Baguette Rhymes with Dead || ONC 2024 | ✔

Chapter 1: Paris Syndrome

I wasn't an expert on music in the slightest, but that didn't stop me from thinking 'Broken Dishwasher' was a weird name for a band.

The group performed in a venue few would consider spectacular: not quite the Paris La Défense Arena, but the cellar bar of a dingy hostel near the Saint-Lazare station in the eighth arrondisement. Their audience, me included, consisted of a handful of young foreign travellers who happened to find themselves in the French capital this autumn. A foursome of young women made up the band, their lead singer caterwauling into her microphone with wild abandon. Stupid name or not, Broken Dishwasher must've struck a golden deal with my accommodation of choice: the ladies gained a free practice space and beta listeners, while the hostel could provide its guests with cheap entertainment under the guise of 'promoting up-and-coming local talent'.

Nothing but winners in that arrangement. The only losers seemed to be my poor, suffering ears.

I sighed, placing the book I'd been trying to read on the table in front of me. I'd hoped to get through the last hundred pages of The Count of Monte Cristo tonight, preferably with some nice background music, but this noise only assaulted my ability to concentrate. I'd come down to the hostel bar searching for a positive experience and my prospects had briefly looked promising: the dimmed lights, the cozy bar and the allure of being in the underbelly of a historical building made for a decent reading atmosphere. But, in the end, it disappointed me.

Just like the entirety of Paris so far.

Only two days into what would be a month-long trip on the Continent, starting in France and ending in the Netherlands after a carefully planned route through Italy and Germany, and already it was off to a miserable start. I understood those Japanese tourists coming down with Paris Syndrome a little too well. The books and movies I loved showed a Paris of glamour and romance, elegant sophistication, a city so elevated above the others it had no true equal in the world. Nobody had bothered to tell me how rough around the edges the real thing would be.

In just those two days, I'd taken note of more homeless people in the streets than I had in eighteen years of living in Dublin. I couldn't go near a single tourist attraction without scammers clamouring for my attention and touts hounding me as they tried to sell me tacky souvenirs I didn't want. The Eiffel Tower wasn't much more than a rusting metal monstrosity, its image only improving at night when the French turned on the lights. The streets had a funnier smell to them than I was used to and rats scurried along the Seine when darkness fell. On the subway, at least one strange old man had stared me down to the point of discomfort, and the continuous threat of skilled pickpockets robbing me of my most important possessions saddled me up with a constant sense of paranoia.

I could see beauty in quaint cafés, stately old buildings and the relics of times past all around me. But that didn't mean the city as a whole wasn't a dirty, overcrowded mess.

I'd emptied my glass of Pepsi, which signalled to me that perhaps it was time to slowly start on my way back to my dorm. One more glass and I'd turn in for the night. I decided to put a little more distance between myself and the dulcet, off-key tones of Broken Dishwasher's lead singer, leaving my table and fleeing for the bar on the other side of the cellar, which seemed a better place to have my final drink. With Dumas' masterpiece tucked under my arm, I wondered why Paris couldn't be more like the Paris of Edmond Dantès, why it couldn't be that glorious place of storybooks and centuries long gone.

But maybe, I supposed, it wasn't Paris I resented. Maybe it was just my being there all alone.

Even if that was my own stupid fault.

"Pepsi, s'il vous plaît," I told the bartender as I took a seat at the bar, placing The Count of Monte Cristo in front of me again. With over a thousand pages, the damn thing weighed a kilogram, and I wouldn't keep holding that if I could avoid it. I only noticed I'd sat down next to someone else when my neighbour pointed out the size of the tome.