Oh, earlier on thursday I had met a french contact juggler, and we talked a little. Unfortunately I hadn't eaten and was really shaky, plus we were over concrete, so I was nervous and juggling terribly, quite a disgrace. Anyway, he said this spot where he was was the jugglers hangout in the afternoons, which sounded cool, tho when I stopped by later there were as many bums as jugglers. I'm sure you are all wondering how I could tell them apart :). Hey, At least the jugglers do something before they ask for money. For those of you who know Paris, my hotel was in between Las Halles and the Pompidou center.

Jean Michelle Jarre and some others are doing "Rendezvous 98", a huge free electronic music concert under the Eiffel tower on tuesday, but I don't think it fits into my itinerary, especially after this festival rich week.

At the restaraunt at the museum, I had some food and then sat, sipping my water, looking at people, and writing in my notebook, trying out the whole Parisian cafe thang. It worked like a charm - I wrote for half and hour, and the waiter didn't come near me. As soon as I closed my notebook, he arrived.

Afterwards I checked out the middle level of the museum. The endless monotony of statues with small penises was finally broken by a gorgeous collection of cloisonee and other small, cunningly-wrought things.

Thursday evening I walked to the Eiffel Tower. It was totally spectacular, everyone should see it. At the top I met two friendly hispanic chicks from chicago who were there with a couple dozen other people. They were very nice and outgoing, and we chatted a lot and tried to go out for food, but ended up not cuz they didn't have much french money and the subways were about to stop running. I felt a bit left out cuz their group conversed mainly in spanish, which made me really angry that I don't speak the language. I was so stupid back in school not to spend more effort learning it, and not to take four years in high school instead of two. Languages are sooo useful in europe, and you can relate to people and talk to them and understand them so much better. I felt ashamed that I didn't speak spanish, because I could, if i had put in the effort. Oh well, now I know.

We arranged to meet at 5PM friday under the tower, and I headed home. I didn't sleep much, for some reason, but in the morning I felt totally energetic and not tired, so that was OK. I tried to go to the Pompidou center, where the museum of modern art is, but it was closed for renovations. I had to kill time until my 5PM meeting and my night train, so I chilled in the part of the center that was open, surfing its webpages and reading books in its library. I chatted some with the french geek who manages their computers, and he gave me a long, rambling, unasked for lecture on environmentalism and the US and how much water and energy we use and so forth. His grasp of US geography was so poor that he seemed to think that one can talk about weather for the entire country. Even I donUt expect the weather in Paris and Nice to be the same, and they are an awful lot closer than, say, Maine and Florida.

Eventually I headed towards Notre Dame. Wow. It is the most gorgeous cathedral I have ever seen in my life, even if it was full of people profaning its space with their chattering and wasting pictures on the ineffable that film can never capture. I don't believe in God, so I sat in silence and offered up a prayer to the indomitable human drive to create beauty, and to those who spent their lives doing so there. The cathedral actually managed to profane itself a smidgeon, there was a small information board with a football exhibit, a biblical quote on athletes and a quote from a football referee on god, and some pictures. (For those who don't follow these things, France has an excellent team and is thus football mad, they are playing Brasil in the final of the world cup sunday evening).

I walked the 4 or so miles to the Eiffel tower, but got stood up by the girls, which wasn't such a bad thing - email from Mats had alerted me that the night train to Berlin (which was the same one they had tried to take wed. night) left at 8:45, not 10:45 as we had thought, so the logistics were getting a little tight on spending time with the girls and then getting my bags and getting to the train station. I went to the station and sent that brief email, then hopped on the train to Berlin.

My hope was that the people in my couchette compartment would a) speak english and b) not be jerks, and I got both wishes. There were 3 random old non-english speakers, who went to bed quickly and don't count, and a couple young brits. We chatted lots, they were way cool, and were going to Berlin for the love parade and going to Prague next, like me, so maybe I'll run into them again [I didn't]. I got a little sleep on the train, and eventually rolled into Berlin this morning (saturday). At 9:15, the area around the train station, which is part of the Love Parade area, was already full of freaks, blowing their rave whistles and playing loud hardcore techno. It took me a good hour with the crowd and the confusion to find out where to change money, do so, find out where to get a telephone card, do so, wait in line for the phone, call the hostel Mats was at for directions, find out where to get a subway pass, do so, and get on the subway.

Eventually I arrived at the hostel, which was truly plush. Mats and his two friends and I are in a huge quad room with two brand new bunkbeds, four lockers, a little table, a washbasin - its nice. ItUs called the RLet us Sleep!S hostel, and its brand new. Apparently its not even legal yet becaus it hasnUt gotten licensed, but they figured theyUd open up for the love parade to give it a sort of test run. The owner, Jurgen, is a great guy, and we had an awesome time with him. It was a bit out of the way, but the rooms were sooooo fine, the mattresses so comfortable, the comforters so comforting, the space so big. IUve been in rooms the same size as our quad in other hostels that had 12 or 16 beds. Eventually we all took off for THE LOVE PARADE (TLP).

TLP is sort of like a big rave. Its in the Tiergarten in berlin, which is a huge park, and there are *lots* of people here - according to the Let's Go guidebook it was the first million-person rave. We were later told that this year was estimated at 1.5 million. This place was packed with more freaks than come to a whole NIN tour. More freaks than IUd ever seen together in one place before. Germans plan their Love Parade outfits for months beforehand, and there were zillions of spiked colored hairdos, piercings, scantily clad women (even a few topless), just rave outfits everywhere. Wow. The actual parade is all these floats, semi's rigged up with audio equipment, blasting techno with people dancing on them, each one advertising a party for later. They parade in a big ring, moving slowly through masses of people. It was just a huge party scene. wow. There are like 80 different ones.

Eventually we tired of the madness and headed back. Tonight we are going out to one of the numerous Love Parade techno rave parties - the parade breaks up into 30 or 40 different parties.

So here's Love from patri, comin' atcha with a hardcore techno beat!

I promise to send all of y'all who have emailed me over the past week or so personal mail soon, I haven't really had a chance.

l8r sk8r's

Patri.

p.s. If whoever gave me a huge phat map of Berlin last year is on this list, like it was during/after budapest, just randomly in case I ever went to berlin, and since I did randomly go to berlin and the map rocks and turned out to be useful, thanks a ton! I think it might have been mr. archer, but I ain't sure at all. Anyway, thanks!

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