Travel: Does it Expand Your World View?

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I Embedded in Paris in Search of the American Dream

By Norma Jaeger Hopcraft

I saw a question online: “What are the top 10 places to travel to in 2019 to expand your world view?”

I’ve traveled quite a bit—more than I dreamt possible—but I wasn’t changed discernibly by two weeks in Italy or 10 days sailing in the British Virgin Islands.

But when I bought a one-way ticket to Paris, when I went there to live for a year in search of my American Dream of writing a very good novel, when I lived chez famille with a French woman and her two nieces, when I embedded in the language and the culture and knew that I couldn’t go home for at least one year—that changed me.

The vast distance from home—3,000 miles of ocean, and I couldn’t afford to jump on a plane to traverse it—made me homesick after the first month more deeply than I’d ever experienced. I could not return to the familiar faces and things of the States. I found it a bit distressing that everything was different in France, even the plastic wrap. It was tinted green and thinner than the stuff I was accustomed to. Fixtures in the bathroom, tiles, fabrics, the foods offered on the shelves, were all different.

Below: pictures from my life in Paris and more on embedding.

Driveways in the Paris suburbs are different than in the U.S. Ancient stone walls, for one.

Martine's niece Daphne, who taught me French and became a lifelong friend. She's visiting me in Brooklyn in May!

Statue of Charles DeGaulle outside the Metro.

I didn’t expect that. I had thought before I left, “France is a Western country, steeped in the Judeo-Christian mindset. I won’t be that much different from here.”

Wrong. And the distance from home, the inability to fly back for a quick fix, being embedded in a culture I found profoundly different, made big changes in me.

I was forced to redefine "home," and I could only find it within myself. And since I believe in a Higher Power, whom I choose to call Emmanuel, I had company in my home within myself.

I did not have to be defined by labels imposed by myself or others, like “American writer” or “mature woman” or “expat”—though I rather adored that expat label and did everything I could to remain an expat in Europe. See my blog post about how I ended up living in Barcelona here.

I felt free, with Emmanuel, to cultivate a childlike wonder about Paris, and all things French, and for how Emmanuel had orchestrated my life that I would end up here. Read how here.

The immersion in a culture vastly different from the U.S. made me see that we aren’t the center of the world. Other countries have much higher priorities than news from the U.S. Though we feature in their news much more than they do in ours.

My appreciation for the French deepened too. My landlady Martine and her two twenty-something nieces opened their hearts to me. It was unlike any experience I’ve had from American friends.

I learned, because I had the time to learn and to experience, which I wouldn’t have had if I had rushed around Paris for a brief vacation, that they have a different attitude toward life, work, family, friends, money. Most French, I think it’s safe to say, work in order to live, not live to work. They keenly value friends and family and aren’t willing to give up time with them for the sake of the Almighty Euro. I learned so much. Including that this orientation is changing, sadly, under the influence of the United States.

My worldview expanded when I lived in Paris because I realized that Putin’s tanks in the Crimea and Ukraine could conceivably roll all the way to me. News stories of suicide bombs in Israel and Palestine were scarier because those places were much, much closer. India was closer too. Many French go there for vacations, and it’s a much shorter flight than from New York. It’s doable.

The last worldview change that I experienced from living in Paris and Barcelona is that I’ve never felt at home in my own culture in the U.S. since. Martine had warned me that going back to my own culture would be the hardest part of having lived abroad.

Martine grew up in the Saumur region tending the vines and trodding the white grapes the region is famous for. She had dreamed of living and working abroad—and she made the dream come true. She lived in Kuwait, Malaysia, Burkino Fasa, and India. So, the Middle East, Asia, Africa and South Asia.

While I was embedded in her Paris home, Martine and her nieces taught me French expressions and cooking. We threw parties together. I cut beautiful loaves of crusty pain into baskets for guests to smear one of France’s 350 types of cheese upon.

I had all kinds of memorable experiences. Martine was an actress, and belted out Les Marseillais on Bastille Day, with a nice touch of irony, while the President of France marched with a brass band down Les Champs Elysees on her TV. I could hear her from out in her jardin. I would not have gotten that unforgettable experience if I’d floated into Paris for a look-see and floated out again.

She sold the beautiful house she had in Paris, the one I lived in for a year, and moved back to the Saumur region recently. In both homes, I hear her say she doesn’t feel at home.

I still recommend not just vacationing around a place but embedding there long-term. My answer to the title question is: anywhere that you embed is the best place for a permanent change of worldview! 

Two friends from my Paris Writers Circle

Everything was different in France. Coming from New York City, I marveled at how there were no right angle corners in Paris.

The flowers left in dismay after the Charlie Hebdo shooting. It was a taste from home--the U.S.--mass shootings and terrorism.

Some of the art left at the site.

Momentoes left in grief and shock. 

How about you? Where would you like to embed yourself and learn about the culture, language, and landscape? Comment below!

Paris vs. New York City in Winter

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Battling Out Winter in Two Great Cities

By Norma Jaeger Hopcraft

Paris (arguably the capital of Europe) and New York City (some say the capital of the world) offer very different experiences of winter.

Cold? Both can be, but the winter I was in Paris, in search of the American Dream, was a typical winter. Temps went to 33 degrees and stayed there. New York can dip to 0 degrees, and the wind can whip down the straight streets, lined with tall buildings, to give that beloved canyon effect, and we’re talking wind chill way below zero.

In New York City, the wind comes off of the Atlantic, through the Verrazano Narrows, through Upper New York Harbor, and then splits in order to howl up the Hudson on the west and the East River on the east. It makes its presence felt all the way to the center of the island, on Fifth and Sixth Avenues.

Paris wasn’t windy in winter, though the air always moved along the Seine. And there is no canyon effect – there’s only one building more than six or seven stories tall, and that’s the hideous Montparnasse tower. Also, the streets rarely run straight for more than one block, which means the wind can’t howl down them very well. In fact there are no right-angle corners in Paris. Every corner is at a unique angle. It’s great.

The air moves along the Seine, winter and summer, but it doesn't debilitate people the way the wind does in New York City.

La Conciergerie, in which Marie Antoinette was imprisoned before being beheaded. There is a re-envisioned apartment in this building now, envisioning what her cell would have been like.

Of course, along the Seine, the famous vendors of books, posters, postcards.

A cobbled ramp (in a beautiful scallop-shell pattern) leading down to the quai.

Another view of the Conciergerie.

No matter which angle I viewed it from, Paris was beautiful.

New York has colder temperatures, magnified by wind. But it has more sun, and this is an important difference.

Paris is as far north as Newfoundland, Canada. More north than the northern edge of Maine. This means it’s much closer to the Arctic Circle than New York. So the sun is low in the sky in winter, much lower than in New York.

In Paris in winter, the sun barely makes it above the roof of a two-story building, even at its highest point in the day. And most of the buildings are six- or seven-stories.

On top of that, the skies are normally full of dense clouds that barely ever let a sunbeam through the cracks. If the clouds do part and the sun does burst through, the clouds make a point of blocking up that crack just as fast as possible.

So between a low, weak, northern sun and clouds that are diabolically intent on denying earthlings any sunlight, Paris winters are very gray, very dimly lit, and very difficult to endure if you’re accustomed to a more New York sort of winter.

I would be writing in my favorite library, La Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris, with an eye cocked out the window. I was sun starved, and I intended to do something about it. I would watch, wait, write. There it was! A sunbeam! I would pack my stuff up, race outside, and stand in the sunbeam—even if it was in the middle of an intersection. Nobody’s moving very fast in Le Marais, where the library’s located. It's mostly tourists strolling. I’d stand there absorbing the sun’s rays on my face – and a minute later clouds rose and the sun was gone. For another three, long, agonizing weeks.

I was shaky, cranky, feeling ill. How did people in Copenhagen, Scotland, Sweden--all closer to the Arctic Circle than Paris--get through winter? 

Somebody said “Light lots of candles and take Vitamin D-3,” so I did. I felt no better.

Next time: what I did to deal with light deficiency.