The End of a Trip, Paris

It was truly strange to write the title to this post, finally having realized the completion the bicycling portion of my trip. Did I really bike all the way from Berlin to Paris? To tell the truth as I sit here now typing away it seems a tad unreal and it feels like it will take a long while to process the whole experience and form any sort of concrete narrative. The diversity of experience, the time spent on the road with thoughts and ideas racing through my head like what felt like fire, the couchsurfing hosts who were all so generous and giving and really changed the nature of the trip itself for me - all of these things seem strung across a complex web of memory that will take a while to untangle. What an adventure.

I arrived in Paris late last night after a few days of really long riding. I made it across Belgium in a day, and then through France to Paris in another two. The sun finally came out and made for some beautiful days of riding, although my legs are aching this morning from pushing too hard for several days in row. There are some memories from the past few days which stick out that i suppose i would to get down. I stayed with a wonderful married couple in Belgium who cooked me the most enormous and delicious dinner after my first day of long riding. Afterwards they gave me a tour of the town, which is filled with history from the first world war (there were a lot of victims from gassings on the surrounding hillsides, which made the next day of riding through them a tad eerie). The french seem to love cycling and cyclists both, and i got a few morale boosts from people cheering me on from the side of the road in several small french towns as I passed through. The roads in France and Belgium, aren't nearly as ideal for cycling as in Germany or the Netherlands, but cars were still fairly respectful and there wasn't anything too inconvenient to overcome. For the first night in France on my way to Paris I was able to stay with a lovely girl in a small town near peronne. She studied art history and we were able to talk about Marcel Duchamp for a while which was fun, although it made me realize how much i have already forgotten from some of my history of art and visual culture(HAVC) courses in Santa Cruz.

Paris is a beautiful city. As soon as I arrived I biked around the city to get a feel for things before meeting up with seb, anton, molly and will who have all been staying here. I was able to find a wonderful place to stay in the basement of a anarchist social space in town (it's run by the same people whom wrote 'call'). It's very charming and comfortable here. The building has a large anarchist library, a nice courtyard in the back, and even a full kitchen so I will finally be able to get some cooking in again. Today I'm planning on going to get a free lunch from food not bombs with Will before he heads off to Ireland, and then a, planning on exploring the city using the map that Marla drew for me a while back in Berlin. Tomorrow I'll explore all of the Museums and then the day after I'll be off to see the Tour de France in Marseilles via a high speed french train. As always I'm taking lots of photos and will upload them soon.

Salut,
-i