Wrapping up the Loose Threads - France

I would like to simultaneously say both goodbye to my epic epitahs, and also to my new method of communication with the outside world - the blog! Instead of submitting you to reading my updates in large, fortnight long chunks, I thought it would be suitable for me to simply update this daily and you can clue in whenever you're curious to see what I'm getting up to in the world... And New York is really going to be it's own bubble.

I'm sitting writing this from BAT5 (British Airways Terminal 5 in the non-backpacker speak that I have become so accoustomed to) where I have a 6 hour stop over. Normally 6 hours in an airport would sound just as fun as repeatedly stabbing yourself in the eye with a broken biro, or watching Dancing with the Stars in Swedish; but T5 is a wonderland in itself. Just an expensive wonderland... £1 fo 10 minutes... This is how much you know I love you!

Now my last more-whale-than-word email ended in Scotland, land of the now infamous 'Hairy Coo'. That was on the 9th of September. Has it really been that long? The past few weeks have been PACKED so forgive me if I alterante between giving too much information and not enough. I will inevitably pick and choose between whatever suits my diverse tastes at the time of writing.

So.

EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND to LONDON, BRITIAN 9th: The free haircut that I mentioned in Scotland went just dandy, but also just a bit boring for my ecclectic tastes... 4 inches later, it's nice, but I'm going to get something edgy done when I hit to NY shores. I got in pretty late and don't think I even ate dinner and just fell asleep in my clothes on Asha's couch.

LONDON 10th: The next day I remember going back to the same heavenly scone place (sans Shakespearean actors this time), back to the same gob dropping TATE to see an exhibtion I missed, and yet again, somehow managed to miss seeing the Globe... Despite the fact that I walked past it. Twice. I met up with the beautiful creature that is Tiffany (remember her from emails ago? Choreographer cum record label manager that I met in Croatia?) and we went to one of the strangest night clubs I have ever set foot in. It was part art gallery, part live dramatic art istalation, part one-man-shows, part dancefloor and part bar. With pinball machines. And all of this was underground beneath London Bridge station. I wasn't feeling too peachy-keen though, so we called it a night as the last trains were leaving.

LONDON to PARIS, FRANCE 11th: I caught one of the last Eurostars this day before the fire in the tunnel that I'm sure that you would have all heard about. Lucky me! (Seperate lucky incidenet - I have heard about the RMIT student who was travelling in Dubrovnik, Croatia by herself and has gone missing. I know the club that she was last seen at and it's quite scary seeing someone else who just must have been in the wrong place and the wrong time... I thought that Dubrovnik was honestly one of the safest cities I had been too. I was obviously wrong). I made my way to Beatrice's house in a succession of French metro stops that I can niether pronounce nor find on a map, and surprisingly, for once, did NOT get hideously lost! I was greeted by Ceser with kisses on both cheeks. This is the boy that I met when I was 8 and he was 9 and naturally feel in love with purely for the fact that he was a French boy who kisses on both cheeks! And he was just the same - except about a foot taller. Then Baptiste walked in (Jack's age just about) and it was the same. Then Marie (21 y.o. journalism student who was travelling India at the same time as me) and that was EXACTLLY the same. Including the jealously. But it was when I saw Beatrice that I flipped out just a little bit. She's just like my mother, except Dutch/French, so the next few days were like a little slice of home. I slept in Baptiste's room, ate the most magnificent baguettes with salted butter that I may as well have just slathered on my thighs in the first place. Except it wouldn't have tasted quite as nice there.

PARIS 12th-15th: The next couple of days are a little hazy of which was on what day, so I'll group them all. Things that I can tick off my 'I've seen Paris' list:
- Eiffel Tower (climbed the 800 plus steps to the second tower. Sweating would be an understatement)
- Arc du Triumphe (spelt wrong of course. It was going to cost €9 to get to the top. No way, Jose)
- Notre Dame (Really stunning now that it's been restored. I have lots of fond 2005 Euro Choir memories of singing there; althought I found myself looking more at the reflections of the stained glass windows on the ground than the glass itself)
- Pompidou (I was way too tired to appreciate this centre for all it was worth. I spent 4 hours there, but I have seen SO many galleries that it just seems unfortunate that when you get to the one that's supposedly one of the best in the world, all the Francis Bacons and Jason Pollocks start to look the same. Cool exterior though)
- The Lourve (I met Beatrice on her lunch break here, and she showed me her favourite areas and gave me a little history lesson. She's an AMAZING artist herself, so it was nice have a personlised tour! I continued wandering around for about 4 hours after that too. Mona Lisa's looking good considering her age. I wonder if she uses L'Oreal?)
- That park outside the Lourve (I'm not even going to try and spell it. You know the one. It was really nice, but cold and raining. But you know that I love that)
- Mussee du O'rsay (you can continue to laugh while I massacre the French language. Again, I really regretted now that I've arted myself out! I have a few memories of being there with Dad back when I was a Bubba - remembering not to sneeze on Whistler's mother a la Mr Bean for an example)

That's about it for the big touritst attractions. I really spent a lot of my time simple wandering around the streets. I had my own set of keys, so I would generally wake up in the morning once everyone had gone to uni/school/work and watch French MTV and eat baguette and butter and jam; then go walkabout and whatever I came across, I saw! Paris doesn't quite 'speak' to me in the same multitude that Berlin does, albeit it really is a beautiful city to get lost in. And lost I certainly got.

By night, this city turns into a playground. I was lucky enough to have 2 fantabulous bigger siblings who were more than happy to take me out and try to get me wasted as every responsible older brother or sister does to their kin. Cesar succeeded on the first night, as Beatrice loves to remind me.

We started off drinking at dinner; then free wine at one of his friend's restraunts that she was bored of working in; then we went to one of his friend's house where about 8 of his other friends(stunning. I am yet to meet an non-attractuve, well dressed French man. Touch proverbial wood) were watching a rugby game. I fobbed my way through knowing what I was talking about as they kept refilling my glass of some lucid green liquer that tasted like a thousand liquid extra-strength breath mints. Then we all went out to a bar where it was one of their friend's 21sts... I kind of remember ordering 20 shots for €20 with one of the girls, but I'm not quite sure where they all went... Surely I would have given some away? I also remember conga lines on the dancefloor, and EVERYONE knowing my name. Even if no one else even knew who they were. It was like being a local celebrity, sans paparezi (even THERE I think that there was one person taking photos all night...). Anyway, the resposible kids we are, we knew that we couldn't vespa home, so instead they proposed that we ride some of the free bikes.

I hate bikes. HATE them. Psycological fear of them. And trying to ride one when I'm drunk and have even little sense of balance that what I normally do? Uh uh. Not. Good. I got home dinkying with Cesar, but not before a couple of bumps and bruises.

The next night out with the boys was a lot more calm - sitting around drinking a cocktail of reisling, vodka, that mint stuff and beer. They were going out afterwards to a similar shindig, but I couldn't bring myself for a repeat adventure. So I went home and had a girls night in with tea and Garden State with Beatrice and Marie on the couch.

PARIS 16th: Warning: The next week or so is epic. I will not go into a ridiculous amount of details, purely due to the fact that I will most defintely write about this 48 hours in some sort of strange real-time short to medium length story. That's how much went on.Essentially, today was the day that I met Anna. And on top of this, today was THE day. The Wombats day. The one secure date that I had for the whole of my 3 months in Europe. And I spent the entire day trying to make sure that I didn't give myself a heart attack in anticipation, and miss the gig. (For those oldies who don't know, The Wombats are not some sort of weird marsupial troupe. They are a really funky, somewhat crazy band from Liverpool who all wear red raybans and sing songs like "let's dance to Joy Divison and celebrate the irony that everything is going wrong but we're so happy" or "I can see your interests wane my Dear. She wanted Mary Poppins but I took her to King Lear".) I met Anna for the first time since Croatia outside the Elysee MontMarte as the sun was going down over the Moulin Rouge. I was busy pretending that I was Ukrainian to a bunch of pushy French dickheads when I ensconced her in my arms (probably confusing them even more...). Her Indian happy jacket was ripped, so we shared a bottle of rose while I felt very cool sitting crosslegged in the middle of Monte Marte sewing it back up for her.

And then the concert. My god the concert. What I didn't realise when I bought the tickets 5 months ago, was that it was their opening night of their European tour. And. They. Went. CRAZY. Anna and I both had bruised hip bones the next day.

I also happened to stumble upon the deatils to their afterparty (don't ask me how); so we wound up a few metro stops down the line at a really grungy medium sized club in East Paris. Anna was joking about how cool it would be to meet them. And I told her that's easy - it just takes a bit of sass. Gaurunteed, give me 2 or 3 minutes of my thing and I had us both up behind the decks! Murph, the lead singer, was on a bit of an ego trip and didn't really give anyone, not even his bandmates, much attention. Dan was pretty cool and reeeeally relaxed (too relaxed? Ahem?) but it was Tord, the quiet Norwegian bassist that I really got talking to. He's Scandanavian, I spent India with 9 Scandanavians, of course we were going to be peas in a pod! Speaking of pods, I wanted them to play a song, so I found it and highlighted it on my ipod to show them. Instead of putting it on, they TOOK my ipod and put it on! That was the first time that I caught Murph's attetnion. He had a flick through it, and then said "can we use this for awhile?". Yes you may, sir! What a privelge to have my ipod be the primary source of music for them to mix... Don't worry, I saved the playlist that they made... At about 3ish they all rolled into their tourbus, promised to see us when they come down to Melbourne (empty, I know) and off they went to Lille.

But the butter in the sandwich was this: there was a guy in a scarf Anna and I were dancing with for quite a chunk of the night. He turns out to be the bassist of the band that was doing the opening slot. Georgia's sweet talking ways and Anna's endearing presence earnt us an invite to Backstage for their gig the next night...

PARIS 17th: Lottie day!!!!!! LOLA! L. O. L. A. LOLA! I got a phonecall waking me up from my groggy serious lack of sleep informing me that my best St. Kilda buddy was within walking distance from my house... And I'll avoid all the sentimental bullshit about seeing her for the frist time in 6 months, because she's already heard it all and that's all that really needs to be heard. It was like stepping back into one of my favourite coffee shops (minus the good coffee. Parisans need to take some serious barrista courses) and yabbing away. Which we did over crepes as so-so essperssos for about 2 hours. Then it was walking and talking about everything aside from what we'd both been doing the past half year! I think that that is the sign of true friendship - when you don't need to ask 'so, what have you been doing' and you launch back into huge philosophical conversations; like Melbourne fashion style and Frankie :). We walked to Notre Dame and sat talking about our futures in the pews perhaps a little too loudly (I wanted to stick a post-it on my forehead that read I HAVEN'T SEEN THIS GIRL IN TOO LONG SO DEAL but I thought that would be insenstiive so I deccided against it.). Then we went wandering around the huge cemetry on the Eastern boundary for about 2 or 3 hours. This provided us with plenty of ironic quotes such as Lottie's "this is totally where you go when you die". It took us an hour to find Jimmy Morrisons's grave, and then we had the engenoius idea of taking a photo of the map and using the zoom to find our way around - of technology! How I (VERY occasionaly) love you! We also saw Oscare Wilde's, which was covered with equally ironic, but somewhat more famous, quotes. My favourite was "the only this that you can't resist is temptation"

It was 3o'clock by now which is baguette o'clock. So we went and sat underneath the Eiffel Tower and had a late lunch. Just beautiful! In direct contrast to the situation that I found myself in a few hours later. I was told at the train station that not only could I not get out of Paris to Bruseels the next day as promised, I couldn't get from Denmark to Paris OR Paris back to London. So I was essentially simultaneously stranded in 3 sepereate areas of Europe at once.

Putting this behind me and hoping for the best the next day, we went and met Anna (very late) for some drinks before meeting the band.It her time moseying around the area, Anna found the most gorgeous little shop full of everything you could never want nor need. Like individual glass googly eyes taken out of doll's heads. Or iceskates on strings. Or a comb that looks like a minuature umbrella. And what were they playing in this 10metre square store in the back streets of Paris? The Cat Empire...

After this little slice of heaven, a fabourlously messy night ensued. We met the rest of the band, and alternated from going to the bathroom to take swigs out of Anna's vodka flask and half falling asleep to get through the first band. Hopless. I was getting worried.But then with a BANG and NOT a whimper, The Lanskies started. This band was so good that Lottie, Anna and I all have their CDs and are planning to pull our respective strings to get them distributed in Australia. They are really THAT good! We shook our bonbons until our scarves came untied and our heels began to blister and our lipstick began to smudge. Then the closing band came on and it was a repeat event. We fell out of the gig space at 2ish and followed the bands around on a bar crawl through tiny laneways and over cobblestones, venturing further and further away from home. Once last drinks had been called and I couldn't stand to hear Lottie and Anna both speak in fluent French to the boys all night (rendering me uncharacteristically silent in this situation) we attempted to stumble our way back home. It took nearly 2 hours, but Lottie and I made it. About an hour in, Anna realised that she was way too far away and instead caught a taxi. This left Lottie and I to literally skip down the deserted streets of Paris, listening to Sigur Ros and reflecting on the good old days...

I need to go check-in now, so I'll continue with Anna and I's Bennelux adventure possibly through the big silver gates!