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Other entries in Paris

Je suis a paris!

I want to dispel a rumor about Paris and the negative impression that people seem to have of the city. I think it was awesome. I repeatedly had people offer to help me carry my bags up and down stairs without any other motives other than being helpful. And a lot of people helped me with directions and finding things.

As for the customer service, I can only say positive things but I have lived in Eastern Europe for the past few years where service is notoriously pitiful. That being said I thought that the places I went and the people I met were pleasant and helpful despite my language difficulties. I don't speak French but I did learn how to say. "Good Day, Sorry I don't speak French" and "I would like". Important Tip: The "I would like" phrase and [Finger Pointing in direction of what you want] combination could be one of he most useful phrase/hand gesture combo in the world. That will generally get you anything within pointing range(beer, sandwich, woman, etc.)! I suggest you learn that wherever you go that has a lot of non-English speaking people.

I took a crazy long walk around Paris. It was one of those walks that if I showed it to someone who knew the city I think that they would have serious doubts that I walked the distance I did in one day. I won't go into the details but I saw and walked nearly every major point of interest downtown. There are a few things I missed but I walked from 10am until 8pm non-stop with an hour of eating on a bench. Now when I return to "gay paris" I can know where I want to invest my time. And if I never go back then I have seen most of Paris' sights. The Latin Quarter was awesome but in all other streets in all the other districts you are sure to find some interesting places that you would want to enter and/or just hang out.

There is a hill in Paris that is awesome! It overlooks the entire city. At night people go up there and drink and hang out on the steps to check out the amazing view. Sitting there I felt like many generations of writers, painters, and random people have done the same thing. Felt like Hemmingway must have done the same. Felt like I was following the footsteps of many others and performing a right of passage.

People ask me a lot about traveling alone and how come that doesn't bother me. When you travel and stay at Hostels you're never alone. If anything, you can have good transient "friendships" with fellow travelers. Because they and you are transients so you don't have to go through the crap of forging a real friendship. The transient traveling friend is a person to hang out and see sights, go out, or hang out with. Very disposable if things aren't fun. Each night there was about seven of us who went out together just because we were all there and in the same mindset. None of them were disposable and I had great fun. That pretty much works the same everywhere. Plus, if I had been with someone on my long walk for sure I would have never made it. Traveling alone lets you set your own agenda. There are a few people out there that I would love to travel with. But I wouldn't stay at home just because I would be a lone. If my real friends can come then I'd be ultra happy, but if not I'm going where I want to go with or without...

Charles De Gaule Airport: I had a few snafus with the airport.

The Airport train from Paris broke down right before I left paris go to Chareles De Gaule. I had to find another way to get there with all my worldly possessions around me and so did all the other people in Paris who were going to the airport. Thank god this dude Stefan from Nice and I were complaining at the bus stop about how bad it sucked. We managed to hail a taxi and it only cost me half the fare cause we split it.

At the airport I was informed my luggage was a bit excessive. I had two bags and one of them was really heavy. My one heavy one was way over the 20 kilo limit. They wanted me to pay an additional 900.00 Euro in order to take all my stuff. Obviously, I didn't pay even one extra Euro. But I had to take out some stuff and leave it there.

I had booked the flight from Paris because it was a Quantas flight and they are an awesome airline. But this flight was operated by Air France! Don't ever fly Air France cause they are a bunch of pricks! I booked this flight out of France cause I knew that Tarom (in Romania) would be the same and I wanted to go to a place where I could get a real airline like Quantas. State owned airlines are shitty. Quantas would have never given me a problem since they offer a larger baggage limit.

**I still blame this all on Romania cause if that country had a good post system I could have shipped my stuff back to the states for a reasonable sum of money with little bullshit bureaucratic hassle. For that reason I had to take stuff here to mail it to the states by surface mail. Hence the large amount of luggage.**

Anyway, I had to leave a whole bag full of contents in Paris. You can't just leave a bag cause that would be a security threat. So I had to take a big clear plastic bag and empty the contents into it and give it to security. There went my extra shoes, tent, jackets, some warm clothes and other stuff that wasn't extremely important. But damn that sucked! My tent was the hardest cause I could have given it to someone who would have used it.

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