Paris, 15.05.04-17.05.04

Stayed in the hotel Mont Blanc this time. It's in the 5th arrondissement, cheap, clean and otherwise OK, and has a toilet with a door that cannot be closed when somebody is using it because there is no space at all between the seat and the door. Well, that's not a problem when you are alone.

The weather was lovely. Decided not to go to any museums or suchlike and just to hang out. The 5th and the 6th are my favorite places in Paris. The city is much like it was the year before, except for better weather. The only things that changed was the appearance of even more Asian delis than there used to be (beautiful but average as far as the food is concerned) and a lot of newspaper headlines telling about the local gay marriage debate, probably due to the fact that the gay marriages in Massachusetts were due to start on Monday.

Suddenly felt like having sex right there and then, but Killeri was not with me and the locals are very much not to my taste. There was a lot of men perstering women in the streets. Or me, anyway. For some reason I have guys trying to pick me up in the streets all the time, more than many women I know. Don't understand why: I am not particularly pretty, not a particularly nice person, and, alas, not particularly young anymore. Either it's the big tits, or I look much friendlier than I really am, or I just walk around more than most people. In any case none of them has ever had any luck with me. In Finland it usually just takes a glimpse or two of my "inner beauty" to scare those guys away, but many other nations, including the French, are more persistent. The French are brave, too. I can only raise my hat (but obviously not drop my pants) to a guy who is trying to pick up a woman who is 30 years younger than him, 30 cm taller and has 30 more teeth. This time's funniest guy was an Indian from UK who tried to impress me by talking about numerology and palm reading. He asked me for my birth date and immediately deduced from it that I am not married. One could have thought that my previous mention of my boyfriend could cause someone to deduce that I do not also have a husband even without knowing my birth date.

Realized that I'd never been to Champs-Elysees at night and went there. Looked pretty nice but I still prefer the 5th and the 6th. Place de la Concorde was nice in the dark too and the Eiffel tower had some weird blinking lights all over.

Next day I decided to go to a museum anyway. I'd always wanted to go to the museum of cinema and it had always been closed when I was in Paris. Walked to Trocadero and found out that it was closed again. Is the damn thing ever open? Instead saw a lot of Chinese demonstrating for Falun Dafa. Or against, go figure.

Shopped for DVDs. France has a lot of lovely DVDs, too bad I can't afford them all. Also they have a nasty habit of not putting any subtitles in, not even in French for the deaf people. Don't they have any deaf people in France? I can watch a French movie without subtitles but it takes some effort. With subtitles in French it would be no effort at all.

Paris also has a lot of bookstores and books (in French and otherwise). I know it's fashionable to say bad things about the French, both in the US and in Finland, but I am convinced that people who have a bookstore on every corner cannot be all bad. I managed to resist the impulse to go to Gibert Joseph (a huge bookstore on St. Michel; probably part of a chain) and buy it all. OK, I did not really manage to resist the impulse, I simply left the shopping for Sunday and forgot that it was closed on Sundays.

In the afternood decided to walk down rue de Rivoli in Marais and then maybe to rue des Rosier (a Jewish neighborhood) to get some local bagels.

Last year I saw more police in Paris than I'd seen in all my previous life put together, and I'd thought that I'd never see even half as many again. Well, I was wrong. Rue de Rivoli was a complete traffic jam consisting only of police cars for several blocks. Reminded me of Blues Brothers. The cars and the police were positioned like something was happening in the Place de la Bastille and for a second I wondered whether somebody is trying to take the Bastille again. Using my regular prudence and common sense, or lack thereof, I went there too. There was a huge demonstration against antisemitism, which was just ending (demonstration, not antisemitism). A large group of people broke off from the demonstration and moved towards rue des Rosiers so decisively that I realized that unless I run ahead of them I have no chance of any bagels at all, but was too lazy to run. When I got there, the bagels were long gone, the street had a carneval-like atmosphere, some old guys were playing klezmer music and what looked like a Jewish motorcycle gang was finishing up some kosher pizza.

Walked through the 6th again, where some Berber guy in his sixties tried to set up a date with me in spite of being on duty as a restaurant thrower-in. He looked very much like my late uncle Zyama. The thought of being picked up by uncle Zyama made me giggle, which the Berber guy unfortunately understood wrong.

Had a dinner at le Bistrot Mazarin (42 rue Mazarine). Great place, great food, reasonable prices. That's in the 6th but a couple of blocks away from most restaurants there.

One more thing about Paris: nowadays there are role-playing game stores everywhere, at least in the 5th. Lots of them.