I Can Still Recall Our Last Summer

I will try to connect two things that don’t make much sense together: ABBA and Les Miserables.

“I Can Still Recall Our Last Summer” is one of my favorite of ABBA’s (many) bangers. “The summer air was soft and warm, the feeling bright, the Paris night.” Like a summer night, sound is nostalgic sticky sweet, and a little clubby and dreamy. In the song, the speaker reminisces on “our last summer”, the last one she spent long ago with “Harry” either before they parted ways or married, it’s left ambiguous, but he remaines “and now you’re working in a bank, a family man, a football fan… how dull it seems, yet you’re the hero of my dreams.” Either way, it’s what seems like the last summer of youth.

In one of my more melodramatic tendencies, I’ve been listening to this song on repeat, taking breaks from Bookpacking to “songpacking” as I take “walks along the Seine” or enjoy “Paris restaurants, morning croissants, in the tourist jam round the Notre Dame.” Yes, it’s a profoundly touristy song.

It’s also a song about nostalgia for being young, and about Paris. Specifically, what people project onto Paris. It’s about idealism and associating this city with youth and optimism. One of the reasons why I like this song, aside from its silly Eurovision flair and association with Mamma Mia, is that I feel like in some ways this trip is the end of my last summer.

At least of my youth. I’ll still be young next summer, and for quite a few summers after that. But I’m a senior in college with no plans for continuing my education. This is my last summer before I’m a “real adult.” My last summer break in between school terms. This is the last time I’ll be on a school trip. This is the last summer I’ll be able to call myself a student. So, this trip in Europe, aside from Bookpacking, to me feels like a farewell to being a student and organizing my life as in between jobs and big responsibilities.

The young foreigner “finding themselves” in Paris is an excruciatingly cliched plot premise. But I think even for the French, Paris, like any big city, is a place to seek out for adventure. When discussing Parisian youth and idealism, it’s impossible not to bring up the ABC’s. The ABC’s are a student group in Les Miserables, a ragtag bunch of university kids hanging around the Cafe Musain in the Latin Quarter, drinking to the Revolution.

For them, it really is their last summer, as every one of them are (spoiler alert) massacred at the barricades in the July 1832 revolution. I wondered, as I listened to the song, what they would have thought of it. And who in the group would like ABBA and who wouldn’t. Perhaps not the song itself, but the idea of Paris representing youth.

Near La Sorbonne in the Latin Quarter, around where the ABC’s would have hung out.

In my gamin piece, I mentioned that Victor Hugo chooses to personify the city of Paris as a young person. I said it’s young because everything seems in front of Paris, it feels endless, boundless, and like things are just getting started. But in the case of the ABC’s, and this silly song, I’d also like to add that something about Paris feels dreamy, idealistic.

Radical movements are fueled by idealism, and often led by young people. In class, we studied student protests in 1968 that caused the famed barricades to go right back up. We also learned about Paris being a “theatre” for displays of protest and movements across history.

I think what makes Paris the center for radical and idealism is the same thing that makes it a center for dreamy foreigners to skip around and have fun. It’s that sense that anything is possible, that there are plenty of corners to hide in, and plenty of open cafes to sit in community with others and discuss the state of the world.

Even old people here act “young,” dancing in the street, walking their dogs late at night, dressing in the latest fashion. Maybe the sense of youth is just some sense of Parisian spirit and savoring of life. I felt a lot of connection with the ABC’s. I’m not one to throw myself at the barricades. But both the ABC’s and our class are, essentially, young people trying to find our way in the same city.

As our class wandered around the place where the Cafe Musain might have been, I wondered what they all thought Paris represented, and whether, like many young people, it was a place to find purpose.

Thoughts on smiles

    For all their joie du vie, Parisians really don’t smile much. At least that’s what I was warned of, that fabled Parisian mean-spiritedness and cold judgment from nearly everyone I told about my Bookpacking trip. Regardless of whether they had been to Paris or not. “Avoid eye contact with anyone on the street. And whatever you do, don’t smile at strangers.” someone told me.

So, the first time I went to the grocery store checkout line I was prepared for the worst. I said my “bonjour” to the cashier. She did too, but she didn’t tone her voice up, or smile, or even raise her eyelids like I’ve been conditioned to do and to expect. She asked if I wanted a bag but I didn’t understand. I figured that this was the moment. I summoned all the spite I had and brainstormed the best ways to retort her inevitable French meanness.  

She repeated everything very slowly, and then understanding my blank stare switched to English. A man with his young daughter at the register across from me turned and asked, in broken English, if I needed any help with anything. Both of them with serene, hard-to-read faces but a nonchalant, genuine patience. I checked out my groceries and left. 

It’s true, Parisians didn’t smile on the metro, they didn’t smile on the street, they didn’t smile at me. It didn’t bother me as much as I think it bothers other Americans. But I thought it was true that they seemed cold and indifferent to one another. And even though I’m not the most talkative person myself, I missed the constant background chatter of London and the U.S. But I found myself greatly appreciating this version of politeness and social culture.

The past few weeks I’ve been smiled at less and also looked after the most than I ever have been by a city. People have gone out of their way to help me and each other more than I’ve personally experienced in any other city. I was a euro short at the grocery store and an old man who overheard silently reached over the register and bought my groceries for me. The lady who ran the boulangerie across the street from my apartment was never not frowning and spoke in a brash tone, but within days memorized my order. 

Everywhere I go, I see Parisians helping each other out. Like giving a supporting arm to people on the bus stumbling when the bus lurches forward. Not with loud English politeness or American enthusiasm. Instead, with a gentle sense of duty. And without expecting zealous displays of gratitude in exchange. 

Any Parisian reading this would be like… duh. Don’t get me wrong, I I was expecting the stereotype to be incorrect as stereotypes tend to be. What surprised me is how incorrect. It’s interesting to be in a place with different ideas of politeness, and I think that is why there is so much cross-cultural misunderstanding. I’m sure that to Parisians, American social norms are brash and superficial. The culture shock definitely made me reevaluate my West coast American culture from what I’d imagine to be a French perspective. It also makes me think about kindness. 

I’ve been thinking of the concept of what it means to be kind throughout reading and discussing Les Miserables because it is a question that seems to fascinate Hugo. What does it mean to be kind? And, what kindness do we owe to each other? One of my (unexpectedly) favorite sections in Les Miserables is the one that opens the novel, a lengthy life story of a Catholic bishop named Myriel. Myriel rejects the corruption of the Catholic Church that would work in his favor towards gaining comfort and wealth. Instead, he devotes every aspect of his life to service and acts of kindness towards others. Hugo criticizes the flashiness of other Bishops, how they use the guise of religion to further their own interests. It’s a conflict between superficial shows of virtue and Myriel’s genuine shows of virtue. But Myriel’s is far quieter. 

Parisians are quiet but they also seem genuine. I like how in the U.S. people talk loudly and smile at each other. But does a baseline performance of kindness make it hard to tell which is real and which is fake? I think so. Parisians don’t seem to appreciate a big American smile. They do appreciate that you say “Bonjour” and “Bon journée.” This practice of greeting store workers and them greeting you is a lovely acknowledgement that the worker and customer are both individuals worthy of an individual hello and goodbye. This simple action of recognizing humanity is far more important than a smile. Forget this step, and you might not be served. Even if you have a big warm grin. 

Not to imply that Parisians all act this way or are the epitome of virtue. They are certainly not. It would be dehumanizing to say they were. And this is surely a starry-eyed American way to see things. It’s not that Parisians are perfect figures of moral purity. Or that no one has seemed superficial or rude. It’s that the specific way that kindness is expressed through silent action without smiles, and little things like the greeting norm, is a reminder to me that kindness does not have to be a performance. In fact, it shouldn’t be at all. Perhaps kindness should be humble, and quiet, because it’s not something to show off, it’s simply what we owe each other.

Well-worn paths

On Thursday, our class went to the Marais to walk along the same path that Jean Valjean habitually takes in Les Miserables. In his old age his beloved daughter Cosette now lives with her newly wedded husband Marius in her father-in-law’s house. Jean is in exile: forbidden by himself and her husband to see her because of his status as an ex-convict. He takes a solitary walk through his neighborhood every day towards her house and stops each time he gets too close.

Jean Valjean would have passed through here on his walk.

“There he would walk slowly, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, his head straining forward, his eyes fixed undeviatingly on a point, always the same, that semed for him starry and was none other than the corner of Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire.” It’s a devastating passage to read. 

It’s also a highly specific one. Hugo left very direct instructions for how to follow the route. “From Rue de l’Homme-Armé, on the Rue Ste-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie side, walked past Blancs-Manteaux up to Rue Culture-Ste-Catherine, as at Rue de l’Echarpe turned left into Rue St. Louis.” Without being familiar with Paris it’s a dizzying puzzle to put together. It was a laundry list of words and a vague image of my idea of generic Parisian streets. 

But to actually be there made the dull list of words come alive. I’ve never felt so connected to the specific experience of a character. It’s not just that you’re seeing the streets. It’s different from watching a movie and seeing what the character is seeing, or reading an illustrated book, or even being familiar with the area that a character is written in. 

You’re immersed in the character’s experience with all your senses. As I walked over the cobblestone by Rue Pavee I would think for a second that Jean Valjean once stepped on the same stones. And then remember that he never existed. 

I would notice something interesting, like a stone accent on an old building, and wonder what caught his eye on the street. I smelled cigarette smoke and wondered if he did too. I zipped up my jacket and wondered if it was chilly or if he got some calm sun. We passed by an old stone church that he would have certainly seen. I wondered what he thought of the rough cream stone, or if there were people coming out from mass that he knew, or if he was so absentminded that he looked right through it. 

Place de Vosges. And a pretty neat Apple advertisement.

Aside from feeling connected to the novel, the same-ness of everything made me feel connected to the past. Jean Valjean may not have been a real person, but Victor Hugo was. After our walk, we visited Hugo’s former home in the Place de Vosges. It’s one of the quaint uniformly red-bricked townhomes surrounding a trimmed grass courtyard and walking path.

There was a lot to see in the museum from artistic interpretations of Hugo’s stories, to information on Hugo’s life and personality, such as his affinity for extravagant and colorful home decor. Next, we visited the Musée de Carnavalet, a museum about Paris. There was a painting I stopped at for a long time. It wasn’t a particularly interesting painting. I didn’t think it was all that beautiful. 

It was just the Place de Vosges square. Place de Vosges almost exactly as I saw it. But, it was painted sometime in the 1800’s. And yet, it was all the same: the fountain in the center of the square, the houses, the green wrought iron gates. There weren’t bistros, or stores, or tourists, or cars, the garden had been fixed up with benches and trees since. But the baseline of the view, little details aside, was mostly unchanged.

Places de Vosges, sometime before 1900.

That’s exactly what was so fascinating about it to me. That Victor Hugo and I, around 200 years later, saw the same thing. That people in the past, Victor Hugo or otherwise, saw the same view that I did feels really special. The past and the present feel much closer. The people of the past feel less like an idea and more like they’re part of my story.

I’m from San Francisco, which famously crumbled and then then burnt to the ground in an earthquake-fire combo in 1906. I’ve seen old maps of my city, and the layout has changed who knows how many times. Buildings are constantly being torn down and built up. The oldness of the city streets and buildings in Paris is still hard for me to fully comprehend.  

This “bookpacking” experience at this level of specificity would simply not have been possible. Now the Marais is filled with modern chain stores, and tourists, and neon lights, of course. But the facades of the buildings and old structures like churches seem unchanged. And most importantly, the layout of the streets is near identical. 

Marais side street. Seems straight out of 1830.

Valjean’s path was, for the most part, the same as how someone from that time would have seen it. As I say “someone from that time,” it’s hard not to include Jean Valjean. Walking along his path made him feel so real because the place is so specific, and the place is real. Every corner is accounted for. There’s not an once of fantasy in the passage. So it’s hard to confront that he is one. But in a sense he is real, because his perspective that I was so immersed in on the walk is representative of Hugo’s, and of many others who walked on the same street in the 1830’s and on.  

It feels like a gift from Hugo to leave all these clues. Their specificity makes me wonder if he hoped people would try this out. Likely not bookpacking in the way our class is doing but taking that walk. Or maybe it was something like an inside joke, a detail made for him and Parisians who would already have an image of those streets in their minds. The area in the Marais was blocks from Place de Vosges. He’s walked all these streets countless times. Why did he choose these specific streets for this scene? It’s a question we’ll never know the answer to, but it was fun to imagine the answer as I followed Jean’s footsteps.

Paris is a Gamin

One of my favorite chapters in Les Miserables is one describing the concept of the Parisian gamin: a term coined by Hugo for what’s essentially a street urchin, a la Oliver Twist. It’s to introduce one of my favorite characters, a gamin named Gavroche. I loved his incessant energy, his childlike self-importance, and his kindness hidden behind playful snark. Although he is small, Hugo sees the gamine as important enough to devote a wonderful chapter to describing the term. Why? Because, “The gamin embodies Paris and Paris embodies the world.”

Hidden places.

So to understand the city, and I suppose the world, I wanted to understand Paris through the perspective of a gamin. And as a gamin, a personification. Before I go on, I have to note that when I speak of gamins and Gavroche I speak of the fictional idea of the gamin and not the very real experience of actual homelessness in Paris. One is a concept and archetype of fiction and the other is a very different experience that is not representative of whimsy, or wonder, or any characteristic of the gamin that I will attempt to describe. 

Anyway, Gavroche is a child of the streets, “If you were to ask that huge city, ‘what is that?’ it would reply, ‘That’s my little one.’”.  Gavroche is something like a prince, he commands the crevices, and corners, and side streets. He lives in the limerance of the public street instead of inside: everywhere and nowhere at once.  

The latter is a feeling I often experience when traveling. Wandering into every store and bistro trying to get as much of a Parisian experience as possible despite my achieving feet. The novelty of every detail is exciting but also a reminder that I’m a tourist, I don’t quite belong. 

That sense only intensified when I was stuck in Saint-Germain during a vicious downpour without an umbrella. I was forty-five minutes away from my apartment and too far from the nearest metro station to avoid getting soaked. I spent about an hour hurring into any dry alcove, pretending I belonged in bistros I wasn’t a customer in, slipping into any open shop I could find until I was kicked out. Watching the street crouched on the ground and from behind secret entrances to dry alcoves made me wonder if this is how Gavroche experienced Paris. Darting from the public street to secret places only known to him safely out of sight. 

Watching the street from a dry spot.

But the gamin does not limit himself to the side streets. “Try to think of something that Paris does not have.” Hugo dares. It’s not unearned confidence. There’s an overwhelming sense of possibility here because there’s so much squeezed in one city block. Like Paris, the gamin feels boundless. Gavroche does not feel like he isn’t worthy of anywhere. Nothing is off-limits. Not even the giant plaster elephant monument Napoleon once placed at the Bastille (yes, it was real, look it up), without any reverence or fielty, he uses it’s interior as his secret hideout. This has a political undertone to it. “He sometimes has a home… but he prefers the street because there he finds freedom.” In studying the French Revolution it seems that French history often has patterns of trading discomfort for the pursuit of freedom and the mistrust of boundaries. 

The gamin’s sense of limitless is also reflected in the experience of the city streets. The winding quality of the streets, the way you can walk through a nondescript door into a massive courtyard or unexpected art museum that’s invisible from the street, the way I walked around the Marais for two hours and realized I only saw a tiny slice of it. 

Another sense of expanse in this city is the possibility of contradiction and contrast. Gavroche is uncivil and rough, he has a “hatred of the respectable citizen” and “fishes in the gutter” but he is also a respectable citizen when he spends a few sous to go to the theater. In the popular American imagination, Paris is a flawless postcard of uniform cream colored avenues and adorable terraces. It meets that expectation but as this is an actual city there are trashbags, and litter, and scaffolding leaned up against luxury boutiques and quaint apartment windows overflowing with postcard-perfect bougainvilleas.

It has a history of both great sophistication and ruthlessness: in school I was taught of much of French history as both a role model and a cautionary tale. It’s strange to stand around the Place de la Concorde near quaint bistros and a museum housing Monet and other quintessential markers of sophistication while thinking about how rivers of blood ran through the cobblestone. 

On that note of the theater, the gamin appreciates the finer things. Hugo said “Give a person the unnecessary and deprive him of the essential, what you have is the gamin.” In the downpour many Parisians were not worried about seeking shelter. Most preferred to get cold and soaked if it meant savoring their outdoor table at a bistro with their friends. I think in many other places they would grumble and get in their cars with the heat cranked to max or demand an inside seat. The street might be cleared within an hour. And there’s a sense of indulgence in nicheness and beauty for the sake of beauty.

Walking around Saint-Germain, I passed by countless art galleries and shops selling just one item: handmade pottery, door handles, combs, handmade custom wallpaper. All with limited hours and a nice clientele. Some were luxury but others weren’t at all. Things that probably aren’t as profitable as a supermarket or a Home Goods, but that indulge small moments of beauty and excitement.  

We can attempt to define the gamin but the gamin is so vast and contradictory that perhaps, like Paris, it is undefinable. But I think Hugo’s characterization of it it as a child with endless possibility and spirit because everything is unknown and in front of them might be a good place to start.

The Infrastructure of Eavesdropping

Tucked behind the crisscross of commuters entering and exiting Russell Square Station there’s an old cobblestone alleyway I became very familiar with during my week in London. If I had a little time, and nothing to do with it, I’d wander over and sit on a bench by a row of sunflower stalks to get some peace from the crowds of car horns and tourists. The alley, like many London streets, is so narrow enough to see and hear dozens of people within a ten foot radius.

I love to people-watch. While reading A Tale of Two Cities I could imagine that Charles Dickens shared my invasive hobby. Once in a while, Dickens takes a moment to indulge in representing seemingly unimportant interactions of passerby on the streets and public spaces of London and Paris. There’s the rowdy spectacle and rumor of a crowd during a funeral procession, pseudonymous revolutionaries in a wine shop, a bureaucratic interaction with a clerk, to name a few examples.   

Places like these make me think that those bits of chatter is just as much an accurate representation of London public spaces as it is a stylistic choice. There are voices everywhere. But aside from snippets of dialogue Dickens’ narrative decision to wildly change perspective across social standing and values from chapter to chapter from a French Marquis, to a shady body snatcher, to a mild mannered corporate drone feels similar to this street where so many different people are unintentionally in association with each other. In the book it’s through sharing narrative space. Here it’s literal space.

This effect seems to be created by London'‘s infrastructure. Our group visited the old streets in the original City of London where Dickens would have walked and many of those seemed like only a few people could stand in them side-by side. You could imagine that Dickens would’ve had to squeeze past many conversations to get to the pub for a drink. It appears that through the years they didn’t get much wider. Streets like this are too narrow for more than one car to pass through so they often don’t bother. Instead there are people. Every corner appears to overlap and bend in towards each other. Voices bounce every direction off the close brick walls. 

A each other’s doorsteps, there were three businesses in this alley:

1. A standard English pub. Plastic wisteria falls over the windows. The middle aged American tourists and weary corporate workers who couldn’t get a seat drink in groups outside.

2. A no-frills artisan bakery with a line down the block of hipsters showing off, giddy teenagers talking smack about their classmates, and pastry enthusiasts such as myself.

3. A windowless experimental art gallery/possibly nightclub behind a freshly painted, heavily locked warehouse door (“INVITATION ONLY”). 

If this was in Los Angeles, these places would be separated by at least a few lanes of traffic, some sidewalks, and a fair amount of space between walls. The finance worker and the alternative gallery curator would never have to know the other existed. But here the businesses and clients in them all spill out over each other. There’s no other choice. 

A couple on first date couldn’t find a bench of their own so sat on mine. Over a cream puff, the scruffy-looking man recalled his experience growing up in state schools and recalled the anxiety of not feeling assimilated into the elite circles at his university.

“Wait, you went to state school too, right?” he said. “‘Cause it would be awkward if I just complained about all those people from those fancy schools and you ended up being one of them.” 

If you turned behind the bench,  a small construction crew installed a brand new door into someone’s flat. One of them told a joke, at least that’s what it seemed like, in Hungarian which inspired another to go off on an enthusiastic tangent I couldn’t understand. 

A group of young blue-collar workers in extremely expensive dry cleaned suits, holding beers compared notes on work and the economy “You never know what’s gonna happen these days.” one mused.

A neat man with his fingers dripping in silver rings glances over his shoulder as he turns the key to the gallery before he slinks in. He’s careful to only let the door open a crack in order to maintain the advertised secrecy.

These little streets appear remarkably Democratic, everyone regardless of class or identity or personality has no choice but to share a space. Each of these people were in the alleyway for mismatched reasons at mismatched establishments. They were from different economic backgrounds, used different slang, loved and judged the opposite things. And yet, I did not have to move an inch to observe all of this at once. 

It seems inevitable that one would overhear personal intimate conversations of people who they will never actually speak to, who they maybe dislike or disagree with, or don’t care about. It’s a remarkable thing that London’s antiquated infrastructure forced them all to stand within steps of each other. I don’t know what effect this has on London culture. It certainly doesn't stop division and resentment here. But perhaps it helps a little.

What I do know from experience is that hearing daily conversation is great insight to how someone experiences life. Even a mundane conversation about a pastry or a lunch break says a lot about what people are afraid of, or excited about, or what they value. And hearing others’ voices, especially unfamiliar ones, is a powerful reminder of people’s humanity. I think that’s why Dickens includes so many people in the narrative with such care so that the reader can “eavesdrop” on so many important lives. 

To sit on a bench in a narrow London street is a lesson in the multiplicity of a city and a culture. The seemingly singular identity “Londoner” means endless things. I think this is why Dickens takes care to include a wide range of perspectives and seemingly trivial voices from his novel to represent a city. I could imagine that any of his characters might be sitting right by me all at once before they go home to opposite sides of town.