dx �wednesday morning:
transavia flight didn't betray me this time, got to ORY in time, immediately found @[email protected] wearing a highly recognizable VLC (very large cone) hat from last week's videolan dev days.
we got to the paris center, which at times looks an awful lot like i never left buenos aires. some of this shit's like, average corrientes y callao architecture. some parts are neater though.
[intermission: they asked us to leave the bus for 30 mins so i got food. the girl said she knew "a little" english which seems to mean as much as my french, so i ordered the wrong thing, but it ended up being cheaper and still delicious. not pictured, i ate it]
anyway wednesday afternoon:
we had lunch (ordered secret stuff off the french-only menu, not listed in the english one, turned out to be minced chicken and mashed potatoes)
...and started planning the first ~adventure~ involving, uhm, printers. also, running.
we had lunch (ordered secret stuff off the french-only menu, not listed in the english one, turned out to be minced chicken and mashed potatoes)
...and started planning the first ~adventure~ involving, uhm, printers. also, running.
the day before, while still in NL, i got an email from the canada visa thing implying that it might be approved but they need me to send the passport physically. this is uh. tricky while staying only 3 days in france. but decided to give them a visit and try to talk about it.
the plan involved potentially cancelling non-refundable flights to stay another week in france but still make it to canada, stuff like that. hence the bank account hurting.
long story short, canada is cancelled, everything fell through because i got there 4 minutes after the closing time (16:30), not a soul inside, running wasn't enough. so yeah, RIP.
i'll do the passport stuff when i'm back in argentina, and might try rebooking canada (if it hurts less than cancelling)
soooo, moving on, later that day we were supposed to meet with @[email protected] who, surprisingly, actually has a physical presence!
we sort of did meet! in chunks! because i screwed up and remembered i had a limited window for the airbnb checkin between 17 and 19 so.. i vanished for like two hours after we met ;_;
that airbnb wasn't even that good, was a few shared rooms with 6 people per room. does the job and it's 25 euros booked the day before, won't complain too much.
anyway during that time i left @[email protected] talking with @[email protected] and when we met again and tried to speedrun one section of the louvre museum but they refused to sell tickets to @[email protected] because it was closing in 30 mins ;_;
also cool rooms (didn't take more pics because it's the sort of beauty cameras don't capture well, or at least not mine)
then we had pizza because it seems we're all negatively-opinionated about food. my randomly picked pizza might have had pineapple and i didn't care.
dang, i told myself i'd avoid political posts here, sorry
thursday's plan was more concise: go to lyon, see alcest, go to airbnb in lyon. simple enough right? heheheh.
oh i should clarify that i find this chaos *fun*, even if unfortunate sometimes. when it really sucks is when it affects others, but apparently this one was less chaotic than average for bofh, who may be cursèd
but tldr: train cost went up to 194 eur, oof. SNCF is awful at accepting non-french cards. ATMs rejected them too. international phone calls aren't real. had to do the SIP thing mentioned earlier.
ended up solving it by finding 200 eur in my emergency money stash in my suitcase.
was it worth it? hell yeah. i fucking loved it. and bofh, who hadn't heard a single song by alcest before, liked it a lot too :3
also i totally forgot that the supporting band, vampillia, is japanese, until the main vocalist switched to clean vocals and i went ooooohh. of course. neige is a massive weeb.
they are 10 or so members and at least two girls (violin and keyboard i think)
they are 10 or so members and at least two girls (violin and keyboard i think)
re: "neige is a massive weeb", neige being the alcest frontman, this is the kodama tour. kodama is short for shirikodama which is a mythical ball that contains the soul, but they didn't want to include the word as- oh what? it's not related? dang.
alcest is walcest
ok continuing: last night (thursday), we had another airbnb in lyon, we were informed after the confirmation that check in was between 20 and 23... and we didn't make it. tried to negotiate but the owner left and stopped responding. that was Fun.
so we thought, okay, this sucks, let's just find some hotel. everything was full. it made no sense. later i found out there's some international dance festival in lyon this week. cool.
we ended up wandering streets all night and did an heroic effort at maintaining the battery of my phone (our only phone, bofh's got stolen) alive, with gps enabled all the time and wifi hotspot almost always on (for the laptop that was also charging it)
lyon, more like li-ion
this morning we parted ways. bofh is going from lyon to some other place and i'm going to london tonight. decided to take the slow (7hs) way back to paris with a 19 eur bus, which has a wonderful AC socket. i love it so much.
massive shout outs to bofh who, despite what the name might suggest, is one of the nicest people i know and made the thing much less stressful than it could have been
...if you don't believe in curses, that is. but even in that case, superior curse management skills 10/10
hahahah fuck. my flight to london is tomorrow not today :D
i'm good at travel
ok so i liked the airport but i'm crashing at @[email protected]'s place, who lives in the catacombs and offered me an extra room
i hardly know her, but she seems cool and definitely not a murderer or someone who wants me to end up staying in an underground storage for dead people
i think i slept... 12 hours? fib lives in a weird timezone and is still sleeping. the wifi is called "peptide" which is cute. there's a black cat that is even shier.
we went to a cat cafe, i ate "some french thing", then we walked back to fib's place to pick my stuff and ran to gare du nord to pick the direct train to the airport which will leave me with... 50 minutes to go through bag drop, security and boarding
void friend@dx aaaah i'm stressing out again!