A Bromantic Weekend in Paris

Yes, you read that correctly - I said BROmantic. Are you still wondering what that is? I would consult the Olford Not-so-concise Dictionary, but I think this video explains it better:

So as you can see, bromance is basically romance.................. between bros. Yeah, I know. You never saw that coming did you? I'll give you a moment to really come to terms with and assimilate this heterosexual amour, because it is especially important for this post.

It was a couple of weeks ago  (I've spent the last two weeks drinking beer and watching How I Met Your Mother with my friend Procrastination Jones). I had just finished my exams and started my telesales job for a small start-up company. My friends were hopping on planes one by one evacuating the city like it was Damascus, and I started to feel like the last green bottle standing on the wall. Most of my friends due to stay for the Admissibles job were going to spend May traveling - they were getting away from the pain of an emptying city. I had neither the time or money for that, but somebody was imploring me to visit him in Paris.

I've probably mentioned it before, but my brother from another mother of a different colour, Cameron, had made the last minute decision not to return to Rennes after Christmas. Instead, he chose to undertake an internship in Paris, and it was his birthday that weekend, and of course he wanted me to be there. Having secured a (mind-numbing) job, I had an income, and with free accommodation.... well, it would be rude not to!

So after a hard and lonely day's work in Nowhereland, I rushed out of the office to get the TGV straight to Montparnasse station for my bromantic weekend catching up with my best friend. As he is from Hong Kong, I decided to impress him a bit with the Chinese I had been teaching myself with my audio course on my iPod (thank you Michel Thomas Method!) so I spent the train journey listening to this course (and dosing off, as I always do when traveling these days) and welcomed him by saying "Are you French now?" Okay, I haven't learned much Mandarin, and certainly nothing useful, but hey it's better than nothing!

Now, fortunately for you it was a couple of weekends ago now, so my memory is a little hazy and I won't be able to recall every last detail of the weekend. HANG ON WHAT ARE YOU DOING? STOP THAT! Stop jumping up and down and cheering! No, put away that champagne bottle! Don't you THINK about blowing that party horn! Why are you going outside? Oh no, those aren't fireworks are they.... Okay there's DEFINITELY no need to call your parents! Not at 2am!......

When I arrived and was greeted by my friend at the station, we went straight to get some French cuisine at the restaurant next to his place, where I had been on my last visit. (If I had written this as soon as I returned, I would have remembered the name. It was Le something I think. That should eliminate most options!) I thought "hey I have a job now! Why not treat myself a bit with some proper gastronomie". Okay, it was a lamb shank and creme brulée, hardly bourgeois, but for me that's rather fancy. Unlike my last visit in March, I decided to be less stingy with my money and ENJOY Paris. 

The last visit, like the rest of my second semester, I failed to chronicle in this blog. Basically I visited Cam for a weekend then for a catch up, along with my friends John and Kai from Warwick. John came from the aforementioned nerdland and Kai had flown over from Milan, where he has done his Erasmus year. Basically it was Ollie and the Eurasians, the world's saddest band name. That last weekend was spent being stingy, checking out Notre Dame (again) and Sacré Coeur (again) and watching Cam and Kai plough their way through the Paris Half-Marathon. I said 'watching' - by that I mean 'stay in bed until they are nearly done, then take the metro to meet them somewhere near the finish line, arriving late, but still pretend to have supported them throughout their arduous endeavour'. 

This time, however, was going to be just me and Cam, and I was going to splash the cash a little, dine properly, and celebrate his 22nd birthday in style. Ah, 22: what an important age! It is the first birthday when becoming older is not enjoyable. It does not empower you to do anything - 21 finished that off. It just means you're getting older, getting weaker, getting dumber, getting closer to death. From now, every birthday is a significant tick of that menacing and maleficent clock that depletes your life with every single movement nudging you towards death. So yeah, happy birthday buddy!

I know what you're thinking though - this weekend seemed a bit gay. There was nothing queer about our bromantic weekend: it was perfectly heterosexual and laddish. We dined together, walked near the Seine at night carrying our guitars to make sweet music near a bridge, watched No Strings Attached, bought ice cream and ate it as we promenaded along the boulevard in the world's most romantic city ........ a perfectly normal lad's weekend thank you very much!

But the best part for me was that I managed to achieve one of my goals for the year abroad, one that I had never mentioned on this blog. Twice before had I visited the Eiffel Tower in 1999 and in 2005, but NEVER had I been up it, not even to the first étage. However, it was to be the third time lucky, and by 'lucky' I mean 'without lethargic parents who are too sensible with their money to blow it on climbing hundreds of stairs' (but to be fair the queue was massive on the past two occasions). Luckily for us that day, the queue was negligible, and the ticket was a mere 9€ to go all the way to the summit. Hey, if I was to go up, I was to do it properly!

After briskly walking up the countless stairs with enough excitement to overpower the fatigue, I arrived at the first floor, and looked down. Everyone was already so small. The street we had just followed to arrive at the world-famous landmark was but a thin beige line. More stairs and the second floor beckoned. Now Cam had come further than his last visit, and the beige line was thinner and the pedestrians strolling where we had been merely twenty minutes beforehand were already smaller than the cliché size of ants. Now we had to wait for the lift to the top, so we joined a very international queue, including some Americans who got chatting to one another after realising both parties were from the same country and shamelessly switched from their broken French to their mockery of the English Language for the whole 7th arrondissement to hear. One lot were from Chicago, the other from Oregon, and being in another country left them talking like they were next-door neighbours!

Anyway, then it happened. The lift was ready. I had finally done it - the top. This was literally the highest I had ever been (in a building of course - my life isn't THAT sad!) I could see virtually all of Paris, playing a game with Cam to find the landmarks we knew so well. The Louvre, Notre Dame right near it, Sacré Coeur eclipsing the aforementioned overrated cathedral with its grandeur and making me again question whether if it were not for Victor Hugo, and then Disney, would the Sacré Coeur be more renowned than Quasimodo's abode. There was also the business centre of La Défense, looming ahead towering its surroundings to reflect the people who inhabit the respective buildings.This view of Paris from above made me feel strangely empowered: omniscient Ollie, lord of the French capital. 

Then we descended, and I remembered that I'm a pleb.

It must be said though, I love Paris. Despite its best efforts to look like the modernised capital of a world-leading economy and its large population and various arrondissements, it still carries that quaintness and antiquity that is so quintessentially French. Yes it is expensive, yes the metro is much slower than the Rennes one and the stations are disgusting. One example that weekend was, well how do I put it gently - fecal matter near a platform that was certainly not canine. However, it is a vibrant city with heritage, class, fantastic views, and a certain mode de vie that just does not exist in the UK. The French seem to enjoy the finer things in life - good food, art, culture. They seem happier than the British, and I do not think it is merely due to how little they work (oooooooh OH NO HE DIDN'T!) and part of me wants to experience this lifestyle for a while, to be Parisian.

But not for too long though.

As well as enjoying the city on a weekend of such wonderful weather, it was great to catch up with Cam, as well as Frieddie (my other fellow Warwicker in ESC Rennes who, probably rightly for her, abandoned me for Paris) and the other Warwickers who were based in the large capital. In fact, it makes me think of next year at Warwick, and how much I am actually looking forward to it. To avoid writing a novel in this post, I shall continue with a second one to break it up.

However, I am not wishing my life away (well, not until I return to Wales). Life in Rennes has become somewhat awesome again. Sure it will never be what it was in the first semester, or even the second, but Rennes is home, and I am about to start my last month here. The next post will fill you in on life in the present, in this Breton capital. 

Anyway, sorry for the delayed update and continuous backtracking. I am also sorry for the lack of pictures - I may add some tomorrow if I feel like it. 

So yeah, long story short, Paris is awesome. You can't do a proper year abroad in France without visiting it. After all "La France est Paris et le reste". 

Rant over

Ollie