Paris really is one of a kind. Tourists think of it as beautiful, romantic and exciting. But I have to be truly honest with you: it is, to put it simply, an armpit.
Someone tried to convince me that Paris was the centre of the world recently – “Well of course, France is right in the middle of the world map, and everybody knows that Paris is in the centre of France, soooo….”. Be that as it may, that still doesn’t stop it from being a big, smelly, minging armpit.
Everybody knows the sights: Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Montmartre, the Arc de Triomphe…
Everybody knows the sounds: angry drivers beeping their car horns, the chatter of people, the thundering of the metro trains, sirens, tourists asking for directions…
But the smells… they continue to surprise me (apart from the ‘doggie presents’ that are nicely placed all over the city of course). The French don’t have the reputation of being the sweetest smelling bunch, but I haven’t actually been able to prove that theory correct since I’ve been here. What I mean by that is that it’s not the people that are a bit whiffy, but the places. In the last week alone, I have been confronted by two blasts from the past, neither of which were particularly pleasant.
The first, lets call it, “experience” sent me back to a visit to York as a child… and to be more specific, the the Jorvik Viking Centre. I enjoyed it at the time, but anyone that has been there knows how disgusting it smells. My sister came home with a scratch ‘n’ sniff post card, and the smell of it still continues to haunt me. The smell of a Viking toilet isn’t really what you want to be horrified by on the way home from a particularly sucky day at work. I never figured out what it was that smelt so bad either. Gross.
The second was this morning on the way to work. The street smelt like what we used to call ‘the fish glue’ at school. Everybody always wanted to use the pva glue pots but there was always one unfortunate child in my Y1 class that got stuck with the fish glue pot. We always felt sorry for the one that got it (but weren’t willing to swap, naturally), it really is a MINGING smell.
I wonder what other horrors await my nostrils…
