A Kiss for the French

I know you've all been eagerly awaiting my post on my trip to France, so I figured I would finally bite the bullet and put all the details here for you. I was there for just four days (last Thursday to Sunday), but it was a fantastic trip, and I'll organize my memories as best as I can here for you:

First of all, I failed to closely check the flight times when I actually booked the plane to Paris from Prague, so my flights to and from Paris were at the worst possible times for me. My flight to Paris left Prague at 6am on Thursday morning. Some more details are needed here: the subway in Prague is closed from 12am to 5am, so for me to be at the airport in Prague, I would have had to get the last subway to Dejvicka stop, and then grab the last bus to the airport. This meant that I had to get the final train from Hradec to Prague, which left at 8pm on Wednesday night, 10 hours before my actual flight. For those who have slept in airports before, you know my situation; for those who haven't, I HIGHLY recommend it!! :P

So I arrived in Paris at about 8am on Thursday morning, not really knowing where I had to go once I landed. I had arranged plans to stay with my friend Andrea. Andrea is a new friend: last July, the weekend before I flew back to Canada and I had a visit with Sarah and Irish Tim -- friends from my university days -- we met an American girl named Andrea who was living and working in Paris. We invited her to hang out with us for the weekend because she was by herself just exploring Prague. We all had fun, and she offered to put us up if we ever found our way to Paris. Well, I had arranged to stay with her during my stay in Paris (she lives right in the centre of Paris too, on Boulevard St. Germaine, so it was really perfect!). However, we hadn't really arranged for me to pick up her apartment keys, so although I found where she lived, I didn't know how to get in (and she wasn't finished work until 6 or 7pm that night). So I found a payphone and used my credit card to call her cellphone, but I only got her message service (a one minute phone call which ended up costing me $23 Canadian!!!). Undefeated, I found a nearby internet cafe and logged in, thinking that perhaps she had made a plan and emailed me the details. I was correct. It was also in this internet cafe that an email from Steve-o informed me of the subsequent Genesis reunion tour which would later drain my wallet further. Anyway, I went through the correct procedure to find Andrea's housekey, worthy itself of passing the 00 Agent entry examinations, and dropped my crap off at her apartment. Her apartment is about 2 square meters large...it was a tight squeeze! The rest of that Thursday I spent just wandering through the main centre of Paris, looking in bookstores, and finding my way to Notre Dame cathedral...



Later Thursday night, I met up with Andrea, where she treated me to some French red wine, French baguette bread, and French cheese, which smelled like goat urine but tasted exquisite! We went out for dinner (rumproast for me) at a typical French bistro -- not a tourist place. Before we settled on our restaurant, however, we had to pass through the Japanese section of the city; isn't this the funniest name for a Japanese restaurant??


Friday was my day at the Louvre....




Just so you know, the Louvre is absolutely huge. A day is not enough. I will admit that I'm not particularly an "art" person; I mean, I am an artistic person, but I mostly lean towards literature, music, and the art of ice hockey -- visual arts, sculpture, and painting has never really been either my interest or my forte...unless you count all those pictures of the Simpsons and hockey players that I used to draw instead of paying attention to class during grade 5. But the Louvre is unbelievable! I actually recognized very many of the paintings there, and some of them are massive -- as big as a wall. I honestly couldn't help but stopping to stare at some of the paintings and really look at them. I stayed in the Louvre for about six or seven hours. Although we weren't allowed to photograph her, I did pay a small visit to miss Mona Lisa. I also saw miss Venus de Milo...
...and this, my favourite sculpture from the Louvre (and probably ever), Cupid and Psyche...

Also, before I left, I made sure to take this photograph for Jen...

As I left the Louvre, the sun was beginning to descend. I walked the famous walk away from the Louvre, through the Tulerie Gardens, down the Champs-Elysees, and to L'Arc de Triomphe...

Continuing back towards Andrea's place (from which I was very far at this point), I came across this familiar sight across the River Seine...

The Eiffel Tower is actually prettier at night than it is by day, as you can see for yourself...


So I got a train back to Andrea's, and we prepared our plans for the night (after more bread and cheese). We went out to probably the cheapest bar near the centre of Paris and saw a cool jazz band. We met up with Andrea's friend Daphne, who is one of the most strikingly beautiful young ladies I have ever seen in my life.

The next morning, I woke up pretty early, because my day was to be spent in Normandy. Wait, let me rephrase: half of my day was to be spent in Normandy, and the other half was to be spent travelling to and from Normandy. Between trains and buses, the trip was three hours each way! However, this was the point of the trip, and I wasn't giving up. I hopped on a train to Caen, and from Caen I got on a bus to Courseulles-sur-mer, where the Juno Beach Centre is located. There was a small moment of panic in Caen when I realized that I had left my directions at Andrea's apartment, but I checked all the bus schedules and recognized the city and my bus stop on bus line #3 (whew!). I got to the Juno Beach Centre just in time for them to be closing for lunch, so I had to go myself and get a lunch. I was delivered what is likely the biggest bucket of mussels ever consumed by one person. The white wine was good too though. After lunch I returned to the Juno Beach Centre and started through the museum. After an hour, the Remembrance Day ceremony began, so I aborted the museum and finished it later. I must say, about the ceremony, that it was more celebratory than I expected it would be. I am used to solemn ceremonies of remembrance, but this ceremony involved clapping and the singing of both the Canadian and French national anthems. But there was the Last Post, a minute of silence, and some wreaths were laid by the memorial. After I finished the museum tour, which I regrettably didn't have enough time (because of the bus schedule) to explore as thoroughly as I wanted to, I went down along the path to the actual beach, and here I can start to be a bit more serious. The beach was empty -- my moment of solemn solitude. The beach itself is not as steep or foreboding as Omaha Beach, just a few kilometres down the coast (the one everybody recognizes from Saving Private Ryan), but I tried to imagine what it must have felt like to be the first soldiers off the boats, wading through the waters toward the Germans, carrying 75 pounds minimum of clothing and equipment, knowing that you're probably going to die on these grounds today. Juno Beach was the first beach from the Allied raids on D-Day to be secured. The sacrifice by all of the men on this day is incredible to fathom, and it's a sacrifice I hope will never need to be repeated during my lifetime. As I wandered for a few moments in silence along the coastal waters, I asked myself, as I have asked myself so many times before, that if I was faced with such a task as the soldiers on D-Day faced, how would I respond? Am I capable of such foolish and noble bravery? Could I adapt a 'kill or be killed' attitude in order to 'do what I had to do'? And if so, for what reasons would I do it: my family? my country? a god that I may or may not believe in? In the end, I can't comfortably think of any reason that could drive me to hold a gun, shoot it, and take someone's life, but that is the privilege that I live with -- not having to make that choice. It's a privilege that I think about very frequently, and sometimes wonder if anything would, or could, ever change these feelings. I'm sure that most of the soldiers in both WWI and WWII, on both sides, once felt that they couldn't kill either.

In his introduction to A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway wrote that "wars are fought by the finest people that there are, or just say people, although, the closer you are to where they are fighting, the finer people you meet; but they are made, provoked and initiated by straight economic rivalries and by swine that stand to profit from them." As I stood on the beach and contemplated the events on D-Day, so many years ago, I found myself agreeing with him...