Less than two months remain in my cross-Atlantic journey. This growing sense of imminence has led me to begin thinking about the rapidly diminishing number of days that I have left to explore France before heading back to the States. There is so much I haven’t seen and experienced and that I know will have escaped me once again when I board the plane on July 12. Le Grand Palais. Le Petit Palais. L’Institut du monde arabe. The top of Notre Dame. The top of the Arc de triomphe. Le musée Quai Branly. Just a few of the sites on my list before the end of my séjour. Trips already planned include Lausanne, Marseille, Provence, Aurillac, Lyon and perhaps a wine tasting journey through Bourgogne. Spain will have to wait. As will Bordeaux, île de Ré, les Pyrénées...
From my seat in classe première on the TGV Lyria destined for Lausanne, Switzerland, I watch the little villages fly by between sips of coffee and flipped pages of Les Inrockuptibles. Savoring a bite of roast beef and a mouthful of red wine, I reflect on what gives the French countryside its look that distinguishes it from America. The United States neither lack in beauty nor diversity, and yet... the hills and dales and waterways that flash by my window leave me hungry for more and a lingering feeling of nostalgia immediately after we pass. Nonetheless, as I contemplate the primarily light-colored stone houses and their reddish-brown roofs that crowd around the central church of many a village between Paris and Dijon and on to Lausanne, I am filled with an even greater desire to explore my own country. To fly to various corners of the 48 contiguous, rent a car and explore parks and towns and monuments and histories. I want to read about it all; explore it by bike, on foot, running or walking, in a canoe, a kayak; photograph it; watch sunrises and sunsets as the alter the perception of places already discovered. Each new experience opens the door to a million more; each article and book read makes me excitingly aware of how many more pages await me.
And for all the talk of the future, it is equally fulfilling to savor the present. This afternoon, we arrived at the Tennis de la Faluère for our third team match, this time versus TC Lutèce from the 20th arrondissement.
The sign and a gravel path led us through a tree-shaped tunnel, across the bois de Vincennes’s bicycle loop to a large tennis complex of 21 quick courts in which each set of four courts was partitioned by large, well-manicured fifteen foot hedges. We wound our way through the labyrinth back to courts 20 and 21, the latter being the lone, non-protected court, seemingly added as an afterthought to fill the remaining space. I played in the number one position and easily took care of my match with a 6-0, 6-0 win. The rest of the team followed suit with a three set win at the number two position and relatively decisive wins at the number three and number four positions. We lost the unplayed doubles through a heads or tails coin toss. All this final information came to me via text as I was forced to abandon my teammates mid-match to catch my train to Switzerland.
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| "Quick", i.e. French hard courts |
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| Anne, in a three-set battle |
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| Dominique, cheering her on |
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| Christelle, taking care of business |
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| Kelly, our fan, and me after my match |
The sign and a gravel path led us through a tree-shaped tunnel, across the bois de Vincennes’s bicycle loop to a large tennis complex of 21 quick courts in which each set of four courts was partitioned by large, well-manicured fifteen foot hedges. We wound our way through the labyrinth back to courts 20 and 21, the latter being the lone, non-protected court, seemingly added as an afterthought to fill the remaining space. I played in the number one position and easily took care of my match with a 6-0, 6-0 win. The rest of the team followed suit with a three set win at the number two position and relatively decisive wins at the number three and number four positions. We lost the unplayed doubles through a heads or tails coin toss. All this final information came to me via text as I was forced to abandon my teammates mid-match to catch my train to Switzerland.
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