the smell of the metro

Is there any smell sweeter than the smell of the Paris Metro? That musky dusty indefinable whiff that fills your nostrils as soon as you descend into the white tiled tunnels listening for the trains, for the sound of French people (talking French!!) and reveling in the knowledge you are back here, about to get on a train in Paris, France. 

This is the question i posed to my old man on our arrival at Gare du Nord last Friday. 

'Plenty' he observes dryly and i know he's right. The smell of a baby, milky and sweet. The smell of a stew that's been cooking gently all afternoon whose wine rich aroma greets you from a cold winter walk. The smell of baking bread or fresh coffee. The smell of the sea all briny and fresh scouring you with the knowledge you are oh so alive. The smell of jasmine tucked into the dark oiled hair of women in South India perfuming the air around them, a moment of olfactory bliss for a traveller's nose still getting used to the pungency of a place with a less than perfect sewage management system. The smell of your Mother so familiar. A tiny white chocolate scented fist held up by a child to be kissed so that you guess she's stolen a bit of the Easter Egg she bought you. The smell of your love as he lies next to you in bed, a smell that long ago made your knees weak and your heart turn over and is now a sleepy safe man aroma between the warm sheets. The calming smell of tibetan incense as you climb onto your meditation cushion and prepare to be with your own breath again. 

Yes, there must be many smells nicer than the Metro. But for me it is one of the sweetest. As i stepped onto the train last Friday i listened to the music of the droning note signaling the doors are open and waited for the silver doors to close with that satisfying metallic click. And i filled my lungs with the smell of Paris. A smell that takes me back to when i was 19 and lived here, here in Paris, for a year. A time when i believed anything was possible and perhaps it was. 

On this visit my Mother has asked me to find a Guerlain perfume for her she'd read about in a book. In the beautiful Guerlain shop on the Champs Elysees we found it. We squirted, sniffed, saw the price and put it back on the glittering glass shelves. It was nice but far too expensive. Yet i admit i would pay the same for Eau Du Metro should any parfumier ever decide to make such a scent. But perhaps it wouldn't be the same bottled. It is a smell that places you precisely in a specific geographical location (though not precisely in time, as for me it transports me back to many memories of falling in love with an exciting foreign city for the first time) and that is why it is so special. Perhaps, like that interesting new liquor discovered on holiday and tucked in a suitcase to be shared with friends on our return, it just doesn't taste the same at home.

After our lovely weekend of museums, food, wine and love we parted. My husband went off to a conference on the edge of Paris and i headed back to Garde du Nord. i took a last long inhalation of the Metro and climbed up to the main concourse. There was a sign for the 'Salon de Grand Voyageurs'. That's why i love Paris. As i looked for the Eurostar Terminal i took comfort in knowing i was no mere tourist, but a grand voyager, and one who has not just casually sniffed but has fully inhaled the heady scent of the Paris Metro.