It seems hardly real that I'm writing this post, finally, but here we are. I'm headed back home on Thursday to Sydney and a (somewhat) regular life again.
The best way I can think to structure this all is simply in the same way I structured my trip--by destination. So, let's start (and end) with London, shall we?
I'll be honest, of all the cities I was visiting this trip, I was most excited for London. How could I not be? I'd spent pretty much all of my academic life reading about the city or reading authors who had written and lived there. I have not hidden the fact that I burst into tears the first night I got here from anyone--I took a walk along the Thames and looked out at the Tower Bridge and started crying because it hardly seemed real that I was standing in London at 24 years old.
I got supremely lucky the next day and (due to jet lag) woke up at like 5 o'clock in the morning, which meant I was out the door by 8, and pretty much the only person around when the Tower of London opened for the morning. It was absolutely dead silent in the area, and walking around the places I'd obsessively read (really terrible) historical fiction was nothing short of bliss. I didn't even realise how insanely busy it gets until about noon, which is when a large amount of tourists descended on it and I grasped how lucky I'd been to be able to explore the Tower with pretty much no one in the exhibits.
Also, it should surprise no one that they're still making cracks about Anne Boleyn and her using her 'feminine wiles' to attract Henry but it still pisses me off that they're framing her as a coquette and not a shrewd survivalist--I digress.
The rest of my visit to London was when I met up with Matt, and I'm sure you all saw how highly documented that was. The tour at Leavesden is something I think I'll remember for the rest of my life, and a lovely bookend to a series that really shaped who I am as a person. I also finally got to spend a metric fuckton of money and now I don't need any more Harry Potter merchandise.
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HAHAH jokes I just couldn't fit more in my suitcase.
The same really goes for being at Kings Cross--Warwick Davis showed up! Matt and I couldn't believe that we were there, doing something that had started as a joke (this whole trip started with me joking how poetic it would be if we met up and went to Kings Cross on the last official day of the series), and our fictional head of house was the one actor that showed up; it was too perfect for words. Though, having seen the line at the platform wall for the trolley photos, I'm really glad we did ours at Leavesden the day before--besides, I would have had to buy the picture instead of having at least two dozen outtakes to choose from.
I got to meet some old and new friends in London (does anything top randomly running into someone you haven't seen since high school?) and was pretty sad to leave, but knew I'd be back soon, anyway.
Barcelona was exactly the kind of holiday I needed, but I could not have spent longer than four days there. For one, I am not used to waking up at getting my day started at any later than 9am, and that is not acceptable in Spain. And two, my liver (and I say this having lived in Australia for six months) could not handle the all-day wine drinking that we indulged in. Don't get me wrong--I enjoyed it, but the slow pace started to wear on my brain, and it felt like we hadn't actually done anything because Matt and I (both big-city dwellers) were so used to doing so much every day.
The places we did visit--the Sagrada Familia, Park Guell, Barceloneta--were beautiful, and well worth the transit. There is a sense of comfort and friendliness everywhere in Barcelona, and I certainly would love to go back to Spain to experience more of it.
Which is maybe what made going to Paris so jarring.
I'm going to preface this by saying that I had no expectations of Paris--I never dreamed of visiting it, and I already knew all about how outwardly rude they are to tourists and especially: French-Canadians.
What I did not expect was how frustrated that would make me feel.
Look, I speak French fluently. I try to downplay this sometimes because of that good ol' Canadian self-effacement, but I've been speaking it fluently since I was six, and I went to school entirely in French. The only time I ever spoke English from ages six to fifteen (when I moved over to immersion for personal reasons) was outside of class and in English class. So, yeah, I know my accent is decent, and while my vocabulary is a bit rusty these days (a fact I'm now desperately trying to remedy since this trip), I can understand everyone perfectly and reply back to them.
But the problem is, it's in a French-Canadian accent.
Every person I tell this to (unless it's a French person) thinks I'm being over-dramatic.
"No way they hate your accent that much. You've just met a bad bunch of people."
Well, here's the thing: I actually love the French people I've met in Canada. Most likely because they are out of France and the minority so they don't feel as safe being complete assholes about how we speak French, but still. And even though I love those people, they have still made it completely clear to me that the majority of French people do not view our accents and our language as French--and God forbid you accidentally tell them that you do.
On one of our last nights out, Matt and I sat outside a bar in Le Marais and struck up a conversation with a woman and a man who were speaking a hearty mix of Franglais. I could tell that neither of their accents were very Parisian, and we chatted a bit. The woman, it turned out, was from Austin, and had moved to Paris five years ago after marrying her French husband.
We were chatting and drunkenly joking around, and I pronounced a French word with a markedly French accent--something I do regularly because, like I said, it's hard to undo over a decade of training. The woman quirked an eyebrow and repeated the word back to me mockingly, about to probably make some joke about how I was 'trying' to speak the language.
I should probably mention that this had been happening to me the whole trip. I would walk up to everyone--shop owner, transit supervisor, even just someone I was passing by on the street--and ask a perfectly understandable and technically correct question to them in French, and be greeted with either a some form of mocking about what I had said, or (heavily accented and hard to understand) English in response. A lot of the time this was happening to me because I was so used to greeting people with 'Salut/Allo', which I later realised was totally signalling me out as French-Canadian--I can't help it! Bonjour sounds totally formal and archaic to my ears; I cannot remember the last time anyone in my family has ever greeted someone like that.
So, yeah, I was drunk and a bit ready to argue, probably. As she was about to make some crack about my accent, I cut her off and said, 'Well, I am French and from Canada, so I'm not 'trying' to speak the language, it's actually my language.'
And then, this woman, who had previously told me she moved to Paris from Austin, Texas about five years ago, looked me in the eyes and said (pretty nastily, actually), 'You're not French. Don't say that.'
The semantical argument that only people from France get to call themselves French--y'all, get over yourselves. Where on earth do you think French-Canadians got the 'French' part from? Do you think people just sprouted up in a separate continent speaking your language? Or did you forget that you sent over colonisers and then lost them to the British (or maybe is that too sore of a subject)? In fact, if we're going to be super stuck-up about this, my family is technically directly descended from the first people who came over from France, so, yeah, I can call myself French. In the context of telling you I'm from Canada, I'm sure you can work out that I mean I'm French-Canadian.
Regardless, in a way, she was right. I texted my mother that night and said I was tired of Paris and missed the way it sounded when she and my family spoke in French to me; the fact of the matter is, I recognised my language in Paris, but it was very much not my people. There was no raucous and bawdy laughter every five seconds, people weren't yelling and shouting and cursing, and the musical lilt of everything seemed to have disappeared. It was like someone had taken the French of my childhood and taken the joy I'd found in speaking it away.
Maybe this seems a bit harsh, but the fact of the matter is, no one owns a damn language. I hated the superiority French speakers had about their language in elementary school and I still hate it to this day--everyone deserves a chance to learn it. For the last day of our Paris trip, I spoke exclusively in English to everyone I encountered, and was treated a lot better because of it, which in turn made me sad that I'd even tried.
Also worth mentioning, I have never in my life been harassed on the street as much as I was in Paris. I was prepared for this (at least three of my female friends warned me about it) but nothing can really steel you for a man asking you how many holes you can fit a cock in because he's got four other friends with him. I'm honestly worried about French women now--that is no way to live life, y'all. What is going on over there?!
The city itself? It's beautiful. I still prefer the old Notre Dame Cathedral to the Eiffel Tower (which, for Vancouverites, literally looks like it's made of the same material as the Iron Workers Memorial Bridge... so... you know). The city breathes history and I had a blast actually putting effort into my appearance and not sticking out like a sore thumb because of it.
Coming back to London was a weird breath of fresh air--I realised at one point London has actually felt more like a home to me than pretty much anywhere I've been at this point. It happily exceeded my expectations (and certainly made me really reconsider doing my Master's here, but that's a scary conversation for the future) and I have enjoyed the last two days just exploring the neighbourhoods and walking around on my own. I've spent all morning walking across bridges and hoping it doesn't rain because I forgot to pack an umbrella. Last night I got to watch King Lear performed at the Globe and openly wept and laughed and remembered (again) why I loved watching theatre so much.
Travelling abroad has felt most like wandering around with my heart splayed out in my hands, begging people to look at it--it's been the most weirdly vulnerable thing I've done in a while. I'm happy I get to do it, and I can't wait to do it again.
It turns out my heart just really likes the fresh air.
- C
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