Sorry for the late update but it has been a lot to do ever since I set my foot back in Austria.
- Paris was wonderful to begin with. It felt great to finally be there and to enjoy the culture and history that lies upon the city like a blanket. It is a place I would love to go back to, just like London and to some extent Rome.
- One interesting and entertaining detail during my stay in Paris was the fashion and elegance that was so evident. After having been in Linz for almost eleven weeks, I am slowly getting used to see all types of funny beards, funny clothes and pink hairstyles. I saw nothing of that in Paris. I wish to think that even the homeless were elegantly dressed.
- We arrived in Paris early on Saturday morning, and we headed towards our hotel. We were not going to be able to check in directly and we knew it, but we already had three friends that were staying at the same hotel so we went to wake them up and to go sightseeing. The last thing the hotel receptionist said was "A bientôt monsieur" (meaning "see you later sir"). He also told us that we could check in later during the day, and we kindly accepted that without any problems. After a long day of sightseeing we returned to the hotel to check in, only now there was another man standing in the reception, telling us that our room had "plumbing problems". I felt a strong and unpleasant moment of déjà vu (mid September, Linz, Kolpinghaus). I was too experienced in this field to even react in a "customer oriented" way. I knew that this battle was lost from the very beginning. The room did not have plumbing problems, the idiot on the other side of the counter had double booked the room. We even offered him to stay there without using the restroom and the shower, but he refused. He also refused to show us the room (I was "curious" to know about the standard of the place). He redirected us to another hotel around the block, a complete joke. I have been to some shitholes through the years, but this place was worse than anything I had ever seen. No door to the showers (I was sharing room with two girls) and the toilet seat was located in a separate room, without direct accessibility to a zinc.
Bottom line: Stay the hell away from Hôtel Darcet!!
However, one of the girls in the company had a brilliant solution to our problem. She started bidding through an Internet service on an unbooked hotel room in a 4-star hotel in another part of Paris instead, and we ended up there an hour or two later. The normal price per night in that hotel (or the equivalent) was somewhere around €200 - €250 per night. We paid €30. That is €3 more than what we were supposed to pay at the other place.
- The hotel was (as I mentioned earlier) brilliant, and we checked in right in time to see Sully Muntari score 1-0 for Inter vs. Juventus in Derby d'Italia. Fantastic.
- I did not see the whole game, only 15 minutes or something. Before we left the hotel to have dinner in the city, we scrolled through the titles of adult content that the hotel had to offer for enthusiastic guests. The titles were absolutely hilarious, but what struck me the most was that almost all of them were in German. Doesn't that tell you something?
- The weekend is almost here and it has almost been one week since I left. I have one more deadline this weekend and my midterm exam on Tuesday. Tough luck. I handed in some bureaucratic masterpieces today at the international office. It's amazing how complicated everything gets.
- I am looking forward to a fantastic evening with reading, writing and more reading... NOT.
- No classes tomorrow I believe, I am looking forward to more reading writing and even more reading.
- My friends that I travelled to Paris with are leaving for Rome in a couple of hours. I am pretty tired of being a traveller (considering my situation as an exchange student), but it would really feel good to see new places every week (just like they have been doing the last two months).
Thank you for reading.
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