Day 355: Paris and Anjali, 50 francs
36yearsago.com
Vienna 1971—A Student Journal
A year of music, study, travel, sightseeing &
friends.
Day
355 — Paris and Anjali, 50 francs
22-Jul-1972
(Sat.)
TRANSCRIPT
WIEN to PARIS
A busy morning. Left for airport. Airport—no problems
with bringing guitar and horn on plane. My luggage is
the exact weight. Routine check of luggage and
personal search. No problem. Good idea.
Changed money. I have 50 Francs to see Paris.
Ha!
Plane trip: very small plane. Still, everything
really nice.
PARIS
After getting a lot of help from a fellow at Pan Am,
I contacted Anjali. Took bus, left luggage, and went
to house (walked).
Met mother. Beautiful house, right at the foot of the
Eiffel Tower. Met sisters. Nice. They already had so
many guests, I couldn’t stay. Helped me find a room
for 20 francs at a student hostel. Went there and
then back.
Met Anjali—looking great. Went for a walk, ate, and
then sang with guitars. Really nice seeing her,
pleasant, and good looking.
Had a short, nice, and pleasant time. Not time alone.
Said goodbye knowing that we wouldn’t see each other
again.
Again, this was the logical and foreseeable
result—since we have two different paths and
countries. Again, I have another empty feeling,
another void.
Paris — People — Europe — THE END
REFLECTIONS
Paris
in a day. I leave
Vienna and arrive in Paris. The Pan Am people were
once again very helpful (bring that airline back). I
don’t write about Paris itself because I was
preoccupied with a special friend, but I did take
some pictures. Paris, the little I saw of it, was
beautiful.
Money.
On arriving in Paris, I only had 50 French francs. As
always, and with most us, money always seems to be an
issue. With the ebb and flow of life and living
expenses, things haven’t changed that much in the
present. We have to make due.
Parisian memories. Besides
Anjali, I have two memories of Paris—one, the fact
that it was beautiful to walk around and that there
was a sense of history and culture (as with Vienna).
The second memory is that of my walking through the
park near the Eiffel Tower and asking a man for
directions. In my best two-years-of-high-school
French, I asked something like, “Pardonez-moi,
je veux aller a cette addresse. Vous savez où est
l’addresse?” Pointing
to the address in my letter, there was no response
and I thought my French was bad. Instead, he turned
out to be a homeless man who was, himself,
preoccupied.
Two preoccupied souls wandering the parks of Paris.
Anjali.
I meet
Anjali at her house and once again meet her mom, and
her sisters—all very, very nice and friendly. I have
mentioned that Anjali’s father was a diplomat. They
lived in a beautiful house near the Eiffel Tower.
Living all over the world was a nice way to grow up.
Did I mention that Anjali knew how to speak a million
languages?
I think that Anjali was happy to see me in her always
polite, but cute, manner. I remember her asking me
how long I was planning to stay. Perhaps, she would
have showed me the city. I said I needed to leave
shortly. Inside my churning stomach I’m
hoping
that,
somehow, her family was going to let me stay for a
few days. When I heard they had guests, I said I was
leaving the next morning. Her mother helped me find a
room in a student hostel. They didn’t know I only had
50 francs to my name. (What an adventure.)
A
talk, a walk. After
setting myself up at the hostel, I return and spend a
short and wonderful time with Anjali, walking,
talking, just being good friends. You can tell from
the journal that I had feelings for Anjali. Knowing
that I would never see her again (and I haven’t) was
affecting me. I always suspected that Anjali had her
feet realistically on the ground when it came to us.
She was heading off to University in a month and had
a full life ahead of her. I’m going across the pond
back to the U.S. to start my life after college.
Still there was this feeling of a void. Hard to
explain. Not so hard to explain. Ah youth, we all get
over it—but feelings are very powerful when you are
young.
Anjali was a wonderful girl and we ended up being
good friends.
Anjali
surprise. Here is
the surprise I promised you at the beginning of the
journal, when I first talked about Anjali during the
month of our summer German language course—Anjali and
I ended up corresponding, via old-fashioned
traditional letter writing, for several years after
Vienna. I remember enjoying reading and writing those
letters between us. I wish I had them (discreetly)
for this journal. In those letters, we became better
friends and shared our experiences.
Anjali eventually graduated University, married a
young man, and begain to raise a young, new family.
How do I know this? Well, 10 years after 1972 Vienna,
in 1982, I wrote a song called “One Summer Night”
that I sang on a homemade demo and sent to her old
address. Surprise, I receive a response and Anjali
updates me on her family. Unfortunately, I can’t sing
very well, but “One Summer Night” specifically
referred to Anjali and our dinner/dance night out
when she was leaving Vienna in September 1971. See
Day 033.
I remember, that in 1971–1972, I missed Anjali a lot.
Last
day is tomorrow. My last
day in Europe is tomorrow. I will reveal a new Anjali
surprise that even surprised me.
Here are some photos of Paris. Such a beautiful city.
You know this, the Eiffel Tower
A
Parisian street corner
Walking the streets and parks of
Paris
John
- - - -
