Lost Tower

I’m with a tourist group in Paris. We’re sitting on top of a giant bus, it must be at least 3 floors. It’s late in the evening, and we’ve been driving for hours to get to Paris. We’re all looking forward to seeing the Eiffel Tower.

We arrive at the place where the tower is supposed to be, only to find that - you guessed it - it’s not there. A guy dressed in bright orange working clothes tells us that if we hurry, we can catch up with the tower, as it is being transported away at the moment. The bus revs up and we’re away, chasing the lost tower.

The journey is short, but intense. We’re zig-zagging through narrow alley-ways at tremendous speed, following the lights from a huge, blurry object in the distance. We yell and shout at the driver to slow down, and suddenly we stop. We’re right behind an enormous carrier, a vehicle that resembles the ones space-shuttles are being transported with. We’re moving at almost no speed at all. It’s dead quiet. The large carrier doesn’t make a sound, its wheels spin slow, almost unnoticed.

From where we sit we can now see that people are dismantling the Eiffel Tower. They’re removing small bits and larger segments and placing them on the deck of the carrier. Someone asks if we want to sit on top of the tower while it’s being taken apart, and we all say yes. So we jump off the bus and start climbing on what’s left of the tower. It’s very confusing; climbing up isn’t climbing up, it’s taking us sideways, and climbing down takes us higher. I try to tell myself that this effect is caused by the fact that the workers are moving the pieces of the tower around. I take a lot of photos, although I’m almost certain it’s too dark.

We reach the top of the tower. We’re looking at the big city below. I couldn’t tell if it’s Paris or not. Someone tells me that this dismantling routine is done every night, for preservation purposes. The tower gets unmounted, disassembled, assembled again and put back, all in a couple of hours, every night, while carried through the city on a monstrous vehicle.

We reach the space where the tower is supposed to sit. We realize that the tower is now completely rebuilt, so we run down the stairs to the ground, to get a look at it from there. It’s huge. Lightbulbs are covering every inch of it. We walk a little further away to get an overview. The bus is waiting for us. I’m looking at the pictures I took. They all show images of the Eiffel Tower from the ground, all right and proper, as it should be.