For better or for worse, Paris to me is inextricably bound with the movie, 'Before Sunset'. I watched it a few weeks before we left for Paris. I remember really liking the film, but it wasn't like an earth-shaking life-altering experience for me.
And then about a week after we'd left from Paris, on the journey from Madrid to Cordoba, the movie was being played on the train... in Spanish. This time, it felt different. I knew all the dialogues; in fact, I didn't need to listen to the dialogues. That lump in the throat, that tug at the heart strings, that faith, that romance that I couldn't summon when I was watching the movie at home- I found all that while watching the film on a moving train... in mute. That's when I got it. The movie wasn't about those two people; it was about those two people... in Paris.
You need to be an adventurer or a romantic at heart (aren't they both the same?) to fall in love with Paris. Seeing the Eiffel or the Louvre or the Chateau de Versailles couldn't do it for me. But walking up to the Notre Dame in the cool breeze of the early morning, I suddenly felt the incredible sense of romance that is Paris. It is that moment that comes in every relationship, when you can chose what this will mean to you. It's a decision that is based on whether you like who you are in that relationship. And I must have really liked who I was in Paris; I distinctly remember thinking then that I would give anything to live in this city awhile.
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