The Museum of the Middle Ages, housed in the former Cluny Abbey hotel (late c.15th) and the Gallo-Roman baths (c.1st-3rd), is a great way to spend an afternoon in Paris. It’s even better at the moment, because until June 30 the museum has free admission, which makes it even more appealing to splash out that extra 1€ for an informative yet toffy-toned audio guide.

Not that this was intended to be a post of tenuous segues, but the Museum of the Middle Ages was definitely thought-provoking. Judging from the smell, quite possibly the most authentic medieval item on display was the ladies loos, but try as I might, I couldn’t find the accompanying audio guide spiel on their origins.

Which in turn got me thinking about the greatest ever introductions to novels. In my humble opinion, Patrick Süskind’s rankly stenched opening to Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is deserved some sort of fetid accolade. The sensorially superb story of the odoriferous, yet odourless, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is really a love or hate tale. This book entices extreme reactions – it either gives you chilling creeps of disgust or glee.

Anyway… a portion of the tale’s action takes place in the south-eastern French town of Grasse. The centre of French perfume industry since the 18th century and regarded to be the world’s perfume capital, Grasse is also worth a look. A sun-baked Riviera feel characterises the town, and the perfume museum will interest even the most devout cosmetics-phobe (I can provide a personal testimony for this!). Grasse can be reached on an easy trip from either Nice or Cannes, and I recommend a wander through the backstreets for baklava!

When I was living in Russia, I started to take ballet classes. This was pretty remarkable in itself, one of those momentous taming of the tomboy life developments. It got pretty embarrassing at times (for more gory details, check out my Europe Trotter post and have an artistically-appreciative perve at the Farukh Ruzimatov video I rustled up from YouTube!), but the most embarrassing instance in my “ballet career” actually happened in France.

This is hard to believe, as most of the time in my St. Petersburg class I was pirouetting on thin ice in terms of the stuff-up stakes. It didn’t get off to a good start. I turned up to the first lesson with pink slippers (perhaps the Grishko sales assistants were trying to offload this unpopular shade of baby-bum on unsuspecting foreigners and dance novices), only to have it announced by our militaristic teacher that our “uniform” would have to match the colour of our slippers. I balked at this prospect, and instead wore all black for the duration of the course. She never mentioned anything, and if she did, I would have feigned a convenient language incomprehension.

But the worst was in France, in a little town called Hyères on the Côte d’Azur. I had just arrived there from St. Petes on a gust of icy Siberian winds, fresh from my ballet classes, and seeking a little respite in the sun. Guillaume, who was living there at the time, suggested that we find a ballet class for me, which I thought sounded like a great idea (I was thoroughly enjoying ballet at the time). We found a dance studio with an instructor who, ‘no problem at all, I can speak English’ announced that he had the perfect class for me when I told him that I had been only dancing for six months in Russia.

I went to the class, and to my surprise I found myself surrounded by lithe 15-year-olds, and not the frumpy, tracky-dacked adult learners I had been expecting. We started and then I realise what was wrong. He thought that I had been in Russia for six months to dance, not the actuality of only starting six months previously when I happened to be in Russia.

Merde! It was deeply, shamefully humiliating, to describe it in the best possible terms. On his encouragement I tried to stick it out for the whole class, but in the end I held my head high (and tears in) and made what I hope was a graceful exit. I packed my bag, ran home in tears, and never went back there!


My worse-for-wear Grishko ballet slippers (version II, in black). They’ve taken a battering since being converted to everyday house slippers!

This is now my third visit to France.

Technically, it’s my fourth, but I am blocking a whirlwind “three days in Paris, two days on the Côte d’Azur” bus tour from my re-telling, but I thought I should set things straight in case any of those suppressed memories rear their ugly heads in the near future.

The first was a nervous meet-the-family visit to my boyfriend’s hometown, all under the guise of attending the Festival des Francofolies in La Rochelle. Linguistically, I was able to express that I was 13 years old, which was hilariously funny for me, but I don’t think the joke carried well, and I’m sure that many family and friends thought that perhaps Guillaume (let’s give him a name) was indulging in some illegal fetish that involved an over-grown pre-pubescent…

The second was spontaneous – and all related to the fact that the mercury had plunged to -30° in St. Petersburg (after a marvellously temperate 0° for the whole of the New Year’s festive season), whilst Toulon (where Guillaume was studying at the time) was enjoying a mid-winter 24° (plus!), so I thought I should join the dazzling sunshine to shake my winter blues. I spent a month nearby, in a little holiday unit, rented to students in the off-season. With the Mediterranean as my backyard, I could concentrate on the hardly serious pursuits of buying a pain au chocolat of a morning, and wandering amongst seaweed of an afternoon. To finish it all off, we had a memorably compact week in Paris, staying in a friend’s capsule-like apartment and notching up tourist attractions like they were prize scalps. Needless to say, this time, I’ve hardly ventured outside. I can see the Eiffel Tower from the nearby metro station, and otherwise, I might just wait till the tourist tide has ebbed away… wish me luck, please, I might be waiting until 80…