unexpected noodles: a midnight musing on soggy baklava in paris
i just checked the weather and it's 8.15°C outside, which is about the temperature of a fridge built into a bicycle. the kind of cold that makes your eyelashes stick together like long-lost lovers. i’m sitting at a café that smells like regret and underbrewed coffee, and the WiFi is working because i observed three signs of modernity here: a working outlet, a menu in three languages, and someone using a Bluetooth earbud to loudly narrate their divorce story.
someone told me that the baklava at this spot tastes like ‘moonlight on a brick,’ whatever that means. i tried it. it was soggy. not the good soggy that’s like, ‘i rehydrated the carbs from a forgotten subway era,’ but the ‘my dessert is pleading for help’ kind. the guy behind the counter looked at me like i’d asked him to explain quantum physics using a Ouija board. i didn’t ask again.
if you get bored, brussels is just a short train ride away. not to give you location vibes or anything! down here, the sewers might be nicer than your neighborhood back home. around 2AM, I hear students from esa mass yelling something about ludwig beethoven while playing their instruments like they’re trying to summon the skyline.
i saw a guy skateboarding down the steps of the jardin du luxembourg. not the intricate backward ollie kind, but the ‘i paid 500€ for this leather jacket and now i’m blaming the city’s cobblestones’ vibe. he lost a tooth. this is the kind of city where your first injury becomes a story you tell to nannies.
for the budget travelers out here: check out le petit parisien café. 72 av timothée pariève, 75010. it’s closed on tuesdays, apparently because they only want your soul on tentacle-tuesday nights. the owner’s cat, i swear, has seen more trauma than me.
IF YOU INSIST ON STAYING INDOORS: go to a bookstore. there’s one with a little carousel in the corner that used to play folk songs. i don’t know if that’s true, but i needed that kind of magic.
map embedded below, because yeah - the parks here are like green lungs for briefcases full of regret:
images that screamed to be here:
bathroom break update: the metro’s most underrated feature isn’t the smell (though that deserves a parking spot), it’s the lack of seatbelts. i tried to wing it on the 6. stopped writing this for 17 minutes. my back now occupies the same emotional terrain as that soggy baklava.