Pret - a - Porter & Nuit Blanche

I started the day like every other Saturday – watching TV ;-) Same shit, different language. It was really hard to get out of my bed but in the end I managed to leave the hotel at around 11 and headed straight to Sacre Coeur. I don’t know if it’s just me or India left a scar but I was so angry at the guys at the stairs greeting me friendly trying to tie some strings around my finger and asking me where I was from and what my name was. Only after telling the guy who already started to make an armband around my fingers that I will not buy whatever he was making did he let go.

I climbed the stairs, went inside, sat on the stairs, walked around the back, did what people do when they are at this place. It was pretty cool and reminded me a bit of the atmosphere at the Spanish stairs in Rome – but that place was cooler. All around the church there were all kinds of small tents selling some regional food and other stuff. I bought three differently spiced salts made via a very traditional collection method - after tasting all of them.



Next on Estelle’s list of must-sees of Paris was Le Bon Marche which was a more-or-less short walk away. It turned out to be a pretty exclusive shopping centre with a very cool exhibition on the top floor. I didn’t buy anything but took some photos and watched a short video in the exhibition on British humour – a movie called “Little Britain” – by Steve Bendelack (my humble British audience will be probably saying something around “that shite?”) I need to check for it on eBay as it was hilarious. There were also many pieces of jewellery presented by little lady sculptures about 20 cm high.



Next was the Jardin du Luxembourg which was extremely relaxing. I almost fell asleep just lying there on one of the chairs so I decided to head home to get some sleep to be ready for the city in the evening. I wanted to take my by this time usual tour via the city when I saw hundreds of people around the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts. It turned out to be a proper fashion show! So instead of walking home I joined the photographers at taking a picture of every celebrity arriving for the next hour. I shot around three hundred pictures of people arriving and leaving an hour later. Looking back at the pictures I still have some potential around focusing with the camera.



I had no idea who the people were – some of them were literally swarmed by all the photographers, some had bodyguards and some were totally ignored. I got totally excited – being “Sensationsgeil” as I am normally I felt great being able to take a picture of all these people. How cool it is to be in the city of Fashion and witness a fashion show! Plus the coolest thing happened as most of the guests left the place and the security people decided to also leave.

I went inside, looked around and met Jean – Paul Gaultier!!!! How cool. To quote Cartman from South Park: “Hey Everybody – I saw the Terrence and Phillip movie? Who wants to touch me? I said who wants to touch me?!??”



I arrived home after 8 and decided to rest a bit. I saw a poster during the week that there is some event called Nuit Blanche in the Notre Dame and they have some kind of show with music at midnight so I prepared to go back to town for just that. I was totally tired because of too much walking so it took me a while to get ready and I also decided to leave the camera at home and just enjoy the show this time.

What a mistake! The Nuit Blanche did not only concern the Notre Dame but it meant that all around town there were hundreds of happenings - sound installations, movies, moving things, all kinds of artistic things basically. As I was walking around the City Hall watching an interview with the organisers I met some people from South Tirol and their Australian friend Rob. Diana moved to Paris a while ago and her sister Christine came over for the weekend from Vienna. Rob works in London and also came over for the weekend to visit Christine. Talking to Christine about Vienna really made me totally home sick, which reminds me that I need to go visit my parents soon!

Anyway – back to the Nuit Blanche (white night). First we tried going into the City Hall but backed off after realizing the hour long queue in front of it. So we headed for an old church towards the Centre Pompidou which was filled with great red light and some bubbles flying around. I cursed so badly for not taking my camera with me and I hope Christine will send me her pictures so I can include them here. There were some short movies in front of the Centre Pompidou and we decided to take the Metro to the Paris Bercy and check out an installation concerning some cats about bulimia and the Bibliotheque Nationale de France. We took the line 14, which goes totally automatically and is the express line among the Metro lines and so arrived there in only 10 minutes. Besides the installation around the cats there was a very cool sound installation in the area in front of the stadium. Around 30 microphones and a video installation of a mouth singing songs together created the coolest Karaoke I participated at. Basically it was mass karaoke where everybody could join in on singing famous songs and it was coooool.

The Bibliotheque was also pretty amazing – even without the sound installation it is an eye-sight. The woods in the middle were floated with fog and some blue and red light. A ladder arose out of the woods in between the buildings as high as the four book-like buildings of the library leading into the sky – the whole thing in connection with classical music and two huge waving flashlights was very enlightening. After being mesmerised for about an hour we headed down to the riverside to a trendy place called La Guinguette Pirate and had some wine. To my biggest surprise they were serving Hungarian Goulash!!! Diana told me this place was buzzing in the summer and I could imagine living here must be very nice. There was also a swimming pool boat – unfortunately the event there required the visitors to get into the water, which we didn’t do for obvious reasons.

We spent the rest of the night walking around the city and in the end said goodbye at Saint-Lazare. I took the night bus N24 to the Champs Elysées to check out some more stuff there and saw some thirty snow bears! It took me another 30 minutes to find a taxi to take me home, which was an adventure on its own as the Taxi driver did not find my hotel and left me in a garage under another hotel nearby. I fell into bed at 5:30 in the morning after a very long day in Paris.

I love this city!!!