DARE I SAY I’ve been to Paris, when I was only nineteen and broke and couldn’t afford a single meal at an actual restaurant? I took a bus there with Marla, an American friend who was living in Amsterdam at the time. We were super close in high school and I’d flown out to visit her in the hopes that we’d reconnect for a European adventure together.
But when I arrived, she announced that she was newly in love with an older man who lived in the same building two floors below, so I ended up spending more time with her flatmates than her, making grand communal meals in the evenings, walking to and from the markets alone. It was fine, I liked learning about all thedifferent kinds of cheeses available in a Dutch grocery, but this wasn’t the trip I’d intended.
Then one night I got robbed—something about junkies who slept in the basement where hundreds of bikes are stored and it’s easy to hide—and once these guys were inside the building, they’d roam the floors, checking open flats. A few got into ours and then rummaged through my closet—while I was still sleeping apparently—and stole most of the cash I’d brought with me to Amsterdam for the visit—earned from babysitting and catering gigs at home.
So Marla suggested a weekend trip to Paris—a reset of sorts—to see the Eiffel Tower and tour all the fabulous art museums. Also, she’d gotten in a fight with her boyfriend and declared the need for space from the grayness of Amsterdam in early winter. So we boarded a night bus bound for the city of lights and all that it could offer us as young travelers. I was excited. I still had a few hundred dollars left to my name and didn’t own a credit card in these before times without the internet or smartphones—but I believed it was enough.
We found a room at a Catholic hostel in the Latin Quarter and soon realized that we’d signed up for a curfew—up by 7 a.m. each morning for a light breakfast of baguettes with butter and jam, back by 10 p.m. each night—no exceptions. We quickly figured our money wouldn’t get us very far beyond the parks and promenades.
I remember walking around that city aimlessly for hours feeling no love for any of it—we were too broke to eat anywhere and Marla was too lovesick anyway to care. We’d walk past the fancy patios where diners clinked their glasses full of envy. I remember buying cans of tuna and cracking them open on the French manicured lawns of grand parks, gnawing on yet more bread and wishing I was elsewhere—anywhere—but there!
Can I say I’ve even been to Paris in such circumstances? I barely remember any of it but I do have evidence of that trip in the form of a friendship that carried on for years afterward.
One evening at the hostel we met Graciana, a young solo traveler from Argentina. She was sitting on her bed with all of the contents of her backpack dumped out on the bedspread, and she was sorting through it all. I want to say she was crying—at least distraught—enough to ask her what was wrong.
“I’m homesick!” she confessed, telling us how she’d flown here from Buenos Aires for a trip around Europe that she’d saved for but was now feeling so desperate and sad that she wanted to go home and forget the whole thing. We rallied around the idea that she should stay and spent a few whole days with her walking around aimlessly, together.
I adored her story—how her family had come from Eastern Europe and resettled in Buenos Aires after the second war—how she had Jewish roots, how everyone she knew was in some kind of therapy, how she loved languages and cultures and wanted to experience all of them. We were so young, so curious, so ready for endless conversations.
When it was time to leave Paris, she rode the bus back with us to Amsterdam, if I’m not mistaken! I eventually flew back home to Chicago, and the friendship with Marla slowly fizzled—and then fried.
But Graciana and I stayed in touch for many years—I ended up visiting her and her boyfriend in her home city of Buenos Aires, and again six years later in Mexico City, when they were already married with twins.
I flew to Buenos Aires in 2003, as the city faltered under the weight of its financial crisis. I'd come to see a friend but made it a point to reconnect with Graciana. I remember how she introduced me to Proyecto Venus (Project Venus) and the concept of “Venus Dollars,” a community-based currency shared among artists and creatives as a project designed to rebuke the destructive forces of capitalism. The idea was that members could trade goods and services—editorial to legal, cleaning to cooking—completely outside standard capitalistic structures. She took me once to a bookshop and pointed out an entire shelf of books that you could purchase with "Venus" dollars.
The project had started just before the financial collapse and while people lined up at banks demanding what was left of their savings, the project picked up across the city among artists and creatives grasping at alternatives. I remember protests erupting in the streets—people had lost nearly all of their money—and yet the Louis Vuitton shop was still open. For those shopping with American dollars, everything was a steal. No one else could afford it. Inflation soared and Argentines with money in the bank lost 70 percent of its value in the blink of an eye.
The situation was tense, no doubt. But I remember how Graciana's days were filled with hope in her friends, tiny books and small presses, long talks at street-side cafes fueled by cup after cup of potent espressos, a view of the future still rooted in the arts. And we bonded over poetry—she wrote poems of her own in Spanish and I remember how she obsessed over lines of Walt Whitman in translation, a lover of language and words. She was working on a small cultural exchange business at that time with a group of friends who led tours of the city to tourists.
We continued to stay in touch, mostly through letters. Six years later in Mexico, while visiting another friend, I reconnected with Graciana again. I remember how we visited Frida Kahlo’s blue house in Coyoacán, an epic and spiritual visit for both of us. I sensed a shift in her then, a mother of two sons, with a focus more on marketing trends than poetry, and a restlessness to move again, but she was also still the same curious person with a bright light in her heart, if a bit more anxious then. We were both older and trying to feel our way toward uncertain futures.
And then, for one reason or the other we lost touch. The last time I heard from her was about ten years ago! But when I think of Paris, I think of Graciana and the friendship that bloomed there between us under such fleeting circumstances. There’s not any one single reason why haven’t spoken—not that I can recall—it’s just that life spins us all out in different directions. But I remember our shared love for poetry—and a mutual will to find beauty wherever we went—no matter how lost we both felt on the road.
But when I arrived, she announced that she was newly in love with an older man who lived in the same building two floors below, so I ended up spending more time with her flatmates than her, making grand communal meals in the evenings, walking to and from the markets alone. It was fine, I liked learning about all thedifferent kinds of cheeses available in a Dutch grocery, but this wasn’t the trip I’d intended.
Then one night I got robbed—something about junkies who slept in the basement where hundreds of bikes are stored and it’s easy to hide—and once these guys were inside the building, they’d roam the floors, checking open flats. A few got into ours and then rummaged through my closet—while I was still sleeping apparently—and stole most of the cash I’d brought with me to Amsterdam for the visit—earned from babysitting and catering gigs at home.
So Marla suggested a weekend trip to Paris—a reset of sorts—to see the Eiffel Tower and tour all the fabulous art museums. Also, she’d gotten in a fight with her boyfriend and declared the need for space from the grayness of Amsterdam in early winter. So we boarded a night bus bound for the city of lights and all that it could offer us as young travelers. I was excited. I still had a few hundred dollars left to my name and didn’t own a credit card in these before times without the internet or smartphones—but I believed it was enough.
We found a room at a Catholic hostel in the Latin Quarter and soon realized that we’d signed up for a curfew—up by 7 a.m. each morning for a light breakfast of baguettes with butter and jam, back by 10 p.m. each night—no exceptions. We quickly figured our money wouldn’t get us very far beyond the parks and promenades.
I remember walking around that city aimlessly for hours feeling no love for any of it—we were too broke to eat anywhere and Marla was too lovesick anyway to care. We’d walk past the fancy patios where diners clinked their glasses full of envy. I remember buying cans of tuna and cracking them open on the French manicured lawns of grand parks, gnawing on yet more bread and wishing I was elsewhere—anywhere—but there!
Can I say I’ve even been to Paris in such circumstances? I barely remember any of it but I do have evidence of that trip in the form of a friendship that carried on for years afterward.
One evening at the hostel we met Graciana, a young solo traveler from Argentina. She was sitting on her bed with all of the contents of her backpack dumped out on the bedspread, and she was sorting through it all. I want to say she was crying—at least distraught—enough to ask her what was wrong.
“I’m homesick!” she confessed, telling us how she’d flown here from Buenos Aires for a trip around Europe that she’d saved for but was now feeling so desperate and sad that she wanted to go home and forget the whole thing. We rallied around the idea that she should stay and spent a few whole days with her walking around aimlessly, together.
I adored her story—how her family had come from Eastern Europe and resettled in Buenos Aires after the second war—how she had Jewish roots, how everyone she knew was in some kind of therapy, how she loved languages and cultures and wanted to experience all of them. We were so young, so curious, so ready for endless conversations.
When it was time to leave Paris, she rode the bus back with us to Amsterdam, if I’m not mistaken! I eventually flew back home to Chicago, and the friendship with Marla slowly fizzled—and then fried.
But Graciana and I stayed in touch for many years—I ended up visiting her and her boyfriend in her home city of Buenos Aires, and again six years later in Mexico City, when they were already married with twins.
I flew to Buenos Aires in 2003, as the city faltered under the weight of its financial crisis. I'd come to see a friend but made it a point to reconnect with Graciana. I remember how she introduced me to Proyecto Venus (Project Venus) and the concept of “Venus Dollars,” a community-based currency shared among artists and creatives as a project designed to rebuke the destructive forces of capitalism. The idea was that members could trade goods and services—editorial to legal, cleaning to cooking—completely outside standard capitalistic structures. She took me once to a bookshop and pointed out an entire shelf of books that you could purchase with "Venus" dollars.
The project had started just before the financial collapse and while people lined up at banks demanding what was left of their savings, the project picked up across the city among artists and creatives grasping at alternatives. I remember protests erupting in the streets—people had lost nearly all of their money—and yet the Louis Vuitton shop was still open. For those shopping with American dollars, everything was a steal. No one else could afford it. Inflation soared and Argentines with money in the bank lost 70 percent of its value in the blink of an eye.
The situation was tense, no doubt. But I remember how Graciana's days were filled with hope in her friends, tiny books and small presses, long talks at street-side cafes fueled by cup after cup of potent espressos, a view of the future still rooted in the arts. And we bonded over poetry—she wrote poems of her own in Spanish and I remember how she obsessed over lines of Walt Whitman in translation, a lover of language and words. She was working on a small cultural exchange business at that time with a group of friends who led tours of the city to tourists.
We continued to stay in touch, mostly through letters. Six years later in Mexico, while visiting another friend, I reconnected with Graciana again. I remember how we visited Frida Kahlo’s blue house in Coyoacán, an epic and spiritual visit for both of us. I sensed a shift in her then, a mother of two sons, with a focus more on marketing trends than poetry, and a restlessness to move again, but she was also still the same curious person with a bright light in her heart, if a bit more anxious then. We were both older and trying to feel our way toward uncertain futures.
And then, for one reason or the other we lost touch. The last time I heard from her was about ten years ago! But when I think of Paris, I think of Graciana and the friendship that bloomed there between us under such fleeting circumstances. There’s not any one single reason why haven’t spoken—not that I can recall—it’s just that life spins us all out in different directions. But I remember our shared love for poetry—and a mutual will to find beauty wherever we went—no matter how lost we both felt on the road.
