Paris -2

We were left enthralled by Paris, the Seine, the Notre Dame Cathedral, and of course the Louvre. It took time to soak in the feeling that I am at these places, which forever seemed so very out of reach, like places in some fantasyland. And now they stood right before me, and I was overwhelmed.

This board was everywhere inside Louvre

The Italian art gallery

Madonna of the Rocks

There she is, getting more attention as always

David and Goliath

There was a food festival going on, where specalities from different parts of France were being tasted by the people. In the picture above, people are trying raw oysters with some lemon. It's a delicacy in southern France.

Arc de Triomphe- French version of Indian gate

The city has a very very dense network of subways for metro-rail. There are 12 separate lines of Metros, connecting different parts of the city, and interconnected with each other. It is said that when in Paris, you are always within 500 metres of a metro station. I was really afraid that someday the city might collapse to the lower level. And now add to that the numerous tunnels for vehicles and subways for pedestrians, and underground stations for the RERs, and we really have something to worry about here. It’s all hollow below.

The French are clearly more proud of their language than the Germans. I mean what kind of manners is this? Writing descriptions of every object only in French at a world famous place like Louvre Museum. But the language in general sounds sweeter than German, who with their excessive and strong use of ‘H(heich)’, ‘K’ and ‘F’ always seem to be cursing or breathing fire in their words. Anyway, but in French we had some pronounciation comedies. When Diptarka asked a girl the way to the Louvre, she said with a question mark on her face ‘Pardonne?’ but its pronounciation in French is such that the ‘r’ and the ‘n’s and the 'e' are silent. Now try reading it again. And also some Indian interns devised a new way of pronouncing ‘Bonjour’ such that it sounds closer to a Hindi slang. (You won’t get it if you don’t know it.)

Here, we saw lots of African-origin people, some pretty well-to-do ones. We also saw lots of bare legs, they were all over the place and very distractive indeed. But girls were pretty comfortable dressing scantily, unlike the few imitating Indians.

However all said and done, in Paris, I was looted in more ways than one, be it food or the 500ml drinking water that cost 2.5 euros at Louvre, or the transportation costs. We were happy that at least we did not have to spend on acco, but then Diptarka and I had mild heart attacks, when we returned to Germany, and got messages from the mobile operator that we were approaching our limit of 5000 rupees of talktime. Apparently they charged something like 3 euros/min for outgoing and incoming calls when in Paris.