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Travellers arriving at the Gare du Nord train station will probably recognize the experience. As soon as you leave the gigantic arrival hall and witness the stately apartment blocks on the other side of the street, you realize and even feel it: I am in Paris. Those monumental, six storey high buildings, consisting of big, grey stones with cast iron balconies and lay roofs, are so typical of Paris, that they almost singlehandedly define its identity. You will encounter them all over the city, in every arrondissement. They give the city a unity, not equalled in other cities (certainly no other …

Today it is the tenth day of the “confinement”. That is the French word for lockdown and it literally means something like being locked up. The word truly describes our reality. During the sanitary emergency – another fancy term – we are trapped in space and time in Paris. You may go outside to stretch your legs, but it should not extend an hour a day and you’ll have to stay within a mile of your home. To make matters worse, even our smile is permanently locked behind a mask. Would France still be France without widespread fraud? This time …

Spring 2020 Paris went into lockdown. Soon after that announcement the internet was flooded with beautiful pictures of an eerily empty city. People from the Netherlands were wondering how I felt about those deserted streets. Well, impossible to say for since we were only allowed to go as far as 1km from our homes there was no way for me to see the Louvre or the Eiffel tower. As they were too far out of reach for me I never got to experience the beautiful and monumental empty Paris. The lockdown was tough for us, both mentally and physically. The …