Day 8: Brad's on TV!
8:45pm
Checked out of the hostel in the morning but waited around for Ken, Cam, and Matt. C&M disappeared to brunch while I was talking with an extremely distant relative -- a descendant of the Brennan clan of Ireland who grew up in York.
Ken and I went to a few places in town looking for a replacement Mac laptop for him. First to an Apple reseller two blocks away from the hostel. Unfortunately they only had ones with AZERTY keyboads, for quite a bit more money than MacMall even when the VAT refund was figured in. We headed down one stop past Gare du Midi on the Metro to a used computer retailer but almost all of his Mac stock was G4s, also with AZERTY.
We walked around the nearby open air market for a bit and Ken bought a pair of €10 jeans to replace his rather threadbare pair. We sat down at a corner cafe for a last meal of Trappist ales and burgers. The burgers were excellent -- the meat mix reminded me of my recipe, and definitely had garlic, onion, and cayenne pepper. We parted ways after lunch so I could get tothe train station and Ken could get to the embassy.
After getting directions to the Gare du Midi (South Station) in Brussels from a pair of attractiveyoung women on a strret corner, I hightailed it to the station knowing that I could only make so many wrong turns before I'd be late for the train. I madeiton time, but it took a bit of walking around in the station to find the ticket machines for Thalys. I made it up to the platform right when the train arrived, and hopped in the first class coach as my discount ticket reserved a seat for me there. My seat was taken by someone else when I got there, but I didn't want to cause a fuss, especially with the language barrier, so I took the first empty seat I could find, then the second one when I got kicked out of the first, then the third one when I got kicked out of the second. Serendipitously, the third seat had a table, though the other three young men around it knew no or very little English.
Still full from the bar burgers, I declined the meal but accepted a Coke. I'm actually going to miss soda over here -- it is all made with cane sugar instead of HFCS. While all of this was going on, three men in suits were standing behind the lunch server, and they all perked up when they heard me speak English to her. The one in front introduced himself to me as Sung-Woong Kang from YTN, a Korean analogue to CNN. He asked me a few questions about my use of Wi-Fi on the train. I said that I was familiar with the difficult problems of keeping a connection going in a moving environment from my grad studies, and I was glad I didn't have to worry about that part of it while I was using it; also I was using the Internet to book lodging at my destination while traveling there, something that I thought was a great use of the tech.
When I arrived at Paris, I realized that the map contained in my hostel guide did not extend all the way to the street my hostel was on. However, I knew the genral direction to go and what to look for, so I knew that getting there was just a matter of orienting myself properly. Since it was overcast at the time, I misjudged the location of the sun and made a big loop to Gare du Est (East Station) before actually getting on the right way. Paris... is... HUGE. I walked for two hours today but I'm still in the same corner of the map that I started in. Somehow I found a 1.25L bottle of sparkling water for €0.50 at a grocery store, a grand deal when you consider that the bar on the ground floor of the hostel makes weak mixed drinks for €5 during happy hour and a poor man's black velvet costs €6 (prices include "service charge", i.e. mandatory tip).
Took a rest when I got here to the hostel. This is the first of three hostels where I don't have a top bunk. In fact, there are no bunk beds: we're all on really low to the floor beds with loose slats that I keep causing to pop out.
I went to the hostel bar after this respite and ordered the aforementioned poor man's black velvet when I saw that they had both Guinness and cider on tap. Sat down with my beer & laptop next to a redhead from Chicago named Lindsay. Somehow I pulled out of my ass an uncharacteristically confident "Hey, do you mind if I join you?" I ended up eating the rest of her dip plate wherein she got taraba instead of guacamole -- I misidentified it as salmon spread and she's a veg -- and got tapenade which she thought was supposed to bethe guacamole. The tapenade was tasty but full of pits, the taraba too fishy. I haven't left the bar except for a quick outing to take pictures of the bridge. Just about to eat a croque monsieur and finish thispint of vastly-inferior-to-everything-Belgian beer.
Checked out of the hostel in the morning but waited around for Ken, Cam, and Matt. C&M disappeared to brunch while I was talking with an extremely distant relative -- a descendant of the Brennan clan of Ireland who grew up in York.
Ken and I went to a few places in town looking for a replacement Mac laptop for him. First to an Apple reseller two blocks away from the hostel. Unfortunately they only had ones with AZERTY keyboads, for quite a bit more money than MacMall even when the VAT refund was figured in. We headed down one stop past Gare du Midi on the Metro to a used computer retailer but almost all of his Mac stock was G4s, also with AZERTY.
We walked around the nearby open air market for a bit and Ken bought a pair of €10 jeans to replace his rather threadbare pair. We sat down at a corner cafe for a last meal of Trappist ales and burgers. The burgers were excellent -- the meat mix reminded me of my recipe, and definitely had garlic, onion, and cayenne pepper. We parted ways after lunch so I could get tothe train station and Ken could get to the embassy.
After getting directions to the Gare du Midi (South Station) in Brussels from a pair of attractiveyoung women on a strret corner, I hightailed it to the station knowing that I could only make so many wrong turns before I'd be late for the train. I madeiton time, but it took a bit of walking around in the station to find the ticket machines for Thalys. I made it up to the platform right when the train arrived, and hopped in the first class coach as my discount ticket reserved a seat for me there. My seat was taken by someone else when I got there, but I didn't want to cause a fuss, especially with the language barrier, so I took the first empty seat I could find, then the second one when I got kicked out of the first, then the third one when I got kicked out of the second. Serendipitously, the third seat had a table, though the other three young men around it knew no or very little English.
Still full from the bar burgers, I declined the meal but accepted a Coke. I'm actually going to miss soda over here -- it is all made with cane sugar instead of HFCS. While all of this was going on, three men in suits were standing behind the lunch server, and they all perked up when they heard me speak English to her. The one in front introduced himself to me as Sung-Woong Kang from YTN, a Korean analogue to CNN. He asked me a few questions about my use of Wi-Fi on the train. I said that I was familiar with the difficult problems of keeping a connection going in a moving environment from my grad studies, and I was glad I didn't have to worry about that part of it while I was using it; also I was using the Internet to book lodging at my destination while traveling there, something that I thought was a great use of the tech.
When I arrived at Paris, I realized that the map contained in my hostel guide did not extend all the way to the street my hostel was on. However, I knew the genral direction to go and what to look for, so I knew that getting there was just a matter of orienting myself properly. Since it was overcast at the time, I misjudged the location of the sun and made a big loop to Gare du Est (East Station) before actually getting on the right way. Paris... is... HUGE. I walked for two hours today but I'm still in the same corner of the map that I started in. Somehow I found a 1.25L bottle of sparkling water for €0.50 at a grocery store, a grand deal when you consider that the bar on the ground floor of the hostel makes weak mixed drinks for €5 during happy hour and a poor man's black velvet costs €6 (prices include "service charge", i.e. mandatory tip).
Took a rest when I got here to the hostel. This is the first of three hostels where I don't have a top bunk. In fact, there are no bunk beds: we're all on really low to the floor beds with loose slats that I keep causing to pop out.
I went to the hostel bar after this respite and ordered the aforementioned poor man's black velvet when I saw that they had both Guinness and cider on tap. Sat down with my beer & laptop next to a redhead from Chicago named Lindsay. Somehow I pulled out of my ass an uncharacteristically confident "Hey, do you mind if I join you?" I ended up eating the rest of her dip plate wherein she got taraba instead of guacamole -- I misidentified it as salmon spread and she's a veg -- and got tapenade which she thought was supposed to bethe guacamole. The tapenade was tasty but full of pits, the taraba too fishy. I haven't left the bar except for a quick outing to take pictures of the bridge. Just about to eat a croque monsieur and finish thispint of vastly-inferior-to-everything-Belgian beer.