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J’aime Paris, Chapter II – To Delhi and back
When you think about Paris, first thing that comes into your mind is of course the Eiffel Tower, but the second one should be a flock of couples almost making out all around. Well, you’re not that wrong. Paris is the Sweethearts Capital, but it can also be much more than this. Last weekend M and I went to Paris at our friend C’s and, even if we’d already been in the Ville Lumiere more than once, it had been able to surprise us as if it was a completely different town we were visiting.
C. lives close to Place de la Republique, and I couldn’t imagine a better neighbourhood for him to live in, as he – who’s in love with the Arab world, or, at least, with the Arab food, the Arab tobacco in the Arab pipe and, of course, the Arab women – can find there many kebab restaurants ( the smoke coming from the windows smelle greasy enough, but I wouldn’t swear that the brown stuff turning round and round was actual lamb meat …well, only the braves…) and even a Hammam, a Turkish Bath, to spend the afternoons at ( unless you don’t like mushrooms…neither to drink nor under your feet).
Saturday morning we met P for breakfast ( trip tip: if you’re Italian and you can’t start your morning without an espresso, you’d better ask for a café serré, or you’ll end up depressed, forcing yourself to sip dirty hot water from a huge cup, that will automatically lead you to the closest toilet to eject what you’ve just ingested…let’s consider it some kind of natural colonscopy ). P is a handsome, smart middle-aged man with an astonishing predisposition for foreign languages, and he entertained us with jokes in German and Greek as we relaxed in a small café, lazily staring at a mill-run that made the whole scene look as if it was settled in Amsterdam. When one of the waiters started to fight with the clochard that has permanently settled in the cute, fancy kiosk right in front C’s apartment, we decided it was time to go, so we left Amsterdam and headed towards Paris Indian quarter.
P brought us in a super weird roofed street, where we walked for a while taking thousands of pictures to carnival suites shops and to huge papier-maché Indian elephants. There were also many Afro hairdressers, and grocers that sold varieties of fruit we couldn’t recognise, and the everything looked and smelled of India in such a way that you could expect a baboon jumping on your head all of a sudden.
Regardlessly to our stomach we asked for some original French Tandoori chicken and basmati rice, while a young guy tried some scarves on in the shop en face, jiggling as P gave him suggestion to the colour that better suited him.
Life can be a mess, but if you are in Paris, you don’t care.
All the way to La Mecca
www.qiblalocator.com is a webpage that allows Muslims all around the world to know the exact position of La Mecca from the place they are. It’s very easy, you just scribble the address of the place you are, and a red line will show you the direction your prayers shoud take.
This is the coolest thing I’ve ever read about. I wish I had something to tell me exactly where to send my whishes, my hopes and my faith. I’ve always envied those little moments in a Muslim day during which, no matter who, they take their time to convey their faith towards someone ( or something) they can visualize wherever they are.
If our reference points are getting weaker and weaker as the time goes by, as the world shrinks, as the institutions fall apart, will a GPS save us?
New Year’s Eve – Day 3
Whoo, just got back from the weirdest new year’s eve party of my entire life. As I already said, we couldn’t find a restaurant healthy enough to have a traditional new year’s eve supper, so we just wallked a little around Plaza Real, at last resigned to have just a little jamon ( ham) and a beer, but it soon became clear that it would be a mission as impossible as Tom Cruise’s when he gets hung upisde down like a jamon in some caveau. In the end, as a lighthouse in the cold Spanish night, there it was a small rotisserie called El Rey del Pimiento (Plaza Puerta Cerrada, 4 – Madrid) that lookd open and lively and we hurred inside. As you can see from the pictures above, the place could easily have been the set of The Lord of the Rings, as it was populated by the Spanish Freaks Association and its decor could leave without words even the leader of Kitsch Fanatics Worldwide.
After five minutes, Fulvio had already become waiter Mario’s best friend, while my mother got a little freaked out because of the smoke of cigarettes that occluded the possibility of seeing what we were eating ( croquetas!!!). My sister ( unbelievably still not whining) and I just kept singing our Give me hope remix, hoping some miracle to come and resolve the situation. The miracle came, and was sangria carafe shaped. After that my memories are a little foggy, all I remember is:
- us walking out the Pimiento place giggling
- us buying from the cutest chinese guy three little bags with 12 berries of grape each, to be swallowed at midnight in Puerta del Sol square, together with a bottle of champagne.
- us completely lost in the colorful crowd of Puerta del Sol
- me getting almost choked while trying to eat a berry for each toll of the clock at midnight.
Happy New Year to all of you, folks.
11.15 pm (Sangria Especial)
11.45 pm ( Puerta del Sol)
Nochevieja Madrilena – Day 1
Day 1 – December 30th 2007, 5 a.m.
We’re going to Madrid for the New Year’s Eve. Since we had to leave at 5 a.m. from Bari airport, I thought it was useless to go to sleep and decided to stay up till 4 with my friends and then go and wake my family up. Look at my face and guess who had the crappiest idea on earth.
So, there we are, ready to go, each one of us bringing those things that couldn’t absolutely be left at home:
Me: camera and cigarettes
Mother: Lonely Planet guide
Fulvio: himself and cigarettes
Sister: life size ugly disney cartoon monster ( boyfriend’s present…looks like we are going to share the bed, the monster, my sister and I) , two ( two !!!) albums of pictures of her boyfriend and her ( Is she afraid to forget the face of her boyfriend during the neverending three days lasting trip ?)
The reason why we had to leave at 5 am is that to go to Madrid straight from Bari we reserved seats on a charter flight.
Charter: special flight that is scheduled when lots of people from the same town go to the same place in particular periods, like Christmas or summer holidays.
Charters from Bari: more or less the same thing but with some slight differences:
1) People from Bari only move in hordes, so the avarage leaving family includes: Mother, Father, three or four ( or five) overweight kids ( if older than 15, you have to add the respective boyfriends and grilfriends), the octogenarian granny ( that the rest of the family always forgets on the plane since it’s too concentrated in remembering the duty free bag) and some more relatives and friends. Leggi il seguito di questo post »
Stop the clash of civilizations…
Besides….
this blog is about dialogue, about the hope that speaking, sharing, confronting our lives to the ones of others, who live just a step away, can change something…just a little…this is my Christmas wish
