catacombs

So the French culture is well known to be one of theatre, beauty, and art and this past weekend I saw that this extended even to Paris' remedy for storing the bones of the dead.

First you have to walk a ways to get to the actual bone room and along the way I must say I was very impressed with the place's use of light (Is it wrong to want the person who did the lighting there to do lighting for my next apartment?)



It really created a good ambiance before seeing the entrance which states: "Stop! It's here, the empire of death!" (Best door sign, ever).



Immediately upon entry I was greeted by inhabitants of the empire.



After of course, the initial shock, I began to realize the enormity of it all. The walls for a good half mile (maybe more) consisted of human bones.



And after I got past that, I began to see that the bones were arranged in a decorative, almost artistic way. Some obvious (skull and crossbones).



Some practical (a giant vase).



And some even romantic (a heart).



Which begs the question, why? From what I had read, the catacombs resulted in a need to store human remains due to insanitary conditions in the city - not someone's art project. My own personal theory is that the guys whose job it was to do such a morbid and monotonous task just simple got tired of stacking femurs all day. And we all know boredom is the father of creativeness so one of the guys started being fancy and before you knew it, they had built a giant vase.

I was told that they search you before leaving the place to make sure you weren't trying to bring home with you the remains of a dead stranger. I found this to be silly.

But sure enough, before we left someone checked our bags. Next to him were a stack of bones (even skulls) all confiscated within the last couple of days.



Right. I wonder what people say when they're caught. Er. I had that skull on me before I came.

So yeah in the end the catacombs really made me think (about life, death, and humantiy), like good art should.

carte de sejour part deux

So today I went to the prefecture to get my new carte de sejour. You may be asking yourself, wait but didn't Kelly already go through this hellish nightmare?

No that was just the process of renewing my residence card. From that I got a receipt that says I have requested a new card along with an appointment to pick up the real thing in two months.

Those who are astute might wonder now, but wait today is 2 months and 2 weeks after Kelly's renewal appointment. Correct. I originally had an appointment on the 6th of January and on that day I went to the prefecture only to be greeted by a locked door and this sign:



No that's not an advertisement for a new club opening, it's the poor student's only means of knowing that the prefecture has in fact, moved, and if are unlucky enough to have an appointment during the week of the 4th - 8th you now have a new appointment 2 weeks after your original date (remember my rule about never getting something done the first time you go in France? mmm h'mmm).

That brings me to today. I was a little concerned about finding the place but that turned out to be silly since the prefecture was clearly marked with a giant line of unhappy people outside.

I was prepared for this because knowing how France works I was pretty sure that before they decided to change everyone's appointment on the week of the 4th to the week of the 18th , they had already given out appointments for 18th. That meant that now the already beyond capacity number of "appointments" (it's not really an appointment it's a time slot you have assigned to you along with like 50 other people) have doubled for the week of the 18th. This I was sure of.

What I didn't account for was the fact that the prefecture had now joined offices with... wait for it.

The French DMV! (that France, still full of surprises). So now imagine the above scenario and add to that people waiting at your average DMV.

Do you ever wonder to yourself that perhaps god is just some really bored guy that tries to amuse himself when there's no good t.v. on? Or perhaps that humanity is one big video game for aliens where the goal is to make doing the simplist thing as challenging as possible. Bonus points for ridiculousness.

I wondered these things while I stood in line to get in into the prefecture. Because it's like someone saw me go to the prefecture on the 6th and decided that no, it was just too easy. Let's multiple the line by 100, move the line outside, and make it not only cold, but raining as well. Hahahahahaha.



Everything. Happens. To. Me.

In the end I got in and got my new carte de sejour. The physical act of getting it took 2 minutes. Total wait time: 2 hours.

It expires in October 2010. I shall cherish every moment until then.

il neige encore

saint sylvestre

So against the advice of Parisiennes and my own experience of underwelming "iconic" things to do (yes New Year's eve in Time Square I am looking at you), I celebrated New Years at the Eiffel Tower. But first there was dinner.

Thinking ourselves clever we tried to book a restaurant next to the Eiffel tower only to be asked for a 300 Euro deposit for dinner. Per person.

Searching for something a little more budget friendly I exhausted my Lonely Planet for choices and scoured the internet. I finally found a resteraunt for 60 euros a plate and in a decent range of the Eiffel festivities.

The upside was the restaurant turned out to have a less expensive set menu for 35 euros that was not the 7 course New Year's eve special. We opted for this because 1. We wanted to finish dinner early to head to the Eiffel and 2. We (and our stomaches) still had vague memories of the other 7 course meal we had recently (Xmas).

The downside was that get what you pay for and I ended up getting two oysters as an appetizer (90 percent of the dish consisted of the uneditable shell, unediable salt pebbles, inediable seaweed, and oyster ice shreds which I didn't eat - on the right):



For my main course I ordered Gambas but it turned out to be just one big shrimp (I'm convinced the beady eye thing is laughing at me in the picture):



The chocolate cake for dessert and the live entertainment (the owners of the restaurant are also a paino/singer duo) weren't half bad this could be due to the fact that I was already drunk by this point (hey, I did have two oysters and a big shrimp for dinner, k?).

At 11 we headed to the Trocadero. Unforch so was everyone else so by the time we actually got close enough to the train to board it we were denied by the law of physics in which a body of mass can not occupy the same area as another 500 bodies of mass squeezed into a metro car. We got lucky by the 4th train when some unfortunate souls squeezed their way off the train.

Five arm-pitt filled "why the hell are you trying to hold on to the bar therefore pressing your arm against my face, falling is a luxury for those with space TO fall" metro stops later, we ended up at Trocadero only to get into the queue to get out of the metro.

At 11:50 we stepped out of the metro and into the mud and fog to view the Eiffel tower never before lights "spectacle" (read: the Eiffel tower turned different colors):



Then it kind of did this thing were the lights incrementally decreased from the top down and I guess the this was the countdown because then the Eiffel tower went into a blaze of white light:



Afterwards you heard scattered cries of "Happy New Year!" and popped champagne bottles (gotta love the absence of open liquor laws) throughout the crowd after everyone checked their watches (or cell phones) and figured that it was, in fact, new years (thank you confusing and unorganized France).

Then everyone kind of waited around for the Eiffel Tower to do something else. When it didn't the crowd started to thin out.

Cold, and ankle deep in mud we decided to walk to a further smaller metro while swigging champagne and dodging drunk people on the streets. It took us a total of 2 and half hours of metro transit time to get back to the hotel.

So yeah that was my New Years. Two and a half hours to consume 2 oysters and 1 shrimp, 15 minutes to watch the Eiffel tower change colors , and a total of almost 4 hours trying to get to the metro, on the metro, riding the metro, and finally off the metro.

90 percent crap kinda like my appetizer. C'est la vie.

Happy New Year.