Mundane Travel

Yue and I spent the first week and a half of the new year in Paris. As I look back on our photos, I realize that we spent almost all of our time in the city finding, going to, and eating at pastry shops across the city (sometimes with breaks in between to eat savory foods as well). While this was pretty much the ideal way to enter 2025 for me, it has left behind very few actual “cultural activities” that would be fit for the first travel oriented post on Hegel’s Bagels. However, despite our choice not to explore almost any of the many cultural artifacts of Paris, we were able to go to what may be my favorite climbing gym, Climbing District Saint-Lazare.

Climbing District Saint-Lazare is housed in a 19th century chapel that, as you climb up the central wall, surrounds you with the original stone archways and stained glass windows. The gym is also located near Place de Clichy, which is one of my favorite intersections in Paris (Place de Clichy is one of only three intersections in the city bordering four different arrondissements). European climbing gyms are quite cool and tend to have a lot more amenities than gyms in the US, this one featuring a small library of books about European climbing and mountaineering (pictured below), as well as a cafe/bar with board games. 

I’ve noticed that I tend to go to climbing gyms pretty often when I travel to other countries. It started because I was looking for a way to continue training while abroad, but, as I went more, I noticed that climbing gyms provide an interesting window into local people doing something completely “normal.” Most people at climbing gyms (in the US and abroad) just live nearby and like to climb. In a way, my experiences at these gyms captures an extreme of what I think people mean when they refer to activities as non-touristy. At the same time, climbing gyms fall into a territory that is so non-touristy that it becomes mundane. 

Last winter when my family traveled to Japan, my mom and I had a conversation on what “authentic travel” really looked like. The point she made was that cultural resource centers like museums, landmarks, and other artifacts are what makes travel authentic. After all, these places are the roots of what a country’s culture, beliefs, and customs look like today. I, at the time, argued that “authentic travel” primarily had to do with being exposed to how people in that place live today, not in past centuries. After all, the average resident of Tokyo isn’t spending their leisure time going to Senso-Ji or Skytree. In a way, I was advocating for what I’ll refer to in this post as “mundane travel.” 

In reality, I think that these are both valuable mindsets for travel. It’s cool to see how people somewhere totally new live, but that can definitely leave less to write home about than seeing the pyramids. At the same time, I often feel that people don’t think enough about what we gain from mundane activities. Despite the fact that Yue and I did see the Louvre, and that I could have written this post about that instead, the experiences I am most excited to share here are mundane ones. I loved revisiting my favorite climbing gym and going to a jazz concert where a local musician performed some of his mostly pretty good compositions. I loved sitting in the dreadfully bleak winter Tuileries with Yue, eating a ham and butter sandwich, trying to persuade ducks to come sit with us. And I loved eating at Vaudeville, a seafood bistrot from 1918 where we had delicious moules-frites (admittedly a dish that originated in Belgium). In these places, I felt like I got brief glances into what it was like for someone living in Paris today, more so than I did at museums and churches. 

Food, I feel, ties into this idea of mundane travel especially well (I suspect that some theme of food will tie well into most of my posts). Eating local foods is something that lets you experience cultural roots at the same time as the mundane. When we were in Venice at the end of December, my dad mentioned that it's the meals he’s had, surrounded by locals, eating local food, that he feels most immersed in a place's history and culture. The foods in a city come from its geography, what crops, fish, and meat are available, and what they had to do to preserve them. They also show that place’s history, traditions, and beliefs that led to the creation of its cuisine.

Much of the development of French cooking came from a historical separation of class between the poor and the ultra-wealthy. Concepts like haute cuisine and refined dishes often came from the kitchen of the royal court (it’s a common crossword reference that veloute was invented by the chef for Louis XVIII). At the same time, French peasants were forced to find creative ways to make enough food to feed themselves during times of political upheaval. The practice of putting bread in soups that we see in dishes like French onion soup originated during the French Revolution for this exact reason. All this history and culture is found in meals most people in Paris have everyday. For them, food is mundane, but for us it’s a different sort of cultural resource to experience. 

As I write this Paris post, I am actually almost three weeks into seeing Vietnam and back-posting a bit. Even so, I have tried to continue finding balance between my mundane travel proclivities and opportunities for more cultural immersion, usually through food. I will try to get more up to date on posting (I fear I’ve been getting a little lost in the sauce on these first two posts), so please bear with me!

In the meantime, please enjoy this photo of Yue eating the famous Michalak mango pastry: