Dance first. Think later.

• Being cheered on by bums on the street while I jog past them in the morning
• Hearing tourists talking SO LOUD on the metro and being able to smirk to myself at the looks they get from commuting Parisians
• Being mistaken for a hooker while waiting for the metro to open at 530 a.m. on the Avenue Champs-Elysees, even though I’m wearing a perfectly normal outfit
• A French guy hearing my friends and I talk and says to us, “One of you has a Northeastern sounding accent.” Regardless that we weren’t sure of which northeast he was speaking of, he isn’t fazed when I tell him I’m from California
• Accidentally writing “j’ai couche” TWICE in my French essay - meaning that I had a lot of sex during our midterm break, while I actually meant to write that I slept a lot
• Being asked for directions and actually being able to reply in French without thoroughly embarrassing myself

A few of the precious and not so precious moments I’ve encountered lately :) Paris <3

Although playing tourist is always fun, Sunday really is the day of rest. It’s raining and the skies are completely grey, which means laundry day, tidy-up day, homework day, and pretty much anything that will avoid having to step foot outside.

That being sad, there is nothing like a cup of tea, some good music, and a snuggly sweater to ring in autumn. Today I have also taken it upon myself to reorganize my massive iTunes, discarding songs I don’t like. While I was doing this, I rediscovered Beach House, an indie band whose songs belong in the buildup part of a movie - you know what I’m talking about, the montage of the guy who gets the nerve up to tell the girl he loves her, or the scenic shots of people riding in a really cool-looking car. I can recommend their album Teen Dream - this is one of my favorite songs: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-wfb25WmV4&ob=av2e

Whoever thought that giving directions in another language and big city is easy, was wrong. At least, that’s what I think every day when I am asked for directions - in the metro, on the street, you name it. Since this has been happening on average 1-2 times a day since the beginning, and I obviously do not dress like a Parisian, I can’t pretend that my gradual integration into French society gives me the appearance of knowing where I’m going - because often, it’s exactly the opposite. Maybe it’s that the city has so many little nooks and crannies that people are often lost. Who knows. And when I am abruptly stopped and asked for a street, I just point in a direction that (I hope) is the right one and blab something in broken French while the person looks at me oddly, probably wondering why they asked me in the first place.

Something to think about..

Today I saw not one, but THREE policemen and women on rollerblades on the streets of Paris. At first I thought they were just really extreme rollerbladers (the French seem to be into rollerblading and Razor scooters, I guess it’s efficient?) but on second look I saw that they were wearing some sort of vest and a hat with “POLICE” stitched on it. I’m beginning to like this city more and more.

So sorry to everyone expecting an update, I’ve been in Paris for a week and a half (well, more since the point when I wrote this) and I can’t even find the time to write a blog post! I know it’s a lame excuse but in such a beautiful city you shouldn’t be squatting at home on the internet anyway. C’est la vie.

After being in Den Haag (The Hague) with momma for a couple days, our epic trip to Paris began last Sunday. And I mean epic - lots of heavy lifting involved, thanks to the geniuses who created the non-handicap friendly Parisian metro. I ain’t complainin, just, you know, my back suffered a lot from my poor decision to take so many pairs of shoes in my suitcases. What’s done is done though, and eventually we made it to my apartment.

Paris is such a funny city, like Istanbul, where you see one pretty building on your potential street and you’re like “Oh, what a lovely neighborhood!” When in fact that was the nicest building on your street and none of them look like that. Knowing the reputation of Parisian apartments (tiny, very expensive, and not necessarily the most upkept), I was definitely not expecting to be living in a mansion anyway.

The new pad, however, is actually pretty spacious for two people. I have yet to meet the woman I’m subletting from, because she travels a lot due to her awesome job as a film critic and journalist. The apartment is filled with tons of books and magazines, giving the apartment a kind of boho feel. and there’s even a long narrow balcony with a view of the southeast part of Paris. My room is decently sized, not a broom closet at least, and I’m starting to get to know my way around the area, so things are going well so far.

I’ll just give some highlights so far, since I feel like I’ve done SO much since I’ve been here (probably not, but hey, I’ll save us all some reading). On a few nights during intro week, I went to the Bar A Day event that the “Buddy Program” at Sciences Po is offering - every night of intro week, a new bar in Paris where everyone can meet. This sounds very fun in theory, but in fact most of the time I went the bars were way too crowded and hot to have any fun in unless you were too trashed to notice. And given my newfound status in this city, I wasn’t sure what the social norm was for prebuying drinks before the bar and drinking on the street, as is common in cities such as Berlin. The pub crawl on the Sunday before classes started, however, was very fun and offered the chance to meet some more people i.e. from the master’s program.

So with my Lonely Planet in hand, I set out to explore at least some streets of Paris. This is a daunting task, let me tell you. Try to walk instead of taking the metro and you are a FOOL: sore legs and heat exhaustion were the result of that one. 

Favorite parts so far:

Wine and cheese plate at a cafe on the Place D’Italie

cheap Vietnamese restaurant in Chinatown near Place D’Italie (and my house, waddup)

Jardin du Luxembourg (you ain’t never seen a garden this fancy)

the Bastille bar street

Rue des Rosiers (Jewish neighborhood, best Yiddish desserts and falafel!)

There’s so much more of course, but due to classes starting I actually have to get some work done, so more later! 

Peaaaace.

After a harried goodbye to my loved ones and coworkers in Berlin, I’m off to a whole new adventure: my only real week of vacation this summer, one week in the Netherlands before I go off to Paris for the semester.

I’m proud to say that I got here in one piece. I survived the overweight suitcase haul, the overemotional roommate (?), the drunk Stuttgart soccer fans in the train…survived it all, albeit with a very sore back.

First stop, Eindhoven. City of 300,000; the New York Times recently commemorated the city for its building designs. Apparently it’s quite the up-and-coming place in the architecture world. Cool. To be honest I really only went there to see my dear older brother, who had just moved into a new place.

Next day, after shuffling around some clothes, arrived in Delft with what seemed to be the same amount of clothes I left Berlin with - not my intention.  But, as Fernando Lamas once said, “it is better to look good than to feel good”. The overpacking also poses a problem for my itching desire to buy new shoes - booties, to be exact. Those 70% end-of-summer sales are calling out my NAME, yo. 

I was very happy to be in Delft because two of my besties from college, Alex and Emma, were waiting! We spent two days at Alex’s with Emma, and then I slept there for the rest of the week. It was so relaxing to be there and catch up over the last few months.

On Friday I met up with my momma in Den Haag, which is one of the most underrated Dutch cities. In my opinion, it has the old-fashioned 18th century Dutch charm everywhere in the city, which is hard to do in this day and age. We fulfilled our cultural quota for the weekend at the Mauritshuis, which houses A LOT of Dutch 16th and 17th century paintings. Rembrandt included.

Tomorrow we’re off to Paris, au revoir for now!

Sorry I haven’t written in so long! I had guests (friends from UCU and Anna’s friend Fay) over for about a week in a half in my teeny apartment. It was great fun to explore the city more and show them around, but the cherry on top was really the Melt! Festival this past weekend.

On Friday morning (July 15^th), Fay, Anna, Clem and I woke up at 7.30 am to see Fay off and to pack last minute stuff for the festival. I had gotten the day off of work so I was pretty happy to leave earlier. People had been going to the festival as early as Thursday evening to get camping spots, so we gave some of the guys who were going from UC our tent to put it next to theirs.  We cooked a ton of food and packed it with us, knowing that we’d spend most of our money on drinks at the festival.

We had found another guy online to ride with us on the train to make it cheaper, so we bought some Dunkin’ Donuts and made our way there. I usually try to avoid eating doughnuts but I figured for a festival junk food was in order.  We made it to Dessau around 2 pm, and took a shuttle to the camping grounds in Gräfenhainichen. Located in the southwest region of Brandenburg / north of Sachsen-Anhalt, the wilderness is gorgeous coming out of Berlin. We were so anxious to get to the campsite, so arriving there was really such a relief. The boys met us outside of the campsite and we set up our stuff. We chilled at the campsite for a few hours before going to the festival around 8 pm. Melt! started at like 3 pm every day and ended at 8 am, with a 24-hour sleepless tent for those of us who don’t need sleep to function. We, however, decided to be smart and energize before heading over to the festival.

The camping grounds were also right next to a lake or inlet, which you had to walk around to get to the Ferropolis (festival grounds). The initial view of Ferropolis – “the Iron City” - was amazing. It is normally an open air museum, made of old train and machinery parts that they molded into what look like huge cranes. People are allowed to climb up them and watch the concerts. Lasers, and spotlights of all different colors light them up at night; watching them is so mesmerizing. Speaking with personal experience, you don’t even have to be under the influence to feel like you’re tripping when you watch them.

CREDIT 1INCHFORWARD.COM

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We trudged over to the festival that evening with butterflies and rose in our stomachs, crumpled schedule of bands and DJs to see in our pocket. At 10 pm Nicolas Jaar was playing: Clem had introduced me to his stuff but I wasn’t 100% sure I liked it, just because it was so unbelievably chill. Those of you who know me know that coming from the Bay, I need some bass in my music. I was so wrong, however. This multitalented DJ from New York played the saxophone, sang, and DJed all in the same set. Forget about typical minimal DJ sets, this was anything but. The crowd, save for a few who had already partied a little too much too early, was going crazy on his jazzy and smooth music. My favorite song by him would have to be  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y_ikBmNeRU. Everybody bouncing to this was amazing!

We missed Oliver Koletzki, a German DJ who I definitely recommend you check out. The song “Kusskompatibel” is a swingy song that is great for waking up. Next we got lost, there were so many stages! So we ended up watching this cool band that I still don’t know the name of, got some food, (best festival food I have ever had – organic burgers!) ran off to see Foster the People, catching the song “Pumped Up Kicks” while running in. I was really happy about that, the song is so catchy! Then we got in the front for Noah and the Whale, which was definitely worth it. The lights and the band were just so energy-laden for such an indie atmosphere, and the singer’s voice sounds way better than on the CD, if that’s even possible.

After our little indie break, we were ready to go party some more. We went and saw Paul Kalkbrenner for a few hours, which was so worth the hype. I’ve never seen so many Europeans go crazy at once. The only thing was that the music was way too loud, which distracted me. Anna and I got really tired so it was time for some drinks to energize. Mind you, this was at about 4 am. We went to Fake Blood for a few minutes when we heard him play that famous song of his, highly underrated DJ! I decided that red lights are the way to go for stage lighting. We wanted to take a break but then we went over to Boys Noize and the music was just such hard-hitting electro that we couldn’t stand back and watch. As the sun came up people were still going nuts, that guy really knows how to work the crowd! At around 5:30 am we were ready to go see Gui Boratto, who is a Brazilian ambient kinda minimal DJ. At that point people were starting to lose their charm, some really pale faces and sunken eyes among the crowd. The best part was sitting on the railing and listening with your eyes closed, though, while the sun was coming up over us. One guy ripped off a huge tree branch and was distributing it among the crowd, which we partook in. It was such a nice and relaxed feeling, but we were exhausted and headed home.

Saturday night, after chilling on the beach for the entire day, we decided to head over to the festival around 10 pm, knowing it’d be just as late of a night.  First we went to The Streets, which was jam-packed at the main stage, probably with the thousands of British people who came to Melt. I’ve always liked The Streets but live they were mind-blowing. Reggae vibes, live singers with voices that gave you goosebumps, not to mention the main rapper/singer’s stage presence. At one point he made us form mosh pits, stating that Germany was the best at making them. Loved it!

After the Streets we went to Isole, a DJ who is apparently known for making minimal what it is today. He was playing the smaller stage on the edge of the festival, where apparently all the best lesser-known (among the big names I mean) DJs played. It was also just so much more than expected. Then we went to Rusko, who played for what seemed like three hours. It was on the beach, on the huge hill, and it was amazing how you could witness all the people literally going CRAZY while he spun. He played some cool reggae-sounding remixes, as well as his popular songs. The best part was when he remixed “Day and Night” and “Get it on the Floor” by DMX. People were shitting bricks all over the place.

After Rusko we needed a break so we chilled on the hill while Siriusmo was playing – another amazing German DJ! Then Clem’s cousin, Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, was on and we wiggled our way to the front. What a dancey, 90s-rave-like performance. TEED had a headdress on and had 2 Pulp Fiction – looking synchronized dancers, like the classy version of go-go dancers. He was truly a vision. Clem even got to say hi to him, which we were very happy about. Talented family member for suuuure. It was really cool how such a chill song like “Garden” turned into such a dance party, people fist pumping like nobody’s business.

By that time it was 4 a.m. again, only we didn’t feel as tired as the day before. We headed over to Modeselektor at the beach, which was probably one of my favorite sets of the night, and that’s saying something! It felt like glitchy dubstep with an electro twist, with the two of them just chilling on the stage as if they weren’t responsible for all the people going insane on the beach. The best part was the grandma that was dancing with the DJ’s posse on stage: she was getting down and working the crowd, until we were like, “Okay she’s either one of their mothers or a crazy fan”. Turned out to be both, as one of the DJs introduced her as his “mum”. So cute! We met up with some UC people there, as well as a couple nice guys from Australia. Good vibes all around. When they played “Hyper Hyper”, it was breathtaking to see people screaming “BASS BASS DRUM, BASS BASS BASS DRUM” as the sun was rising over the lake, shining light on us.

The next day we slept until 330 pm, record time! We decided to go home that night; the only problem was that good acts were already starting to play at 5, at which point we were just getting ready. We rushed over to catch the last of Jose Gonzalez’s set, which we unfortunately missed. It was raining bullets and did not stop at all the whole day or night, which was super annoying. The upside was witnessing everyone in Jaegermeister or other themed garbage bags, rocking out anyway. We saw Katy B and then I HAD to get front row for the Cold War Kids, which wasn’t difficult because people were just so chill that day. I loved their set but the bassist was ruining it with weird stage antics, we decided he was definitely partying with something. The last and final set we saw was Ben Klock, a minimal DJ who I had never heard of before. We just decided to go and check it out and by golly was it amazing. Even if you tried to stop dancing, with water dripping all over the place, the music would just pick you right up again. Clem and I decided that the music was fit for people jogging or walking up the stairs, because you would never want to stop. The guy was really cute to boot.

Because Ben Klock was so good, we had to pack up the tent in record time and run for the bus. I mistakenly thought the last train would be at midnight, but it was at 11, ten minutes before we took the bus. That meant we had to spend a few hours sleeping in the train station like drowned rats before we could take the next train to Berlin at 5 a.m. Although it was annoying, we made the best of it, camping out in the corner of the station with another guy who had missed the train. The police and station security was super nice to us, maybe the factor of being 3 innocent-looking girls helped. They offered us the bathroom and to come to them if anything weird was going on. I definitely thought they would kick us out and was so pleasantly surprised that the couple sleepless hours didn’t bother me as much. At 5 we took the train with all the commuters, who basically laughed at our frumpy and stinky state. We arrived at my place at 7:30 a.m., at which point I quickly showered and headed out to work. All in all it was an unforgettable festival with great people and music. I would recommend it to any music lover – Melt really did melt my heart. See you in 2012!