Gucci, Louis, Prada and New Jersey wannabes

Paris

It’s 7am and we’re on the flight from Paris to Berlin. Coming from London where there were no language barriers, Paris definitely took some getting used to. I promised myself before this trip that I wouldn’t let stereotypes prevent me from trying to get to know the city/people I was visiting but that was hard to do in Paris. Mostly because I really felt like most of the Parisians I encountered held very strong disdain for Americans. It was evident in the tone they used when answering questions. This made it much harder to ask for help because we basically knew we would be ignored. Thankfully, the map we got from our hotel became permanently attached to my hip and we made it through the last three days in this wonderful city without getting into too much trouble.

We did most of the general touristy stuff like going to Notre Dame (I even found a Polish tour group which I snuck into for a half hour), the Eiffel Tower, the Catacombs, the Louvre, Luxembourg Palace, etc. However, the thing I will remember the most is definitely the Catacombs. Although we had to wait in a two hour line to get in, it was totally worth it. Just the idea of thousands of bones piled up in large tunnels and caverns several stories below ground is intriguing but actually being there and seeing it was pretty chilling. After we made it through the initial passageways and the bones started piling up it literally felt like forever before they ended. The passage we walked through was 1.7 kilometers long, which is about a 30 minute walk and about 70% of it was lined with bones on each side about 3-4 feet deep and 5 feet high. There were several guards sitting down in the tunnels and we found one napping. It was kind of funny and pretty creepy that he was able to sleep so soundly while sitting among all those bones. And lastly, believe it or not, they had to check bags on our way out because they’ve had incidents of people stealing bones. It’s pretty unimaginable that someone would even want to touch them, much less take one home as a souvenir.

Now, onto the important stuff like food and fashion and cute boys (cough, Lauren). It’s safe to say we were both waay under-dressed for being in Paris. Although about 50% of the people we encountered were also tourists and dressed even worse than we were, you still felt out of place whenever a Parisian looked you up and down with a condescending look. As for the men, they pretty much all gel their hair back, wear pointy black leather shoes with small heels, and have on dark jeans with a button down dress shirt. I think they have to sign something before being able to live in Paris stating that they will always wear such outfits because this was the preferred dress at all times of day, in all temperatures, and on all occasions. At the risk of sounding un-cultured…they looked pretty fruity. I think the funniest display of this was early this morning…we were leaving our hotel and saw two visibly drunk Parisian guys laughing, yelling, and what can only be described as frolicking down the street. They kind of reminded me of the blonde German brothers in Beerfest, except substitute the German for French.

After being sternly warned by Steph about obeying pedestrian signals we made sure to stay out of motorists way but saw many wandering tourists get honked and yelled at for walking out into the middle of the street. One lady totally walked into a pole because she was so engrossed in her map. She didn’t get hurt but provided some great amusement for us as she tried to pretend it didn’t happen and disappeared off down the street.

This is for Stephie: So one night I was watching British CNN in our hotel room because it’s the only channel that we got in English and they had a video of the day about some restaurant in a Wisconsin town that served chocolate covered fried bacon on a stick. I immediately thought of you. It was pretty funny tho, I mean no wonder Parisians have such disdain for Americans tho…all they think we do is dress badly, have no manners, and eat chocolate bacon.

One last note about the culture differences: One night we wanted to have a picnic on the mall right below the Eiffel tower and wanted to find grocery store to get some cheese, bread, wine, etc. We asked the concierge and she directed us down the street giving us its name and saying we couldn’t miss it. However, finding it proved to be much harder than expected. We walked to the street she instructed and found the name she gave us only to find a small clothing store. After two days of getting very bad directions from Parisians, we were convinced that the concierge was messing with us. We asked another person near-by and they pointed at to the same building. At that point we both thought we were going crazy because there was no way there was a grocery store in this small store front. Then we noticed people walking into the store without so much as looking at the clothes and disappearing in the back. We followed and discovered that there was an escalator to the grocery part of the store in the basement. Who knew that grocery stores are disguised as boutiques in Paris? After this realization the whole situation just became so ridiculous that we couldn’t help but laugh at ourselves.

I can’t remember any more right now but we’ll write again soon. Now its off to Berlin (after almost missing our flight btw, cause EasyJet decided it would be a good idea to have two check-in desks and one security pass-through for about 5 flights worth of people all departing at the same time.) Ahh..the joys of travel.

Bye!