i don’t understand the french.

i suppose that’s why i’m kinda-sorta seeing a greek guy.

funny how a huge chunk of my friends in paris seem to be greek.

an excerpt from the préfecture, part two.

how fitting:

cher: now, that’s a bit of a distortion, don’t you think?

ernestine: look, cher, i work for the phone company! it’s not my job to think!

i find it truly astounding how the words “phone company” and “french government” are pretty much interchangeable.

on the métro…

all cities have given names to their rapid transit lines. sometimes, they are somewhat fancy names, like london’s jubilee line. other times, they are very utilitarian, such as new york city’s subway, with letters and numbers being the order.

paris decided to go with the very simple method of using numbered lines, which makes for an easy-to-navigate system.

there are 14 “regular” lines, 2 “shuttle” lines and 5 “suburban” lines. within the city limits, all of these services operate under the same fare structure and with roughly the same frequency of service. average speed will vary across the lines; lines 2 and 6, for example, are unconscionably slow (seriously, sometimes stations are two blocks apart from each other), whereas line “A” is miraculously fast – crossing the entire city from east to west in 12-15 minutes.

but still, these lines all have their characteristics, sadly lost to the logic of numbering.

i therefore present the following, a list of alternative names for some of paris’ métro lines:

• line 1 – the tourist line. connecting the arc de triomphe, the champs élysées and châtelet, this line manages to get a lot of tourists (of the worst variety). when it’s raining, this line becomes the sardine line, as flocks of tourists will seem to use the métro as an instant shelter, riding for an hour at a time just so that they don’t have to give up their seat or brave the outside world.
• line 2 - the pickpocket line. this line runs from the arc de triomphe to nation via montmartre and barbès-rochechouart. a lot of tourists on this line too. however, since this line passes through some rougher neighbourhoods too, it’s a great place for dumb tourists to get their affairs liberated from them. it’s also wonderful looking at horrified faces when people realize that paris isn’t as cookie-cutter-clean as they may have thought it to be.
• line 3 - the backpacker line. this line links paris with the international bus station. since there is no domestic intercity bus network (the TGV largely made non-chartered buses obsolete), this line gets a lot of budget travelers from abroad. alternate name: the hipster line, as it passes right through the working-class-trendy district of oberkampf.
• line 4 - the maghreb express. if you’ve never been to morocco, algeria or tunisia, you will have felt like it when you take this line, particularly around château d’eau station.
• line 6 - the édith piaf line. this line spans the seine between the trocadéro palace and the eiffel tower, which means a lot of tourists. you would not believe how many time i’ve heard accordion players grind out la vie en rose for tips on this line. alternate name: la ligne des feuilles mortes.
• line 7 – the line of french bureaucracy. an extremely slow line, but very thorough. it connects with every other line; no other line does this.
• line 10 – the super-fantastic line of mystery! until i started taking this line on a near daily basis to go get abused by the préfecture office, i had no idea how many hidden and/or closed métro stations there were. i intend to see if i can’t break into one of these ghost stations one day.
• line 11 – the urine line. well, okay. not just urine, but pretty much every kind of unpleasant odour you could possibly imagine can be found in the trains and stations of line 11. thankfully, it’s fast, so your ride is likely to be short. but still, sometimes it’s near overwhelming (no wonder the RATP drew the line in brown on the métro map).
• line 13 – the why-do-we-even-bother? line. talk about overcrowding; who’d have thought that you would have to fight for a seat at 9 pm on sunday evening?
• line 14 – the météor. an acronym for “MÉTro Est Ouest Rapide”. it stands apart by being efficient, fast and clean. unfortunately, this is offset by parisians oohing and aahing over it every time it’s mentioned by a foreigner. y’see, it’s an automatic line; god forbid any other city has an automatic line.

there are other fun things about the métro. like how nobody pays (except for me, it seems), how you can’t bring your bike on the trains and how it closes way too early (12:30 am sometimes). but still, monsieur le métro works with astounding regularity, and, from what i have heard, kicks the ass of its londonian counterpart.

it’s something that i will surely miss when i return to vancouver.

an excerpt from the préfecture.

the following is not an exaggeration. this actually happened:

them: your document isn’t ready.

me: but the vancouver office said it would be.

them: oh, they sent it, but it’s waiting to be decoded.

me: decoded?

them: yes, it’s a TELEX.

me: i…see.

them: come back at the end of june.

me: can i get your phone number so i can call ahead to see if it’s ready?

them: we don’t have a phone.

me: um, forgive the assumption, but what’s that phone-like thing on your desk?

them: oh, that. that’s a phone, but it’s for me. you can’t call us.

absolutely astonishing. i find it hard to believe that this actually happens in the twenty-first century.

the only thing that would have made this truly perfect is if she would have called me “mr. veedle.”

…

…

i think that it’s time that i give up on my comforts. i’m not sure just yet. but it looks like i’ll be forced to make that jump soon.

thanks a lot, richelieu. your needless paranoia has made paris the romantic place that it is: cold, impenetrable and extremely beautiful.

…two roads diverged in a road, and i,

i took the one less traveled by,

and that has made all the difference.

- robert frost

“…je comprends, madame!”

ever since i was a kid, i’ve always removed my shoes before entering the house. it’s just one of those things that i do subconsciously. although my standards have been relaxed to a small degree regarding this rule since living with my folks, the thought of keeping one’s shoes on in the house is a pretty gross one. also, keep in mind that my w.c. keeps flooding (with clean water, thankfully), meaning that it’s necessary to go into the toilet with one’s shoes on, a not-inconsiderable inconvenience.

so there’s this miserable old woman with nothing better to do than lecture me based on my habit of keeping my shoes on my shoe rack neatly placed outside my door (à la japonaise). even worse, she goes to complain to the concierge about my practice.

am i blocking anyone or anything? nope. no way. i live in a cul-de-sac of sorts…my section of the building is my section of the building, and there’s no reason to go there besides to see me. but with the flooding in the w.c., i’m not going to do as she says. i’m going to keep my shoes outside until someone complains, and then i’m going to explain that it’s disgusting and that i’ve lived my entire life this way.

a critical vision.

those of you interested in the study of space and place should certainly check out radical cartography. it’s an amateur map-maker’s dream come true.

—

buenos aires, i hate you so much…

a note to myself, part two.

mike, you’ve got to accept the fact that, no matter how hard you try, you are completely incapable of studying at home. it just doesn’t work for you.

get yourself to a café (like this one) and – goddammit – get your work done there. it’s true that you’re trying to save money, but it would be a shame if you spent the better part of ten months in paris at home, doing absolutely nothing productive.

and, also, get yourself to saint-ouen tomorrow. you have work to do and money to make.

…grumble…

so, of course, when you should be working on your papers, what do you do? you go read 300 pages of popcorn literature.

thankfully, this is popcorn literature far superior to the crap pumped out by sophie kinsella (author of the shopaholic series):

“…i was going to turn into one of those people who sit in parisian cafés and type their rantings into a laptop computer, hoping all the while that someone will come up and ask ‘what are you writing?’, when in fact everyone steers clear because they’re scared you’ll want to explain what you’re writing.”

—

i still don’t have my papers. bureaucracy is not something the french do well (or, perhaps, they are exceedingly, savagely and sadistically good at it).

this is another thing that the french don’t do well: accept foreigners…regardless of what the past sixty years’ statistics would have you believe. they know that you’re there, yes…but you’ll never be one of them, no matter how goddamn hard you may try.

surprises, surprises.

here’s something downright shocking: i may, in fact, actually enjoy yogurt. who would have thought? this is the one thing that i have gagged at since i was a little kid. and now, after downing a meal of bastard curry with chris anderson, i’m thinking to myself, jeez, that yogurt in the fridge is looking mighty appealing.

chris and his friend, martin, ended up staying with me for a few nights. and what a few nights they were. fueled by alcohol yet proving to be surprisingly productive in the academic sense, these few days ended up being a very pleasant surprise.

and another surprise! danny, one of the geog kids, is gonna be crashing chez moi for a couple days too. again, a very pleasant surprise.

i ought to check out the couchsurfing scene when i finally get around to, well, whatever.

—

i should be getting my papers tomorrow. wish me luck.