Overseas Briefing

PARIS — After two years of coping with the relentless stress we urban types experience surrounded by the physical beauty and placid countryside of Middlebury, I decided to relocate to what is seemingly the complete opposite end of the spectrum: the city of the sedentary café lifestyle. After almost two months, I admit that Paris has not been the stress-free haven I had anticipated. First of all, France has hopped to the top of Al-Qaeda's hit list. Warning e-mails from the State Department advise Americans to stay clear of largely frequented tourist destinations, public transportation and from revealing their nationality. I figured I could simply focus on my studies, finally buy that burnt orange Fiat I'd been coveting, lose 20 pounds, grow a petit moustache and I'd be set. Unfortunately, I am easily distracted; the Fiat, while charmingly tiny, has a prohibitively large price tag; the weight … well … I'm working on it; and finally, I concluded that my face is not well-suited for a mustache of any sort, nor do I have the time for required upkeep.

Thus I continue to take the metro out of necessity as the Parisians do, with a look of apathetic constipation to avoid prolonged interpersonal contact, yet behind that façade I am always vigilant. Should I hear the ticking of what sounds like a bicycle wheel turning but could just as easily be a time bomb while riding on a packed train at Saint Michel (tourist alert!), I am the first to scan the car for said bike and quickly make my escape. When I hear a man singing what I know to be a Jewish prayer on a different Metro ride, it is clear to me if not to all the other innocents on the train that the end is near since why else would one be singing such a prayer?

But I live in such acute fear only occasionally. The rest of the time, Paris is an invigorating, bustling, truly global metropolis, where having a foreign accent is just as common as being a native Parisian. Stepping onto one of the Grands Boulevards means immersing oneself into the fast pace of French daily life, propelled by a palpable energy — an energy that has most recently manifested itself into a series of citywide strikes-turned-riots complete with the burning of cars, the storming of universities and the emblazoning of metro advertisements and primary schools with opposition slogan graffiti.

The fact that the mobilization of the masses is taking place here is actually something I find inspiring. This particular issue, however, I find a little harder to get behind. The French government has introduced legislation to change the legal retirement age from 60 to 62.  Why are students who should be excited about embarking on the careers of their choice already be whining about having to work, particularly given that they are talking about a retirement that will probably be five years earlier than the one we will have to get used to in the U.S.? Of course, this issue might be the straw that broke the camel's back, in that President Nicolas Sarkozy has received much criticism in general, including the banning of full burqas and the large-scale expulsion of illegal itinerant workers, once called gypsies but now known as Romas, from France.

Still, while the two years of extra work personally doesn't seem worth all the fuss (especially when one considers the flawed logic of the strategy of the French masses to skip work now so as not to work later), the spectacle adds real authenticity to my experience here. And what would city livin' be without the occasional bomb scare to keep you on your toes? Yes, my relationship with Paris is complicated, but it is growing more tender and passionate by the day.