by bus.

By bus, Paris was surprising. Take this:

This is where Napoleon was buried, Nita told me. She was sitting in front of me, facing me. I looked out the window; I saw a mausoleum-like square building, quite a nice one, with like three big black balls on the top, some golden chain around them. I thought. Hm, nice, interesting big black balls – what did they think when they put them on top of his mausoleum? And then, that’s when I saw a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious grand, grand, magnificent building (“building” sounds almost like an insult in this case, but I would need more time to think of an exact word to describe it) at quite a distance. Whoa. Whoa. And, ah, I told myself, this is what I should call a post-Amsterdam effect.

Not getting the picture? Here’s another one:

We passed another garden, and I thought – gees, look at this pathetic garden. It is true, Jardin du Luxembourg is quite something. There’s just no other garden like it in Paris. Jardin du Luxembourg is just the bes-

Boink. On my head. Well because, you see, when you are in a bus, especially when you are not sleepy (and thus not stupid), you would know exactly that, looking from inside the bus, the bus windows and how they are framed (and where in the bus you would sit) would somehow conceal – and gradually reveal – reality. That’s the most exciting part of a bus trip. You would know that reality is not only what you can see through your part of the window, from the place you are seated.

Well, I was sleepy, and thus stupid, and so I thought what I saw was exactly what reality was. So I saw this small pathetic garden (compared to Jardin du Luxembourg, once again). I looked at it pathetically, and I was ready to make some snobbish comment about it and compare it again and again with my beloved Jardin du Luxembourg. Until I realized that this little pathetic garden was actually the garden surrounding the meganificentsupercalifragilisticexpialidocious one and only: Tour Eiffel.

There must be a reason why Napoleon was born short.

And why the Dutch are mostly taller.