screaming godhead
Every Great City has a River
OCTOBER 17, 2007
5:45
I slept fitfully at best on the second half of the train ride. I was crammed in a 6 person enclosed cabin with five other filthy travelers’ half asleep in all variety of imaginative positions. The air was extremely hot and thick with feet smell. I got charged two days on my Eurail pass for traveling overnight, which is clearly identified as bullshit in the terms and conditions I had with me, printed in all proper and waterproof English legal tone, and useless to stop the massive French conductor from matter-of-factly squeezing the hole-punch.
I got into the Paris East train station at 6:45 and realized that my guidebook doesn’t list hostels. The cheapest hotel in the book was 80 euros, which is roughly four nights at any hostel I’ve ever been to, but I decided to head that way for lack of a better option. I tried to sit and negotiate maps in the train station, but the sound that France’s train stations use to signify a loudspeaker announcement is this like super reverby and echoed few notes that sounds like some clip from the theme song to Unsloved Mysteries, and this, combined with the nebulous mix of pigeons and long skirted gypsies that sort of just drift around in your periphery as you sit, and break around walkers like wisps of smoke only to reform behind them (more on gypsies later), all of this, was bit unnerving for me in the chill predawn of 6:45 Paris, so I just headed to the nearest subway line instead.
I gather that the word ‘hostel’ is not a French-English cognate, though hotel is, because no one seemed to have any idea what in the hell I was talking about at as I combed the city for every knowledgeable looking hotel receptionist I could find. After about the fourth hotel, throwing out an absolutely ridiculous variety of English words to mean ‘hostel’ – and I am operating entirely in parle- vouz Anglais? mode here – I was given a poorly drawn map to a nearby cultural center, with brief verbal directions in an accent so thick that I had to repeat my plea for English at least three times, though it was already being spoken. Honestly, have a French person tell you to take Boulevard St. Michelle and tell me that sounds like English.
I roamed around Paris for another hour and a half or so trying to interpret this map. Eventually I stopped at a café and ordered a coffee, a croissant, and a baguette. The coffee here is unbelievable; dark and thick and strong enough to leave a film in your mouth.
Refreshed, I tried to cross-reference the map with some others in my guide book. In doing so, I discovered an alternate interpretation of the hurried drawing and perused that direction. It quickly became clear that this was the intended direction, but there was in fact no cultural center where my friend had assured me there would be. Further, it came to me in force then that I have no idea what exactly a cultural center is or what it might be able to do for me. I gave up, finally, and set out to find an internet café to solve this the new-fashioned way.
On my way to a café, either by sheer luck or the basic laws of statistics coupled with my now heinously long meandering, I happened upon a hostel.
By some odd rules that neither French nor English allowed the receptionist and I to see eye-to-eye on, I was not allowed to stay at that hostel, but, at long last, she provided me with a list of other neighborhood hostels. I went to the only one that seemed anything like hostels I’ve been in. They had one bed open. So at 11:00 am, 5 hours after arriving in Paris East, I finally secured a bed.
The logistics of this bed, however, where absolutely soul crushing to me. I was going on 3 hours of sleep composed from a smattering of sub half-hour intervals in a sweat-box, and I already had several miles of walking under my belt. So there at the hostel, so relieved to finally have a place to sleep and more tired than I can really ever remember being, I was informed that my bed would be available at 4:00 pm.
The truth, in just about every other city I’ve been in, I would have found a nice tree and slept in its shade. Paris, however, is crawling with pick-pocket gypsies. Their little sneaky goddamn gypsy kids swarming, causing diversions, groping. One of these little whores actually went for my back left pocket in lobby of the hostel while I was checking in. She almost got a worthless map of Paris, but I caught the bitch and she played like it was just a clumsy bump as she passed. Wallets go in the back right you stupid gypsy cunt.
I passed the time at a café down the street, drinking as much of that delectable coffee as I could afford. Reading, nodding off, always watching for the fucking gypsies. At about 2:00 pm I got a second wind and went for a little stroll.
8:00 pm Saturday
So I walked toward the river and in not too much time I encountered Norte Dame. I’m quite sure there’s not a building in North America like it: spires, buttresses, horrible gargoyles covering every inch. And these rabid greyhound looking things leaping periodically from the walls. Its a shame that all of the best art is born of fanaticism. It seems people are always the most fervent about the things they’re wrong about.
Continuing down the river, I came upon Musee Louvre. This is another incredible piece of architecture. The outside of the Louvre alone is enough to spend an afternoon gawking at. It’s enormous, encompassing an inner square and front courtyard both big enough to house most modern buildings. It is entirely of stone, sculpted with an intricacy that speaks of countless thousands of skilled man-hours, and it has arches you could drive a semi through (so long as it was extremely bulletproof).
The cafes are omnipresent here; all reasonably priced, all delicious. I had a salad with avocados, smoked salmon, and a caesar-esque dressing that mad my eyes water. When the rain let up I went for it, realizing shortly that I was still very far from my hostel. I assumed I could improvise some route back to my street, which, if you’ve ever seen Paris, was plainly ridiculous. An hour of hopeless, disorienting circles andI stumbled through the door five blocks shy of soaked.
so close...
At last I was allowed to my bed (though I had to rent sheets) and I slept until 7:00 am this morning.
I ate a quick breakfast and made it to Musee Louvre by opening time. Were every piece of art removed, the interior of the Louvre would be every bit as spectacular as the exterior. With the art (and I am certainly no connoisseur of visual art), it is simply unbelievable. I won’t try to comment much on what I saw, because my vocabulary in the arts is about as extensive as my vocabulary in French, but I have to wonder if anyone alive today could paint with such intricacy, such accuracy of poise, such minutia in the wrinkling of a robe or the life in the eyes, and I think not.
I stopped back by the hostel to sort out some earlier dicking around that caused me to clear out of my room (sheets and all) and threw my second nights stay into limbo, before moving on to the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower. The arc is a massive stone structure depicting gods and heroes and should be awe-inspiring but almost becomes the norm in this city. The tower is almost inconceivably large, but a bit dull otherwise. In fact, being the foundation of steel design, it may well be responsible for the divorce of architecture and art, however necessary that may have been to reach the sky.
There’s an elevator in the Eiffel tower that, for 12 euros, will fling you up what must be a thousand feet to the tip of the structure. The line was agonizing and riddled with gypsies [See footnotes 1 and 2], but the view was well worth it. Only there did I realize how huge this city actually is. I must have seen a mere hundredth of this spanning metropolis. It seems you could fit Manhattan into it about 20 times.
I’ve seen views from those heights before; I’ve probably been on 30 airplanes. It’s not until you realize that you’re actually supported from the below, on some giant stepstool, that it really becomes amazing. You can’t see the struts from the platform atop the tower, and though no technology exists to levitate such a platform at great heights, it really seems like the more feasible explanation. You really have to think about all that steel beneath your feet, give a little jump maybe, feel it. In a way it’s a very primitive idea, to reach the sky simply by building up from the ground.
Next time I decide to go onto something so extraordinary, I intend to bring an egg so I can eat it and then do a push-up. Just for the quote. Just so that when they finally decide to blow it up, I’ll be ok with it.
11:00 pm Sunday
The Paris hostel was even lamer than the first hostel I stayed at in Berlin. There was no common area of any sort, so it was impossible to gather a crew. So I spent my last night in Paris sitting in cafés drinking espresso and wandering the streets. It was actually quite a nice wind down from the week’s travels. In the morning I went to a big bookstore over by the Louvre to pick up a little gift, then went and sat by the river for a few. I caught a two o’clock train back to Frankfurt, picked up my bags, and made it to Ludwigshafen by about 9:00 pm. And then the fun began.
[1] I’ve learned more and more about the gypsies as I’ve traveled through Europe and none of its good. They’re all over the major cities, mostly at train stations and major tourist attractions. They are beggars, especially to the English speaking, but the begging is almost always a front for some more devious scheme. Often they will ask you to write something in English for them, and while you do so, another one makes off with you bag or wallet or whatever. They always have sob stories that absolutely don’t jive with the sheer number of them, like they’re sisters and their father can’t work because of some debilitating injury etc., etc. They all have the same style of ornate long gypsy skirt that looks a bit too nice for a bunch of homeless girls to be running around wearing. There are no men.
Everything about them speaks of some frighteningly organized and widespread cult. There must be thousands of them around Europe, spanning tens of countries. Yet they all have the same bullshit stories and scams, the same too-nice clothes. I have no idea what they’re actually up to, but I have to imagine that begging is merely one leg of a complex and multifaceted business plan.
It’s also not understood where these bitches go to sleep. It seems they must just recede into walls like cockroaches in sudden light. They seem to me, in the way that they mill around the crowds in feigned aimlessness, to mingle so seamlessly with the pigeons that my personal opinion is that they bear something like the same relationship to the filthy birds as vampires do to bats.
[2] In all of this anti-gypsy ranting, I mean to refer only to this particular gypsy bitch-cult and to express my disgust with their practices. I mean to imply NO OFFENSE whatsoever to the members or associated community of Gogol Bordello, should any of them happen to read this account.
5:45
I slept fitfully at best on the second half of the train ride. I was crammed in a 6 person enclosed cabin with five other filthy travelers’ half asleep in all variety of imaginative positions. The air was extremely hot and thick with feet smell. I got charged two days on my Eurail pass for traveling overnight, which is clearly identified as bullshit in the terms and conditions I had with me, printed in all proper and waterproof English legal tone, and useless to stop the massive French conductor from matter-of-factly squeezing the hole-punch.
I got into the Paris East train station at 6:45 and realized that my guidebook doesn’t list hostels. The cheapest hotel in the book was 80 euros, which is roughly four nights at any hostel I’ve ever been to, but I decided to head that way for lack of a better option. I tried to sit and negotiate maps in the train station, but the sound that France’s train stations use to signify a loudspeaker announcement is this like super reverby and echoed few notes that sounds like some clip from the theme song to Unsloved Mysteries, and this, combined with the nebulous mix of pigeons and long skirted gypsies that sort of just drift around in your periphery as you sit, and break around walkers like wisps of smoke only to reform behind them (more on gypsies later), all of this, was bit unnerving for me in the chill predawn of 6:45 Paris, so I just headed to the nearest subway line instead.
I gather that the word ‘hostel’ is not a French-English cognate, though hotel is, because no one seemed to have any idea what in the hell I was talking about at as I combed the city for every knowledgeable looking hotel receptionist I could find. After about the fourth hotel, throwing out an absolutely ridiculous variety of English words to mean ‘hostel’ – and I am operating entirely in parle- vouz Anglais? mode here – I was given a poorly drawn map to a nearby cultural center, with brief verbal directions in an accent so thick that I had to repeat my plea for English at least three times, though it was already being spoken. Honestly, have a French person tell you to take Boulevard St. Michelle and tell me that sounds like English.
I roamed around Paris for another hour and a half or so trying to interpret this map. Eventually I stopped at a café and ordered a coffee, a croissant, and a baguette. The coffee here is unbelievable; dark and thick and strong enough to leave a film in your mouth.
Refreshed, I tried to cross-reference the map with some others in my guide book. In doing so, I discovered an alternate interpretation of the hurried drawing and perused that direction. It quickly became clear that this was the intended direction, but there was in fact no cultural center where my friend had assured me there would be. Further, it came to me in force then that I have no idea what exactly a cultural center is or what it might be able to do for me. I gave up, finally, and set out to find an internet café to solve this the new-fashioned way.
On my way to a café, either by sheer luck or the basic laws of statistics coupled with my now heinously long meandering, I happened upon a hostel.
By some odd rules that neither French nor English allowed the receptionist and I to see eye-to-eye on, I was not allowed to stay at that hostel, but, at long last, she provided me with a list of other neighborhood hostels. I went to the only one that seemed anything like hostels I’ve been in. They had one bed open. So at 11:00 am, 5 hours after arriving in Paris East, I finally secured a bed.
The logistics of this bed, however, where absolutely soul crushing to me. I was going on 3 hours of sleep composed from a smattering of sub half-hour intervals in a sweat-box, and I already had several miles of walking under my belt. So there at the hostel, so relieved to finally have a place to sleep and more tired than I can really ever remember being, I was informed that my bed would be available at 4:00 pm.
The truth, in just about every other city I’ve been in, I would have found a nice tree and slept in its shade. Paris, however, is crawling with pick-pocket gypsies. Their little sneaky goddamn gypsy kids swarming, causing diversions, groping. One of these little whores actually went for my back left pocket in lobby of the hostel while I was checking in. She almost got a worthless map of Paris, but I caught the bitch and she played like it was just a clumsy bump as she passed. Wallets go in the back right you stupid gypsy cunt.
I passed the time at a café down the street, drinking as much of that delectable coffee as I could afford. Reading, nodding off, always watching for the fucking gypsies. At about 2:00 pm I got a second wind and went for a little stroll.
8:00 pm Saturday
So I walked toward the river and in not too much time I encountered Norte Dame. I’m quite sure there’s not a building in North America like it: spires, buttresses, horrible gargoyles covering every inch. And these rabid greyhound looking things leaping periodically from the walls. Its a shame that all of the best art is born of fanaticism. It seems people are always the most fervent about the things they’re wrong about.
Continuing down the river, I came upon Musee Louvre. This is another incredible piece of architecture. The outside of the Louvre alone is enough to spend an afternoon gawking at. It’s enormous, encompassing an inner square and front courtyard both big enough to house most modern buildings. It is entirely of stone, sculpted with an intricacy that speaks of countless thousands of skilled man-hours, and it has arches you could drive a semi through (so long as it was extremely bulletproof).
In front of the Louvre, a garden spans for a kilometer at least. Beautiful flowers, precisely trimmed hedges, and priceless sculptures throughout. At the far end of this garden I was forced back by ominous rain clouds. I began back along the river, mistook some nameless tower for part of Notre Dame (only in Paris), and turned ‘toward’ the hostel. When the rain started I went into a café for dinner.
The cafes are omnipresent here; all reasonably priced, all delicious. I had a salad with avocados, smoked salmon, and a caesar-esque dressing that mad my eyes water. When the rain let up I went for it, realizing shortly that I was still very far from my hostel. I assumed I could improvise some route back to my street, which, if you’ve ever seen Paris, was plainly ridiculous. An hour of hopeless, disorienting circles andI stumbled through the door five blocks shy of soaked.
so close...At last I was allowed to my bed (though I had to rent sheets) and I slept until 7:00 am this morning.
I ate a quick breakfast and made it to Musee Louvre by opening time. Were every piece of art removed, the interior of the Louvre would be every bit as spectacular as the exterior. With the art (and I am certainly no connoisseur of visual art), it is simply unbelievable. I won’t try to comment much on what I saw, because my vocabulary in the arts is about as extensive as my vocabulary in French, but I have to wonder if anyone alive today could paint with such intricacy, such accuracy of poise, such minutia in the wrinkling of a robe or the life in the eyes, and I think not.
I stopped back by the hostel to sort out some earlier dicking around that caused me to clear out of my room (sheets and all) and threw my second nights stay into limbo, before moving on to the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower. The arc is a massive stone structure depicting gods and heroes and should be awe-inspiring but almost becomes the norm in this city. The tower is almost inconceivably large, but a bit dull otherwise. In fact, being the foundation of steel design, it may well be responsible for the divorce of architecture and art, however necessary that may have been to reach the sky.
Fucking gypsy bitches
There’s an elevator in the Eiffel tower that, for 12 euros, will fling you up what must be a thousand feet to the tip of the structure. The line was agonizing and riddled with gypsies [See footnotes 1 and 2], but the view was well worth it. Only there did I realize how huge this city actually is. I must have seen a mere hundredth of this spanning metropolis. It seems you could fit Manhattan into it about 20 times.
I’ve seen views from those heights before; I’ve probably been on 30 airplanes. It’s not until you realize that you’re actually supported from the below, on some giant stepstool, that it really becomes amazing. You can’t see the struts from the platform atop the tower, and though no technology exists to levitate such a platform at great heights, it really seems like the more feasible explanation. You really have to think about all that steel beneath your feet, give a little jump maybe, feel it. In a way it’s a very primitive idea, to reach the sky simply by building up from the ground.
Next time I decide to go onto something so extraordinary, I intend to bring an egg so I can eat it and then do a push-up. Just for the quote. Just so that when they finally decide to blow it up, I’ll be ok with it.
11:00 pm Sunday
The Paris hostel was even lamer than the first hostel I stayed at in Berlin. There was no common area of any sort, so it was impossible to gather a crew. So I spent my last night in Paris sitting in cafés drinking espresso and wandering the streets. It was actually quite a nice wind down from the week’s travels. In the morning I went to a big bookstore over by the Louvre to pick up a little gift, then went and sat by the river for a few. I caught a two o’clock train back to Frankfurt, picked up my bags, and made it to Ludwigshafen by about 9:00 pm. And then the fun began.
[1] I’ve learned more and more about the gypsies as I’ve traveled through Europe and none of its good. They’re all over the major cities, mostly at train stations and major tourist attractions. They are beggars, especially to the English speaking, but the begging is almost always a front for some more devious scheme. Often they will ask you to write something in English for them, and while you do so, another one makes off with you bag or wallet or whatever. They always have sob stories that absolutely don’t jive with the sheer number of them, like they’re sisters and their father can’t work because of some debilitating injury etc., etc. They all have the same style of ornate long gypsy skirt that looks a bit too nice for a bunch of homeless girls to be running around wearing. There are no men.
Everything about them speaks of some frighteningly organized and widespread cult. There must be thousands of them around Europe, spanning tens of countries. Yet they all have the same bullshit stories and scams, the same too-nice clothes. I have no idea what they’re actually up to, but I have to imagine that begging is merely one leg of a complex and multifaceted business plan.
It’s also not understood where these bitches go to sleep. It seems they must just recede into walls like cockroaches in sudden light. They seem to me, in the way that they mill around the crowds in feigned aimlessness, to mingle so seamlessly with the pigeons that my personal opinion is that they bear something like the same relationship to the filthy birds as vampires do to bats.
[2] In all of this anti-gypsy ranting, I mean to refer only to this particular gypsy bitch-cult and to express my disgust with their practices. I mean to imply NO OFFENSE whatsoever to the members or associated community of Gogol Bordello, should any of them happen to read this account.
posted by J.K.Scott at 8:05 PM
2 comments
