The beginning of Paris

I am in North Umberland, a dormitory of the London School of Economics in Trafalgar Square. The London Eye, Westminster Abbey, Covent Gardens, the National Portrait Gallery, and even Big Ben can all be seen in a brisk half-hour walk. My friend Abby has just gone for a day trip to Oxford and Blenham. This leaves me with a strawberry yogurt, her meticulous room, and a few hours to think about where I've been for the past week.

Last Saturday, I returned to Copenhagen from my academic study tour to Berlin and Poznan, Poland. After completing a 12-hour overnight bus-ferry-bus ride, we sleepily dragged our suitcases over the Danish cobblestones to our respective bus and Metro stops. DIS pays for the transportation passes that allow us to travel from home to school each day--or at least siphons off a bit of our parents' money for this purpose--but all of our passes had expired while we were in Germany. As we waited at Norreport station, we each practiced different contortions of fingers and wrists that would obscure the card's expiration date. The generosity of Danish socialism and the fear of the steep fine we might incur, however, eventually drove us to drop the $4 worth of Danish kroner to get home.

Nearly every DIS student had returned to Copenhagen that weekend, each of them with a suitcase of dirty laundry. My own wad of whites and colors somehow made it into one of the washing machines in the basement of my apartment by the afternoon. That evening, a few girls and I celebrated my friend Rachel's 21st birthday, the fifth anniversary of reaching legal drinking age in Denmark. Fighting fatigue, my friend Marlo and I stayed up until two in the morning to talk about what we'd seen and done while abroad in the last week.

Sundays in Osterbro hum with a quiet vigor. I spent my morning in my favorite way, walking through Faelledparken, Copenhagen's "Central Park" which abuts the FC Kobenhavn Stadium, which a 10-kroner chocolate croissant in my hand. Each time I walk down the park's paths, I seem always to see a father running beside a wobbling toddler on a two-wheeler, a woman with a cane and a wrinkled smile, and a senior citizen in spandex who is clearly able to jog farther than I am. I wandered through the neighborhood for a few hours before saying a few goodbyes and riding the Metro to the Copenhagen airport for my flight to Paris.

Many trips to the duty-free shop and a two-hour flight later, I arrived in Charles de Gaulle airport. Through my nine words of French, the taxi driver's knowledge of the city, and my friend Meredith's descriptive text messages, I somehow made it to La Bastille. "Mon amie!" I exclaimed as Meredith appeared in the window of the cab. "Mon petit amie," I said again, but Meredith corrected me. "That's not 'my small friend.' That means my boyfriend."

Mer and I shared dinner at midnight with all the other petit amies at La Bastille. We walked--quietly, blindly, so as to avoid the wrath of her host mother--into her host family's apartment. The home is covered in arrays of mismatched mirrors, bold floral wallpaper, and shelves of unused perfume bottles. (The French affection for eau de perfum is ironic because, well, French people really don't smell all that fragrant.) We snuggled into Meredith's double bed, covering only three-quarters of it.

The next morning, we visited the Pompidou, the national museum of modern art. The building is constructed with its insides on the outside, the water mains and pipes snaking over its exterior walls. The concrete slab of courtyard outside the entrance has improbably become a trendy place to eat lunch and catch wireless. The inside has two main floors of modern and contemporary works. One wide hall courses through each floor, with small tributaries and themed rooms that diverge from its edges. The museum had space to move, but I kept finding myself in the same room twice or walking through exhibits the opposite direction of other people. (That experience should not be attributed to the design of the museum. In fourth grade, I instinctively roller-skated counter-clockwise, right into the faces and knees of the rink's other patrons.)

I had a lunch of baguettes and elephant ears with my friend Caitlin, whom I traveled with to Amsterdam last month, and our friends Melissa and Evan, who also go to Colby. Caitlin showed me to Rue de la Rennes, a shopping street from which my sister had requested a pair of patent leather ballet flats. The gravity of my mission did not preclude me from checking out every other boutique on the avenue, reaching the street's end, and then searching for the department store, Le Bon Marche. By eight o'clock, I exhaustedly wound my way back to Meredith. We settled on a Mediterranean dinner and a late night helping of creme brulee.

I have an entire day of Paris and three in London left to write about. But for now I must go finish packing before I meet one of my oldest friends for lunch. I leave for short trip to Edinburgh, Scotland tonight. I'll continue writing the very next time I get a chance. Of course, pictures will follow when I'm back in Copenhagen.

For now, I must thank all of the people who have been so hospitable to me in the past week: Meredith, Caitlin, Abby, my friend Will. I must thank all of my friends' friends, who have been welcoming and generous. Thanks as well to all of the strangers who have pointed me in the right direction, had patience with my American English, and even covered the cost of my coffee on the plane. Thank you to my parents, my sister, and my brother for traveling beside me, I feel, as I discover so many little pieces of Europe.