From the World of Yesterday, written by Stefan Zweig, the chapter which he talks about his Paris years
“Oh, how easily, how well, one lived in Paris, particularly if one was young! Merely walking about was a pleasure and a lesson at the same time, for everything was within reach. You could walk into a secondhand bookshop and spend a quarter hour turning the pages without the dealer’s grumbling or complaining. You could go into the small galleries and the art shops and browse around as you wished, you could look in on the auctions at the Hôtel Drouot, and chat with the governesses in the parks. It was not easy to stop once you had started strolling, for the street drew you on magnetically; it was a kaleidoscope, constantly disclosing something new. If you were tired you could sit on the terrace of one of the ten thousand cafés and write letters on stationery which was supplied free of charge and at the same time have the street vendors trying to sell you their entire stock of baubles and gadgets. The only difficult thing was to stay home or to go home, especially when it was spring and the lights shone soft and silvery over the Seine, and the trees on the boulevards were beginning to bud, and the girls were wearing bunches of violets which they had bought for a penny. But it was not necessarily spring that put you in a good mood in Paris.”
are we going to have this kind of life back at some point, or nay?