Parislog 41
August 15, 2006

I had a nice and busy day today starting out with meeting up with a woman from a site called freecycleparis. This is a cool site that I ran into the other day where people give away anything that they have no use. No one can charge for anything. I got a whole bunch of South Park videos from her. That should give me a little amusement.

I then had a rendez-vous with A* and I* to go to see Pirates of Caribbean. The cinema we went to is in a little section of Paris called Bercy Village that used to be a wine processing area and has now been gentrified. It is an adorable little road with a ton of little bistros and a couple of nice shops. On the next street over is a cooking school in more of the old industrial buildings but this street has a little more of the original look left over. It is a highly enjoyed area by the Yuppie crowd.

While I was on the metro going over there, there was a little girl sitting in the seat right across from me who was with a rather large family. There were three kids and the two parents who gave off the impression that they were from the country. They were bigger and louder then the average city dweller and the mannerisms just seemed so foreign even though they were speaking French. So I started to realize that the girl was mimicking the way that I was sitting. I was very upright in my chair with one hand resting on the wrist of the other on my lap and I had one foot under the seat and one slightly in front of the seat. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure and so I changed the position of my feet and sure enough she did exactly the same thing. It brought a little secret smile to my face.

The metro that takes me to Bercy Village is the newest line in Paris. #14. It is a driverless train and is a little freaky to ride. When I got to the train it was just arriving and so I jumped on as soon as I got on the platform, which happened to be the back end of the train. Then as the train was going, I walked all the way up to the front of the train. All the cars are connected just like the articulated buses and so it is completely open from front to back. Then when you arrive at the front there is a window that is open to the track and dark in front of you, that is unless a train is coming the other way or a station is coming up. It is very interesting to be able to watch like that.

After the movie, I went to a Meetup.com Paris, The Paris French Language meetup. It was at a little bar on rue Montmartre and was a bunch of people interested in practicing French and English with each other. I am using this venue to reach out and meet some new people in town. I was able to have conversations with 4 people and I really enjoyed myself, until that hour when the bars turn up the music. I really wish that bars didn’t do that. I have such a hard time hearing conversation in that sort of environment. And my voice gets tired from competing with it. Other than that, I had fun. Two were women that were fun to talk too and two were men of which one had family in the knitwear business. Score.