it's basically a train station with statues
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
here are some attempts at photos
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)
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.
we also found this very large cone
few more assorted cute pics
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)
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
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
update: easyjet is great and i highly recommend them, they gave me another 15 minutes to get to the airport.
ok got here, p good timing tbh
EZY2442 undelayed itself, it's only 4 minutes late now. reduce the intensity of the easyjet-thanking by 73.3%
ok had to commit some crimes because i misplaced one of my train tickets but other than that, i got to my destination safely and was given cup noodles :3
a few of yesterday's pics in france
, compared to it you are nothing