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last week i was sitting at the station, and a metro stopped in front of me.
Some aspiring artists had decorated the public transport with their tags:
'shit' and 'hell'.
way to go guys, you really outdid yourselves.

the boyz

So the boys came over, and are probably back in holland by now.
What an excellent weekend, laughed my ass off.
Niki, Allan and Allan’s inflatable bed and air pump came around 2a.m. thursday night. The nights were pretty cold, since I’m still too cheap to turn on the heating. The boys resolved this by snuggling against each other for heat, which was just too cute.
Friday the boys did the tourist tour of Paris while I stayed back home to sleep, and we met up at Louvre, where Niki had to see the Mona Lisa smile. Then we went to a mussles (clam) restaurant with eight people altogether. The wine was good, the clams were even better, and they were supposed to be on discount as well. From there we zigzagged Paris and somehow ended up in the most expensive bars, which was confirmed by our budget analysis in the morning.
Saturday started relatively slowly, but we finally hauled our asses up (rather painfully I might add) to the Sacré Coeur church, with a beautiful view of a clear-skyed Paris. Too bad for the group of people on the stairs singing ‘we are the world, we are the children’ together, with some idiot encouraging them with a guitar. The saturday night party was actually a lot of fun, with a much more modest amount of people showing up than anticipated/invited.
Sunday was pretty laid back – we stayed home, cooked, and made bad jokes, and then laughed at our bad jokes.
And, ah, Niki brought over ALL his music, and I filled my hard drive with MUSIC. I bought amplifiers too.. yessssss.
back to the books for me, ciao!

blablabla

Weekend is around the corner again, but with a different twist - Big Al and Niki are coming down from Holland!! Excellent.. We will see how the two little boys fit on our inflatable mattress, hehee..
Next month should actually be really busy, with a total of around 7 people visiting us.. I tried to take some of my school assignments a little bit earlier than just at the end of the semester (when my french would hopefully be better), and monday i did the math: MOST of my assignments are next month, when everybody is visiting. clever me. So this week i started studying. Iliana, if you read this, could you please tell me which of Foucault's texts is on Clausewitz? I have to write an 'original' paper on clausewitz.
For saturday i decided to invite people over. I would have liked to invite more, but we are already around twenty, and I don't know if even that is a good idea - who knows how these frenchies feel about noisy parties saturday night. I guess i'll know sunday.
Last sunday we were at Versailles, which is just unbelievably beautiful (the garden). It has this gigantic cross-shaped lake/canal-thing, surrounded by tall trees. Makes you think how many men it took to dig it, way back in the.. 1600's? A french girl told us that the last time it was drained was during the second world war, so god knows what there is in there. At least when i was sitting by the water a big fish scared the hell out of me. They had to drain it because it is positioned like a compass, and with the moonlight, it gave perfect directions for enemy airplanes to find paris.
And the same girl was nice enough to give us a tour of her hometown (still Versailles) and invite us over for dinner to her house (Axel and I). So we had a Dinner at a Real French Home. (there is a small competition here between Erasmus students on who gets to know the infamously hard-to-get-to-know parisians).
Enough blablabla,
Have a good weekend!!!
Niklas.

RANDOM JETSOM and some flotsam

The window-fixing-man is here, with his infernal saw and drill.
We had a crevettes dinner yesterday with nine people. I think we used up all of our dishes. And I've been washing dishes all morning. Well, maybe morning is a little bit off the mark, i woke up at 12.30. The drill again, infernal.
Its getting colder here in Paris. It's la mode for the long legged parisian girls to have black stockings, a pretty short loose skirt, and boots going up to your knees. It's so hot.
My grandma from Paris always said that stepping into dogshit (maybe it was shit in general) brought you good luck. Well, these parisians must be some lucky people. And I ought to have my share of that luck coming my way.
And also, you develop a dogshit paranoia. Since you can smell it everywhere, and see it even more often, you check the soles of your shoes to make sure its not you. In the street, the metro, in class.
The other day julia was doing some medical charts. Here they are done by hand onto paper. So julia wrote, whatever she was supposed to write on the chart. Later the doctor came back, very angry.

-What is this??
- Its the chart?
- But its written all in black!
- Well yes, my pen is black?
- What?! you dont have a four color pen?? You have to have a four color pen! The blood samples in red...
So now you know. A doctor in France essentially needs a four color pen.

resurrection..?

What an insane weekend. I dont think i've ever seen that many naked people or disgusting things in my life, and i dont consider myself too much of a novice at these things.. So have to hand it to the frogs, they can party like madmen.
The first night started out alright with a longlong busride to bretagne with plenty of games involving taking off your clothes and showing your ass to the other busses that passed by (the were 350 students on the trip). Then somehow we made it to our rooms and then to the disco. I recall even dancing some.
The next day was even more party intensive, with the french going down to the beach and starting their 'games'. We were at a safe distance, a little bit further down the patch of sand. Fortunately or unfortunately, we didnt participate in the games, they were too hardcore for us regular folk.
Later that night you were supposed to have a disguise at the disco/bar-thing (open bar, all night- tough one for us finns). Having brought nothing we went for the good old toga thing, topped with a little bit of eyeliner. And the weirdest thing was everybody knew who the hell we were by the second night. 'Tu es le finlandais!!!', 'bah.. oui? et toi tu es..?'
Surviving the weekend is still the principle thing on my mind, and I have classes where we have to participate on a discussion on wether clausewitz' theory on war is still of value. Good thing i've never read clausewitz - otherwise i might be completely screwed.

P.S. my false identity was bulletproof. People now know everything on the medical system in finland.

Just came out of class.
So, it was twenty minutes into the lesson. The teacher had just told us that we should never 'actually asnwer the question i am asking. you have to see that no question is neutral, and find the biases behind it, and find your own, more important question to answer' (in french, 18 people in the classroom) ... uh, what? ' Now, i will give you five minutes, think about this, and then we will discuss: 'how to live together. okay, go.' shit. and he asked randomly too (i got lucky this time..).

I have to leave to classes in ten minutes, so i'll save you from my literary brilliance.
Yesterday we found out the reason why we havent gotten any mail for three weeks. We had forgotten to notify the 'guardienne' of the house that we had moved in. Apparently, she is the middleman between the mailman and our postbox. Even though our name was on the postbox, she sent all of our mail back. all of it, for a month. I could have killed that *********. I gave her a piece of my mind, and i think i now have on friend less in the world.
This weekend, i am off to the medical students weekend of integration in bretagne. We will see if my gynaecologist identity holds. The germans will prep me in the bus on the way there.
Take care.
Niklas

Saturday morning, niklas comes back to consciousness, in the grasps of a furious hangover. He decides to fall back into unconsciousness.
Two hours later, he takes another go at it. The room spins and his mouth has the vilest of tastes. He wishes that he had already brushed his teeth, taken a shower and would be enjoying a cup of coffee. That would definetly alleviate his poor condition. Wait - niklas backtracks on his wish! He realizes that the actual brushing of the teeth, and the shower, the act itself, is the most pleasurable part, and looks forward to doing both. This in mind, already feeling like a champion because of his neanderthal-like illumination, he rises and applies the toothpaste to his toothbrush. He goes for the faucet, turns it. TZZZ-PT-PT- ... silence. they CUT THE FUCKING WATER.

Damn, being by yourself can feel good sometimes (it's been a week since the last time). This house is a real 'bordel' like the french say. Poor Heidi, who is staying at our place until she finds a flat (she is going to Sciences Po as well), is still out of luck. Her landlord wanted her to pay the whole year's rent in advance. Not a good idea I opinioned. Back to square one for her..
Julia just came home. Also, I have to say, I am completely and desolately surrounded by women. And all the women say, 'many men would not complain in your situation', but hell, I would like to hear somebody say 'shit' every once in a while, or accompanying me in complimenting the female figure of a bypasser, or just not speaking at all. But for the time being, I think I will just have to adapt myself to my androgyne situation, and say 'yes' when I am asked if the jewelery in the shop window is beautiful.
But back to our bordel. There is some interest as to what kind of abode we are inhabiting, so maybe a short description is in place. The flat is maybe a little bit over 40 square meters big. It consists of three rooms: kitchen, and two bedrooms (one of which is also the living room). We live on the fifth floor and enjoy the parisien rarity of having an elevator (yesss!!!). You come in through the door into a narrow passage with the first door to your right being the toilet, the second door to your left leading to the two bedrooms (and eventually the shower) and the door to the kitchen at the end. The floorboards are a dark brown and are creaky. We have a couple of good windows for the winter, but their effect is neutralized by the couple of not-so-good windows. There is a lot of light that comes in, and julia keeps adding in all kinds of plants and flowers. Notre maison.

P.S. the commenting works now, without a password.

DA FISH

I know most of you don't know yet, and unfortunately i can't call you all personally (overseas calls are really expensive with my prepaid connection), but, i hope that this posting will reach as many of you as possible, okay?
Just before leaving Finland, i caught a REALLY BIG FISH, a PIKE, almost ONE METER LONG!!!!! UNBELIEVABLE, I KNOW!!!!
but believe it ladies and gentlemen - i got the pictures to prove it. oh yeah...

Its friday morning now.. Woke up around noon, feeling a bit groggy. I had breakfest the local way for the first time - went down to 'our' boulangerie, bought une baguette and un pain au chocolat, came back and made me some of that dark roasted arabic coffee they sell here. I opened up the windows to get some air in, broke the bread, put some cheese on it, sipped the coffee and read my book.
I was feeling a bit 'tired' cause we had a cheese party here last night. As gay as it sounds, the concept works. Everybody brought a piece of cheese and a baguette or a bottle of wine. The format is a straight knock off of one of Joonas' friend. But goddamn the cheese is good here!
I don't know exactly how it has happened, but we have become surrounded by germans. German medical students to be exact. All germans. At the end of the year I will have probably learned german instead of french. And i will always be safe getting sick anywhere in Germany.
So you know, when in germany, do as the germans, right? Since they all signed up for this medical student integration weekend in Bretagne, i thought i should too. So i am now a level D2 gyneacology student from finland (no, gyneacology wasn't my idea). We will see if I can get away with this.
Back to my book now. And maybe I will make some more coffee too. Vacations are a bitch...
Yours truly
Niklas.
weekend
cheese party
WEI