somatablet.com

It’s raining again today. For the third straight day.

I bought an ethernet cable yesterday, and can now use my laptop from home! I can be on iChat, I can download stuff from iTunes, and I can FTP again. With this FTPing ability, it means uploading photos is far easier, so I’ve backed down on my promise not to post any Paris pictures. They’re available, in all their clicheness, below.

So, Paris. Last Thursday, El Día de Hispanidad here in Spain, we didn’t have classes. I spent the day in Madrid before my evening flight to Paris, which was a stupid choice. Nothing was open. I walked around and found the only open cafe, Starbucks. I enjoyed a Grande Cafe Latte con leche desnatado, but got promptly bored. I ended up spending about six hours at the Madrid airport waiting for my flight. I had hoped to catch an earlier one, but I ascertained after talking to some customer service types that with my fare, no changes were allowed. How annoying.

I got to Paris Orly at around 10:30, and took the commuter train line into the city. I met up with Eddie on the north east side of the city, where he graciously hosted me for the four nights I was there. We headed out to the Bastille area to hit up some bars, but didn’t get there until around 1:30. Places snootily refused us entry, as almost every bar closed at two. Finally, we found the only bar that was still open. Unsurprisingly, it was a Spanish bar, filled with Spaniards bearing mullets and speaking Spanish. It doesn’t matter where they are; Spaniards know how to party. After grabbing a post-drink snack, we hitched a cab back to Eddie’s dorm and slept.

The next morning, Eddie had some homework to finish, so I went towards the center of the city alone with a book. I walked up and down the beautiful tree-lined boulevards, saw some of the main fashion streets and checked out H&M, visited Notre Dame, and finally took up a bench on a bridge crossing the Seine to read for a while. The city is absolutely picturesque, a perfect mix of classiness, bohemianness, water, trees, streets, plazas. My god, though, everything is SO expensive. I’m spoiled in Spain; all my favorite sins are dirt cheap.

A little later, I wandered over to the Pompidou museum, but it was closed for a strike. Silly Europeans. I ended up just sitting in the plaza out front with some coffee and more reading. A guy approached me for a light and said “merci,” to which I instinctively responded “de nada.” - “¿Hablas español?” - “Un poco; estoy estudiando en España este semestre. ¿De dónde eres?”

Turns out the guy was Venezuelan by birth, and had been living in Paris for three years. We pretty much summarized each of our life stories in Spanish for the next hour. It was a really good feeling, but a bit strange that the longest random Spanish conversation I’ve had since being here was in Paris. As the conversation closed, Eddie texted me saying he’d be there in ten minutes. I said goodbye to the guy, then Eddie and I walked the city a bit.

We decided we were both hungry, and ended up heading towards a place called Pizza San Antonio. It was only 6:30, though, and the place didn’t open until 7. My instant reaction was to suggest getting a drink, so we each got two. Now pleasantly buzzing along, we got a pair of pizzas, and they were amazing. We got one with prosciutto, and the other with gorgonzola and bacon, and we were completely stuffed after them.

Around this time, I got a text from Sue, who is also on the Toledo program. She flew in Friday afternoon to Paris and had some other plans, but wanted to know if we were planning to go out that night. Of course! We first went back to Eddie’s dorm to down some booze (a bottle of wine split and two 650ml bottles of Heineken each). Then we took the metro over to Sue near Montmartre, but when we got there we realized we didn’t really have any plans. Eddie called around, and then we took the metro back towards downtown intending to hang out at Kenna’s Parisian apartment (she’s here on the year-long program). But when we got there, she and her friends were already headed out to bars and clubs. One last trip on the metro, and we ended up pretty much back where we picked up Sue in the first place.

And then, the problems inherent in groups. Especially a group of nine Americans in Paris. We got bounced from a couple clubs, then couldn’t find any bars we all wanted to go to. Finally, I convinced Eddie and Sue that we should split off, and the three of us landed at an Irish bar. I chugged a couple drinks to recover my buzz, and we had a great time talking and listening to live music and drinking and eating delicious french fries.

When that bar closed, we found another, and I ratcheted up my drunk level even more. All told, I think I had a mixed drink of mostly rum and seven large beers that night. A young Parisian joined us (he was kind of chaperoning his very drunk friends, and was exploiting us to practice his English, but he was nice). We talked to him for an hour or so, but then he told us he had to leave. A little while later, that bar closed, too, and we all stumbled out onto the street. We ran into the Parisian again, and he talked to us out on the sidewalk until almost 5 in the morning. I can’t remember for the life of me what we talked about, because he kept switching back to French, which Eddie and Sue both have a working knowledge of. Not me, so I just watched rather drunkenly as the city started to wake up around me.

After another cabride back, we got back to Eddie’s dorm and slept until Saturday afternoon. We didn’t do a lot Saturday besides having dinner at a fondue restaurant that served wine out of baby bottles. It was a tiny little place, with only two (really long but narrow) tables, and you sat right on top of the people next to you. It was charming, but about a million degrees when surrounding by fondue pots or people on all sides. That night, we went out drinking and clubbing, and got back the next morning at around 6:30.

On Sunday, Eddie had some more work to do, so I went to see the Eiffel Tower. I relaxed in the park out front for a bit, reading so that I could see the Eiffel Tower just behind my book, then decided to make the walk up to the second level, saving €4 compared to taking the elevators (everyone told me the top was not worth going to, that it looks like a city viewed from an airplane). Despite the haze, the view from the second level was amazing, and I got a really good feel for the layout of the city. Always a fan of that/why am I not an urban planner? I guess urban planning has a lot to do with economics…

Anyway. After a while up the tower and a cup of the worst espresso I’ve had in all of Europe, I marched back down and met up with Eddie at the Arc de Triomphe as night fell. It’s larger than I expected, and I can’t believe how many streets radiate out from it. It also afforded a really nice view of the Eiffel Tower from the distance, and I got to see the dazzling (read: tacky) lightshow it puts on every hour. Sue, who was supposed to fly out that day, missed her flight; she gave a call and we agreed to meet up with her. From there, we went back to Pizza San Antonio with some people from the Paris program, and between seven of us had four litres of wine.

After dinner, we went out to a nearby bar and drank some more. Can never go wrong with that. We left with just enough time to catch the metro back before it closes at 1, and when we got to Eddie’s dorm I packed all my stuff. 4AM rolled around far too quickly, I grabbed my stuff, said goodbye, and caught a taxi to the airport. Getting back to Spain was so nice; I realized how good my comprehension has become. I was completely lost in Paris, with no idea how to say anything; in Spain, I can pretty much always get what I intend across. In addition, Spaniards are really lax about syntactical mistakes and mispronunciations; they’re patient with foreigners and tend to be interested in what everyone has to say. It probably helps that I have a knack for picking up accents and I don’t think I sound very American when I speak Spanish. In France, the only time I wasn’t answered immediately in English was when I properly pronounced “deux billets, si vous plait.” It was a happy moment, but the only one like it. In Spain, people have only switched to English when I ask them to, and I’ve only asked in a couple situations where I just don’t have the vocabulary I need (ie when I lost my camera and had to fill out a bunch of forms and answer a bunch of questions).

I’m really glad I got to see Paris, though, and even if I don’t have any desire to live there, I would definitely love to visit again. It was really nice to meet up with Eddie and compare experiences, and hopefully he’ll get a chance to come see Spain before the quarter is out.