Confessions of a Culture Vulture

The first week of Uni is always slow. It's even slower when you understand nothing that anyone says. Thankfully, French universities don't seem to set homework for classes, so I don't suppose it matters that I'm confused until the exams. What a horrible thought. 
Anyway, I've spent most of my spare time running through bookshops trying to find the hundred and ten french books, and the five or six english ones I have to read this semester. 

Warning, this book might kill! - Found in Boulinier, Boulevard St Michel

Aside from hiding in bookshops, I've not done much apart from skulk around Paris and find quirky little cultural things, which is great. Cars were the first cute find.

And then a little bit of René Magritte. 

Not sure if that one was a clever pun or cheeky graffiti.

Back to School

Usually the start of the year makes me want to throw myself out of a window. This year is only slightly different. Enrolling for classes at the Sorbonne has already been a massive pain, and I've not even done it properly yet. Don't get me wrong, we tried - we followed the instructions, chose classes, filled in paperwork, the lot. But as it turns out, half the classes clash or are in completely opposite ends of the city, and the other half are boring beyond compare.
Having said that, we have been to a few classes so far. The first day was a bit of a nightmare: we ended up having a four-hour gap between classes. In any other city, it would have been the choice between a mind-numbing library visit or a trip home and back. Luckily, there's more to do in Paris.
We popped up to the Latin Quarter to find a place to get lunch first. We strolled around for a bit trying to find a French place - we figured we should be eating french food given where we were. Naturally we ended up going for Burritos. 

Chido Mexican Street Food - Rue Mouffetard 

Despite giving in to the mouth-watering temptation of Mexican food, we actually thought this was a good find. The food is dead cheap, absolutely delicious, and it's a quiet place too. Definitely recommend. 
Full to bursting point and feeling lazy after the first class of the semester, we had to figure out what to do with the left over three hours before our next lesson.

Ceiling of the Pantheon - this quickly became my desktop background

The decision was made to pop to the Pantheon. I won't lie to you, I don't really know what it is. What I do know is that a lot of France's most prominent figures are buried in the crypt beneath it - Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Voltaire, the list goes on. Quite a creepy place to be honest, but interesting. Unfortunately for us, in the middle of this huge tomb, full of France's most respected people, we got caught by uncontrollable giggling. Definitely not the appropriate time or place.

I didn't sign up for this

So, it's time to sign up for classes. We had a (relatively useless) talk at the University, and I met Sonia, who goes to my Uni at home, but who I've never really talked to before (who knows why, she's fab). We decided to grab lunch after the talk and try and figure out how to sign up for classes. Spoiler alert, it's impossible. If you're headed on a future year abroad, prepare to be baffled for a while, followed by a long period of confusion, before you decide to just write down what your friend did and hope for the best.

In other news, I'm really starting to love this little things about living here. I've lived in a city before, and I've lived in the arse-end of nowhere too, but this is a completely different breed of place. Even the bog-standard view from my window makes me happy.

La Vie Flaneuse

One week on, and I'm still not a student yet. Classes don't start until the 21st, so I've got plenty of spare time. And so begins the sightseeing (I'm allowed to be a tourist until I have actual responsibilities).
In the desperate search for friends that every fresher encounters, I posted on an Erasmus Facebook page, and met a great girl from Norway. We decided to meet up and wander around, and the result, of course, was a whole load of pretty photos. 

We started off at the Eiffel Tower, of course. After sitting on the grass on the Champ de Mars for a while, we moved on to the lesser known parts of Paris.

Ok, when I said lesser known, I may have been stretching the truth. Our next stop was the Louvre. As we were on a self-made walking tour, we didn't go inside (we've both been in before), but the pyramids are a great photo op when you're on a slow walk.

We walked back along the Seine, and without a doubt, I have never enjoyed walking home more. Paris at the moment is in the blissful suspension between Summer and Autumn; the leaves are turning those warm colours, but the sky is still clear blue and the sun is still red hot. What a time to be alive.

10 Things I’ve learnt during my first two weeks in Paris

1. Paris is beautiful.
I mean that one was obvious, no surprise here. 

2. If you want to do anything official in France (open a bank account, set up a SIM card), you’ll need a lot of paperwork.
Passports, attestation d’assurance, student cards, EHIC cards etc. - you need all of it or you’ll get a blank stare from a French employee.

3. Woody Allen was wrong -
Paris is not more beautiful when it rains.

4. The Euro is absolutely not worth the same amount as the Pound.
When you go shopping you don’t need to drop your jaw because you spent 20 euros in Monoprix on what seemed like a small shop - that’s actually less than £15.

5. French water is not pleasant to drink.
It’s clean, and safe to drink, it’s just not nice to drink.

6. This is not like England - everywhere is closed on a Sunday.
Some sparse grocery stores are open, and businesses in massively touristy areas are open, but your local supermarket might be closed.

7. There is an air raid siren that goes off every 1st Wednesday of the month in Paris.
It’s a WW2 air raid siren that they have maintained in the event of nuclear war. Unsettling if you don’t know what it is! (Yes, I did learn the hard way)

8. French Universities are on the same organisational level as Ron Swanson -
0/10. They will schedule an “orientation” talk. They will give you no information. You will have to stand outside of an office for three weeks before you know where you are meant to be.

9. A) There is a lot of pressure on year abroad to make loads of new friends 

and socialize all day every day, but if you need some alone time to recharge, don’t beat yourself up about it. Watch some Netflix. Go for a walk. Whatever.

B) But it is pretty nice to make a couple of friends 

who you can talk to if you need to. Being alone in a new country is some scary shit, it’s nice to have people there for you if you need them.

10. The Eiffel Tower is just scaffolding. 

This is a confirmed fact. There are a lot of prettier things in Paris.

Paris est une fête

As you may know from an earlier post, this academic year is the start of my Year Abroad: 5 months in France, and 6 in Germany. This week, I started the journey. Paris is my new home for five months, and it's terrifying. Scary as it might be to move across the channel - to a place I don't know, with people I've never met and a language I hardly speak - it's also exciting to think that this is going to be a chapter in my life I will never forget. How many people can say, "I lived in Paris"? How many can say that they walked along the Seine on their days off; that their classroom is literally 500 meters from the Notre Dame? Not many.  So I'm turning my cheek on the anxiety I'm feeling, and planning a great 5 months in a great city, hopefully with great people and great experiences. It's been a bizarre week, but a great one already. I'm not in class yet, so I've got a whole load of free time to wander around the city and get a feel for the area.  My first mission was to figure out the route to Uni, so I set off on what turned out to be one of the most scenic strolls of my life to date. 

Jardin du Luxembourg

Rue du Vaugirard

At this point, it was starting to feel like I was living in a very realistic dream. By the time I got to the University, I was pretty sure this was an Inception moment, because this is what the Sorbonne building looks like.

Université Sorbonne Paris IV

The Instagrammer's dream. I have no idea what it will be like going to the actual classes, or if I will even survive the French language, but it's safe to say that I'm living in a fairytale at the moment.

Have we met? | John Wick Review

Thanks to Cineworld Unlimited, last night I was afforded a viewing of Keanu Reeves’ new film, John Wick, a week before the box office opens. The movie poster - Reeves with smoking guns in both hands, and a black suit reminiscent of his matrix days - was promising. But I hadn’t seen any sign of this film in movie theatres yet; no preview, no trailer, no trace. I didn’t know what to expect. And yet somehow, this film was not what I expected. 

The first twenty minutes were extremely calm; even sombre. We meet John Wick, a normal guy, who has just lost his wife to a mystery illness. Anyone with a soft-centred heart is roped in when a tiny puppy, a gift from Wick’s late wife, arrives on his doorstep. We’re reminded of PS I Love You. We see a grieving man getting used to Daisy, a puppy he wasn’t expecting, but probably needed. We’re attached. To them both. 

So heart strings are sufficiently pulled. But don’t be fooled - the atmosphere quickly changes. In a gas-station exchange, we meet Josef (played by Alfie Allen with an impressive russian accent), and the tension in the film is revealed. What is that tension? Wick’s car. Anti-climax? I thought so. At this point I can’t tell who the target audience is - the puppy-loving softie or the car-crazed lad. Give it a few scenes, and we find out exactly what is going on here. 

Brace yourselves, you’re not only about to hear a (very mild) spoiler, but you’re likely going to be a little disturbed. We’re in Wick’s apartment in the middle of the night. Daisy is awake. Wick pulls himself out of bed to let his new puppy out. But, of course, as he trudges down the stairs, he discovers that three Assassin’s Creed-style cloaked figures are waiting for him in his living room. No doubt, a flawlessly choreographed fight scene follows, and Wick is floored. Daisy is crying. A figure is unhooded. It’s Josef, here to claim Wick’s car. Dramatic, right? But what follows is one of the most unnecessary sources of revenge film has ever seen. Josef, tired of the puppy’s yelping and presumably devoid of any human sentiment, utters the words “Shut that dog up”. I don’t need to share gorey details for you to understand what’s happened here. Wick wakes up an indefinite amount of time later, shares a traumatic scene with Daisy - now heart-breakingly lifeless - and finds that his car is gone too. In true Hollywood style, Wick’s fuse is lit, and he spends the rest of his screen time on a revenge-fuelled, murderous rampage in search of Josef.

I’ll admit it, I’m a dog lover - I would die for my black labs, and that’s probably why I felt like this scene was so unnecessary. But animal cruelty aside, I still have a problem with this film. 

Let’s break it down to its basics. 

1. A guy who wants revenge 
2. Fast cars 
3. The Russian Mob 
4. Guns 
5. Men 
6. Bourbon 

It’s everything we’ve seen before, crammed into one film. Don’t get me wrong, it will entertain, but in every scene you’ll find yourself thinking, “Hey, that’s just like (any other fast-car mafia movie)”. The cars are fast, Wick is furious, I am experiencing déjà vu. 

What’s worse is that this movie is crammed full of men. Sure, I sound like a broken record, but it’s absolutely true. There is one woman of note in the entire film, and she is cast as a modern femme fatale - she’s a hot, heeled, hired assassin. The character is an unbearable cliché. If you grasp at straws, there are two other females in the movie… one - Wick’s wife - dies before the film starts, and the other - Daisy - is introduced just to be killed off. So we’re looking at a film where we’re resorting to female dogs to find the women. 

Like I said, this film will keep you entertained for a couple of hours. It’s fast, it’s familiar, and it’s featuring Reeves. But it’s nothing new, it’s textbook, and it’s shamefully male-orientated. All I can really conclude is that this is a man’s movie, and I'm no man.