We did the whole tourist thing again yesterday, i was fucking knackered after travelling and kipped from about 10pm to 11am this morning. Got some food, and strolled around paris gawking around at shit like the eiffel tower, thought that might impress me somehow, but nah, it was boring, i eat some strawberries and started to burst with this need to shit, had to pay fifty bloody cents for the privilge. They really have ripping tourists off down to a tee, four euro for an ice cream...jesus christ! you'd have to be fucking crazy.

Made our way from paris to barcelona, paris was a drudge. Baracalonas not on our tickets, interrail tickets are a waste of time, all the travelling weve done so far doesnt come to the cost of them, never mind if we just train hopped; in future id advise people to avoid interrail tickets, like i said about tgv, theyre pretty worthless anyway.

Thought we were sorted on the train from paris for bunks, apparently fucking not, class decides who sleeps and who doesnt. Mental views across the mountains as we came into spain, of course i slept through most of it. they practically lock you into train stations here, you have to have a ticket to get pas tsome barrier in the actual station, being irish id dumped it, so we had to pull a runner, as the spainish dude deliberated with a pregnant lady.

So we made it to Barcelona. After a day wandering around Paris doing all the tourist like thing i described earlier we decided it ws time to leave, as there was nothing clearly happening there, which for me was something of a huge dissappointment, ahd romantic notions about Paris sicne I was a kid. Arriving back at the squat at rue de courannes we discovered that there was some sense of an attempt to organise through overt political action in the form of a place called the SolIArtium, basically it was an exihibit place for artists.

It was odd the streets being so littered with political posters, yet nothing seemed to be really happening, really got the impresion that things are more spontaneous, from what Noks was saying confrontations seem to apeen organically and in the suburbs. The film La Haine being an obvious way to understand this; pigs kill a friend, cars get burnt, shit goes down. Theres is also meant to be more of a squatters movement in the suburbs. When i say organically, of course im not ignoring the reality of the energy put into things like the antiwar movement, but basically anyone we met political there seemed to just let others do that work and then hop on board to provoke a riot, which while not being a bad thing, can be a bit annoying if for the rest of the time they just smoke hash and discuss anarchism in hushed tones among themselves. I gather that where as in Dublin, the left almost ignores the significance of young kids fighting off the police at a beach party organised by MTV, in Paris this would be seen in a wider context. One of the Sundays described how the kids at Dollymount shouted anarchist slogans 'fuck the police' and the like. In france theres a wider built in recognition of the role of the state in the average persons mind, and that comes from experience and every day life. For instance id imagine the kids been hassled for selling smoke outside the squat would see no hessitation in fighting off a raid on the immigrants quarter of the squatted factories. But then again maybe Im wrong.

Labels: France, Paris, Travel