my plan for october was to go to paris, quickly find an easy and well-paid job (something like sampling chocolate was what i had in mind) and spend the large part of the next month wandering around galleries, shopping and eating crepes.
well, it would seem i was perhaps a little optimistic, but in spite of my limited success in the parisian job market (although to be fair i was offered 2 jobs- one in a bar that meant walking 20km home at 4am each night, and the other was only offered 4 days before my planned departure), i have actually had an incredibly good time so far, with the only thing missing being that tall brunette girl who i seem to see everywhere (and apparently she's having a good time on the other side of the channel so i'm not too worried).
basically, the job-hunt consigned to the too-hard basket, i proceeded to catch up with a few friends lurking around (you know who you are), hang around in a lot of impressive galleries pretending i knew about art, and eat my own weight in nutella crepes. life was good.
i've been staying with arguably the world's most hospitable family friends, who had met me all of twice before i turned up at charles de gaulle requesting food and accommodation, and have very generously had me stay in their house on and off since my arrival. AND, on top of all that, they're really nice people.
jeremy, eldest son of family, 19 and pretty cool, gave me a good introduction to paris as on my first weekend he took me to two parties (if any australian girls are feeling unloved they should definitely give france a go), the green day concert (for which he wouldn't let me pay him back and where i actually had a really good time, despite being in the mosh pit and surrounded by sweaty french emos) and finally lent me his NaviGo card for when he doesn't need it, which is basically a glorified train pass that identifies me as Jeremy Watkins, 19-year-old blonde male, and so is essentially a fake ID that would have me laughed out of any club. but still.
i spent the next week sleeping in, hanging out with jesse treharne, lucy bowers or a combination of the two, seeing some of paris's sights that had previously escaped my notice (i don't know why people queue for hours for the louvre, the musée d'orsay was incredible and we saw a guy who looked just like justin timberlake from behind), and generally came to feel a little less like a tourist in this beautiful city.
then, WEEK 2.5 (my second whole week in paris), rupert saxton and his beloved fluffy blonde hair turned up at Gare Montparnasse for his last week in paris, where we stayed in a slightly scruffy but really friendly hostel called the 3 Ducks, 10 minutes from the Eiffel Tower. having both seen pretty much every landmark paris has to offer (and there are many), we felt little pressure to sightsee and so spent a large proportion of our time cooking up a storm in the hostel kitchen, making friends with the many cool people who passed through the hostel's doors (you, too, know who you are) and going on pub crawls pretending we were siblings- on one famous occasion rupert only bought one drink and i managed to somehow make €5, which had something to do with a kebab but we're not quite sure.
we also made the trip out to the Palace of Versailles, where the massive queue made us consider going home, but after lining up for 15 minutes we discovered that as members of the European Union (we both have a parent from sunny Great Britain) we were allowed to jump the queue, flash a passport and feel really clever all at once. the palace is really incredible, must have been awesome to live in, and the gardens are bigger than several parisian arrondisements put together. nice.
rupert and i basically ended the week with a few photos of versailles, a zillion of the eiffel tower with people walking through the picture and one of me in 'the batcave' (a doona cover with pictures of che guevara on it that would make the revolutionary turn in his grave). a good result.
on rupert's last day in paris, and my last day of having any plans, i was kind of mooching around the courtyard when a nice danish guy we'd met a few days earlier asked me why i looked so devo, and i explained that i was at the end of a pretty fun few weeks with no plans ahead, and he asked me if i wanted to come to belgium with him and a friend. that night.
and so, with no good reason to say no and previous research indicating that scandanavian people are all really nice, i accepted.
but you'll have to wait for that one.
x
