Why do we fall in love with Paris?

Russia grumbles. It’s eaten something that won't go down, caught a cold it can’t get over. Doors slam. Everyone is telling somebody they can trust a dirty thing about somebody they can't, or about somebody who's died, or about somebody.

Paris purrs. Electric trains run silently over electric tracks, porpoising underground and above. Smart cars whiz through gnarled streets before nestling into petit niches. The language flows, mysteriously unobstructed by its own unflattering consonants. The corners of buildings and sidewalks and stairs are rounded by age, and Robert Doisneau photographs.

I can’t articulate why I fell in love with Paris, but I can tell you why I liked it:

Paris mixes the elegance and efficiency of a city like Stockholm, with the verve/freedom/happeningness of a San Francisco. Of course any local could point out a million flaws, but in my experience everything worked: I always got where I needed to get, I rarely waited in line, I didn't see backed up toilets or buildings in serious disrepair. To the contrary I ate well, slept well, and had nothing but pleasant interactions with the Parisians I met. You could say it’s simply a very wealthy city and that's true, but if wealth were everything I would be drooling over London.

I think the difference lies in Montmartre--the hillside neighbourhood crowned by the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur, historically the home of the artists, the poor, and the prostitutes (though it seems there are fewer of all three than in years’ past, especially the poor). Somehow the spirit of their Montmartre seems to flow down the hillside and splash through the city. It's the love for a flawed species, harbored by artists who also starved, poor folks who also worked like dogs, and hookers who also prayed forgiveness. Or maybe just the first group. By the cohabitation of the three groups, Montmartre framed the city as both romantic and realistic, urban and rural. It was a place of transition for all three, and in some ways still is. To further illustrate my point, Montmartre is where you find the last vineyard in the city, as well as its last working windmill. It’s also where you find the resting place of the 3rd century martyr St. Denis alongside a statue of Marcel Ayme’s man who walked through walls (I’d never heard of it).

The last thing I’ll say is that Montmartre appears to be the product of an organic, democratic development, unlike anything I’ve felt in Petersburg. Peter the Great didn’t commanded Montmartre to look like Montmartre, nobody did, or rather lots of people did over many years which is how it should be. Petersburg sickens me not because it is ugly, but because it was born of tyranny and vain mimicry. Falling in love with Petersburg, to me, would be like falling in love with one of the knock-off villages at Six Flags, to grossly oversimplify my own opinions.