Still,
I found London as an everchanging city. I don't recognize even Brixton , where I used to live. It has changed and developed (it has art galleries on Electric Lane now!) However, that's what I love about London. Life moves on a vertiginous pace that pushes you to move just as fast. I found London invaded by denim and snake print this time around. I found many more manufactured hipsters than the real ones that used to hang out around Hoxton and Shoreditch. In the gay scene, my hearcut repeats constantly and people seem to have a thing for long earrings on only one ear now. I think the earring fad should disappear as soon as possible. As for the London oddities, I wasn't deprived from them. One day I was sitting in a café and then a feather mattress exploded or something. For half an hour, I saw a rain of feather coming down the street. It only gave London that magical feeling.
Most of my friends from when I lived in here are somewhere else, but I'm glad to see some of those who stayed made an effort to meet up with me. I like that it is still extra easy to meet strangers and just have party buddies for a night. I had totally forgotten there's no awkward context for a British person to start small talk until I was washing my hands and the guy doing the same next to me told me the water was extra cold. Right, I had forgotten about chatty people everywhere, but how happy I am those things haven't changed. See, I'm perfectly content with walking around, talking to people and carrying on with my life. You can't do that in Costa Rica. Overall, I felt that if I were to move to London again, the city would give me a chance of starting a brand new life with the benefit of the knowledge I already have of it and the ocassional visit or concurrence of people I like from here and from all around the world. I like that.
I found Paris as a city that rarely changes. I stayed in the Montmartre district, which has been decadent for two centuries and remains so. My stay in Paris this time focused more on the real Paris, far away from the sights (as I was trying to spend as little time as possible near crowds.)I do not think I missed that much. Still, it was really nice to walk around the unknown or otherwise the non touristic streets of the city and see how Paris holds on to its essence, however romantic, bohemian or even grotesque it might be. To my distress, I saw my French ex too and realized the chemistry between the two of us hadn't changed either. That's always the risk (just now I sighed so loud it took me out it distracted me from what I was writing.) Anyway, I found this stability in the city's spirit very comforting too. For one, spring is making the trees on the north side of La Seine river bloom with so many flowers that they fly around like a yellow rain and they make a fine carpet on the steps of the lover's bridge, where people now have to struggle to find a place to put their locks with their name and promise everlasting, nonconditional love (*Sighs again*.) And that's only for Paris. The weekend in Rennes with my friends is a whole new chapter of fun that requires an entry on itself.I propose a toast for the old and the new, and the balance of those elements in life. As I have taken the time to write this entry, I feel entitled to take the last hours of my trip and get comfortably drunk.
Cheers.
