Another Here

Still on the same day as the photos I posted on Friday…

The Arc de Triomphe. It’s much bigger in real life than I expected. We didn’t realize there’s an underground walkway you can use to get to the center of the roundabout – at least, I read later that there is one – we just saw people running through traffic and decided we didn’t want to get right up next to it that badly.

Obligatory photo of the Eiffel Tower.

Upon arriving at the base of the tower, we spotted one line that was shorter than the others. Only after we were in the line did we realize why it was so much shorter.

Here’s a tip: if you’re ever in France, “escalier” means “staircase”.

Obligatory photo from the Eiffel Tower, after obligatory 10-minute rest from climbing all those steps.

Mad props to all the old people we saw taking the stairs up and down the tower, though. I think there were more retirees on the stairs than young people.

A park at the far East end of the islands where Adam and I took a break in the evening. We had some really great crepes on the Eastern island in the afternoon. I can’t remember the name of the place, but it’s not like it takes all that long to see the whole island anyway.

Tuesday saw us in Paris. The weather would not be particularly good until we got to Amsterdam a few days later, but the cloud cover took the edge off the heat, and we didn’t have any problems with rain.

Paris was where I began to get tired of carrying around my camera and my jacket. It was too warm to wear the jacket most of the time, but occasionally too cool to leave it behind.

An arch at an intersection not far from our hotel. We were on Boulevard de Sebastopol, in the “ethnic” (read: black) part of town. About a block behind the hotel was Rue St-Denis, an interesting street that featured more sex shops than a city the size of Paris actually needs – most of them creatively titled by their street number – and a few really worn-out hookers. It improved dramatically as you got closer to the Seine, with a variety of nice restaurants, cafes, and pubs.

According to Google, St-Denis is the place to go for hookers in Paris. We must have been on the wrong blocks, because we only ever saw about five – the same ones every night – and just to look at them, I don’t think they were getting a lot of business.

A plaza farther down St-Denis, closer to the river.

The Centre Pompidou, a modern art gallery on the other side of the street from St-Denis. I’m not sure I should even dignify this place with a photo. After we left the building, I was annoyed. After visiting the Louvre a day or two later, I was straight-up insulted that such a place as the Centre Pompidou even exists. Everyone even remotely associated with it should be ashamed of themselves. I want my money back.

Adam looking at the one exhibit inside Pompidou that wasn’t completely retarded – just bizarre.

Some more photos from London:

I guess there are a lot of office buildings around the docklands. All of them look quite nice. While I’d hate to live in London, the offices themselves seem like very pleasant places to work.

They have a variety of restaurants at ground level, so people have a reason to be there outside of normal working hours. They aren’t completely deserted by 6:00 PM like many other office parks.

Inside the Tower of London. Probably not worth the 17 pounds it cost to get in, but there were a few things worth seeing. I don’t have photos, but we also went to the City of London museum later in the day, which was free and would have been worth 17 pounds.

Something that became kind of a running joke between me and Adam was that wherever you went, it was 10 pounds/euros to get in. This was particularly true in London. Just seeing the inside of St. Paul’s cathedral would have been 10 pounds (we passed). By comparison, I think the Louvre was something like 9 euro to get in, and you could easily spend hours in there seeing all sorts of different things. It made 10 pounds to get into St. Paul’s look utterly ridiculous.

I’m sure that building up there is very important, but I have absolutely no idea what it is. We saw it on the way from the Tate modern art museum, in which we actually didn’t see any exhibits. We just went to the top floor, got some coffee, and enjoyed the view.

Walking along the Thames on our way to the museum – or trying to, anyway – drove home the point about what a pedestrian-hostile place London is. Whereas Paris celebrates the Seine and makes it almost impossible to avoid having a pleasant walk alongside it, you can scarcely walk two blocks along the Thames without having to make some kind of detour, or being bombarded with construction noise and scaffolding. The walkway itself along the Thames is barely two meters wide. Maybe it’s better in other parts of the city, but where we were, it was a joke.

To be fair, London is indiscriminate – it hates cyclists and motorists as much as it hates pedestrians.

The trip began in London. We only spent one full day there because Adam and I had both already been there before. It turned out to be the right decision.

The hotel in London. I don’t think it was terribly expensive by hotel standards, and it was a nice enough place to stay. At least the beds weren’t pushed together, unlike the other hotels. It wasn’t far from the metro, so it was easy to get around from there.

Some boats we saw on the way to meet Adam’s friend for dinner. Good guy; I actually met him back in 2003 when I visited Poland. He’s definitely moved up in the world.

The Thames at sunset after we collected Adam’s friend and went off to the restaurant. It’s kind of an ugly river, but if you catch it at the right time it looks OK.

Some goofy sculpture in the docklands.

Get it? It looks like a tree!

Someone got paid a lot of money to think of that, I’ll bet.

I’ve returned. I had a good time for most of the trip. I saw a bunch of different places, watched plenty of football, got sunburned and lost some weight. While I didn’t have any revelations about what to do with myself in the future, I couldn’t avoid being reminded what a fucking joke my life is now.

I first noticed it in Paris, when I realized that nearly everyone there was traveling with their spouse or boy/girlfriend. It was clear that I didn’t belong there. Paris isn’t for people like me – it’s for normal people, people who already have someone, to go and celebrate their relationships and look forward to the future.

I’m nearly 29 and I’ve never been in a relationship. I didn’t even have a single friend during college. I’m doing work I swore for five years I’d never do again because I hate it so much, earning a humiliating salary, living in a location I don’t even like. I go to work, then I come home and hide in my apartment until it’s time to go to work again. I’ve been doing this my entire fucking life and I’ll never change anything because I’m such a fucking coward.

It wasn’t just Paris that reminded me how broken I am. Nearly everywhere I went, I was surrounded by happy, normal people that just served to remind me that I’ll never be happy or successful like them. I remember being out at night in Luxembourg – freaking Luxembourg, a city nobody will ever accuse of having a vibrant social scene – and seeing crowds of people, all having a good time socializing and enjoying each others’ company. I couldn’t even understand what they were doing, or how. I can’t even make simple conversation over dinner with people I know – let alone total strangers – because I have nothing to contribute to any conversation.

Until I have the balls to take the dignified way out of this situation, I’ve decided I can at least make my life as joyless and as much like being dead as possible. Games in particular keep me distracted from reality, so I’m getting rid of those. I’ve emptied my GameFly queue, boxed up my game consoles and put them in the closet. I’m not going to bother getting my 360 fixed. I’m not going to play any games at all except for my weekly MMO group. I’ve unsubscribed from all game-related podcasts, and may just quit listening to podcasts altogether. I’ve unsubscribed from all my RSS feeds except for a couple I use to keep an eye on the site.

I won’t have anything at all to do when I’m at home, but at least I won’t be able to trick myself into thinking my life isn’t some kind of fucking farce. For once, I’ll have more than enough time to think about what a joke it really is.

June is the month of pictures. I’m not going to post one big wrap-up of the entire trip; instead, I’ll post one or more pictures each weekday for the rest of the month and include comments.

At this point, I’m undecided whether to even bother continuing the Year of Enrichment or, for that matter, the blog. Self-improvement in my case just seems like polishing the proverbial turd. And in case it isn’t obvious, the podcast is over for good.

Edit: The fact that I’ve turned off comments on this post should be a hint to you that I don’t want to discuss it. So don’t e-mail me about it, because you’re not going to get a reply.