Paris etc.

I can't believe it's already a week ago that we were in Paris and I haven't written anything about it yet... That's pretty bad! But my excuse is that it was a very busy week. One of these typical Italian weeks: my "everything has been taken care off" job is suddenly not quite as taken care of as it was supposed to be... Of course, we don't hear anything about it directly, but only little snippets of gossip that we can dilute from secretaries et cetera. Apparently, the Powers That Be are currently in the process of deciding whether or not to cut the hours of all the tutors. For the current courses!!! How on earth is it possible to cut the hours of courses that have already started and for which work is already being done, you ask? I have no idea, but I am not impressed. My friend Idil and I have been trying to work out a system in which we both work our maximum number of hours, but now it may turn out that we're gonna be stuck with fewer hours than expected. It really sucks!!!

So all that, and all the involved information-finding missions, have made it a bit of a stressfull week.

But, indeed, last weekend we were in Paris. And it was lovely!!! The Versailles Castle was great, and we spent nearly an entire day in the gardens and the castle (which was necessary to get good-value-for-money, because damn, it's expensive to get in there!!!)



However, most importantly, this was another point from The List (number 41, that is), so half of the Paris-mission was accomplished.
We then went on to see a lot of other famous sites, like the Notre Dame

The next day, we got up early to go to the Louvre. Number 39 of The List, which Fedor and I, both hadn't done yet. We stayed for about 6 hours, during which we only saw some 15% of the actual museum... It is definitely a reason to go back again to Paris some time in the future!

But we really did have to leave, because we also wanted to visit the famous cemetery. And while I did like Père Lachaise, I was not as impressed as I had hoped to be. It's in quite a bad state of repair, with many damaged graves (who the fck damages a grave, seriously?????) and not nearly as many monumental graves as our Cimitero Monumentale in Milano. But it was interesting to see, nonetheless.



All in all, we had a very good time, but there wasn't enough of it....

Tonight, we fly to Duesseldorf for a superquick visit to my friend Stephie. We wanted to go a bit longer, but Ryanair has decided on our behalf that we should not go at 2PM, but instead at 10PM tonite, so we're not arriving until midnight. Hmmm, not very pleasant, but it'll be good to see Stephie, nonetheless!
Ciao,
OJ