Paris-- the good and the bad

Is Paris an ashtray??

Does a bear shit in the woods?

Do I have pink eye?

Yeah, I'm afraid the answer to all three is "yes". I'm not sure from what though...

...perhaps it is from the hostel's bedsheets which are not changed from one person to the next? Oh, it's too easy to blame others though. It could very well be from my own filth. I finally did laundry today, for the first time since Dingle. And I only did laundry in Dingle because the hotel's laundry service did it for me. Today I forced myself to do laundry at a French Laundromat, ( it was like taking the SATs, I had to get a French person to help me), because I had already worn each pair of socks and underwear for about four consecutive days each.

In my defense, I have been taking a lot of showers (in Paris, twice a day because it's so hot that it causes me to sweat a lot), but I would just have to put on dirty clothes after my shower. Yes, I don't like that either, but what else am I supposed to do?--laundry?...ugh.

Anyway, I wake up one morning in the hostel and my eye is crusted over, so I pry it open. It's pink. Pink eye, right? At the time, I didn't know that you could buy prescription drugs in France without a prescription (as long as it's not vallium or anything too fun like that) , so I went all the way to the "American Hospital" in Paris, as per the recommendation from the evil little fucker that works in reception at my hostel. They wouldn't let me see a doctor, of course, unless it was a €500 emergency room visit. But the woman there told me that I could just buy some antibiotic eyedrops at a pharmacy. Great. It's not like it took me a couple hours of walking in the hot sun and sitting in a hot subway to get there or anything like that...

Stop me if I'm sounding negative, I don't mean to be. My story has a happy ending...

So I show a pharmacist my eye and she says that it looks like allergies. I say, "no, I think it's an infection" and so she says "ok, I'll go get you some antibiotic eyedrops". It was as easy as that.

Now, don't be after givin' me all the sympathy in the world. Within the first two applications of the eyedrops (or 12 hours later) my eyes had cleared up completely and now there's no trace of pinkness at all. I'm treating both eyes as a preventative measure.

My three-day stay at the Cualaincourt Square "Hotel" was up, but I didn't want to leave Paris. And I certainly didn't want to stay there another night. So I packed my things up and moved to another hotel. I am now staying for three more nights in Paris at the Hotel Caron on Rue du Caron. It's in a more hip area and closer to the city center. It was one of the cheapest hotels I could find (€45 per night), but it is a HOTEL, which means I get my own bedroom, thank Jesus for that. Although, I still have to go out in the hallway to use the communal shower and toilet, but I do get my own sink next to the bed. It's kind of dirty, but I love it--the view from the sixth floor and the lack of a curfew. (I'm in room 12, but there are only two rooms per floor and no elevator, so I have to climb a lot of stairs).

I finally decided to bite the bullet and type a blog using these keyboards in France. I hate them for many reasons, some of the best reasons are because the "Q" is where the "A" should be; the "Z" is where the "W" should be, etc; I have to hit "shift" to make a "period" or "."; I also have to hit the shift key to make all the numbers; and finally, I have to concentrate for about fifteen to twenty seconds to find the apostrophe or " ' " key, the quote or " " " key, and the parentheses "( )"... so this is all taking me a very long time to type, because I have to continuously be correcting these mistakes, but it's good practice and I'm getting a little bit faster.

Paris is beautiful. And the nights are the perfect temperature in a tee-shirt, neither too hot nor too cold.

I went to the Louvre today. People have always told me how huge and unimaginably immense it is, and so I don't think that any amount of real estate would have impressed me at this point. Suffice it to say, it is big. I probably didn't even make it through a quarter of the museum by the time it closed. I did get to see and photograph the Mona Lisa, which is the main thing. I also saw Napoleon III's fabulously ostentacious (sp?) apartment, Egyptian stuff, etc...

Numbers are more tangible than adjectives though. If you were to devote one minute (60 seconds) to viewing and appreciating each piece of art in the museum, it would take you 180 days to finish seeing everything. Now that's without going to the bathroom, eating or sleeping.

Hey mom, in the subterranean mall under the Louve there was a mineral/rock store and I saw an elephant carved of pure jade for €300. I thought maybe I should get it for you, but then I thought "Would mom want a jade elephant? Or would mom want that I not charge €300?" So I didn't buy it. Besides, you're probably over you're whole elephant thing anyway, right? "Favorite animal" related gifts are kind of a cop-out from creativity come Christmas and birthday time, anyway. So I won't get you elephants anymore, lest it be a white elephant.

I'm going to jump around here... No culture understands the importance of the culinary art more than the French. I've had some really good meals here. I love food. People that work in the restaurants here are not moonlighting or waiting for something better; this is their life and they mean business, and it shows in the quality of the food and the service.

The three-course meal is standard. Today for lunch at "Chez Paul" I had the Escargot for an appetizer. It came in a liquid butter/garlic sauce (with black truffle oil perhaps?) and plenty of salt. For the main I had the chateubriand, cooked medium with a Bernaise sauce. For dessert I had a "Chocolate Marquis" which was a delightfully rich chocolate mousse type thing in a creamy vanilla sauce, some hazelnut bits, and a soft crust of some kind of (pie dough perhaps?) surrounding it...it was great. I also had a pitcher of red wine (Cotes du Rhone) which equates to about half a bottle. After all that, the French always finish their meals with coffee; ALWAYS an espresso. So I, in turn, order an espresso at the end of every meal and I now find it quite palettable (after adding the sugar packet, of course).

Wine is cheap here. It's cheaper than soda for example...and I'm talking about good wine. I saw a bottle of Cotes Du Rhone in the store for €1.50. I would mail some wine home, but it is illegal to ship alcohol into the United States. (Not that I've let that entirely stop me... wink, wink. Mom, be expecting a package any day now. Just hold it for me, sil vous plait).

The French people are not as bad as people say. They're fine. You just have to approach them in the right way. If you just start talking to them in English they might be a little put-off so I've learned a little bit of French (just a few useful phrases), enough so that I can always approach someone in French and achive a few basic transactions. If I'm asking for directions I'll say "Excuse moi madam/monsigior. Parle vous anglaise?" (Please excuse all errors in my French spelling, by the way).

The most important thing I've learned how to say is how to ask for the check at the end of a meal: (L'addition, sil' vous plait!) , because no European waiter will ever bring you your check EVER unless you ask for it. It's all about slowly enjoying the meal and not being rushed. You would still be in your chair at closing time if you didn't ask for the check yourself.

I like speaking French. It's fun. I think I need to learn it and then live here when I grow up so that I can eat well all the time. I've actually been mistaken for "one of them" several times. French people will come up to me and ask me something in French, like for directions or something, but then I have to ruin it by opening my mouth and saying "oh sorry, I don't speak French. I'm a tourist." I don't know why that should be too surprising to me; I look as European as the next guy, afterall. In fact, most people are surprised that I'm from California, after having looked at me. Because of my pale skin, most people assume I'm either British or Irish, I believe.

My favorite interaction was this: I wanted to ask directions to go somewhere, so I walked up to a woman on the street and started "Excuse moi madame..." , but she cut me short and said "No; sorry, I only speak English!" and continued walking away. Rather than let her know that I was also a tourist and start a conversation in English, I just let her walk away, under the impression that I was a Frenchman who could only speak French. For that brief moment I could pretend, and for that brief moment I was indeed a Frenchman. I find this endlessly entertaining.

*****

Coming from the airport into Paris for the first time, I met an Indian guy on the train. He was from India but had been living in Paris for a few months. So his English was much better than his French. He saw my bags and knew I was a tourist. We got into a conversation and he explained his occupation which had brought him to Paris. It had something to do with relating Einstein's theory of something to someone else's theory of something and atom splitting and electron waves and how they emit energy or something... anyway, I don't know, but he was smarter than me so he explained to me how the metro system works.

Once you get used to it, you see that the color coding of the different metro lines is very simple and effiecient. Public transportation has to be navigable by the retard here (sorry for the non-PC-ness of that), because the French are so adamant about only speaking their own language. Indeed, I've ran into several people already that have no English, but only French.

The Indian guy was kind enough to accompany me all the way to my stop and even carry one of my many burdensome bags for me. Once he left, of course, I got on the wrong connecting metro line, and coming back I missed my stop. When I finally got to my stop again I stood up and expected the door to open automatically like on metro lines in the States. It didn't and I figeted vainly with the handle before the train took off again without me ever having figured out how to open the door. That meant that I missed my stop again and appeared the fool in front of everyone else. I finally figured out that you have to lift the lever if you want the door to open at a stop.

Anyways, that was four days ago. I'm an expert with the Paris Metro now and I navigate it like a pro. I just bought a week-long pass.

When I first arrived in the room of my hostel there were two other guys there. A white guy from South Africa, and another guy from the US (Colorado). Within ten seconds, once we all realized that we all spoke English, they said "Are you hungry?" and I said "Yeah," so the three of us went out and had pizza in Paris. And the pizza was better than any pizza that you can get in the culinary wasteland known as "Los Angeles". The next day the American left and I spent the day with the South African guy and another white South African, (a girl, also staying in the hostel). The three of us walked. I don't know if I've ever walked so much in a day. We walked from Montmarte to the Hotel du Invalides, Eiffel Tower, Champs du Eyesses... And that evening we took a boat ride down the Sienne River to see the Paris city-scape at night, witnessing the lighting of the Eiffel Tower. It's quite pretty.

That may have been the night that I went out to the discoteque and missed the curfew of the hostel, which obliged (sp?) me to eat slowly and walk a lot. But I don't know. The dates blend together a lot.

So many people come in and out of those hostels. The next day a guy from the Czech Republic came into the room; he was travelling on business. He started showing me all the pictures of Paris he had taken on his laptop. There was a guy from Ireland (Leitrim), so we talked about that, seeing as how I was just there and all. There was a hitchhiker from Holland. Funny accents people from Holland have...I thought he was on drugs at first, but it was just his accent. A guy from Orange County. Canada. India. It got to the point where I didn't know who else was sleeping below, above or next to me after a while...and I didn't much care. I guess that's how it is at hostels. It's a diverse, chaotic environment, always changing with people moving in and out.

There is a mutual respect, however, between everybody and theft is not a problem at all, that I have experienced. I feel guity if I come in to bed late after other people are sleeping, because it's inevitable that the door will creak and the bed will squeek. I can only be 'so' quiet. That's a nice thing about having my own room; I don't have to worry about other peoples' well-being. Also I just have too much stuff... so now I have somewhere to let it sprawl across the floor with impunity and ease-of-mind.

It's funny that no matter where I go in life I always seem to bring the messy bedroom with me. I will lug it across a city and through the metro, because I can tell you, I've only been in this room one day now and it's already a sty. It's part of my psyche and will always be with me, I guess.

I don't know what I'll do after Paris. I haven't made a single plan about that yet. I think I'll go to the Musee du Dorce'e tomorrow. That has all the impressionism, you know: Van Gogh, Monet, Manet, etc...

Yes, though, to serisouly answer your question Kathleen, everyone DOES smoke here. You know the dried bits of mucous which collect in your nasal cavity after aiding your inhalation filtration, commonly referred to as "boogers"? Well, mine are pretty much black at the end of every day, from breathing in everyone's cigarette smoke, I believe. There is no such thing as a "non-smoking section" in a restaurant either. Such sections, although government mandated, are ignored. The French love their cigarettes just as much as their red wine. And I think they view our anti-smoking American nature as puritanical and Nazi-like.

No, you just have to get used to it and learn to like it. The smoke filled cafes, brasseries and restaurants adds to the charm and ambiance of it all. It's really part of it and I for one accept it and don't let it bother me. I've never been one to be bothered by smoke though, unless someone blows it right in my face.

more later
Andrew