Translation: The consequences of doing laundry in another country
Bam. Go ahead Grandma and Mom; laugh it up. I bet you're thinking, "she's 21 years old, she should know how to do laundry" and I do. Or, at least I thought I did until I pulled this sweater out of the washing machine 5 minutes ago.
I am lucky to be one of the few people to have a washing machine in my home, but I'm not sure I love it all so much anymore. The machines here are tiny, forcing me to do laundry more than once a month - a novel idea for the typical college student.
At least I'm saving quarters and sparing my back from carrying the enormous canvas laundry bag I shove into the trunk of my little car for the weekends I go home to "visit" (do laundry for free and hopefully get fed a few free meals). Not only are these machines tiny, but with all their knobs and buttons, they resemble something like the complicated cock pit of a 747 or a spaceship. At first it was quite intimidating - Madame gave me a crash tutorial, explaining all the different options for materials, temperatures (in Celsius, mind you), filth level of clothing and how to figure out which button was the start button. After my first laundry day I thought I had it down - I learned that I had to latch the interior basket before the top would close, and carefully measured soap levels, contemplated the filth levels and voilà, I had some clean clothes, but I guess this time around I got a little cocky. I don't know what I did wrong, but I'm going to have to go buy a new sweater...or 5.
Fall is coming quick here. It's starting to have that brisk feeling in the air in the mornings and late afternoons and every morning I'm finding more and more yellow leaves on my walk to the metro. I can't wait, but with each passing day, it seems to be a bit colder and I'm starting to realize how spoiled I've been in Santa Barbara, and how unprepared for colder weather I may be. Boots, scarfs and jackets are already part of my daily apparel, and the first day of fall isn't for another week or so. I have about 5 long sleeve shirts, one full of holes, all sunny Santa Barbara friendly, so I think it might be about time to find some better, heavier sweaters and figure out how to work the cockpit laundry machine so as not to shrink them. I'm going to have to ask Madame for another tutorial because I feel trial and error might lead to so many errors that my little sister will be getting a box full of my shrunken sweaters as a gift for her 5th birthday.
Adventures have yet to cease in my time here. Everyday I discover something new, whether it's discovered by my looking for it, or if it comes to me as a surprise. For example, this past weekend was the Journées Europeennes Du Patrimoines, a weekend once a year where all of Europe opens up the doors of buildings that are usually closed to the public. Yesterday I found myself wandering around inside the intensely gold-leafed rooms of the Luxembourg Palace, which now houses the French Senate. It was incredibly impressive, but the roped walkways provided you with a trying, seemingly-eternal shuffle through the entirety of the buildings, ultimately resulting in the misbehaving of young women with cameras and a sense of humor.
Some of the immaculately dressed guards laughed and complimented on our smiles and laughter, others looked at us scornfully as if to say "respect that (hideous) couch! This is a palace!"
The discoveries I make by surprise don't leave me any less entertained, either. For instance, last night after meeting a group of friends for a birthday dinner, I discovered what would happen if I followed a directionally-challenged friend - we'd get on the metro going the wrong way. Making this realization one stop from the end, we managed to successfully get everyone off the train and to the opposite platform to take us back in the correct direction. The secondary lesson of the evening followed just before that train's departure - the metro conductor will not wait for your whole group of friends to get on the metro before closing the doors. The buzz came on signaling that the doors were going to close any second, and Chelsey and Astrid were just stepping on when bam - the doors close. Astrid's eyes widened like a cartoon's with shock from her slender face as the doors squeezed her narrow shoulders out of the doors back onto the platform. Little Chelsey helplessly flailed with one arm as her other was stuck in-between the doors, and Ryan came to the manly-man rescue, pulling the doors apart until they re-opened, allowing Astrid and Chelsey to make a second attempt to get on the train without getting caught by the doors. I think we laughed the entire line back to the direction we were supposed to be going in the first place.
This city is beautiful, and I'm getting more comfortable in it day by day, but every now and the I'm knocked back on my butt and reminded that I am in a ruthless, though beautiful, BIG city. The lessons of the metro are only one example of that; others would be the daily coldness experienced from the true Parisians, nearly getting run over by a mini cooper or vespa almost every time you cross the street and the feeling of claustrophobia that sometimes creeps in while walking through crowds of people, standing on the metro at rush hour, or tripping over chairs to get to a table in the back of a café. Paris has so many parks to provide some air to all the people stuck in these crowded places, but sometimes you need to venture out of the city to feel noticeable space around you.
Friday morning I took the train out to Chantilly with some friends, a smaller town almost directly north of Paris, famous for their horses, home of whipped cream, and to some beautiful wide open spaces. Just walking through the forrêt felt good. We wandered down the dirt trails, through the trees, listening to the peaceful quiet that echoed back only the noises we emitted ourselves.
The pastures near the Château Chantilly were perfectly green and spacious, even the sky felt bigger with its fluffy, whipped clouds leisurely moving above us in the breeze. Laying down in this grass with hardly anything around besides tress and a few buildings in the distance closer to the Château felt so much more relaxing and satisfactory than any park I've visited so far in Paris. It makes me want to spend every weekend on the train to Versailles or Chartres or Chantilly, at least every weekend I don't spend in another country. Fresh air is definitely missed the the streets of this city of lights.
No comments:
Post a Comment