Onwards to Paris

Well, I'm safely in Paris, the last leg of my journey. I'm getting some hardcore travel fatigue, and I'm alone in Paris, so I've decided to stay in the hotel tonight. More on that in a bit. But let me catch you up on Switzerland first.

So yeah, I went to this discotheque last night and it was crazy. As I said before, I had scoped out the location, so I had only to walk over there, and I did. Close to the square there was some loud, punk-sounding music going on. "That doesn't seem right..." I thought. A lot of people were milling around the square. I thought maybe it was some bizarre opener, so I went inside and looked around the area before where you pay, and sure enough, it just looked like a punk show. I thought maybe I had the days mixed up, since I'm pretty sure my phone is a day slow.

I walked over to where I had seen one of the flyers to make sure the show I was thinking of was happening on the 15th, and sure enough it was. This is weird. I walked back and checked out the club again. I was going to ask someone when I noticed a flyer with different bands listed for tonight but the same address. Aha! I went outside and looked around the side of the building and sure enough there was a separate entrance.

I went in and there weren't many people there yet, but the place looked correct. The DJ was the opening DJ and he was spinning some EBM and synthpop, and that and some of the people there reminded me of Ceremony in Pittsburgh. I went over and looked at the beer menu. There were several things listed at 3 francs, so I ordered one, a panachee. The bartender took out a smallish plastic cup, filled it about half with something from a bottle and then poured beer in the rest. It tasted delicious but kind of light. Later I ordered it again and figured it out. It was a beer and citrus water together. Very tasty but not so high on the alcohol content. I saw a guy ordering just beer so I followed suit later.

The first DJ did play some really good songs (one I had to write down the lyrics in my phone so I could try and track down) but a lot of stuff that was just hard and not so danceable, and mostly no one bothered to get up. More people started to come in and eventually the main DJ, Plastique de Reve took the stage.

Within a couple songs he was playing some really good, danceable stuff that got the first couple people on the floor. It was definitely electro, but some was harder like EBM and some was more like fashionable sounding electro but still pretty hard and house-oriented, thus, easy to danc etc. At several points in the set the DJ stopped playing records and slid into some keyboard and vocoder stuff, which was impressive and made me want to try that. At one point in time he did a fantastic rendition of the 80's new romantic hit "Fade to Grey," one of my favorite 80's singles by one of my favorite, lesser-known groups. Coincidentally I had been listening to it on the trainride to Geneva. Later I heard him play "Disco Rout" by Legowelt, a Belgian electro group I like with a harder, dancefloor-oriented sound which was pretty much in line with everything he played. Those were the only two songs in about 3 and a half hours that I recognized, but it was awesome.

At first I entertained some ideas of just being a bystander, but before long I started dancing up there with everyone else. It's definitely a late club, this Usine. At first it was pretty sparse but when I left at 3:30am the place was still completely packed. I danced from about half past midnight until then, the whole time, which is I think the longest I've ever danced for. There wasn't a whole lot of room on the dancefloor so a lot of the time I was just moving a bit, conserving energy, but there was room to dance around sometimes too. By the time I left, the floor had become a swamp of discarded beer cans and beer, and my shirt was soaked in sweat down to the last couple inches of my waist.

I tried to talk to one guy I thought was speaking English but when he responded to me I couldn't hear what he was saying and I think it might have been Dutch or German. He definitely wasn't Swiss, but most of those in attendance were, I think. I danced with one girl up by the front for a bit, and I swear as I was leaving this guy tried to get me to give him a high five, but I would have felt really dumb if he hadn't been so I pretended not to notice, and he looked slightly offended.

I walked home and I was worried about getting mugged but Geneva is pretty safe so I was fine. Most of the streets I took were large and well-lit, and it was only about a 10 minute walk away. When I got home I was so gross and sweaty I decided to take a shower at around 4am before bed. I got up at about 8 to get ready for checkout at 10am.

I packed my bags and put them into day lockers. The best train I could take was at about 1pm and would get me into Paris before 5pm, but I had to be careful because the front office was closed from noon to one so I had to get my bags before noon. Having only about an hour and a half I really didn't have time to do much. I started walking towards the Jet d'Eau, a giant water stream hundreds of feet up in the air that's one of the main tourist attractions here. It's impressive, going way over houses, but i just don't understand the point. It's kind of like the European version of the Greatest Ball of Twine in Minnesota.

I needed to eat, so I only had a little while to go around. I still had a little over 110 Francs, and although I wanted to save some of the bills, I wanted to use most of it up since it was money spent already. I got a postcard and found myself a Swiss Army Knife. I had already gotten some at a good price at the hotel lounge but I hadn't found one for myself until then. Good, good, there went about 20 francs. I tried unsuccessfully to find the travel section in the bookstore I had been to the other day.

As I was walking to the Jet, I found some t-shirts to get and with lunch that pretty well was the money I needed to spend. I had lunch at Burger King because I wanted something substantial and fast, and in this case also cheap. I figured I'd get plenty of croissants and gaufres in Paris anyway.

I got back to the hotel and began moving my bags to the train station, about a five minute walk away. Let me tell you, my bags have gotten so heavy that I had to stop about every 100 feet and take a break. Man are they heavy. I finally got to the station and went to purchase a ticket. Lucky me, my train was sold out. Great. The next one left close to 5pm. I got a ticket and checked out the locker situation at the train station, finding that they were all too small for my huge bags. Not wanting to drag my bags back to the hostel, I decided just to kill time at the train station. I found a seat near customs and read for about 3 hours.

I caught the train with no further hiccups. Paris has 4 or 5 train stations, and luckily the one that Swiss trains go into is also the closest to my hotel. I took a taxi, which was only 10 Euros. I had been expecting to pay the 40 Euros it will cost to go to Charles de Gaulle airport. I arrived here exhausted at 9pm.

The hotel is one step up from a hostel. There is no air conditioning, but there is a TV. There's a lift (elevator) but it's broken, so I had to lug my stuff up two sets of stairs. There's a computer with internet that's very cheap (4 Euros for usage from noon to midnight) but you have to wait your turn on it and it's in the lobby. I'm typing this on my computer and will burn everything to disk so I don't have to use everyone's internet time typing and so I don't have to use the crazy French keyboard it has.

I grabbed a bite to eat - McDonald's since I'm too tired to want to deal with ordering food at any restaurant I don't know so well and since mostly all there is near here is Turkish, Chinese and butchers. Interestingly the McDonald's here has free ketchup I think, unlike anywhere else I've been.

It occurred to me earlier that all of the shopping I would like to do is pretty much shot since tomorrow is a Sunday and apparently everything in Paris does close on Sundays. Just about. So it looks like I'll be doing some sightseeing, which is fine since there are a billion things to see in Paris and I'm positive I won't see all of them.

Like I said before, I'm mostly just ready to go home. I want to speak to people in English and have them understand me etc. But I am in Paris for a whole day so I will try and make the most of it. At first I wanted to get up very early and tour the city at first light, like the Parisian photographer Eugene Atget, a favorite of mine. I can't decide if that's the plan or not yet, it somewhat depends on the time the Metro opens. I think at least I'll be on it as soon as it starts running.

I'll probably get some internet time tomorrow evening, or at the very least at one of the airports during a layover. It's really crazy to think I'll be home soon, and I'm really looking forward to getting my life back in order and sorting through everything I've learned, bought and discovered and integrating it into my life.