By Dr. Terhemba Shija
The distance between Charles Dickens’ twin cities, London and Paris could be abridged with a mere one hour of flying or three hours of speed train beneath the basement of the English sea, or even a seven hour bus and ferry adventure across the English Channel. We chose the fastest option.
Our flight from London Heathrow on that misty Saturday night was like moving from a cold bathroom into a warmer ambience of a heated living room. I was returning to Paris again after 23 years when as Benue’s Commissioner I led the state’s Art Council troupe to perform at the French national theatre.
From the window seat of the Air France plane, Paris soon came to view with a million neon lights plotting the contours of the city below. “What a glamourous view” My wife remarked. I nodded my approval.
We disembarked at the Charles De gaulle Airport and were ushered before a courteous immigration officer, whose only question was to know how long our holiday would be and to view our return tickets.
The brief ritual being over and our luggage reclaimed, we got an airport taxi that drove us for forty-five minutes into the well-lit labyrinths of one of Western Europe’s oldest cities. Our round-faced Japanese taxi driver in his clumsy monosyllabic English, exuded the confidence of a global citizen at home with the big issues of our world. A smart and jovial guy, I guess he probably wanted to improve the proficiency of his English by engaging us in discussions on just every topic he thought would catch our fancy. Of course, we followed his incoherent babbling, not really understanding his rendition about Olympics by the River Seine nor the logic of the transitional politics of France or the US.
At our hotel, two front desk officials, in their sibilant French accents, warmly received and led us to our third floor room. This was to be our home for the next five days. We were also linked to the all-important hotel’s wi-fi for our local and international communications.
But just while we could give kudos to Paris for the its environmental and human warmth, the following morning dawned on the city reluctantly. The skies hung low, visibility sunk even lower than we had witnessed in England the night before, and the mercuries of city thermometers also dropped. This situation however, magically changed after three hours or so. The clouds pulled the curtains and the sun emerged so brilliantly like a bejeweled gift unveiled at breakfast.
The first major lesson learnt was that never trust the European weather. However our five days’ stay in Paris have taught us the contrary concerning the common Parisians on the street. They have been polite, personable and generous We were treated with utmost courtesy anywhere we went. Language was not a barrier. In fact, a certain gentleman, who appears with us in one of our selfies here, spent a lot of time conducting us round.
Breakfast in Paris, at least in the hotel I stayed had been like a communal feast of bread. The French people eat a lot of bread in diverse forms and textures. From the soft and crispy croissants, through the conventional sliced, sweet or unleavened type to the hard crusted tube-like loaves that require a carpenter’s saw-like knife to deal with, the breakfast feast is complemented with tea, fruit juice, bacon and eggs.
I observed that the three meals a day tradition was really an invention of the British not the French. They mostly go for one major meal a day outside breakfast. Call it lunch or supper, this meal comes in three courses, preceeded by at least one glass of wine. As expected, my wife being a teetotaler, conceded her share of the wine to me while she stuck to her soft drinks.
The Parisians are a sociable lot and they make a show it. Paris is truly a city that flows with wine and champagne. Thousands of pubs dot popular streets, with customers spilling over gregariously on corridors, pavements and walkways like beer parlours on the streets of Gboko do. You get the impression that Paris neither sleeps nor slumbers in summer, it just rocks and rocks day and night.
Yet strangely, the gentleman or woman on the street of Paris is generally a trim, fit and healthy person, in spite of their lifestyle of perpetual rollicking. It appears Paris has more bicycles than cars. Riders of motorcycles and bicycles are given equal recognition, as much as eedestrians in the construction of city roads. Large expanses of walkways are provided for pedestrians and joggers, while either sides are lined up with avenues of exotic pantane trees. Clean luxurious buses, tramps and underground trains run their courses precisely on time.
The Parisians have got a strong sense of fashion and the sartorial. It’s the home of many world class designers of clothes and perfumes. This notwithstanding, clothes and luxury commodities are too expensive for tourists like us living on earnings from weak economies.
I may not know where our little daughter got her inspiration from, but one of her major requests to me has been to do a photo shoot at the Eiffel tower. We have gladly obliged her and I wish to tell her upon my return the story of the French Revolution of 1789 and the first declaration of universal human rights after the destruction of feudalism, for which the Eiffel tower symbolises.
We made the long winding journey to the Eiffel tower on an open-air bus, meandering leisurely along the ancient streets of Paris, criss-crossing several times some of the 37 bridges that cross the the 13 kilometer stretch of the Seine disecting the city. Along the way we stopped over at Notre-Dame cathedral, the National museum “Musee D’ Orsay” and various other monuments in memory of French heroes like Charles Degaulle, Napoleon Bornaparte, and so on.
I rounded off my tour this morning by stopping over at the famous Presence Africaine bookshop at Rue des Escole, near the Notre-Dame cathedral to pick some new books for my colleagues back home at the Department of French. Its been hilarious moment for me.
My taxi driver, upon discovering my nationality, instantly struck a relationship with me speaking so highly about his Nigerian heroes, Victor Osimhen and JJ Okocha. He said Osimhen’s signing at Garataksaray is the best thing that has happened to his native Turkey of late.
Our Paris journey ends as we are now on our way in the rains to the airport. Torkuma, here we come! The beautiful Hungarian city of Budapest is our next destination.
