Paris When It Sizzles

"C'est chaud," my boulanger says to me as he wraps up my baguette de tradition. I count out my euro and twenty centimes and look up. He's staring at me and I realize he'd said something to me. "Comment?" I ask. "C'est chaud, la journée," he repeats. He's telling me that today is hot. I look back at him, expressionless, and nod or maybe even say "yeah" in English since my brain feels as foggy as the air that's hanging over the city. I walk out and wonder to myself why he'd point out something so awfully obvious.

I once fondly wrote about my apartment, which is called hell a chambre de bonne, a tiny room at the top of a Parisian apartment building just beneath the gray mansard rooftop. It offers several advantages, such as much lower rent, a great view of the city and a built-in workout every time I leave and come back up my seven flights of stairs. And in the summer?

It is a nightmare.

Today, it hit 97 degrees. This heat wave, or canicule as they call it, has turned my beloved Paris into, quite frankly, overall suffering. Since air-conditioning in France is something I've only encountered in hotels and grocery stores (And I'm all for the energy-saving benefit of not climate-controlling everything), I walked up the desert wasteland of boulevard Saint-Michel to Monoprix and purchased an overpriced fan.

I carried that giant box twenty five minutes back up the boulevard which I've noticed now wafts a nice, warm dog shit smell and past people who still could not part with their scarves or jackets, while I kept stopping to adjust my sunglasses that were slipping off my nose. They watched me in my shorts and tank top as if I were insane, but you cannot tell me that people who wear their puffy winter jackets when it is above 70 degrees are not either: A. Boiling hot and too stubborn to admit it, or are B. In scientific terms, batshit crazy. I've even seen people running in long pants and sweatshirts. It takes a lot of self-restraint to not scream at them when I see this happening. Parisians will be Parisians.

I've spent the last two days laying in the middle of my floor, water dribbling from my mouth, and wondering if I'll make it out of this alive. My plants are dying. I can't work on my thesis. I wonder if this new fan is making it cooler or just spreading more hot air. Flies are moving in to my apartment (Do they think it's cooler in here?). I wonder if closing my windows and curtains is better than opening them. My dishes and jars of peanut butter are hot to the touch. 

If I ever had any advice to give to tourists coming to visit Paris in the summer, I'd say wait until September. October, even. Let it get cold because this city just can't cool itself down.

And I know people are hot because I can smell them on the métro. Instead, I'll be walking until further notice. I'm not sentencing myself to that torture.

Melting,

Rachel