I went to France to see what the hype was all about. Turns out it is really over rated. I didn’t see fairies like the movies said it would. Instead, it was freezing cold, it smelt like piss everywhere, and there were professional criminals lurking around, one of whom snatched my golden bracelet from underneath my sleeves.(My grandmother gave that to me. You cunt!)

It seems like I had a brush with Paris Syndrome. This city does not deserve to be the most visited tourist destination. Especially for the price! In my opinion, of all the con artists in Paris, the biggest ones are the guys who sell you the trip! Okay, maybe that’s going too far, but it’s definitely not worth it, other places are more deserving of tourism.

Paris is a city that is frozen in one historical era. Barely any hints of anything before or after. Yes, I’ve seen the major tourist attractions and they’ve all been written about before, and I’ve read about them a million times doing French grammar exercises, but nothing prepared me for this eiffel tower trip. I had to spend three hours at least in a line up. It was freakin’ freezing. I could barely feel my hands. I was so grouchy from waiting in the cold that I only stayed for a few seconds when I finally reached the top. Nothing I haven’t seen before. Just some concrete and grass arranged in another way with a view from another angle and from another height. The only cool thing was that arrow that pointed to the precise direction to Montreal.

Yes, I should have dressed up more warmly, I’ve been checking the weather forecast everyday before I left and it always said it would be low 20’s. With the way foreigners always talk about Montreal, “Oh its so cold”, I assumed that everywhere else is a sauna party. What a lie! It was just as cold as Montreal!

Then there are the “backpackers” I have always thought were so cool and adventurous. The guys who head out to new territory carrying everything they need on their backs. But in a place that is strikingly familiar to home. H&M’s, Starbucks, and Macdonalds… and iPhones, it almost seems ridiculous. Travelling from America to Western Europe doesn’t really give you the shock and thrill that travelling is supposed to.

I stayed at a hostel hoping for a hippie adventure, and I kinda did, but I also met some stiff prudes. A girl from Alberta was my roomie for the week. I went to my room (which was stuffy with mold and smelly) at 6:00 pm to practice the violin. It was too cold to play outside and I really needed to practice. I hesitated because my roomie was already tucked in her bed. “Uh, is it cool if I practice, it’s just that there is nowhere else, and I have to prepare..”

“Yea it’s cool,” she said and went back to reading her Kobo and eventually dozed off. AT 6 pm!!! And this isn’t jet lag, she just came back from the UK, which is just a 1 hour difference. She could have read her kobo at home, why would anyone want to chill out in a dingy hostel room? To me, a hostel is an in-and-out mission. You just go there to sleep, and as soon as you wake up, you dash the f* right out of there… to explore!

Later on at 9pm, my German roommate stumbles in and gets ready for bed. She went to sleep and didn’t mind the playing. It was her first night in Paris, and she wanted to spend all of it in the hostel? I felt weirded out and left the room to a bar with some people I met at the lobby.

LATE night I come back, I opened the bedroom door to a smog of mold and b.o. I held my breath and opened the window as wide as I could. Then I ran outsidethe the room and waited until I was sure the air was clear. When I came back in, I left the window ajar, just enough for the temperature to be comfortable and the freshness to circulate into a closed & mouldy room where six women were sleeping! Myself included!

It was probably 5 am when I woke up. The smell came back, I looked at the window and saw that it was firmly shut. What person in the right mind could have shut it?! I immediately opened that window as wide as the hinges allowed, and put my head out to breath, as if I had come up from the bottom of the Atlantic ocean desperate to inhale fresh air.

Other hostel memories: I mastered the art of brushing my teeth and showering with minimal to no contact at all. The breakfast was okay. Staff was friendly. Many of the people were cool.

So what else did I do? I had the opportunity to take lessons with a well-known Iranian bagpipe player. For my next Persian Project I will incorporate bandari. So watch out.

Oh and.. there is more to the story, as always, but I will save those details for my tell-all book that I will publish when I’m in my 50’s.