Post Paris Blues

As expected, leaving Paris was as bad as I thought. No. Scratch that. It was worse.

Sadly, that means that this blog is, for now, redundant. Sad face. However, I'm going to be using my Tumblr for non-Paris related musings (and probably a lot of Paris-related musings actually.)

A très bientôt...

Bisous

Please Don't Leave

I have two full days left in Paris. Two full days of being a Parisian resident. Two full days to make the most of the city and the people. Two full days to eat my weight in lovely food (which I have been doing). As this reality sets in, so does a feeling of distraught. I don't want to leave. I didn't want to leave when I booked my ticket home, less so when it was a month to go, then two weeks and then a week. And now even less so now that my bedroom is just a room full of suitcases.

Even Paris doesn't want me to leave; check out the weather forcast for the week that I leave:

But seriously, I have never wanted to stay somewhere so much in my life. I even managed to come to terms with leaving my second year student house which still holds some of my best memories. But that was different; then I was actually embarking upon a new exciting adventure. Now I'm going back to Birmingham. Of course I'm excited to be living with two of my friends and I'm looking forward to being in the same country as the others. I know I'll visit Paris again (I'm already looking at flights for October/November) and see the friends I have here, but I won't live here. I'll just be a visitor.

For most people the magic of Paris is climbing the Eiffel Tower, seeing the Mona Lisa and strolling down the Champs Elysées. But for me it's wandering down side streets and coming across quirky shops or restaurants, discovering new hipster bars and just laying in the park near my flat, hoping that the greased-up, tan guy doesn't spot me on my own and come over to make conversation. It's all the amazing food that I can't eat back at home; the unparalleled fresh bread, the crepes and the variety of food from all over the world. It's speaking French. It's being angry at the French system but secretly loving the excuse to complain. It has been living in one of the worst areas Paris has to offer and having the best year of my life.

Who knows, maybe I won't feel this way in a few months time but right now I can't think of anything I want to do less than leave. Is it wrong to secretly hope that Kate and Sally's threats of stealing my passport and shoes are serious?

Eurockéennes Festival 2011

Imagine my delight when Kate receives an email telling her she can have two free tickets to a music festival. Imagine my rising level of excitement when we check out the line up and it's pretty damn good. Imagine my hysteria when I receive an email asking me to register on the 'press' section of the festival's website. Things just seemed to get better and better after we found train tickets that weren't too extortionate and a friend who's au pair family would lend us a tent and sleeping bags.

Even the small glitch when we arrived at the campsite didn't deter us. We showed up without tickets, thinking there would be a list of press people. Turns out that said list was at the festival site, available from 4pm. It was midday. So, faced with the prospect of lugging all our baggage to the festival site, to wait for three hours to collect our wristband, come all the way back to the campsite to set up the tent and then leave straight away, we explained the situation to two more people and were finally just let in.

Feeling quite pleased with ourselves, the smugness soon wore off when we began to set up the tent. Kate's first impression was: "Oh no...some of the tent is missing." Her second impression: "Oh no, even worse, none of it is missing...this is it!" Then we found the instructions and realised that it wasn't in fact a tent, but a beach shelter. Cue two nights squished together amongst all our luggage, freezing to death as the condensation from the sides seeped in to my very old sleeping bag, as it was impossible to not touch the side.

Beach Shelter

However, the press experience and the music made up for our sleeping woes. We got to skip the queue, go to the press tent and bar, go into the VIP section, eat nice food, and, perhaps the best part, avoid the festival toilets. The bands were excellent, highlights being The Ting Tings, Arctic Monkeys, Queens of the Stone Age, Arcade Fire, jumping around to 'Jump Around' by House of Pain, rocking out with your kebab out (not a euphemism) to Motorhead and raving to Crystal Castles, despite the sound problems.

Press Bar

Festival

In hindsight, had I known that I'd be sleeping in the oldest sleeping bag ever, in a beach shelter, with another person, in what must have been a temperature of 1 or 2 degrees at night, would I do it again? Of course!

Paris From The Sky

Since I came to Paris in September, I have seen the city from up high more times than is really necessary. So much so, that I have now come to the point where I am reluctant to part with money to see Centre Pompidou, Invalides, Panthéon and Sacré-Coeur from over 200 metres high up yet again. However, for the past couple of weeks this is exactly what I've been doing.

I have seen Paris from Tour Monparnasse, which was impressive but left me a little disappointed, perhaps due to the terrace being closed. From the Sacre-Coeur, which was interesting as you get to see a little more of northern Paris. And attempted to see the view from Paris' hot air balloon in Parc André Citroen; not a successful attempt as apparently the smallest breeze will cause them to stop the balloon rides for about two days which is really rather annoying when you have traveled from the other side of Paris to do this for your friend's last day. Lesson learned: call first.

My favourite view is still the one from Arc de Triomphe, it was high enough to see the important monuments but also not too high to still make out some details. The only disadvantage are the 284 stairs you have to climb first! I'm still yet to see the view from Notre-Dame but this also includes seeing the bells, so I'm not too reluctant to do that. And I still haven't seen a view of Paris at night....which could mean a fifth visit to the Eiffel Tower.

The View From Sacré-Coeur

From Tour Montparnasse

From Institut du Monde Arabe

From Arc de Triomphe

From Centre Pompidou

Job Disasters Pt II

Before the two job distasters that I wrote about in my previous post, I had two other job disasters but they were disasters for different reasons and one wasn't even my fault...

A friend who worked in the librarie of a musum sent my CV to her boss and managed to get me an interview at her work. Ok, the interview was actually with her, and it wasn't really an interview because we just chatted and drank coffee. However, I did meet the boss and after speaking to her she seemed keen to take me on. The only problem: "il vraiment faut avoir une convention de stage." A 'convention de stage,' which translates as a work placement/internship agreement, shouldn't be too much of a problem to come by I thought. That was until I contacted my university and they refused to provide me with one. I persisted and even asked about four different people but they all said no. The reason being: It isn't an 'integral' part of the year abroad. Read: We can't be bothered with the administration/it will cost us money. Great. All this document requires is a signature and a stamp. Other universities seem to give them out like sweets, but not Birmingham.

Then a couple of weeks later I received a phonecall from a subway-style restaurant. I chatted to the manager and it seemed to be going well until he asked about my disponibilité, to which I replied: "début de juin jusqu'à la fin d'août." He became a lot less keen and said they needed people who were staying much longer. Damn my honesty.

Today I received a voicemail from a cafe who received my CV from a bar I had applied to. Oh the irony; I spent three weeks job-hunting, waiting by the phone to hear something, and now I'm spending my time avoiding phonecalls from potential employers! Lesson learned: don't leave it so late to job-hunt next time.

Job, Emploi, Travail, Boulot...

I've been job-hunting in Paris for about three weeks and have officially given up. A couple of weeks ago, I received an email from the owner of a restaurant telling me to come for an interview the next day at 4.30pm. So I went. The guy told me that it was a good thing I wasn't busy; he showed me an email from another girl who had asked if she could come another time but he told me that was her chance gone. Cut-throat. Anyway, we chatted a bit and he told me about the job, it wasn't much of an interview. He asked me to complete two tests; the first was to open a bottle of wine with a waiter's corkscrew, at which I failed miserably as I've never used one before. "I thought you said you'd worked in bars and resteraunts before?" He asked me. "Erm..no, a small bar, just one, for a couple of months..." So he set me another 'challenge;' he made me climb the stairs to the first floor of the restaurant, armed with three plates, and tell him how many chairs there were before getting to the top of the stairs. This one I completed with ease as it's not exactly difficult to count to 15. So he told me to come back the next day for a trial shift.

So I went back the next day to work with a horrible little man named 'Guido' - his name should have been warning sign #2 - and I was given no other training than: "When the customer arrives put some bread in a basket and serve it to the table." So, much shouting and biting my head off and snapping ensued when I set the table and mixed up the knife and fork, didn't miraculously know the table numbers or the dishes, and wouldn't clear away peoples plates when they were clearly still eating. He let me go an hour early and told me they'd call me. Needless to say they didn't, and somehow I wasn't disappointed.

My second experience was in the form of babysitting, or not babysitting, as it turned out that the family really wanted a cheap nanny. I don't really know why I went in the first place as I don't like babies, and less so why I didn't leave after I saw that the children were 2 and a half years and 14 months and the mother told me they'd need me to go to Nice that weekend and elsewhere in the south for 3 weeks in July. All of which sounds lovely but not when you're burdened with two bratty kids who aren't even your own. Despite this, out of politeness more than anything, I stayed that day to 'see how I got on with the kids.' Not very well. They were so snotty and dribbly and the girl pissed her pants. I think they felt that I was becoming less and less enamored with them (kids have a sort of sixth-sense for these things) and they started to want their daddy. Not their mommy, not surprisingly, as she was a complete bitch. We mutually agreed (the mother and I) that I was not at ease with kids that young and she sent me on my way without paying me.

Voila: two careers that I am not at all cut out for: nanny and waitress. Shame.

Starbucks rang me the next day asking if I was still looking for work and to call them if so. Despite the fact that I spend enough of my time in there that I might as well work for them, I've never worked as a barista so I just couldn't take the humiliation of potentially another job fail (although it would have made for a good blog entry). So I'm now officially a bum, which leaves more time to go and see all of the things I haven't yet. And maybe write a novel. Or some poetry. Or whatever it is unemployed people do in Paris. Otherwise, I could be unemployed in Birmingham and I'm pretty sure that entails watching all-day Jeremy Kyle marathons with a can of Stella in one hand and a baby in the other. Shudder.

I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself

After a stressful week of exams and then an emotional week of friends leaving, I'm now experiencing a week (well, two days so far) of lack of will and motivation to do much more than pop to the bakery to buy a demi-baguette.

My last two weeks at uni were not fun, consumed as they were with revision and exam worry. All of which paid off as I actually passed everything from my two semesters at a French uni (except for the two exams I missed). That stressful week was then replaced by celebrations (good) and people leaving (bad). I think I was busy every day from the Friday that I finished my last exam to the Sunday of the following week. It was a week that saw us taking the train out of Paris to visit Monet's water lily garden, taking a boat out on a lake in Bois de Boulogne and invited to brunch in a huge apartment just off the Champs Elysées.

~ Giverny ~

A fab week. And although this week started well, Hammam spa and massage then dinner for Kate's birthday, it hasn't been going too well since. And it's only Wednesday. The only things I have achieved this week are posting a parcel, buying some shampoo and catching up on some trash TV, including watching almost a whole season of The Nanny. And it's only Wednesday. I have intended to job-hunt for the last two days but it hasn't really happened. I'm feeling a little un-motivated to do so. Hopefully tomorrow will be more successful, but with going out tonight, I can already see a hangover being tomorrow's excuse.