Paris!
I went to Paris over the weekend. I left Thursday morning and returned Sunday night. I had a good, laid back time.
[What I got up to once there]
Thursday I finally got to meet the lovely tama_abi in the flesh. She was wonderful enough to put me up Thursday night. I spent Thursday walking around touristy places like St Michel, Odeon, St Germain de Pres, the Louvre gardens, the Tuilleries, Place de Concorde and all the lovely bridges in between, not to mention eating some of my favourite Italian ice-cream... Later on we went for Japanese with tama_abi and for a drink in the Marais where we met up with my old friend Amin. It was a lovely laid back night, walking around Paris talking about all things under the moon, from porn to politics.
Friday was my interview. I didn't do much, I spent all the morning stressing and reading up or sitting in the park. My interview went well, I think, but not perfect. I got stuck at points, was a bit too nervous at points, and some of my answers could have been better. It seemed like a cool interesting place to work, so I will be very sad if I blew it. (Don't ask me if I got it, because I am still waiting to find out and the suspense is killing me!) Afterwards I took my stuff to my dear Amin's where we had a typical parisian dinner and lots wine before returning home to chat all night, because we are old and boring and hadn't met for years and Amin always has the best adventures - and love stories.
Saturday I walked around Paris some more. Guys, London might be more happening and trendy than Paris, but Paris is just so classy! And then had a typical weird night out with Amin.
First he took me to the party of a friend of his, who's a university professor. He warned me that the guy usually throws kinky parties with orgies and stuff. I asked if I would be the only straight woman there, which could be awkward, but was assured this party would be toned down and have some straights as well. It turned out to be super boring. All the straight people were colleagues of his partner, so were school teachers, and were married with kids. Many of them had actually brought their children with them! The youngest was nine months old!
We got really bored and Amin persuaded me to leave the party to go to a club that was having a bears night. Why do I let him persuade me to do things like this? After paying the hefty entrance fee, we find the place rather empty, both of people and bears, and playing latin music! A little later -distinctly heterosexual- couples start dancing. Amin looks it up and realises he mixed his clubs up, instead of taking a taxi half across Paris, the right club was right next to his friends house!
So, instead he says we should go to a gay bar he likes in the Marais, that he calls the bac+5 bar because everyone there is hopelessly highly educated and intellectual. We rented some velolibres and cycled through Paris in the dark on unfamiliar bikes on a saturday night full of traffic. It was scary and exhilarating. Like bike rides through busy night-time cities tend to be. The bar was a strange little place full of dreadfully serious and troubled gay men and the odd woman. It was fun though, because it was so small and it was kind of like a private party. Everyone seemed to do the round randomly talking to other people. I have never chatted to so many strangers in a bar before! Most of them were keen to get into Amin's pants of course, but were polite enough to talk to me too. Some said some awfully prejudiced and chauvinistic things, Amin being Iranian, me being Greek and them being European and tipsy. Isn't it odd that the worst stuff were said by Italians and Spanish, rather than the French?
Amin got the hots for an Italian linguistics professor at one of the Paris universities, but - as is usual - he was one of the few who weren't in the least interested in him. I, on the other hand, chatted up a very cute corsican dancer with the name of Ninja Turtle - or a renaissance painter if you want to be all highbrow. When I asked what he did, and he said dancer, you should have seen me try to contain the drool! When he asked if I believed him, I said I would have to see him without his clothes to say, but he didn't oblige. He did some of that fancy footwork that ballet dancers do (he was a modern classical dancer) and showed me some of the differences between the various schools of dance. Very informative. Unfortunately, no matter how much I fluttered my eyelashes or flashed my cleavage I didn't get anywhere. I was hoping he might have been bi, but I guess he was gay. Or just didn't like me. *sigh*
We left eventually, and had to walk home because Amin messed up our cards for the velolibres and didn't want to pay for more, and collapsed into bed at six in the morning.
Only to be woken up at eight in the morning by someone incessantly banging on the front door and calling us on the phone. It turned out that there was a leak somewhere in our pipes and it was leaking into the guy underneath's flat. We turned the water off by the main and tried to go back to sleep. But our sunday was fucked. We woke up late. Lazed around for ages, then went for a nice french lunch, and then returned home to invite some of his friends over and laze about some more before I had to leave for my train.
And that's what I did in Paris. I could have done more, I guess, but didn't really feel like it. I took some photos, but I'm hopelessly behind on downloading and fixing up my photos...
[What I got up to once there]
Thursday I finally got to meet the lovely tama_abi in the flesh. She was wonderful enough to put me up Thursday night. I spent Thursday walking around touristy places like St Michel, Odeon, St Germain de Pres, the Louvre gardens, the Tuilleries, Place de Concorde and all the lovely bridges in between, not to mention eating some of my favourite Italian ice-cream... Later on we went for Japanese with tama_abi and for a drink in the Marais where we met up with my old friend Amin. It was a lovely laid back night, walking around Paris talking about all things under the moon, from porn to politics.
Friday was my interview. I didn't do much, I spent all the morning stressing and reading up or sitting in the park. My interview went well, I think, but not perfect. I got stuck at points, was a bit too nervous at points, and some of my answers could have been better. It seemed like a cool interesting place to work, so I will be very sad if I blew it. (Don't ask me if I got it, because I am still waiting to find out and the suspense is killing me!) Afterwards I took my stuff to my dear Amin's where we had a typical parisian dinner and lots wine before returning home to chat all night, because we are old and boring and hadn't met for years and Amin always has the best adventures - and love stories.
Saturday I walked around Paris some more. Guys, London might be more happening and trendy than Paris, but Paris is just so classy! And then had a typical weird night out with Amin.
First he took me to the party of a friend of his, who's a university professor. He warned me that the guy usually throws kinky parties with orgies and stuff. I asked if I would be the only straight woman there, which could be awkward, but was assured this party would be toned down and have some straights as well. It turned out to be super boring. All the straight people were colleagues of his partner, so were school teachers, and were married with kids. Many of them had actually brought their children with them! The youngest was nine months old!
We got really bored and Amin persuaded me to leave the party to go to a club that was having a bears night. Why do I let him persuade me to do things like this? After paying the hefty entrance fee, we find the place rather empty, both of people and bears, and playing latin music! A little later -distinctly heterosexual- couples start dancing. Amin looks it up and realises he mixed his clubs up, instead of taking a taxi half across Paris, the right club was right next to his friends house!
So, instead he says we should go to a gay bar he likes in the Marais, that he calls the bac+5 bar because everyone there is hopelessly highly educated and intellectual. We rented some velolibres and cycled through Paris in the dark on unfamiliar bikes on a saturday night full of traffic. It was scary and exhilarating. Like bike rides through busy night-time cities tend to be. The bar was a strange little place full of dreadfully serious and troubled gay men and the odd woman. It was fun though, because it was so small and it was kind of like a private party. Everyone seemed to do the round randomly talking to other people. I have never chatted to so many strangers in a bar before! Most of them were keen to get into Amin's pants of course, but were polite enough to talk to me too. Some said some awfully prejudiced and chauvinistic things, Amin being Iranian, me being Greek and them being European and tipsy. Isn't it odd that the worst stuff were said by Italians and Spanish, rather than the French?
Amin got the hots for an Italian linguistics professor at one of the Paris universities, but - as is usual - he was one of the few who weren't in the least interested in him. I, on the other hand, chatted up a very cute corsican dancer with the name of Ninja Turtle - or a renaissance painter if you want to be all highbrow. When I asked what he did, and he said dancer, you should have seen me try to contain the drool! When he asked if I believed him, I said I would have to see him without his clothes to say, but he didn't oblige. He did some of that fancy footwork that ballet dancers do (he was a modern classical dancer) and showed me some of the differences between the various schools of dance. Very informative. Unfortunately, no matter how much I fluttered my eyelashes or flashed my cleavage I didn't get anywhere. I was hoping he might have been bi, but I guess he was gay. Or just didn't like me. *sigh*
We left eventually, and had to walk home because Amin messed up our cards for the velolibres and didn't want to pay for more, and collapsed into bed at six in the morning.
Only to be woken up at eight in the morning by someone incessantly banging on the front door and calling us on the phone. It turned out that there was a leak somewhere in our pipes and it was leaking into the guy underneath's flat. We turned the water off by the main and tried to go back to sleep. But our sunday was fucked. We woke up late. Lazed around for ages, then went for a nice french lunch, and then returned home to invite some of his friends over and laze about some more before I had to leave for my train.
And that's what I did in Paris. I could have done more, I guess, but didn't really feel like it. I took some photos, but I'm hopelessly behind on downloading and fixing up my photos...