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Introduction After a long train ride from Amsterdam, I finally arrived in the city I had most been looking forward to seeing since the beginning of my trip... and the beginning of my "career" as an artist. That's right; Paris, France.
This is a boring picture, but I'm including it because it was the very first thing I saw when I arrived in Paris. I'd probably only been standing on the platform for 15 seconds when I took it, and that train on the left is the same one I arrived in on.
There are several train stations sprinkled around downtown Paris. The one I arrived in is called Gare du Nord, which literally translates into "Park of the North" (I think). Nord means north, I know that much. These are some rather lovely windows inside the station. I was facing the opposite direction of the previous photo when I took this shot. I had become so resourceful after only a week or so in Europe! My ability to read foreign signs and navigate to specific sites had become absolutely excellent. I'm not sure how exactly it is that one gets better at these things, especially with no map as a reference, but I was a goddamned pro. I found my way to the hostel on foot with basically no trouble at all.
This is a tiny little photo that I found on the internet. Interestingly, it's also the best one I could find of the front of the place. See that word on there? "Bar?" Remember that, because it will be important later.
Here's another shot of the outside. This was taken on a much nicer day than the one on which I arrived. I am not sure who the woman in the photo is... she just happened to be walking by when I took it. And yes, the hostel is really called "Peace and Love."
Here's the room I slept in for like... 2 weeks. To give you an idea of how small the room is, I stood against the room's back wall to take this picture and couldn't even fit the end of the bunk bed in. Just out of the picture on the left is where the shower was, and it was about the size of a coffin. It also opened right into the room, which was a weird feature that made it crucial to confirm you were alone in the room before showering. I forgot to bring a towel to Europe and this hostel did not provide them, so I used a tee shirt every day I was there. This same tee shirt was also contaminated with exploded blue pen ink and rancid sock smell, so I was generally cold, damp, somewhat smelly, and streaked with blue by the time I got dressed and headed downstairs. Hooray! This is what backpacking in Europe is all about!
Here's a view out the window. There were four flags out front of the hostel. Not shown: the Canadian flag, the English flag, and the flag of the European Union. This might be a good time to point out that 90% of my pictures from Paris are entirely misleading. Nearly every single day I was there, it was pouring rain, cold, and absurdly windy. The pictures did snap were mostly taken indoors, during brief sun breaks, or on one of the two-ish nice days I had while I was there. I met a lot of excellent people at the Peace and Love. The bartenders and staff were great, and I went on several day-long excursions with people I got to know while there. Did you know that every single Canadian traveler has the Canadian flag pinned, stitched, locked, printed or otherwise adhered to their outerwear and travel gear no fewer than 10 times per person? It's true! Canadians are very patriotic. I got to know people in the hostel from France, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Denmark, and several other places during my stay there.
I brought my laptop to Europe with me, and it was handy as hell to have around. The wireless internet in this place was free, but most people didn't have laptops and didn't want to pay the expensive per-minute fee to use the hostel's lone (and crappy) community machine. This is where we get the alcohol-for-internet trade. Pictured above is the inside of the hostel, and it turned into a full bar at night (and dance club, depending on how intoxicated the crowds got). People would ask if they could use my internet or recharge their iPhones constantly, and I was happy to oblige for free. However, I got a lot of "tips" in the form of tasty drinks, and I couldn't really complain with that. As you can see, I attempted to work on this part of the website while I was in Europe. That's all I was able to complete, I think, because I had much, much better things to do with my time than sit on the computer for hours on end. As I already mentioned, I got to know lots of awesome people in this hostel, and the staff was excellent. The nights were filled with crappy dance music, 90s pop wonder hits, flaming shots and good times. These "flaming shots," by the way, were the kind you lit on fire IN YOUR MOUTH, which, in retrospect, is probably slightly unsafe. I spent several days in Paris with burnt-out sinuses and no sense of smell. The best part about Paris, however, was not the all-night partying. Nope, the best part about Paris was everything else. Thus, I am ending the general party-party section of my Paris trip here. If you really want to see more photos of me and/or the hostel at night, I'm sure there's a small bank of them on the wastelands of Facebook somewhere. On an un-related note, I'm sticking this little section about the Catacombs of Paris here, because there's really no other good place to put it. It just doesn't mesh too well with the rest of the trip. I went here on the first (or second?) full day I was in Paris, and I recommend it to anybody who visits Paris, has some free time, and wants to get creeped the hell out. The first day I was in Paris, the weather was horrendous. Now that I think back, I barely even remember the first day. I met some folks in the lobby of the hostel and talked about backpacking, and then I think I may have gone upstairs and fallen asleep. The second day I was in Paris, the weather was also horrendous, but a new friend and I decided we would hit up the Parisian Catacombs, something I had never even heard of before until the day prior.
This is not my photo.... I yanked it from Wikipedia, because flash photography wasn't allowed down here for some reason. You can click the image to read the Wiki entry. I won't write down the history of the place, since I think Wikipedia does a much better job, but I will say this: These bodies had to be moved from where they were stored previously, because "Paris' [largest cemetery] ... was saturated to a point where its neighbors were suffering from disease, due to contamination caused by improper burials, open mass graves, and earth charged with decomposing organic matter." Yuck! The air was really heavy down here.... it was humid, cave air. The ceiling dripped water and the floor was mud, and my friend and I had to remind each other every time we felt too at home (which was rare) that we were walking through walls and walls of delicately organized human remains. When were they arranged, and why? WHY?? |
