a moveable feast

Where do I begin? And how much cliché quasi-heartfelt bullshit has begun with those very words? Truly, though, I have no fucking idea where to start so I’m just gonna kind of let it happen. I do know that this will be long. This will be obnoxious. There will be excessive descriptions of food (because duh). There will be a lot of bragging about how great my life has been (don’t hate me ‘cause you ain’t me) (or do, I won’t tell you how to live your life). There will be nonsensical, uncut rambling and run on sentences that would make a grammar teacher cry. There may even be some feelings in there somewhere. But these were the best 8 months of my life to date so if you ask me how exchange was and genuinely want to know, then brace yourself. To everyone else I run into in the first few weeks back, I’ll just say it was AMAZING (which is technically true but still feels like the greatest lie by omission), and you’ll smile and say, “Your photos looked great!” even though my hashtag annoyed you progressively more as time went on and I’ll say “Thanks!” even though I remember you didn’t like them on Facebook and we’ll both nod meaningfully and move on with our lives cause let’s be real, you really don’t give a flying fuck and you’re really hoping I don’t elaborate. Don’t worry, I won’t too much. But for those who do care (tbh at this point mostly just for me), this was exchange.

So let’s talk Paris. I can’t believe I’m leaving this beautiful city, but more than that, I can’t believe that I got to be here in the first place. I have dreamed about it ever since my very first French teacher, shoutout Mme. Kippan, told me about how good the bread was in France in the 6^th grade. She was right; the bread is unreal. As are the dairy products, because France doesn’t have stupid protectionist laws that ruin them (please note my high key shade at Canadian farmers). The rubbery, flavourless lies they stick in a rind and call brie in Canada have nothing on the creamy, impossibly savoury varieties my cheese lady – yes, I have a cheese lady who now knows me by name and says hi to me in the streets (my proudest moment in Paris) – lets me sample, and you haven’t truly lived until you’ve experienced the sweet bliss that is simply French butter on French bread. Wow, I couldn’t even make it through a single paragraph without going on a tangent about food.

Anyway, my point was that when you build something up in your head for a while (lol, prom) (jk prom was great), you run the risk of being let down by the reality of the situation. And when you fall head-first in love, it is more often than not the case that the passion fizzles as quickly as it came. Lucky for me, Paris never gave me a reality check and ‘til the very last day, I was still very much living in a dream. From the second I landed at CDG (a structure with which I was about to become very familiar), I was unable to wipe the smile from my face. I could feel my dimples growing deeper as my grin got wider (and my cheeks fatter from being filled with pastries and various cheeses). I remember that first day like it was yesterday. Despite almost getting scammed within half an hour of arriving, I still spent my entire taxi-ride to my new flat with my nose glued to the window, eyes shiny and wide, taking in every detail of the city I was privileged to fall in love with. Over half a year later, every time I spotted the Eiffel Tower (which was often) I still got so giddy I could not help but audibly giggle. Sometimes, I had to pinch myself to remind myself that it was all real.

Paris is the It Girl. She’s the life of the party. She’s instant friends with everyone she meets, and the only people that hate her are the ones that have never really met her. She’s pretty, of course, one of the most beautiful things you’d ever laid eyes on. Some think she’s standoffish because she doesn’t open up to just everyone. She has her flaws too. Like, sometimes she smells bad. And is kind of an asshole. But get to know her and you’ll realize how wise, how deep, how incredibly complex and interesting she is. I’ll miss her. I’ll miss the rows and rows of identical Haussmann apartments, differentiated only by the colours of the flowers spilling out over the intricate wrought iron balconies. I’ll miss the warm, buttery smell of pastries and breads wafting from the boulangeries on every street corner and the damp smell of the streets after it rained. I’ll miss eyeing the vintage posters and spotting copies of everything from Harry Potter to the most famous works of Hugo and Verne from the green stands along the Seine, and I’ll miss the way the Seine glittered at night under the watchful gaze of the City of Lights. I’ll miss walking past the iconic glass pyramid at the Louvre and all the random cathedrals that while stunning in their own right, could never compare to Notre Dame or Sacre Coeur. I’ll miss accidentally stumbling across the gems that make Paris Paris – incredible art galleries, majestic fountains, a surprisingly good cup of coffee (which contrary to popular belief is very rare)… I’ll miss terrasses and speaking French and maybe even all the tiny yappy rat-dogs. Just kidding, I won’t miss the rat-dogs. Get yourselves some proper pets, people, goodness. I’ll miss my cheese lady Marianne and the guys at Au P’tit Grec who always joked with me in line and snuck a little something extra into my crêpes. I’ll miss how literally every corner was beautiful (read: instagrammable). I’ll miss sitting down with a bottle of wine literally anywhere – on the river bank, in front of the Eiffel Tower, in the Jardin du Luxembourg that I frequented almost daily, and of course, on the rooftop of my picturesque flat where I made so many memories. I’ll miss that flat even though it’s on the 6^th (7^th) floor and has no elevator. I’ll miss how it was my space, my escape, and how it made Paris start to feel like home.

It hasn’t all been easy, though, and I’m proud of myself. I don’t say it often because my ego is inflated enough even without my conscious contribution (loljkIamsoinsecureitsactuallyquitesadsooutwardlyIovercompensate), but I really truly am proud of myself. I’ve accomplished a whole damn lot. There are little things, like drastically reducing the number of times I get replied to in English when I try to speak French to locals, and becoming local enough to befriend the people who sell me various foodstuffs. But there are also things that I didn’t notice until they became big things. Like how I developed a definitive and functional personal travel style and am now somewhat of an expert on finding cheap transportation and also packing weeks’ worth of shit in one backpack. Like how I am the money-saving freaking queen and can haggle like no other. Like how holy shit I’ve learned to chill the fuck out. Important life lessons with Yuna Wang: shit will go wrong. If you can fix it, fix it. If you can’t, move on with your life. It’s literally that simple yet it took me 21 long years of life to really figure it out – like, for real. Like, walking the walk for real. And bigger stuff, like landing a dream internship in a field that I love and a city I adore (lol yes despite what my insta would have you believe, I actually did work this summer). And getting comfortable with being really, truly alone. Not alone like I moved out but can still go home every once in a while to do laundry. Not alone like went to a different province for a few months but the people around you still speak your language. Alone like you’re more sick than you’ve ever been in your life like you can’t even breathe and everyone you know is sleeping in a different time zone and you live up 6 flights of stairs but you’re too weak to even get out of bed so how are you supposed to go up and down all those stairs and you have no appetite but you know you should eat but your fridge is empty cause you just moved in and oh my god you don’t even have salt but it’s Sunday anyway so nothing is even open in this goddamn country so you can’t even go to a pharmacy and get some meds so you just decide to go back to sleep hungry and in full-body pain alone. To know that you’ve lived through that kind of alone and were a grown enough adult to deal with it is kind of gratifying.

And then I started making friends. The kind that come from all over the world and give you the best conversations about stuff you’d never even thought about before because you’ve just never been in a place or situation where those topics would come up, the kind that adventure with you and go on spontaneous trips with you and party with you and whine about class with you and drink wine with you and share your highest and lowest moments and of course most importantly, eat food with you. When everyone started leaving in May, I won’t lie, I felt a little lost. Not just because a city teeming with the best babes I’d ever met suddenly felt a lot bigger and emptier, but because I knew that many of the people who had so enriched my life I would never see again (let’s just both ignore the weird sentence structure there). That is tragic, but at least we’ll always have the internet – thanks, Zuck. And I’m proud of having made these relationships because they’re real and we’ve injected great depth into them over a very short period of time and that has made all the difference.

Now, an exhaustive and extremely gratuitous list of every city I had the privilege of visiting:

Amsterdam, Netherlands; Prague, Czech Republic; Budapest, Hungary; Vienna, Austria; Barcelona, Spain; Copenhagen, Denmark; Edinburgh, Scotland; Milan, Florence, Cinque-Terre, Rome, Venice, Italy; Vatican City; Honfleur, Caen, Deauville, Mont Saint-Michel, Nice, France; Monte Carlo, Monaco; Santorini, Athens, Greece; Berlin, Germany; London, Cambridge, England; Warsaw, Poland.

Unless my math is even worse than I thought (which is not entirely outside the realm of possibility), that’s 25 cities in 15 countries besides Paris, France that I’ve been to. What a treat. Travelling was never on my radar as something I needed to do. It was like, cool, if I got to go somewhere for a bit, nice, I’d enjoy it, but I never felt the magnetic pull of the world (I know, I know – brb barfing) like I started to when I got to Europe. Part (most) of it is definitely because this was my first time travelling on my own terms rather than like, following parents or other family members around on a trip that they’d organized without my input. While I did all the touristy must-dos (like obligatory churches), what stayed with me most was the diversity. Canada, while geographically vast, is more or less homogenous across cities west of Ontario large enough to be statistically significant. Despite this, it takes several hours and several hundreds of dollars to get from Vancouver to Toronto. In half the time and a smaller still fraction of the cost, I can literally drive to another country with its own distinct history and culture and (most importantly) food. Travelling has brought to life all the shit I never paid attention to in socials class. Somehow Louis XIV is a lot more interesting when you’re marvelling at his palace in Versailles. Somehow separatism seems a lot more important when you’re greeted, “Bon dia” instead of “Buenos dias” in Barcelona. Somehow the horrors of WWII get a lot more real when you’re looking at hundreds of pairs of shoes in Budapest, or when you’re standing on top of the very spot Hitler shot himself in Berlin. I’ve learned to say “hello” and “thank you” and “sorry” (the Canada in me can’t be quashed) and (most importantly) “cheers” in 9 languages and I’ve crossed paths with folks with unbelievable stories and I’ve seen enough of the world to know that I’ll never have seen enough of it. And once my bank account has been replenished to a much more reasonable level, I can’t wait to get back to it.

Some apologies are in order, I think. First, sorry to all the museums and priceless works of art and historical artefacts that I’ve blatantly disrespected in my Snapchat. Speaking of my Snapchat, sorry about that too. Shoutout to everyone who actually made it through each one – I know they got a little (lot) long but what can I say? My life was fucking rad and I wanted to let you all know. On that note, sorry about my goddamn hashtag too. I thought it was cute when I started but it got old real quick, but by the time I realized, it was too late – I was in too deep. Worry not though, friends, the #wheresyuna saga is drawing to a close (save for about a lifetime’s worth of #tbt’s). Sorry to my liver, which aside from being heavily abused for the past 8 months, will need to get re-accustomed to shitty wine and also other alcohols that aren’t wine. Sorry to all the boys in Europe – I must go now, please delete my number. Sorry, locals of Paris, that you had to look at my dumb mug grinning ear to ear every damn day when I know it makes you uncomfortable to see people smiling on the street for no apparent reason. Idk though RBF gets a little tiring, you should try giving it a break some time. Sorry, friends that from now on are gonna have to listen to me start too many sentences with “oh my god when I was in Paris…”. Sorry to all the Americans whom I’ve pissed off by saying “sorry” too much. Not sorry to all the assholes I invited to fuck right off when they yelled “nihao” at me, though.

But beyond that, I have so much to be grateful for (omg #blessed). First, foremost, most importantly, and most obviously, thank you to all the people without whom exchange would have probably sucked. Well, like, it probably wouldn’t have sucked, I mean, Europe is fucking awesome, but it definitely wouldn’t have been the same without you. I won’t name names but you know who you are. Hopefully I made your time here marginally better too. Thank you to all the babes back home who kept in touch and made my FOMO a little more bearable. You may now carry on with your lives. Thank you to everyone who shot me a message when they heard about scary ISIS shit happening in my proximity – I have been nothing but safe and happy, but I am touched by your concern. Thank you to my mom, whom I appreciate more from a distance. Thank you to every country I visited for welcoming me with open arms and sharing the very best you have to offer with me. I have been thrilled and delighted and am barely even sick of gothic style architecture. And thank you, Paris, for letting me carve out a spot in the same streets that have inspired centuries of the world’s greatest thinkers, writers, and artists. I think I know now why they all ended up here.

I started this off with a cliché so it’s only fitting that we come full circle and end with one too. Judge me harder. I recently bought a copy of Hemingway’s “A Moveable Feast” from Shakespeare and Co. and read it at the café where Amélie was shot in Montmartre, which is just about the pinnacle of cheesy things to do in Paris. But (cringe) clichés only become cliché because they’re true (CRINGE), and that book won over so many hearts because it rings so true – “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man [or woman, y’all we ain’t tryna discriminate], then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”

So goodbye Paris, but this is not goodbye.