dry water and soft air

Water from the faucet smells like a swimming pool. You can get used to it even when you drink it, but it can sometimes surprise you when you take a glass of water or open the shower. With shower there is also something else. You cannot control the stream force. You are not supposed to use both of your hands so there is only one cock and it gives you the possibility to decide if you want to open or not, and then the temperature. And that's all. So simple.
Yesterday we found out next surprising feature of our flat. Apparently the heating season began because in the morning our so far silent and inconspicuous radiator woke us up by loud spit of hot air, and repeated it once in a while. Nice.
Before I leave the apartement there is one more challenge, with which I still can't cope. When I'm about to leave I have this habit that I look out from the window to check the weather. I'm used to decide what to put on me by looking what the pedestrians wear. And from here you can see quite a lot of them. The problem is just that there are always some of them only in t-shirts and shorts, in summer dresses, in sandals, and then just beside them the others in winter coats, hats and so on without mentioning all those how are in between. The weather forecast doesn't help either with all those fahrenheits and miles per hour. So usually I wear too much, but recognize it after a few hundred meters of biking when I'm already totally sweaty. Or then not enough, and that I discover freezing too far away from home.
Yes, but when I finally succeed to go out it's fine. I really like the place. The air is very soft and pleasant, even when there is a cool or wet wind. There is noticeable proximity of the rivers and the ocean is somewhere near with its fishy mood. And there are all those strange shadows and refractions and reflexes on the walls and the streets. Smells, voices and noices, quite often unpleasant but well. With the pedestrians and passers-through I have still this feeling of new place, that I cannot imagine their life, what they will do in three hours or how they woke up last morning. Of course in the places where I'm used to, I don't know about them either but I have this maybe dangerous facility to imagine. Or even better I'm so used to those people that I don't need to imagine. I can recognize their smell, their clothes, their directions. Here it's still a new place, and in addition it seems that here is more diversity than usually is.
One thing that makes this place surprisingly familiar are the plane-trees. There are plenty of them in parks, on the streets and in house yards. They made the splendid alleies with rhythmical line of fanciful columns and spectacular sunshade full of gold and greenish spots. On the narrow one-way streets between amazingly tall brick walls they seem to share out more of the light then of shadow with their illuminated yellowish treetop. There are also shadowy acacias with their funny sprined pod under the branches, oaks and the others well known to me. I don't know why plane-trees made the biggest effect. And why I feel so cozy with them, a bit defiantly to all strangeness. Parisian nostalgia? Or just light?

L