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A Gap Year in Pandemic-stricken Paris
This probably wasn’t the best year to go on a working holiday.
Seeing how the last twelve months have unraveled, that really goes without saying. But just like the year itself, hindsight is always twenty-twenty.
When I arrived in Paris at the start of March, no one knew a pandemic was less than six feet away from sweeping the globe. Fast-forward several months, and round-the-clock window gazing is back on the agenda.
We’re now four weeks into the reconfinement. For obvious reasons, the French capital doesn’t feel especially festive at the moment; not unless you consider surgical masks as Halloween costumes.
But if it’s quiet now, it was even more so in the hours leading up to lockdown.
As I left the office that late October evening, I placed my work commute justificatif in my pocket and ventured out onto the quiet streets. Sodium lamps bathed the city in orange, offering a warm respite from the darkness all around.
As I made my way towards the Villiers métro station, I saw a couple carrying an exercise bike. On a wall, a makeshift sign read “I breathe therefore I am”. Whatever its intended message, it begged the question: where else but in France could you find allusions to Descartes in graffiti?
