City of romance and love and shit…

I got to spend two whole days in Paris, waiting for my truck-ride to arrive in Germany, so I can start heading that way for the rendezvous. I changed two host apartments in Paris with different people living in them, trying to get to meet as many as I can.The first two, Vicențiu and Ioana (photos in previous article) are a Romanian couple living in Paris and soon to move to Madrid. They live close to the crossing of Avenue des Maine and Rue des Plantes. And they make some fair pancakes.

The other four (Ștefan and flat-mates, I slept in the same bed with this guy) work in constructions in the French capital and live near Gare de l’Est. So I got to cover a lot of Paris. They rent a small but warm apartment (partly because of their 7 meter diagonal plasma TV). I watched some French TV again, which reminded me of my night in Calais when I found myself zapping through TV stations that I didn’t understand anyway. I finally watched gardening, by the end.

I also met “veteran” Jeg reader and young blogger Dan Toader (blog here) who sponsored my stay with 30 euros, 6 sandwiches and 10 metro tickets (plus biscuits and a Coke – so full menu). His contribution got me up the Eiffel Tour, into Louvre and basically everywhere I wanted to go.

I then visited Marius (an ex class-mate’s brother) and got to eat as much food from his birthday party I could stuff into me.

I also had a nice traditional french lunch, right next to Louvre… in a McDonald’s restaurant. The menu was called “M” and I think it stands for junkois des merde, but my French is kinda rusty.

If you visit The Louvre Museum to see Mona Lisa, be sure to check her out real good on the posters on your way in, ’cause once you’ll find the original, well, you’re really fucked then.

For all us people galloping to the really only relevant salon 6 of the 1st stage in Louvre, having to pass through centuries of all that kissing angels kiddy porn as Jesus dies on the cross babies sucking fat-ass mother’s boobs in public renaissance crap, it comes as big fucking surprise to glance at the real-life Gioconda from a roughly 10 meter distance. My compact camera can’t even zoom that far. I see two large differently colored pixels of the damn thing. And if I want to take a photo, nooo, the protective glass doesn’t reflect flash light, in case I wanna remake that in Photoshop and sell it.

Apparently, if you’re not paralyzed from at least waist down, you can’t even get near the freaking frame. Yes! For some reason, only disabled people get to see it up close. I don’t know if that’s a perverted way to bring them some kind of creepy closure to their suffering, but be sure to bring a wheel-chair for the race across the safety cable. Like I’m gonna harm the painting by pulling my teeth out and throwing them at the bullet proof window or something.

Also, if you’re already in a wheel-chair, please do not stand up and try to walk towards Mona Lisa, because they’ll tackle you straight down, they don’t care it’s a miracle.

So bare in mind: signs directing you to it are better than real thing.

I also found out that my black leather jacket has been to Paris before me. And people actually knew my jacket and they didn’t know me. It was found in a coffee shop around Arc de Triomphe, where a Romanian worked as a bartender a few years ago. From there (as no one came back to claim it), it got sold for a beer to Arpi (who also worked in Paris) and from whom I mainly stole it afterwards. Publicly, the story is I exchanged it for one of my jackets (that I didn’t know how to get rid of).

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Where were we? Ah yes, then I left Paris and now I’m in München. I got a ridiculous 200 euro donation from buddy Markus (he’s German, but has a company in Romania). I’ve slept part of it off in the night train to here and saved some extra for beer, as he advised.

I got picked up by hung-over Vlad, a fierce foot-ball hooligan (not!) and Poli Timișoara fanatic. He has a photo archive with faces of opposite teams’ ultras so he knows them around the stadium before and after important matches. That way he doesn’t crack strangers’ heads by mistake. And his girlfriend gave him a photo-mousepad of herself, as a present. Ok?

[And thus one’s a first, hehe. Weird, since I credit music usually in the description. No, I didn’t buy it for the movie. But it’s not in a commercial use either. Anybody got a clue how I can make a fuss out of this and scream abuse? Just kidding.]

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[later edit] I’ve spent all day with my host Vlad and his friend Bălti, touring München and playing mini-golf war. Luckily, my truck driver was late, so I got to edit a short clip about it and how I managed to screw up my camera. Vlad managed to kick Bălti spot on in the forehead with a golf-club. Vlad won 5 points ahead of my 57, while Bălti was way behind with 66 and disoriented with his concussion.

Vlad, after viewing my brother’s photo-blog, which he didn’t appreciate too much: “I used to be an amateur photographer, but then they stole my camera from my room…“

After hitting my camera with the golf ball (no, I didn’t have several tries, I was aiming for something higher), my camera bent in the lens area. Vlad is lending me his compact Canon to use instead.