I was nervous heading to Paris. And it wasn’t because of the fact that I had condoms stuffed with 5kg of crack cocaine slowly decomposing in my stomach*.. No, it was because the French are renowned for their intolerance of the “non-French speaker” in their own country.. I knew a few words, like Croissant, and Baguette.. and Frogs Legs, but not nearly enough to get by on. So before I left, I brushed up on my skills with a French phrase book that cost a total of $1.99. It wasn’t very helpful, and neither were about 50% of the French population I approached.. The other 50% were really great people, willing to help out the non-French speaking scum to great lengths..
Still travelling with my two troublesome mates from Sydney, we eventually found our way around Paris, seeing most of the famous landmarks.. We contemplated at length on building the Ifle Tower ‘mark 2′ right next to the real Ifle Tower, only four times the size. For this venture we were going to need full financial support from a rich Arab or Texan, in exchange we were going to give them full advertising rights for both the North and South faces - so long as they named it the “The Tower of Arabia” or “The Texan Tower” or something like that.. I’m glad most of these ideas go no where fast..
We had grand schemes to help improve the country aesthetically, but there was nothing we could do about the weather. It was actually colder in Paris than London, and we were even luck enough to get hail whilst walking the streets on our first day. Again, not what I expected from summer. Anywhere.
While in Paris we made it to the Famous Moulin Rouge Show, and if you check out the Video section of this site, you might see some of what goes on there.. You’re not aloud to video or take photos during the show, so these were done kind of slyly..
Next stop was Berlin, but things had been too easy for us for too long.. For some reason, even with three reasonably intelligent people in our party, we still managed to fuck up our journey to Berlin. Somehow, we managed to get on the train a day early, and after a brief argument with the correct ticket holders (there was going to be blood), we negotiated with the conductor to let us on anyway. We didn’t need the sleeping cabin we paid extra for anyway, as we spent the entire night in the bar carriage. And after drinking the train dry, it was easy to pass out for the few minuets left of the journey in the busy corridors..
Overall, Paris was a beautiful city - still had military types roaming around with sub-machine guns in full view in certain areas, which is never cool, but after South America, I’m less shocked each and every time - we’re very lucky back in Oz to not have that.
(*oh, and it was a joke about the crack.., just in case some of you didn’t get it..)..
See my photos from Paris here..