the 11th century, and Londoners seem to have embraced that peculiar image. As this city changes in various ways, its history stays in the forefront.

As we use A Tale of Two Cities as a travel guide of London, I’m seeing how integral literature is to the fabric of this city. Great English literature informs so much that I’ve seen, from the little Paddington bears in tourist shops to the “poet’s corner” in Westminster Abbey, London loves to honor its cherished literature in tandem with its rich history, and it shows in every corner. As we walked into various streets, we see the name Manette above us, the name of one of the characters in the novel. From something as little as a street sign, we understand that London seeks to honor and celebrate its history and influential figures.

I end my stay in London visiting a childhood friend who moved here when we were ten years old. The last time I visited her, we were kids and I barely remember it, but I do have the photos! I see her home, her neighborhood, and meet some of her friends—getting the local Londoner experience through her eyes. I feel so grateful to have had the opportunity to see her again since the pandemic stopped us from visiting each other. I get a taste of her life for a day and cherish every moment.