Ever since the premiere of the literary picture, the virtual and the real city of Paris have coupled in the collective imaginary of the Europe.
It is therefore understandable that, when confronted with a city that looks and feels nothing like what we might have been led to expect by the literacy, we experience in Paris a strange perversion of a feeling which, according to Umberto Eco, emerges when the completely real becomes identified with the completely fake, and "absolute unreality is offered as real presence".
A similar feeling would pervade us if, arriving in Paris, we all of a sudden realized the Tour Eiffel did not exist, outside of post cards and films, and that in its place was just a wonderful six-lane highway.
Just like Freud arriving in Athens: " It's just like we learned at school"....
