not so much of an update as an attempt to maintain composure.

the lady sitting at the front desk of the hostel that we're staying at looks an awful lot like an unkempt, dark haired version of the foreign writer on 30 rock, only with a bigger nose and an actual real accent.

may i present to you, sue galloway, the foreign writer from 30 rock. pretty sure her name is holga or helga or something else tragically Norweigian.

she's been playing whitney houston songs for the past hour and a half or so, in what i can only imagine is her attempt at a small scale homage to the recently deceased music artist. currently she's playing i want to dance with somebody and singing rather enthusiastically. and by "rather" i mean "very".

this really doesn't have much to do with anything, but i'm having a really hard time not laughing at her, so i'm choosing to focus all my energy on this instead. success.


another reason for this useless update is we have a train to catch in three hours and nothing to do. so we're currently killing time. i've complained about this enough that i'm sure you're all familiar with my lack of reliable internet here, therefore perusing entertainment via the web isn't a smart option. it produces slight anger storms and it's not a pretty sight.


i don't really have much else to write about today. we did spend an hour and a half traversing the creepiest/coolest cemetery ever though, and no worries, i took probably 150 pictures. i'm crossing my fingers that our train will have power outlets so i can work on those pictures tonight.

yep, i think that's about it.

tschussy!

paris makes you fall in love with the food and their history. that's how they get you.

first things first: my skin hurts. i think it’s what they call wind burn, actually. it’s making my face and hands all fake-warm and burn-y and in need of some serious moisturizing, which i shall have to postpone until after i write my daily novel for you. so, shall we begin?

i started off today less than ideal with the weirdest dream i've had in a looong, long time. the kind that leaves the rest of your day all tainty and such. you know the type. no worries my weirdness surrounding my dream was immediately pushed to the back of my mind the second i saw myself in the mirror. last night i fell asleep with wet hair. this morning i woke up looking rather Medusa-esque. very chic, very Paris. and that is the hair that i chose to immortalize by being in a bunch of pictures today. i make the best decisions.

anyway, we started off our day on a business oriented foot. we headed to the train station and purchased our train ticket for tomorrow night. 8:20 PM- 7:30 AM. thrilled. we also met a nice lady from minnesota who was staying with her cousin in Frankfurt and was here in Paris by herself for the day. we seem to have a knack for finding the lonely, women travelers from the states over here. i guess our knack could be worse, such as attracting those people who hand out fliers on the street or people who have recently eaten a bowl of onions. but i digress.

at noon we met up with marissa's friend and his two cousins in front of notre dame. we talked for a few minutes and then they took us to a fancy pants restaurant just across the street, called Cafe Panis. now, i remember telling someone once that i wasn't a huge foodie; that i didn't really care about food, and that i ate mostly to not die. i've since realized that’s because i really was just eating to not die by stuffing myself with the cheapest and most boring stuff i could find. paris has opened my eyes to real food and i have a feeling i'm going to pay for this realization once i go back to feeding myself on a college student's budget. in this restaurant i had the best Crème Brûlée anyone has ever had. ever. 

marissa's friends were so generous, they shared all their food with us so we would be able to experience as many authentic french foods as possible. (side note: my meal came with french fries which were probably the worst fries i'd ever had. jeez france, step up your fry game. honestly.) at the end of our meal they "insisted" me and marissa absolutely had to see the bathroom, because it was fancy or something. so we did, and it wasn't anything at all. in fact it was rather cramped and it smelled funny, as public restrooms do. but when we came back we found out they had insisted because they wanted to pay for the whole bill, and it was no small bill at that. i am constantly dumbfounded by generosity like that from practical strangers. 

us in front of the fancy restaurant: the guy on the left was marissa's friend. (the picture is slightly blurry because i have a camera that no one knows how to operate. apologies)

after that we walked across the stree to visit Notre Dame, which thankfully was free. and gorgeous to boot. worry-ith not, for i took loads of pictures inside and you shall all see them soon enough.

marissa's friend insisted they take a picture of us in front of notre dame. so we did. notice the awesome hair.

Notre Dame was only around the corner from Sainte Chappelle's cathedral so we headed in that direction. i'd learned about Sainte Chappelle's in my art history class last semester so i knew this was one of the major things i had to see. and it did not disappoint. the outside of the building just might be more impressive than the inside with spires so thin they remind me of fish bones; so delicate and spindly. the architecture is so precisely thin that the entire thing seems to be made of stained glass. speaking of stain-glass, the entire top layer of the cathedral is just stain glass and it's absolutely breathtaking. i actually took a video of the stain glass windows, which i just attempted to upload on here for you to all enjoy. but the internet would have not of that. so you're going to have to do without. apologies. 

right around the corner form Sainte Chappelle's we visited the Conciergerie, which started out as a palace for the city's royalty and was then turned into a prison, which housed marie antoinette in the last days before she was executed. the first floor of the building was being used for some super strange, modern art show- we were unaware of this and so we were both confused when unicorn skin, "bird houses" full of books made of legit bird feathers, and a bear rug made of wood greeted us, instead of the prison we were promised. however we were not entirely wrong, for it was the basement of the building that is full of historical information surrounding the prisoners it housed and their situations for being put there. 

i left the concierge with a sense of bittersweet awe. the way the stories of those executed during the french revolution were presented gave a sense of sadness and reverence for those who gave their lives. it left me actually wanting to search out about the revolution and it's history on my own, which is something i can say i've never felt before about any other country's revolutionary history. 

all in all, today was a really great day full of really great experiences. i think after being here for four days i've finally gotten past all the overwhelming fluff that paris tries to throw in your face and i'm starting to see and really value the rich history this place has to offer. not going to lie, i'm kinda sad to go. 

oh! funny-ish story time: so i've seen a lot of pigeons lately (especially today where this dude at Notre Dame was putting pieces of bread in his mouth and letting the birds come eat the bread from his mouth. it was as if he wanted every disease ever). i was actually almost ran into by two separate birds who decided to fly right where i was about to step, but anyway...  on the way home from the Conciergerie i actually saw a lady act like a pigeon. like legit the first thing i thought when i saw her running was, "wow, she looks exactly like a pigeon!" background story: our bus driver today was insane. like, i'm sure he is the man solely responsible for giving all of France a bad name. he's loud and scary and when people see him driving- they run. about 40 to 50 people were walking across the street at the crosswalk, where they're supposed to walk, when he suddenly felt entitled to honk his way right through it. so he did. this is when he almost hit the unsuspecting lady. she was about half way through the crosswalk when he started laying on his horn. it scared her so bad that her first step was more jump than step, but even that feels incorrect because it was really more flight than jump. she then ran away with her arms flailing behind her very pigeon-esque. not going to lie, i laughed. and how could i not? she looked like a pigeon! haha, i'm still laughing, not sorry. 

his insanity couldn't be all fun and games forever though, so he did almost hit a little five or six year old boy. and that had nobody laughing. when i saw the little boy run out into the street without knowledge of who was driving right for him, my heart lept. i legit thought we were going to hit him. luckily my bus driver did what he does best and he layed on the horn long and loud enough that the boy jumped/flew back onto the sidewalk, where his very caring and absolutely mortified mother was there waiting for him with words of love, fear, and threats and a lot of tight arm grabbing and shaking. can't say i blame her though, i thought he was a goner as well. 

so the tour bus that we've been riding around in plays music in between each fun fact about the city. want to hear the song that's was played ten times more than any other song? 

this is just one version of it, not the actual one that we've had the privilege of listening to for the past three days straight. i say that like i hate the song now, i actually don't. just to be clear. 

Paris day three: Panthéon, shakespeare and company, and cinnamon hot chocolate.

i swear the internet here is trying to kill me. after playing the game of "connecting to the login site/can't connect to the login site/connecting to the login site" for about 5 whole minutes (not the exaggerating type of minutes either. but like, legit i timed this five minutes. ridiculous.) i was about ready to force the other twelve people in the lobby off their laptops so i could get some uninterrupted bandwidth. no worries though, we're finally connected. for now.

today has been super low key, which seems a little ungrateful to say once i list off all the once-in-a-lifetime things we've done and seen in about 8 hours time. first thing we did was visit a chocolate museum, which i thought was going to be awesome considering european chocolate is supposed to be the best. yeeeeaah... that may be the case but i guess i forgot the best chocolate doesn't necessarily equal the most interesting museum. and it was cold, (i think that's the thing i'm struggling with most here. there is no warmth. the tour bus is cold. the bus stops are cold. the stores are cold. the sites are cold. while waiting for our bus today i found myself moving down the street in line with the small sliver of sunshine that had fought it's way in between the massive buildings. i ended up quite a ways from marissa, who was waiting in line where i was supposed to be. the only place that's warm is my bed and i would totally hate myself forever if i stayed in bed the whole time i was in paris.) long, and in french. we got to taste some really fancy hot chocolate after and i chose milk chocolate and cinnamon, which was easily the best cinnamon hot chocolate i've ever had in my life, albeit it was also the only cinnamon hot chocolate i've ever had, but i digress. i think they whipped warm milk and then put the flavor in that because it was so creamy and rich. i'm tempted to try making it on my own but i know it'll never live up to what i had today.
oh! also, at the end of the tour they had a room full of stupidly fancy cups that royalty used to drink their hot chocolate out from. one of the cups was designed in such a way that the gentlemen using it could enjoy their cup-o-cocoa without dirtying their mustache. hilarious. don't worry, i totally took a picture. (as seen to the right) i find the flowery design on the mustache cup to be awfully fitting. do you think those fancy pants dudes were also desperately afraid their lipstick would come off onto their precious floral-to-the-max cup? buh dun dun tch! (jk, to be fair all the french men i've seen this trip have been very, very ruggedly manly. rest assured. i'm only calling the old royal men, who wore powdered wigs and tights, girls. buuut moving on)


the highlight of my day was easily our trip to shakespeare and company, which enabled me to cross something off my bucket list that i completely forgot to even put on my bucket list. shakespeare and company is a world famous bookstore on paris's left bank most well known for being the gathering place for writers such as ernest hemingway and james joyce. it's been featured in a few films and is basically heaven for literature nerds everywhere. including me. i could have easily spent the entire day in that little store. unfortunately you're not allowed to take pictures, which nearly killed me. nearly. and so with my nikon in my backpack i figured i'd compromise with the store and only take pictures with my less than amazing phone. that way everyone wins... right? right. the walls were completely covered with gorgeous new, and gorgeous old books alike. there were a few books i wanted to buy so badly because they were old and full of character. but alas, books are heavy and money is for food at this point. so....

i decided that i was allowed to purchase only one book there. i wanted to make it a classic that i knew i already loved, so naturally i purchased the picture of dorian gray. <<<
this was my favorite book that i read last year and this specific version of the book is so absolutely gorgeous, i couldn't resist. swoooooon. one of my favorite things they do at the store is when you purchase a book they stamp it with the official "shakespeare and company stamp" and i totally got one >>>

this isn't my actual stamp, 

i'm too lazy to get it out and take a picture of it right now, 

but i'm sure you'll see mine soon enough.

our next stop was the pantheon, which i managed to only call the parthenon once, ten points! it was adequately freezing, enormous, and fancy inside. we went down to the basement to the crypt of all the famous french people who were buried there including mrs. marie curie and the author of my favorite movie, the count of monte cristo: alexander dumas. i took pictures of these things as well buuut you get to wait a few days for me to finally take them off my camera (i'm currently up to 430 photos. yay!), edit, and upload them. the pantheon is also house to foucault's pendulum, which claims to hold completely still even though it gently swings in the middle of the pantheon. the explanation? the pendulum isn't moving but rather it's the pantheon that's moving with the rotation of the earth and all that other trippy stuff. honestly it's hard for me to wrap my mind that. i took a video of the pendulum swinging buuut i shall save that for another day. or i'll put it up here later and just not tell you. who knows. 

on our way back to the hostel from the pantheon we stopped at a random place for linner/dunch. we both wanted to try authentic paninis and crepes while we were here so i ordered some random panini, a lemon crepe, and cherry coke (which tasted sugar free and a little weird). the lemon crepe alone was reason enough to stay here in paris for the rest of my life. they do lemon perfect here. mmmmm. the dude who ran the place was a little overbearing, but still charming.

alright, i can tell i'm getting tired because i just want to write about the rest of today's experiences in short three word sentences. crepes are good. he was nice. we walked far. it was freezing. i'm finally warm. i love chocolate. blah blah blah.

day three was easily a success.

writing frozen is hard, but paris is so worth it.

today has been ultra surreal. although now that i'm thinking about it, it started off as anything but.
me and marissa woke up this morning in a room with a young korean couple, who had decided to shower sans curtain last night making it necessary to wear boots to wade through all the water. wet sock, to the extreme.

the day was all uphill from there though.

at about 10:30 we caught a bus to the Louvre Museum, (aaand we totally got in fo' free! thank you Innsbruck Student Pass) where we spent a good chunk of our day. turns out i have a huge affinity for greek statues, but we all kind of already knew that. i took a bunch of pictures that i'm not willing to sort through right now, but once i do i'm sure i'll let you all know.

at about 3 we decided to find our way over to the Eiffel Tower via tour bus, which we got at an inflated "discounted" price from our hostel. Marissa reminded me that i probably wasn't going to have a chance to sit on top of a tour bus while it traversed Paris ever again, so i braved the cold and we sat on top (a decision i am stiff suffering the consequences of as i sit here in the lobby in my scarf and coat, even after three hours of being indoors). all day i was on the hunt for an eiffel tower charm for my unfortunately bare charm bracelet, and i'm happy to report i found one in the gift shop at the base of the tower for only 12 euros.

i took this from the top of the tour bus. all of paris looks amazing like this. i wish i even knew what this was a picture of, but alas i do not. 

the view from on top of the tower was something i don't think i'll soon forget. we went at sundown, which is apparently the best time to go, and i swear the city seems to stretch on forever. it's gorgeous.

the view from the eiffel tower. uhmm amazing. 

me, frozen. i fully realize i'm going to look the EXACT same in every picture because it's freezing and i'm wearing as many layers as humanly possible. 

but since i was already so unfortunately frozen i couldn't stay up there for long and we ended up leaving after only five minutes. we made a mad dash for our bus in hopes that it would be there sooner than later to minimize our time outdoors and after a very heartfelt impromptu song i made up and preformed to entice the bus to hurry, it arrived, just in time for me to realize i had misplaced (or rather lost) my 32 euro, two day ticket. after waiting in the cold. with no other way to get home. i frantically searched all my pockets as the bus that was supposed to take me and marissa home left without us. for the first time in a few hours my thoughts weren't consumed with how frozen i was, but instead they were focused on just how retarded i was to lose that pass now that we were the farthest from our hostel that we planned on going.

so with no other way to get home we decided to take a taxi, which didn't end up costing as much as i thought it was going to, plus it was warm. oh! also i promise to never complain about St. George drivers again. oh. my. gosh. as far as i can tell there are no traffic rules here. or at least no rules that are followed. pedestrians walk when they want. drivers know no lanes. and car horns are apparently necessary... pure insanity.

we made it though. we purchased quite the inventive lunch/dinner of random items we found at the market a few buildings down (side note! they're playing "hey there delilah" here in the lobby. aw... american music) and sat down to eat it in the lobby here right next to steve, an older gentleman from southern california, who felt it was his duty and his right to inform us of... everything. we got a nice little lecture on how mass with in an ancient catholic church is living art, how republicans are doing their best to destroy america, and on the history of paris, van gough (and his film maker grand-nephew... who get a muslem murdered or something), the lucrative LA art movement in the 80's, and a bunch of other random bits about this dude's financial status, or lack thereof, how many mormon's he's ever met and his opinion of each and every one of them, and how many times he's been to whichever country. we seriously talked to him for an hour.

it's now almost 10 PM my toes are still frozen, i just finished my hot chocolate and one of my ribs is fighting to pop out of place so i'm going to call it a night.

the traveler's journal: a semi pointless story about a train ride to paris and other paris related thangs.

so i'm currently sitting in the lobby of a hostel in paris, sucking up more than my fair share of free wifi, while a french version of "you'll be in my heart," by phil colins plays over the radio (those are definitely words i never thought i'd say). it's only 8:05 PM but i'm already to throw in the towel and call it a night. want to know why? ok:
so yesterday me and marissa caught an 8:30 PM train from innsbruck to munich. apparently our train was having difficulties though, because it was fifteen minutes late, giving us a slight heart attack and only twenty minutes to get to our connecting train in munich. that was the second most stressful train ride of my life (the first being the one from zurich to innsbruck, as a sleep deprived maria wasn't even sure she was on the right train, or that anyone would be there in the end to meet her because her train was an hour late, or that she'd even be awake to get off at her stop because she keep falling asleep every time she blinked. also, where did that third person talking come from? weird.) we pulled into the munich station with 2 minutes to spare before our next train was scheduled to take off, prompting the first step off the train to be the first step of a fun little run through the munich train station from platform 14 to 23.

we ended up making it though, miraculously enough, and then spent the next 13 hours sitting in a compartment with two other people as the temperature went from freezing to boiling multiple times as the train stopped every half an hour for the first two hours.

actual serious story time: so when i first told everyone that i was studying abroad multiple people felt the need to share scary travel stories that either they'd experienced, or that they'd seen on tv (yes people, i've seen taken, thank you for your concern). one such story was told to me by my mom, who had heard it from her friend who studied abroad 15 years ago in europe, and it goes a little something like this: 


so they were traveling via night rail to italy and the conductor of the train would go into each compartment after the people inside had fallen asleep, and he would spray "this stuff" to make everyone fall into a super deep sleep so he could later go through their stuff and take what he wanted without anyone knowing. no worries the story ends happily, as my mother's friend stayed up and watched over everyone's bags and when the conductor came into their cabin she yelled at him and scared him away. and everyone lived happily ever after.

now time for my story: at about 2:30 AM we were stopping for a while to cut the train in half or something because half of us were heading to paris and the other half of us were heading to amsterdam. everyone in my cabin was asleep, except for me because the room had gone from boiling lava hot to freezing again, when the cabin door opened and a dude in an official looking, maybe conductor?, train suit came in and started poking around near the lady who was sleeping across from us. i groggily looked over at him and he shortly left the room. i was then able to fall asleep for a little while longer until i heard the door open again. when i saw that it was the same conductor man i sat up this time and made sure he knew i was awake. he made eye contact with me and either kissed two of his fingers or put a finger to his lips in a "shhh" fashion, i didn't have my glasses on so i can't be sure, winked and then left. i wasn't inclined to believe my mom's horror conductor story before... but now... i dunno.

for most of the train ride, the song train song by feist and ben gibbard was stuck in my head. slightly annoying. also, i had a dream that the hostel we stayed at served us pickled and cooked bat for breakfast. woke up from that one with a bad taste in my mouth. ah bah dun dun tch!

wow, now that i've taken a million, long winded paragraphs to tell you about half of our journey i'll sum up the rest as quickly as possible.
we arrived in paris at about 10:30, as previously said, and immediately set out to find us a cheap hostel. after walking in the completely wrong direction for... a while, we arrived at the hostel "vintage" at 11:30. the nice man at the front desk took our bags and told us our room wouldn't be ready until 4. he didn't send us on our way before taking our payment, a sweet 124 euros for 4 nights, and giving us a map with circled destinations on it. we set out to discover as much of paris as we could by foot, which turns out wasn't very much. guys, this place is huge. we saw a church that has had someone inside it constantly praying from the time it was built, 125 years ago. i could even point out and name some of the classicizing features of the church, take that last semester's art history class! i wanted so badly to take pictures of the inside of the church but it was strictly prohibited, and i didn't feel like getting kicked out of paris on my first day here, so i settled with pictures of the outside of the church instead. i don't really want to edit all the pictures i've taken today yet, which admittedly aren't all that much, but i'll give you at least one picture of the church. oh! i totally forgot to mention, we ran into a lady from dallas on our way to the church. she was in paris all by herself and she was rather chatty and slightly motherly, which was nice. anyway, that nice lady decided me and marissa really needed a picture in front of the fancy pants cathedral, so she attempted to use my camera to take one. and the picture on the left is the result (after a lot of editing to lighten it up) of that. ha.

after the church we went on a fun little walk to visit one of the mystery circles on our map. turns out our destination took us through the... adult part of town. that was an adventure, to say the least. 

we came back and checked into our rooms after that and then wandered around town some more, stopping for food a time or two. can i just say the food here is divine? i walk past bakeries and am immediately filled with the desire to eat everything my eyes see (ha, i say that like it's any different from the rest of my life, but you get the idea.)

so far i've had a quiche, the best lemon pie thing ever, and a variety of a nutella candy bar. it's a good thing that i'm spending half of my days walking or i'm pretty sure i'd end up coming home fat. 

well, it's now almost 10 PM. i think that's a long enough novel for you guys to read for tonight (although i'm pretty sure my mom is the only person who would have gotten this far. mom, you're a trooper). 

until tomorrow,  tschüss!