Paris was, is and will always be one important place that holds so many memories for my husband and I.
We didn’t meet for the first time in Paris (that was another story with the Köln-Hauptbahnhof / Cologne Central Station on a breezy summer night years ago) but he was living and working in Paris back then. Countless are the numbers of times we caught the maroon-red Thalys train back and forth from Paris to Köln.
We spent so many days and nights in Paris, living the life of young lovers crazily in love with sweet -as-sugar together-forever promises. It was in Paris that we made the important decisions in our lives: moving to Germany, moving to Indonesia, started our first business venture together…and many many many other things that have brought us where we are today.
So when we went back to Paris, just the two of us, it was like all the things that lighted up the fireworks years ago came rushing back once more.
J went to Paris 3 days earlier with his best friend Romy who came to France with us, and I caught a TGV from Bellegarde to Paris (just like back in the days) on the 30th of December, leaving baby under the care of his grandmothers and my aunt. The fact of not meeting him for a shortwhile and the anxious feeling I had all the way inside the speedrunning TGV were just like back then – I felt that I was going to meet him on a day like a day sometime years ago when we had just met.
I was lucky to catch the same train as my brother-in-law Ben and his other half did. We booked each a TGV, one hour apart from each other, but we ended up in the same train. In fact, the night before I was supposed to go, there was a heavy snowstorm – the wind uprooted some trees which fell and blocked the TGV route and there was too much snow, so Ben’s train came about half an hour late, and my father-in-law talked the SNCF controller into letting me in (“Excuse me, sir, are you really going to let a lady travel alone at dusk with a train that might never come; while in this train there’s his brother-in-law??”). Lou, Ben’s boyfriend and I immediately chatted our way through the journey and only stopped after a woman next to me stared at us with angry, bitchy red eyes. So I wasn’t alone. And in Gare de Lyon, Paris, J and our friend Romy were waiting for us.
Words can’t describe how much we were happy to be reunited again, in Paris, even if we were just apart for 3 days it felt like forever. It’s true what people say – sometimes you need to make a little time away from your significant other, just to revive the sparks that once made you an item.
While Paris was a bit unfriendly when we first arrived, this time it was different. I loved every bit of promenade we did along the Champs-Élysées; going from Arc-de-Triomphe/Étoile downward to the inner city of Paris. We had dinner at Le Consulat, a cafe on the hills of Montmartre, then the next day, lunch in this pretty Parisian bistro called La Belle Ferronière (and I am officially in love – yet again – with caramel crème brûlée).
We spent such a great time in Paris – the two of us – we walked around, caught the metros together, chatted happily and found every bit of the corners familiar – as though we had never left at all. As though those newly-becoming-an-item days back then were just yesterday. Even though a big half decade separated us from the last days we spent in the City of Love together.
And then something struck us.
We love Paris. Always.
If we love Jakarta for all its mess and its lively quarters, the noisy nightlife, the daily brouhaha – then we love Paris because it’s so culturally enriching. Jakarta isn’t exactly the place where you can go out to theatres or just hop out of your apartment and walk around – it is a nice place to live, but for all things cultural it’s Paris.
We miss Paris. Always.
We’re planning to spend a month every now and then in there. Of course by controlling the company from afar – there won’t be any problem on that matter, because internet connection is everywhere in Paris. We want to be one of those seasonal Parisians who come every now and then, spending a season there, then back to the tropical Indonesia. We want to share our time between the two worlds, because we are a couple made of two worlds.
We adore Paris. Always.
It will always be a big part of our love story. And we hope that in the future it will also hold an important part in our life. We want to stroll down along the parkways, hand in hand, us and Louis (and maybe his future siblings). We want to teach him that city life isn’t all about being stuck in traffic and childhood isn’t all about going to the malls; we want him to know that city life also means metros, walking around on foot and childhood can also mean parks, libraries, museums; we want him to know and value his lifestyle in Indonesia with all the helps we have – while in France everyone practices DIY method. And lastly, we also want to teach him that he isn’t always the all-important mixed-kid superstar like he is in Jakarta, he can also be just an ordinary kid in Paris.
People say, that when you really really want something, the universe conspires to help you get it. Let’s hope that the universe is conspiring to let us make this dream of Paris come true.
Life in Knocked-Up Mode 
