i was supposed to be in Bruges by now - it's the date i've had booked since the day before i left London when i waved my finger at the calendar in the STA in Covent Garden and plucked a random date out of the air. as it happens, i'm not currently in Bruges: i'm still in Paris. it wasn't my idea, although it was a good one. one i liked more and more as the seconds passed after it was inserted into my head as gentle as a needle in your vein, as effective as a red-hot spike through your ear. wisdom comes at the strangest times, like when you're sitting on the bank of the Seine and someone says quietly:
"You know, you don't have to leave tomorrow..."
and so i didn't.
the free walking tour was a good idea too - there was a huge contingent from the St Christopher's and it was a good opportunity to meet a few people. i did another of the NewEurope tours in Dublin, and i strongly recommend them. it's a cheap 3-4 hours of entertaininemt, and you see a lot of a city quick. after we were done there were a few people who wanted to head off to the Eiffel Tower, so i went along and as we were all milling around afterwards in the shade of that monstrous feat of engineering i suggested that the Arc du Triomphe was only another 20 minutes walk onwards, so i led them there. suddenly i'm a fucking tour guide in a city i'd spent a total of 2 days in previously.
NewEurope run a number of paid-for tours, including one through the Montmartre area, famous for artists and sleaze, the Moulin Rouge and a particularly impressive church. we were all keen, so we caught the Metro out to Blanche Station from the Arc du Triomphe and met them up across the road from the Moulin Rouge (which is smaller than you'd expect, as well as being somewhat less impressive than the movie would lead you to believe). we're led along and shown the houses where Van Gogh lived and Picasso lived, as well as the cafe where Picasso painted pictures for food before he got famous, on to the statue dedicated to the martyr who allegedly picked up his own severed head, then hiked 6 miles up the hill to that very spot before dropping dead, preaching the gospel as he went, meandering our way up to the hill whereupon sits the church i'd seen in the distance from the Eiffel Tower ages previously. it's a gleaming white mixture of roman, byzantine and gothic styles. it's also where my spectacles broke in two, leaving me with my prescription sunglasses to see by.
well, fuck.
i wound up walking around through the twilight with a small crew of people who wanted to check out the markets we'd walked through previously on the tour and pick up some art. the area's jumping with starving artists making a living sketching portraits and caricatures, as well as some extraordinarily pleasant paintings of various landmarks, and i wound up dropping 20 Euros on a couple of nice pictures that'll go well with the pair i picked up in Barcelona. now there's a habit i should probably nip in the bud sooner rather than later...
meanwhile, after nearly 12 hours of wandering around with this group, i was starting to get to know them pretty well. there's Mladin - a Serbian from Melbourne taking his long-service leave, MCG - a Californian student with an eco-sustainability bent on exchange in Denmark and taking her time getting there, plus Stars and Moon - mum dragging her youngest around Europe for a while as part of her home-schooling. they've proven to be an entertaining crew for the last couple of days. we finally got back to the hostel just as the last of the light was fading, which was good since i was getting to the point where i had to choose between wearing my sunnies and being able to see the darkness clearly, or going without and seeing it light but blurry. next thing i knew, MCG and i were sitting on the little bridge across the Seine at 2 in the morning with me looking like some sort of vampire fetishist, wearing mirror-shades in the middle of the night, talking about sustainable technologies for a brighter future.
i finally got to sleep at somewhere around 3 or 4 when Snoring Guy rolled over, farted and shut the fuck up (i've come to the opinion that roughly one in 6 people snore, so if you're in a dorm room you're almost guaranteed to have SOMEONE sleeping in the same room who sounds like a cross between a clogged toilet and Thomas the Fucking Tank Engine), then was up again at 7:30AM to shift my bus bookings around.
today i played tour-guide again. our merry band caught the Metro to Notre Dame, then onwards to the Catacombs, where MCG bailed and headed for the hostel and 4 hours of sleep. i'm not sure how it happened, but people seem to think that i'm some sort of authority on this town. it helps that they wanted to see things i've already seen once and i have the sort of memory that holds onto otherwise-useless information which is none-the-less interesting. i'd planned on getting the crew to the Catacombs then chilling out in a cafe before meeting them afterwards but Stars wouldn't hear of it, and the next thing i knew my ticket was covered. we stopped for a bite to eat, and suddenly i have a burger in front of me. after guiding everyone around yesterday Mladin insisted on going a round at the hostel, and he's been talking about grabbing crepes somewhere too. this is the sort of generosity that does my head in - here i am wandering around with random 24 Hour Friends, having a good time and suddenly it's like a job people want to tip me for. i don't want it but i'll accept it, even if only not to be rude - i'm just happy to have entertaining people to hang with and i'm having a blast just walking the streets, soaking up the colour, practicing my French (mine is laughably bad, but better than most of the people i'm with so i've been doing a fair bit of the talking). what's really funny is that this isn't the first time someone's suggested that i drop out and become a tour-guide. maybe i should have a think about that...
meanwhile, Stars and Moon need to get to Charles de Gaulle for their flight to Luton and i'm going to make damn-sure they get on the right train, so Mladin and i help them navigate the maze of the nearby Metro/RER station, then accompany them as far as Gare du Nord on our way back to the hostel. i'm going to have to keep in touch with those two - Stars is a remarkably interesting woman in her early 50's with a lot of life-knowledge. she's a quick study as well. she had me pegged surprisingly quickly. Moon, on the other hand, has to be one of the clueiest 13 year olds i've ever met. life is long, though, and Stars has consigned her email address to the mercies of my Notebook de Dios so we'll just have to see what happens. i'm supposed to be passing through her part of the world in September next year anyway, so things could always get interesting.
i had a bit of a time out in my new dorm - booking an extra bed at the last second often means shifting rooms, and now i'm up on the 6th floor in a room with 6 beds, not bunks, and an ensuite bathroom. it hurt my wallet, but the convenience factor was entirely worth it. i was sitting in the bar a couple of hours later chatting with a couple of randoms - Rachel the Apprentice Chef from Sydney whom i'd met in my dorm earlier, and Emily from Melbourne who's touring for a couple of months while her boyfriend winds up his work before they meet back up in London - when MCG comes down and we head down the road for a cheap meal of couscous before whiling away the evening, picking up from where we'd left he night before while the rain comes down outside, making the streets glisten and lending the Parisien night a dream-like quality. tomorrow MCG, Mladin and i are headed for Versailles to check out the Chateau and the gardens that have seen the feet of the the likes of Louis XIV and XVI, Marie-Antionette and Napoleon Boneparte and i know that once again tonight i'll get nowhere near enough sleep, and tomorrow will be spent telling stories and entertaining the troops. we've got a good dynamic running now - 3 very different people with vastly different backgrounds who somehow get along famously. MCG's enjoying having interesting people to hang out with and Mladin's liking having the backup in his wanderings. he was really nervous about getting around a completely foreign city, but he's getting it together. by Friday he'll be running around alone without a care in the world. by Friday i'll be on the bus to Bruges, as tempting as it is to hang around untill Sunday when Mladin and MCG move on. i can't though - i just can't afford it, although that's probably for the best anyway. i could see myself getting too attached to this place and i don't have that luxury. places to do, things to meet, people to be... or is that supposed to be the other way around?
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