Parisian Getaway

Paris in Love
by Eloisa James

Paris I Love You but You're Bringing Me Down
by Rosecrans Baldwin

     Sure you dream of traveling, but have you ever dreamed of living abroad?  It is one thing adapting for a few short weeks, another to do it permanently.  There is a whole new culture to learn, a language, details about daily life and so much more.  There is also the risk of having your dreams dashed.  The tourist facade sometimes hides a great many problems.  The phrase "I loved visiting, but I wouldn't want to live there." is around for a reason.

      In both of these books, the authors dreamed of living in Paris.  Both were devoted francophiles and had visited before.  Both intended to use the time they spent in the City of Light to work on a book and live the life they dreamed of.  For all of the similarities, there are differences.  James and her family moved to Paris after a major health scare.  She wanted to live the life she dreamed of while she still had a life to live.  Accordingly her book is a joyful tale--a collection of expanded communiques from the year.  She tells funny stories, anecdotes about the Parisian life and general pleasures of France. Little is shared about the true difficulties of living abroad except in a few of the stories relating to her children who initially struggle to fit into their Italian language school. This could be in part because James and her husband have lived abroad before (her husband is Italian).  Overall, it is a cheerful book that makes you want to have the same experience. 

     Baldwin, on the other hand, is not able to live a life of leisure during his time in Paris.  He has a job at a marketing firm and works on his novel late at night or early in the morning.  He is candid about his struggles with the language, with French bureaucracy, with the culture, and with many other small things such as the endless construction around their apartment.  At the same time he loves Paris and shares the joys when he finds them such as lunches in the park, frequent only in Paris moments, and the miracle of increasing fluency in a new language.  It isn't as cheerful as the James book, but it is incredibly refreshing in its honest portrayal of the realities of living in another country. It didn't bring me down in the slightest, but instead made me want to have the very same experience.  

     Reading these two books made me realize how much I would like the adventure and challenge of living abroad.  I did it for 8 weeks as a teenager, but I spent most of my time avoiding the experience.  My adult self looks back upon that with great regret.  I missed so much.  Now I can only manage a 2 week trip here, another there.  What I wouldn't do to be able to stay and truly immerse myself in a new place and culture.  Here is to my making that dream a reality one day.  If I ever do, however, I definitely won't be writing a book about it!