Some Janvier

Sorry folks, I’m way behind. Here’s some stuff that’s been happening:

WE BE TRAFFIC JAMMIN’

         I went out with Clare and her temporarily disabled boyfriend (ski accident) to meet some other American ex-pats at a bar by Bastille. We took the bus there. The trip should have taken 20 minutes, but it ended up taking 50 because of an enormous back-up of taxis. They went as far as the eye could see. I've never seen anything like it. All the other passengers on the bus eventually got off and walked wherever they were going, but we were stuck because Silvan couldn’t go very far sporting his sizeable leg brace.

         We passed the time speculating about possible explanations for this tremendous jam. I offered that maybe it was a result of a major event we weren’t aware of, like a Lady Gaga concert or a presidential address or something. Clare supposed that it was a taxi driver strike. We concluded that this was the most likely reason.

         After a while we started chatting with the driver and he told us what was really going on. This is a regular occurrence. There's no real rhyme or reason to it, but all of the taxis in town just hang out at Gare de Lyon. When we finally got up to the station it was clear that he was right. There were cabs wrapped all the way around, parked 3 deep in a lot of places. Most of them were empty because there were only a handful of people exiting the station and, of those, many were trying to work their way around the cabs to get to their rides.

          The driver occasionally laid on the horn and spewed hate at the cabbies in earshot, but this had little effect. As we slowly inched along, he filled us in on how the city claims to have a shortage of taxis and how they’ve decided to create 30,000 more. All this time there may have been enough, but they’re hanging out at Gare de Lyon. Ahh Paris.

RAIN RIDE

         A couple Saturdays ago, Antoine invited me to go out dancing with him and his people. I’m not big on nightclubs, but Antoine’s scene is more like pubs where they blast catchy music that eventually inspires dancing. 
        His crowd is full of night owls, so they weren’t planning on meeting up until 10pm. This is past my bedtime. Despite a difficult battle with my inner grandma, I got myself dressed and out. My plan was to make it back home by the time that the metro stopped running (2am), so that I wouldn’t be stuck taking a night bus alone or paying 12€ for a taxi.

         Antoine was disappointed to hear this because he was hoping we could split cab fare. With the both of us it wouldn’t be too expensive. But he stays out until 4am. We compromised and agreed to leave together at 3am.

Café OZ at night

         They chose an Austrailian themed place called Café Oz and we got in a lot of beer and ridiculous dancing. Antoine is the type of kid that waits about 5 minutes after entering a place before finding himself a table top to dance on. It was a good time. We were exhausted and sweaty when we finally went out to find a cab at 3am. 
        Unfortunately, everyone else had already had the same idea and beat us to it. All the taxis were occupied. We walked around for 45 minutes and called 3 cab companies without any luck. I explained to Antoine that they were probably all hanging out at Gare de Lyon and we should just walk there, but he pointed out that it would take longer to walk there than to just walk home. Oh yeah, and it was raining. And neither of us had an umbrella.

         After an hour of walking up and down Grands Boulevards getting damp and frustrated, we decided to take Velib (rent-a-bikes) and hope we didn’t die. 

        We crossed Paris on rent-a-bikes at 4am on Saturday night (or Sunday morning), without helmets, in the rain, in our winter coats. And I was in a skirt. My annoyance at the situation faded quickly because it was all just too ridiculous. Plus, the streets smelled like bread from the boulangeries that were already starting up. And we got to pass the Pyramid at the Louvre when there was absolutely no one there. By the time I got home, I wasn’t even upset about being soaked and not being in bed until 4:30am.

IN FURTHER NEWS: Emma was here last week, we took a trip to Belgium, and I had my lungs x-rayed by the immigration people (not for going to Belgium, unrelated). I will write all about it in my next entry…

à tout à l’heure y’all!