This article was sent to newsletter subscribers as part of our weekly newsletter, Personal Space. Sign up to start getting it here.
Every person I follow on social media is in Europe right now. They’re either at an art museum in Copenhagen (why have I seen at least three different people visit The Louisiana Museum in the past few days?), standing in front of a tile wall in Lisbon or, of course, trying to get a perfect selfie with the Eiffel Tower.
While I remain decidedly stateside this summer, the onslaught of snapshots have me thinking about my own Eiffel Tower memory, from the summer I studied abroad in London.
It went like this, as I wrote in my journal at the time:
“saturday night in front of the eiffel tower, i met un garcon americaine… the eiffel tower la nuit plus a cute boy plus my own bottle of wine equals je l’aime.”
Let me translate that from cringe to English for you: My friends and I went to Paris for the weekend and had the highly original idea to buy wine, cheese and a baguette for a picnic under the Eiffel Tower. Once we were there, we started talking to a group of American guys who had the same idea.
“Where are you from?” we asked.
“Georgia,” they said.
“Oh!” I said. “I know exactly six people in Georgia who are your age: my cousins. Do you know them?”
What a stupid question. Georgia is a whole state. Of course they didn’t know them. I told them their names anyway.
“Oh yeah,” one of the guys (the cutest one, in my opinion) answered nonchalantly. “We carpool to Hebrew school.”
What if I told you that reader, I married him?
I didn’t. But for the rest of that weekend in Paris, I believed that was the only way this could end. We’d honeymoon in Paris and go to this exact same spot! We’d drive our own children to Hebrew school! We’d spend the rest of our lives telling this story!
Instead, according to my trusty journal, police at the Eiffel Tower started spraying tear gas (I didn’t think to write down why, too invested in my love story) and we all ran away. I saw him once more, at the train station on our way back to London, but was thwarted from deepening our connection for a second time because — again, according to my journal — my friends and I spotted, of all people, the actress who played Mrs. Geist in “Clueless” and ran to talk to her.
I guess all in all, it wasn’t a bad weekend. To this day it’s my most interesting Jewish geography story.
Sign up here to receive these essays with extras including what we’re reading, buying, and watching.
