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My World in Figures, 2007 Edition from The Economist tells me that France has hosted over 75 million tourists this past year.  That just so happens to place the country atop the leaderboard when it comes to pure numbers of tourists.  Because I think it’s interesting here are the countries that round out the top five:

2. Spain, 53.6 million

3. United States of America, 46 million!!! (I wonder where we would be if you excluded NYC)

4. China, 41.76 million

5. Italy, 37.1 million

Not only am I surprised that Italy is a lowly number 5 on the list, but also notice the domination of France!  20 million more people visit it than the number two on the list!  In fact, you would have to combine Spain with number 7 Hong Kong (21.8 million) to equal France.  Not that I’m especially happy with all the tourism – they get in the way of my Metro routine and cause all the huge lines for the things I want to see when feeling touristy.

I joined the flocks of tourists and went on several wandering sessions this weekend, with only some loose destinations in mind.  Here are my random notes.

> Mysterious Crepe Disappearances – With the significant quantity of crepers around, I’m assuming they do brisk business.  But I’m mystified by the lack of Parisians on the streets eating them.  As far as I can tell, they are either A) devouring the crepe in about 45 seconds, or B) sticking the crepe in a bag and running away to their apartment, then eating it at their leisure, or C) buying the crepe and then throwing it away.

> Canadian Bookshops – I found another English language place, called the Abbey Bookshop.  It’s located in the Latin Quarter, and it took a lifetime to find.  It’s a tiny place – if you want to pass someone who’s looking at a book you either have to climb over their head or shove them into the bookshelf.  As annoying as it sometimes can be, that’s what gives these bookshops the character that Barnes & Noble sorely lacks.  And – in a serendipitous moment – one of the books I was flipping through gifted me a bookmark from Librairie Galignani – the first English bookshop in Europe!  Now I just have to track down how to get there…

The lower level of the Abbey Bookshop…

> The Allure of Converse – I do not understand it, but Parisians adore the Chuck Taylor Cons.  I haven’t seen anyone in the States bust out a pair of these since junior high, but either the folks here are behind the times or ahead of the style revolution.  I myself had a pair back in the day and was not impressed, but during my wanderings these are a common sighting (unlike a Parisian eating a crepe).  I also see a lot of fish / fruit markets on the weekends, and am starting to see a lot more Christmas (or Noel, as they say here) decor.  These both are much more explainable than the shoes.

> Of Military Hospitals and Churches – Admittedly, I do enjoy wandering through an old, European church from time to time.  They’re typically huge, intricate, beautiful, and – dare I say – awe inspiring.  It’s like touring the Budweiser Brewery, but you don’t feel like an alcoholic afterwards.  I ended up walking around the Val-de-Grâce, mainly because it had an impressive facade and I was incredibly cold.  While the church is impressive (they began building it in 1645), the museum that is part of the structure is unbelievably depressing.  Val-de-Grâce was also a military hospital and so logically it now hosts a museum on the subject.  Imagine what this means – scissors, scalpels, stretchers, painting after painting of dying / wounded / getting operated on men, and old medical books. 

There was one painting in particular that I found to be very, very, creepy and I couldn’t help but stare at it for a few minutes.  In the foreground of the painting lay a dead soldier, still clutching his rifle.  He has fallen next to a pond, and a brown, drippy, ghoulish woman with no legs (her lower body tapered down to a point – almost like a frightening mermaid) has crawled out of the water to get in on the action.  This creature has one hand / claw on the soldier’s chest and is wearing a…well, creepy expression on her face.  In the background there was a group of soldiers who, while still far away, are running up to retrieve the body of the soldier.

It’s the unanswered questions that this painting stirs up that make it disturbing.  Like, what is this presumably evil water demon planning on doing to this guy?  And why is her hand on his chest?  Is she planning on stealing his soul?  Dragging him into the water to feed baby brown water ghouls?  Whatever her scheme is you can’t help but think it’s something terrible when looking at her face, as well as the group of soldiers in the back, rushing up to their fallen comrade.  I suppose that no matter how creepy I think this painting is, it did its job – after all, how great is a painting, or any work of art, if you merely look at it and think of it no more?

Val-de-Grâce, view from the street…

> What Can a Lion Statue Tell You - Possibly nothing.  Or possibly everything.  While walking in Jardin du Luxembourg I stumbled into a lion statue.  He was a noble looking character, head held high and his eyes gazing off into the distance.  I had seen another lion statue just about a week ago, this one in Berlin.  There was also a man on a horse.  His arm was raised, and in his hand he gripped a long spear.  Below him, enjoying a good trampling by the horse, was a lion, a broken arrow already lodged in the animal’s side.  The lion’s mouth was open in an assumed roar, but to me it just looked like he was sad – or fearful, if you looked at the animal’s eyes.  After all, I’ll give you one guess as to what the guy on the horse was planning on doing with the spear.

When I saw the statue in Paris, in Luxembourg Garden, I thought of the characteristics that most people in the world probably associate to a lion – strength, pride, honor, nobility.  I found it interesting that the only lion statue I saw in Germany involved the animal being trampled and facing imminent death.

Paris lion on the left, Berlin lion on the right.

> A Treasure Found – I almost fell over in shock (and awe) while perusing the supermarket aisles – lo and behold, a treasure trove discovered!  America’s finest creation, the Hot Pocket, was resting comfortably in my grocer’s freezer just a few feet away!  Now, there are some limitations with the French Hot Pocket.  For example, I have but one option.  There is no Pepperoni Pizza, Barbecue Beef, Ham and Cheddar, Four Cheese, Chicken Tortilla, Philly Cheesesteak, Steak Fajita, or Sausage varieties to be found.  But I’ll be damned if I’m going to let something like that stop me from enjoying the quality and the joy that I’ve come to expect from the Hot Pocket.

I think the world stopped turning this Friday because I went out to a bar not called Le Nouveau Monde.  Instead I went to the very French sounding Lizard Lounge, but since this is Paris I of course got lost in my attempt to find it.  This time, though, I have the excuse that I was not leading the way on this one – I was following someone who allegedly knew its location.  I say ’allegedly’ because once we arrived at Iguana Bar she realized that she did not in fact know where Le Lizard Lounge was.  How anyone could ever get these two bars confused, I don’t know…

The Lizard Lounge is a good little spot.  It’s a bit cramped, but I think that is just a feature of all Parisian bars (or at least bars that don’t charge a 30 Euro cover).  Another feature is that at least half of the crowd seems to be smoking cigarettes, but they better puff away while they still can – rumor has it that January 1 2008 will usher in the era of smoke free saloons.  While I was drinking my refreshing pints of Heineken (Europe’s biggest brewery!) I contemplated the history of the Lizard Lounge building.  We were downstairs, and it looked a bit like you were in a subway tunnel.  I ended my internal discussion by deciding that this just must have been the way that the Parisians of the past liked their basements.

I made a bold decision tonight and returned to the hobo village, located just a bit north of my apartment around Bastille.  I decided to venture up there in hopes of somehow gaining entrance to a sold out concert, although I was anticipating some difficulty in regards to buying a ticket from someone off the street.  I can barely order a packet of Metro tickets, let alone beg for and negotiate the price of a Keren Ann concert ticket.

But it has been a day of oddities, so I figured the French scalping attempts would just be added to the list.  Just about 10 hours ago I was sitting in my apartment hallway watching a locksmith drill out my deadbolt.  Of all things, he was wearing a Cleveland Indians cap.  We got into a lively debate about baseball teams, but that did little to take away from the fact he was holding an enormous power tool that was dominating my lock.  The whole thing is one bad, long story, but I did actually find one French person who truly loves America.  Incredible!

I debated my options all day.  One of them included taping a sign to my chest that said “Heeeey, spare ticket anyone?”, translated into French of course.  My other brilliant scheme – walking around the entrance with a fistful of Euro bills – was deemed more likely to get me physically beaten with a brick than to secure a ticket.  It turns out all I had to do was turn in a world class miming exhibition to the guy that was standing around the front doors looking at his watch.

And what a great show it was!  The beer was a mere 6 Euro per pint, which is normal in a Paris bar.  So it’s unlike the good ol’ USA, where once you get trapped in a concert venue or baseball stadium beer is suddenly a valuable commodity, and thus costs you triple vs. what it costs on the outside.  And it’s interesting – there were about 500 patrons in this club, and people were sitting on the floor all the way up to the stage.  I’ve never seen anything like it.  On top of that, Ms. Keren Ann herself played a couple covers – remember the inspiring “But Then I Got High” song by Afro Man?  And the Counting Crows song, where they’re singing about paving paradise in order to give cars a nice, new parking lot?  Both played, and both great.  Unfortunately, she did not play “Gold Digger,” although I was desperately holding out hope.

CREPE COUNT = 10

I have made the magical journey to St. Etienne, France again.  I have rewarded myself for sitting through an entire day of meetings in French by purchasing my first non-Parisien crepe, and am now sitting here in the hotel bar enjoying a 1664 and wondering if there are any English gangsters.  There are two English blokes sitting next to me, and one of them just said “And I digress, but he’s a ninny.”  I can’t help but find the accent a bit comical, so if there are English gangsters I bet they have a tough time being intimidating.   

CREPE COUNT = 9 (adding the one from Sunday!)

Haha, ok I had to add this…one of the English guys just said “And they pay a plumb!”  Imagine a slightly drunk, incredulous Englishman saying this and maybe you will laugh like I did.  Seriously.  Say that phrase with your best English accent.

Berlin was conquered this weekend, but it was a spirited, feisty battle.  I endured the punches – the Friday night fiasco, a ridiculous Saturday morning four hour delay, the steady flow of Euros from my checking account, the lack of a sweet warm scarf in the bitter German wind – and emerged exhausted and victorious.

Berlin, once you get there (it’s further east than you would think), is an easy city to tour.  Most of the sites to see are located on Unter den Linden – which stands for “under the linden trees” (and, on a side note, all the linden trees were ripped down by Hitler) – and I was able to do most of the things I wanted to do from Saturday 2:30 pm to Sunday 3 pm.  Germany is an interesting city – much of it looks remarkably new, and zee Germans must be very clean because there was very little trash around on the street (I later learned that Germany recycles approximately 70% of its trash – kind of makes me wonder why Green Peace decided to hold a protest here on Saturday night).  This is perplexing for about four seconds, then you realize that everything actually is pretty new, since the city was bombed to shit during WWII.  And honestly, I didn’t know how to feel about that.  I was a bit disappointed to learn that so many old, historic buildings had been destroyed, but then you think about the reasons behind why they had been bombed into dust…

Philosophical or moral discussions aside, Berlin was quite an intriguing place.  In the short time I was there, here’s a list of my proud accomplishments:

> Tour of the Reichstag Building in the Berlin Evening: The Reichstag is the house of the German parliament, and is also the place where about 1500 German soldiers decided to make their last stand before the Russians beat them down.  I befriended a California ethics professor as I stood in line to enter, and we discussed the morality of torture on terrorists and his youthful European adventures.  The most incredible story he told me involved coming over to Berlin in the 1960s pretending to be a Vietnam protestor, which got him over into East Berlin - where of course he ended up debating communists over beer.  I found out that he has written a book that I have decided to eventually purchase.  That’s the least I can do for some fascinating conversation: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0803215347/ref=ord_cart_shr?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance

Photo of the Soviets raising the flag above the Reichstag after the battle there.  It’s actually a staged picture, like the photo of the three Americans raising the flag on Iwo Jima during WWII.

> Staring at the Brandenburg Gate: This is apparently a famous symbol of Berlin, but I had not heard of it before.  And if I haven’t heard of something before, well then…regardless, it’s very impressive, especially when you realize that this right on the border of East and West Germany.  One of President Reagan’s famous lines was delivered here: “General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

Piece of the Berlin Wall…

> Berliner Pilsner and Heineken Gold Until 6 am: I went to Berlin to meet up with a friend that was over there, and we spent about nine hours in an expat bar in Berlin drinking beer and scotch.  I was happy as a squirrel in a garbage can when I found myself playing songs from my MP3 player over the bar’s sound system (”Snow in Berlin” by Zookeeper – a perfect song for the situation, I think!).

> Getting Lost in a City Not Named Paris: Yes, I got lost trying to walk from my hotel to Unter den Linden, but I happend across something called Victory Monument.  It’s very tall, very impressive, and it has a golden angel perched on the top.  My guidebook said that Hitler had it moved to its current location so he could have his victory parades past it.  The only bad thing is that it started raining and I had no umbrella.

> Checkpoint Charlie: This was one of the gates between Soviet East and (mostly) American West Berlin.  It’s a preserved gatehouse in the middle of this city – you can’t help but stare at it for a while.  As if to prove that the American presence still has not left Berlin, Subway Sandwiches decided to open a restaurant right next to the checkpoint.

> Climbing to the Top of the Berliner Dom: For the low low price of a couple Euros, I got to walk up about 300 steps to the top of the cathedral in Berlin!  The great thing about a city like Paris or Rome is if you walk up 300 steps to the top of a giant old church, you can see the whole city.  If you would walk up 300 steps in Chicago, New York, Atlanta, or KC you’d find yourself looking into the fourth floor of an Ernst & Young building.

> Dominated German Bratwurst and Suckling Pig: I was humbled walking around the food markets in Berlin.  It’s almost as if the population celebrates Carnovergaard all year ’round.  I showed my appreciation by sampling as much as possible – outstanding!

> Contemplated Books on Fire: For whatever reason I was intrigued by the square where the famous Nazi book burning had taken place back in 1933.  It seemed incredible that in a square that looked this simple and innocent had played a part in one of the most disturbing points of human history.  In the middle of the square, laid in the brick, there is a glass pane - if you look down you will see a pure white room filled with empty bookshelves.