panta rhei.
des idèes plein les fruits
ideas full of fruits
i did my first trip to paris when i was 16. we were four friends who had been travelling through france together for the summer, and we had four days and two rides left on our train ticket ("france vacance" it was called, a ticket that enabled you to ride as far as you wanted on four different days during a three-week period of time). we had been trekking and canoeing in the gorge ardèche for the previous weeks, and since a valid "ride day" started at 8 p.m.and lasted until midnight the next day, we decided to take an evening train down to marseille, spend the night there roaming around, then catch a very early morning train to mulhouse (which is close to the german border right where we lived on the other side), hitchhike back home into our village, drop off our backpacks, and finally take a train north to paris. this way, we would only use one ride for the whole trip, and could use the last one back home four days later.
as we didn't have much money left, we knew we couldn't afford a hostel or an other accomodation in paris, therfore we decided that we didn't need any luggage, since we would have to spend the nights on the streets, anyway. so we just took our passports our tickets, and some leftover money, and off we went.
we've had impressing and intense four days in paris. we spent the nights on the sidewalk in front of gare du nord (the north station), where we could rest on the ground until the street cleaners chased us away with their water brooms at six in the mornings. quickly we had figured out where to dig up pieces of cardboard to lie on (and where to hide these precious pieces of insulation during the daytime), and which places around the station we could use, and which were already taken by the regular dossers and habitué clochards.
needless to say we didn't get much sleep at night. it was loud and bright, we got quite a few "unwanted guests" trying to squeeze themselves between us in the wee hours, and even in a warm summer, it gets cool at nighttime when you're lying on plain ground with neither a sleeping bag nor a jacket (i didn't even bring long pants; that's why in the picture above you can see me with my legs tugged into a plastic garbage bag, since my calves had been getting uncomfortably cold the nights before.) the person in the sleeping bag to the right was a dutch traveller who was afraid to sleep alone, so we gave her a place at our side for a night.
during the daytime, we occasionally had a nap or two in parks or on a traffic island, but when you're 16, you can get away with almost no sleep for quite a while, and the city was energizing enough for us to keep us going. we were filled with ideas and fruits and inspirations....
the pic was taken in the very early morning hours by friend number four, who had gotten up shortly before the water broom men arrived.
des idèes plein les fruits
ideas full of fruits
i did my first trip to paris when i was 16. we were four friends who had been travelling through france together for the summer, and we had four days and two rides left on our train ticket ("france vacance" it was called, a ticket that enabled you to ride as far as you wanted on four different days during a three-week period of time). we had been trekking and canoeing in the gorge ardèche for the previous weeks, and since a valid "ride day" started at 8 p.m.and lasted until midnight the next day, we decided to take an evening train down to marseille, spend the night there roaming around, then catch a very early morning train to mulhouse (which is close to the german border right where we lived on the other side), hitchhike back home into our village, drop off our backpacks, and finally take a train north to paris. this way, we would only use one ride for the whole trip, and could use the last one back home four days later.
as we didn't have much money left, we knew we couldn't afford a hostel or an other accomodation in paris, therfore we decided that we didn't need any luggage, since we would have to spend the nights on the streets, anyway. so we just took our passports our tickets, and some leftover money, and off we went.
we've had impressing and intense four days in paris. we spent the nights on the sidewalk in front of gare du nord (the north station), where we could rest on the ground until the street cleaners chased us away with their water brooms at six in the mornings. quickly we had figured out where to dig up pieces of cardboard to lie on (and where to hide these precious pieces of insulation during the daytime), and which places around the station we could use, and which were already taken by the regular dossers and habitué clochards.
needless to say we didn't get much sleep at night. it was loud and bright, we got quite a few "unwanted guests" trying to squeeze themselves between us in the wee hours, and even in a warm summer, it gets cool at nighttime when you're lying on plain ground with neither a sleeping bag nor a jacket (i didn't even bring long pants; that's why in the picture above you can see me with my legs tugged into a plastic garbage bag, since my calves had been getting uncomfortably cold the nights before.) the person in the sleeping bag to the right was a dutch traveller who was afraid to sleep alone, so we gave her a place at our side for a night.
during the daytime, we occasionally had a nap or two in parks or on a traffic island, but when you're 16, you can get away with almost no sleep for quite a while, and the city was energizing enough for us to keep us going. we were filled with ideas and fruits and inspirations....
the pic was taken in the very early morning hours by friend number four, who had gotten up shortly before the water broom men arrived.