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...!
Sunday 27 December 2009
Sunday 22 November 2009
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!
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!
Monday 9 November 2009
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!
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!
Monday 19 October 2009
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.
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.
Monday 28 September 2009
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. :)
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. :)
Sunday 20 September 2009
A Brush With The Lebanese Pop Elite
This week's escapades include: a chance meeting with pop's premier Lebanese star; Renault babies (for the record my favourite is Kangoo!); A cocktail-fuelled 4.30am walk through central Paris; an over-zealous attempt at gripping the German language and playing cache-cache (hide and seek) in the walk in wardrobe of an Oscar nominated actor.
Due, either to concern for my failing health, or else just getting peed off with my constant coughing, my landlady kindly left some medication for me on the table one morning. Within 36hours of taking it, my horrible cold was almost a mere memory! So, malady out of the way, it was time for a bit more exploring and consequential hilarity. On Friday, I innocently popped out to the shops and ended up strolling aimlessly down the Champs Elysées. I decided to indulge in a perousal of the CDs and DVDs in Virgin Megastore and then things went a bit mad/random. There I was looking for 'Bienvenue chez les ch'tis' (in order to prepare for the imminent trip to Bergues to consolidate the Wright-Docherty amitié) when I became aware of a lot of security beefcakes in the building. Intrigued as ever, I thought I'd enquire and they told me that Mika was coming in to do a signing. I could've nodded, smiled and then left, but with no plans for the rest of the afternoon it suddenly seemed of paramount importance that I meet him! So I bought the CD and joined the throng of Froggy Mika fans. After far too long standing in a hot, sweating mob, I had my moment with Mika himself. "What intelligent conversation did I instigate?" I hear you cry. Well, obviously I panicked and talked tea. But it was a lovely conversation about the merits of English tea nonetheless, and then he signed my CD, shook my hand and I toddled off feeling strangely satisfied by my afternoon's accomplishment! To top it off, on Sunday night he did an interview on the TF1 national news, and there was some footage from the signing in which I was visible! Yesss, my French TV debut after only a fortnight in the country!!
Keen to share my latest pop story, I met Helena and Henri on Friday night at Place Monge in the 5th arrondissement. We started off having a really sophisticated drink in a lovely square but things quickly went downhill. I think the pivotal moment was when the week's most pressing question appeared to be
"would you rather kiss someone really gorgeous with swine flu or someone really ugly without?!"
However, the real downfall was our relocation to a rowdy Irish bar - as full of character as it was full of characters....
Now there are family members reading so let's just say that over the course of the next 5 hours or so, firstly in the Irish pub and then in a basement club, a couple of beverages were consumed! Bumping into my flatmate Misha, we became a group of 4 and, in the words of HH, we "ripped up the dancefloor and showed the French how it's done!".
Talking to a pair of German guys in the club it was inevitable that I insisted on demonstrating my German prowess and hit them with my favourite line
"Ich habe meine hausaufgaben gegessen". (I have eaten my homework).
Sadly, I was quite proud of this at the time, but I don't think the Germans were!
Having no idea whatsoever how the night buses work around here we all decided to walk home. I have to admit that this part of the night (OK morning it was 4.30am) is fairly sketchy. But I do remember getting particularly excited at the sight of Notre Dame and thus bursting into song (Garou of course!) And I do believe that we all sang for most of the walk home!
Lastly, on Sunday morning I crossed the Seine to do my first stint of babysitting of the year. All I can say is that the children's father is fairly well know in France (not so much internationally!) and it was , therefore, another slightly surreal experience. An open film script on the coffee table, and a walk-in wardrobe brimming with designer labels. Alas my role for the day was to play hide and seek and star wars lego (incidently, the 6 year old told me I was "une championne du lego" maybe I can use that in future!) The boys were actually fairly sweet (as far as children go) and very well behaved so I wasn't too scared when the dad came home and asked me if I'd give them some English lessons some time!
So there we go, another week in my Parisian life gone by, and not without its fair share of laughter and the ubiquitous level of the surreal that I seem unable to shun! Unfortunately work starts on Friday and so I fear things may become less exciting soon, but hell that leaves me 4 days to find myself in more ridiculous situations... Bring it on!
Due, either to concern for my failing health, or else just getting peed off with my constant coughing, my landlady kindly left some medication for me on the table one morning. Within 36hours of taking it, my horrible cold was almost a mere memory! So, malady out of the way, it was time for a bit more exploring and consequential hilarity. On Friday, I innocently popped out to the shops and ended up strolling aimlessly down the Champs Elysées. I decided to indulge in a perousal of the CDs and DVDs in Virgin Megastore and then things went a bit mad/random. There I was looking for 'Bienvenue chez les ch'tis' (in order to prepare for the imminent trip to Bergues to consolidate the Wright-Docherty amitié) when I became aware of a lot of security beefcakes in the building. Intrigued as ever, I thought I'd enquire and they told me that Mika was coming in to do a signing. I could've nodded, smiled and then left, but with no plans for the rest of the afternoon it suddenly seemed of paramount importance that I meet him! So I bought the CD and joined the throng of Froggy Mika fans. After far too long standing in a hot, sweating mob, I had my moment with Mika himself. "What intelligent conversation did I instigate?" I hear you cry. Well, obviously I panicked and talked tea. But it was a lovely conversation about the merits of English tea nonetheless, and then he signed my CD, shook my hand and I toddled off feeling strangely satisfied by my afternoon's accomplishment! To top it off, on Sunday night he did an interview on the TF1 national news, and there was some footage from the signing in which I was visible! Yesss, my French TV debut after only a fortnight in the country!!
Keen to share my latest pop story, I met Helena and Henri on Friday night at Place Monge in the 5th arrondissement. We started off having a really sophisticated drink in a lovely square but things quickly went downhill. I think the pivotal moment was when the week's most pressing question appeared to be
"would you rather kiss someone really gorgeous with swine flu or someone really ugly without?!"
However, the real downfall was our relocation to a rowdy Irish bar - as full of character as it was full of characters....
Now there are family members reading so let's just say that over the course of the next 5 hours or so, firstly in the Irish pub and then in a basement club, a couple of beverages were consumed! Bumping into my flatmate Misha, we became a group of 4 and, in the words of HH, we "ripped up the dancefloor and showed the French how it's done!".
Talking to a pair of German guys in the club it was inevitable that I insisted on demonstrating my German prowess and hit them with my favourite line
"Ich habe meine hausaufgaben gegessen". (I have eaten my homework).
Sadly, I was quite proud of this at the time, but I don't think the Germans were!
Having no idea whatsoever how the night buses work around here we all decided to walk home. I have to admit that this part of the night (OK morning it was 4.30am) is fairly sketchy. But I do remember getting particularly excited at the sight of Notre Dame and thus bursting into song (Garou of course!) And I do believe that we all sang for most of the walk home!
Lastly, on Sunday morning I crossed the Seine to do my first stint of babysitting of the year. All I can say is that the children's father is fairly well know in France (not so much internationally!) and it was , therefore, another slightly surreal experience. An open film script on the coffee table, and a walk-in wardrobe brimming with designer labels. Alas my role for the day was to play hide and seek and star wars lego (incidently, the 6 year old told me I was "une championne du lego" maybe I can use that in future!) The boys were actually fairly sweet (as far as children go) and very well behaved so I wasn't too scared when the dad came home and asked me if I'd give them some English lessons some time!
So there we go, another week in my Parisian life gone by, and not without its fair share of laughter and the ubiquitous level of the surreal that I seem unable to shun! Unfortunately work starts on Friday and so I fear things may become less exciting soon, but hell that leaves me 4 days to find myself in more ridiculous situations... Bring it on!
Saturday 12 September 2009
First Fortnight
Hello one and all and welcome to my new blog! I aim to use this a forum to write about my experiences over the following year in Paris, vent my agressions and passions and I'm also doing it because Natalie David said I should "write a blog and get it turned into a million pound book deal". This scheme based, not on the merit of my writing skills, but on the likelihood of my getting into ridiculous situations resulting in equally ridiculous stories to tell!!!
So thus far, my Parisian life has predominantly revolved around looking around horrible flats and sleepless hostel nights. The room I was staying in, in the hostel in Montmartre seemed to attract some strange characters (maybe that's why I was placed there?!). My favourite room-mates had to be 'Jen and Jen' the two blonder than blonde Californians who proudly announced to me one night that they intended to visit "Shar-tray" the following day where apparently there's "like a big church or something". Having never heard of this place I took it upon myself to look on the map. Scrutinising the area around Paris, I realised that actually they had been talking about Chartres! Another Jen and Jen highlight was a conversation we had on their final night in Paris. It went something along the lines of:
"Hey Natalie you speak French right? So, like everyone keeps saying Bonjour all the time. What is that, like hello or something?"
"Yes, it means hello"
"Oh wow. That is so coooool."
If anyone ever says that flat-hunting in Paris is anything less than a hellish, soul destroying experience then I'm a tee-total vegetarian. It's legacy is the most horrendous cold I've had in years (and no it's not, as everyone keeps enquiring, swine flu.) I'm so run down and battered by the whole thing. On my final full day of searching I turned up at Helena's in the evening, as had become habitual, to perouse the internet for the following day's appointments. She was totally horrified by the state I was in (I don't really remember!). I was horribly ill, coughing, almost no voice and practially falling asleep standing up! (well it wouldn't be the first time!)
Now I have found myself possibly the most beautiful room in Paris, at a bargain price, it almost seems worth the: fleeing from the gender defying Algerian; the finding myself in the middle of a film set and consequently being shouted at by an important looking man with a walkie-talkie; the 12 hours or more I spent on the metro crossing Paris; the "you don't mind me sleeping in my jocks do you?" septuagenarian Aussie room-mate; and of course the highly attractive snot and coughing fits.
On the social side of life, it has been really great to see some of the old Erasmus lot again. Zuzanna, Julie and Henri have provided several evenings of wining and dining, so thank you guys for that and a specific thank you to Zuzanna for saving me a lot of stress and hassle by helping me open a bank account.
So today, my first truly free day I went to the supermarket to stock up on the important things in an English girl in Paris' life: teabags; crisps; Uncle Ben's curry sauce and sliced bread. I think I'll probably go to some sort of French hell for the heinous crime but hey after the week I've had, no patriotic glares of disgust are going to stop me getting at my home comforts! And this afternoon, in what may seem like a strange choice of locations for celebrating my newfound freedom from the grasps of Parisian flat-hunting, Helena and I hit the Père Lachaise cemetery to do a bit of celeb-spotting. Unfortunately we were rubbish and only found Colette, Rossini, Felix Faure and Oscar Wilde but we will definitely return and hunt down Jim and co.
Somewhat bizarrely, and certainly unexpectedly it was a really relaxing and pleasant place to spend a beautiful autumnal afternoon in Paris. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and the light made the city look beautiful. Things got a little fantastical and dark as Helena and I indulged in some plots for short stories and got horrendously lost in the labrynthine city of tombs but we eventually made it out before the gates were locked for the night...!
Now I look forward to 2 weeks of freedom to explore the city before work begins on the 28th. It's been a stressful first 10days or so, but as my father always reassures me "It's all character-building stuff girl"! And it most definitely makes me appreciate the flat that I am now in. I have no idea what the coming year has in store, but I can certainly expect an element of the ridiculous (it follows me wherever I go) and lots of Parisian fun! Finally, I have to say thanks to Helena, who despite only knowing me for just over a week has looked after me well in my hour of desperation, be it through the use of her apartment as an escape hide-out or just pouring me a glass of wine when things were really bad! I think it's time for the adventure to really start!!! :)
So thus far, my Parisian life has predominantly revolved around looking around horrible flats and sleepless hostel nights. The room I was staying in, in the hostel in Montmartre seemed to attract some strange characters (maybe that's why I was placed there?!). My favourite room-mates had to be 'Jen and Jen' the two blonder than blonde Californians who proudly announced to me one night that they intended to visit "Shar-tray" the following day where apparently there's "like a big church or something". Having never heard of this place I took it upon myself to look on the map. Scrutinising the area around Paris, I realised that actually they had been talking about Chartres! Another Jen and Jen highlight was a conversation we had on their final night in Paris. It went something along the lines of:
"Hey Natalie you speak French right? So, like everyone keeps saying Bonjour all the time. What is that, like hello or something?"
"Yes, it means hello"
"Oh wow. That is so coooool."
If anyone ever says that flat-hunting in Paris is anything less than a hellish, soul destroying experience then I'm a tee-total vegetarian. It's legacy is the most horrendous cold I've had in years (and no it's not, as everyone keeps enquiring, swine flu.) I'm so run down and battered by the whole thing. On my final full day of searching I turned up at Helena's in the evening, as had become habitual, to perouse the internet for the following day's appointments. She was totally horrified by the state I was in (I don't really remember!). I was horribly ill, coughing, almost no voice and practially falling asleep standing up! (well it wouldn't be the first time!)
Now I have found myself possibly the most beautiful room in Paris, at a bargain price, it almost seems worth the: fleeing from the gender defying Algerian; the finding myself in the middle of a film set and consequently being shouted at by an important looking man with a walkie-talkie; the 12 hours or more I spent on the metro crossing Paris; the "you don't mind me sleeping in my jocks do you?" septuagenarian Aussie room-mate; and of course the highly attractive snot and coughing fits.
On the social side of life, it has been really great to see some of the old Erasmus lot again. Zuzanna, Julie and Henri have provided several evenings of wining and dining, so thank you guys for that and a specific thank you to Zuzanna for saving me a lot of stress and hassle by helping me open a bank account.
So today, my first truly free day I went to the supermarket to stock up on the important things in an English girl in Paris' life: teabags; crisps; Uncle Ben's curry sauce and sliced bread. I think I'll probably go to some sort of French hell for the heinous crime but hey after the week I've had, no patriotic glares of disgust are going to stop me getting at my home comforts! And this afternoon, in what may seem like a strange choice of locations for celebrating my newfound freedom from the grasps of Parisian flat-hunting, Helena and I hit the Père Lachaise cemetery to do a bit of celeb-spotting. Unfortunately we were rubbish and only found Colette, Rossini, Felix Faure and Oscar Wilde but we will definitely return and hunt down Jim and co.
Somewhat bizarrely, and certainly unexpectedly it was a really relaxing and pleasant place to spend a beautiful autumnal afternoon in Paris. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and the light made the city look beautiful. Things got a little fantastical and dark as Helena and I indulged in some plots for short stories and got horrendously lost in the labrynthine city of tombs but we eventually made it out before the gates were locked for the night...!
Now I look forward to 2 weeks of freedom to explore the city before work begins on the 28th. It's been a stressful first 10days or so, but as my father always reassures me "It's all character-building stuff girl"! And it most definitely makes me appreciate the flat that I am now in. I have no idea what the coming year has in store, but I can certainly expect an element of the ridiculous (it follows me wherever I go) and lots of Parisian fun! Finally, I have to say thanks to Helena, who despite only knowing me for just over a week has looked after me well in my hour of desperation, be it through the use of her apartment as an escape hide-out or just pouring me a glass of wine when things were really bad! I think it's time for the adventure to really start!!! :)
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