In November, I went to visit Paris to meet up with some of my Erasmus friends one year after. Although have passed something more than two months I just felt now the motivation to write something about it. At the beginning nothing was really impressive to me. How surprising is that? being in Paris and not to be impressed ?Difficult but it happens! And that was what I was feeling at that time. Despite the fact that I had a long trip by taking two planes from Athens to Paris with a stop in Rome, I was really impatient to smell the perfume of the Parisian culture, to drink a glass of red wine imitating French people how they smell the wine before drinking it( sometimes i just think of them being too snobs by showing off their expertise of good wines ), and walking along the boulevards.
When the plane landed at the airport of Charles de Gaulle I was trying frantically to find the right way to take the metro in order to go to my final destination, which was my friend’s flat, Antoine's..Somewhere in the city centre..Without knowing where to go and just being told that the metro was not working due to strike reasons I got so mad that I felt that I was turning red and maybe I was ready to explode like a volcano at that moment...I angrily asked the person who was standing at the info point and he was constantly smiling at me “Only Greek people go on strikes, why do French people have to go on strike as well?!”. His response was “I am sorry Madame, you can take the bus line, I can't do anything else” companied with a French accent. For my bad luck the handle of my suitcase suddenly broke and it was so hard to lift it that made my struggle like a nightmare. I couldn't stay at the airport longer, so I took a snap decision to go with a shuttle bus to Montparnasse, I knew it would cost me something more but I wanted to leave that place immediately. And so I did!
After one hour and twenty minutes it was such a relief to see Antoine coming to pick me up. Finally I was not lost! I would not had to sleep on the Parisians streets! Believe it or not these were my thoughts before meeting Antoine. We went at his flat where I met with his flat mate Kerstin and Sakari, our Erasmus friend from Finland. Vera, from France, and Lisa from Germany, appeared after a few minutes. To my surprise we were all together, one year after the Erasmus in Budapest, drinking wines and eating bread with cheese, laughing and telling our news one another. Maybe the fact that we were all together, maybe the wine, maybe that we were in Paris made this trip so special and unforgettable to me!
Love you Paris ;)
Lisa, me and Voltaire..
