Most humorous of all was our departure. In fact, they called over to the airfield and held a plane, then piled us and all our luggage and all our guards into a large, black limousine and drove us out onto the airfield right up to the plane. The boarding ramp had already been removed and had to be brought back for us; I could see faces gawking out the plane’s windows; planes wait for no one; we were hurried up the stairs accompanied by our guards and escorted to our seats in the crowded plane. The last words from the chief guard to the stewardess were: “Here is their passport, don’t give it to them until you are off the ground!” (This was so we didn’t bolt and jump off the plane in a daring last second escape, I suppose?) It made us seem really desperate and dangerous; heads turned, everyone had to get a look at us, but no one said anything. International spies, jewel thieves at least! And I thought it only happened in movies.
This short flight was fraught with anxieties; would we get into France? There was a large black X on our passport and a message: “refused entrance to U.K.” After landing, we got in line with all the other tourists; there were lots; French Customs was just waving people through as they held up their passports. We walked by but just didn’t believe it for a while, didn’t believe we had actually gotten through customs and were in France. Then we were jubilant, elated . . . but, what next? Somehow we had to figure out what to do now.
Christmas in Paris!
Our trip began with an amazing demonstration of objective chance. We started for London but here we were in Paris. Little did we realize how fortunate this was. The Surrealist Group had several special events going on.
When we arrived in France at Le Bourget Airport on December 22, we had no plans, no place to stay, and no one had been informed of our arrival; suddenly we were just there, disoriented but ecstatic! All our careful plans demolished. Our relatives back in the U.S. didn’t have a clue as to where we were. At last report, the day before, I had called my mother and told her we were being held in detention in London; the relatives wouldn’t know where we were for days.
As soon as we could find a phone at Le Bourget, we tried to call Robert Benayoun, the member of the Surrealist Group with whom we’d been corresponding. We looked up his number in the Paris phone directory and dialed anxiously; a woman answered, she didn’t speak English. Then she informed us that M. Benayoun was very ill. Too ill, in fact, to come to the phone. What to do? I explained we were friends of his from Chicago. She was astonished; she didn’t know that M. Benayoun had any friends in Chicago. When Franklin said, “Is this the home of Robert Benayoun, Surréaliste?” She hung up.
We just couldn’t stand airports or their atmosphere for one more minute. We moved our luggage to a locker and, equipped with Europe on $5.00 A Day, caught a bus for Paris.
Outside the window a curious world passed by, new and modern buildings were rising next door to tiny one-room cottages hardly large enough for a bed and chair, and barely high enough to stand up in, but surrounded by neatly kept tiny gardens.
We arrived at Les Invalides air terminal somewhere in central Paris. We didn’t have a map yet, so we had no idea where we were, but left and wandered instinctively down toward the Seine and across a bridge, just soaking in wonderful new sensations on all sides. Not believing it, everything seemed so different, we just wandered and looked at the people, the buildings, the traffic. Finally, we woke up to the fact that we had to find a place to stay and much of the day had already passed. I’m not sure if Hôtel des Acacias was in Europe on $5.00 A Day, but I think it was. It was already towards evening then, the day after the shortest day of the year, and around 4:00 p.m. when we wandered there. It was snowing lightly and beautifully against the dark Paris stones. The rue des Acacias bent gracefully. We went into the hotel and I practiced my phrase-book French, “Avez-vous un chambre pour deux? Combien?”
The room was about $5.00 and that seemed exceedingly expensive to us, but we were just exhausted; I was too exhausted to walk another step, so we agreed on it. It was quite a lovely hotel and room; I remember going to the casement window, opening it wide and looking out over the chimneys and rooftops with Paris all lit up and glowing and beautiful snow falling, somehow not really still believing it: we were actually in Paris. The view out the window was so beautiful, I would have been satisfied if we had done nothing else for our trip.
For a moment we thought about going out for food, but we were exhausted and just lay down, fell asleep, and didn’t awaken until late the next morning.
Amazingly, when we awoke, we discovered we were still in Paris; it hadn’t been a dream, so here we were, two kids in our early twenties having grown up with the corn of the vast Midwest. Franklin had at least been to Mexico; I had never really been anywhere outside the country except to Canada for a day. But suddenly the boring sameness of everyday life had vanished; everything seemed different, unexpected, sensuous, new, its routine peeled away. Just being there standing on the street was an adventure.
Well, according to our infallible guide, Europe on $5.00 A Day, we could find a cheaper hotel on the Left Bank so we headed for St. Germain des Pres near the Sorbonne, and thus a student center in Paris. We walked down the steps into the Metro, after first admiring and running our hands over the beautiful turn-of-the-century art nouveau entrances designed by Hector Guimard, purchased two second-class tickets, and consulted the Metro machine for finding our route. You pressed a button indicating where you wanted to go, and the entire route with transfer points lit up on a glass map of the whole system in red, yellow, or green lights. The Metro had a substantial tunnel system for getting passengers to their trains, and iron gates near the boarding platform closed automatically as the train pulled out of the station to keep frantic riders from mobbing the train and not letting it leave the station. Metro riders were usually frantic.
The first hotel we checked out on the Left Bank was awful, a closet with a bed in it that slanted severely downhill. But, then, at 52 rue Dauphine we found Le Hôtel du Grand Balcon. This time, more cautious, we asked to see the room, it was a beautiful light room with French windows that looking down on rue Dauphine from the fourth floor, by U.S. ideas of floors, at $2.22 per day.
In our room was a sink and bidet, down the hall was the toilet, the halls and stairs were lit by a lumière (a timed light), which we never timed correctly; consequently we were always running down the stairs in the dark. There was not a lot of heat, so we spent much of our time in bed, reading with all of our clothes on, including extra sweaters. We had to wear all of our clothes outside, also, so instead of presenting a fashionable lean Parisian appearance, we looked more like Russian bears.
People asked us if we were from Marseilles, a more working class, tougher place than Paris. When they found we spoke English, they asked if we were from Canada; we thought about this, why Canada, and decided they were hoping against hope they hadn’t run into more awful American tourists. We replied we were from Chicago; that was all right. They would laugh and do a machine gun imitation, “Rat-tat-tat! Capone!” Being from Chicago made us okay; it made us human. Often people would ask, “Why are you in Vietnam?” and, of course, we would explain we opposed the war. The walls in Paris had “U.S. out of Vietnam” graffiti all over the place.
Our room was a long walk up; only one other floor above us; all the rooms on this top floor were already rented by students. That first day, we parked our bags in our room, paid up, and rushed back outside, hungry to experience Paris, by this time, actually very hungry for food. The last time we had eaten was when BOAC had fed us on the plane crossing the Atlantic close to two days ago. We went to a very small French bistro down a couple of stairs, with three tables, and ordered bread and cheese and wolfed it down. We felt better with each bite.
Our hotel was located at the remarkable intersection of rue Mazarine, rue Dauphine, rue Buci, rue St.-André-des-Arts, and rue de l’Ancienne-Comedie. This last was a very short street, but the name was such a wonder, evoking for me a whole array of images.
There was still a slight touch of snow on the ground. Parisians didn’t seem equipped to deal with it; no shovels were used, only brooms, but it melted quickly. It stayed cold, though, and damp; colder than we had anticipated. It proved to be the coldest winter in