Day 1 -- Paris, Montmarte

To get you up to speed here, I decided to keep an "on-line" journal of my time in Europe. This has never, ever been done before, so far as I can tell. In fact, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone out there who's even been to Europe, much less written about it.

Irregardless (synonym of "regardless?"), here is my journal, in blog format. Truth be told, it's exactly one year later as I'm writing this -- I figured I'd touch up the "Europe" entries of my new "japesandjibes" blog, because...well, I think they're the most interesting.

But anyhow, enough with the preamble, and on with the show. This next paragraph is from my original blog posted to MySpace:

Okay...coupla' things. First off, I've been keeping faithful with the Europe Journal, but I haven't been able to upload my writing until now. So, I'll start you off slow, then post a couple entries a day to get you caught up.

Secondly, I have pictures [ed: ignore this paragraph -- I've added pictures to this entry since I wrote this]. Unfortunately, for this first day, the pictures are stuck on a camera for which I forgot my charger [ed: true, but it doesn't matter now]. So...no pictures for day one. But if I get time (and the inclination), when I'm back in the states, I'll go back and upload [ed: you still reading? Why? I told you not to read this]. Probably won't happen[ed: it did]...but if a publisher were to pay me several millions worth of dollars in cash money (it could happen -- blogs turn into millions of dollars all the time)[ed: that last parenthetical statement was from the original, not to updated post], I'd gladly make the effort[ed: sorry, I'll stop with the "[ed:] crap now].

Anyhow: ON WITH THE BLOG!!!

Normally I'd say something like: "We made it," but that's terribly predictable. Instead I'll just lead off with the completely appropriate: "POTATO LADDER of TURKEY CHEVROLET!"

The flight was…well, imagine leaving at 11:30 PM, flying 10 ½ hours in coach. The woman in front of you had breath that smells like poo…it's so bad you can smell it a row back...and because you suck at sleeping on a plane, you're not able to sleep a wink.

I kid. It wasn't so bad. I slept fitfully…and Erika slept as she always does – aggravatingly easily. Either way, it was an airplane, and it behaved as an airplane should behave.

Me, sipping some airplane coffee, and watching us make our way over the Atlantic

"Customs" was pretty intense – we stood in line for about 10 minutes, then when we were called forward by a man (who was carrying on what could only be a "lazy" French conversation with someone behind him) who took our passport, opened it to the picture, and handed it back to us without even glancing up.

I noticed, attempting to leave customs (and the airport) that, apparently the French have a problem with "turnstiles." They must not believe they're European enough…or something. Dunno'. Instead of turnstiles, they have these miniature metal doors that either open automatically, or need to be pushed (only true Parisians seem to know which is which…the rest of us are pushing on the automatic doors, or waiting for the manual doors to open). Anyway, we passed through several iterations of "doorstiles" (the name I just coined…because I'm awesome), and made our way to the RER.

From what I can tell, "RER" stands for "Paris Subway." And it rides…like a subway in Paris (if you can imagine that).

On the train we had our first encounter with Parisian hospitality (up to this point we had been pretty much ignored…no matter how "lost" or "American" we looked). The train was…say…about half full. Erika and I decided that it was in our best interests to pack "very heavy" for our trip (~20kg apiece…or 85 pounds total). Erika's bag is so heavy (HOW HEAVY IS IT?!) that she's unable to carry it up a flight of stairs (THAT PUNCHLINE WAS AWFUL). And guess what else Europeans love? STAIRS!

Anyhow, Erika had placed her 20kg bag on the seat. Sitting across from us was a mousy, blond French woman reading Chick lit, drinking a bottle of Coke Zero, and nibbling furtively on French chocolates. She told us that we weren't allowed to do that. I didn't quite understand why -- her English was about as good as our French – maybe she thought we'd needed to make more room for other passengers? Either way, she took the initiative, and tried to lift Erika massive bag into the overhead bin…and she couldn't even get it off the floor. It was pretty tense for about 30 seconds, and I tried to heft the bag into the little bin (it didn't fit, of course). Eventually we just ignored her and sat with our bags the way they were before the stink was raised – RER rules and protocol be damned. She returned to her mousy ways, and we kept to our "rude American tourists who don't know how to be polite in a foreign country" ways.

After about 30 minutes, we arrived at the Gard du Nord train station, which is…er…a train station (Gard) in the north (du Nord) part of Paris. Damn, French is easy, isn't it? So, looking as touristy and lost as possible, we started walking. And in a very touristy move, we discovered that we didn't know how to exit the station (all the signs marked "sortie" seemed to lead down stairs, to more trains). Eventually we found our way outside, and were fortunate enough to head in the generally correct direction…straight through the "sex show" district of Montmarte…pausing only occasionally to lift Erika's suitcase over a curb…or stare at a GoogleMaps printout (just begging to get mugged by some Parisian ne'er-do-well). Luckily, people seemed uninterested in either helping us, or hindering us…which was fine with us.

As a side note, for those of you who are curious – something the guide books don't tell you – the street names in Paris are typically on the sides of the buildings, not on the "streets" themselves. Coupled with a general lack of "lighting," we had a helluva' time making our way across town.

So, several wrong turns and back-tracks later…we arrived at Hotel Bonsejour Montmarte. It was just as adorable as advertised – a hotel manager with a big birthmark on his neck checked us in…and it was our first attempt at speaking Au Françoise, and boy did we suck.

See, our French language training started months ago…but we never really got past the first 10 minutes of our language tape (where they teach us, to the rhythm of some hilariously bad techno music, to order coffee with milk). Once we'd mastered the fine art of coffee ordering, we sat back and let that information sink in…until we were about an hour away from landing at Charles de Gaulle airport. It was then that we started hectically memorizing numbers, common phrases, greetings, responses, etc.

So when we were finally forced into an actual conversation with a Frenchman we failed miserably (because he was not selling coffee). Luckily the man spoke fairly good English…and the required transaction was a fairly simple one. We paid him for our room and trudged up four flights of stairs to our new home for the next couple of days.

The view from the deck of our hotel. Yes. It was adorable.

After settling in, and phoning home, we went out for our "first meal in Europe." We found a café about a block from our hotel. The menu had an English translation, and our waitress was fairly proficient at English. In spite of this, we tried like hellfire to bust out our new French vocabulary (by ordering coffee, for instance)…but our conversations with the waitress ended up being an adorable mix of us trying to order in French, and her responding in English.

Here we got our second lesson in Parisian hospitality. The food came relatively quickly, as did the drinks…but when we asked for the bill the woman decided to clean the bar…and the glasses…and bus the tables…and clean the bar some more…and wipe down the beer taps…and talk to some big Parisian guy who wandered in…and clean the bar just a little bit more...

Erika...finally able to exit our first Parisian restaurant.

Finally…after about 30 minutes of lolly-gagging, she came with the bill. Which we paid…because we're awesome like that. We left, strolled for a bit (minus the luggage encumbrance, which made Paris much more enjoyable), and went back to our hotel room…where I am right now, laying down, typing on a laptop. Erika's sitting next to me reading a guidebook. Just noticed, our bed seems to have plastic sheets…which is pretty cool. Maybe I'll pee the bed tonight to give them a test run…