Paris airport at dawn. Somehow possible due to the cloudy morning light and the forests at the edge of the Tarmac, Paris feels more American than Chicago. People smile at me, perhaps because it’s morning time and beautiful. The customs official, the guys at the magazine stand. I like it here but immediately realize how expensive it will be with my weak American dollar. I jump the 8 Euro train fare, nearly sixteen dollars American. On the platform, the European automated noises and recorded warnings sound much more menacing and futuristic than their American counterparts, like something out of an X-files episode. The buzzer that announces my trains departure sounds like a fire alarm going off. When the train comes out from the clean tunnels, a landscape of gray flat buildings, sanitized and cleanly, like Washington, DC. Strange because Washington, DC was built and planned on Paris. France as a country with an individual identity is gone; replaced by big empty fields and silent, sleek Eurotrains, periodic gas stations that look like something out of Back to the Future and shiny unmarked buildings, just a state in this united EU of the future; one united currency, one bland technocratic appearance. Not at all the Paris of the American imagination—the Moulin Rouge and Montmare that lifestyle tourists seek in cheesy, expensive cafes and tourist shops now, can only be found in dingy hidden squats now.