Last night in Paris

I choose Café Le Petit Pont because it is bustling and alive and brimming with people. And I choose it for the view. From my table I can see Notre Dame – albeit through the cigarette smoke that hangs like smog and through which I can just read the ‘Espace non Fumeur’ sign in the blue haze.

The atmosphere is electric – constant conversation; waiters flying past with trays on arms; people arriving, shedding their coats; orders shouted to the kitchen; people paying bills and leaving.

The footpath is crammed with tables, where people sit elbow to elbow. I opt for warmth and sit inside at a table spread with white cloth and scattered rose petals.

It is after work and people have come here to talk, smoke and drink. The talk is loud and animated. The piano player in the corner is working hard to be heard.

I sit and observe and wait to be served. As much as I try to look as if I belong, I wonder if I have ‘tourist’ written on my forehead. For a long time I watch waiters invite people to seats, serve about five couples who have arrived after me.

Finally, driven by my gnawing empty stomach, I attract the attention of a waiter who hovers too close to my table on his pass to the kitchen. I ask for soupe a l’oignon gratinee and mercifully it arrives about two minutes later, smothered in melted cheese, bubbling and delicious.

It is my last night in Paris. I try to soak the experience up into my bones. I look at the faces, listen to the piano, the white noise of people telling their stories, catch the odd phrase that I have managed to understand, dredged from the recesses of my text book French.

It is eight o’clock on a Thursday evening. The streets remind me of pre-Christmas Melbourne. There is a constant stream of cars, motorbikes, buses and people. The souvenir stall holders on the street opposite attract a never-ending stream of customers.

Every now and again the buzz of conversation and traffic noise is punctuated by the characteristic pa pi pa pi of a police siren.

I watch business men and women, couples with identical shoes and back packs, people in overcoats and berets and beautifully coiffed Parisian women walk past and enter and leave the café. I wonder about their lives – what has brought them here and where they’ve come from.

I think about the life I will be returning to in a few days time. The life where the streets are deserted by nightfall apart from the occasional dog-walker. Where the buildings, compared to Paris, are non-descript and ordinary. Where people like me live their suburban lives.

I look out at a scene that is anything but ordinary. I watch faces light up when friends meet, the kiss on each cheek, the vigorous shake of the hand. I listen to the bubble of laugher that rises up with the smoke and bounces from table to table. Watch lips curl around a cigarette, suck in and blow into the face of the person opposite, both oblivious to anything other than the conversation.

I know I cannot stay here. That I must ask for the l’addition and negotiate my way back to the Metro and then back to my hotel to pack my bags.

I don’t know how to cement this place into my memory so that I can escape here when the ordinariness of my own street becomes overwhelming. When I am a million miles away from Paris.

I pay and walk across the road to Notre Dame. It looks magnificent in the half light of evening.

Tears stream down my face and I don’t hold them back.