12 September 2011

Paris: la belle, la bête, et le what now?

Amazing things about Paris:

1) WARM BAGUETTES: The best things ever. Somehow I’ve had incredible luck for three days running, and have never yet walked home with a less-than-piping-hot baguette.

2) Chocolate éclairs: OH. MON. DIEU. The best things ever, after warm baguettes. Didn’t realize they were chocolate when I bought them — I mean, they had chocolate on top, of course — but they had chocolate mousse inside, and I bit into one and almost died right then and there of happiness.

3) Daily life in Paris can be rather complicated and difficult, which means that even tiny victories (e.g. food) can be celebrated all out of proportion. Perfect example: learned today that my super-fancy, cutting-edge contact lens solution is available here, albeit it for €18/ginormous bottle. Danced all the way home.


Less-than-amazing things about Paris:

1) The national telecom company blacklist, which I have inexplicably found myself on. (Now, true, I have had fantasies about getting into some sort of political trouble in a foreign country, but I was hoping to be able to say something more along the lines of, “Ah, Liechtenstein! Yes, I was once deported from Liechtenstein,” and less, “I was blacklisted by every phone company in France for a while.”) After paying an exorbitant fee, I have freed myself from this blacklist, but only after “twelve to fifteen days” of processing time. Because they who control the blacklist don’t have computers, I guess, and so need to inform each other of my acquittal by carrier pigeon.



Incredibly weird things about Paris: there’s only a need for one: Marie Antoinette’s dulcimer-playing android. Android, as in Data, only in the eighteenth century.



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