paris is a beautiful city. but it's too smokey. too much cigarette smoke. but there's also good food and drink. and i think we've only seen the nice side of the city. champs elysee, the louvre, arc de triumph, pantheon, eiffel tower, pompidou, notre dame, chateau de versaille, gau de nord, st michel, mouffetard, the tuileries, monmarte, rambuteau, moulin rouge. all the places are nice and historic and probably preserved by the government or some tourism agency. but i guess tourists will never know what the French feel about living in Paris, in France, under their own regimes. it probably takes more than a semester of exchange, getting to know the locals, experiencing the random strikes, protests and bad weather and subtleties of being french. of pronouncing 'R's as a very nasal "H'. and getting to love the metro and RER systems and the perks and privileges of following the bebes. the charms of paris lies in the historic monuments, the time-honored piles of stones, boulders and 'esmeraldas' that preserve the glorious past of France.

i guess it was rather disturbing that Paris was the first city that came to mind when i thought of France. For such a big country, i wonder what happened to the rest of France. Embodied by the Bordeaux and Burgundy which the rest of the world knows as wine or beef. or maebe that's just the picture of themselves that they want to paint to the rest of the world. or perhaps the rest of the world just cant be bothered enough to look beyond the vin and viandes.

off to munich and rome. time to move on to other cities. paris had been fun but like new york i guess its a little too overwhelming for my liking. the little messiness just grates on my nerves, not unlike that of tokyo. perhaps that's why i would never like the hustle and bustle of huge cities. the sheer number of people will get to me somehow. sometime.