Friday, July 23rd -- Paris, France
I spent my second night in a youth hostel in Paris last night. I arrived in Paris around 6:00am local time two days ago. The flight from LAX to Orly airport was ten about hours long. It wasn't so bad, though. There was nobody sitting next to me and a nice, elderly French lady two seats away. The charter flight that I flew on was run by a French airline, and it seemed that the majority of the passengers were French-speaking. When we were taking off from LA, all of the announcements were in both French and English, but the frequency of the English announcements seemed to decline as we got farther and farther away from the United States.Customs was amazingly simple. I breezed right though, and emerged into the center of the Orly airport. I was a bit disoriented at first. There I was, in Europe for the first time, and I didn't have even the beginnings of a plan. I changed some money and found out how to get into Paris (Orly is outside of the city). I rode a rail system into the edge of Paris where it intersected the main Paris Metro. After a lot of staring at Metro maps, I finally managed to figure out what station the youth hostel I wanted to go to was near, and after some confusion, managed to get there. I felt victorious when I emerged out into the Paris morning at the Republique station.
As I was looking for the hostel, a man took one glance at me and pointed
across the street. Wearing my big backpack and fumbling through my guidebook,
I guess it was pretty obvious what I was looking for.
It turned out that the hostel was full, but the guy at the desk was sending people to another. When I was making a reservation, he accidentally thought that I was with two Swedes who were at the desk with me. I've been the honorary "third Swede" ever since. Their names are Karin and Torbjorn. They are both really nice, and speak English quite well -- much better than I speak Swedish, anyway. I've decided that Swedish is an impossible language. Not only can I not understand a word, I can't even make the sounds you need to speak the language. In particular, in order to pronounce the word for the number "7" in Swedish you have to make contortions with your mouth that no person should have to be subjected to.
While they are quite fluent in English, they don't know much slang, and are delighted whenever I teach them something like the proper pronunciation of the word "cool". For whatever reason, Karin is completely fascinated by the phrase "inversely proportional". She keeps trying to find things that are inversely proportional to each other just so that she can say the words. Strange people, these Swedes.
Even though they speak English perfectly well, they still have this annoying habit of speaking Swedish in my presence. Whenever they do this, I launch into my best impersonation of the Swedish chef to indicate that I have no idea what they are saying. Lately, they've gotten even sneakier, and will insert my name randomly into a Swedish conversation ("Dee hurden beeden luden Mike, borden shdrooden") to make it seem as though they are talking about me.
The same
day that I arrived, the Swedes and I went sightseeing. According to my
biological clock, it was night, but it was still morning in Paris. I figured
the best way to adjust was to stay awake until local night time. We went
first to Notre Dame, where I took a brilliant picture of my camera strap.
We then took random busses all over town, miraculously ending up at the
Arc de Triumph. We climbed the stairs to the top for a great view of Paris.
We then went to find someplace to eat. We ended up walking around an African-Parisian
area, and found a little restaurant. We all ordered the Menu -- a fixed
price meal including entree, plat (main course) and dessert or cheese.
I had a ham entree, beef tongue (yes, I ordered that on purpose -- it wasn't
a language blunder) for the plat, and chocolate mousse for dessert. The
food was quite good, however the restrooms were my first exposure to the
lovely custom of supplying nothing but a pair of footprints and a hole
as fixtures.
After dinner, we went to the Sacre Cours. It is an amazing church atop
a hill and is very beautiful inside. Although I'm religiously challenged,
I paid my five francs, lit a candle, and placed it in one of the candle
holders. The stairs in front of the church seem to be a place where young
people gather to drink and socialize -- there were many little groups passing
around bottles of wine. Next to the church is a square where many portrait
painters solicit business. After valiantly fending off the artists who
wanted to render our likenesses, we went to the base of the hill and, after
having a drink at a little cafe, rode a little elevator back up the hill
to the church.
Torbjorn convinced us that we absolutely had to go to an area of Paris
called Pigalle. It turned out that this is Paris' red light district. The
hawkers yell at you in English as you walk bye "Come on! Good fuck show!
You will like!" I got my picture taken with some mannequins in the entrance
to one of the establishments, and the hawker got angry when we didn't go
in. After having our fill of such things, we returned to the hotel via
the Metro. They were working on one of the Metro lines that we wanted to
travel on, so we had to detour around it. On the way back, Torbjorn was
accosted by a drunk Sri Lankan, and none of our combined language skills
could figure out exactly what he wanted. 
Finally, we got back to the hostel around 12:30. It was great to go to
sleep. I hadn't yet slept since arriving in Paris and had been up for a
good 36 hours at this point. Despite my long first day in Paris, I got
up at 8:00 the next morning and had the complimentary hostel breakfast.
This consisted of a piece of bread, jam, and a bowl of hot chocolate or
coffee. Along with my Swedish friends I grabbed the metro to the Eiffel
Tower. We rode the elevator to the top. Amazing view. This tower is really,
really tall.
That afternoon, we ventured outside of Paris to Versailles, stopping for
lunch in a little restaurant along the way. Versailles was quite beautiful
-- particularly the gardens. Touring the famous interior I found quite
boring, however. It was frustrating being herded around with the hordes
of other people also there. The highlight of my visit was obtaining a receipt
that said I'd paid my franc and a half for the priveledge of using the
Versailles bathroom. On the metro on the way back into Paris, we started
up a conversation with a group of French people. It ended up being a French
lesson, with one woman pulling all sorts of odds and ends out of her purse
and telling us the French words for them. We then took a ride on the Bateaux-Mouches
-- boats that go up and down the Seine while speakers blare out the sites
in several languages as you drift by. Cheesy tourist trap, but fun. At
one point, you can see both the Satue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower at
the same time. How can this be, you say? Well, the French gave Liberty
to the US, but they kept a small version at home.
Karin
on the Bateaux-Mouches.
We had dinner in the latin quarter at an Italian restaurant and wandered around for a while, checking out the Pantheon -- Abutille Saint Germain. We rode the Metro back to the hostel, helping a couple of recently arrived Brits get their bearings along the way.
I got up at 7:30 this morning am about to have breakfast. I've got to call Mom this morning -- she's probably not sure if I'm alive or not.
Saturday, July 24th, 1993 -- Gard du Nord, Paris, France
I'm just leaving Paris on a train bound for Brussels. My first train trip in Europe has already gone awry. I missed my scheduled train by about a minute. I'm taking the next one, but it will get my to Brussels a few hours late. I hope I can find a place to stay. I said goodbye to Karin and Torbjorn on the Metro on the way to the train station. They are off to Djon. It would have been nice to travel with them some more as I really liked them, but I have to take my vacation, not theirs. I got up yesterday morning and had the same wonderful breakfast in the hostel. I called Mom, but calculated the time difference the wrong way -- it was 2:00am back in Saskatoon (my home town, in the province of Saskatchewan, Canada). She was groggy, but happy to know that I was ok. The Swedes and I wandered around a market for a while. A guy asked me, "Combien?" thinking that I was the vendor of a booth. It taxed my French to try to tell him otherwise, but that alone got the point across. 
We then went to Place de Concorde. Torbjorn took a picture of me standing
in the center of Champs d'Elysse with the Arc de Triumph behind me and
traffic all around. He chickened out and didn't let the cars get close
enough, though. We had lunch at Chez Ronald (my name for McDonald's in
Paris). Quite a trip. The same old thing as in North America, except more
expensive. They do sell wine, though (this is France, after all). We went
to the Seine near Notre Dame and slept in the grass along the bank for
a few hours. Afterward, we walked along the river past booksellers and
musicians. We saw an attractive woman giving a man a massage in the grass,
and I shouted, "Moi ausie!" She lookup up, quite embarrassed. Got to love
being an obnoxious foreigner.
That evening, we went to Place de la Bastille. It is quite the hangout
spot. There are motorcycles parked everywhere and all sorts of little bars
and restaurants. We found a bumper car ride and had a blast smashing into
each other. Some things are international, I guess. We had a drink in one
of the local bars. Karin's coke was 23ff. More expensive than wine! We
returned to the hostel and met two guys from Edinburgh. One had had his
passport, money, and the rest of the stuff in his money belt stolen the
day before. They had slept in someone's private garden the night before
because they couldn't find a hostel that had space.
Monday, July 26th, 1993 -- Brussels->Amsterdam
I'm on a train from Brussels to Amsterdam. I spent two days in Brussels. I met a woman named Cindi from Denver on the train and thought she was cute. She had some problem with the conductor. I asked her what had happened, and she told me that her rail pass didn't cover an extra charge that they had on this particular trip. We ended up talking for the rest of the trip, and looked for accommodation together when we arrived in Brussels. It was then about 5:00 and all of the hostels were full. We ended up booking a room in the "Hotel de France" -- more expensive than a hostel, but doable when split two ways. We changed our clothes, walked to the Grand Place, the old center of Brussels, and had dinner at a sidewalk restaurant. 
Some
guys want a picture with Cindi.
Afterward, we had a few drinks in a hole-in-the-wall bar populated with locals. There was a record collection behind the bar and the bartender was playing all sorts of obscure stuff. After a few very tasty Belgian beers, we went to another bar on a street dominated by Gyro stands. Two guitarists were playing blues tunes -- it was an interesting experience listening to a Belgian sing Stevie Ray Vaughan. It started raining just as we left, and we got drenched on the way back to the hotel. We spent the next day walking around Brussels. There really wasn't that much to see, as Brussels made for work and not play. That night, Cindi took a train to Switzerland. She asked me to come along, but again I resisted, not wanting to latch onto someone else's vacation. I walked to the Jacques Brel youth hostel (where I'd booked a spot earlier in the day) and had a few drinks in the hostel bar. I met a woman from Quebec who worked as a Nurse in west Africa and practised my pathetic French with her. I met two guys who had just arrived from Amsterdam, and decided that that would be my next stop.
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