Alaminadura

Source: RTL.fr

            What is your very first thought when you think about the beginnings of your one-year stay in Paris? Is it the Eiffel Tower? Or is it a very long walk alongside the Seine? Well, it didn’t happen to me. My adventure started from a distant corner of the City of Lights: Porte de Clignancourt, the very last station of the line 4, the 18th district. What was I doing over there on the 5th of September? Well, people responsible for preparing the French classes for the Erasmus students were thinking that it could have been the great place for the very first metro trip, so I had to sacrifice over 40 minutes of walking each day for two weeks to reach the centre of Clignancourt (one of the buildings of the Sorbonne University) and another 40 minutes to get back.

            Don’t worry, I don’t intend to bore you with the reports on my French classes. I would like to invite you to join me for a walk to one of the most known flea markets…

            Narrow streets and old market stalls – it’s probably the only right reason to visit Porte de Clignancourt. The flea market in this district had been highly influenced by the oriental cultures. You can get an original (or almost…) saree which looks like it’s hand woven, but yeah, it costs 15€ so you can be sure that the only thing that has really been “handmade” was to dress the dummies with those fabulous clothes.

Apart from the dresses, you can find there a dozen of stands with spices. Cumin, harissa, anise, black-caraway – imagine all those smells and colours! But the Clignancourt Market isn’t really food-centered (I will tell you later about the place with the most delicious fruits in the entire Paris). You can literally be a Treasure Hunter in this place. Digging in bric-à-brac can be amazingly fun. I used to spend a couple of minutes each day after my French classes to discover the most interesting objects of the whole marketplace: the kettle which seemed to be created for Alice in Wonderland, the watch with the Kama Sutra scenes instead of hours, carving-letters openers with a fancy edge – you can have them all if you are patient enough to find them among the pile of pieces of various, completely unpredictable things.

When you’re not interested in old things, you can simply walk around, talk with people and discover the diversity of cultures which came from across the seas. Arabs are the most noisy of the mall, they are great to practice with them the art of haggling and they let you win (sometimes…). Algerians, on another hand, are really helpful and polite, they love to tell the stories (and I will mention them some more in the next note). When it come to Moroccans, they are short-tempered (much more than I could possibly think) but at the same time they are sociable (and we’ll get back to them again in another post). It might sound like a bit of generalization but that’s what my very first impression was like when I’ve met all those nations in one place. After some time I started to distinguish them by the accents and single words in their dialects. And I fell in love with the diversity of Paris from the first visit at one of the stalls in Clignancourt.

Source: https://www.airbnb.pl

Source: https://www.airbnb.pl

I guess you wonder what could possibly this post’s title mean. Well, I remember one song which I used to hear every single day during those two weeks of my French classes. One man had a stand with this really old record player. All he did was listen all day long to this one particular song. Alaminadura sung by Bi Kidude – the oldest singer in the world who died in 2013. Her birth date remains unknown. You can read about this extraordinary woman here, as I believe her story is trurly heart-touching. 

At the beginning

Let’s begin…

So, you may think that this is just an another blog about Paris. And maybe you’re right. But when I asked myself about what I would be able to write during the whole semester, that was my very first thought.

I spent last year in Paris, studying at Paris-Sorbonne University. And let’s be honest: the studies weren’t in the centre of my life over there…

I made the effort to see as many interesting places as it was possible. I tried to get to know both people and town. I would like to tell you about the process of exploration of the City of Lights. It won’t be a guide blog, nothing like that. But I will try to smuggle some facts about Paris and its history. And, above all, I will try to enthuse you with my adoration to the City of Love.