"Well, my life is getting in the way of my alcoholism!"

was kate's witty response to my: "My alcoholism is getting in the way of my life!" We were joking, of course, but this weekend has been, unintentionally, an alcohol-themed one.

We started out on Thursday when a friend's mum came to visit, at Le Refuge des Fondus. Possibly the smallest restaurant in the world, no dignity is spared when you climb over the table to take your seat. At 18€ per person, it's not the cheapest meal but you pay for the novelty value; drinks in baby bottles and bottomless bread. Anyway, it was the baby bottles that saw Kate and I a little tipsy upon leaving the resto. Not really sure how that happened but no drunken antics ensued, all in all it was very civilised.

Friday night, on the other hand, was a little different. In fact, it all was bound to go downhill after someone uttered the words: "How about we play ring of fire?" Only having four players made for some interesting states just leaving the house. We went to another quirky (tiny) indie bar: L'Orange Mécanique. Despite our game of ROF and the cards being biased against our Norwegian flatmate, even though they were playing cards with Norwegian-French phrases on them, the night was going fairly well until we decided to catch the night bus home.

'Interesting' is the only word I can think of to describe taking the Noctilien that night. We caught our first night bus from Belleville to Chatelet with a group of gangsters smoking cigarettes at the back and caught our second bus from Chatelet to Chateau Rouge with a group of gangsters smoking spliff at the back. So out of it as they were, they forgot to press the button to call their stop and the driver drove past it. Reasonably (sarcasm), they shouted at the driver to stop but as he wouldn't they tried the emergency stop button. Being so stupid as they were, they couldn't work it and just had to wait for the next stop (5 minutes away from theirs). As they filed off the bus they had one last attempt at the emergency break and my astute housemate noted that "Darwinism has failed."

Not that we can claim to be any more intelligent; if you know Paris or just look at a metro map, you will see that we went all the way into the centre to come all the way back out when walking westwards would have taken half the time. Things began to look up when we saw that the local bakery was still open (at 4am?!), and began to go downhill again when we were accosted by two drunk guys also taking advantage of the still open bakery. We left with some new drug-dealers: "I sell shit you know, take my number if you need some." Needless to say, I didn't take his number as I definitely didn't ask if he sold drugs.

So we all wake up on Saturday feeling a little worse for wear and anticipate with dread the thought of our impending wine-tasting afternoon. The wine-tasting was held inside a stuffy hall where the whole world seemed to be. After tasting a good few wines, that were very nice, we began to feel the effects and decided to leave. Cue Saturday night at 23h30; an impromptu night out with my Norwegian flatmate to a French soirée. We had all sorts of expectations of something more civilised than our Ring of Fire evening. This was not the case. One girl was already pretty drunk but preceeded to carry on doing tequila shots. Needless to say, she finished up the night with her head in the toilet.

Although I didn't drink as much as the girl at the party, I'm now sitting in bed feeling sorry for myself. It's not quite the end of the weekend but I can honestly say, I hope that no more alcohol will be consumed...

The Curious Incident of the Pear in the Night-time

This weekend after a series of (two) strange events, I am left feeling as though I have entered some sort of Twilight Zone. Both events took place on Saturday night (or more accurately; Sunday morning), the first being the pear incident. As I was up so late I got hungry, so I decided on a healthy snack to sate my hunger. But when I reached for one of the pears in my cupboard, it felt wet and mushy. Preparing myself for a mouldy patch, I picked it up, only to find that someone had taken a bite out of it. Not a small mouse-bite; a huge human bite. Obviously I hadn't bought it like that and there was only one bite missing, so it wasn't eaten by a hungry flatmate. What's more is that it was still wet and only a little brown, suggesting that it was a recent incident. Only me and one other flatmate were in, hanging out together... Baffled.

Incident number two is the toilet book incident. I should probably explain what the toilet book is first. The toilet book is a book with blank pages, which is kept in the toilet so that people can record their toilet-time musings. We also get guests to contribute to it. So, it was a little weird when my housemate and I found strange hand-writing in it, that we didn't recognise. As I said, it was just the two of us in the flat. One flatmate hasn't wrote in it before so we guessed that one set of handwriting belonged to him as he had just got back before we saw it. But what was odd was that someone had written underneath it and it didn't match any of our penmanship.

Perhaps the old lady across the corridor has been sneaking in here, although judging by the amount of time it takes just to unlock her front door, I just don't think she is stealthy enough. Perhaps someone is playing a trick on me/us, but I just can't shake this eerie feeling...

Amsterdam, Je t'aime pas

As much as I love Paris, it's always nice to go somewhere a little (a lot) less stressful; more laid-back. So, last weekend my flatmate and I embarked upon a trip to Amsterdam, perhaps perceived to be a city that defines the expression 'laid-back'. However, after spending two days there it didn't really live up to its reputation. There were only three incidents that left me with this impression but they were three incidents in pretty much one day.

The first was being dug in the arm by an angry cyclist. The cycle paths are not at all clearly marked for a city which has a multi-story parking space...for bikes, and I found myself unintentionally walking on one. An angry man careered towards me shouting in Dutch so I did my best to move out of the way and he still felt the need to discipline me, and hit me in the arm as he went past. The second incident was when my flatmate paid for the bus with a 20 euro note, she was met with a snotty "Get the right change next time." Finally, there was the guy trying to break into the hostel by charging the door and subsequently cracking the glass.

I met up with a friend who happened to be there the same weekend and when I asked her what she thought of Amsterdam she replied: "The people are quite rude, aren't they?" By this point I hadn't had a chance to experience said rudeness but I definitely left with the same impression.

Perhaps I was in a bad mood because it rained all weekend and being a Brit, this doesn't bode well; cue two grumpy girls lamenting the wind/rain combination and wrestling with fly-away umbrellas. The hostel we stayed in was really good; clean and spacious and it is a very pretty city. I can't make the generalisation that everyone there was rude as I did ask for directions and came accross a very polite man who was even concerned for our welfare: "Vondelpark? Well it's quite a long walk and you don't want to go there at night."

I think the bad experiences were increased ten-fold today when I went to Gare du Nord with an optimistic disposition and some faith left in humanity, only to find out that no-one had handed in my ipod which I left on the train. I suppose I can't really blame the Dutch for this...but, I bet it was a Frenchie that stole it!