london, paris (part III)

allora, i'm going to be a little more brief for this second half of the spring break highlights, i'm exhausted.

after visiting the arkitektur museet and moderna museet in stockholm i jumped on a bus to the airport, where i jumped on a plane to london. one hour after touchdown, i arrived at my buddy ted's flat with chilled guinness in hand. it was fantastic to see him - ted, my other soulmate tom and i were roommates on the theatre in london program, and ted has remained in london with an internship at parliament. not too shabby. the next morning, we enjoyed together a full english breakfast, which attentive readers may recall had become a veritable institution for room 14 during our january stay in london. with such rocket fuel in my blood, i finished up and mailed out my take 5 application (take 5 is a u of r program that allows students to pursue a course of study novel to them for one year, tuition free - i'm hoping to study german history in the early 20th century). ted and i went for a nice walk in hyde park and shared our deepest secrets. the rest of the day we caught up with other people from the u of r in london and went to various pubs and clubs with them and theirs. we were lucky enough to catch some live irish folk music, which i must say is almost on par with a full english breakfast in capacity for circulatory acceleration.

thursday i went over to the national gallery for the morning and took in the sights of many of the paintings we have been studying in my art history course, specifically piero della francesca and other quattrocento masters. in the afternoon, ted and i went to the novello theatre and saw the royal shakespeare company in a production of As You Like It. it was simply delightful - on the theatre program we had seen the same company in productions of Twelfth Night and A Comedy of Errors and i couldn't have enjoyed more the opportunity to soak in the thematic correspondences with those productions in this, the final play in their comedy season. plus we sat front row centre for 5 pounds. yeah bud. rather, yeah bud. the use of italics is an art i have yet to master.

ted and i left his flat at 03:45 the next morning to walk to waterloo station; from hither we took the train to paris nord, otherwise known (in this sentence) as 'yon.' we strolled around in the morning (arrived at 09:30 local time), including a peak inside sainte chappelle - stained glass like you've never seen, and notre dame. we had a humorous moment of self reflection on our american identities when we overheard a large woman's grotesquely nasal southern drawl resound within the otherwise silent sainte chappelle: y'all wanna go see that big church naow? by big church i can only assume she meant the nearby notre dame, among the world's most recognizeable and well-known monuments to human capacity when creating with an intention toward the divine. i did not appreciate very much this insertion into the silence. oh well, we chuckled about it later.

ted and i then walked through les jardins des tuileries and up the champs-elysees to l'arc de triomphe, where we met our friend rachel. equally fantastic to see her. we bought a quantity of wine and cheese, several baguettes, and spent the afternoon consuming said gifts of gods. that night rachel's friends from her study abroad program in paris came over and then we went to a bar called le piano-vache (the piano-cow - i have no idea, apparently it's famous) for a st. patrick's day pint and then had crepes on the way home. crepes are also gifts of the gods.

the next morning we got up, ate granola, yogurt, baguette, and cheese, and headed out for a stroll. our destination: student protests against the current french legislation that creates an extremely 'precarious' situation for new graduates. as much as i sympathize with the cause and hope that the french government will pursue a lasting solution to these issues, i must admit that if one is going to write a popular polemic, one should find a more forceful title than 'against precariousness.' the article and bulletin that was pressed into my hands several times through the afternoon might have as well been titled: 'yeah, so, like, the way we feel right now - it's not great. we'd prefer to feel otherwise. can we do something about that?'

a brief note on this to put the american post-grad job market into perspective: under the current french law, if you're under 26 it's very difficult to find a job that isn't of a specified and very brief length, for example, 6 months. when you're hired, you know you'll be fired. with an unemployment rate of 20-25% in the 16-26 age demographic, that can't feel great. more importantly as a cause of dis-ease (one might say a feeling of 'precariousness') : if you're under 26, as it stands right now in france you can be fired at any time, and your (former) employer is under no legal obligation whatsoever to give you a reason. i just realized that sentence contains an unintentional but a propos sad face. i was glad to add my presence and voice to the number of protesters. there was some violence and about 100 arrests later in the afternoon, but we had long since gone to experience other aspects of french culture besides popular revolution. namely, montmartre and sacre coeur. on that note, mosaic is the artistic method that is currently most impressive to me.

that night we hung out more with CIEE paris people and did a little dancing at a fun club where the bartenders played cymbals and empty glasses in their spare time. i'm thinking of making that a career goal, but for no more than 6 months. sunday we laid pretty low - ted and i went to a park we thought was closer than it really was (actually in le banlieu - danger will robinson!) and wrote some things down on pieces of paper. on route to the train station, we visited with rachel's family, who had just arrived for a 7-day visit. it was equally lovely and surreal to get together with friends and family in a paris apartment.

i headed to the train station for the final leg of the journey - paris-florence overnight. i spoke a frightening creole of french and italian to the other passengers in my couchette and read the night away. arrived back in arezzo at 09:15 - just in time to wash my face and head to class. va bene.