So what is it about Paris? It has a history with the world. I have a history with it. This is not one of those romantic Paris stories. I
could not possibly do one of those.

Hotel de Nesle in Paris is run by Renee. The first time I met Renee, I was a teenager. She gave me the Napoleon and Josephine room in her hotel. Every room in her hotel has a different hand painted theme. Her hotel lobby has clutters of dried flowers swarming the ceiling. It used to be a room full of Lebanese mirrors, middle eastern sofas and second hand rescued furniture but then she stopped serving breakfast at her hotel and the dried flowers and a big sheepdog called Pilou, appeared in the lobby instead.

13 years later, I visited Renee alone. I forgot to ask how I
would feel about "serious"…

I am not a celebrity watcher, but the Stones hung out in her bohemian hotel before they
were serious. Artists, writers and some impostors hung out at Renee, because come what
may, she decided her hotel was for the young. Always. So in the
last 30 years, she maintained a
reasonable rate despite being across the road from the Louvre and in the middle of Latin Quarter. Her hotel is a little side street
from Pont Neuf. There are lots of second hand and antique bookstores.

The open door policy of Hotel de Nesle, taught me a lot at an impressionable age. At 19, I met lots of people; artists, photographers, writers, body healers. We were young and eager.
A Canadian writer taught me about Camille Claudele and the marginalisation of female artistic talent in the old salon. I sketched 'The winged Victory of Samothrace" at the Louvre, on the free
entry night. Somebody might have offered to buy me a cous cous dinner in exchange for a sketch of a Rodin work, but I refused. Camille Claudelle's sculptures in the corner of the Rodin museum looked too haunting. I think that was the beginning of my "feminist rhetoric". I remembered being at a particularly stuffy 21st birthday party, a daughter of a Professor from my old school and I told the story. Several people refused to believe that the old Rodin nicked ideas from the young Camille and they believed "sexual inequality"
no longer existed. Frankly I declared that I hated my Girls grammar school and its attempts to teach me how to be whiter. After an awkward pause, somebody offered me a non-alcoholic fruit
cocktail then suggested that the Principal, Mr Warren Stone, was a tad middle class!

Romantic and bohemian Paris is a movie youth runs in its head and projects onto the wide screen surround-sounds of metropolitan Paris. Getting bitten by lice and working in the Shakespeare and Co. bookshop were somehow stylish! Everybody wore black a lot and
to my knowledge no one became the next Camille, James (as in Joyce) or Anais (Nin). Though a few did try to shag like a Henry (Miller) until we read the memoir and realised there's more scandal
in cybersex.

My history with Paris did begin. Because of Paris I met the first Buddhist philosophy teacher who asked me, " What is the nature of your mind?" The old man encouraged me to think about it and tell him the answer when I saw him next. I said," Okay, it will take me about a week max.!" He laughed and told me to come back after the summer. Then he died 3 months later, still expecting an answer! I don't know what to answer still but at least, it a very good puzzle.

As a mid-20 something, I came to see Renee again. She recognised me with her usual, "Cherie, donez-moi Money." She asked me what I was doing and at the time I found myself saying in haphazard French, " I am studying law and writing for a newspaper." She smiled and handed me Room 10.

My lawschool boyfriend and I fought like cats and dogs up and down the boulevard of Paris. In some places, an angry screaming woman might solicit a "don't shout, calm down. Don't be neurotic!" Not Paris…not for me anyway.

Renee via the newly installed intercom at the hotel, shouted to the shagging couple in Room 2, "Pay for your chambre…then you can have another night of screaming." The Scottish couple came down somewhat perturbed. None of us could look Dorothy in the eyes for she was very loud indeed, and unfortunately the intercom, like Dorothy, had been "ON". All night.

So while I fought in Room 10, in Room 2 Dorothy's "O" was an interesting echo. Paris as a city shrugged and on the whole, let us know, "The expression of love and hate are both the needs of women."

When I screamed blue murder, embroiled in another fight, French waiters handed over sweet aperitif and urged me to drink while my blood boiled. No one felt ashamed of being an angry woman and/or one blasting out her sexual pleasures! No one asked me to be reasonable nor was Dorothy asked to cross her legs!

Some would say this was French style, but I would say perhaps in this matter, the French got something out of their revolution mantra, "Liberte, Egalite, etc.."

When all the screaming was over, we all convened in Room 12, where a French subway busker-"a performance artist" - was cordially invited to sing his agit-pop protest song that goes "Francois Mitterrand is a fascist cochon (pig) who will sell the liberty of the French people to prostitute the Franc for the Euro." We laughed and let our blood thicken while Renee collected our room tariff, without fail!

At the time, the French Busker sang this all over Paris on a daily basis and no one decided he should be arrested for inciting a potential riot because he expressed opinions about how the economy and the trading in his country should be run but then again, this was way back then and anti-globalisation did not involve preventative arrest because you could potentially cause a riot! Well, lucky for us. Too bad for those in up against the WTO 2003!

I turned the corner off Rue Dauphine and held my breath for I was terrified that somehow Hotel de Nesle had caved in to the EU developmental homogeny. I really thought that perhaps Renne's place will be replace by some 5 star Euro-Yankee joint venture and end up as a marble of conformity, doling out Apple Martinis and charging min. €250.

As I handed the Euro to Renee at 33 and Bush's America said France knows nothing about "democracy and liberty", I am so relieved.

Parents and friend will grow old. Babies will get born and people might die. Paris still looked quite the picture, not showing the wear and tear of centuries of history she had weathered. This is not nostalgia but a sense of living grace in the revolutions she had hosted; in the empires she had birthed and dissolved. She was the silent backdrop in to Bogart's "Here's looking at you, kid" to a toothy Bergman. Off screen, of course, there was still the censorship of
Mr McCarthy, and even Bogart took to the street to protest. She
gave us Cyrano played by Depardieu and now Deneuve is doing a modern rendition of "les liaison dangereuse". I am not sure the power of Bush's spin doctors can quite remove Paris, besides French fries, never came from France…it was more a Belgium
thing…

The dignity of Paris is like a woman well taught by history, and quite a
lot of it was not exactly "joie de vivre". Paris is like a woman who
wakes up in her own space. That space, like Renee's hotel is not about money.

I think it is okay to give Paris, the dear lady, a standing ovation for resisting unfair wars and unfair social tyrants…of course, she is
flawed but there is the wisdom, chaos and the willingness to allow Resistance!

Renee decided I am old enough and upgraded me to Room 7, with Heloise looking doe fully over the double bed. Paris with all her cafes seemed to be quite nice to solo women, or rather a woman in search of solitude! I dropped my Beaujolais village from distraction. I got another discreetly from the French waiter, as Renee's giant Pilou (Sheppard
dog) licked up the residue and promptly pissed all over the café's chalkboard menu. Well, they say your dog can get you into some very good establishments in Paris. Its true. As Pilou walked me along the Seine, Parisians leaned out from their balconies to make kiss doggy noises…well, Parisians know their priorities…dogs sometimes have better taste than human!

So why should we allow temporary politics to stop us from drinking a toast to the Paris that embraces the tantrums and the passions of women? France, with her revolution, may have some experience in distinguishing Patriotism from Patronising politicians?

Cecilia Yu currently lives in London and Denize Maaloe lives in Paris.