The Other Resurrection

Firstly Happy Easter to all! This weekend seems to be perfectly apt for the resurrection of my blog! After more than two months without a computer or internet access, I do, at last, feel like I’m back in the 21^st Century. I’m now into my eighth month living in Paris and still disturbingly excitable about the whole thing. As springtime descends onto the city in true clichéd style I’m loving it more every day!

After a quiet family Christmas in Cirencester, the lure of a Parisian New Year celebration was too strong to ignore. Charlotte and I had previously exchanged cash with a man on the Champs Elysees, in what must have seemed like a particularly dodgy deal, but was in fact an innocent acquisition of tickets for the “Soiree Blanche” party at the Royal Pavilion. It appeared to be a suitably glamorous way to see in the New Year, and the whole idea was that everyone was to dress in white. In true French spirit however, Charlotte and I were amongst approximately ten of the guests who had actually dressed in white. It seems that the French don’t like being told what to do and are decidedly sceptical about any form of fancy dress! The fireworks and glamorous location meant that it was a good welcome to 2010 but a horrendous bout of flu, OK perhaps just a bad cold, prevented it being amazing. Nonetheless a new year had started and I was determined to make it a good one.

Since the beginning of February several people have come out for a visit. Firstly my jovial and very Scottish cousin/ aunt Diana came to Paris for a weekend with a group of friends. We went for a lovely lunch in a very traditional Parisian restaurant and laughed a lot. How reassuring to find somebody else in the family who errs on the side of slight madness!!! Continuing the Scottish theme, Jennifer continued taking advantage of my living in Paris by visiting from Glasgow for a second time! This time she brought a friend with her and I perfected my art of Paris tour-guiding! My final February visitor was one of my oldest friends from Cirencester: Julia. I don’t know if Julia has any Scottish ties but that’s really not important is it?! Either way, we had a really good few days: a perfect mix of seeing the obvious tourist sites (Eiffel Tower etc...), some more off track sites such as the catacombs, which wasn’t a very nice experience on a fairly hung-over Sunday morning (nobody mentioned the very long, claustrophobic, damp walk through piles of millions of leg bones and skulls) and some authentic Paris partying nights resulting in an unexpected, late night visit to some of Paris’ less desirable haunts!

After too many weeks of being plagued by a horrendous cold that wouldn’t shift for love nor money and a Iaptop that had effectively died on me, I decided to return to the UK for a few days of home comforts. Thankfully the train journey to London was distinctly less dramatic than the last and I arrived in England unscathed! I had a few hours to kill before my bus that was to take me all the way to Cirencester, so I met up with Norwegian friend Marita for a coffee and chin wag. It always takes me a while to realign myself with the cultural surroundings when I return home after a period abroad, and I found myself ‘Excusez-moi’-ing and 'Merci'-ing everyone in Starbucks much to the bemusement of the staff. Another highly forgettable journey along a snowy M4 (I’m not complaining, I prefer journeys to unremarkable!) took me back to the homeland, good ol’ Ciren where mum was waiting for me. It was nice to be home in Cirencester especially catching up with a couple of friends but even after a few days I was anxious to get back to my new home. Leaving my laptop in the trusty care of the parents, I headed off to swanky new Heathrow Terminal 5. At exactly the same time as my flight to Paris was a flight to Oslo, and yes, I was tempted to get on the wrong plane – all in the name of a potentially amusing blog post of course!

Into March and the visitors kept on coming. Continuing with the Scottish theme, next to touch down at Charles de Gaulle from Edinburgh was Ellie McJock . I’d like to say that I remember doing loads of fun things when she was here but unfortunately one incident sticks out rather more than any other. In a quest to save a few euros and have a laugh, McJock decided that it would be a hilarious idea to make me walk up the Eiffel tower. None of this lift malarkey but instead a mere 1665 steps complete with flirtatious builders and vertigo inducing gaps. All was fine and dandy until we came back down. Moving away from the tower for Ellie to take the standard tourist photograph, we noticed a man sitting on the barrier of the second level with his legs hanging over, next second he had jumped. Fortunately I managed to turn away and close my eyes before bearing witness to anything too distressing! Well I won’t be forgetting Ellie’s visit anytime soon! Other than the suicide I’m fairly confident we also had a great time, all the usual sites on the Natalie Wright tour of Paris which may well include several drinking establishments. The last person to come and pay me a visit was Kate, who took me on my maiden voyage to Disneyland. I was very sceptical about the saccharine happiness of giant mice and ducks skipping and singing but have to admit that within an hour of arriving I was singing ‘Zip a Dee Doo Dah’ and ‘It’s a Small World’. I even indulged in a spot of flirting with Mickey and Goofy! Roles were reversed as Kate, a seasoned Disneyworld expert, became the tour guide and took me under her happy Disney wing for the day. Before I get too carried away with this new found joy, let’s get back to Paris...

When not entertaining (mainly Scottish) guests, I’ve developed somewhat of a routine in my lifestyle. Throughout the first months of 2010, Charlotte and I have been very regular visitors to our favourite Thursday evening ‘Afterwork’ party in a club (Neo) on the Champs Elysees where we really became part of the furniture! I find very few things more satisfying having moved to a new country/city than walking into a place to be greeted like an old familiar regular. We became friends with the DJ, the bouncers, the managers, nigh on everybody in the place. Wonderful, until they decided to close a few weeks ago!! Now we need to find somewhere new to establish ourselves!! We have also continued partying downstairs in the basement, sometimes with a tiger, other times without. Something I would never expect to see in the UK and a definite fingers up to health and safety, the club in the basement occasionally brings in a young tiger (he was 8 months old last time he came) called Prince to boost numbers on a quiet Friday night! Uncaged and with a rope lead, he is fairly free to roam around the entrance hall and swipe at people he takes a disliking to at his leisure. He is very cute though!

Somewhat randomly, there have been a couple of music industry nights out recently, the first of which was in a club just off the Champs Elysees. When at 2am a tired and bitterly sober me was whinging to leave, Charlotte pointed out a group of interesting looking people. There was something about them which screamed come and talk to us, so, naturally, we marched up to them and introduced ourselves. They turned out to be well known singers/ DJs in France and they insisted that we sat on their table with them and played ridiculous French drinking games which I won’t even pretend to understand. The other industry night out was at the Bataclan, a big venue I had been aiming to go to for a long time. Helena and I had been invited by our friend Josh Weller who was performing there that night as part of a Universal music showcase. It was always going to be a good night as it was free champagne which is music to my ears!! In the 3 months since we last saw Josh play live, the change was almost indescribable. I was genuinely shocked by the level of performance, perhaps thanks in part to the big stage and equipment but either way, and the crowd seemed to agree with me, it was an impressive gig! More free champagne at the bar next door afterwards courtesy of Universal Music and another evening to make me ponder over working, somehow, in the music world. (Yes mum, I do still want to be a journalist.)

Finally, in a bid to leave no stone of Paris unturned, Charlotte and I created our “Wednesday afternoon culture days”. I would imagine that it will come as no shock to you that this is something that occurs every Wednesday afternoon, when we go to visit a place of interest, not necessarily on the main tourist route. We have been to museums, galleries, and cafes (they are of immense cultural importance in this city) and my favourite outing was our trip to the Edvard Munch exhibition. Since my trip to Oslo in December I have become, some might say, weirdly fascinated by many things Norwegian, I even followed a pair of Norwegian lesbians around the exhibition to try and listen in to them speaking the language!!! (And I failed miserably to understand.)

The Sunday Lunch Flunch tradition continues, not necessarily every Sunday, but the majority of the time, Helena and I meet up for an end of the week de-brief and gossip. We have also become regulars at Le Menhir restaurant, in varying sizes of groups. When Ellie was here, a group of ten of us met for dinner, of which there were nine different nationalities. I absolutely adore these kind of outings where the language swaps every few sentences and tongue in cheek xenophobia is aplenty! I’m also still babysitting a lot for Mr film star which has its moments, evermore surreal by the week. I am very happy that I have found bar work for the summer which means that I can stay in my beloved Paris until September and take full advantage of the hot summer days relaxing in the Tuileries Gardens or on the Paris Plage (fake beach!)

I’m aware that this has turned into a dissertation but I vow here and now to update my blog with shorter, regular posts from now on in. Unless nothing happens of course, in which case I’ll just have to make something up!!!

Dull and Dreary December Part 2: A trip to Oslo

I have decided to dedicate a whole entry to my December trip to Oslo as it was full of anecdotes and strange situations. It won't be a very succinct report of my visit but for my sake at least, I want a written account of that weekend, so why not make it into a blog post! In July I booked the tickets and in a late night act of extraordinary luck, I stumbled onto one of Ryanair's sales on which I found Paris - Oslo return tickets for a grant total of 10euros. Taking this as an omen, I booked up, reserved my concert tickets and pocketed the idea somewhere towards the back of my brain for a couple of months. I can't say when I definitely decided to go, but it wasn't more than 2 or 3 days before the departure!! In the end it seemed that nobody would be able to accompany me on my trip and at first this seemed like a major hurdle, honestly who travels to some far flung nordic city for a weekend by themselves?? A madwoman with a thirst for adventure and amusement perhaps! Whilst a1 were just about the single most important entity in my life aged 13, as a sensible and mature 22 year old justification was certainly needed in my mind to go to such lengths. As a budding future journalist, in recent months my attention and thoughts have wandered into the pop music journalism sector. Excellent, so I would use the weekend solely as a research and networking excursion to further my impending high flying career. Sorted. Yes, European news journalism would be the sensible option, but if I can't chase a more exciting option when I'm still young then when will I? (This whole no future regrets thing is going a bit far, I'll be throwing myself out of a plane before I know it)! In the weeks leading up to the concerts I helped as much as I could with some online shameless plugging on music forums, youtube etc... whilst simultaneously doing some small scale PR for another band over here in Paris. For a while I felt like I'd fallen into another role. Through this I was "virtually" (through facebook and MSN) introduced firstly to Christian Dyresen who was basically in charge of the whole show and became my online norwegian teacher for the month leading up to the trip! I've never not been learning a language so clearly I decided that it would be a good idea to fill this gap in my life by learning this bizarre and difficult language!! Meanwhile, as I was taking on this new language, my flatmate Misha had just started learning Korean and several slightly odd evenings were spent sitting in my room each muttering away and repeating phrases in our respective target languages! Secondly, I was introduced to Marita who was working on the PR, but more on her later!!

So the day of departure dawned and I felt surprisingly nervous, the reoccuring thought of the day being "What the hell am I doing?!" Charlotte and Helena did their best to reassure me I was perfectly sane to be going, at work the morning of the flight. An amusing text message from my dad informed me that Obama himself was also in Oslo that day, so I was to be in good company! Alas the realisation that Mr O would be using neither the same airport nor hotel as me came as a disappointment if not a total surprise!! Despite the seemingly short 1hour 45minute flight from "Paris" to "Oslo" the complete journey was decidedly longer. Of course when Ryanair say Paris to Oslo they mean nothing of the sort, so an hour bus ride out of Paris you might find yourself getting close to the airport, then on the norwegian side, ordinarily it's a two hour journey from Torp airport to Oslo city centre. Unless of course you are arriving on the day of the president's visit, in which case the main roads are closed and as a result the coach driver has no option but to tackle the snowy, steep and narrow alternative routes!!! There was one point when I started to panic mildly when I noticed we seemed to be eschewing all directions to Oslo and instead following signs to Stockholm, but lo and behold eventually the coach pulled into Oslo Bus Station. When my first attempts of norwegian communication were met with utter confusion (a devastating personal failure) I had to admit defeat and ask for directions to the hotel in english. "Get a taxi" was easy enough to understand. Thank God for small mercies the journey was only three minutes long or I fear I would be in debt for the rest of my life. Clearly the warnings of Norway's cost were not exaggerated. After checking in I wasn't really ready to hit the sack despite the fairly late hour so I thought I might get in a spot of people meeting (OK networking- my favourite word!) before the night was out. I was looking for the 'a1' room, yes every hotel should come equipped with one, when I spotted three familiar faces in front of me. Only a poster, but a good start nonetheless! With great excitement and trepidation I crept though the a1 adorned door to be greeted with an empty room, which I later discovered to be the usual meeting place for the Norwegian Rotary Club. You really couldn't make this kind of story up, honestly as if things weren't peculiar enough as they were! By this point I started writing a kind of stream of consciousness in my notebook which makes for fairly amusing reading in hindsight, one of my favourite lines reads: "I'm freezing, starving, exhausted and alone in a hotel in Norway. If I didn't have such a good sense of humour I might take this badly".

Waking up Friday morning in Norway I realised it hadn't been a dream, so with great enthusiasm and joy (!) I tucked into my first Scandinavian breakfast - a slightly odd buffet of fish, cucumber, peppers, oranges, brown cheese (which for the record is delicious) and the more conventional cereal/toast combination. Thankfully, when I went downstairs to reception I recognised Marita, at last a friendly face even if we had never before met. After a chat and armed with top tips, I hit Oslo city centre for a day of furious tourism, however my fast pace was unnecessary as I'd overestimated the size of the city and found that I had 'done' all the main sites by lunchtime. I usually like to indulge in a spot of people watching when in new places, but the December temperature in Oslo doesn't make such an activity a particularly welcoming idea. So I walked all along the water front, and it was actually very pleasant. After a hot shower and change of clothes back at the hotel, I met up with Line, another norwegian friend and together we went to meet Mumi, an a1 fan who had travelled all the way from Japan for the concerts!!! After a bite of dinner where we were, apparently, sitting next to a contestant from norwegian X Factor we headed over to the beautiful Christiania Theatre ahead of the concert. Keen to give a helping hand, I earned my keep by selling programmes to unsuspecting fans on arrival at the theatre with Marita and Line and had lots of fun doing so. A lady organising the backstage "meet and greet" approached Mumi to confirm she would be going to meet the boys after the concert, and then turned to me and said "You too?!" so obviously I nodded. When Cecilie later asked "Natalie, why on earth were you on the meet and greet list?!" I had no clear answer. The concert was a fabulous melange of melodic trips down memory lane and a showcase of some of the guys' solo and new material. Obviously the "meet and greet" afterwards was good fun, I felt momentarily guilty being there as it was supposed to be for fans that had done something special/specific but who am I to question these things?! Admittedly Mark also looked slightly confused by my appearance and as he tried to make Ben remember me from London it was great to know that ah yes after all I was memorable: for fairly stupidly breaking a cash machine and drinking gin and tonic!! We can't all be glamorous and cool headed in life. It was of course the first time I had met Christian since that long-ago morning in Woolworths, Watford with Alex!! (2001 I believe?!) but once again, I failed spectacularly with what I had thought would be a highly impressive demonstration of my recently acquired linguistic flare (quite evidently I have none whatsoever when it comes to norwegian!) In what seemed liked the correct protocol for backstage boyband meets, I thrust my programme under their noses and demanded something creative. Obviously Ben rose to the challenge and I now have a masterpiece of art in the form of a heavily annotated photo of Mark complete with beard, earring and best of all a forehead tattoo declaring "I love Ben". Classic.

The after party was in a bar not far away (obviously, it's Oslo. Nothing is very far away). Amusingly all the cocktails had been given a1 song titles as names, and I allowed myself a cheeky "Take you Home" as the "Like a Rose" had complicated norwegian words in the ingredients! There was a great atmosphere with lots of people mixing and talking. There were three noticeably large crowds moving around the room, each with a band member at the centre! After a while the guys had to leave to go to "a nobel peace prize party with Will Smith". Unbelievably I didn't once pull out my line of "Will Smith and I are practically best friends" after my film premiere encouter in Rome (if you haven't already heard this story - firstly congratulations, you are lucky to have escaped, it's one of my favourites, and secondly: don't ask.) The crowd disbanded fairly rapidly after the departure of Mark, Ben and Christian and I was ready to leave with Marita and Line when Cecilie (PA, photographer, general glue of the whole a1 entity!) made the mistake of telling me to stay for one more. Initially, in my defence, it wasn't clear that it would be just me, Cecilie and the drummer i.e I would be completely crashing their date. The blame is, however, entirely on Cecilie and I hold no responsibility for my gooseberry status. Despite this, we had a hilarious time and even, surreally, stumbled across a Santa Claus on the way home who appeared to be fairly aimlessly hanging out in the park. We stopped for a photo with him and I trotted on back to the hotel smiling and laughing, reflecting on my oddest of days.

On Saturday, my final day I was extremely tempted to fabricate a freak snowstorm conviniently postponing my return by 24hours thus allowing me to stay for the Saturday night concert and more shenanigans. The pursestrings, however, had a different idea and forced me to leave as planned that afternoon. Not relishing the idea of spending another day alone in the city, it was lucky for me that Marita was at the hotel in the morning and we consequently spent the rest of the day together in town, drinking coffee, chatting and laughing a lot!! If nothing else, I made a new friend from my trip as Marita is lovely! I absolutley love making friends from all over the world and hope that I can continue doing so with any equally ridiculous future trips abroad. As a leaving gift (not really, but perfectly timed, just before I had to leave) A1 performed a short concert in the middle of town for charity and the mob that ensued totally shocked me! Clearly they are extremely well known and liked in Norway and I really wasn't prepared for the level of craziness that followed them down the street!!

I had a truly brilliant time in Oslo, even if the trip was surrounded with an air of surreal randomness. After months of deliberating, to go or not to go, it ended up being a fairly spontaneous adventure and one that I almost didn't take for fear of being a lone traveller. That would've been a stupid decision and I'm so glad that I went. The main reason for it's success was the group of people that made it so fun, most notably Marita, Cecilie and of course the boys! And it's given me food for thought about potentially pursuing work in a vaguely similar sector. The only true disaster: my spectacular linguistic failure, on that note: Takk Takk og God Natt (or something!)

Dull and Dreary December Part 1

The title is, of course, sarcastic as December '09 has quite possibly been the most amusing of my 271 months of life thus far!! There has barely been a quiet moment and I know that when I'm an old fart (40 or so) I will look back on these times and reminisce about how it was the best time in my life etc... So I'm trying my best to appreciate it all now so as to minimise the later regrets.

The various parties and champagne fuelled nights out this month which would ordinarily provide the backbone to my blog entry almost pale into insignificance against some of my other adventures this month. But let's start with the all important champagne nights!

A new Paris tradition has emerged resulting in a weekly 9 hour clubbing marathon. On Thursday nights Charlotte and I have taken to frequenting "Neo" a gorgeous, stylish club just off the Champs Elysées, to make the most of the unlimited champagne between 7 and 9pm. Continuing with the perceived VIP treatment we waltz in past the enormous queue merely because we had reserved our places online! Slightly odd, but who am I to question these procedures?! Bizarrely most people at the club seem content with one or two flutes of champagne leaving us anglophones to fully take advantage of the set up! In a bid to educate the French DJ in up to date music, I have started taking my Ipod along to the club, and he plugs it in to play out all the new music to the club: usually songs which haven't yet been released in France. I like to think of it as my contribution to French society: the introduction of new British and American music! When, by 10pm, all free drink opportunities appear to have been seiged, Charlotte and I slowly make our way back to my flat to carry on the champagne partying in the basement! Club 130 is proving to be an excellent asset to my social life and it literally could not be easier to get home - a 30 second ride in the lift and I'm outside my door! That is what I like to call convinience clubbing. Of course it helps that Quentin and Mathieu who run the place have welcomed us with open arms and made us feel like a part of the 130 "gang"! (Woo hardcore Natz becomes part of Parisian Gang.)

There were also a couple of flat parties chez des amis in December. Firstly Margaux and Charlotte held another of their classic parties, this time VIP themed. As the wonderful friend that I am, I offered to help Charlotte prepare the whole thing as Margaux was busy revising for exams. Meeting at midday for a cheeky chinese lunch we then wasted about an hour, totally lost, in one of life's most frustrating experiences: an utterly futile 1 hour loop of the area surrounding the gare du nord to end up 50m from where we started and all in the pursuit of fake nails! Disgruntled and sheepish we then moved on to more pressing matters: that of the decoration necessary for a VIP soirée. Off to the party shop and then because I'm a bit of a mug and a pro at being in humiliating situations, I was the one who landed the honour and responsibility of transporting 12 fully inflated helium balloons through the Paris metro system. If this sounds like a fairly undaunting task then allow me to correct you now. There is a lot of wind in the metro and also a lot of people. 12 balloons take up a lot of space and make a lot of noise when they pop!! Obviously Charlotte's reaction to my plight was to laugh hysterically and take lots of photographs, but after a complicated journey home the party went ahead and was another great success. (And yes I did fall asleep with the chihuahua once again...)

Zuzanna perfectly planned a surpirse party for Berengere's birthday which as usual meant that a whole host of different nationalities came together for an evening of multilingual chit chat!!



One of my first night-time outings in Paris introduced me to singer and songwriter Josh Weller. Having been out for drinks and dinner with him, Simon (the backing man) and the manager, Helena and I stayed in touch with Josh and were therefore pleased when he told us he was coming back in December, this time as the support act for his girlfriend: a certain Miss Paloma Faith. The concert was truly one of the best I can remember seeing for a long time. The French audience were horrendously lacklustre and still/rigid but this didn't detract from the quality of both performances (Josh and Paloma) and the combination of the two of them performing their brilliantly cynical "It's Christmas and I Hate You" song was such good entertainment! Helena and I had an unabashed dance and sing-a-long in the audience but as soon as the lights went up the bouncer was super keen to shoo everybody out of the venue before you could say encore! Luckily for us, Josh came to our rescue announcing to the bouncer that as his cousins we should be allowed to stay behind to have a drink with the artists! After inquiring after the health of fictional Uncle Johnny the bouncer seemed satisfied and thundered off elsewhere to vent some agression, leaving us to have a drink with Josh, Simon, Paloma and her band. We then migrated en masse to the beautifully traditional Parisian bar next door where we spent the rest of the night mingling (Or networking as I like to call it!). Everybody was genuinely really lovely and I had a great conversation with the pianist, Dom Pipkin. After weeks on the road, Paloma and co. had to get back on their enormous tourbus to travel through the night to their final venue of the tour in Birmingham. Before leaving, Paloma asked if I would do her a 'massive favour' and take care of her good friend Ann who had come to Paris to see her but whose accommodation had fallen through at the last minute thus leaving her homeless for the night! After having had such a good night how could I possibly say no?! And it worked out perfectly in the end as Ann was such a nice person and the whole story resulted in a new friend! We spent the entirety of the next day having a fabulously stereotypical girly day in Paris, drinking coffee, shopping on the Champs Elysées and gossipping. However, when swapping anecdotes about our respectives best friends Ann sounded decidedly cooler than me talking about Paloma as opposed to me recounting stories of Alice sodding Bennet for example!!! The Josh/Paloma night was absoultely brilliant and I remained on my best behaviour the whole time, only being truly humiliated once, by getting my head stuck in the automatic tour bus door. But we'll forget that part!

With Tom's arrival in Paris I've discovered a lot more of the Irish/Australian establishments in the vicinity and now that he's working in Café Oz around the corner from my house, it means another drinking hole with very lenient "paying-for-drinks rules"!! By the end of the year I'm wondering if we'll find anywhere to actually pay for drinks. Clearly I am not complaining about this fact!!!

Enough for part 1 of my December blog. Half of this was written at 41,000 feet above Denmark and the other half at 2am on Boxing day with a belly full of cheese and mince pies. After a decent rest and some quiet time, I will attempt to tackle the reporting of the second and more eventful half of the month, including my slightly random/insane solo trip to Norway and my brief stint as ITV reporter for the top story on the national news...!

Staying Socially Afloat

In one of my most masochistic acts to date, I decided to give up chocolate for the whole of November. A decision based on absolutely no tangible benefits but because life is a little bit too cushy here and I needed a challenge. It has proved easier than anticipated though, as I have replaced chocolate with champagne! A slight cold and earache has tried to hamper my fun over the last week, but a trip to see the plastic surgeon (I kid you not) and resulting prescription has put that worry aside! So another busy fortnight which started with the revival of Erasmus life, Paris style:

Just in case things weren't international enough as it was, the first weekend of the month brought a Roman reunion to Paris. Jen and Alain hopped on a plane from sunny Glasgow and Antonio flew over from Madrid. Us nouveau-Parisians welcomed our guests in the best way we know how: by taking them out drinking! We went to a bar called Apérock Café where they have (not entirely convincingly) renamed all the cocktails with a rock music theme. Hilariously my peach-based cocktail was the "Depêche Mode" and Jen's was a "Mick Shaker" ie Jagger in case you were looking for the link. Despite the terrible level of wit, the evening was a total success and at any one point there were at least 5 different nationalities in any conversation: very l'auberge espagnol!

In the lighter hours of the weekend, we did a fairly thorough tourist trail through le Gai Paris, massively taking advantage of the free for under 26s sites. Somehow a walk through the heart of the city had us in almost constant fits of laughter, and interpreting the numerous works of modern art scattered through the Tuileries Gardens we came to the conclusion that "la vie est futile" (Life is futile!) and this became a running joke for the rest of the weekend. A 3 course meal for 10€ at Le Menhir signalled the end of the night for Jen and I who are evidently too old to deal with two heavy nights in a row. After Sunday's stroll around the Louvre and the obligatory photo sessions next to the Eiffel Tower it was already time to bid farewell to the Scots amongst us. Waving goodbye to our friends I couldn't help wondering where in the world we would next meet...! Exhausted and ready to go home I was then told by Henri that we were going out to meet Miguel, Antonio and Anne Laila for dinner somewhere in the north of Paris. Of course I could theoretically have politely declined and returned home alone to my lesson plans and resident chihuahua but a steak and bottle of red with friends unsurprisingly seemed the much more fitting option!

The lure of free champagne had Charlotte and I rushing back to the piano bar mid-week with Helena this time. After being presented with an enormous bottle of champagne (Sorry dad, I'm failing you, I don't know what the official bottle-size name is), we pushed our luck about as far as possible before leaving to investigate the club in my building! Helena left us at this point, to go home and rest after a hectic week, so Charlotte and I pressed on alone. Mercifully void of topless women and transvestites this visit was infintely more successful than the last! On a night when luck seemed to be pouring from the stars into our laps, no sooner had we entered the club than we met some people who has paid a lot of money for a private table and who invited us to sit with them and share their costly bottle of vodka. (Ie classy vodka in a classy club, not a watered down bottle of Tesco value in the Rock, where VIP tables don't exist to my knowledge....) So after yet another free drink we were telling our life stories, as is a fairly regular occurence when you move to a new city, and I casually mentionned that I lived upstairs. Our new friends suddenly became very ebullient and demanded to know if I had yet been introduced to Quentin, which for the record I hadn't. Embracing our newfound carefree demeanour and having no idea who Quentin is, nor why it was so important that we meet him, we followed them to meet the man! Turns out Quentin is, at 26, the manager of the recently reopened club and an excellent person to know! He was really nice and took the time to tell us a bit about the place and it's history, and it transpires that he effectively brought his crowd of exclusive clubbers with him when he re-opened the club under the name "130".
After a brilliant night out at a cost of precisely 0€ our feet were throbbing and we were slightly wobbly on the old legs. Charlotte and I then felt very smug as the journey home could not have been easier - a mere five floors up in the lift and we were home!

One night when I came home from work I put on the TF1 news and noticed that it was coming live from Place de la Concorde, broadcasting a live concert commemorating the fall of the Berlin wall. I was exhausted but have a natural inquisitiveness and pull towards big events and after all the luck I've had so far in Paris, I was feeling a bit cocky and decided to head on down. It is, after all, only at the end of my road. Only problem is that my road is longer than Morestall Drive for example, a fact I sometimes forget. I probably thought I'd bump into someone fabulously famous and spend the evening sipping free Moët. Alas literally the second I arrived, the last note of the concert sounded and the crowd dispersed. A well deserved reality-check? Yes. But I did have a sneaky sense of excitement walking in the opposite direction of the mass exodus of the Place.

Last weekend I went on my second French voyage of the year so far. This time, however, it was not to discover a new city. In fact, the complete opposite - I went to Nantes to visit my grandma and the rest of the French family. It was really nice to spend some time alone with Mémère as she is affectionately known in the family (despite it's negative connotations in French!) and also a welcome break from the ambulance sirens of the Rue de Rivoli. On Saturday we went to the countryside and had a big family lunch - a slightly surreal experience owing to the absence of mum and dad, but luckily I survived the pressure of total french family immersion and I don't think I made too much of a fool of myself, linguistically or otherwise. The meal was beautiful and definitely adhered to my newfound level of life: fresh lobster, duck and lots of champagne. By Sunday lunchtime I was already excited about returning 'home' to Paris. If home is where the heart is, then Paris can certainly claim this title! Well OK, it can share the postition with my beloved Ciren, but I can genuinely see myself living here in Paris for a long time.

On the train home from work on Monday with Charlotte, a tactical eavsdrop informed us that we were sharing the carriage with a player from Marseille football club. This was particularly exciting for Charlotte who, for some unfathomable reason, supports l'OM! Anyway, not working on Tuesdays means that Monday night is the new Saturday night... sort of! A friend from Ciren was over for a few days looking for a job and somewhere to live. Having gotten tired of waiting at home, with a degree but no work, he decided to come and ride out the recession living in Paris! In a depressing time like this when even friends that have been working a year or less are being made redundant it seems like a great idea! So I met up with Tom and his friend Theo and we somehow ended up in an Irish pub and participating in Monday night pub quiz! It was good craic (!) but the lax rules on cheating would have had Bill in a cold sweat! Iphones everywhere and people joining teams willy nilly. Good fun and I would like to go back as I love pub quizzes and we're all allowed a little bit of home comfort, but it had nothing to rival the institution that is Bill and the Nelson pub quiz! I then continued my night by heading to Helena's flat to celebrate Tobias' birthday. Another highly international night, I walked the 10minutes home with a group of people and managed to hold conversations in four languages in that short time!!

I've got a busy fortnight coming up with lots of parties, visits, concerts etc... Obviously I'd rather stay in my flat alone every night with a cup of a tea, but a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do to stay socially afloat in Paris!

The Parents Come To Stay

After Matty's visit a little down time was in order, to get over the excitement of our linguistic escapades,alas a call from Helena on Saturday morning inviting me to a Brazilian restaurant cum nightclub with a plethora of Italians proved a little too difficult to resist. So as we dined on South American cuisine with what can only be descibed as an eclectic group of people (Nationalities included Italian, English, German, Greek, American and French), the other half of the room started to fill with night time revellers. Slightly odd atmosphere for eating in but brilliant nontheless. After our rather costly prawns, Helena, Tobias and I simultaneously hit the cocktails and the dancefloor with mixed results. I like to think that my latino dancing was Strictly Come Dancing worthy but I severly doubt this now I think with a lucid ie sober mind. Getting home at 4am obviously ruled out doing anything constructive for the rest of the weekend, except of course the now complusory Sunday Lunch Flunch for general mutual sympathy (ow my head hurts so much) and night de-brief (Did I really spend half an hour practicing my newly acquired Norwegian skills on some unsuspecting Swedes? Answer: yes Natalie, of course you did.)

A fairly uneventful week of work ensued and the following weekend Zuzanna held her 'mojito party'. Having sent her mother, sister and even dog to sleep in the office for a night Zuzanna took advantage of an empty appartment to invite us round to indulge in cocktails, conversation and even a bit of dancing towards the end! Once again I met some nice new people and even had a farily inspiring conversation with one of Zuzanna's friends who is in the process of becoming a sport's jounalist. He told me that I must follow my dreams, once again fuelling my idea of music journalism... On the way home, Henri and I once more filled the streets of Paris with our dulcet tones, this time I hasten to recall, it was a co-written masterpiece entitled "La Motte Piquet Grenelle" the name of the nearest metro station. Quite why it felt so necessary at the time remains somewhat of a mystery to me, but what I do remember is that we had lots of fun at the time singing away at 3am so it can't all be bad! The best thing about living where I do is that practically every night bus goes through Chatelet, so on our first sighting of a bus we climbed on and it took me almost to my front door - how's that for service!

Last week was fairly dominated by the visit from the folks - ie mum and dad. The devoted and wonderful daughter that I am, I trotted off to Gare du Nord on Sunday to meet them off the train (not before having my vital Sunday Lunch Flunch of course...!) In what seemed to be an exercise in making me look like a bad human being, just as the train pulled into the station a man collapsed onto my foot. Instead of wowing the crowd with my astonishing first aid skills (of which I have approximately none) I stood still with a perplexed expression on my face until some woman nearby came running over and did all the stuff your supposed to do when someone collapses onto you. Aparently watching Casualty for a decade isn't enough preperation when it comes to dealing with a medical emergency! I collected the old dears and got them safely to their hotel and we commenced our tourist tour of my part of town. We had a lovely dinner in a traditional french restaurant (Le Menhir) and I even made a complete fool of myself ( Could you believe it?!) standing outside Mr Actor's flat pointing, until dad casually said "That's not him leaning out of the window looking this way is it?!" So much for my cool, disinterested exterior. Over the two follwing days we did the sights as you would expect (including the strawberry millefeuille patisserie!) and spent a surprisingly entertaining hour queuing for the Musée d'Orsay on Tuesday morning - the perfect location for a spot of people watching! We saw a he-she teenager and a woman dressed in what can only be described as a vintage wedding dress amongst many others. In this particularly norwegian era of my life (!), it was fitting that we went for a coffee with dad's friend Rob who was in town on business with the norwegian company he works for. Mercifully I restrained, for once, from trying out my linguistic skills. It was lovely to have the parents here for a few days, and I don't just mean because they took me out for dinner three nights in a row! (Although that was great!) And my greatest achievement during their visit, was eating frogs' legs for the very first time!

Shock horror, on Friday last week I went to the Virgin Megastores on the Champs Elysées and nothing, absolutely nothing of interest happened. I merely walked in, looked around a bit, bought some DVDs and left again. This is most unsatisfactory and I hope it doesn't happen again. On my way home I did come across a lot of television cameras outside one of the big hotels on Rue de Rivoli and I aimlessly stood around for a while hoping to catch some excitement, however it has recently become very wintry over here and I got cold and bored so I left! In the evening Ollie sent me a message saying he was bored and we decided to share a bottle of wine and catch up with each others' news. He has, after about a month in Paris found somewhere to live, but has been staying in an apartment a stone's throw from the Sacré Couer so I went there. On the metro on the way home I bumped into Mr Swedish man from Favela Chic (the Brazilian club)! The poor soul looked traumatised when he recognised me as if I might start depserately trying out my norwegian again. But I was very well behaved and for the second time that week refrained from norwegian waffle! It never ceases to amaze me when in a city of 2.4million inhabitants plus tourists, it is a fairly common occurence to bump into somebody in the street or metro! Saturday started like any other, with a beautiful strawberry millefeuille. I am definitely addicted and moving back to England could prove problematic...! Another lazy day was followed by an evening of humiliation and fun...

Clearly Paris is too sophisticated to celebrate Halloween, so on 31st October amongst the crowds on the Rue de Rivoli were scattered a few ex-pats sheepishly skulking down the street in varying degrees of fancy dress. Thanking God for small mercies, I wasn't alone in my quest to walk down the street as Helena (ie nurse with giant, inflatable syringe) and Tobias (alias the Doctor in full scrubs with effective fake blood smeered everywhere) met me (whiskers, black ears and even a tail peaking out from beneath my coat) outside the flat. The metro journey was odd and certainly filled the daily humiliation quota. At the other end we met up with Robin Hood (Zuzanna) and Cleopatra (Berengere)! The party was at Charlotte's flat next to the Eiffel Tower and it was a brilliant night, everyone mixed really well regardless of nationalities and levels of previous acquaintance. Clearly I am too old these days for fun and games late into the night and by 1am I was fast asleep on Charlotte's bed clutching her chihuahua! Sunday lunch flunch was, as ever, an excellent place for recollection and laughter the next day!

Lastly, no natzinparis blog update would be complete without a champagne ridden soirée or a bit of cheeky networking/blagging. On Wednesday the 5 lectrices from university went out for a meal at Le Menhir, the French restaurant in which I ate my first ever French Onion Soup with my parents the week before. After a nice meal Charlotte and I decided to eschew good sense and head to a bar. I'd like to say we chose a piano bar on Rue de la Huchette but there wasn't really much of a choice in the matter. The doorman Sergey, practically picked us up and dropped us at the bar. After one glass of wine, we were ready to leave until someone offered to buy us another. Somewhat half heartedly we accepted and then he introduced us to his brother, who as it happens was the owner of the bar! An evening of unlimited free champagne ensued and come 3am, after a slightly surreal tour of the greek restaurant opposite, 2 marriage proposals, and job offers coming from all angles we realised it was far too late for Charlotte to get home on the metro! So, she came and crashed at my flat and a mere 4 hours later we were up and getting ready to go to work. It was the hardest day of work to date!!

Essentially the moral of this blog entry is that I am an inherently bad person, I am partying a little too hard for a mature graduate (!!) and I have succeeded in increasing the stereotypical image of my French life by eating frogs' legs and french onion soup. Très bien!

Gluttony and a Linguistic Pilgrammage

So it's been about a decade since my last update, and at first it was because nothing of any interest whatsoever happened, but then things began to pick up again.

Paris fashion week came and went, bringing with it a noticeably large number of additional limos, models and paps. One afternoon I was going about my daily business, buying some stationery for work from the Virgin Megastores on the Champs Elysées (where all my entertaining anectdotes seem to start!) Perfectly satisfied with my modest daily accomplishment I was walking home when I stumbled directly into the path of about 200 paparazzi! Lots of incomprehensible yelling ensued which I could only take to mean "Get out of the bloody way woman" as I turned around to see a scantily clad, stilettoed personality climbing out of a blacked-out car. Apparently I had sidled into the arrival area for the biggest fashion week show and I was completely obstructing the view of this French actress' big entrance. (Note to self: Must start dressing up for future trips to Virgin Megastore in case of celebrity based situations). OK so I didn't recognise any of the 'celebrities' turning up in ever more perculiar outfits, including a man dressed entirely in newspaper, but I didn't want to lose my last scraps of self respect by admitting this and asking the vast numbers of international press who anyone was. So I just smiled knowingly and took in the atmosphere, after all things like this never happen in Cirencester!

Embracing the ever-so slightly sterotypical French culture I went along to a friend's flat for a Wine and Cheese soirée. This event was actually the catalyst for my discovery of my local area, as I had been instructed to bring along 'un bon fromage'. Clearly the supermarket own brand brie would not suffice for such an occassion so instead I hit the streets of the premier arrondissement to sniff out (quite literally) my local fromagerie. I found it only one street away from my flat and it was beautifully traditional and full of character. I bought some miniature 'chevres' coated in herbs and peppers and vowed to come back on a regular basis. However I then tripped up on my way out of the shop sending a bicycle that had been propped up against the door flying! I was really quite mortified and consequently I haven't felt the need for cheese since! On a more positive note, I found, on the same street, 2 lovely boulangeries/patisseries which doesn't bode well for my newfound vice - Strawberry millefeuilles. Ever the one for tradition and routine, I now live for my Saturday morning Strawberry Millefeuille extravaganza. I'm trying out different patisseries and find that millefueille is an excellent benchmark for assessing the general quality of each outlet! It has become the thing that gets me through work all week and this Saturday's SM had frozen strawberries in it, the disappointment of which has tarred my whole weekend!

The other new tradition in my Parisian life is 'Sunday Flunch Lunch'. (Flunch being a cheap restaurant chain where 5€ gets you meat of some sort with unlimited access to veg, pasta and chips!) This is excellent except for the fact that I've put on about 100kilos courtesy of Flunch since being here (nothing to do with the strawberry millefeuilles or almost daily pains au chocolat of course!) So every Sunday lunchtime I meet Helena there and we have a good old chin wag at the same time.

Last Saturday was the celebration of the Vendanges de Montmarte which is when the grapes are picked at the Montmartre vineyard. Any excuse for a knees up, this is turned into a massive celebration and manifestation of all things French. I met Henri and some of his french friends to witness a spectauclar, no expenses spared, firewors display complete with a Gainsbourg/Brel/Piaf soundtrack in front of the Sacré Couer and then spent the rest of the night with half the population of Paris weaving between the stalls representing every corner of France selling regional food and wine. It was, however, too overcrowded to make the most of it so I suggested to Helena the next day at Flunch that we return that afternoon. It was great to look around the stalls and there were lots of unconventional street performers keeping us entertained. We then indulged in a flute of champagne! Sitting on the steps outside Sacré Couer on a Sunday afternoon sipping champagne and watching the world go by from the best viewpoint over Paris made for a most satisfactory end of the week!

This week has been dominated by Matty's visit and my first trip out of Paris. After a very long day on Monday of work and then babysitting (which was a surreal experinece in itself, as the children and I watched their dad on live television as I sat in his living room!) I eventually got home really late knowing that I had to be up at the crack of way before dawn in order to catch my 06.57 train to Lille. This was no ordinary trip but instead a linguistic pilgrammage to 'Le Nord'. Meeting Matty off the bus from the airport we found our hostel and then had a couple of hours to kill in Lille city centre. Having left the Parisian metropolis for 24 hours I assumed to have a day void of any TV film crews, alas Matty and I innocently sauntered into the main square to be shouted at by a woman with a walkie-talkie - yes they were filming an upcoming film with actor Bernard Le Coq. So watch out for "Le cible dans le dos" in the future, who knows perhaps Matty and I will make a cameo appearance.
After being hassled somewhat randomly by some Dutch schoolgirls who insisted on doing a questionnaire on Matty ("My favourite country in the whole world is Scotland because I like haggis") we boarded the train for our highly anticipated trip to Bergues. This otherwise non-descript very northern town was the setting of the massively successful French film 'Bienvenue chez les chti's' last year and having spent the final semester of university studying the accent, the linguistic pull of Bergues was too strong to resist. I do not actually remember being in so much pain from laughing as I was that grey Tuesday afternoon, climbing Bergues belltower, watching the local youth playing a game of petanque and even eating a tarte aux pommes in the square (I panicked...!) Sprinting to get the train back to Lille, the seemingly lovely ticekt-inspector lady failed to tell us that we needed to change at Hazebrouck and we regrettably ended up in Lens! Perhaps it's not fair to judge a town on the surrounding area of the station but from what we saw it's the msot godforesaken town in history! Eventually back in Lille Matty and I hit the town and after a free bottle of wine, we tried out a local bar full of Lillois medical students on whom we tried out our best chti dialect with mixed reactions.

Back in Paris, I had to leave Matty to his own devices whilst I went to work but on Thursday evening a very international group of 8 of us went out to dinner at a nearby creperie. With Americans, French, Brits, a Portugese and a German it was like a UN meeting, only slightly less sophisticated but great fun nonetheless. We finished the night in a sangria bar and the retired home after a fairly tame evening. On Friday Matty and I took full advantage of the free entry to national tourist attractions and went to the Pompidou museum and climbed the Arc de Triomphe. I should have learned my lesson by now, but on the way home I thought it would be a good idea to pop into Virgin Megastores. In the main entrance of the shop was a pile of copies of 'Dracula the undead' the new sequel to the original Dracula. Glancing at the inside cover to read about it, a booming American voice cut through "Hello, please can we have a photo taken with you. We are the authors" to which a very bemused Matty and I obliged and turned to face a camera and videocamera and had several photos taken! It was another of those strange situations I all too often find myself in, as Mr Stoker (great-grand nephew of original Bram) went on to explain to me in great detail the process of writing up Bram's notes and about the screenplay that he was currently in talks to sell to Hollywood! What was particularly odd was that there was a growing queue of real fans lining up for the official signing he was doing afterwards and yet he chose to divulge all to us!

Only working part time means that I've had a lot of time to consider future possibilities and career options and the overwhelming urge in my barmy brain at the moment is to combine 2 of my passions - jornalism and pop music. So it's something I'm somewhat passively researching at the moment just because it's something that really interests me. It also means that I've spent a lot of time reading pop music related articles and was very sad to hear about Stephen Gately this week. Anyone that knows me well will know the role that boybands play in my life and so I even managed to do a lesson this week at university using an article about his untimely death!

This blog is going to turn into a tome of ridiculousness if I don't stop soon. So as autumn really takes it's grip on Paris, I can only look forward to a season of fun-filled antics and discovering the city as best I can.

Champagne Continued...

Somehow another week has gone flying by and it's time for the latest blog post. Sometimes it feels like I've just arrived here, yet when I think back to the day I pulled into the Gare du Nord, with nowhere to live, no phone, no bank account and very little familiarity of Paris - it seems like a lifetime ago!

So this week has lived up to its predecessors with lots of excitement and parties through the night! I'm already worrying about how I'm ever going to be able to leave at the end of the year...

A quiet start to the week meant that Monday centred around lunch with Zuzanna. With no plans for the morning and another gorgeous, sunny, September sky I decided to walk all the way to the 15th. It's all very well hopping onto the metro and resurfacing 15minutes later on the other side of the city, but that's not what living here is about. I want to 'know' the city, and walking all the way through it is a fantastic way of doing this. I walked past beautiful fruit markets, old men playing boules, a solitary artist capturing a moment and even witnessed a typical ridiculous Parisian car-crash, just in case the scene was getting a little too halcyon! In the afternoon I took advantage of the new 'free museums for under 26s' and got hopelessly lost in the infinite corridors and rooms of the Louvre. I tried my hardest to be artistic and intellectual turning my head in all directions to admire the 16th Century paintings, but like the sheep I try my hardest not to be, I ended up heading straight for Mona like everyone else! Perhaps due to my complete lack of artistic genes, I still fail to fully comprehend why this painting is SO much better than all the others... (In my humble opinion, it is not!)

Coming to Paris I knew nothing about the music scene and nightlife so took it upon myself to do some research. After a while looking at clubs and venues on the internet, I stumbled across a singer/songwriter called Josh Weller (www.myspace.com/joshweller if you're interested). He was playing a gig in one of the most talked about clubs in Paris (Le Baron), so killing 2 birds with 1 fairly small stone, I emailed him and got on the guestlist for Tuesday's gig. Failing miserably at the 'fashionably late' entrance we had planned, Helena and I arrived before the doors had even opened and got sent to a local bar to have a glass of wine! Nothing happens very early over here...
At midnight, Josh came onto the small stage right in front of us and performed a really great set. The combination of self-proclaimed pop music with musicals influence and a natural performing talent (plus a crazy hairstyle!) meant that it was an excellent gig and spurred us on for an evening of chatting and networking! There was no doubt that the club had an air of exclusivity about it, and the drink of choice was certainly champagne, or the infamous Baron cocktail which tasted like Woolworths to me!! (I think it's from some childhood pick 'n' mix taste!!)
Being new in the city, it's only normal that Helena and I have only a few friends each here! So ever keen to meet new people, we spent the rest of the night talking to Josh and co. (including a man we affectionately named Mr Guantanamo, who I later discovered to be one of Paris' premier music promoters...oops, now I kind of wish I didn't spend all evening talking to him about pop music, like I knew what I was rambling on about!)

The next day Helena and I met Josh and Simon for drinks in a cute but extortionate little square only 10minutes from my flat on the Rue de Rivoli. Josh even partook in a bit of meditation with a hialrious loon all for the sake of entertainment! The guys left laden down with guitars and cases to catch the Eurostar home. Half an hour later, a phone call informed me that their train had been cancelled and they were on their way back into town! Eager not to turn down a Parisian social occasion I joined them and Josh's manager for dinner in a local American diner.
It was really cool to meet them and has had 2 positive outcomes... We now have some lovely new friends who are going to keep us up to date with the Parisian music scene and the meeting has also produced a soundtrack for the week!! Josh's girlfriend Paloma Faith released her single 'New York' this week and it has (slightly irritatingly) become engrained in my brain from the first hearing and consequently has become synonymous with my Parisian partying! After the playing it's had in this flat this week it's become positively anthemic!!

The highlight of Thursday was the Sony 'after-work' party. Marie who works at Sony invited us (erasmus lot!)to go along to the event. It's a popular concept these days in Paris. The party starts at 7, and there is free flowing champagne until 9 (battle of the elbows wins the most number of free glasses - gold medal here undoubtedly is rewarded to Henri!) and then the dance floor gets going. After a seemingly full night out, lots of champagne and socialising I was home and tucked up in bed by 11pm!

Living with a club in the basement it seemed almost rude not to investigate, so on Saturday night Helena, Henri and I popped down there in the lift (after several hours of warming up with some French wine, music and chat)! Excellent news, seeing as we were already in the building, we didn't have to pay the entrance fee! Good start... However, things turned somewhat surreal when we arrived. Apparently we didn't realise that it was a gay night to celebrate the start of Paris fashion week and frankly I feel slightly traumatised by the experience and making me re-live it is slightly terrifying. Especially the bit with the completely topless, big woman walking agressively around the club who subsequently crashed out on the bench behind us. Surreal doesn't describe it...

I know that this lifestyle probably can't feasibly continue for a whole year, but I'm not in a rush to give up the parties and champagne just yet! The city seems to throw up opportunities around every corner and I'm going to make the very most of it so I can never look back at my year and regret things I didn't do. :)