Days 11 & 12: Goodbye Dragon Inn, Bonjour Paris

This trip has already revealed to me many things I didn’t realise (or only half-realised) about myself.  The day I left Taipei proved to me just how much of a softie I really am. There. I said it. I’m a mushy, lily-livered, marshmallow of feathery softness. Or, it may just be that I get emotional when I know I have to take a 13-hour plane ride.

Check-out time at the Dandy was midday, so I figured I’d get a blog entry done before having to leave. No such luck. Got distracted emailing folks back home and sorting out stuff for the flight ahead. No sign yet of my emotional breakdown, though.

While I wouldn’t say that I had bonded with the staff at the Dandy, there was a strange feeling of leaving home when I handed over the key. I guess it was the fact that it had been my refuge in a crazy and alien city that made it feel hard to leave. Still, check-out was as clinical and efficient as it could be. I left my suitcase behind and went roaming the streets, killing half an hour before I knew I was to meet Winston for a goodbye lunch.

I found a shady spot in a park on the corner of Linsen North and Nanjing East Roads and sat a while to observe and take in a peaceful view of Taipei. It was warm and a little muggy, and the park helped to buffer some of the traffic noise. For the first time, I felt like Taipei was beautiful.

Winston and I ate lunch at a restaurant called Oriental Curry, and he spent much of the time reading the newspaper.

I tried to make conversation. ‘What did you do yesterday?’

‘Nothing.’

‘What, you sat in an empty room without moving or thinking?’

He groaned, unused to being properly questioned.

‘I went to the library.’

‘Oh, right. Did you borrow a book? Or use the computer?’

‘No.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You just sat in the library?’

‘Yes.’

‘What, watching people?’

‘Yes.’

Pause.

‘Okay.’

Knowing this was the last time I would see him, I took the opportunity to ask him a question I otherwise might not: What do you hope for in your future, Winston?

His first reaction was a smile, which expressed both his discomfort and his impression of Westerners as shamelessly interrogatory. But soon he answered, ‘No hope.’

‘Nothing?’ I asked, doubtingly.

‘How do I know?’ he wondered, genuinely.

‘You can know what you hope for, even if you don’t know what’s going to happen.’

‘But I don’t know what I hope for.’

I tried to dig deeper, but he truly could not identify anything that he wanted for his future. As often happened in conversations with Winston, it ended when I gave up trying to extract more than one syllable of information.

I still had four hours to kill before I needed to catch my bus to the airport, so we resolved to go and see a movie. I was happy to see pretty much anything, but he only wanted to see The Blind Side, with Sandra Bullock. We got to the cinema and discovered that The Blind Side wouldn’t start for another hour-and-a-half, which wasn’t workable. Scorsese’s Shutter Island was starting sooner, though, and would fill the time perfectly. But he didn’t want to see it.

‘Well, I’m going to bore you to death for four hours if we don’t see something,’ I argued.

But he wouldn’t budge. It was Bullock or nothing. I called his bluff.

‘Okay, then. I’ll go and see Shutter Island on my own.’

‘That’s fine,’ he said.

So we said our goodbyes. He seemed kind of despondent and I wondered if he had grown attached. Of course, he would never admit to an emotion.

But I certainly felt emotional. The strange father-son relationship that seemed to have developed was coming to an end, and I was really doubtful about how he would fare on his own in the world. There is such arrogance in that, especially considering he’s older than I, but it was a genuine feeling and I don’t want to lie about it.

Shutter Island was fairly painfully boring, but I won’t get into that here. It killed just the right amount of time before I had to get to the bus. And I got to see just how low cinema seats can be.

When I collected my suitcase from the Dandy, the sweet girl at the reception desk asked if I would give her the address of my blog (I had mentioned it on a feedback form). She said they were all very curious to read it.

As I walked to the bus station, it was all I could think about. I would never see those people again. And they’d been so stoic and accommodating during my stay. On the bus, tears streamed down my face. I didn’t sob, but I couldn’t suppress the throbbing in my head. It had to find its way out somehow. I’m sure it was a combination of tiredness, dread about the flight ahead, sadness for Winston – hoping against hope that he would be okay – and the thought that I would probably never see this place again, and it had offered me so much.

Honestly, I didn’t think I would get emotional about any place after staying in it for eight days. But there I was: a pathetic, weeping softie. What can I say?

Thankfully, by the time the bus reached the airport, I had settled down. The flight to Hong Kong passed without any pain – though my battle with a book of crosswords my sister gave me before leaving was well and truly on.  On to the eighth crossword and I still hadn’t been able to complete one, despite having come painfully close.

In the gate lounge at Honkers airport, I started to notice a new kind of person, the likes of whom I had not come across since leaving Australia. This person, whether male or female, was invariably stylishly dressed, tanned and sporting effortlessly chic hair. It was then that it hit me: I’m going to Paris.

The 13-hour flight contained elements of pain, as I did not sleep for any more than ten minutes, despite taking six (yes, six) tablets I had bought in Taipei which were called ‘Relax’ tablets. Short-lasting in effect, but powerful when they hit, they did help to relax my muscles so I could ease into sleep, but they didn’t actually turn off my brain. It didn’t help that the man next to me, who reminded me somehow of that wacky chef from the Muppets, was more than happy to take up about a quarter of my seat space, and to sleep on his side (sitting up, mind you) facing me, and twitching.

[Side note for my writerly friends: For the last two hours of the flight, I watched episodes of 30 Rock, a show I had not seen before but had been implored to see on many occasions. It was the perfect thing to make the last gruelling hours pass. Really hilarious. And my writerly friends can rest easy knowing that I have finally seen some episodes of a contemporary TV show. I also watched In the Loop, which was very funny, but overdid the ‘swearing as comedy’.]

I got very efficiently through Charles de Gaulle airport, though others seemed not to have it so easy, and found my chauffeur. Yes, I ordered a car for my arrival in Paris. My Parisian leg was always going to be my apex of decadence, and I didn’t want to have to worry about finding my way after a lengthy, probably sleepless transit. My driver was a young guy who had actually spent a year living in Melbourne in 2006, so we had plenty to chat about. He dropped me off at the apartment just before 7am and took a 25 Euro tip. I had three hours before Dominique, the owner of the apartment, was to arrive to let me in.

I found a patisserie that was just opening up and was thrilled by the lovely lady’s warm ‘Bonjour!’ (though I was struggling to slip out of ‘Ni hao’ mode). She said something about ‘dejeuner’, and I managed to say ‘petit dejeuner’, and she made helpful suggestions, such as ‘caffe’ and ‘pain au chocolat’. I accepted both and took a seat.

Feeling more than a little out of my depth, I wrote a few pages in my journal, reflecting on the fact that, so far, Paris had lived up to every clichéd idea I had in my head: my huge morning cup/bowl of coffee, the abundance of utterly delicious pastries, the sing-song ‘bonjours’ flying around as people started to stream in ordering their morning cholesterol fix, and the obligatory man-with-baguette every few metres.

With just over two hours to kill, I resolved to go for a walk. Though it was a great time to be walking around Paris – the sun had just come out after a few days of quite powerful storms – to say that I got lost would be an understatement. Thinking that I was walking in more or less of a circle, I actually ended up fifteen minutes drive away from the apartment. By the time I realised I was lost, I had reached a quiet part of town, where no taxis, metro stations or maps were to be found. And I was getting worried that the wheels on my suitcase were going to buckle.

Sick with worry, I darted around streets, hoping to find a way to a road where I might be able to get a taxi, but was thwarted at every turn, usually by a cursed canal I could not yet name. Worried that Dominique might not hang around to wait for a tardy tenant, I started to feel sick. Thankfully some mysterious force was on my side: after some forty minutes of searching, I hit a main street and hailed a taxi. Struggling to understand my pronunication of ‘rue du Vertbois’, the taxi driver seemed frustrated and irritated. I managed to explain ‘troisieme arondissement’ but it didn’t seem to help him any. Within fifteen minutes, I was at the apartment and gave the driver a tip to thank him for his patience. I was pleased to see he seemed genuinely touched by this.

I met Dominique (who was completely lovely) and she took me up to the apartment. I was thrilled to find that it was even better than I had imagined: small, to be sure, but completely practical, well-equipped and decorated, and very well-located. Unfortunately, due to my totally overwrought state, the rest of Monday was a write-off, as I slept and slept, breaking only to go out for dinner at a nearby pizza restaurant. (I know, I know. A pizza on your first night in Paris? I was tired. I had no idea what was going on.) I knew that tomorrow would be busy, though, as I had to get hunting for a dining partner for Wednesday night’s dinner at Le Bristol…