Jour 85, 1 April: The Farewell and Amsterdam

Hôtel Apollon Montparnasse, Jour de 85. The Farewell and Amsterdam

'Rôtisserie'

Katya and I started to pack last night, so the check-out was not as close a call as the London hotel. We spent part of the late late morning buying the remaining gift for Katya’s sister back home, and then finally made use of the Parisian specialty stores.

'Beckett'

      Paris is a city of specialized shops: patisseries (pastry), fromageries (cheese), rotisseries (meat), and more. Our morning breakfast on the go had been pastries up until today, when we settled on exploring the bread and meat. We bought a cheap mozzarella circle to complete our intended lunch of cheese and chicken baguette sandwiches that we put together ourselves. Yes, we bought a half chicken for ourselves. We sat down in the famous cemetery in Paris, where we visited the gravesite of Samuel Beckett (we would’ve seen more but the composers’ graves Katya wanted to find were at a different cemetery in the city). This famous modernist writer had one rose over his and his wife’s grave, enlivening the tribute with life.

      We also walked over to the garden near the l’Observatoire de Paris, and though we had intended to look over the city from the top of the observatory, we didn’t have time and so we just took timed pictures of us on the grass and spent our last hours together until June holding Katya in my arms and vice versa.

      The farewell was tough—too little time for it. At a random wall we dropped our bags and sat down just inside the metro station at Gare du Nord train station, since there were no chairs or benches. Katya cried in my arms. After twenty minutes of us in sadness, I finally really cried when she stopped crying, just about to go through the turnstile to take an underground train to the airport, Charles de Gaulle. We kissed through these metal bars when she went to the other side, still able to hold hands a little through it. I didn’t think of it at the time, but it was definitely like Pyramus and Thisbe in Midsummer Night’s Dream—kiss me through this chink in the wall. Finally we parted and I spent five minutes trying to find my way up to the Gare du Nord station.

      After a wait of two hours, I got on a train to Amsterdam. I wrote most of this blog of this past week at the time, after finishing Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. On that note, there is a devious edge to perseverance, as the book points out: obsession into madness. Frankenstein is as much a monster as his creation.

Amsterdam Centraal

      Once I arrived at Amsterdam Centraal station, I realized how ignorant and foolish I was to know not even what language or currency was used here. Well it’s Dutch, and it’s euros. I bought a hot dog and some meat slice and finally got my area codes to work to call Joseph and find out where to go.

      I foolishly just tried to get directions to the street Oudezijds Achterburgwal, which only got me still lost until I looked closely at the map I had taken a picture of on my black camera and recognized the street I was on. From there, I found the red-light district.

     I was confused as to why it was called the ‘red-light district’ until I saw a series of windows in a red tint and a girl in lingerie seductively dancing and looking at people walking by. I almost jumped in fright. These were window displays not of typical store objects but of live girls. I felt pity and gross. I didn’t really give a second glance, moving on and finally finding the hostel, Heart of Amsterdam.

      The coldness of the nightly solitude and the weight of my bags down the streets ended once I opened my room and the warmth of seeing my friends made up for the last few hours of wandering. Joseph, Vinnie, Mo, Caitlin, and Vito (Liam was also with us on the trip but not tonight) all greeted me in the room.  As Joseph told me, they had requested me in this room too, since otherwise my separate reservation would’ve dragged me into another one. I was grateful for that.

      Apparently they went to the Vincent van Gogh museum in the day, which made me envious. We spent the night around, enchanted, and bar-hopped a bit. Good night.