Looking for the Bastille (and finding Paris instead)
02 July 2026
This morning, while talking about Bastille Day with my colleague Klara, we discovered that we had both fallen victim to the same Parisian misunderstanding. Klara is Swedish, intelligent, curious, and has been living in Paris long enough to know her way around the city. Yet during a that discussion, she confidently pointed to the famous column rising above Place de la Bastille and informed me: "Well, that's the Bastille, isn't it?" I laughed. Not because she was wrong — although she was — but because I had once made an equally enthusiastic mistake myself...