Vesper

I was invited to a Vesper this evening...a fine gathering social, hosted in someones house, with dinner, wine, beer, schnapps, grappa, etc...namely alcohol. Makes things interesting. Anyway the dinner was very typical...all sorts of cheese, cold cuts, wurst, and bread. There's no need for a stove or oven, just plain old bread, cheese, meat. As plain as it sounds its frigggggin goood....once again perfected by the Germans.

i've found a renewed love for jazz piano

http://spikedhumor.com/articles/139377/Ants_Nature_s_Secret_Society.html

we should function no more than ants do in their lives as one mass organism

how the HELL did these extra-ordinary organisms come about...

to be inquisitive, when is it too much? Can one's appetite for food for the mind be too much..

Paris

Looking up inside the Printemps department store.

Whether it be "trendy" clothing shops (and i use the word in the vaguest sense, definitely not from my perspective, I'd start losing friends if i wore those clothes), old monuments or art galleries/museums, this is a big city where there's always something to see around the corner, so walking around wasn't really a drag. Paris is so rammed at this time of year.

I had to drive in this shit.



























Line up for Haagen-Dazs

Along Les Boulevard are department stores, music halls, and the Opera. It seemed like boxing day as people filled the streets and spilled onto the roads, very very reminiscent of Hong Kong. The people were mainly European tourists, Italians, Spanish, German, you name it, however it was still very easy to pick out the chic, elegant Parisian women who looked like they just done a photo shoot for Cosmo..

its all about people watching in the cafes that concentrate in central Paris, or anywhere else for that matter

We entered Notre Dame to find a mass in progress. Biggest mass i have ever seen. They managed to fill the Notre Dame.

























Passages were another cool thing. They were basically glass roofed hallways that tunneled through some of the buildings, where collectors of old art, books, stamps, anything really, set up shop.

New Years was spent along the famous avenue Champs-Elysées, where we had a relatively inexpensive dinner for only 25EUR (~$37 CAD) per person. Almost all the stores were still opened...now why would anyone want to line up in the Louis Vuitton store on New Years eve?? Blue Christmas lights lit up the entire Avenue from the Arc de Triomphe to Place de la Concorde. The roads were eventually closed to cars for more people. Automotive companies like Mercedes, Renault, Toyota revealed their new concept cars. By new years the entire Avenue was full of people, nobody could move anywhere. Man what a sobering experience...i could only imagine in Germany where everyone, even the Polizei, would be pissed drunk.














After tucking in my parents to sleep i was on a mission to drink I MEAN UHH go for a walk in the park...only after two hours of being rejected by clubs and bars did i manage to squeeze out one drink from a packed and dirty crowded bar. House parties were pretty popular, a good way to avoid it all. People were passing out left and right, cops running after people, closing down streets, alota gays....."celebrating"...ya. I had this one guy (NOT a gay...i dont think........) stalk me down for half an hour or so before i pulled some James Bond shit and lost him. Paris rocks. A new train in June 2008 connecting Paris to Stuttgart will shorten the journey to 3 hours, cutting my time of travel by half (it takes 8 hours by car to Paris from where I live).