Many crazy things were packed into this one tiny weekend. Let me begin at the beginning.
Friday evening, Erin and I went to pick up Samara at Gare du Nord. We found her, and found our way back to the Métro, and all was well, until a random guy came up to as and started speaking English to us. This is not unusual when you are speaking English with your friends in Paris (Parisians have no sense of what is inappropriate in interactions with foreigners - they think anything goes), but it is still creepy and unwanted. And this guy soon revealed himself as being creepier than most. He started by saying, “What’s going on?” but we just ignored him. He took our pictures, and then started telling us, “Va te faire foutre,” which literally means, “Go f*** yourself,” over and over again. He was clearly unstable, but that doesn’t excuse random swearing at strangers. We got on the train and he followed us on, still shouting profanity in French and English, and then adding “f***” to the end of any word he knew in English, the most prominent one being “monkey.” He scared us. When he got off, we waited till the last minute to get off, too (because he got off at our stop) and then waited till two or three trains had come and gone and it was safe to assume that he was on some other train or out of the train station. Whew.
We headed back to Erin’s apartment, and then went out to get kebab. Mmm.
In France, "kebab" places do not serve shish kebab, as you might expect. Shish kebab is brochettes. "Kebab" is a bunch of shredded lamb stuffed into a giant bread thingy with lettuce, tomato, and sauce if you're lucky. And it is delicious.
On the métro. Samara's smoothie is bad. My kinder bueno is delicious.
Bein goofs
After kebab, we went to my room to use the internet, and watched a hilarious music video by “Petros.” Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that is none other than my sixth-grade boyfriend, Peter Shields, playing pop star. Please listen to the lyrics. "I know you want my body, you know I think you're hot." Ah, young romance. Also, note tha Catholic guilt, and the lip curl that he has been practicing since elementary school.
I write with a mocking tone, and yet I must admit that this song has been stuck in my head for days and that I finally broke down and bought it from the iTunes music store. So he must be doing something right.
After that we decided to wander around the Marais. The first thing that happened was that we were walking around, and Erin was saying how people don’t really dress weird in France. Samara replied, “Except that guy,” pointing to a man dressed as a rabbit. Yeah, except that guy. We tried to take some clandestine pictures of him, and then decided to just walk up to him. He was trying to sell us some carrots for two euros. I get the feeling it was either some sort of promotion or social experiment. He made some vague allusions to carrot/phallus metaphors, but his main selling point was, “You are going to spend the money on drinks anyway, you might as well spend it on something that has vitamins in it.” He had a good point, although after taking several pictures of him and Erin, we bid him adieu.
"Why are you wearing that silly rabbit suit?"
"Why are you wearing that silly man suit?"
Hmm?
Bisous!
We were looking for a club of some sort, but didn’t really know where to look, and we ended up at a hookah bar. I am not generally into smoking of any sort, but hookah (Or “chicha,” in French) bothers me the least, and Erin and Samara thought it would be fun, so I let down my guard a little bit and joined in. I really enjoyed it (we chose apple flavored chicha), although looking back I have a feeling that it was actually the delicious mango juice that I had along with it that was so enjoyable. But it is a kind of nice social thing to do. Afterwards, Samara and Erin headed to Erin’s and I went home.
Trying out the hookah
Weirded out by the hookah
To me she looks like an odd kind of saxophonist
smokinnn (still weirded out)
Onward and upward
Erin pouring tea from high above, in true French fashion.
Chicha video! Soundtrack courtesy of Peter Shields.
Saturday morning I did laundry, and Erin and Samara came by around two. We lost track of time and so did not realize that it was three when we left, and 4:15 by the time Samara and I went into a restaurant at Denfert-Rochereau and she enjoyed her chocolate crêpes and mint sorbet and I enjoyed my café liégois ice cream (complete with whole, crunchy, coffee beans). This loss of time meant that we arrived at the Catacombs too late to go down, which was very sad. Samara went to look at a tiny Indian store, and I went home, leaving Erin and Samara to do their thang. Their thang included belly-dancing at Sacré Coeur and taking pictures in front of the Eiffel Tower.
These activities somehow took them until midnight, at which point they came to my room. Erin was endlessly amused by my Swedish textbook and asked me to read from it. I am sure my pronunciation is atrocious.
At 12:30 we got on the last RER. Erin went home, and Samara and I continued on to the Marais, where we were going to check out 3w Kafé, a new lesbian bar (all the cool dance clubs got closed down, so we had to settle for a bar with a tiny dance floor downstairs). When we got to the Saint-Paul Métro stop, we realized that Samara needed a new booklet of RATP tickets, so we went to the little kiosk. Which, of course, only takes change. And at 1 AM, the ticket counter was closed. So we dug through our wallets and somehow came up w/ 11€10 in change. What we did not know was that the machine will not accept more than 20 coins. After one failed attempt, we dumped all the change in my hand and picked through it for large coins, putting them in first. Eventually, we ended up using exactly 20 coins and got Samara her tickets, which she was going to need later, for our exciting (and frustrating) foray into the world of the Noctilien (Paris’ new night bus system).
We found our way to the bar with no trouble, and headed inside. It was completely packed, so we went downstairs to the “dance floor,” which was more like a glorified hallway. It was cozy, though, not cramped. It was really refreshing just to be there and to see all different kinds of girls, able to be themselves, without some of the pressures of patriarchy and heterosexism, just for the night, just inside those walls. For the most part, Samara and I just stood and people-watched, although eventually we found a place to put our stuff down and sort of attempted to dance. Samara was using belly-dancing moves, and I can’t dance for my life, so we looked semi-ridiculous, but we had a good time. At one point, this girl who had been staring at us came up and started talking to us. She was mostly there because she thought Samara looked interesting, but, oddly, she was mostly talking to me. About Samara. Samara had forgotten a lot of French, so I did a lot of translating this weekend, but this was definitely the weirdest. The girl kept saying how pretty Samara was, and how she couldn’t believe a girl that pretty could be single. She also kept telling me that it was impossible to be in a long-distance relationship. Hmmm. She asked Samara about her bangles (the weekend was continually punctuated by various people asking Samara about Goth apparel/belly-dance apparel), and just babbled to me oddly for a long time. Finally she went away, and we went back to being bad at dancing. She came up at the end of the night, and I think she wanted us to come w/ her and her friends to go dance somewhere else, but we politely declined.
We navigated the Noctilien home, getting off-track at one point (owing to the fact that the info online, on the maps, and at the actual stations were all different) but being too comfortable in our warm bus that was going in the wrong direction to get off. Finally we got on a bus that took us to Porte d’Orléans, which was the closest we could get to the Cité Universitaire. We walked down boulevard Jourdan, and ran into some guys asking us if we knew where the Cité Universitaire party was. I didn’t want to burst there bubble by telling them that at 4 AM, any party hosted by one of these buildings was most likely over, so I just told him I didn’t know. He asked if we lived in the Cité, and I told him I did and Samara was visiting. He got excited when I said I lived in the FEU, cause he lived there last year. He, too, asked Samara about her Goth garb, and if there was some underlying revendication. We were exhausted - so not in the mood to go into some philosophical discussion - so we begged off, but the guy (Damien) and I exchanged numbers - he is going to drop me a line next time he passes by the FEU. Always nice to make new friends.
At 4:30 AM, Samara and I collapsed into bed. That is a New Orleans bedtime, and I am way out of the habit. And I prefer it that way. So, no more 4:30 AM bedtimes anytime soon. We slept until TWO PM on Sunday. Vaune woke us up knocking on the door.
Samara wanted a croissant and a hot chocolate, so we went to the artisan boulangerie at Porte d’Orléans. On the tramway, a man stopped us and asked us if we spoke French. He leaned in and very quietly, very slowly (and very politely, to be fair) said the following:
“Je suis chrétien. Je sais qu’il y a des gens qui ne croient pas au Dieu. Si vous avez un peu de temps aujourd’hui, vous pouvez recevoir Dieu.”
Which means:
“I am a Christian. I know that there are people who do not believe in God. If you have a little time today, you can receive Him.”
I literally said, “Not today, thank you,” and we walked away. He told us to have a nice day, and said something like, “maybe next week.” I don’t think so. It was… not nice, but different, to have someone proselytizing politely. Someone actually exhibiting “Christian” behavior while trying to convert people to Christianity. Of course, it was still weird and inappropriate.
After buying way too many pastries, we came back to my room and collapsed until it was time to leave. We got to the station early and went across the street to get pizza first. After pizza, we went to the Eurostar terminal and hugged and bisous’d goodbye, and Samara was on her way.
Last night, Vaune’s friend/acquaintance Evan, who is also living in Paris, came to have coffee with her. She brought me along as a buffer, in case they had nothing to talk about. I had my second cup of coffee in seven years, and regretted it, remembering why I haven’t had a cup since I was thirteen. It makes me sick to my stomach. But Lavazza is so delicious! We had a good time with Evan. After loitering in the brasserie for way too long, we went back to the FEU and had a bottle of wine with Evan and Ashley in the basement lounge of the FEU. It was nice and relaxing, although I wanted to go to bed earlier last night. We invited Evan to dinner on Friday (I am making a recipe from the cookbook my Mom sent me) and Ashley wanted to come, too, so we will have lovely dinner guests on Friday, which is nice because our food co-op seems to be falling apart a bit. On Saturday night, there were only four of us there, and last night no one even signed up to cook. Lame.
Well this blog post has gotten really long (I’m on my 4th page in Word and that doesn’t include pictures or video) so I am going to end it. I’ll update again the next time something interesting happens!
