Archive for the ‘Travel’ Category
Les bouquinistes
Posted on: October 8, 2009
- In: Bibliophilia | Cultural History | History | Travel | Used Bookstores
- 4 Comments
Are you a book lover? A bibliophile? Do you get no greater joy out of life than browsing a used bookstore? Do your knees get weak at the thought of a library book sale?
Have you been to Paris yet?
The Parisiens know books, appreciate books. You’ve probably seen the pictures of the book stalls that line the Seine, in their ubiquitous green carts. These are les bouquinistes, the legendary booksellers of Paris:
They are part of the Paris legend. 217 booksellers spread out their 900 stands along the capital’s 11 quays, which represent a three kilometer walk. The onlookers pass by their sides, rummage through the famous green boxes, buy a book here and there, a poster, a vintage print. But who are these men and women who brave the wind, the cold and the rain? Winter is here, but they are still at the task. Enter into the biggest outdoor bookstore.
The quote above is a translation of an audio piece from La Guinguette — a very good online French journal. I want to put a plug in for them, as they have great products, and the audio is free to listen to. (You can download it if you subscribe.)
This article is a great example. this is not French for the beginner, instead it is the French as it is spoken in the streets. Read this article in the English translation, but also play it, to get the ambient sound of the Paris streets as bouquinistes are interviewed at their stalls.
I can almost picture where each stall is, as it’s described in the article. On our honeymoon, we rented an apartment next to the Seine, on the rive gauche, with green stalls outside our door…
And the French are wonderfully book mad. Here’s a picture of me paying 2 euro for a book at a vending machine:
Another way to access books!
Travel Writing
Posted on: January 6, 2007
- In: Quotes | Reviews | Travel | Travel Writing
- 2 Comments
If there’s one genre that we all feel we have a claim to, it’s travel writing. C’mon! Don’t you feel that you too could be a travel writer? It’s not that hard, is it?
Anyone can throw a 50-word review on an online travel community — I do it myself quite regularly at my new obsession, Gusto!. (If you’re so inclined, check out my profile.) But seriously — name a travel writer, who’s not one of these two big guns:
Bill Bryson
Today I want to introduce you to the man everyone should read (and aspire to write as well as), Pico Iyer. Prolific, insightful, man-of-the-world — you get 200,000+ Google hits on the man. (Go ahead, explore. He’s been interviewed a lot, he’s written a lot, and he’s had lots written about him. And, he speaks well — went to a reading and Q&A with him once.)
I will give you a sample, and you can decide for yourself.
Years ago, my mom and I traveled to Vietnam, and stayed for a week in Hanoi, in the old part of the city. Gorgeous place, but I can’t describe it anywhere near as well as Iyer in this excerpt:
“And nighttime was the best of all in the old, and stately capital, as something ancient began to come forth from the shadows. I loved to bump along the lamplit alleyways after dark in a cyclo, a perfect pace at which to see and smell the spicy nights. In the gloom, the town was more mysterious than ever, the streets too dark even to read by, the little stalls half lit, the faces eerie in blackness. Lovers were eating ice cream by the waterside, and children traded cards of movie stars. Whole families sat at tables on the sidewalk, eating elaborate meals by the flicker of oil lamps. Couples sat cradled by their bicycles, or in the hollows of large trees. The air smelled of mint and a festival spirit. And it was easy to feel the lamps were burning inside the people too.”
[from the essay “Yesterday Once More” in the collection Falling off the Map: Some Lonely Places of the World (1993)]
Go check him out. You won’t regret it.
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