Just Recovering

4 May 2011

Paris, France

I’m sicker than before. It’s as if there’s an earthquake, Richter Scale 7, happening inside of me with all the shaking that’s happening.

It seems the other three pople in here haven’t heard of blowing their nose–ever– because it’s the loudest snoring I’ve ever heard. It’s some sort musical triad as they all snore differently at once. It’s some time in the middle of the night and I don’t really care about missing out on anything in Paris for a long time if this sickness lasts a while.

I drift in and out of consciousness, which I can now confirm is not the same as one good sleep. A shirt ridden with body odour falls on my face from the moron above.

At 8am, my conclusions of the intelligence of the guy above me is confirmed as his phone alarm goes off. He doesn’t want to take up–nobody does. Why even bother turning the alarm off, then? Ten minutes goes by for which we all hear the twenty second tone over and over again. We heard it thirty times. Thirty. They guy comes to some sort of sense and turns the alarm off in the same way one would smash the alarm clock with one’s fist: by breaking the phone into pieces by kicking it off the bed.

I’m awake now anyway, so I head down for a delicious breakfast: mushy fruit salad! Dlicioius Parisian cuisine just as I was expecting. That famous French bread… it’s as fresh as my great Grandmother’s bread from the 1800s. All of this at such a remarkably low price, too!

They’ve no vacancies for tonight so I’m homeless again. The day passes with me taking my computer to a McDonald’s (difficult to find in Paris though I don’t know why because there are so many tourists), eventually to book a hotel, which really was my only option.

By the afternoon I arrive to the hotel to see a Middle Eastern man smoking outside–an all too common sight in this city. Franglais is spoken and I’m in a hotel, which is such luxury compared to the hostels–theoretically. I walk into my room and am greeted by a bed with a dip in the middle as large as the constellation and a view out to… three cement walls. At least there’s not just one wall. Considering this is a three star ‘hotel’ I assume any less stars and you’d be sharing a bunk bed with prison inmates with only one cement wall to look at (shock, horror). The only powerpoint is high up on the wall, just in arm’s reach. The truth is I don’t really care, as the thought of sleep, now that I’ve stocked up on tablets, is completely worth every excess Euro and dodgy facility.

Lying in the Big Dipper, I look forward to meeting my 2nd cousin in Paris. I’m not sure what it is Parisian youths do, but I’ll let her be the tour guide. My door, like every other smooth surface in this city, has several bits of graffiti on it. The’decoration’ is Parisian; it’s not clear to what is dirty or decorative or neither. The hotel staff are Parisian; they just couldn’t give a f###.

I don’t know what others think of this place, but it’s probably’cool’ “because it’s Paris”. That makes as much sense as saying a cigarette butt is cool because, well, it’s a cigarette butt! Maybe that is what makes Paris cool, because the cracks in the streets are literally overflowing with them.

My initial’thing’ for Paris was the right one (for me); do the sightseeing and get the hell out. All I hope is that any remaining energy in me will be sufficient, because I don’t know where to go next in the world, but I hope it comes soon.