The City of Lights

Hi everyone!  First of all, sorry for missing a post last week - I was busy preparing for a presentation and lab report for an unfinished course at my host university in Paris.  The presentation was scheduled to be in Paris, on Friday the 26th, which leads to one obvious and two joyful facts (for me at least): weekend trip to Paris and a long photo-blog post this week!  I was extremely happy to be able to return to the city of lights once again.  It allowed me to reach some kind of closure for my semester studying abroad, which was – I’m sure you’ve heard it a million times beforea million times before - an extremely fulfilling and [insert most cliché words in the universe] experience.

On Friday, I decided to go to my definite favourite place in Paris : the Louvre Museum.  It’s always funny to see so many people gathered around the Mona Lisa, all of them with arms outstretched in the air to catch a shot of the mysterious lady.  Since it’s now vacation season, there were a lot of people at the Louvre and barely enough space to move.  Also, entrance is free for youths under the age of 25 on Friday evenings after 6pm (!), so I guess most people are taking advantage of that.  At night, a friend and I went to get some Japanese food on St-Anne, next to Opéra, which is Japan heaven as it is crowded door-to-door with authentic Japanese restaurants.  I just love how the cooks make the dishes right in front of you, and sometimes even personally hands over your plate over the counter!  The food was delish!!  It’s just that the food is inexplicably expensive compared to the prices that I have gotten used to and love in Germany.  A sad story to tell to the empty wallet.     

On Saturday, instead of visiting famous museums and monuments, I decided to walk around downtown Paris for probably the last time in a long long long while.  A friend from Ottawa is also in Paris for the summer, and so we took a walk downtown, from Duroc (the aparment where my friend was living) to Montparnasse (tower of Montparnasse and Rue de Rennes for some shopping), Jussieu to finally, the Notre-Dame cathedral.  One of my secret wishes was met that day when I visited a true Parisian apartment, and it looked just like in the movies.  There was so much class even in the dustiest little corner.  We ate something typically French for lunch : a paté and camembert with baguettes, garden salad and an anise drink (which tastes a bit like licorish).  I never had so much pleasure eating healthy food in my life.  During our day-long stroll, we randomly ran into the Gay Pride parade!!! =D  There must have been a kilometre of open-air buses with people dancing and throwing pink stuff in the air and generally having a good time.  However, my friend is a strict Catholic so the parade was quite the awkward surprise for both of us!  Later, under the trees of the Notre-Dame cathedral, I sat on an unreasonably large piece of bird poop, which, after getting laughed at by random men on the seat next to us, ended the day for me.  But thankfully it was the end of the day and time to wrap up anyway! 

The end to this awesome weekend was very ironic.  I returned to Jülich by noon on Sunday.  I took a 3-hour Thalys train from Paris to Aachen, then a train to Duren and another rural line to Jülich.  This allowed me to figure out the commute between Aachen and Julich, but I was not happy when the ticket machine ate my 5-euro bill!  By then, I was very tired by then and just wanted to have a good power nap when I got home.  Some clarification to what I’m about to discover: before I left for Paris, I was asked by a neighbour that I got along with if he could use my apartment to watch a movie with his friends.  I gladly accepted had to suffer the consequences later because my apartment was left in ruins!  Two mountains of dishes were cluttering the sink, furniture was moved and they even used my appliances to do their personal things.  I just couldn’t believe my eyes!  What a way to end a great weekend! L         

Phew that’s it for this week’s post, thanks for getting this far.  I promise to be more regular with my entries next week!