I’ve never backposted before in my life, but this might make this easier for the girl with the unreliable short-term memory (i.e. me) who has problems separating days of the week.
So I had a bit of an adventure this weekend, involving Paris, a pact with a school friend that (for once) comes to fruition, and just a little mayhem to keep things interesting.
Things actually started off interesting, meaning that I woke up on Friday realizing that I had absolutely no idea what the name of the hostel we were staying at was. I put my faith in good karma, printed out the maps to two of the likely candidates, utterly failed to withdraw Euro from an ATM in Geneva and got on the TGV to Paris.
2 hours after reaching Paris and having done a nice little foot tour around Montmartre and Basilica de Sacre Coeur, I had chatted up a nice Aussie named Dennis but failed to locate housing or Victoria Murphy. Failing to locate Vicki would prove to be a common theme for Friday, but the hostel keeper and Dennis – bless him, wherever he may be – pointed me out to an Internet café around the corner and invited me out to drinks if I ended up without a place.
I forked over 75 Euro-cents and spent 15 minutes copying down the name and address of every hostel Vicki could have made a reservation at, and the next ten minutes playing “Avez-vous un reservation pour Victoria Murphy?” with hostel owners across the city.
In what must be the first good idea I’ve had this year, it worked. Trudged back the way I came for a kilometre, dumped off my stuff in a room with three twin beds pushed together and met our roommate from Sydney. Proceeded to harass the front desk for the next 2 hours about whether Vicki had called/emailed/checked in/eloped, which ended up being somewhat fortuitous because I was feeling energetic enough to start conversation with Jenni (schoolteacher from Sydney) and then Jeff (computer engineer from Burnaby) whom I tagged along with to the Eiffel Tower after it was clear I’d be Vicki-less for awhile longer.
Jeff and I did a half-witted search for an ATM, after which we did our own currency exchange of 300 CHF for Euro while waiting for the Metro. We headed up to the Eiffel Tower right at dusk, went up, froze in the wind a bit and got to see the city lit up at night. There’s something about lights at night – city of light or no.
The two of us got dinner across the street from where we were staying afterwards – around midnight by this point and still no sign of the Vickster – and proceeded to argue public policy. Since I was less of an Asian lightweight than Jeff was, I fuelled up on a lot of rose wine by the time 2 AM rolled around and was being the perfect libertarian poster child while illustrating my points using statutory rape analogies lifted right out of crim class. We concluded at the bar shortly thereafter. I think we left on good terms...
Vicki was there when I got back, already in bed and ignoring me.
That was Friday.
So I had a bit of an adventure this weekend, involving Paris, a pact with a school friend that (for once) comes to fruition, and just a little mayhem to keep things interesting.
Things actually started off interesting, meaning that I woke up on Friday realizing that I had absolutely no idea what the name of the hostel we were staying at was. I put my faith in good karma, printed out the maps to two of the likely candidates, utterly failed to withdraw Euro from an ATM in Geneva and got on the TGV to Paris.
2 hours after reaching Paris and having done a nice little foot tour around Montmartre and Basilica de Sacre Coeur, I had chatted up a nice Aussie named Dennis but failed to locate housing or Victoria Murphy. Failing to locate Vicki would prove to be a common theme for Friday, but the hostel keeper and Dennis – bless him, wherever he may be – pointed me out to an Internet café around the corner and invited me out to drinks if I ended up without a place.
I forked over 75 Euro-cents and spent 15 minutes copying down the name and address of every hostel Vicki could have made a reservation at, and the next ten minutes playing “Avez-vous un reservation pour Victoria Murphy?” with hostel owners across the city.
In what must be the first good idea I’ve had this year, it worked. Trudged back the way I came for a kilometre, dumped off my stuff in a room with three twin beds pushed together and met our roommate from Sydney. Proceeded to harass the front desk for the next 2 hours about whether Vicki had called/emailed/checked in/eloped, which ended up being somewhat fortuitous because I was feeling energetic enough to start conversation with Jenni (schoolteacher from Sydney) and then Jeff (computer engineer from Burnaby) whom I tagged along with to the Eiffel Tower after it was clear I’d be Vicki-less for awhile longer.
Jeff and I did a half-witted search for an ATM, after which we did our own currency exchange of 300 CHF for Euro while waiting for the Metro. We headed up to the Eiffel Tower right at dusk, went up, froze in the wind a bit and got to see the city lit up at night. There’s something about lights at night – city of light or no.
The two of us got dinner across the street from where we were staying afterwards – around midnight by this point and still no sign of the Vickster – and proceeded to argue public policy. Since I was less of an Asian lightweight than Jeff was, I fuelled up on a lot of rose wine by the time 2 AM rolled around and was being the perfect libertarian poster child while illustrating my points using statutory rape analogies lifted right out of crim class. We concluded at the bar shortly thereafter. I think we left on good terms...
Vicki was there when I got back, already in bed and ignoring me.
That was Friday.
