Missing: If found, please report.

I have been in France for five months 20 days and counting.

I miss laughing at least 80 percent of the time.  I miss my cat meowing and taking my dog for walks.  I miss my Nature’s Gate shampoo and conditioner.  I miss my own shower. I miss my own bed.  I miss the rest of my clothes, which have been neglected for 5 months.  I miss not getting to know my new house.  I miss Carpenter Library with the tables.  I miss my job working in archives. I miss people smiling on the street.  I miss blue skies 200 days out of the year instead of 14.  I miss local things.  I miss knowing people on the street and I miss Vermont farmers’ markets.  I miss really good tap water.  I miss green spaces that weren’t artificially made but rather consciously protected.  I miss my sweatpants.  I miss swimming.  I miss responsible students.  I miss BYOB restaurants. I miss Vermonters.  I miss Bryn Mawr.  I oddly miss the United States.  I miss Bear Pond Books.  I miss the English language.  I miss my quirks.  I miss driving.  I miss playing the saxophone.  I miss my friends.  I miss my family.  I miss my oddly extended family.  I probably miss you (whoever you are reading this).  I miss understanding academia.  I miss being a true-to-the-core political science major.  I miss having the New York Times to read at breakfast.  I miss having the New York Times crossword puzzle to attempt.  I miss yarn-bombed places.  I miss snow.  I miss the bitter cold of fall in Vermont.  I miss tjmaxx.  I miss my printer.  I miss coin rolls.  I miss well water.  

Revolution...pourquoi pas?

Living in Paris definitely has it's ups and downs.  Who knew?  Apparently Louis XIV did in the 17th century when he moved his court to Versailles (or something like that).  The gold-laden, mammoth estate of Versailles is obnoxious in all its "glory".  The buildings are huge, the tourists are everywhere and the history seems absent at times.  As my father put it, I "visited the place that caused the French Revolution."  Indeed Versailles is ridiculous to the point of unbelievable, but at the same time there is one aspect that gave my exploration a certain charm.

Versailles was one place I thought I would visit because if I didn't do it now, I probably never would.  Last year in England I visited castles left and right, but compared to England Versailles is barely a castle.  Versailles is a royal estate.  The buildings alone explain the horrible labor that the monarchy forced upon the backs of the French but the gardens bring the estate to a whole new level.  The gardens were also my favorite part.  Unlike the castles in England, Versailles feels like a dollhouse waiting for some little girl to place her dolls on the pink ottomans or have tea on the hideous green china.  The English castles, while much older and often in ruins, felt much more like the places of royalty as I could invent my own ideas of what life must have been like.  The gardens at Versailles however leave nothing to the imagination and instead bring you into a magical land of fountains and mazes and music.  

We were lucky enough that our visit landed on one of the last days of the Grandes Eaux Musicales, the spectacle that takes place at Versailles on the weekends from March to October.  Walking out to the gardens, which also meant breathing real air after a few hours inside, we walked out to water splashing and a symphony playing off in the distance.  After a quick tour of the gardens just off the side of the entrance we headed towards the main "canal."  It was here that I was mesmerized.  Music was playing all around me and I was convinced that I would turn the corner and there would be the Paris Orchestra.  Unfortunately that was just my imagination again.  My next thought was that the music was coming from the fountains themselves.  Wrong again.  I started looking for the speakers, and despite Versailles' best attempt to hide the large black sound projectors in the green trees behind fences, I soon found the source of the melodies that were seeping around us. It may seem over done, and frankly looking back it all seems like a pretty good reason to start a revolution, but in the 21st century on a bitter, cold day in the fall, I was quite pleased to have an accompagnement to my walk around the gardens of Versailles.