Down and Out in Paris

The last few days have been a whirlwind. I suddenly met lots of kids and found myself (once again) walking all over this town. Since I last wrote, I have played Frisbee in the rain while lightning struck all over Paris, gotten free beer for two nights in a row at a bar, had a intense conversation with an Indian sitar player who blessed me, drank beer with Italians who hated soccer and loved metal, met hella kids from SF who knew kids I knew, hung out in a park on the outskirts of Paris that is notorious for the male prostitutes that run around it at night, miss my train to Nice, and watched all kinds of drama go down. And after all that here I am; alone again in Paris. I am right back there again. I have two more days here and then I am off to Angers to study intensively for a whole month, 5 hours a week including Saturday and Sunday. Needless to say this blog will suddenly by next week, get really boring.
Right now I am exhausted. I haven’t slept longer than 4 hours in one night for the last 6 days. And the irony out of all of this is that it’s a Saturday. God, I wish it wasn’t a Saturday.

A few days ago I met some Canadians and a French girl outside my hostel late at night. Since, a lot of the people that stay here are my age and don’t seem to have a lot of money, the sidewalk outside the front of the hostel seems to become a favorite hangout spot to drink beer and talk. Here I met them and proceeded to hangout with them for the next day and half. They were younger than me but seemed like okay kids. In all honesty, I don’t really have very much exciting things to say about these kids. They were nice to keep company with after spending 4 days practically not talking, but in the end they turned out to be sort of overdramatic and I had to split hanging out with them. In these two nights Paris stormed heavily at night. Lightning, thunder etc. I had taken up a friendship with the bartenders across the street and found myself playing Frisbee out in the street at night with them two nights in a row. This resulted in pissed off French people and the Frisbee hitting cars regularly. In the end, we could not get a single French person to play Frisbee with us. Lame. Nevertheless, finding myself in a downtown street getting drenched, playing Frisbee as lightning visibly struck down behind us was almost surreal.
The next night I met some kids from SF. They knew my roommate, Jordan, and we all hit it off immediately. It was nice to relax the speech and let the slang flow. Being in Europe, you have to speak English extremely slow and simple if you do not know the other persons language. And while with the Canadians this wasn’t so much of a problem, it still was noticeable how much I had simplified and slowed down my speech upon talking to the SF kids. We proceeded to drink bottles of wine and talk about SF. During this conversation, two Europeans guys came up and tried to hit on the two SF girls. They came rolling up in their white pants, sleeveless spandex shirts, and gelled hair…one of them took out a mini radio from out of their pocket and it was playing techno. I only mention this because this is an extremely European experience. The super silly looking suave French guys…hitting on the American girls…and pulling tricks like pulling out a mini radio out of their pockets…its things like that which make you sort of appreciate a town like Portland or San Francisco. Furthermore, it sort of makes you appreciate the fact that you’re not European. Nevertheless, we got those guys out of conversation quickly. This same night also consisted of French guy wanting to kick my ass. He butted into our conversation(this happens all the time with French guys)….I was talking to him and in the course of my sentence said, “fuck” and he thought I was cursing at him. He got super hot headed and preceded to threaten me with amazing accentuated English comebacks such as, “Fock yurs mutter”. After me and one of the SF kids explained to him in French that it was an expression we use and not so much a verbal attack on him…he calmed down and split. Thank God.
See, this is Paris so far. I have had lots of fun and met cool kids and done cool things. But a majority of Paris consist of expensive food and beer, stupid hotheaded French males, rollerbladers and tons of French people in the act of doing nothing and being really boring individuals.
The next night I hung out with the SF kids and drank wine with other SF kids and some French people, in a park in front of La Sorbonne.(sp?) At one moment in the night, this dude from SF who has been living here every summer for the last 3 years said that living in Paris is a constant reminder of how awesome SF is and makes you appreciate it even more.
You know what?
Word.
Same goes for Portland.
It’s like this love-hate relationship. Wine in cheap but nothing else is. I found myself eating a sandwich across from Baudelaire’s grave in the same cemetery that Sartre is buried. I have stayed out all night with cool kids and good conversations. But is this Paris? Or is this the Paris that I and these kids create that we are here. Wherever you are, it’s what you make of it. However, the environment and the price it cost play a major factor.
In the end, I am drained. I will definitely look back on the photos I have taken, the blog I have written and various writings in my journal with a fond affections and I will leave here with many memories. However, the distribution of the good times with the times where you find yourself exhausted and just appreciating where your from are pretty even. Nevertheless, I will always want to come back here. I meet all these kids who come here every summer or have parents who are French and so they live here at various times of year. You cannot help to sort of envy these kids. You have to leave to appreciate where your from. I definitely wouldn’t mind spending a month in Paris every year even if it was just to act as a constant reminder. In conclusion, Paris was awesome and horrible all the same. I can’t help to think that any great city should be anything less.