Over the past month I have been backpacking round Europe, meeting people, visiting historic cities, and drinking the local bars dry. I can't remember exactly what happened, but I imagine it went a little bit something like this...
Sweeps Travel Blog: #01
To me, Paris had become diluted by both frequency and accessibility of my previous visits. I was there a few years back, sightseeing with my parents, and again just one year ago to watch the Rugby World Cup final. The Eiffel tower retains every sense of imposing architectural significance, bit similar to every architectural landmark, prior to the initial "It's bigger than I remember” fades into the skyline. Paris was the first city we hit having left England, a fearsome 9 hour train journey from London with a grimy ferry crossing in between. Being fresh to the challenge of backpacking meant both a heightened sense of enthusiasm for exploration and a fresh-faced optimism for the world in general. The reality was we arrived in Paris two hours later than planned, then had to fend off a copious drug-dealers as we conspicuously backpacked our way through nocturnal northern Paris to our Hostel. A backpack may be the most convenient and economic way to travel, but you might as well slap a "Naive Tourist" sticker on your forehead for all the negative attention it brings.
We arrived at "Friends Hostel"
A name which it did not deserve, and were immediately prompted for cash by the obviously un-interested frenchman behind the desk. The combination of peeling wallpaper and dim lighting did little to soften the blow of our crash-landing in what was rapidly being revealed as the fuck-end of Paris. I had to venture back out onto the streets, obtain some Euros, then pay the man before he would even put down his newspaper and talk to us properly. The transaction completed we were informed our dorm was upstairs and that there were already people asleep there. We wandered up to find one of our beds occupied. The offending lad, apparently English, hopped out and scampered off down the hall. All well and good, but I wasn't too enthusiastic about sleeping in a still-warm bed that was until very recently occupied by a random half naked British child. I turned to close the door but discovered not only did the door not have a lock, it wouldn’t even shut properly. In all honestly, it was more of a stranded plank of wood than a door. Fantastic. Ah, the joys of backpacking. One piece of travelling gear I found essential over the course of my trip was a small wire, similar to a bike lock, which I used to lock my pack to any solid or convenient furniture in the immediate vicinity - the fact I had nothing stolen in my entire trip is ample proof of their effectiveness. I padlocked my bag to the bed and shoved every item of value (nintendo DS, iPod, Phone, Wallet, Passport) down the bottom end of my sleeping bag. The physical discomfort they bought was far outweighed by my reassurance that I was still in possession of them.The 2 guys already in the room were English lads, from Dorset, who had apparently walked from Calais all the way to Paris, effectively drawing out the journey which had taken us only 5 hours by train to a fearsome 1 week hike. They seemed to appreciate the Hostel a lot more than we did, though this stretch of imagination is not difficult when considering their previous alternative of sleeping under the stars next to a French motorway.
After dumping our bags in the second hotel (small, simple, brown wallpaper) we ventured out into Paris. We hit the Eiffel tower which was… what you’d expect from a giant unchanging monument. We went to Notre Dame, another Parisian must-see that we had already seen, from there walked north to the Pompidou. Art galleries are often top of my hit-list when travelling, and the Pompidou is one of my favourite galleries in the world - not least for its downright Futurama style of design. Giant plastic tubes with escalators running up the outside of the building. What’s not to like?
I feel like I have a bit of an immunity to the pretentiousness that art seems to carry.
I can easily walk through an entire exhibition and not stop to admire or appreciate a single piece. Art to me is subjective. I can appreciate the ideas behind it, but if it doesn’t work for me then I wont waste my time. In contrast I can spend 20 minutes looking at a single photograph because the composition is interesting. I’m easily hypnotised. Fortunately the curator of the Pompidou seems to be running the museum with my particular interests in mind because I managed to pass several hours sauntering around. There was one photograph I enjoyed specifically called “radioactive cats”, an image of a man and a woman in an old rustic kitchen surrounded by luminous green felines. Classy huh?The Pompidou over, we wandered back out into the streets of Paris. It was early afternoon, suffering from yesterdays journey we decided to walk back in the direction of our Hotel, which was close to Gare Du Nord. Once we got there we crashed out for an hour, then agreed, as this was our only real night in Paris, that we should go and get drunk. We ventured back out into the city, the metro taking us to somewhere in the southwest parts. We completely failed to find a bar recommended by our guide book, instead spending the evening drinking ouzo with an Elderly French man in an all-but-deserted café. There was some sort of live music event
happening close by so there was live jazz floating about. We spent several hours listening to a 70 year old Frenchman teach us why smoking weed was better than drinking absinthe, in very broken English. We discussed our families (he had 17 grandchildren, apparently) and talked about travelling - a topic which carries considerable weight amongst the backpacker community. Should you venture out into the world, your arsenal of sure-fire questions consists of “where are you going”, “where have you been already” and “where would you recommend?”. You can’t fail.
Our next stop was Geneva in Switzerland, our train leaving Paris at 7am - meaning a fantastically early start the next morning - haunted by a wonderfully cloudy ouzo hangover.
Thus ends the first chapter of my month long trip round Europe. I'm trying to go into as much detail as I can remember, so it might take a while to write the full trip - but if people are interested then i'm going to stick with it. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy writing them.
Thanks For Reading
Love Sweep
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