soulmatejunkee | Paris - October 6th/7th 2012

Originally posted by Sabine

bergergrey at Paris - October 6th/7th 2012 - Daytime

I just stole it from Sabine an re-posted it, so it's her POV

On the first weekend of October 2012, Paris was hosting the 12^th La Nuit Blanche, White Night, starting at 7 pm on Saturday evening and lasting until Sunday morning, 7 am. It’s a night full of art, installations and performances with free entrance for everyone.

For friends and relatives, I was going for the art. For my friends on the QaF fandom, I was going to breathe the same air as Randy Harrison and a rather unlikely chance to meet him somewhere that night. He was on vacation Paris at that time.

For me the trip started with riding my bike to the train station in Mannheim where I was supposed to meet my friend Steffi soulmatejunkee from the fandom who came travelling down from Wiesbaden.

We met at platform 4 after having talked to each other on our mobiles. At the same platform stood a lot of people in traditional bavarian costumes, heading for Munich to the Oktoberfest.

We hadn’t seen each other in person before but I felt comfortable with Steffi at once.

We had to change our train in Karlsruhe and saw that there were more people heading to Munich. They looked slightly drunk already and it was only 9 am in the morning. Oh well. Their choice to pass the weekend. We had chosen something completely different.

The French speed train TGV arrived slightly delayed but we had seat reservations and were looking forward to our 3 hour journey to Paris.

Looking back I have no idea what we were talking about and I admit that I was nervous. Spending the night outside in Paris is something you don’t do often.

We arrived Paris on time and bought a Metro day pass each. It was valid 24 hours and you were allowed to ride the Metro and all the buses as often as you liked. It was very cheap (9,75 Euro). We also got a Nuit Blanche guide there.

It started rainning the same minute we stepped off the Metro and set foot on the city center of Paris.

Luckily we both had brought an umbrella with us but rain is always uncomfortable. In the news they said that it would stop raining at about midnight but we were sceptical (but it turned out to be true).

Let me experience rain and I will step into the deepest puddle on the sidewalk or collide with a lamp post while trying to protect the city map and the metro line map while reading the Nuit Blanche guide and holding the umbrella at the same time.

Steffi giggled and warned me about puddles, at least the deep ones. Yes, it’s all clumsy me.

Our first stop was a Bistro on the Ile de la Cité where I had my first pain au chocolat and my first cup of peppermint tea. I decided that I could live on pac and pt. It was so delicious. Steffi had a cheese baguette with Coke.

Later we walked to Notre Dame and across Pont de Neuf, strolling along the Seine, holding our umbrellas. Paris is beautiful even in the rain. Wet clothes and shoes apparently not. And so began our hopping from Bistros to bus stops, from hot cups of tea to shopping, from folding and unfolding our umbrellas. We saw the opera, a monument of Molière, the theatre Comédie Francaise, a light installation on a fountain, an exhibition of the police and fire department, lots of bridges, the garden of Tuileries next to the Louvre, we rode the bus and the Metro.

It was just as it was supposed to be. We had fun and laughed a lot, talked a lot and walked a lot. The greatest thing was La Pont des Arts, the Bridge of Art which is situated between L’Ile de la Cité (with Notre Dame) and the Louvre. It’s full of love padlocks and we took our time to read the inscriptions.

And suddenly we found the ultimate padlock. Brian and Justin had been there before. Maybe on the same day. Maybe they had just left. We couldn’t believe our eyes and I took a lot of pictures.
Just imagine that the keys have just been thrown over the railing into the Seine.

Later that day, we came back a second time. We couldn’t leave. The padlock had a magnetic attraction. It pulled us back. I couldn’t stop looking at the pics all day, all night and even on the train ride back home.

Pont des Arts (one side of it)

some padlocks with inscriptions

the B/J padlock, front

back