By Ty Malcolm
When people ask me my favorite period in history, I usually choose the interwar years, around 1920-1930. This time period brought about a radical shift in a wide range of fields - politics, economics, art, music, literature. In European capitals, artists and writers hopped between endless bars and cafés, exchanging ideas and styles they would use to describe and shape their age.
Paris attracted American expats from the "Lost Generation," like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, and Earnest Hemingway. Hemingway would go on to write A Moveable Feast about this period in his life, detailing his interactions with the Well-Knowns and Unknowns of 1920s Paris. Armed with my copy of Ein Fest fürs Leben (the German-language title for A Moveable Feast), I set out for my second visit to Paris. No longer tied to the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, I could shape the trip into whatever I wanted!
While Hemingway and his family would have needed an entire day on the train to reach Vienna, for me flying was the clear choice. My preference for morning flights (and my financial limitations) conspired to leave me with a 6AM flight, arriving in Paris just after 8AM. The neighborhood of my hotel, located just outside the Luxembourg Gardens, was a very popular area during this time period. It was really interesting to walk down streets and boulevards that I had already read about. I visited the Institute of the Arab World, a multi-level museum off the beaten path. The art was beautiful... I just wish I spoke French so I could read the descriptions!
