And Outside The Rain Fell...

Day 2 -> Paris

As compared to Day 1, Day 2 was quite a fizzle. Or so I thought. Promptly waking up at 6 am for the first day of classes in a new country, in a new world, I was ready for action. Helping myself to a quick breakfast of only an apple (juicy, red, very yummy, cost 0.3 Euros), a muffler and a monkey cap on my head, we set off towards college. It was indeed funny carrying heavy rucksacks to class, we had no other alternative indeed.

Walking along the roads of Paris is always beautiful. The city seems to be alive at 8 in the morning, the roads buzzing with traffic, men in superb suits cycling along on the cycle tracks, women in outstanding hairdo and beautiful dresses walking along, going about their work. The one thing you notice here is how staid the colours people wear here are – it’s always an overcoat in black or grey. And nearly every person here has their hair done beautifully (around 20 Euros, less 10% for etudiant).

The mopeds and bikes people use here are crazy – contrary to my perception, there are far too many two wheelers here, in far too many shapes, sizes, and even colours. I’ll post pictures soon of fancy scooters and scooterettes. Everyone here seems to enjoy zipping around in them. We reached class around 8.45, got ourselves entry speaking in broken French without an identity card and settled down into our first class. The professors so far haven’t marvelled me, but well, that’s that. People from other schools(especially European) are far too enthusiastic, not particularly the best though. My second class got cancelled for some reason. That gave me an opportunity to finish some admission formalities. We then went around a short walk around ESCP, with the magnificent Saint Ambroise looming large. It was just beautiful, staring into those almost Gothic spires and the plain, dual toned stones blocks. Too bad it wasn’t open, else I would have loved to see it from the inside. I will be doing that soon anyhow.




We walked on to the G20 supermarket, and my suspicion came true, beer indeed is a lot cheaper than mineral water from the alps. Good that I’m a teetotaller. Most breads have eggs in it, and I can now say I’m almost an expert and reading ingredients in French. Almost. We lunched on, believe it or not, a yummy banana each, and lots of around .5 litres of mixed fruit juice each. It wasn’t much, but we were just preparing for dinner, I guess.



Another class got done, and I once got lost in the blocks at ESCP. It’s not much of a college, a lot like Jain college in the kind of things it’s students do, and therefore, as a corollary, I love it completely. I love the way people carry off their hair here. Would get one hair cut before I come. Just one. Now I’m waiting for my hair to grow up.

At 8, when our last class ended, we were exhausted. The backpacks with the laptop seemed an enormous burden now. And we decided we’d invest in going back home by train. Probably the best decision in the day. We switched 3 quick trains, armed with a map and a destination, Gard du Nord.


We happened to stumble open this Pakistani chap here (indeed, it’s like the Indians, Bangladeshis and Pakistanis share a unique cross-cultural bond) who helped us to the nearest “Indian” street which was a minutes walk away. Not too long, it had many Indian restaurants, a few Bangla stores and lots of South Asians.It was a feast to our eyes.

We jumped into the nearest Bangla store and picked up Ready-to-eat Parathas ( 2 packets of 5 for 1.6 euros a piece). We were starving, and this seemed cheap! We also found directions to a few Sri-Lankan Tam stores, which we would be rummaging through soon. We then took the arduous journey home, and the laptops were really proving to be a burden now with their weight. We happened to stop over at Carrefour supermarket, and it was almost a “Yippee!” moment when we found bread without egg at .69 Euros for a huge loaf. Grabbing on to it, we picked up butter and 2.5 kgs of potatoes (which I don’t like at all, but it’s vegetarian atleast!) and doing so, picked up our breakfast for tomorrow.

We almost crashed into home, and cooked almost right away. We picked Chana Masala (MTR Ready-to-Eat, I highly recommend it now), “microwave-d” it. We picked parathas, heating it. And together, huddled into our small kitchen, we just had the most delicious meal of our lives. Starvation and exhaustion don’t augur well together, but with food, especially Indian food, it all just vanishes. We gobbled 8 parathas (I did the cooking), and topped it off with plate-fulls of lemon rice each. Bless Tardi. Prits does an amazing job of managing it all. And I like cooking!

Prits and Tardi then drew out and elaborate plan for the planned journey to Scandinavian Europe this Thursday. I quickly arranged my documents and was to open a back account the first thing in the morning. Tired, sick, almost feverish and coughing violently, I slept like a log, prepared for another day tomorrow in fascinating Paris.