Mon-sewer, where is the Loooooo-ver Museum?

I feel like the French don't need nuclear weapons. They could just threaten to burn their national art collection and the world would be on its knees.

Whether or not I will see the whole Louvre before my departure is the greatest stress in my life right now. This is a testimony both to the comparatively light workload at the University of Chicago Paris and to the cultural behemoth that is the Louvre. Good lord, it is like Narnia.

My first exposure to the Louvre was a visit to the Soviet Counterpoint Exhibit, which was due to close the next day. It was like when you are writing a paper and you get through the first sentence and realize how long it will take you to write six more pages on Balkan dictionaries. Fortunately, I get in free. I have been back several times, and it is just absurd. Thus far I have not seen any of the "big pieces" (I plan to visit the Mona Lisa at the crack of dawn on a Tuesday, because when I tried to go on Saturday I became very uncomfortable in the crush of people and had to retreat). Rather, I have become intimately acquainted with the "lesser artists," a category which, in my American-English guide to the Louvre, includes Albrecht Dürer. I always emerge feeling delusional and inexplicably inebriated. There is a medieval wing full of Soviet memorabilia, and a room full of Greek statues, and when you turn any given corner you are as likely to see a Vermeer as you are a Starbucks in Seattle. It's terrifying.