My entire experience of Paris happened unexpectedly in high school, after I had spent a summer in Turkey as an exchange student. Our return to the States was going to be by ship, as had been our trip out, across the Atlantic; this final crossing would be westward, from Rotterdam to New York. But when we left our host families’ homes scattered all over Turkey and gathered in Istanbul, we learned that plans had changed. We were going to fly home instead, by way of Paris, where we would lay over five nights at a school that was unoccupied during the summer.

No one would be supervising us! But we would be provided with beds and breakfast. I don’t remember other meals being served, and I have no memory either of what else I ate for five days; no croissants, I’m certain of that — only those simple foods we were served in the mornings, at long tables in the dining hall: café au lait and plain bread. Was there butter for the bread? Possibly, but it wouldn’t have been necessary. I thought the naked slices of baguettes perfect, and made a special place of reverence in my mind for wide bowls of café au lait, the most elegant breakfast imaginable – five whole mornings of it, très, très bon. 

It has been impossible to find online a picture that comes close to resembling the manner in which this drink was served to us. The bowl was larger and wider than most pictures I can find, but Coffee Geek, in the course of telling us how to make a modern version of the drink, explains how the current bowl style does come in different sizes. I imagine the ones used in that Paris school were an institutional white. As to size, these that Wayfair suggests for the French breakfast look about right to me. If you add a cup of coffee to a cup of milk, your bowl needs to hold at least 16 oz.

French was at the time my favorite subject in school, and when I went off to college, I started out as a French major. In both settings our lessons involved memorized conversations on topics taken from the life of a typical student in France, and here I was in a French school building, having a small bit of like experience; I had learned back in French class about the beverage so I didn’t find it odd.

I enjoyed the forced visit to France and being able to use some of my language skills, which were much stronger than what I’d recently learned of Turkish. We had no guides, no adult even suggesting what we should do or see. My friends and I wandered around and rode the Metro, but the Louvre was closed for some reason; I bought postcards at a bookstall in Montmartre.

What a strange experience it all seems from this vantage point. If we had been given a chance to prepare, what might we have done with five days in Paris? Maybe nothing that different. I’ve never returned to Paris, but I always remember fondly that brief encounter, and drinking  café au lait in its native land.