"So whatcha been up to in Paris?" "Oh ya know, just checkin out dead stuff."

It's been quite a morbid few days.


I came to this odd realization as I sat down at Cafe Chez Papa Saturday afternoon with a few friends to enjoy a little warmth and coffee. Sitting there in that cafe, laughing with friends, and watching Parisians walking by outside, I couldn't help but feel the life of this city surge through me. That's when I realized, despite the vivacity of Paris, most of my activities over the last few days involved people with no vivacity whatsoever.


Aka dead people.


As class ended on Friday, a few of us journeyed into the heart of Paris to conquer the twisting streets and back alleys of the Latin Quarter, a section of Paris rich in history and culture. The streets are basically a maze of sinuous pathways, so it came as a big surprise when I emerged from a tiny alleyway to find one of the coolest looking buildings I've ever seen.

The Pantheon. Originally a basilica but was converted into a secular building to house the bodies of some of the greatest French minds after they have passed away. After we pushed open the gigantic doors, we entered the main hall of the building.

Incredible. What made it even better was that it felt like a discovery of our own. As if the city led us down our windy path for the exact purpose of finding this amazing building. Paris seems to have a way of doing that. We followed the instructions of our tour brochures and continued down the hall, finally descending the stairs  into the crypt below.

Now things were starting to get creepy. What lay ahead of us was a maze of tombs of some of the greatest minds the human race has ever known.

Voltaire the Philosopher

Marie & Pierre Curie

Victor Hugo                                                     

I almost felt like I wasn't worthy of being here, like a simple guy from the U.S. had no place being anywhere near these tombs. Really humbling, yet cool feeling. That feeling was nothing compared to how I would feel the next day. The following afternoon, as a cloudy sky threatened rain, we found ourselves descending deep below Paris into the many tunnels beneath the city that house the remains of millions and millions of Parisians from another time.


The Catacombs.

"Stop! This here is an empire of death."

Welp, that's comforting.

Back in the 17th century, many of the cemeteries outside Paris hit a boiling point of unsanitary conditions and overcrowded graves. To ameliorate the problem, Paris government officials began a project of digging tunnels underneath the city to use as a mass gravesite. What resulted was one of the eeriest experiences I've ever had.

Once again, another humbling experience. We were standing amongst the only remnants of millions of lives. Just astounding. Another feeling that kind of hit me was whether my being here was ethically right. Was it cool for me to pay 4 euro to come explore the graves of people I never knew? Is it right to make someone's grave an attraction? The group of us never outrightly asked any of these questions. But I knew we were all thinking them. No one really talked as we weaved through the stacks of skulls and bones. Kinda makes you acknowledge your own mortality. Something that people my age and especially in my group of friends, with all our planning for the future, rarely think about. But I guess that's the point of catapulting into a completely different world. To discover things about yourself you would never normally realize.

So as I sat in that cafe, relishing in the tantalizing wafts of baking bread, the warmth of good company, and the vivacity of the city outside, the juxtaposition of the life above the streets and the death below seemed almost poetic in a way.

Poetic. That's actually a great word to describe Paris.

       Poetic.