lunedì, giugno 01, 2009
Happy birthday!
Normally I would say this would be as good a day as any other to start writing my blog again, but it's not. It's a better day than most, since exactly one year ago I moved to live in Paris.
Now of course this is not a breaking news since if you did not know about this, it means we are absolutely not in touch, hence you couldn't care less about the city I live in. :)
So let's recap what happened during these 643 (or 1 year, 9 months, 4 days) since my last post.
Last time I wrote I just left Finland to moved to Den Haag, in Holland. So I have to report you about my experience in Holland and France.
The fans of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" among you will surely appreciate my accurate description of Holland after living there for almost one year: mostly boring (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#Mostly_Harmless).
I can't hide I was happy to leave the country and leave that period of my life behind me. I went there with four good friends and since then only one of them is still in Holland and went so far to start his family there. The other four spread around: me in France, one in Sweden, an two back home in Finland and Turkey.
That was one negative part of leaving Holland, since it's not easy to part from good friends.
An other thing I miss it's my huge flat. I had a 140 sqm flat on two floors just overseeing a park. It was just awesome. Now here in Paris I have a much smaller flat nowhere near a park, and it was damn hard to find it.
To be fair, some pretty funny stuff worth remembering happened in Holland. I will just say "shellfish, what shellfish?" Yeah, I know. It's an inside joke, but that's life. ;)
And then I found a job in Paris, again for my "historic" employer.
I was supposed to move in April but then I was able to push it a bit to June.
Coming to Paris was an historic change. I started to meet people the same day I arrived, and I kept meeting cool people ever since.
At the very beginning I was so thirsty of social interaction because of our miserable life in Holland that I was going out every evening. Bars, restaurants, picnics "En plein air", river cruises, and a lot of friends from Italy or Finland introduced me their friends in Paris.
I've heard many times that moving in Paris can be alienating and that's very hard to meet people. I know exactly what that means. There is so much stuff going on in Paris and everyone here is so busy that you really have to make an extra effort to grab someone's attention if you want to meet them again. Because there is always a party go to, a friend calling for a drink or some other cool stuff. So for an outsider it's hard to fit it.
Paradoxically, my miserable life in Holland helped me out. I was so anxious not to end up in Paris as I was in Holland that I did all I could to make friends. And I managed. :)
Fast forward: one year later.
Incredibly as it might sound to whom knows me well, I'm still in Paris and I still enjoy it. I get to travel a bit thanks to my work (I was in Slovenia, Germany and Italy).
I do speak some French (but I have no clue how to write it), I still meet cool people (albeit I have to admit very few of them are French) and most importantly I have no plans to leave for the time being.
I've heard I have a new reader. ;-) So I'm curious to see if my last post will be noticed. ;-)
Au revoir,
alfonso
Now of course this is not a breaking news since if you did not know about this, it means we are absolutely not in touch, hence you couldn't care less about the city I live in. :)
So let's recap what happened during these 643 (or 1 year, 9 months, 4 days) since my last post.
Last time I wrote I just left Finland to moved to Den Haag, in Holland. So I have to report you about my experience in Holland and France.
The fans of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" among you will surely appreciate my accurate description of Holland after living there for almost one year: mostly boring (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#Mostly_Harmless).
I can't hide I was happy to leave the country and leave that period of my life behind me. I went there with four good friends and since then only one of them is still in Holland and went so far to start his family there. The other four spread around: me in France, one in Sweden, an two back home in Finland and Turkey.
That was one negative part of leaving Holland, since it's not easy to part from good friends.
An other thing I miss it's my huge flat. I had a 140 sqm flat on two floors just overseeing a park. It was just awesome. Now here in Paris I have a much smaller flat nowhere near a park, and it was damn hard to find it.
To be fair, some pretty funny stuff worth remembering happened in Holland. I will just say "shellfish, what shellfish?" Yeah, I know. It's an inside joke, but that's life. ;)
And then I found a job in Paris, again for my "historic" employer.
I was supposed to move in April but then I was able to push it a bit to June.
Coming to Paris was an historic change. I started to meet people the same day I arrived, and I kept meeting cool people ever since.
At the very beginning I was so thirsty of social interaction because of our miserable life in Holland that I was going out every evening. Bars, restaurants, picnics "En plein air", river cruises, and a lot of friends from Italy or Finland introduced me their friends in Paris.
I've heard many times that moving in Paris can be alienating and that's very hard to meet people. I know exactly what that means. There is so much stuff going on in Paris and everyone here is so busy that you really have to make an extra effort to grab someone's attention if you want to meet them again. Because there is always a party go to, a friend calling for a drink or some other cool stuff. So for an outsider it's hard to fit it.
Paradoxically, my miserable life in Holland helped me out. I was so anxious not to end up in Paris as I was in Holland that I did all I could to make friends. And I managed. :)
Fast forward: one year later.
Incredibly as it might sound to whom knows me well, I'm still in Paris and I still enjoy it. I get to travel a bit thanks to my work (I was in Slovenia, Germany and Italy).
I do speak some French (but I have no clue how to write it), I still meet cool people (albeit I have to admit very few of them are French) and most importantly I have no plans to leave for the time being.
I've heard I have a new reader. ;-) So I'm curious to see if my last post will be noticed. ;-)
Au revoir,
alfonso
