Sitting on a bed in a very sparsely furnished apartment in the 3rd arrondissement, I’m feeling an odd sense of comfort and normalcy despite the fact that it’s anything but. Over the past few days, my emotions have surprised me. Perhaps because deep down, I’ve been convinced that I was going to live in Europe from the time I was about 12 years old. Or perhaps because this was the logical culmination of the past 5 years of my life. Either way, it’s exciting, but it just feels normally.
I fully recognize that the biggest hinderance at first will be the language barrier. But I’ve been prepared for this moment of reckoning, and if anything, it’s just a motivator to actually learn French. There are moments where I feel quite good about the level I am able to understand. If I had to give it a label, I would call it uncomfortably surviving. When I went to open a bank account at my local BNP Paribas, the banker didn’t speak really any English, and with some help from Aurélie who was on speakerphone for part of the exchange, we got things sorted. Though, I still have not been able to log into my account, but I am mostly confident that he said it would take a few days for things to process before I would have access. I think.
Miraculously, the cold, grey, rainy first day went shockingly smooth. For some reason, we organized for the move to take place on the morning of our arrival in France, which was certainly ambitious given that we also had to pick up our keys that morning. Additionally, we had not seen if a few issues were fixed in the apartment prior to move in. Lots of trust involved. Aurélie’s belongings were packed and loaded in north of France, and trucked to Paris while we ran around puddle-filled Paris on what would be an unsuccessful hunt for acceptable curtains. We grabbed a quick sandwich at a boulangerie near her office that we like. I had my favorite, the Jambon Bleu, which is a sandwich consisting of lettuce, tomato, extremely thinly sliced prosciutto, two fairly large slabs of fresh bleu cheese and a bit of mayo on crisp baguette.
View from our 5th floor apartment overlooking the southeast of a rainy Paris.
We made our way back to the apartment, and the movers were on time and worked quickly to unload what we clearly underestimated in terms of volume. Everything went well, they took the empty boxes away, and that was it.
For the first two nights, we decided to stay in a hotel that we like just around the corner from our new place by the Republic metro stop. It was definitely the right decision, as Aurélie had to be in the office and has a two day conference from 7:30a – 6:00p today and tomorrow, and we didn’t have blinds or curtains to have some privacy from our new neighbors.
At the hotel, I got some work done, and spent a lot of time filling out various paperwork for the move, signing up for a Paris metro monthly subscription called pass Navigo, updated the my info in the French train system, and a lot of other mundane but important things to take care of for an international move and also starting a new job. Things like taxes, healthcare, retirement accounts, and more. I’m come to the relatively quick conclusion that preparing for a lot of things that I’m managing in a way that I’d like to is not going to be fully possible, and I am recognizing that it’s going to be a test of patience and willpower at times handling the unknown.
I had one of my first frustrating moments yesterday at a Home Depot style store called Leroy-Merlin. Thankfully, I could walk there from our apartment in about 15 minutes, and spent the subsequent two hours trying to navigate a massive, multi-level store without cell service in an attempt to buy a drill, some tools, and curtains to hang. The drill and the tools were a success, but the curtains were not. I finally and found the curtain section after discovering a completely new and hidden level after frustratingly walking around the store for what felt like an hour having been directed to the “shower curtain” section multiple times when I asked for help from unenthused associates. After finding the ones I thought would be the correct size (I thought wrong), I was still not fully confident that my taste would match the expectations of the much more sophisticated interior design sense of Aurélie. I ended up not getting the blinds, and made my way back home with a new drill, a basic tool kit, a tape measure, and a level.
After careful consultation with the resident interior designer, I went back and purchased the curtains and hardware to hang them, and I’m sitting here looking at them nicely hung in the bedroom.
That evening, we met at a nice Italian restaurant called Le Monteverdi in the 6th arrondissement for dinner. The atmosphere was nice, the food was good, and they served the wine in quirky chalice style goblets, but what left the greatest impression was the baby grand piano nestled in what was certainly not a spacious restaurant. The adept pianist played a wide variety of music and the baby grand had that lovely full feeling sound which matched the setting of wood paneled walls and red velvet curtains. What was most surprising and enjoyable to me was when she played a Randy Newman medley of his non-popular stuff off his studio albums but did end with You’ve Got a Friend in Me.
In an odd way, France feels less foreign in the traditional sense to me than Germany, despite the fact I lived in Germany much longer and already speak the language. I think what it comes down to is a sense of familiarity in terms of culture. Perhaps I’ll be proven wrong, but I think there is more culturally in common between our oldest ally than with Germany.
The next hours, days, weeks and months will be filled with discoveries, fun, and certainly many tests of patience. But I haven’t been more ready or excited for something in a long, long time.
Until then, time for some Champagne to celebrate new beginnings.
JOHN PATRICK QUINN 