Wine and Jagerbombs. Life is Good!

I forgot to mention that the Saturday night before moving to the new hostel was spent on the pedestrian bridge over the seine. It’s pretty amazing; basically all the students just come out on to the bridge at about 8 o’clock and start having picnics, drinking and playing guitar. So having found a suitable group who spoke English I spent that night under the light of the Eiffel tower, chatting to Frenchies and being fed wine and Jagerbombs. Life is good!


One really cool thing they do is take a padlock, write the name of the person they love on it and lock it to the bridge. I thought that was pretty cool.



Anyway, most of the rest of the week passed without much drama. Two lovely Danish girls moved into my room in the new Hostel and they were great company, even though we never got a chance to go out on account of one of them having a gammy leg that she burned on a motorbike.

For the most part last week was pretty uneventful. I was dying with the cold which could be down to the fact that I’d been living off bread for two weeks and was probably nutritionally deficient. Papa Sean gave me chickpeas. Yes. Chickpeas. Nice man, that.

Saw a play by Ionesco which was pretty awesome.

Moved back to the D’Artagnan. Been talking to Papa Sean a lot more this time round, he makes it very easy to meet people, including Michael and Jamie, two Canadian guys who were going on an 8 month travel across the world and who introduced me to the awesomeness of crocs. I think I kind of freaked them out when I received a kinda upsetting and unexpected message on Monday and ended up having a small scale breakdown for five minutes…but they were really nice about it and took loads of pictures of me wearing the Canadian flag like a cape. I was very sad to see them leave so early. They are returning to Paris at the end of August and I may actually come back just to see them ;)

It’s weird, thinking about the people you meet here. As Papa Sean said, some people you meet for a few hours and you have an instant connection. Others, you push so hard and you’re just banging your head against the wall. I know what he means….

Went out in the Tuesday night with two lovely American girls and a guy called Rouddy. Ended up in a cool Latino bar. The guys are weird here. It’s like, you’re standing talking to your friends, or clearly busy, and they just grab you and start dancing with you. It’s crazy! The club itself was a lot of fun. I learned to salsa! Been listening to Gogol Bordello all day now and wishing I had someone to salsa to them with. Maybe once me and Stuart take up swing dancing…

Knackered today. Fell asleep at a play, which I feel sorta guilty about. Poor actors! Thgey were good, but I went to sleep at like 4 this morning lol. Now I’m gutted cause Spain won and not Germany. Scheisser!

Off to Lyon tomorrow. Early rise at 6.30 – it’s gonna kill me. I can’t wait to get to Lyon, yet I never want to leave Paris! Yet I hate it, yet still I want more time. Moremoremore… also want to see the rest of the world. I always thought I’d do Europe over the next few years and then branch out into the Americas, China, Russia, maybe even Australia…now I want it all, right NOW.

Iain Cordona gets a special mention for saying my blog was entertaining. Thanksies! :D



Oh, and before it becomes obsolete, I wrote this ages ago:



Rule one: Don’t make eye contact with strangers. That’s one of the main things I hate about Paris. In Glasgow, it’s normal to look at someone on the tube or the metro or the underground or whatever and smile. If a woman sits next to a man in the train station, it doesn’t mean a thing. In Paris, no one smiles on the metro, especially not to each other. And women need to be careful not to give even the slightest hint of invitation. In Paris, you can’t just be friendly for friendliness sake. Everyone’s after something. At least, that’s the belief.