Joie D'Être Blasé

Ah, Paris! What more can be said about Paris? The most visited city on the planet is way on the beaten path, but it is there for a reason. Everyone knows of its romantic aura, its grand boulevards, its ubiquitous cafés, its exquisite cuisine, its impressive museums and monuments, its cranky residents. To be fair, Parisians look not so much cranky but rather afflicted by a chronic case of ennui. Maybe that happens when you live in one of the loveliest cities in the world (yawn!) but I can think of a suitable remedy: les Parisiens ennuiés should all be sent to Somalia. I bet l'ennui would vanish before they could scream "Au secours!"

Paris wasn't always so charming. Like many ancient cities, Paris grew without a plan and by the mid-19th century, it was a maze of narrow winding streets lined with wooden buildings where population density reached 250,000 people/sq. mile (100,000 per sq. km) and sewage went into gutters that ran down the middle of the street. It was said that you could smell Paris before you ever saw it. It was fertile ground for disease and a 6-month cholera epidemic in 1832 killed 20,000 people in the city. Changes were needed to relieve the over-population and hygiene issues.

It took an authoritarian government, that of Napoléon III, nephew of the famous Bonaparte, to actually get it done. In 1852, he commissioned Georges-Eugène Haussmann to modernize Paris and in less than 20 years, Haussmann completely transformed the city into what we see today - countless long straight, wide boulevards lined with cafés and shops, and open spaces. He did so with a heavy hand through a program of expropriations, razing and strict building regulations (for instance, floors in neighboring buildings had to have the same height, their façades main lines had to be the same). It's estimated that 60% of Paris buildings were impacted.

It is argued that the primary goal of the Paris redesign was not so much to improve living conditions but to more effectively police the capital. In a city long known for street revolutions, wide straight avenues would facilitate movement of military troops and hinder barricades. While this is likely true given that it came from a Napoléon, sanitation and social conditions did improve in the end. And nobody can deny that Paris turned out to be one of the most stunning cities in the world as a result. So was this a work of evil turned into a work of genius? Perhaps. But one thing we can say - if the main goal of the reshaping of Paris was to hamper protests, it was a miserable failure. To this day, protests and strikes are part of the French culture and happen with quite some frequency. In fact, the French are so fond of them that even their national soccer team went on strike during the World Cup 2010, a miscalculated move to say the least.

But strikes and protests were the last things on French minds this early spring. Not even the intervention in Libya, kicked off by the French, gave rise to one. And since I didn’t get the chance to experience a genuine French protest, I decided I should take to the other Parisian tradition – look blasé. So there I went strolling nonchalantly around with a 11-lb/5 kg rucksack (don’t ask…) trying to look as blasé as I could with that hunch on my back. Seven hours later I was so bent that I no longer needed the backpack to look like Quasimodo...I didn't look blasée, I looked blessée. So the following day I figured I should just do what the French do best...rien. Armed with a genuine French baguette (perhaps the only food in Paris that doesn't come in chipmunk portion), I joined dozens of locals sprawled through les jardins de Paris, and pretended to be as ennuiée as only a Parisian can be. And I felt so good doing it that maybe my next stop should be Somalia.