I’m writing to you from a cafe in Paris, which I realise is one of those awful humble-brag sentences (“Ugh, just ate fifteen chocolate pieces in first class, better stop or they’ll revoke my modeling contract”) but I don’t care. There is a man dressed in stripes playing a violin down the street and I just had a croissant so good that I proposed marriage. So I am living my French fantasy. If it makes you feel any better, I had to come to the cafe to work because there is no internet in my Airbnb. I am staying in a tiny place located in the student area around the Sorbonne. When I checked it out online, I was surprised that despite its modest price it boasted an outdoor space. Turns out the “spacious garden with wrap around views” was student code for “plastic hedge on the purely decorative balcony”. When I asked him about it, my host Phillipe shrugged and threw his hands up, as if we were both victims of a trick by the universe. Then he used the loo, lit a cigarette and left. Phillipe, like most of the people here, is infuriatingly well dressed. Grey knotted scarf, skinny khaki pants, plum shoes – the works. He hasn’t responded to a single one of my messages about the internet so I imagine him to be on a yacht somewhere posing for a Chanel campaign and therefore unlikely o burst through my door with a new Wi-Fi router.
I’m not surprised. Customer service has never really been on the French to-do list. Even now, it has taken four tries to get the waitress to bring me water and there are only two other people in the place. They do other things well, bless them: they dress elegantly while smoking cigarettes, and eat truly staggering amounts of carbs without putting on any weight.
The flat is riddled with things that don’t work. The TV has no channels on it, the iron doesn’t heat up, the bedding actually makes you feel colder, the walls are thin and the flush and I are not currently on the best of terms. But for my sins the one thing it does have is a state-of-the-art weighing machine. I mean this thing is Space Age: sleek, silver, glass top – it tells you your weight in any measurements you want and even forages around your shame for your full-body fat percentage.
This is how I know that I’ve put on 6 pounds in 4 days. I tried not to, I really did. I take long walks and skip meals but to no avail. It’s like the main ingredient in everything is butter. You want meat? Butter. You want bread? It’s got butter in it. I’m convinced they inject the stuff into the fruits just so you cannot escape. Berlin was mainly sausages and heat soups so it was easy to skip food there, but to try and walk past a French patisserie blasting out the fragrance of freshly baked Brioche is a herculean effort, and I have failed many times.
I’ll spare you the details of the touristy things I did – the museums, the walks by the river, the shopping – in favour of focusing on on my excursions to the palace of Versailles. I’ve written about it before in this column and some of your may have already seen it. Even if you haven’t, I bet you’ve seen a tacky reproduction in some Auntie’s house in Pakistan (Them: “Uff, I just relate to the French aristocrats so much, na?” Me, looking around furtively: “I wouldn’t say that too much if I were you…”). The palace is, of course, nice but the gardens are truly magnificent and it’s there that I spent a lazy day hanging out by a placid pond feeling like an extra in a pointillist painting. I downloaded an audio guide on my phone before I went and I feel like I need to share with you something I only found out on this trip. It’s called the Versailles Shuffle.
Allow me to explain: one thing that you notice on the tour is that despite the opulent embroidered panels and glittering gilded bedrooms, the place has no bathrooms. None. That was because in those days indoor plumbing wasn’t really a thing. The nobles would take to relieving themselves in the corners of these fancy rooms. There was a whole section of my audio guide titled “The Smells of Versailles” and they don’t mean perfume. “The shuffle” was a term coined by visiting dignitaries for the way that courtiers would tiptoe to avoid piles of waste accumulated in the sumptuous ballrooms and hallways. I mean….can you even? The news floors me. I spent most of my tour looking into the corners of the grand rooms to double check and frankly, it changed my whole rose-tinted idea of Rococo France.
On the upside, it made me see Phillipe’s place in a much kinder light.
Write to thekantawala@gmail.com
I’m not surprised. Customer service has never really been on the French to-do list. Even now, it has taken four tries to get the waitress to bring me water and there are only two other people in the place. They do other things well, bless them: they dress elegantly while smoking cigarettes, and eat truly staggering amounts of carbs without putting on any weight.
I spent a lazy day hanging out by a placid pond feeling like an extra in a pointillist painting
The flat is riddled with things that don’t work. The TV has no channels on it, the iron doesn’t heat up, the bedding actually makes you feel colder, the walls are thin and the flush and I are not currently on the best of terms. But for my sins the one thing it does have is a state-of-the-art weighing machine. I mean this thing is Space Age: sleek, silver, glass top – it tells you your weight in any measurements you want and even forages around your shame for your full-body fat percentage.
This is how I know that I’ve put on 6 pounds in 4 days. I tried not to, I really did. I take long walks and skip meals but to no avail. It’s like the main ingredient in everything is butter. You want meat? Butter. You want bread? It’s got butter in it. I’m convinced they inject the stuff into the fruits just so you cannot escape. Berlin was mainly sausages and heat soups so it was easy to skip food there, but to try and walk past a French patisserie blasting out the fragrance of freshly baked Brioche is a herculean effort, and I have failed many times.
I’ll spare you the details of the touristy things I did – the museums, the walks by the river, the shopping – in favour of focusing on on my excursions to the palace of Versailles. I’ve written about it before in this column and some of your may have already seen it. Even if you haven’t, I bet you’ve seen a tacky reproduction in some Auntie’s house in Pakistan (Them: “Uff, I just relate to the French aristocrats so much, na?” Me, looking around furtively: “I wouldn’t say that too much if I were you…”). The palace is, of course, nice but the gardens are truly magnificent and it’s there that I spent a lazy day hanging out by a placid pond feeling like an extra in a pointillist painting. I downloaded an audio guide on my phone before I went and I feel like I need to share with you something I only found out on this trip. It’s called the Versailles Shuffle.
Allow me to explain: one thing that you notice on the tour is that despite the opulent embroidered panels and glittering gilded bedrooms, the place has no bathrooms. None. That was because in those days indoor plumbing wasn’t really a thing. The nobles would take to relieving themselves in the corners of these fancy rooms. There was a whole section of my audio guide titled “The Smells of Versailles” and they don’t mean perfume. “The shuffle” was a term coined by visiting dignitaries for the way that courtiers would tiptoe to avoid piles of waste accumulated in the sumptuous ballrooms and hallways. I mean….can you even? The news floors me. I spent most of my tour looking into the corners of the grand rooms to double check and frankly, it changed my whole rose-tinted idea of Rococo France.
On the upside, it made me see Phillipe’s place in a much kinder light.
Write to thekantawala@gmail.com