Travels as trips (of self-discovery)

Every time I go to Paris, I am troubled. First of all, I love it. This would be a trite statement to make were it not for the fact that Paris is like Home City. They only differ by some 800 years of existence (Paris is older, obviously), several magnitudes of significance and trillions of francs more poured into the former.

So, every time I go to Paris, I am faced with an alternative version of myself, a bit like what happened in Cologne last summer.

What if I had insisted in studying in Paris? Ok, I would be a worse professional and maybe an unemployed one, too. But maybe I would have lingered on HERE, no negligible matter. I would be proficient in French, the language I love most besides my native one. I would have led a self-confident, bohemian and perhaps perpetually penniless existence. I would have paired up with any number of obnoxious but spectacularly charming somehow ugly (like me) Parisian women smelling of this 80s perfume I still cannot place (not Poison, not Opium and – dear oh dear – not Tresor, which to me was synonymous to sex for half of the nineties). I would take cheap great wine for granted. I would have developed an awful taste in music and I would mistake vaguness for depth and obfuscation for greatness. I would probably be fat, what with all that food, but much more self-confident.

I hate to say it, but it would probably not be me. All the above would take a different character, a different person. Therefore I am not of Paris. Couldn’t have been, too.

A short note on Chicago

Chicago, as you can see here, is impressive. It is the archetypal North American urban landscape. It is a majestic and impressive and awe-inspiring urban landscape.

Still, Chicago is like those cities I used to make with Sim City 2: it looks neat and tidy and gritty in well-proportioned parts. However, or maybe, this is why, it feels very artificial. It has character, what with the lake and the elevated railway and the parks and its landmarks. But this character also feels artificial. Maybe I spent too much time downtown — but no such issues ever arose in, hm, Manhattan.

Speaking of which: Where are Chicagoans? Well, they drive around and they ride the trains. But they don’t walk a lot, do they? Unless they are destitute. Or out-of-towners.

I liked Chicago, I admired Chicago, I enjoyed Chicago. However, I felt no real buzz. Nothing like the invigorating pretense and pretentiousness that, according to St, fuels New Yorkers.

All in all, great buildings and urban vistas don’t make a city — people do. Otherwise, Dubai and Shanghai and other nowhere places would make great cities.

At the end of the day, despite its breathtaking backdrops, count the films taking place in Chicago. I can think of two: the Blues Brothers and — hm — The Matrix. The latter is not really Chicago, either. And it was filmed in Sydney. So, there.