The status quo at Etoile as seen from the top of the Arch of Triumph

Letter From Paris

By Harriet Welty-Rochefort

Paris Kiosque - July 1996 - Volume 3, Number 7
Copyright (c) 1996 Harriet Welty-Rochefort - Used with permission.

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The Etoile, on which the Arch of Triumph, that marvelous tribute to the victories of Napoléon, proudly sits, is the supreme Driver's Training Test. If you can get around it in one piece, well, you've earned the right to drive anywhere in the civilized world.

Just think about it: radiating out from the Etoile are 12 major avenues, the Champs-Elysées, of course, being the most famous. Inside the circle, which has nary a lane and traffic cops only when the situation gets really disastrous, hundreds of cars, trucks, vans, motorcycles (and occasionally bicycles) vy with each other in the World's Greatest Free For All Zone.

I was thinking about this as I breezed around it the other day in my little blue Citroen AX. In my rear view mirror, I could see a huge moving van bearing down on me. In front of me, a grandmother type in a baby buggy sized contrapation shook her grey head in consternation as she slowed down to a snail's pace, surely out of sheer terror. On one side of me, a chic Parisian woman with impeccably manicured hands clutched a portable phone as she nonchalantly gave a piece of her mind to whoever had the misfortune to be on the other end. Beyond her a bit, I could see a mustachioed macyho in a black BMW bent on killing us all just as soon as he got the chance.

None of this fazed me, of course, for I have been driving around the old Arch for the past twenty years. It is only the first time that scares the daylight's out of you. Once you have done it, you are among the initiated and no experience in your life can ever seem so fearsome. (I realized this the day I drove around with my brother who has flown zillions of miles all over the world-but who preferred to shut his eyes during our little tour around the Etoile.)

I'd like to tell you about the first time I drove around it - but I have long since repressed the experience. My son only told me about his first time driving around it months after he had actually done it. It's not the kind of thing you want to remember.

Before I started driving around the Arch, in fact, I must admit I devised a master plan to present to the Mayor of Paris. It consisted of drawing huge white lines called lanes that each car would remain in. This, I felt, was a logical Anglo-Saxon way of alleviating this very Latin approach to getting around a circle.

Fat chance - and now years later, I regret even having had that idea. Where else in the world can you get such kicks for free?

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Harriet Welty-Rochefort, a bona fide Midwesterner from Iowa, visited Paris for the first time while in college. She became so completely enamored of France that she stayed - and has been there ever since. Married to a Frenchman and the mother of two Franco-American boys, Harriet Welty-Rochefort writes on business, lifestyle and travel for major U.S. publications. Her forthcoming book - French Toast - is a lighthearted look at French manners and mores. She can be contacted at 101676.467@compuserve.com.