Paris: dreams, broken on reality Bashny.Net

Imagine...

Saturday morning in Paris. Until spring on the calendar is still far away, but she was already in the air – the smell of wet asphalt after a night of rain, too warm for February wind and in, as if through a thick veil of clouds the sun shines through. The apartment on the ninth floor, the smell of strong coffee on the table – a basket with fresh croissants from the bakery around the corner. I now eat Breakfast and go to market for groceries.



On the way be sure to stop in to your favorite flower store and grab an armful of yellow tulips. While the cake shop next to buy a lemon tart with a fluffy meringue. Back at the house to grill the chicken and prepare the salad. For lunch – a light white wine.

A third half I need to be at metro Iéna – my friend and I go to the exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo. After that the herbal tea on the heated terrace, close to avenue George V. Today is a clear day, no rain, so you can stroll along the Seine. We get to the Louvre, for about seven hours – the time of the aperitif before dinner and we, of course, go to your favorite le Fumoir. Here, as always, a lot of people, we spend at a table by the window. I order my favorite Bellini, and later, paella. At nine-thirty I left home. Tomorrow is Sunday. My boyfriend planned a lunch at the Café de Flore and going to the movies.

Looks like someone else's life in Paris for those who are not too deep into the issue. With the advent of instagram, the gap between real and virtual was tremendous. And it's not so much those who selectively publishes the most vivid pictures of his life, how many viewers who think out something in those images there.



I'm addressing this post to the girl without age and nationality, who dreams of one day moving to Paris to eat croissants, go out to dinner in beautiful restaurants, wear delicate ballet flats and a cashmere pullover to drink wine on the terraces to go on a murderous shopping during the sales, enjoy the incredible architecture, visit these superb museums, buying fresh, obscenely beautiful products on the market and most importantly – to be happy in the city of love and romance.

I know the feeling when you really want to get away from the city, to leave the country – where "people are happy!", "people live!", "people smile!" And I also know very well that it is often an escape from yourself. Alas, in new places we bring our former selves. Because we do not live in cities, and within, in the first place. It's like a relationship – we often make the same mistakes and leave people puzzling over why, why the story is repeated. Just the thing ourselves and not those around us. And I know from experience that packing is much easier than to get my shit together.

It is a great illusion – that the real, happy life, she's out there somewhere, where you're not. Somewhere in Europe/States/Australia.

It is a great illusion – that people in another country is also other, more joyful. We all live under the same sky, and people everywhere are generally the same. Politeness and rudeness in Paris look exactly the same as in any other part of the world. Poverty and wealth, unemployment, bureaucracy, too.

If you put aside the pretty pictures, if to moderate the zeal and enthusiasm, if you stop to think categories "beautiful, like in the movies!", remains the reality of taxes and obligations, rent and Parking fees, utility bills and the average bill for purchases in the supermarket. But it is convenient not to think, when you look at the details of someone's careless photo from Paris and sigh, what's outside your window – gray building-high-rise, the slush of melting snow, and tomorrow morning again to push the bus on the way to work.

It would seem that such an obvious thing, but apparently not. It turns out that you seriously pronounce it in conversations with friends who think that moving to another country is in itself already a guarantee of well-being. Thus between the lines quite often you can read someone's reproach: you still dare to complain about anything while living in Paris? Complaining at home – indefinitely. To complain in Paris – God forbid.



"There is always something to do! There is always somewhere to go, something to see!" enthused my friend from Kiev, who came to Paris for a week on vacation. I nod at her, smiling sadly, because it's my own words of three years ago, when I moved here. And I understand that it is impossible to convince someone or to make him believe that daily life in this extraordinary city is quite normal. And the holidays, special moments and beautiful walks we make for ourselves, wherever we are. But understand this, if only to be in the shoes of immigrant.

I recall in memory all the apartments in which she lived, all the work that I had, and all wages that I have received, and with full confidence I can say that in each of these periods I was very happy. Just value of certain moments, comes to us with time. And it is very important to learn (to learn) to be happy within yourself, not because of the place of residence to another person or something material.

It is advisable to come to this sooner than when the ideal picture of Paris from a movie or someone else's instagram crash into stolen in Montmartre phone, bad service in the restaurant, the endless gray rain in the winter, space the prices for railway tickets, infernal bureaucracy, which sometimes you want to howl, and other things that you can not make a filter of instagram. Because it is the most common, real life, and with all this to face and fight people from different cities and countries.



And finally, about the beautiful moments that we make for ourselves.

On Saturday morning I go to the market for groceries – almost all purchases I make in the prosaic shopping during the week. There, too, all tasty and fresh. But I do consistently buy flowers in the same shop on rue Cler. Just as once bought flowers for grandmothers near the Kiev metro.

My boyfriend and rarely going out to dinner, and for me it's definitely not a must "life in Paris". Although, of course, have favorite places where we go for special occasion or when you want to celebrate the "absolute nothing". Exactly the same as it was in Ukraine.

I finish every working day with a glass of wine on the cosy terrace with wicker chairs, but do it on the weekends. And necessarily bother to the table was the most comfortable. Doing so in any city. Because I'm making a point of harmony.

And we sometimes take glasses, a bottle of wine and late in the evening we go to the Pont Mirabeau, to see in the dark twinkle Tower.



I don't know where in Paris makes the most delicious cappuccino, and don't go to a certain coffee shop halfway across town because I have low standards – I just need a good espresso, but not too difficult.

But sometimes I buy café au lait in a cardboard Cup and go to the Isle of Swans in sweat pants and an old sweater, just to see how people walk their dogs, eating sandwiches sitting on the benches and quietly standing at the railing, looking at the Seine. As well as once walked on the Boulevard Shevchenko from the metro to everything with headphones and a glass of cold latte from McDonald's.

I don't go to all the exhibitions that take place in Paris, and yet was only 5% of museums that are there. But I know how shiny the cobblestones in the courtyard of the Louvre after the rain, the glow of the night the clock face on the Orsay Museum when I later returned home on foot, and as the watery eyes from the wind, when I look at Paris from the top floor of the art centre Pompidou. Just as watering, if on a winter's day to stand on the Vladimir hill and watch on the left Bank of Kiev.

And, by the way, I've never been to Café de Flore. And don't eat croissants for Breakfast — for me they are too fat. But the coffee cake on Sundays is a tradition. We, again, came up with with my boyfriend for yourself. published

 

Author: Olga Citrus

 

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Source: paris.zagranitsa.com/blog/2523/parizh-mechty-razbitye-ob-realnost