Paris: Take it or leave it. (OK, so it’s not that bad)

View from our hotel door. Nice.

I have been in Paris for four nights. I have one more before flying back to the states. As in Madrid I have been working a booth at a nation-sized educational fair (Salon d’Estudiant) each day, unable to see much of the city. Unlike Madrid, this time I am at least staying in the center of the city, just off the Eiffel Tower. Also, I have with me a colleague from Southville, L_____. She speaks French, so I basically sit back and let her lead while helping out where I can.


The Lion, the Obelisk, and the Tower

Night Zero: after the train and checking in, L_____ and I meet Steve (the counselor at the American school who visited our university in Feb.) for dinner. I have Gambas, or blackened shrimp. Very nice.

Fair Day One: In the morning I wander the streets about our hotel, looking for a place to have my laundry done, for I am wearing the last of my clean clothes. Thank God, I find a place. Through hand signals I communicate with the old man that all I need is wash, no expensive pressing. He says “D’ma, d’ma.” L_____ tells me this means tomorrow. Whew…
After the fair L_____ and I walk down near the military college for a late dinner. Having filled up on finger-food at the business lounge already, I just have a Guinness and chocolate mousse for dinner. This is the most sedate St. Pattie’s Day I’ve had in quite a few years.


The tower was sporting a strobe effect at times

Fair Day Two: I go pick up my laundry. Mmmm… clean clothes. After the fair we go straight to dinner at a place called Lido on the Champ d’Elysee. This is sponsored by l’Estudiant for the foreign reps at the Salon. This place is packed, and very, very cramped. Dinner is great, and afterwards is quite a show. Actually, a spectacle. Music, dancers, elaborate sets, colored lights, and many, many exposed breasts. Yes, you read that correctly. If you had a show like this in Southville, it would be called the silliest, most expensive strip club in the state. In Paris, it is high culture.
After the show, L_____ and I took in the grand new Louis Vitton store, made to look like hat boxes or something, and the Arc d’Triumph.


The tower through Guinness goggles

Fair Day Three: Oh boy. At the fair today we had our information session for interested students. Basically, no one showed up. It wasn’t that simple, but I don’t feel like explaining it all. Let’s just say that L_____ was not pleased, and rightly so. I started feeling like my Oman cold was coming back, so I called it a very early night and got about 10 hours sleep.


Notre Dame




Fair Day Four: We talked to some good students today. Enough work. Right now I am enjoying some champagne that I found in my room after the fair. You see, L_____ made my reservations, in two pieces. L_____ is a Hilton Diamond Club member. Therefore, I got her champagne when the reservation switched over. I deserve it. I just finished a six-week work trip. Also, I went on a night-time walkabout of Paris. This followed a dinner of crepes with L_____ in the Mt Parnasse area. I walked from there to Notre Dame. I seem to have a fetish with enjoying a pint of Guinness within sight of great cathedrals. I did a little pub crawl and ended up meeting a couple of guys who work for Quicksilver. Could lead to more internship opportunities for students at the university.


This one begged for black & white

Barcelona: Burn it Down

Have you ever been so enthralled by something, so spellbound, that you had the irrational urge to destroy it, because you realized it couldn’t be yours? Barcelona is like this for me. Just one day here is simply torture. It is like taking just one small sip of a freshly poured Guinness, then having it taken away. Like being allowed to watch only five minutes of the Godfather trilogy. Like only enjoying one oyster from a platter of dozens. I am filled with a sense of disgust and frustration (much like with the women of Seville) that knowing this place exceeds my grasp. At this time, that is. I will come back here. I would like to live here for a bit. Southville, Sevilla, Beirut – these are all wonderful cities, but Barcelona is now first in my mind. Plus, people here like dogs – big dogs. I like that.


Kids and dogs near the Gaudi cathedral

I left Madrid by train after visiting the American School in the morning. The Spanish countryside is everything you’d imagine the Spanish countryside to be. Close your eyes and think “The Sun Also Rises” and “For Whom the Bell Tolls” because there was too much glare on the windows for me to take pictures. Besides, I was too busy looking, and wishing I had a little villa.

I arrived in Barcelona after dark and took a cab to my hotel near the center. After a shower I walked to Las Ramblas, a central series of avenues bracketed with many bars and what not. Several were Australian or Irish in nature, so I stopped here and there for a few pints. After this I wandered about, eventually finding a bar on the corner of Rambla del Ravel where I met a group of American students. I hung out with them the rest of the night, until it was just three of us at an after-hours night club on Plaza Reial. Then to bed.


fresh produce




I woke late in the morning, but with plenty of time to make my appointment on the north side of town at The Benjamin Franklin School. Afterwards I returned to the hotel and changed clothes. I grabbed my camera and decided to go on walkabout. Using a hotel map, I hit La Pedrera (Gaudi) and then the La Gracia district. There I found a local art school where I picked up some info, then a great little jewelry shop where I bought some more presents. I got into a conversation with the owner, a woman who had been making this jewelry for 40 years. Her son is a psychology professor at Harvard. She has a factory attached the shop, which she showed me. I asked if she’d be willing to take on students and she said yes. I am going to find some Spanish-speaking student an incredible internship.


Sagrada Familia


Under Construction

After this I made my way to the Sagrada Familia, Gaudi’s still unfinished cathedral masterpiece. It was every bit as cool as I thought it would be. I parked myself Indian-style on the sidewalk and just stared at it for awhile. Then I went to the Irish pub opposite and had a pint of black stuff to fix the memory. As the light was dying, I took the Metro to a stop way up in the hills, Avenida Tibidabo. From here I trekked up even farther, where I got quite a view while sitting at a little tavern on the crest.


View of Barcelona from cafe-bar at the top


Restaurant in Tibidabo

Rather than return by Metro, I decided to get some exercise by walking all the way back to the hotel. Having worked up an impressive appetite, I went to the Hard Rock (hey, I didn’t want to go to a “real” restaurant by myself) for a bite and some brew. I ended up talking to an older English couple for about an hour. Once they left, I joined a group of three girls who’d been making fun of my gesturing behind the backs of the English. Two were Argentinean, and one was a Peruvian named Mily, all working in local hotels. We spoke Spanglish all night, from Hard Rock to the same club I’d been to the night before. Up quite late.


More Gaudi

I managed to wake up in time to pack and get to the train station in time for my all-day journey to Paris. Slept most of the first leg. Watched the countryside roll by later on.

AULA Day Five: El Final

I woke up early enough to take my dirty clothes by a lavateria I spied yesterday near La Gran Via. However, I was foiled by the fact that it is Sunday, and the establishment is closed. So now I have my dirty clothes with me at the fair. Luckily, there is a closet I can hide them in. Just to fill you in, reimbursements for laundry is one of my running battles with my office. They seem to think that $15 a week (which is what domestic reps get) will cut it all over the world. Not so. Very much not so. Refusing to pay this cost out of pocket, on principle, I have gone to great lengths to stay in this range (remember, Nasser’s apartment) until I can perhaps win my argument to get reimbursed for whatever it may cost, within reason. I am bringing back a laundry list from my current hotel. It is ludicrous.

So far, the day is slow. My objective is to press all my remaining material on students, whether they want it or not. I hate trashing it. Actually, I judged this one quite well. There should not be that much left, and what is can be given out at school visits over the next couple of days or saved for the Paris fair.

So it’s all done. I pack up my stuff and go to catch a cab. I have my laundry, my box of spare materials, my backpack, and a banner rolled up in a tube. I tell the driver “Auditorio,” as I’ve heard drivers repeat back to me every time I say “Hotel Auditorium.” He nods, and away we go. I soon suspect he is heading into town, and inquire as to what route we are taking to the hotel. “Oh”, he says in Spanish, “you should have been more specific. I thought you meant the music theatre downtown.” Yeah, the American leaving the convention center, with so much crap in his arms he can barely walk, wants to take this stuff to a concert, rather than go to the nearby hotel where foreign convention-goers usually stay. What a moron.

While we are speaking of my hotel, let me say that it is the most soulless place I’ve ever spent a week. It is the largest urban hotel in Europe, so they say. It feels as if it was converted from a mall. It is in the middle of nowhere, out by the airport, making it difficult to get into Madrid. This is a blessing in disguise, as the event this week required so much time, that if I were tempted to go enjoy the city every night, I would have been in bad shape indeed. After Seville, I needed to take a break.

However, these sentiments did not prevent me from getting off at the Sevilla Metro stop (good omen) downtown to meet Rachel (the English bird) and her booth-mate Caroline at a bar called Magister for drinks and tapas. Caroline is French, so of course we wandered into the minefield of trans-Atlantic relations. You gotta love the French. They will give you a good argument, even after they’ve admitted they are prejudiced (anti-American) hypocrites (pacifist arms dealers). We move off of politics (Rachel was looking worried when I started arguing France should be thrown off the UN Security Council in favor of India) and on to another bar, along the way touring most of the architectural sites downtown. So, at least I was able to see old Madrid, if briefly.