For some reason, I never sat down long enough to finish writing about Paris, so I ended up starting and stopping. Because I'm lazy to actually FINISH what I started, or even bother to connect the paragraphs in a logical manner...my apologies? Also, I do not have internet access at home due to broadband being down AGAIN. Fuck you TMnet. Fuck you and your hopeless inefficiencies. Fuck you and your evil monopolistic ways.
Paris is neither romantic nor mysterious nor even particularly memorable. The Parisian shops are essentially London shops in another language. The Parisian streets smell of piss that is unforgivably universal in character. Parisian sweets can be replicated in a canny bakery in Singapore. The service is brisk like we would expect in a bustling, impersonal capital. We walked the better half of the city during our brief 4 days there, gazing at intricate architecture and admiring sharply-dressed citizens of an unabashedly metropolitan stronghold. As we were chaffeured out into the suburbs to reach the airport, grey building blocks of housing units crowded onto the skyline and blotted out any memory of the proud Capital. They seemed to appear the minute we crossed an imaginary line, and yet we couldn't pinpoint where the line was, and where the last of the old world stood. An hour's flight brought us back to Coventry; a 20 minute taxi ride took us back to the insular comforts of the university campus. People asked us if we saw any action - Paris was on fire. Fire? We saw only slender cigarettes lit by the equally slender fingers of its elegant inhabitants. While i knew of the rumblings of trouble, I am ashamed to say it completely escaped my thoughts as we happily took in the Louvre, the Seine, Notre Dame. Days after we got back, France erupted in flames stoked by racial and religious tension built up over long years.
We all wanted to save Paris for the One We Love, but seeing as the One We Love could also be the One Who Took His Own Sweet Time, we had to forego soft-focus daydreams and concentrate on cold hard reality, that we were 3 decidedly cynical girls on a mission to finish Paris in 4 days. We walked til our heels burned and Sam cut her feet to ribbons in 10 euro shoes. We ate more chinese food than we care to admit. We saw the Champs Elysee (overrated), Arc de Triomph (overrated), Notre Dame (beautiful, but most of us had seen our share of majestic cathedrals), Disneyland (outgrew all that), and the Eiffel tower from across the river. We sampled crepes on the street (overrated but still pretty damn tasty), steak (raw as live cow), moules frites or mussels n fries (FRIGGIN' EXCELLENT!), and Disneyland's wretched overpriced hotdogs. I suppose any city could be romantic with the one you love, but we encountered the only true and briefest whisper of romance walking thru the courtyards of the Louvre at night. The monument seemed like it was lit from within, its statues and carvings bathed in a most flattering glow. Nothing will prepare you for how big it is, how many works of art it protects. I remember when i was in Berlin, and we strolled around the Brandenburger Gate at midnight, childishly hopping to and fro across the painted remnants of the border. We saw a man and a woman holding hands as they were cycling. When they reached the gate, they briefly let go, only to clutch each other again as they passed from East to West, laughing into the night sky. I guess romance is where you want to find it, even if you're in Germany.
One stereotype that could well be true: the French are obsessed with sex. We visited the red light district of Boulevard de Clichy in Montmatre (home to the famous Moulin Rouge) and made a special detour into the 7 storey Musee d'Erotique. This we HAD to visit because I spent one whole euro trying to find the damn address on the internet in a kiosk in the Louvre. Anyway, yes, 7 whole floors of sex. Sex in every conceivable position in every culture and between any possible entity. We watched bad porno and admired the wood carvings of horny Japanese. On our way back up the street, a man sitting outside a strip club calls out to us:
'Where you from?' (we giggle and ignore him) 'You want to sex???' (we hasten our steps)
At the Virgin megastore, Ana and Sam look through a calender with half-naked sportsmen, discussing certain sexual...habits that they should pay me handsomely not to divulge. As we make to leave, the security guard comes up to us. We think he has come to check our bags, suspecting we are juvenile delinquent shoplifters. Instead he says:
'I see you looking at the pictures. You like?' (we look slightly bemused)
'The handsome men... which one you like?' (Ana and Sam start laughing and I'm still very confused)
He then tells us to visit the rugby pitches if we were perhaps hoping to ogle a few half-naked athletes. Ana then scoots us out with a blatant lie that men back home are better. Ana!
At Disneyland, as we enter the Alice in Wonderland maze (not as thrilling as you'd think), a man comes up to me and strokes my face with a long-stemmed flower. He hugs me close to him and says repeatedly 'You family me?'. To this day we are still struggling to decipher what he meant. Family = familiar? Family = marry? Family = you are my long-lost sister?
Alas, that is all I wrote. My time has been spent balancing my academic work (although I would not overemphasise this), my actual employment work, and being with a certain someone whom I miss very very much right now. I know you're reading this. I miss you! I would like to slather you with chocolate sauce and lick it off slowly and erotically! This is as personal as it gets at this point.
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