Paris calls, and a new adventure is about to begin

About the time I was told it could take up to three months to get a long-term French visa because I had filed all the wrong documents and didn’t have a permanent address in Paris, I wondered what I was doing.

Why was I giving up my rent-controlled apartment in sunny L.A., abandoning my car, saying goodbye to family and friends?

Why, in short, was I moving to Paris?

Actually, this doesn’t count as moving because I’m coming back. But I’m not exactly traveling either, because I plan to stay for seven months.

Call it changing places. That’s what I’m doing. And I have my reasons.

Who needs a reason to go to Paris anyway? Despite the hassles of post-Sept. 11 travel and the worsening exchange rate (1 euro was worth about $1 at the beginning of 2003 and more like $1.24 a year later), Paris remains -- never mind Rome -- the place people want to see before they cash out.

In my case, there’s no danger of missing out. I’ve been to Paris five times, starting in 1986 with my honeymoon, spent in a cruddy but romantic Left Bank hotel. After the marriage ended, I went back to prove that, with or without a husband, I’d always have Paris.

Next, there was a nutty trip in 1994 for a travel story on budget accommodations. To research it, I stayed in 13 hotels in 14 days. I lugged my suitcase around on the Metro and rode a bike to Pere-Lachaise cemetery in a driving rain.

I breezed in two years ago for a memorable 24 hours. That time, I stayed at the ritzy Hotel Montalembert on the Left Bank and got a French haircut.

The city’s beauty, richness and savoir-vivre never failed, though to enjoy them I had to put up with its infamous attitude. Shop clerks cut me short when I tried to speak French, waiters intimidated me, passersby glared when I smiled at them in the street. Above all, the hauteur of Parisians tangled me up inside, made me feel like a rebuffed child.

But in recent visits, I’ve been surprised to find Parisians friendlier and more welcoming, even as they fulminate against the evils of what they perceive as our encroaching culture and arrogant foreign policy. The more I read, the more I realize that they can be short-fused, argumentative people with a code of behavior as cryptic to us as that of Aborigines in the Australian outback.

As their political influence wanes and globalization -- or Americanization, as they call it -- obscures the distinctions that make France French, it is fascinating to watch them cope, like a beautiful woman going ungently through menopause. Something will be lost if they become less themselves.

I returned to Paris last fall with these conflicted feelings and, not quite knowing what I was about, saw an apartment rental agent there. I hadn’t even broached the idea of living and working in Paris with my bosses, but somehow my feet were on the road. Later, my editor floored me by agreeing to the project, provided I keep filing this column and writing travel stories, not only on France but also on other places.

Besides providing an appealing change of orientation and easy access to all of Europe, spending seven months in Paris will give me a chance to figure out the city, see the past in the present, judge the truth and falseness of cliches. On a deeper level, it will allow me to expose myself to France in a way a quick research trip can’t.

In my 10 years as a travel writer, l have island-hopped in Tonga, watched giant sea turtles lay eggs on a beach in Costa Rica and stayed in an ice hotel north of the Arctic Circle in Sweden. I have solved packing dilemmas, know how to plan a trip and see it through with no crises or meltdowns and can move, footloose, around the world. But occasionally I go someplace where I want to stay longer than a few days. What would I find out about a place if I had time to settle in? How would it change me?

Sometimes I think of a monthlong trip I took to India several years ago, how I prepared for it by reading “Mahabharata” and studying yoga, then got there and found everything too intense and contrary to take in, regardless of my preparation. When I got home, I felt shattered and uncertain about what I was doing with my life. It took months to get over it. Now I think that was my best trip.

Moving around is invigorating. You stay on top of things, in control. But now I want to see what happens when I make an investment of time and self in a place.

People are alternately envious and horrified when I tell them what I’m doing. Mostly, they ask whether I know anyone there. I don’t really, though my sister and brother-in-law live in Brussels, 90 minutes from Paris by train.

My visa came through about a month ago. I rented an apartment, and I found a language school where I plan to study for a month. And I bought a plane ticket with an October return.

Now I’m sitting amid packing crates and piles of books about France, still wondering what I’m doing and feeling a little anxious. But it doesn’t bother me anymore. It’s how a person ought to feel before a great adventure.