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Travel Piece  by Ida Nasatir

Letter from Paris,  by Ida Nasatir,  February 2, 1951

February 2, 1951—Ida Nasatir, "A Letter from Paris," Southwestern Jewish Press, page 5:  Dear Julia and Mac: During our stay here we have met a goodly number of our compatriots, and it is a strange but interesting thing that almost ALL of them share one thought in common: the difficulties of adjusting during the first trying weeks abroad. For instance, every traveler is met at the station by an impressive ambassador of its strangeness—the look of its streets. Tire3dwith travel, harassed by porters and Customs officials, humiliated by the clack of an unknown or half-known tongue, and confused by a coinage which is apparently all give and no take, the adventurer into foreign lands still has to come to know the odd and strange streets that wait for him. It is almost always dusk or dawn when he arrives, an often rainy. The immediate sight which greets the weary traveler is a taxi, in which sits a "cold-eyed" driver. The secondary sights are trunks and porters, and a whole orchestra of voices, a frieze of outheld hands. In the background are streets, looking different from known ones at home; there is an air that smells different; sounds that are foreign to experience. Everything is new, so new that its novelty penetrates even the bother of arrival. Having been here for awhile, I find that this impression deadens with familiarity. The streets become your constant companion, and while they are always interesting, they are no longer as awful or as enticing as a wizard; one goes arm-in-arm with them now. Most streets in Paris, except in the very modern quarters, where high commerce or foreign wealth are catered to (and drained) are narrow and cobble-stoned.  A good many of these streets are named after great men, but this system of commemorating celebrated men by naming thoroughfares after them would be more convenient if there were any means of assuring that the celebrity would last as long as the streets. It is a pity, I think, for the "Street of the Three Brothers" to become Rue Taitbout, the world having long forgotten the existence of that worthy functionary. There will come a day, so they tell me, when Parisians will have to part from the "Street of the Good Children," (who studied hard and earnestly) and the "Street of the Naughty Boys" (who lived by theft and malpractices.) There is a terrific crop of avenues, squares, boulevards, and streets called after Joffre, Foch, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and other national heroes, not to mention people of such calibre as: Victor Hugo, Emil Zola, Danton, Robespierre, all the King Louis' their wives and mistresses... Polease don't think me prejudiced or biased if I tell you that the "Street of Halevy," which leads off the busy throughfare of Lafayette, is ever so clean and peaceful; or if I also tell you that Blvd. Haussmann (named after the Jew, Haussman, Napoleon's greatest city engineer) is decidely majectic and stately and not nearly as much a death-trap for pedestrians as is the Champs Elysee.  Fondly, Ida Nasatir.