AspireParis: Of Shakespeare and Unicorns

I am actually writing this from Aachen, Germany, but realize I have gotten behind on my posts from Paris. I thought you might actually like to know some things about Paris before I go on about my next adventure to Brussels and Aachen.

I had the opportunity through a friend to meet an Australian who has made Paris his home for the last 20 years. David is an architect and now a photographer, so you can imagine he was a wealth of information on Paris. Cat & I met David on a Sunday afternoon for a cafe creme in the Cafe Beaubourg next to the Centre George Pompidieu where he shared his latest photos from a recent trip to India that he is hoping to turn into a book. After coffee, David took us over to Shakespeare and company to have tea with the 92-year old former owner of the famous english bookshop that has seen the likes of Hemingway etc in its day. Sunday afternoons at 4pm, you can go up over the bookshop to meet fellow travelers and aspiring authors for tea. The 92-year old former owner was a no-show, but we did meet several interesting others, including a travel writer for the Lonely Planet (my exclusive guide to all things France). Sitting in the small reception room of a tiny apartment above a famous bookshop made me wish (and not for the first time) that I was more literary. I did not fess up that I was currently reading a book entitled "Snow White and the Seven Samurai" about fairy tales gone awry in a humourous fashion.

David invited us along that evening to another Paris institution, although this one might not be in the guide books. We were invited to the home of a 1960s counter-culture icon and co-founder of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Jim Haynes. Apparently every Sunday Jim puts up a meal for up to 50 guests with the sole purpose of encouraging discussion amongst relative strangers. He's been doing this since the 1970s, and estimates that over 120,000 guests have shared a meal and some great conversation at his home. I think my six degrees of separation from the rest of the world just shrank by a degree or two. I talked to people from all over, from Portland OR, New Zealand, Toronto, France, Germany. I didn't get the chance to talk to the fellow from Vancouver. One woman from Milwaukee described how she met her Frence fiance when he was on a high school exchange in the US. They dated briefly then, but it was when he tracked her down some 10 years later that they fell in love and she moved to Paris. When telling this story to another frenchman, he replied "French men are tenacious like that". It was a wonderful evening.

On a separate topic, a week or two ago I made a visit to the Musee du Moyen Age (Museum of the Middle Ages), which to my delight is currently free of charge. It started a lit

tle slowly with some ceramics and bits and pieces of statuary left over from the Middle Ages - you really need to use your imagination with only an arm or a head left of the statue. It then moved on to more information about daily life of the time as captured in a number of tapestries. There were also the tiniest detailed metal sculptures which were fascinating to me in their detail. The culmination is a series of 6 tapestries from the 15th century, called the Lady and the Unicorn. Five of the tapestries depict the five senses, and the sixth "A mon Seul Desir" is the moral of the series possibly about exherting control over your senses and an assertion of free will. (this photo is from musee Cluny website) The bright colours and impecable detail of the tapestries is quite stunning, and given their sheer size, all 6 together are fascinating to behold.