Impromptu tourism

It’s always somewhat painful when the alarm goes off at 6 in the morning, especially in winter. It’s dark, it’s cold, it’s an unnatural time to be out in the world.

This trauma is thankfully no more than a weekly occurrence for me. On Monday mornings I voyage forth to teach at a university out in the back of beyond, way outside the self-contained world that is Paris. Once I get there, things generally go swimmingly, but the process of getting there can require superhuman effort.

When I arrived at work last Monday, having gone through the requisite trauma, I went to the reception to pick up my registers and was received by a blank look from the receptionist, followed by a little noise of astonishment.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded. “There are no lessons this week!”

“Oh,” I said, since there was very little else I could say under the circumstances.

It turns out that the university had a week’s break, but since I just bungee in and bungee back out once a week, I’m not really very plugged into the system and don’t particularly keep track of incidental information like holiday dates.

So finding myself with an unexpectedly free day, I wished the receptionist well and wandered back to the metro station, where I looked in quiet amusement at all the people who had just dragged themselves out of bed (I had by this point been awake for two hours) and who were lumbering off to start a day of work. 

There were some parks that I had been planning to visit for some time but I always got too carried away with daily routine to do so. But now with my daily routine interrupted, it was a perfect opportunity to go and tick some parks off my list.  

I left the sleepy people on the metro and went to have a wander round Parc Kellerman, where I watched ducks having breakfast and gardeners sweeping paths as well as the odd disturbingly enthusiastic jogger plodding their way among the trees.

I pressed on with a scenic walk through the Jardin Thomire and past the Charléty stadium, to Parc Montsouris. I had a moment of déjà vu and then realised that I had been there five years ago one a visit to Paris. Crocuses were pushing up through the grass, announcing the arrival of spring, and a Chinese man was doing tai chi among the trees.

Suitably uplifted, I got on the train and headed towards the city centre to the Jardin de Luxembourg. People were walking dogs, joggers were out in full force and a man was sitting on a bench brushing his teeth. In the background, the Montparnasse Tower disappeared up into the clouds.

From there I headed for the Jardin des Plantes, where a slope had become eroded, exposing a tree’s roots, and a statue of a lion was eating what was left of a person, which was just a foot.

The Jardin des Plantes is home to the natural history museum, which had a magnificent exhibition on called Nuit, which dealt with all things nocturnal.

The first section of the exhibition was about the night sky – the moon, the stars, the planets. In this section I was most suprised to learn that the planets in our solar system all spin on very different axes. How did I get this far without knowing that? Uranus has somehow turned onto its side, and Venus has tilted so far that its top and bottom are entirely reversed. 

I also learned how tides work, which was another shameful gap in my general knowledge. Everyone knows that the moon pulls on the sea, making it rise on the side of the earth closest to the moon. But did you know that the moon and Earth create a centrifugal system as they rotate round each other? And that centrifugal system sends the water on the side of the Earth opposite the moon swinging outwards? So the ocean on one side of Earth is being flung outwards by centrifugal force and on the other side it’s being pulled by the moon, which is why the tide is high on opposite sides of the Earth at the same time.

I also found out that on 10 August 2014 the moon will be at its closest point to the Earth, and will be quite magnificent. Put it in your diary.

There was this video display (happily also available on YouTube) on the relative sizes of various celestial bodies, which was possibly the most intimidating thing I’ve ever seen.

I watched it through four times and came away with shaking knees and a crushing sense of insignificance, and went to seek solace among the creatures of the night.

The animals were beautiful and it was slightly awkward to think that they were probably going about their nocturnal business quite contentedly before someone put a bullet through them and dragged them off to be preserved, stuffed and placed in a display, but I swept that niggling thought under my mental carpet and marvelled at the stern stare of owls, the deer caught mid-step, the grey goose suspended in flight and the wolf pricking up its ears at a sound in the underbrush.

It’s an incredible skill, taxidermy. How do you take the lifeless carcass of an animal, preserve it and then arrange it in such a way – limb positions, attitude, even facial expressions – that it looks as if it has been suddenly frozen while going about its regular business?

There was a very interesting display on the sense of smell (included in the exhibition because some animals use smell to guide them when there is little light), including some delightful pictures of animals flehmening - drawing back the top lip and inhaling to better analyse an odour.

There was also a display of the most incredible insects which mimicked leaves so convincingly that even knowing that they were insects, I was unable to see their wings for wings and could only see them as leaves.

Following a very cute array of diurnal animals bedding down for the night, there were some information sheets about dreaming, from which I learned that the reason we forget our dreams so quickly is that the part of the brain that deals with memory is not activated during dreaming.

Then there was a frilly pastel-coloured, carpeted room made to suggest a bedroom, with some blurbs about monsters under the bed and a Pixaresque animation on the subject, followed by a slightly incongruous display cabinet full of vampire memorabilia and an inexplicable room, empty but for two sumptuous-looking chairs, with a curtain over the entrance, and a shadow display that didn’t work. The shadow display was set up in a grey concrete corridor which terminated in a set of stairs that emerged out by the ticket office.

And that was the night exhibition.

I was by this point tired and hungry, and although I had enjoyed the exhibition very much, I was quite ready for lunch. But my ticket gave me access to the permanent exhibition, and I thought it would be a pity to waste it, so I went and had a quick nose round upstairs.

I was glad I had because the first thing you see when you go into the permanent exhibition is an entire whale skeleton suspended from the ceiling. I had been thinking about whales just the day before and wondering if I would ever be able to see one. It remains on my bucket list, but the skeleton went some way towards satisfying my curiosity. 

SO, WHAT HAVE WE LEARNT?

1) Those early mornings never get any easier...

2) ...but they can turn out to be worth it

3) Some people go jogging early in the morning

4) Spring is coming!

5) The axes of our neighbouring planets are a lot more irregular than you might expect

6) On one side of the Earth, the sea is pulled by the moon, while on the other side it is flung outwards by centrifugal force. That's why there are high tides on opposite sides of the world at the same time. 

7) Look at the moon on 10 August 2014. 

8) Stars are terrifyingly huge

9) It's almost impossible to remember your dreams. 

10) Check the permanent exhibition before you go for lunch. There might be something  worthwhile in it.