Paris: Stumbling into serenity: The secret garden of Saint-Serge

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The other day I was walking through the edgy, regenerated Villette area of Paris, and on one of its busy streets, I stumbled upon something that felt like a gap in time.

I went through an unassuming gate and walked down a narrow, semi-private alley. Just like that, I was out of the noisy present and inside a hidden, completely quiet garden. It turned out to belong to the Saint-Serge de Radonège Russian Orthodox Church.

 

Photo: SortirAParis

The whole scene looked like something out of an old nineteenth-century novel. Orthodox priests with long beards and flowing black robes moved slowly among the flowerbeds, and a group of elderly people sat on rickety chairs, chatting in a mix of Russian and French. The sudden shift from the bustling street to this completely quiet sanctuary was so strange that I almost felt out of place with a smartphone in my hand.

In fact, I kept my mobile firmly in my pocket. For once, it felt a bit wrong to pull it out just to take the usual snapshots I always do whenever I walk around a city.

An elderly woman came up to me and offered a glass of what turned out to be homemade kvass. I accepted the drink, and to be honest, I found it much better than the trendy kombucha they sell in the health food stores nearby.

I thought about how  easily I could have walked right past that gate if my eyes had been glued to my mobile screen, but I tried not to think too hard about what that says about me - or about the kombucha

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