Without Reservations_ The Travels of an Independent Woman - Alice Steinbach [5]
I liked these dreams, both the day and night versions. They seemed to signal a willingness on my part to go where the moment took me and to trust it would take me to an interesting place. They also reminded me of how it felt to approach every day as I once had, guided less by expectations than by curiosity.
On the day I left for Paris, I drank champagne with a friend in the Air France lounge at Dulles airport. “Here’s to a successful trip,” said my friend, raising her glass. I raised mine in reply, saying, “And to an interesting one.”
What I didn’t say was that “success” was not something I was seeking from this venture. In fact, I was determined not to judge this trip, or its outcome, in terms of success or failure. Too much of life—my life, anyway—seemed to be aimed at achieving success and avoiding failure. I was determined not to carry that baggage with me on this trip.
“You must be excited,” my friend said. “I know I would be.”
I laughed. “That’s an understatement. I’m probably the most excited person in this airport,” It was true. I felt the way I did at twenty when, on the spur of the moment, I threw some clothes into a suitcase, bought a ticket at the airport, and left for Turkey.
But later, while waiting to board the plane, another feeling crept in, one I couldn’t quite identify. Was it apprehension? Or just too much champagne? Such thoughts were swept aside, however, once I felt the plane lift off the runway, headed for Paris. This is it, I thought, tightening my seat belt, the beginning of the next part of my life.
To my dismay, I arrived in Paris not an excited woman but an anxious one. Without warning, halfway through the flight, my sense of excitement deserted me and a new, less welcome companion arrived: a complete failure of nerve. What am I doing on this plane? I asked myself. Panic was lurking beneath the question. What had seemed a wonderful idea—une grande aventure, as my friends put it—began to feel like an ill-conceived fantasy that should have provided fifteen minutes of amusement before being discarded.
By the time my plane landed in Paris I had considered every bad outcome—from loss of livelihood to loss of life—that was likely to result from my incredible mistake in judgment. It was a little before eight in the morning and the air terminal was chilly and deserted. A tiring wait to get through customs was followed by a longer and more tiring vigil at the luggage carousel. By the time I had retrieved my bags and made the long trek to the public transportation area, my mood was dangerously low. I decided to cheer myself up by taking a taxi to my hotel instead of the bus that dropped passengers off at some central location.
“Rue de l’Université,” I told the driver, directing him to my hotel. He’d never heard of it. “On the Left Bank,” I said. “Rue de l’Université. Off the quai Voltaire.” He shook his head and sighed wearily, as if to say, It’s no use trying to understand these Americans. Then suddenly he lurched into gear and abruptly hurled his taxi into the traffic headed for Paris.
It is a long drive from the airport into the city, one that offers little in the way of scenic diversion. The truth is, there is no difference between the morning rush-hour traffic in Paris and that of any big American city: bumper-to-bumper cars and lots of ugly industrial parks separated by the occasional cluster of sterile high-rise buildings. The hour-long trip did nothing to bolster my morale.
Just as I was wondering whether it was madness or stupidity that had landed me in the back of this taxi, something happened: we entered the city of Paris and the Seine came into view. Silvery and serpentine, it moved like mercury through the center of the city, a mesmerizing force. From the taxi window I could see the tree-lined quais along the river. A few more