Paris Syndrome

You have to see it to believe it. 

The romantic postcards make it look larger than life, but the Eiffel Tower isn’t all that. 

In fact when I saw it, I could easily believe it. It teeters off into the sky like match-stick spider-web scaffolding. It’s got fussily intricate swirls and whorls like a geometric tree that didn’t know when to stop growing. 

It might have been less disappointing if I hadn’t had the poster. My Mum brought it home for me one night when she was working at the travel agent’s—selling holidays she could never afford to people she would never see again.

My Mum always said you should take what you can get. And in her case it was ballpoint pens and old promotional posters. 

‘Visit romantic Paris’ the poster implored, in spangled word art that was already dated by the time the printer spat it out. Fortunately, I had scissors. 

Carefully, tongue poking out the side of my mouth, I trimmed off the offending slogan so all that remained was the glimmering tower, a park, a sunset, and some elegant flowers peeking up from the bottom of the picture.

Perfect.

I rushed downstairs to fumble through what my Mum affectionately referred to as the ‘shit draw’ for a wad of blu-tack to stick the poster to my ceiling. And there I was, sprawled out on the bed, staring wistfully at that celebrity structure as I drifted off to sleep every night in my box room. 

I dreamt about Paris then. Strolling up to the tower at dusk and throwing out a checked picnic blanket. Opening a hinged-lid basket stuffed with cheeses, grapes, and baguette. 

Sometimes I was alone, sometimes draped around a handsome Parisian who had swept me off my feet. Either way, I was immersed in the climactic scene of my very own movie.

Either way, I’d always wake up before taking the first bite of my picnic. Before that all-important first kiss.

By the time I was 18 I was desperate to see Paris, and the summer before I started uni seemed like the perfect time. Exams done, copious volumes of beer consumed, I was ready for a little culture. 

In a childish attempt to live out the movie in my head I’d crammed brie, grapes, and baguette into my backpack when I visited. Squished bread. Sour grapes. Slightly leaky brie, and a bottle filled with lukewarm tap water. 

Not a feast to be recommended. It was a grey June evening, but mild enough. I plonked myself down on the tourist-trodden lawn and ate as the Parisian traffic blared around me. 

No sunset, no flowers, no romantic, swelling strings. Where was my wind machine, I wondered. Where was the rousing, full-orchestra recapitulation of my theme?

It’s silly, I know, but my heart sank. For another hour, I waited. If I only stared at the tower long enough, I reasoned, maybe my third act would materialise. 

I’d have my meet cute with the handsome stranger, perhaps—or spot a mysterious book that would lead me on a whirlwind adventure. 

Maybe I’d at least feel a fraction of what I felt staring up at my ceiling every night back home. Nothing came. A cool numbness had begun to sweep over me. 

At first, it was pins and needles in my legs, crushed beneath me on the hard earth for too long. Close on its heels was a numbness in my brain. It trickled through my synapses like cold water.

As that inexplicable sadness descended, a new thought occurred. Maybe I was in a movie after all—just not in the genre I wanted. But the dramatic rain refused to fall. The mournful, solo piano line playing in my head soon evaporated.

How could I be so underwhelmed? It’s not as if my poster had lied to me. The Eiffel tower was the exact shape, the exact size, the exact location it depicted. 

Never meet you heroes, I guess. 

Although when your hero’s a building, you expect a little more stability. And I wasn’t feeling so stable myself. The rest of my life stretched dizzyingly out before me, promising anticlimax after anticlimax. Things never feel like they do in the poster. In the cinema. In the books. 

If this was the trip of a lifetime, what then? Staring into the non-future, my heart began to race, and the lawn started to spin.

I found out later there’s a name for what I felt: Paris Syndrome. 

It was coined to describe the crushing disappointment felt by waves of Japanese tourists who visited Paris in the ‘80s. 

Expecting romantic, archaic, accordion-wielding, beret-wearing splendour, they were instead met with the cigarette smoke and hairspray of a modern city. 

According to my research (read: Wikipedia) symptoms run the gamut from nausea and fainting spells to hallucinations. 

I’ve no clue why Paris gets a proper syndrome when every other tourist trap has its own regiment disappointed visitors.

Back home, London is no different. The iconic black cabs are always stuck in traffic, and anyway real Londoners use Uber now.

The Rosetta stone is just an average-looking rock with writing on it. The diplodocus in the Natural History Museum looks bigger in the pictures.

On top of that, the Greek columns in the V&A are only plaster casts. Only tourists shop in Harrods. No one speaks like a Jane Austen character. And I’m sure the Tower of London is a real treasure trove of disappointments. 

So there I was, head tilted to one side as I stared at the disappointingly real Eiffel tower, periodically reaching down to rub feeling back into my legs. The throngs of tourists had begun to thin out, and dusk was descending.

At least I think it was—someone had turned the dimmer switch from ‘grey’ to ‘darker grey’.

I climbed unsteadily to my feet and turned around. After a few steps, on a whim, I glanced over my shoulder for one last look.

Suddenly—instantly—a thousand white lights sprung to life. 

They danced up and down the tower, and up and down again, like fireworks. My jaw dropped. The ice in my brain melted, flowed down my back in chills, seemed to settle on my arms, raising goosebumps.

All the little match-stick pieces looked so different lit up. The shadows they cast seemed to tumble away into the night like smoke. 

And it was better than a movie—so much better. No clichés, no corny dialogue, no overbearing orchestra, no unconvincing romantic subplot. 

Just me. Standing exactly where I’d wanted to be for years. Widening my eyes so I could take in more of the scene. Gulping it down. Drowning in it.

All it took was turning on the lights—I don’t understand why. But some things make no sense and I don’t think that matters.

When I finally dragged myself away, I smiled all the way back to my hotel, all the way to the Eurostar the next day. All the way to uni.

Maybe Paris syndrome has a cure.