#i think most of the actual CULTURE culture is anywhere bu the suburbs. the most i get is like. idk. i got a good connection w the

[snekdood]

my culture is midwestern emo

[motsimages]

A list of Hollywood things that may be what real life is in the US and the equivalent situation in Spain. Feel free to add your own country. I’d love to know of other places :)

This is going to be long, so the TL:DR is there are many things I know about the US because of the movies, landscapes, hobbies, cultural things, everyday life things and sometimes they feel very normal or like something that happens in movies, no in between. They are neither and this is a list of differences I can think of in regards to Spain.

Click there to find out, there are pictures and all.

- Going to school by car, by bike or in a yellow bus: We either walk or your parents drive you (specially when you are too young to go by bus on your own or your parents are overprotective). Not really bike because bike lanes are a mess (in that they don’t exist) in Spain, it is dangerous. There are school buses if students come from places that are further but they’re average travel buses and once you are 16, you cannot use them. You have to go to school from 16 to 18 in public transportation because school is not mandatory after 16, it is understood it’s your choice. You may have a motorbike at 16 but I don’t know anybody who went to school in it. All of this is extra -fun- if you live in a village as in there may not be any bus service if it’s a small place or you live far apart from the village.

The picture is an average school bus with a woman in charge of picking up children. It looks like it’s in the country or maybe, the outside neighbourhoods of a city.

- Dating: we don’t date. If you like someone, you find a way to hang out with them and hope for the best. It may be more or less clear what is going on but it’s not a date, just a plan. You go to a restaurant/movies/theater... when you _are_ in a relationship or with friends. Not a date. The confusing hell it is to watch people saying things like “It’s a date! I’ll pick you up at 8!” Ok. Maybe they pick you up but still not a date. Also: not a problem if you have sex straight away or if you don’t feel like it (because there is no social obligation around it, no date). It seems to be a big deal when you are 30 and “never been in a date” but the first time I was in a date was with my current boyfriend _after_we started going out (I was 30 btw). I met him on a dating app, btw. Still don’t consider the first time we met “a date”. “Going on a date” maybe a thing but still probably based on movies.

- Prom: very confusing. Specially the part where you _have_ to have a _date_ (again, not something we do ever). If we do a ball (IF, also it wouldn’t be a “ball” as such but a “party”), it is actually expected to go on your own, with your friends. It would be a massive social pressure to go with the boy you like (with whom nothing happened prior to this) in front of people. Nah, you either go with your partner that you already have or with mates. But generally speaking, there is no “prom” or “graduation” in high school. In my high school, we spoke with a restaurant to have dinner, invited the teachers we liked and after that, went to local bars to party until the next morning when we went to see what grades we had received for the year. It was done like this so those who failed the exams could still party with the rest.

As for uni, maybe some other colleges do something but we didn’t (mainly because I studied translation and half of the people in my year were abroad that year). I don’t even have a picture of my graduation. People usually dress smart and then wear a band with the colour of their faculty.

The picture is graduation from Tourism (if I’m not mistaken). It shows a group of girls on a scene, all of them smartly dresses with an orange band on their shoulders. Their classmates are sitting on the grades of this “theater thing”, all wearing the same band.

- High School: in general, it’s very confusing. It seems to me like there is some kind of obsession with high school years given all the movies about high school and all the “childhood sweetheart” stories out there. For us, it is quite an irrelevant period of our lives, almost like school. You do it because you have to but often, life (and interesting things) happen AFTER high school. Our high schools don’t have lockers, you just carry 5 books in a backpack. But you have your class, only a couple of things take place in other rooms (maybe Science in the lab, or some optional subjects). Public schools close once the classes are over and all the activities you may want to do, you do them somewhere else (paying for them, most of the time). There are no School teams of anything, you don’t play against other schools either (maybe private schools do, I don’t know). In my high school, I remember for Spring we organised like a week of activities and you would sign up with your mates if anything. You and 2 others would make a basketball team to play in the Basketball league against other people in your class but it isn’t “The Official Team”. I remember there was a card tournament for the game of Mus (typical from Madrid). Also, we don’t have The Popular, The Band Kid, The Nerds, etc. clearly separated. There is bullying (but our toilets are not full of water so you cannot drown there) but either you are normal or you are the weird kid, so to say. I was a weird kid who suffered some light bullying and then I went to average, with no bullying. Overall, everyone speaks with each other and unless it’s a severe case of bullying (which there are), there are no underdogs or closed groups. We don’t have yearbooks AT ALL and this “Clown of the class” thing? I personally find it borderline problematic.

Picture of an average high school in Spain. It’s separated in two halfs. On the left, there is a couple of people carrying backpacks in a corridor. It’s quite dark, a window at the end giving light to the corridor. On the right, one of the doors of the corridor is open and shows a classroom. There are lots of green tables and chairs, all of them in pairs. At the end there is a blackboard. The light comes from the window.

- Alcohol consumption and other drugs: We can drink at 18 and it’s not a big deal if you get drunk. By the time you’re 18, your parents have seen you drunk more than once. You may have gotten drunk with your parents. You’ve seen them drunk more than once. Spain is quite an alcoholic society, tbh. BUT we do not like aggressive drunkards or dependant drunkards. You can get drunk but you have to be able to still be nice. Your friends will stop hanging out with you if you get drunk too often, too heavy or too badly (and you will find those who follow you, obvs). We do it to socialize and have fun, not to knock out. Weed is partially legal (I don’t really know the law, you can get fined for carrying but not arrested, you can buy paraphernalia in shops, there are cannabis clubs, people can smoke on the street in the open, you can grow it at home, it can be used for medical purposes or recreational). Other drugs are illegal though personal use may be allowed? I don’t know but I do know that it’s relatively easy and cheap to find other harder drugs, and so, they are commonly used at parties. The 80s were a complicated time in Spain because the heroine consumption was over the roof. It killed many many people in that generation.

- Houses: in cities, it’s more frequent for people to live in a flat. Depending on the time when this flat was built, the quality of the materials will be better, the flat will be bigger or smaller. Houses are something you see mainly in villages and they tend to be next to each other, no garden (maybe a patio). In the last 20-30 years, people started to show an interest in something that looks like “suburbs” from the movies (even though “suburbio” in Spanish actually means the full opposite of “suburbs”) but it doesn’t fit the weather nor the way we live and I personally hate them. And wooden houses are out of this world, everything here is made of stone or brick. Traditional houses here are made of stone with thick walls (up to one meter of thickness). I attach pictures of houses in the North of Spain. Southern houses are full white, no wooden structures to be seen from the outside.

A village in what looks like the North of Spain. There is a lot of vegetation, you can see some white and brown houses in a grass field. There is a tower at the back. We see a town square with houses made of stone, red roof and wooden balconies. Most of the walls are painted white, some aren’t and you can see the stone itself.

- Physical contact: in the movies, people rarely hug. It seems to me that maybe in the 80s-90s people hugged, touched more on screen. At some point in the 2000s it stopped and now you have people crying their eyes out and their best friend just standing there. We stand closer to each other and touch each other to show care, interest and affection very often. Some people in Spain are not very tactile (and thus, really like Northern Europe) but generally speaking, if someone cries, you hug them (unless you know they don’t want it, in which case you stay nearby). Heterosexual men also hug and also hold each other by the shoulder, for instance. I know this is a shock for some foreigners (don’t know if in the US it would be). From the times I’ve met US people, they’re not only surprised but sometimes actually scared that people touch them. Not even Asians react the way US people do to physical contact in Spain. BTW, when I say “touch”, I mean “the arm, shoulder” mainly. Other places require closer levels of friendship. However, you may kiss your partner/lover anywhere in the street, it’s ok, usually goes unnoticed by people. Even my parents grab each others asses occasionally in the street.

This picture is from La Torre de Suso, where 4 friends gather after 10 years of being apart because an old friend died. It also touches on drug addiction and the 80s. It shows 4 men in their 40s wearing a jacket and a tie, smartly dress, smiling and about to hug each other in the middle of the street of what looks like a small town.

- Welcoming someone to the neighbourhood: apparently, people bring cakes to the new comers. We don’t, you’ll eventually meet your neighbours. Or not. But you have to say hello to the people you see on the stairs of your flat, in the street you live. In small towns/villages, you have to greet everyone you know, at least say “hi”, ideally actually stop for small talk (I’m terrible at this but getting better now that I live in a small town).

- Church: it seems to be a big part of people’s lives. Very often, people are going to church, all ceremonies seem to be religious (marriage, death...) and they tend to be Christian (sometimes Jewish but they seem to be less involved in their religious life?, or maybe the movie is done by non-religious people?). In Spain, everything is Catholic and at the same time, it isn’t. Many traditions are Catholic and people enjoy them but they aren’t Catholic themselves. There are churchgoers, of course. There are Catholic cults with massive power in politics and society (Opus Dei, mainly). But we had a fascist Catholic dictatorship and many people got very tired of it. To give you an idea of how things usually go: everyone in my village eats the same meal (fish and garbanzo beans for lunch, potato omelette for diner) on Good Friday (even my family, where nobody has ever been religious willingly). Only old people and some very Catholic families go to church. Most holidays are related to Catholic Saints (this gives us lots of long weekends and days off during the year) and they are often celebrated with a town fair that lasts several days.

In theory, Spain has no religion. In reality, it is Catholicism. In schools/high schools there is a subject called “Religion” and almost always it’s about Catholicism (teachers of this subject, even in public schools, are related to the Church somehow). It is not mandatory but often there is no alternative if you don’t want to take it (I was the only child who didn’t attend and had my own homework during that time that my mother chose for me: Ethics).

The image is from El Rocío, an important religious fair that takes place in the South of Spain. Many local fairs look similar to this. Lots of people are gathered in a small temporary white hut, decorated with garlands (white and red) and the flag of Andalusia that is green and white. There is a bar with small glasses of white wine and some plates with food on them.

This said, it’s very frequent to get married at the Town Hall with a couple of witness and it’s also very frequent for burials to happen in the Tanatorio, where people can say goodbye to their loved one but it’s not in church.

And even many church goers are not devoted Christians, are open minded about LGBT issues or other, for instance.

- Prison: We don’t have death penalty but people can spend their life in prison if their crimes are massive and they add years and years to their sentence. Prisons here are public and as far as I’ve seen in Spanish movies, there are no uniforms, you wear your everyday clothes. You will only go to prison if you committed a serious crime or if you have several small crimes. Often, the first time it’s a reduced sentence that can be made into paying a fine. The second time you will go to prison. This happens even for domestic violence/rape which usually causes great controversy in society. You can leave earlier if you behave well (very earlier actually) and sometimes you can leave the weekend and the come back to prison, or leave for x hours and come back to sleep. It depends on the sentence and behaviour, etc. I’d say terrorism is the hardest charge and right now, they are using terrorism as an excuse to sentence activists (there quite a lot of political prisoners in Spain).

I mention crimes because you have to have LOTS of other offences to go to prison. They usually are just fined.

The picture is from the movie Cell 211 which is an excellent movie. Do watch it. It shows the main character, a bold man with a goatie wearing a sweater whose sleeves have been cut off. He looks serious. On the background, many men wearing everyday sports clothes cheer and look in the same direction as him.

- Laws: I don’t know Spanish law very well (it bothers me to say that I may know better what to do with the police in the US than in Spain) but it seems to me, from the movies, that many things are made into a massive deal in the US. Like jaywalking is apparently an offence of some kind? Here you can just cross the street wherever. People respect the crossing path for safety but it’s not a crime to not do it. People also don’t sue companies or other people as often and it’s usually not that big of a deal maybe? In any case, it’s a completely different legal system.

. The 50s: The 50s in the US are fancy and colourful. Society seems to have been thriving, everything was getting better. In Spain, the hunger years were starting to be over but many people were poor. We were in the worst of the Franco dictatorship, it was quite a rural society that had been destroyed by a civil war (the effects of which are still being felt). Rich people were fascist, poor people could be anything (many were actually communists, republican or other leftist). This is not a happy time in Spain. Many people had left to be refugees in other countries, many were leaving illegally to work in Germany or France. The music we listened to at the time was definitely not Elvis Presley (look for Lola Flores or Miguel de Molina, even though he ended up fleeing the country because he was openly gay and republican and they almost killed him once).

This image is from the movie Los Santos Inocentes, based on a book of the same title. A classic of Spanish modern literature and cinema. This is the way most people looked in the 50s in Spain. Even now old people look like this in villages.

It is like a family picture in front of a white house. Everyone is wearing black, dark blue, dark green or grey. From left to right, there is a boy sitting on a bench that is situated next to the door. Next, it’s a young girl wearing a long grey skirt and a dark green jacket. By the door, the mother holds a very thin boy who seems to be either deeply sick or dead. She wears mostly black and gray. The boy has the brightest green in the scene. Next to her, there is a man wearing a gray jacket and a bonet and finally, there is an older man that seems to be smiling (the only one smiling, everyone else has a serious and gloomy face).

And that’s what I can think of right now.

[night-filled-mountain]

so forgive me if this is kinda a stupid question but i have an oc from Boston and I've never actually been there (I'm from the south so my experience with anything in the north is limited lol) but I was wondering if there are like... certain phrases/interests/general info that I could use to build up her character a little more?

Not a stupid question! An exciting question!

So, disclaimer: I’m not a native Bostonian. I was born and raised in New Jersey. If I have any followers who can swoop in and correct or add to any of this, please do! But I’ve lived here on and off for 12 years and married a local, so I’ll give it my best shot.

First of all: Where in Boston is your OC from? This is pretty vital to pin down. It’d be a hugely different experience growing up in, say, Beacon Hill vs. Mattapan. There are plenty of basic breakdowns of the different neighborhoods online, but my one strength in answering this question is that I’ve moved all over this city like an erratic Ping-Pong ball. So if you need inside information about any specific area, I’ve lived or worked in: the Theater District, Back Bay, Allston, Brookline (not actually part of Boston, but closely associated with it), Kenmore/Fenway/Longwood (that’s kind of all one neighborhood, but I’ve got all three parts covered), the North End, Lower Mills (part of Dorchester, which is huge), and Mattapan. I’ve also hung out a lot in Downtown Crossing, Chinatown, Beacon Hill, and Cambridge (which is also not part of Boston).

If you don’t know what part of the city your OC’s from yet, think about her economic background, ethnicity/nationality, what she or her parents did/do for work, the kinds of places you imagine her spending her time, etc., and see if you can find a good match.

Other Boston things:

The accent: The Boston accent (as in “We pahk the cah on Hahvahd Yahd”) is real, but not universal. It’s mostly a thing in working-class families who’ve lived around here (and remained working-class) for at least a couple generations. My mother-in-law, who’s from a blue-collar Irish family in Dorchester, has it. Her husband is straight from Ireland with a full-blown brogue. And their four kids--all raised in the suburbs, all educated at private Catholic schools, after which they all went to college--have no trace of either accent.

Phrases: I feel like you want to be really careful with regional words/phrases in general, lest a character come off like a walking parody, but here are a few tips:

Possibly the most stereotypical Boston (and general New England) word is “wicked,” which is used to modify adjectives, as in “It’s wicked cold out” or “I’m wicked hungry.” (A girl from Maine was playing with my hair once and told me it was “wicked pretty,” and it was, like, the highlight of my life.) This is NOT something I hear on the regular, but I wouldn’t balk if your OC used it once or twice over the course of a story.

A liquor store is called a “packie” (short for “package store”). Don’t ask me why. My husband calls them this every time without fail, and was previously unaware that it was not a universal term.

A milkshake is called a frappe (which is pronounced “frap,” and does not involve coffee). Or at least, the drink in which you mix milk and ice cream, which would be called a milkshake in any other part of the country, is called a “frappe.” Supposedly, if you ask for a milkshake, you’ll get a drink made of milk and syrup with no ice cream, but I’ve never attempted this.

You don’t make a U-turn here--you “bang a U-ey.” Again, I can verify this one based on the fact that My Husband Says It. (And he once yelled it while playing a multiplayer video game involving cars, and was horrified when none of his fellow players had any idea what he was talking about.)

Interests: You’re probably already aware of the sports teams (Red Sox for baseball, Patriots for football, Celtics for basketball, Bruins for hockey). This is New England, Land of the Endless Winters, so hockey is pretty big (including casual kids’ hockey teams). Ice-skating is popular in general; the Frog Pond on the Boston Common (which doesn’t actually have any frogs) is a favorite spot.

As someone who is Not A Sports Person, I can also assure you that whether you want them to or not, the Red Sox will affect your life as a Bostonian. You will find yourself almost smothered to death on the T by dense crowds of drunk people in Sox gear on their way to or from a big game. You will be casually shopping downtown when a deafening wave of noise approaches, confetti rains down from the heavens, and you are nearly trampled to death by a post-World Series parade. You will be unable to sleep a wink the night after a game if you live anywhere near Fenway. And do not set foot in a bar at such times. DO NOT.

Other things that Bostonians care about more than the average person, in my experience: SEAFOOD; St. Patrick’s Day (I’ve never been to the parade because of reasons, and honestly, I’d also recommend avoiding the bars, the T, and even the very streets if possible); the Boston Pops concert and fireworks display at the Esplanade every Fourth of July (ok, that’s actually pretty fun); and all things American Revolution (well, you may not be interested, but you probably studied it intensively in school and visited a lot of local historical sites).

Public transit: Boston’s train/bus system is called the MBTA (Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority), but literally everyone calls it “the T.” If you travel on the T regularly, you probably have a CharlieCard:

These are named after an old campaign song by a politician who promised to lower the fares. It’s absurdly catchy.

Knowing what neighborhood your character is from tells you which T stations she would’ve lived near, which is also super important to my Bostonian mind. Is she a Red Line kid? Green? Orange? Blue? Or maybe she mostly took Silver Line buses, or rode the Commuter Rail (a.k.a. Purple Line) to work. (I‘ve only ever lived on the Green and Red Lines and certain bus lines, so I have Biases.)

College town: Boston is a college town. It is lousy with colleges. That’s what first brought me here, and even though I’m a townie now, I remember the culture well. College students make up around 20% of the city’s population when school is in session, and the downtown neighborhoods in particular are crawling with them. They swarm the bookstores and museums and bars (with real or fake IDs) and trendy restaurants. They work in every cafe and perform in every theater. They smoke clove cigarettes and take Duck Tours and ride the Swan Boats. If your character is a local, she’s had annoying encounters with college kids at some point or another. I promise not to take offense.

The Emerald Necklace: This is the nickname for a giant string of parks and waterways that surrounds the city of Boston. No matter where you live, including the most inner-city neighborhoods (which is where I currently live and work), chances are good that there is a substantial amount of green space and water in your general vicinity. Complete with hiking/bike paths that, if you follow them long enough, will take you through literal woods where you can see nothing but trees and hear nothing but birdsong. This is possibly my favorite thing about the whole New England region. It’s so heavily forested that you can still find your way to a little bit of nature in the most unexpected places.

Miscellaneous:

Dunkin’ Donuts is not found only in Boston, but it is more beloved in Boston than anywhere else on earth. I swear there is one on every block in the city. It is the place to get coffee as well as doughnuts. Starbucks is around here too, but is scorned in comparison.

J.P. Licks is a local chain of ice-cream stores with locations all over the city. Everyone goes there. It is very tasty.

The annual Christmas tree on the Boston Common is donated by Canadians from Nova Scotia. There’s a story behind it. It’s pretty cool. (The tree lighting is a huge event with speeches, music, fake snow, and sometimes fireworks. They actually light up the whole Common, which is gorgeous at night. I could see it from my dorm windows in college.)

This is obviously just a tiny fraction of Boston lore, but it’s still probably more than you wanted, and I should wrap this up while the day’s still young, so...hope some part of this was helpful! Let me know if you have any follow-up questions. I’m happy to ramble about Boston all day (...which is probably obvious by now).

[calloutdicksjerksandthelikes]

Compliments

location: near Frankfurt, Hesse, Germany

Some years ago in September I went out around 1.30 pm to take photos of hay stacks a farmer had just made. Yellow on a blue sky. I walked into the agricultural space that extends in a size of roughly 4 km by 10 km around the city; almost all the crops were in, a farmer on his tractor was working a field at a distance of some 200 meters. No people, I noticed. I left the path to get closer to the hay stacks. I took photos. Then I noticed him. He was naked except for short, tight black boxer shorts, white sneaker socks and black sneakers; a black backpack. There was something about him that made me sense danger immediately. 

I am not someone who can sense danger well. But he was highly marked as danger. Call it animal instinct. He looked like a lot of trouble. The very short-cut hair did not conceal the air of troublemaker he exhaled. It was inscribed in his body, the finely toned muscles, the spotless outfit. A giant contradiction. This was not someone easy-going, proper, polished, educated. I looked around, still nobody anywhere in sight. I hesitated between running toward the farmer on his tractor , not knowing if I could get close enough before getting caught, and pretending I did not notice. So I settled for pretending I did not notice him and hoped he would just pass by. 

The next time I looked around, very carefully, I saw him coming toward me, he had left the path. I turned around and started yelling at him “Stop immediately!” “Do not come closer!” several times.

A smear in his face, he walked up to me. He stood at a distance of 10 cm, face-to-face. He said something, followed by an insult. He spoke non-native German with a mumble. The insult ticked me off. He turned around to walk away. I had a fraction to decide: take a photo or not. 

I decided to take a photo. He noticed. He raced back, pushed me to the ground. When I tried to fight him off, he sat on top of me and tried to take away my cell phone. Another fraction later, after I had tried to scream for help and he had noticed the farmer, I let go off the phone. The farmer would not be able to hear me, his tractor making a lot of noise. And I did not know how far this criminal psychopath would go, maybe strangle me? I let go off the phone. He took it, stood up and walked off. As soon as a safe distance emerged, I took off running for help. 

It took me less than 5 minutes to run to a house and get someone to call the police. It took the police an hour to come, on a weekday, daytime. Their excuse was that they “had more important things to do”. It would have been so easy to capture him, on foot, almost naked, in an open field, no bus, no cab in sight. 

Half a year later a police inspector came to my house. If I could help identify a suspect. He showed me a video still. There he was: almost naked, except for the black boxer shorts, the white socks and the black sneakers. Another day and month. He had done something worse to a woman in a pedestrian zone. He likely had done something a lot worse to a woman aged 18 traversing an open field years earlier. In the same time period he had insulted me, wrestled me down and stolen my cell phone, he had insulted women walking in an open space on two or more occasions. I told the officer that I had thought about the incidence, that I believed the suspect to be living here within walking distance; I argued that he is using the connection of two subway stops that are within city boundaries to avoid being charged the significantly higher fare for suburbs. The inspector was startled, then he demanded that I don’t think too much about it and not do anything about it. Suppression. Don’t make the police look dumber than they are. That’s why it takes so long to arrest a criminal.

At then end of the report taking, the policeman said to me that I should expect at least one of the charges against him to be dismissed. What? A cow deal? Where are we? Germany, a country were social harmony is valued higher than justice. He violated my constitutional right to my body, my habea corpus. And I am supposed to see him get away with less than he earned?!

Back then I posted fliers in public spaces offering a reward for any info that leads to his arrest. A few weeks ago I realized how right my hunch was about his clothing. I mentioned to the police officer then taking my report, that I thought his way of dressing very unusual, and I was mocked by my brother who had accompanied me. For years I had forgotten about the incidence, just to realize now how crucial that was: dress code and time of day. Somebody who does not work regular office hours. Somebody who routinely walks home from a more distant subway stop. I suddenly figured that he highly likely worked at a uni; and given that one incidence happened in a pedestrian zone, I know now which uni most likely. I visualize him walking to a subway station after work, via the pedestrian zone where there a plenty of distracted women; he chooses this path because he is foraging, it is not the closest subway station.  

They still have not caught him. No hurry, right, so much more important things to do. Just a few chicks complaining about indecent behavior, so what. A rape, oh come on, why didn’t that chick just take away his knife, right?

All the policemen I had to deal with in this case where male. One of them asked me why I had not attempted to scratch him with my finger nails. State of the art subject matter expertise, right? I reported that I believed the suspect did body toning. I had to explain to the policeman what that means. The policeman discarded it as him just being “young”. Let nobody look better than the average guy, German cultural mantra. Zero tolerance for individual differences.

Since when are women supposed to view it as a compliment when a man makes an unwanted advance? 

What kind of psychopath, other than a narcissist or sociopath, would make an unwanted advance or pass on a woman?

Call them by what they are: psychopath.

We women need to make sexual harassment socially unacceptable by calling it out. Don’t count on the police to resolve any of this, they won’t. 

No, it won’t go away. It does not matter how old you are or how ugly you are or where you live or what you do where and when.

Men like him need to gain control over a woman, even for only a second, to make them feel worth anything. That is how spiritually impoverished they are. They are the abyss. They are the scum of society. 

Women have lost ground every decade since the 1980ies, so don’t count on +time+ to take care of it. 

If you don’t let everyone know, you are on your own. 

Call them out for what they are before the law: criminals.

©calloutdicksjerksandthelikes2020

UPDATE:

I have kept thinking about how to launch a search for the suspect. With Covid-19, all business activity including unis have restricted access and canceled plenary meetings. I want to appeal to people to think of the 18-year old he raped, to think back if they knew or saw somebody around that time who fits the description.

In 2014 I told the police inspector that I think the suspect resides in Stierstadt, an eastern borough of Oberursel. I meant Stierstadt and the adjacent part of Weisskirchen, where there are high rises. It all happens in an area that can be thought of as a large triangle, with 3 rail express/subway stations on one leg, and the fourth station in the angle of the opposing leg. 

He raped the 18-year old in an open space that is adjacent to a subway-stop called ‘Oberursel-Stierstadt’. There are actually two subway stops with this name, one served by a streetcar, the other by an overland express train. In between these two stops, with identical names, is the open space field where the 18-year old was raped, some years before 2014. Now in 2014, when he physically assaulted me, insulted me and stole my phone, he traversed a huge open space connecting the streetcar station ‘Niederursel’ to the  station ‘Oberursel-Stierstadt’ which can be accessed on either the streetcar or the overland express stations. This is the area where he insulted women around the same time. Probably not a coincidence; after the rape, he might have avoided using his original destination, for fear of being recognized, rather than saving money. As I said to the police back then, he resides in Stierstadt or that western part of Weisskirchen that melts into Stierstadt. He uses a narrow connection across a village street to access one open space area from the other, like all the horsemen do when they ride their horses in the fields. 

The day he assaulted me, I hang up reward fliers at all the express rail and subway stations in the area, as well as all bus stops and supermarkets. What I don’t know is if he had already committed a crime at the express rail station ‘Oberursel-Steinbach’, the closest station to the high rises in Weisskirchen.

Back then it outraged me that the police were unable to find a man I was certain to live in Stierstadt, a tiny village of nothing, not even a high-rise, a village of older and newer single family houses with very few apartment blocks. All there is in this small village are two bakeries that have been there for decades. It is as dead-ended as any place can be. I had hoped in 2014 that a friend or family member would betray him to cash in on the reward. 

If I had not had so many negative reactions - from the police, from my brother - I would have continued to think about this in 2014 rather than now. Women get victimized and to make it complete, to ensure social control, men then make sure to invalidate their testimony, their memory, their perceptions. This is how women always end up on the losing end of matters, by systemic discrimination. 

I came across Europe’s-Most-Wanted yesterday and checked out the offenses and verdicts. One of the most horrifying discoveries: criminals with massive records of sexual abuse get less prison time than drug dealers. There is one guy with sexual abuse convictions for abusing dozens of children, and a verdict of 6 years total. He should have gotten 6 years for each child he raped. I don’t think anything speaks more clearly to the low status of assault crimes than the prison sentences handed out all over Europe. Something is profoundly wrong in a society where a sexual offender gets a much lower or even the same sentence as a drug dealer.  This is probably why the police are not really interested in sexual assault or plain assault cases; they built their careers on drug dealer arrests.

Update Q1 2021

There have been reported incidences of sexual harrassment in this town. A smaller man on a bike sexually harrassed women in an open space on two occasions. And a taller man, also on a bike, sexually harrassed women in an open space on at least four instances. All these crimes occured within a few weeks in Q1 in Oberursel.

Copycat crimes? Possibly. 

Cowards? Definitely.

Mysogenists or hate crime offenders? Absolutely

Catch them - trial them - jail them. Extradite them where possible.

[realtalk-princeton]

@Faun maybe the question wasn't submitted? just wanted to know more about life in Japan, especially culture (food, people) and language barrier

@faunJapan hey Faun, could you describe your experience in Japan? especially about the culture and people (and maybe safety)? thanks in advance :-)

Response from Faun:

Hey, sorry I’ve been away for a bit! Thanks for your question; I’ll do my best to answer it however I can. Just want to say in advance, all of this is based on my personal experience, so it could definitely vary for other people who have lived in/traveled to Japan. I am by no means an expert on Japanese culture, which in and of itself is hardly monolithic, so I’ll strive to avoid making uninformed, overgeneralized assertions about anything from my (outsider) perspective.

That being said, I think one general broad perception many people will have of Japan(ese culture) upon first arriving is the high emphasis on civility and order. Compared to countries such as the United States, Japan has a lot more organization and structure in nearly every facet of everyday life: buses always arrive on time, commuters queue up in perfect lines for the train, city streets are kept spotless and litter-free, etc. Furthermore, most people whom you meet (especially those who work in hospitality) will be extremely polite, from taxi drivers to restaurant servers to department store clerks—it’s very rare that you would encounter someone in Japan who is outwardly discourteous to you. A lot of this is derived from a sense of collectivism, which promotes group harmony and the good of the community above that of any one single person, that distinguishes Japan (as well as many other Asian countries) from some of the individualist cultures of the West. Nevertheless, I don’t think you can make any sweeping assumptions about how your interpersonal interactions with people in Japan will turn out before you actually get there.

For example, the first time I went to Japan, I lived in a fairly rural farming city in Fukuoka, which is located on the southernmost island of Kyushu, with an older couple without any children. They lived a pretty “traditional” Japanese lifestyle: their house had tatami mat flooring and sliding doors, they both took a bath after dinner every day, and we slept in futons on the ground in lieu of beds. I was only fifteen at the time, so being still a child I wasn’t really allowed to venture out too much on my own, but I remember enjoying the slow pace of summer life and the beautiful scenery of the Japanese countryside. I spent a lot of time with my host family and grew quite close to them, especially my host mother; we would pick vegetables from the garden and cook meals together, go on evening walks around the neighborhood after dinner, and sit in front of the television watching afternoon programs, me doing my homework while she folded the laundry. My host parents introduced me to a lot of local culture, bringing me to visit their family’s tea fields and taking me to various historical landmarks in the region. They weren’t super talkative, but in a way that was a plus, since it allowed me to slowly develop my comfort with the basics of the language as I lived with them. Overall, they demonstrated a lot of care for me, and I cherished them as if they were my own relatives.

In contrast, I had a somewhat harder time with my host family last year, when I participated in PII. I lived in the suburbs of Kanazawa, which is a moderately large coastal city, with a family of two parents and their two children, around my age. They had a much more “modern” lifestyle: their house was Western in style, located in a fairly new housing complex, both the father and the mother worked, and the family would take meals separately, depending on when they each came home from school or work. However, I had a more difficult time connecting with the individual members of the household; the children were usually out and about doing their own thing, and the father often came home rather late from work. I spent the most time with my host mother, but at first I had trouble adjusting to some of her stringent expectations of me—she would instruct me to put up my hair if I had it down, for example, or tell me to sit up straighter at the dinner table, and I wasn’t comfortable with such a familiar level of “parenting” in my relationship with a host family. Additionally, I struggled more with the language barrier this time around, even though I was much more advanced in Japanese at this point, likely because my host family thought I would be able to handle more complex grammar structures or vocabulary than I actually could given my current level. It wasn’t as if the family was rude or cold or anything like that; they were always kind and courteous to me, and we would also sometimes go on outings to restaurants or local cultural sites, which were pretty fun. Altogether, I just didn’t click as well with them as I did with my other host family (though in their defense, I was also severely depressed last summer so that probably played a part lol).

With regard to food, I feel like it varies so much depending on where you are, but there are a few staples that you can expect to find anywhere. In Kanazawa last year, my friends and I often ate soba, ramen, curry, etc. as well as boxed lunches (e.g. with rice, pork cutlet, etc.) that you can pick up from any convenience store. At home with my host family, my host mother would alternate between traditional Japanese breakfasts (with rice, miso soup, and some other side dishes) and more Western breakfasts (usually toast with jam and a cup of yogurt), and for dinner she’d either make something simple (like steamed fish or vegetables) or order some takeout. A lot of the foods you’d “typically” associate with Japan, like sushi or sukiyaki, are not commonly eaten on an everyday basis, and they might be different from what you’ve had outside of the country (Japanese sushi is a lot smaller and less convoluted than American sushi, for example!). Similarly, some Western chains in Japan will have different localized menus than what you might be used to, such as teriyaki burgers at McDonald’s or cherry blossom lattes at Starbucks. ALSO, the snacks and bottled beverages in Japan slap so hard—my favorites are definitely honey butter chips, kinoko no yama (lil choco mushrooms), oi ocha green tea, and c.c. lemon soft drink. All in all, some of my recommendations for food experiences in Japan include getting soba at a noodle stand (where you eat standing up), getting yakitori (chicken skewers) at an izakaya (a barlike setting where you can get late night snacks and drinks), and getting okonomiyaki (super delicious savory pancake, often cooked on a steel hotplate right in front of you) anywhere in Osaka (where it originated!).

In terms of safety, I’d say it also depends on where you go, but generally I found Japan to be a lot safer than the average city in the United States. When I was in Ishikawa last year, I would often go out on my own or with a group of friends, and very rarely did I feel any sense of unease while roaming the city of Kanazawa. I absolutely loved the freedom of wandering the streets late at night, something I never really got to experience growing up in the United States. One factor that helped was the accessibility of the public transportation in the area: there were tons of buses and trains whose maps and schedules were not difficult to follow, and in the worst case scenario I could always hail a taxi to reroute me to my destination. The language barrier wasn’t necessarily a hindrance at this stage of my time in Japan, but I would say that it’d probably be a lot harder to do some of the things I had to do, like reload a bus pass or buy bullet train tickets, if you didn’t understand/speak some degree of survival Japanese. However, I do want to acknowledge some of the privilege I have as an individual of East Asian descent traveling around Japan; because I often “passed” for a Japanese native (as long as I kept my mouth shut lmao), I rarely got any looks or stood out when I was making my way through my daily routine. I will say though, there was one time that I genuinely did feel unsafe in Japan, which took place not in Kanazawa but in Osaka, a much larger city that I had visited for vacation with a group of friends: I had gone out late on my own (while wearing a nice dress), and an older man had come up to me and tried to follow me back to where I was staying, but I eventually lost him by ducking into a restaurant bathroom. So in general, I don’t consider Japan to be dangerous for the most part, though again it never hurts to be vigilant, especially in a big city.

Wow that was a lot—I hope that was able to address at least some of the things you were asking about! I want to stress once again that my thoughts are by no means the final say on all things Japanese, and also emphasize that Japan and its culture cannot be simply boiled down into one homogenous description. Please feel free to reach out if there’s anything else more specific you would like to hear about (especially with such a broad topic as culture, there’s so much more to talk about, e.g. activities, etiquette, traditions, holidays, etc.)—I’d be happy to answer whatever I can given my own body of knowledge. Ultimately, I’m hoping that this helped to provide you with an initial sketch of Japan, and that you’ll be able to fill in the picture with your own travels there someday! :)

[wecityguidecom]

4 Days in Paris: Feel The City of Culture and Art

The best way to spend 4 days in Paris? You can find detailed information about how to spent 4 days in Paris in a well-written and extensive post. Paris is the capital of France and also the most crowded city in the country. Based on the 2019 census statistic population of Paris is around 2.1 million people. Paris is always one of the major hubs of Europe and the world for finance, diplomacy, commerce, fashion, science, art, and many more things. With its unique history and values, Paris always gains the attention of the people. It's a little hard to believe but every year more than 50 million people visit this incredible city. Every year, Paris welcomes tourists with a number of higher than 25 times its own population. In this post, you will find a generalized Paris city guide and how to spend 4 days in Paris.

Arrondissements of Paris

Before you plan your days in Paris you first know the settlement principals of the city. Paris is divided into the 20 arrondissements, which means basically districts. These 20 districts also divided 100 departments for the municipality affairs. But having a brief knowledge about the 20 will be helpful during your time in Paris. As you can see from the image given below arrondissements formed like a snail shell or clockwise spiral from the 1. A number of the arrondissements in the streets and avenues given by Roman numerals. Each of 20 arrondissements has its own name which will be very helpful for you. Please take a look at the list given below (R means the right of the bank and L means left of the bank). Louvre Bourse Temple Hotel-de-Ville Arrondissement- Pantheon Luxembourg Palais-Bourbon Elysee Opera Entrepot Popincourt Reuilly Gobelins Observatoire Vaugirard Passy Batignolles-Monceau Butte-Montmartre Buttes-Caumont Menilmontant

Paris divided into 20 arrondissements.

Public Transport System of Paris

The second that you should about Paris before planning your 4 days in Paris is the public transport system in the city. I can say that Paris has an extensive, well-designed and efficient public transport system. You shouldn't worry about getting around in Paris. The public transport system of Paris is run by the RATP. There are metro, tram, RER suburban express trains, buses are working in Paris. For the public transport system, Paris is divided into 6 zones. Zones are ring-shaped except Zone 1 which is quite a circle. By taking into account that you will spend 4 days in Paris, Zone 1 and 2 mostly you need to know. Zone 1 and Zone 2 covers the center of Paris. You can download and print the Paris Public Transport  file. This pdf file has information about metro, tram, train and bus lines. I will focus on Zone 1 and Zone 2 because this is 4 days in Paris post. There are more than enough things to do and see in these 2 zones. Travel Passes, Tickets, and Prices If you are planning to use public transport during your in Paris, I'm strongly suggesting buying travel passes. In my opinion, the best way to experience a city is to use public transport to get around. For that, the cheapest and efficient way for it to buy a travel pass. There different types of travell pass for Paris public transport system like; single trip, 1 weekend, 1,2,3 or 5 days and more. Single Trip Tickets (Zone 1) These tickets are only valid for the single trip within Zone 1 in Paris. If only want to go from point A to B this one is ok. Single Trip Tickets prices are vary based on the type of transport. These tickets also allow a transfer between metro to train or etc. If you are planning to use public transport in Paris rarely you can buy these tickets. Generally, prices are starting at 1.90 Euro. Mobilis Tickets If you want to use public transport in Paris unlimited for one day Mobilis tickets are for you. Mobilis tickets give you the freedom to travel between Zone 1 and Zone 5 by using all types of transport with the exception of the Orlyval line, SNCF reservation lines, and Optile special-priced lines.. It doesn't matter when you buy Mobilis tickets validity of the Mobilis tickets starts from 00.00, for the next 24 hours. Before using Mobilis tickets you must enter your name and the date of you use the tickets. Prices for the Mobilis tickets varies depending on the Zones. you can find the details below; Two zones: 7.50 Euro Three zones: 10.00 Euro Four zones: 12.40 Euro Five Zone: 17.80 Euro

Dont forget to write down your name and the zones on the Mobilis ticket (Source). Paris Visite travel pass This one is for you :) Paris Visite travel pass gives you an unlimited number of travel within the selected zones. Paris Visite travel pass allows you to travel anywhere within Zone 1 to 3 for only 5.80 Euros per day which is really economic. You can also buy Paris Visite travel pass in advance from this website. buying Paris Visite travel pass will also give you discounts and advantages around the city.

This image will help you to choose the Zones (Source) Metro Lines of Paris Paris has 16 different metro lines in total. These metro lines numbered from 1 to 14 with different colors and 2 more secondary lines 3b and 7b. By using only metro lines you can visit the major landmarks, parks and historical places of Paris. Within only 10 km x 10 km area of Paris city center, there are more than 300 metro stations. Metro lines are opens roughly between 05.30 to 00:40 more than 20 hours per day. The interval between trips varies between only 2 minutes and 13 minutes. You can find detailed list of the metro lines below: La Defense to Chateau de Vincennes (Metro Line 1) Porte Dauphine to Nation (Metro Line 2) Pont de Levallois to Gallieni (Metro Line 3) Gambetta to Porte des Lilas (Metro Line 3bis) Porte de Clignancourt to Mairie de Montrouge (Metro Line 4) Bobigny - Pablo Picasso to Place d’Italie (Metro Line 5) Charles de Gaulle - Étoile to Nation (Metro Line 6) La Courneuve - 8 Mai 1945 to Villejuif - Louis Aragon Mairie d’Ivry (Metro Line 7) Louis Blanc to Pré Saint-Gervais (Metro Line 7bis) Balard to Pointe du Lac (Metro Line 8) Pont de Sèvres to Mairie de Montreuil (Metro Line 9) Boulogne - Pont de Saint-Cloud to Gare d’Austerlitz (Metro Line 10) Châtelet to Mairie des Lilas (Metro Line 11) Front Populaire to Mairie d’Issy (Metro Line 12) Asnières Gennevilliers Les Courtilles Saint-Denis - Université to Châtillon to Montrouge (Metro Line 13) Saint-Lazare to Olympiades (Metro Line 14)  

Paris both have historical and modern cars on the metro lines (Source). Tram Lines of Paris In 1957, all of the Paris trams were disappeared from the city but they came back at the end of the 20th century. Currently, there are 7 tram lines in Paris. 2 more tram lines will be opened in 2020 and 2021. Most of the lines serve to the outskirts of Paris because of that tourist won't use them often. The best tram line for the tourist is line 1 which runs between Saint-Denis and Noisy-le-Sec. You can find the first and last stops of the tram lines below; Saint-Denis to Noisy-le-Sec (Tram Line 1) La Défense to Porte de Versailles (Tram Line 2) Pont du Garigliano (a RER station) to the metro station Porte d’Ivry (Tram Line 3) Marché de Saint-Denis to Garges-Sarcelles (Tram Line 5) Châtillon – Montrouge to Vélizy-Villacoublay (Tram Line 6) Villejuif to Louis Aragon and Athis-Mons (Tram Line 7) Saint-Denis- Porte de Paris to Épinay – Orgemont (Tram Line 8) RER Lines of Paris Express train lines of Paris names RER lines. There are 5 RER lines connecting Paris city center and suburbs. The first RER line (A, B, C) are popular among the tourist visiting the Paris. You can find the details about RER lines in below; Disneyland Paris to City Center (RER A) Charles de Gaulle Airport to City Center (RER B) Orly Airport to Palace of Versaille (RER C) Orry-la-Ville to Malesherbes (RER D) Tournan to Haussman St-Lazare (RER E) Actually, the RER lines of Paris are very similar to metro lines with only a little differences from them. There normal and express trains in RER lines. Express RER lines don't stop at the all station through the line. You will track the next from the screens inside the train. Some of the RER lines can have different destinations. Never forget to check the screen about the last destinations. Sometimes you can think to take RER trains instead of metro lines because of their speed.

You find detailed information about Paris RER Lines from the map (Source). Buses of Paris Sometimes taking a bus can be the fastest way to get around in Paris, especially in short distances. If you are traveling around hours other than the rush hour taking a bus is a good way to get around. By this way, you can also see the real Paris rather than the underground walls and stones. There are also night buses in Paris called Noctilien. Noctilien runs from 00.30 to 07.00 every day with fewer intervals (10-15 minutes) at the weekends. You can see the N signs on the buses which means they are night buses.

Bus lines of Paris have very good coverage over the center (Source). Montmartre Funicular This uniques funicular line connects the foot with the summit of the Butte Montmartre where the Basilique du Sare Coeur and the Place du Tertre are located. The Montmartre Funicular line opened during the summer of 1990. Since the opening line renovated a couple of times. This automatic funicular line currently transports more than 2 million people every year. One journey with the funicular lasts only for 90 seconds but it is one of the things have to be experienced in Paris. Montmartre Funicular operates from 06.00 to 00.45 am. Please be aware that the ticket office the Montmartre Funicular closes at midnight. The entrance of the Montmartre Funicular is located very southwest of the Sacre-Coeur.

Montmartre Funicular cabins of Paris (Source). Batobuses of Paris These are not buses. They are the abuses, Batobus! Basically, Batobus is a boat shuttle that runs through the River Seine. Batobus line have several stops at the famous touristic places. The schedule and timetable of the Batobus varies depending on the season. Batobuses generally run between 10.00 to 17.00 on weekdays and to 19.00 at the weekends with intervals from 20 minutes to 45 minutes. You can Seine River Cruise tickets from this website in advance. The tickets prices for the adults are 17.00 Euros. If you have travel passcards there is a special rate discount for the ticket which is around 11 Euros. You can also find the Batobus stops given below; Eiffel Tower Musée d’Orsay St Germain des Près Notre-Dame Cathedral Jardin des Plantes Hôtel de Ville Louvre Champs-Elysées Beaugrenelle Batobus is just like any other hop-off and hop-on buses. You can get a one or two day pass and use it unlimited time in the day.

taking a cruise over the Seine River will be a great experience for you (Source). Paris City Bus Tours Just like any other major city in the world there are couple of city bus tours in Paris. There are multiple tours operating in Paris. The most famous three of them are OpenTour, Big Bus Paris and Foxity Sightseeing Tour. Bus tours generally run between 09.30 to 20.30. Bus Tour prices are quite expensive based on my experience. Because you can get 5 days of free passes for public transport at the same prices for Bus Tours which is around 35 Euros.

Other operates have similar tours around Paris (Source). Paris Taxis There are more than 20.000 of taxis around the streets of Paris working 7/24. If you ever use taxis in Paris please be aware of the signs of the taxis. Official and licensed taxis of Paris has Taxi Parisien sign on their roof. In Paris, taxis drivers have to take you wherever you want but sometimes there will be a little problem like any other top touristic location. Sometimes a driver may try to avoid you if you have too much luggage or the trip isn't convenient for them. The minimum fare for the Paris taxis is 2.40 Euros and the lowest price per kilometer is 0.96 Euros.

You will see the Taxi Parisien sign over the taxis (Source).

4 Days in Paris

Well, you know everything you need to know about the public transport system in Paris. Now, we can plan 4 days in Paris and how to spend it! There are a couple of things we focused on this planning post: Focused on Zone 1 and Zone 2 Spend 4 full days in Paris without go/from airport to the city center Already have accommodation in the city center Focused Must-see landmarks and historical places Not spent more than 3 hours on a place even if you need more At least 2 attraction per day First Day of the 4 Days in Paris If you are ready to spend your 4 days in Paris lets start it! We'are starting day 1 with a bus tour around the city to have knowledge about the layout of Paris, lifestyle, avenues, street and more. I think taking a bus tour is the best way to have an idea about a city. You will see almost all of the important sports in the city and feel the atmosphere. I'm writing the bus tour based on the Big Bus Paris Hop On Hop Off Tour but details are the same more or less between other tours. The red route tour is the most extensive line between all. It covers almost all of the most iconic landmarks and places in Paris. The tour starts at the Eiffel Tower and goes in turn, Champ de Mars, Opera Garnier, Louvre Museum, Pont Des Arts, Notre Dame, Musee D'Orsay, Champs-Elyses, Grand Palais and Trocadero.

You can hop on to the buses in front of the Eiffel Tower (Source). Take the Red Route The first bus will go at 09.15 from Eiffel Tower so you need to catch it. You can use the metro to go to the Eiffel Tower in the morning. Bir-Hakeim station of Metro Line 6 and Ecole Militaire station of Metro Line 8 are the closest ones to the Eiffel Tower. Another option to go to the Eiffel Tower is taking a RER C line and get off at the Champ de Mars - Tour Eiffel Station. Bus lines 42, 69, 72, 82 and 87 also passes very close to the Eiffel Tower. Red route operates with 5 to 15 minutes of the interval which allows you to get off every stop and spend some to take photos and look around. If you get off every stop at the tour you will probably spend around 4 to 5 hours to finish the tour and get back to the Eiffel. Now you know the layout of the Paris and places where will you visit in the next couple of days.

Each stop of the tour is a major touristic spot (Source). If you go to the Paris between 1st December and 13th January you can take a Paris Night Tour around the city with Christmas Lights. You can see Paris Christmas Night Tour route. Paris Night Tour or Christmas Tour has the same route with the Red Route but the commentary of the tour will focus on the Christmas lighting and Paris more. Both ordinary red route and Paris Night Tour prices are the same, 27 Euros.

Champ De Mars - Tour Eiffel Station of RER C Line (Source). Eat at the Quartier Latin You spend almost half of the day with the Big Bus Paris tour and probably get a little hungry :) There are two really good places to eat some local and French specialized cuisines, Monmartre and Quartier Latin. I think that you should eat these two places on two separate days. On the first day you can go to the Latin Quarter because it is the top place among the visitors of Paris. Also, you can find extremely cheap places to eat. You can take the RER C line from Eiffel Tower to go to the Saint-Michel Notre-Dame station where is the starting point of the Quartier Latin. From the station, you can walk through the district and find a place to eat. Notre-Dame Cathedral You can finish the day with this iconic landmark of Paris. Notre-Dame Cathedral is dedicated to the Virgin Mary and one of the oldest Gothic Cathedrals in the world and also the one the well-know all along with the world. It is not possible to get inside of the Notre-Dame Cathedral due to fire happened on 15-16 April 2019. Even though you can go there say pay your respect to this magnificent holy place of the Christian world. Notre-Dame Cathedral is only 5 minutes walk from the Saint-Michel Notre-Dame metro station where is also the RER Line C station. You can also visit the Maison Heloise et Abelard, Pont Saint-Louis, Bridge of the Archbishopric, Fondation Louis Lepine, Sainte Chapelle, Conciergerie and Pont Neuf here. You can spend a couple of more hours here before getting back to the hotel. I think that this will be enough for the first. You need an energy for the day 2 :)

Notre-Dame Cathedral severely damaged by the unfortunate fire (Source). Second Day of the 4 Days in Paris You can start with the Eiffel Tower on the 2nd day of your 4 days in Paris. You can read the Eiffel Tower post we published before to have extensive information about the tower. My first suggestion about visiting the Eiffel Tower, buy your tickets in advance to avoid long queues and gain time. You can also eat your lunch at the restaurant in the Eiffel Tower. You already know how to go to the Eiffel Tower, right?

Don't forget to buy your tickets in advance to avoid the queues (Source). There are different types of tickets to visit the Eiffel Tower. Generally, prices are separated based on if you want to go to the top or satisfied with the second floor. To have a full Eiffel Tower experience you need to pay 52 Euro. Generally, if you buy this ticket you need to spend up to 3 hours to have a full experience. Visiting Louvre Museum After spending your time until noon, now it is time to go to the Louvre Museum. This world-famous museum opened at the end of the 18th century (1793). Louvre Museum is also France's most renowned and visited museum. Every year, more than 8 million people visit the Louvre Museum. During years Louvre Museum became to hold more and more works of art. You can see the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci, Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix, The Wedding at Cana by Paolo Veronese, Venus de Milo an ancient Greek statue, Seated Scribe an ancient Egyptian sculpture, Winged Victory of Samothrace a Hellenistic sculpture and also lots of great artifacts of the human history.

Buy your tickets for Louvre Museum in advance to avoid queues like Eiffel Tower (Source). Closest metro station to go to the Louvre Museum is Palais-Royal - Musee du Louvre station of metro line 1 and 7. Also Bus lines 21, 24, 27, 39, 48, 68, 69, 72, 81 and 95 are passed close to the museum. Like Eiffel Tower, Louvre Museum has different types of tickets for its visitors. You can buy your tickets in advance online for 17 Euros per adult. There is also little expensive tour Skip the Line Louvre Museum Guided Tour for 59 Euros per adult. This tour will take around 3 hours to finish. Visiting Eiffel Tower and Louvre Museum will exhaust you and not need to visit another place for the 2nd day at your 4 days in Paris. Third Day of the 4 Days in Paris We will start the 3rd day of your 4 days in Paris by visiting the Montmartre. Basically, Montmartre is a hill with 130 meters of height. This place is one of the most colorful, unique and charming places in Paris. Montmartre was an independent commune just located very close to the Paris city center until 1860. But then it became the 18 districts of Paris. For visitors, Montmartre can be divided into two separate zones. One the near Place Pigalle with its numerous neon lights, cabarets, and sex-shops. The second is a bohemian face of the Montmartre located in the Place du Tertre at the top of the hill. You can reach to summit of the by taking 197 steps of stairs or taking the Montmartre Funicular. You can go to Montmartre by taking metro lines 2 and 12. There are multiple stops of these lines around the Montmartre.

The streets of Montmarte are very colorful (Source). Sacred Heart Basilica of Montmartre At the top of the Montmartre hill, there is a Sacred Heart Basilica of Montmartre (Sacre-Coeur). This place also knowns as a Basilique du Sacré-Coeur and one of the most important religious buildings in Paris. Sacre-Coeur also offers a great panoramic view of the city. This religious landmark constructed between 1875 and1914. Visitors can climb to the top of the dome. you can see important landmarks of Paris like Eiffel Tower and Arc du Triomphe. Luckily there is no entry fee for this magnificent place. You can also have your lunch at Montmartre. This neighborhood is just like the Latin Quarter to have good French cuisine.

Sacred Heart Basilica of Montmartre opens between 06.00 to 22.30 every day (Source). Arc de Triomphe Now, it is time to go to the emblematic symbol of Paris. Arc de Triomphe represents the numerous victories of the French army under Napoleon. To go to the Arc de Triomphe from Montmartre you can take the metro line 2 and get off the Ternes station where is very close to the Arc de Triomphe. This unique landmark of Paris is 50 meters tall, 45 meters wide and 22 meters deep. Arc de Triomphe built by Napoleon in 1806 at the end of the battle of Austerlitz and inaugurated by King Louis-Philippe.

To get to the base of the Arc du Triomphe you will have to take the underpass on the Champs-Élysées (Source). This unique building witnessed Paris history during The Great War (WWI) and World War II. Parades after the world wars held here in 1919 and 1944. If you want to base the Arc de Triomphe always use the underpasses! Because there no traffic light over the roundabout and it will be extremely dangerous to pass it. If you want to get up the observation deck of the landmark you need to pay for it. It may not be worth it if you get up to the Eiffel Tower, so don't spend extra money here. But if you still want to go to the top you have to pay 12 Euros per adult. 1 hour will be enough to experience the Arc de Triomphe. Champs-Élysées Before finishing the 3rd day of your 4 days in Paris it is time to see the Champs-Élysées. You can just enter the Champs-Élysées from Arc de Triomphe. I'm suggesting to take this walk until you reach the Place de la Concorde where is very close to the Louvre Museum. Champs-Élysées is the most beautiful, famous and well-known avenue in Paris. Champs-Élysées is also the world's most famous commercial street. Taking a walk like this will certainly have a calming effect (Source). During your walk through the Champs-Élysées, you can also visit the Palais de la Découverte (Discovery Palace), the Petit Palais and the Grand Palais. You can also have your lunch at one of the restaurants over the Champs-Élysées. This walk will take around 2 to 3 hours if you visit the imposing building over the avenue. There are multiple metro stations over the avenue if you want to go back to your hotel or elsewhere. I think this can be the last attraction of your 3rd day in your 4 days in Paris. Fourth Day of the 4 Days in Paris Welcome to your last day in your 4 days in Paris. For the last day, it is time to visit the Palace of Versailles and The Pantheon. The Pantheon was the first major monument of Paris. It was built long before the other major ones like Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe. This unique building constructed between 1764 and 1790 and designed by Jean Baptiste Rondelet. During the 19th century, The Pantheon used as a religious building. The building can be divided into two sections. The first one is the interior of the mausoleum where you experience the size and decoration of The Pantheon. The second part of the building is the crypt. The crypt contains the iconic French citizens like as Voltaire, Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Marie Curie, Louis Braille, Jean Monnet, and Alejandro Dumas. Also, don't forget to take look to the statue of Jean Jack Rousseau just outside of the Pantheon.

Inside of the Pantheon is breath-taking (Source). Incredible Pantheon The Pantheon is open except the 1st of January from 10.00 to 18.00 pm, from 1st April to 30th September to 18.30. There are multiple ways to go to The pantheon by using public transport. You need to take the metro line 10 and get off at the Cardinal Lemoine station. Also, the Luxembourg station of RER B line is very close to the Pantheon. If you want to use the buses of Paris you need to take one of the buses of lines 21, 27, 38, 82, 84, 85 or 89. Ticket prices of the Pantheon for one adult is 9 Euros. Palace of Versailles Before finishing the 4 days in Paris, the Palace of Versailles is the true ending spot. To go to the Palace of Versailles from The Pantheon you need to take the RER C line. Even with RER C line, it will take around an hour to reach the palace. Visiting the Palace of Versailles will take all day but you can spend the rest of the day after the Pantheon. The Palace of Versailles brings together the history and culture of the French nation into one. Because of its unique properties, the Palace of Versailles is one of the most popular destinations of Paris.

The Palace of Versailles declared as one of the World Heritage Site by UNESCO (Source). You can discover the vast number of decorated halls and rooms of the palace during the visit. The must-see parts of the Versailles Palace are the Grand Apartments of the King, King and Queens Bedchamber and Hall of Mirrors. The ticket price for one adult to visit the Palace of Versailles is 18 Euros. There is also free entry change on the first Sunday of each month between November and March.

Q&A for 4 Days in Paris

In this section, you can find helpful Q&A for your 4 days in Paris. In time we will extend and add more Q&A to this section based on your requests and comments. How can I reach the city center from Charles de Gaulle airport (CDG)? The best, fastest and cheapest way to reach the Paris city center from the Charles de Gaulle airport (CDG) is to take the RER B line. Reaching the city center will take around 50 minutes and costs 10 Euros per adult. How can I reach the city center from Orly Airport (CDG)? Unfortunately, there is not a direct line from Orly airport to Paris city center. At first, you need to take the Orlyval metro to reach the Anthony train Station and take RER B or RER C line to get where you want. Total trip time will take around 60 minutes and costs 12 Euros per adult. Which travel pass should I buy? I'm suggesting you buy the Paris Visite travel pass for 5 days for 38.35 Euros per adult. This pass will also give you to have a chance on different occasions. With Paris Visite travel pass you will get unlimited travel between selected zones, %25 discount on the entrance fee of Arc de Triomphe and Tour Montparnasse observation platform. Are there any other passes? Paris Museum Pass Yes! The Paris Museum Pass is the thing that you need to buy. Because it will give you great advantages during your 4 days in Paris. There are three different options for the Paris Museum Pass. At first, you need to decide the days; 2, 4 or 6 for 48, 62 or 74 Euros per adult. You will have free access to the given museums in the Paris city center; Musée du Louvre, Paris 1st Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie, Paris 19th Musée d'Orsay, Paris 7th Crypte archéologique du parvis Notre-Dame, Paris 4th Sainte-Chapelle, Paris 1st Arc de Triomphe, Paris 8th Musée de l'Armée, Tombeau de Napoléon 1er, Paris 7th Musée national des arts asiatiques - Guimet, Paris 16th Centre Pompidou - Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris 4th Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris 1st Chapelle Expiatoire, Paris 8th Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris 3rd Palais de la découverte, Paris 8th Musée du quai Branly, Paris 7th La Cinémathèque française, Paris 12th Musée national Eugène Delacroix, Paris 6th Musée des Égouts de Paris, Paris 7th Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris 5th Musée d'art et d'histoire du Judaïsme, Paris 3th Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine, Paris 16th Musée national de l’Orangerie, Paris 1st Les Arts décoratifs - Collection Mode et Textile, Paris 1st Musée Rodin, Paris 7th Tours de Notre-Dame de Paris, Paris 4th Musée de Cluny - le monde médiéval, Paris 5th Musée des plans-reliefs, Paris 7th Conciergerie, Paris 1st Musée de la musique, Paris 19th Musée Nissim de Camondo, Paris 8th Les Arts décoratifs - Collection Publicité et Graphisme, Paris 1st Musée national Gustave Moreau, Paris 9th Palais de la Porte Dorée - Musée national de l'histoire de l'Immigration, Paris 12th Musée Picasso, Paris 3th Panthéon, Paris 5th Musée de l’Ordre de la Libération, Paris 7th Paris Passlib' This one is magnificent! Paris Passlib' is available for 2, 3, or 5 days version for the visitors and gives you the all-inclusive access to the Paris Museum Pass, Paris Visite and 1-hour boat cruise, 1-day sightseeing bus tour. For 5 day Paris Passlib' costs 165 Euros per adult. Why not Disneyland on the list? Because you have spent one or two full days to fully-experience Disneyland. If you are staying around a full week in Paris you definitely go there. Are there any other important spots to see? Definitely! I just focused on the major and famous landmarks and places in Paris. You can encounter a historical building while you are walking through the streets of Paris. Palais Garnier, Bridges of Paris, Catacombs of Paris, La Madeleine, Church of Saint-Sulpice and Conciergerie other important places to see in Paris. What should be the budget for Paris? Except for your flight, accommodation, and food you need at least 200 Euros for the passes. This looks like a high price but actually it is really cheap. If you calculate the prices of the tickets you will see the total number is much higher than buying a pass. You can buy the Paris Pass from this website. Paris Pass will include the things given below; Hop-On Hop-Off tour bus (full day ticket) Louvre Museum Palace of Versailles Sightseeing cruise Rodin Museum Arc de Triomphe Montparnasse Tower Musée d’Orsay Palais Garnier Centre Georges Pompidou Paris Pass will also give you skip the line option which will be great if you want to gain time. For public transport, you will also get unlimited access to all types of transport within the Zone 1-3. You can read the full detail about the Paris Pass from this link. That will take a little time because the file is around 100 MB. The price of the Paris Pass will vary based on the days you want to use. Prices are 130 Euros for 2 days, 158 Euros for 3 days, 198 Euros for 4 days and 235 Euros for 6 days.

4 Days in Paris

That's all folks! I try to write down an extensive 4 days in Paris guide. Please share your Paris experience, questions and suggestion on the comment section to improve 4 days in Paris guide and to help the others who are planning to visit Paris! Read the full article

[engl699readingjournal-blog]

during my first seven months in Berlin, I lived in the heart of a wealthy neighborhood that absolutely did not want me there. if that wasn’t made clear enough to me by the old people with whom I engaged in regular stare-downs on the bus toward Wannsee or on the U3 between Krumme Lanke and Wittenbergplatz, it was made clear to me when I took walks around the Schlachtensee or around the Spanische Allee in Nikolassee. especially at night. I very quickly realized that I was Scary because I wore black coats and my boots made a lot of noise on the street cobbles at night, and I took a lot of walks at night, and at one or two houses the curtains of an upstairs window never failed to twitch, once someone even put the effort into raising up those outside-the-window blinds that Germans put down over their windows at night, making their houses look like closed stores at the mall, and looking out to see what manner of ruffian was tromping down the street at 11:00PM to disturb the idyll. it was literally just me, though, three nights into another bout of not sleeping or eating because the bupropion made it hard to sit still or keep food down. if I kept moving through neighborhoods that were not mine at unacceptable hours I could at least ignore the persistent cold-sweating, the drastic weight loss, and the fact that my apartment sucked. during the daytime I walked around the Rehwiese, sometimes accidentally turning into people’s private driveways and always blatantly reading the nameplates on the front gates to their mansions as if casing the property for a robbery. really I just wanted to know what they did for a living and from there proceeded to wonder what I had to do in life to be able to afford a fucking Prussian country house with ornate Jugendstil decor. “, Arzt” and “, Rechtsanwalt” were the most common two declarations I found attached to names, unsurprisingly. “, Architekt” was another. particularly manic episodes involved the charade of me finding a bench and attempting to read a book because at least it looked like I had a purpose being there, the book and all, I looked a little more like a student than a starving unshowered piece of trash, synapses firing uncontrollably and all. this display was met with disapproval from the universal powers that be when I was shit on by a bird while reading the first sentence of Fabian by Erich Kästner over and over again. it wasn’t until later that I actually learned this meadow was called die Rehwiese, which in German means “the roe deer meadow.” in old English my name means the exact same thing. so it was my fucking meadow all along.

in Goodbye to Berlin Isherwood writes of the Grünewald as an area inhabited by most of the richest Berlin families, though “it is difficult to understand why”:

“Their villas,” he writes, “in all known styles of expensive ugliness, ranging from the eccentric-rococo folly to the cubist flat-roofed steel-and-glass box, are crowded together in this dank, dreary pinewood. Few of them can afford large gardens, for the ground is fabulously dear; their only view is of their neighbour’s backyard, each one protected by a wire fence and a savage dog. Terror of burglary and revolution has reduced these miserable people to a state of siege. They have neither privacy nor sunshine. The district is really a millionaire’s slum.” (14)

I have already talked a little bit about how I felt when I rode the S7 train from Nikolassee to the Grünewald S-Bahnhof. I have been on a lot of unnecessarily long bus- and train- and plane-journeys out of sheer cheapness and am still convinced that the stretch between those two train stations is the longest I have ever experienced in my entire life. aside from it being one of the prime stretches during which it was popular for ticket agents to slither out of the cut and start checking for proof that you were allowed to be there, because they knew you couldn’t escape during the suspension of time and civilization and molecular structure and oxygen that occurred in that really wretched sliver of misery, it was also one of those non-spaces in life where you sense that the veil is thin and someone dead from any point or place in history could just materialize across from you reading the Bild-Zeit and wearing a Jack Wolfskin half-zip. staring out the window is actually not something I remember doing much; I feel like it took a while for me to finally look and realize that the stretch was so god damn long precisely because we were going through the middle of the fucking forest. when I finally did look I realized it wasn’t even pretty. to my left I could see the Autobahn in the distance, which was especially depressing on rainy days. I tweeted, to all my friends back home who had no idea what I was talking about, that “the stretch on the S7 between Nikolassee and Grünewald is one of those places that proves God has abandoned the earth.” when I had finally made friends this was the easiest way to reach Mitte and meet them. the Grünewald was a reminder that it was a Homerian epic for me to get anywhere and that I was an idiot for choosing an apartment where I had. getting to my destinations was always like reaching Canaan because of that. for those months I think I actually spent more time engaged with the BVG somehow than I did scowling in the corner of any bar or drinking hot water with ginger and squeezed lemon (see: not “tea”) in people’s flats. later I learned that the Grünewald train station was a major hub for the deportation of Jews who lived in Berlin and its suburbs. Isherwood’s pupil was herself Jewish, as were many of the wealthy people who inhabited the dismal landscape of the cloistered Grünewald district. I wasn’t too far off about it being a place where God had abandoned the earth. a place without sunshine, definitely.

in “Sally Bowles,” Isherwood writes a close character study of a young English singer of mediocre talent and enormous ambition who puts up sexual services as collateral for opportunities to become a famous singer and actress. multiple times he uses the term “demi-monde” and describes Sally as a demimondaine at least once – its meaning as a loan word and its literal translation from the French differ slightly. the cultural meaning of the demi-monde refers to the bohemian lifestyle, transience, the eschewing of traditional morals and the running in hedonistic circles of those who do the same. in French it literally means “half-world,” or almost-world, insinuating an artificiality of the entire structure, a fragility. for the most part Isherwood considers himself outside of the influence of this phenomenon despite brushing elbows with the friends Sally makes, who make grand promises and then melt away like wet crepe paper or just dissolve away into Argentina or some shit. though he does write of an American called Clive, one of many older men who promise the nineteen-year-old Sally an audition with a film producer or other prominent show-business figure. this encounter is intriguingly different, however; Sally, who liberally calls herself a “gold-digger” and a “whore” with no reservations whatever, pulls Isherwood himself into this bizarre triangle in which sex and money are inevitably intertwined, and the “ménage-à-trois” begins making arrangements for the long term: to France and Italy, Clive promises them, then to South America, the United States, Japan, Tahiti. Sally and Isherwood have a brief moment of delusion in which they both think they’ve found someone who will lift them out of their destitution. days after this trip is planned, Clive departs for Budapest, leaving behind an envelope with 300 Marks to be split between them both (50 of which are spent on a lavish dinner that neither enjoys, 200 of which are spent on an abortion). early on, I once joked to a new friend in Berlin that my friends back home urged me not to come back from my time in the city without finding a “sugar-parent” who insisted on supporting me financially for no reason other than that they found me interesting. “everyone in Berlin is poor,” she said, “or they tell you they are, anyway.” needless to say I still have a 28K student loan.

[violetsystems]

#personal

I didn’t end up hearing anything else about the missing package.  I spent most of that morning at the gym thinking about how I would react.  Standing outside in the cold at six in the morning in front of my house talking to somebody you don’t know is intimidating enough.  Plotting to kick a gang off a block is another thing entirely.  Which is what it sounded like half asleep on my way to work and my regular gym routine.  If anyone has learned anything about my real life in Chicago at this point from these blogs, it’s that people try to get me to react to all sorts of crazy things.  It doesn’t help that I’m a highly cerebral and genuine person when it comes to approaching life.  I’ve also been fairly transparent with my approach to my online identity.  I work in IT.  I also work at an art school.  I’m also unique in my own personal ethics, beliefs and creative pursuits.  I have my own life and I live it with accountability.  I think after all this time particularly in this space I believe people know that to be true about me.  There are many things I’ve come to understand about life.  Self expression on the internet is part of who I am.  I’ve been online for years.  Before I even became involved with music I was making zines and getting suspended from high school because of it.  I distributed it in the local record store when I lived in the suburbs.  I didn’t grow up in the city but I commuted to a Christian school that was a mix of kids from all over.  Some parents found one of the younger kids I rode the bus with had one of my zines.  He picked it up at a record store.  It wasn’t explicit at all.  But there were elements of the occult and horror involved.  Mostly drawn and written by local artists and poets I connected with.  Real spooky shit.  They took it to the board and tried to get me expelled.  It was only when my English teacher came to my defense that I got off with an in school suspension.  They lock you in this little room and you think about what you’ve done.  Years later I’m an adult with a blog.  It sounds like a Saturday Night Live sketch.  Locked in another tiny little room.  If it becomes one, we’ll all know where they stole it from.  That is if the site doesn’t shut down tomorrow.  Which if anyone was careful enough to actually read the community alerts they would know that isn’t true. Just like they’d know I’ve left all of my content up since I made this URL my main back in 2010.  You can tell how sad and lonely I was back then.  And yet some things never change about me.  There’s enough of a narrative here over time that people trust that’s ok for me.  That narrative is part of a community of people who have grown to know and respect each other over time.  One like at a time.

So when it comes to defense and reality, December 17th is a sobering date for some people.  If we are talking about the health of the community and the platform in my eyes, nothing is ever perfect.  In the last four months, I’ve connected with a lot more fashion resources here.  Years ago I came to Tumblr to research fashion and Asian culture.  I think my lens has narrowed over the years particularly how it relates to fetishism and objectification.  It helped that I was exposed to real texts and work through this website that challenged my views of these things.  I’ve seen a lot of good resources go dark.  There was a url called cottonblanc that used to transcribe Caroline Evans’ “Fashion at the Edge” word for word.  She teaches at Central Saint Martins and frames everything in the philosophy of Walter Benjamin.   I went out and bought a copy.  I would read whole chapters on Margiela and Mcqueen over and over.  Then one day the url deleted.  And a time and an era definitely passed for me.  But I carried that torch forward with what I learned and evolved with it.  I’ve been wearing Undercover for years.  Nobody knew what it was.  Everyone thought I was the police.  Maybe that’s why all the landlords ask me to solve their problems at six in the morning before I go to the gym.  Some DJ in Vancouver told my friend they knew me not through my music but because I bought an Undercover jacket one hour before they could get to it.  Truthfully I copped my first piece from a reseller on tumblr years ago.  A streetwear and DJ friend who ran the Tokyo Marathon and later passed away introduced me to Gyakusou.  It was a time I was trying to find myself again.  I had just ended a ten year relationship with a girl I really loved at the time.  Sometimes I feel like I’ve only recently recovered.  But I’ve been living another layer of that aesthetic since the summer.  And it has woven itself into the very fabric of the internet like a virus spreading out in a William Gibson novel.  It’s places like these where I’ve been in my element.  It’s a different kind of search engine for me.  Albeit an emotional one.  Which is why I can understand a lot of the concerns especially when it comes to censorship of art.  Which is why I think many of us have to understand that art in itself is a refuge.  And where you draw the line in America is a tricky subject.  

Safety seems the most logical but isn’t always evenly distributed.  Art is a safe space where these things can flourish.  That’s the utopian ideal for sure.  There’s entire schools dedicated to where you draw that line.  And there’s entire narratives that get drowned out for the sake of convenience and lack of care, time or attention.  I’ve written my experiences and frustrations here for longer than I can imagine.  They’ve grown more formatted over time.  It’s true I write these to maintain the fact that I am a human being.  There are reasons why I post the things I do.  I work in an environment where it is crucial that I understand things like microaggresions and triggers.  I’m sensitive to that.  I can’t say I always agree that people are sensitive to mine.  I don’t know that I need that really.  This community in particular and how it spans out into the real world and other platforms has always had my back.  There’s voices on this platform that I trust far more than any semi important name you can throw at me.  People I trust that trust me.  There’s a mutual respect there that goes unspoken.  And that follows me around sometimes.  A reputation.  Of someone that has tried playing by the rules and kept score.  Other people out there keep saying they’re winning.  Do you know how many times people have passed me over because someone else told them I was a loser?  The joke is that it’s all right here.  Exactly how many battles I’ve won.  Exactly how many challenges I’ve learned are worth my time.  Exactly how much I’ve put into the culture here and stood up for it.  When you ask me what I’m most proud of about my time here it’s that people have come to understand me genuinely.  None of what I’ve gone through is fair at all these last few years.  And yet I’ve stood my ground on many things out of principle.  I do believe American culture is overtly too sexual and not sensual and sensitive enough.  I do believe there’s a way you can present your desires without being creepy about it.  And I do believe this platform probably wasn’t becoming a safe place for that.  As of December 17th, despite some extremely flawed and gender heavy wording it will be.  The good news is that art will be there on the front lines to challenge that.  Which means people like me aren’t going anywhere.  Except maybe to New York to visit a little more often next year.  <3 Tim

[davidfostercomedyblog]

“Well-Traveled” Isn’t Everything!

There’s this kid I don’t like.

 Actually, he’s not a kid - of course neither of us are. He’s my age, but somehow not liking someone feels so high school that the thought still manifests as such.

 He’s a friend of a friend of a friend, so I’ve thankfully only been exposed to his pretentious pontifications a handful of times. Each time is unique in subject matter, but consistent in its incidental rebuttal of all that I believe, and each time I bite my tongue because I wish to remain friends with said friends, instead rationalizing: This is what blogs are for! In our most recent crossing of paths he nauseated me with the following anecdote.

 “So I get in this Uber, and there’s this black kid driving, nice kid, and we’re talking…”

 Already I’m annoyed by his self-definition as being not racist.

 “And I come to find out he’s never traveled anywhere,” and he delivers it as if he just told us the kid was dying of liver cancer.

 “He’s 24 years old, grew up in the South Central area, does music, really intelligent kid (we get it, you like blacks), and has never been out of southern California! So finally I just couldn’t hold back and I told him: “Man, you gotta get out and see the world. You just… have to. Like, all you know is L.A., and there’s so much more to see. I mean at least get down to San Diego, right?!”

 Wrong! I could barely refrain from vomiting into my mouth then spewing it into his just for the sake of closing it. Let’s dissect this awful bullshit one beat a time:

 1.     There are 24-year olds who are yet to fall in love, finish school or hold a full-time job, let alone travel the Goddamn world. The (black) kid’s 24, not 44! Can you at least allow all his chest hair to come in before failing to backpack across Southeast Asia becomes an existential crime?

2.     Southern California is one of the most culturally rich parts of the world. It isn’t like he’s been trapped in the middle of Wyoming or even some generic suburb. Kids who grow up in SoCal are relatively exposed, especially those from the hood who apparently work outside it. I think he’s fine.

3. ��   San Diego?! He’s gotta get to San – Diego?! I’ve been to San Diego, twice… and all I learned was that as much as I hate L.A. I would live there any day over San Di-fuckin’ -ego (no offense to beloved friends there). 

 On one hand I acknowledge the value in going to foreign places and observing other cultures. On the other I take exception to clichés such as “seeing the world” or being “well-traveled” as implied badges of “worldliness” or being “cultured.” While “seeing the world” is quite literally what you are doing, its allusion, and illusion, is that such trips dramatically enhance one’s consciousness and relationship with life.

 First of all, being able to take off work and having the resources to travel is relegated to the top percentile, most extraordinarily privileged few. The reason most “well-traveled” folk don’t realize this is because everyone around them is equally privileged and their peanut-sized brains, suspiciously disproportionate to the quantity of stamps on their passports, can’t escape the tunnel vision of their own reality, ironically. They figure everyone gets (all the fuckin’ way) to Asia at least once, and if not they’ve surely “hopped the pond” to Paris or London a few times. I sometimes feel like it’s the adult version of losing our virginity, where “You haven’t done it yet?” is a passive aggressive synonym for: “I’m cooler/better than you.”

 For the record, I’ve been places, bro’. I’ve been to Montreal, Holland, Spain, Costa Rica, Bermuda and San Diego – not the most impressive resume, but not the most shameful either. More important is the fact that I never felt like any of the aforementioned trips made me wiser, more worldly, or self-aware. I was in each place for anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, which in my opinion allows you to get to truly know somewhere about as well as does dating someone for the same amount of time. If you haven’t engaged in a screaming match, been kept awake all night by each other’s storms of emotions, then cried in each others’ arms in forgiveness what the fuck do you really know about this person? Similarly, what can I know about Costa Rica from my privileged, resort stay, one-week romantic getaway, even in spite of having gone out a couple of nights with local surf bums? Nada. I lived in Los Angeles for over a year before I felt like I had a beat on the town at all, and even then it ultimately ate me alive. My opinion is if you’ve never held a job and/or spent at least one year in any place worth visiting then you can’t know shit about it. I’m sure a one-week stay in Arkansas would suffice.

 My parents’ friends have been on vacation to the Dominican Republic over five times. I’ve never been. But my high school girlfriend was a Dominican from Washington Heights and the amount of time I spent chilling with her friends and family was largely what put my Spanish over the top to quasi-fluency (concurrent with high school honors classes). I used my Spanish to get in good with the weed dealers uptown. Later on I coincidentally lived in that same neighborhood for nine years and ate maduros, mofongo and pollo guisado like it was my fuckin’ job. Nevertheless, I’m yet to “see the world” of D.R… right? Sure I am.

 This is why so many people pay so much money to live in such little homes in New York City. Because we’ve got the whole world in our hands, at our fingertips. When I die I’ll have spent way more time in Chinatown conversing with Chinese people than any world traveler has in Shanghai. And there is no amount of trips to Puerto Rico or any part of Latin America that will familiarize you with Hispanic culture as well as my many years working in the Bronx. I’ve got Africa on 116th St., Greece in Astoria and Italy all over the fuckin’ place, fellas. Sure, I’d love to go see the actual places as well, but I live in New York. I can’t afford to.

 I’ll never forget one day waiting tables in Beverly Hills, and some young, attractive but annoying regular walked in wearing a t-shirt: PARIS IS ALWAYS A GOOD IDEA.

 Sure, I thought, so is sex. But not everything’s always on the table like that.

 Wrong. For her everything is always on the table.

 I wondered how many times she’d been to Paris. Maybe only once - maybe never. Maybe six times. This wasn’t the point. The point is she probably had been, as well as to other places that generally come up in the same conversation as “that time in Paris,” and judging from her demeanor, age, and quite frankly, her voice, there was nothing especially “cultured” about this chick. I believe you can sometimes tell a lot about a person’s intellect by their voice and/or thickness of geographical accent. I don’t believe there’s an amount of times one can sip champagne overlooking the Eiffel Tower that promotes psychological frequency. This can only be done via life. In Instagram memes everyone seems to agree that life’s most valuable lessons are learned through suffering and failure, but then in competitive social cyphers of shit heads those experiences are replaced by leisurely 10-day vacations.

 As the moron asked: What can you know about yourself if you’ve never been to San Diego? I ask what can you know about yourself if you’ve never been unable to afford a trip to San Diego, or anywhere for that matter? What can you know about the world if you’ve never flown past the islands of opportunity and made all the wrong decisions only to never see them again? If you’ve never walked the great line at the food stamp and Medicaid office only to be told you make too much to qualify for assistance but not enough to eat three meals every day. If you’ve never swam in the ocean of heartbreak, climbed the tallest mountain of disappointment only to be thrown off into the valley of social isolation, or peeked over the great wall of physical illness only to be punched in the face by false hope and emotional imbalance, what can you know? Oh, you’ve been to Paris? Cool. What about jail? Ever been to jail? Ever had crazy sex in the projects in Harlem when it was still “Harlem?” Ever been bitch-smacked by probable murderers in the George Washington Bridge Bus Terminal and robbed for your nickel bag of weed? No? Then how can you really know yourself, bro’? C’mon, get out there. See the world. Bitch.  

[newstfionline]

Will London Fall?

By Sarah Lyall, NY Times, April 11, 2017

London may be the capital of the world. You can argue for New York, but London has a case. Modern London is the metropolis that globalization created. Walk the streets of Holborn, ride an escalator down to the Tube and listen to the languages in the air. Italian mingles with Hindi, or Mandarin, or Spanish, or Portuguese. Walk through the City, the financial district, and listen to the plumbing system of international capitalism. London is banker to the planet.

London is ancient yet new. It is as much city-state as city, with a culture and economy that circulate the world. London manages to be Los Angeles, Washington and New York wrapped into one. Imagine if one American city were home to Hollywood, the White House, Madison Avenue, Wall Street and Broadway. London is sort of that.

Modern London thrives on the idea that one city can be a global melting pot, a global trading house, a global media machine and a place where everyone tolerates everyone else, mostly. The thought is that being connected to the rest of the world is something to celebrate. But what happens to London when that idea unexpectedly falls away?

LONDON--St. Pancras International rail station, a wonder of Victorian architecture resurrected for the 21st century, opened 10 years ago as the embodiment of a particular notion: that Britain is part of something bigger than itself and that belonging to a fellowship of nations is as easy and natural as stepping onto a train.

It was both shocking and thrilling, at first, that you could catch a Eurostar from a platform in London, slide under the English Channel, hurtle through the French countryside and less than three hours later pull into the Gare du Nord in Paris. To ride the Eurostar was to marvel that the capitals--London so prosaic and straightforward, Paris so romantic and mysterious, the two with their long history of rivalry and discord--were part of the same larger enterprise.

Eurostar symbolized an era in which London seemed to be inevitably rushing toward Europe, too. At least that was the idea until now, and the beginning of the process known as Brexit. The trains are still running, but the era that created modern London appears to be over.

“We’ve made a horrible statement to the rest of the world, and it’s very sad,” said Martin Eden, a publisher waiting to catch the Eurostar to Paris the other day, to celebrate his 43rd birthday. “We should be moving together,” he said of Europe, “instead of moving apart.”

I met Mr. Eden as I wandered around St. Pancras at the moment Britain officially filed for divorce from the European Union. It was lunchtime on March 29, Brexit Day, as you might call it, when Britain delivered a letter to Brussels and opened two years of negotiations over the rules of disengagement.

But as Britain tries to bid farewell to its now-estranged partner of 44 years, London faces a different sort of challenge: how a great global city whose residents voted overwhelmingly against Brexit in last summer’s referendum should adjust to an uncertain future governed by principles that feel antithetical to its very being. Brexit has divided Britain from Europe but also divided Britain from itself, with London on one side and much of England on the other (Scotland and Northern Ireland, which also voted to remain, are another story).

To many people in the capital, the vote last year feels like a rejection not just of Europe but also of the values embodied by London, perhaps the world’s most vibrantly and exuberantly cosmopolitan city: values like openness, tolerance, internationalism and the sense that it is better to look outward than to gaze inward. Even as a sense of melancholy seemed to descend on St. Pancras when I walked around the other day, much of the rest of Britain was celebrating.

“A Magnificent Moment,” The Daily Telegraph announced on its front page the next morning; “Dover and Out,” said The Sun, referring to the White Cliffs of Dover. But even as much of the country has spoken darkly of the influx of immigrants, the erosion of British values and the siphoning of resources by Europe, London has remained about as heterogeneous and open-minded a place as you could imagine, especially for a 2,000-ish-year-old metropolis.

Here are Britain’s richest people and many of its poorest, living side by side in relative peace. London is stuffed with British landmarks--Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, St. Paul’s Cathedral--but also with people comprising 270 nationalities, 8.7 million inhabitants in all.

Brexit has thrown into disarray this great experiment in tolerance. Nobody can predict what the city will look like in 10, 20 or 30 years. If spontaneous travel between Europe and Britain no longer seems so simple, neither does the easy exchange of people, capital, jobs, businesses and languages. Perhaps more significant, it is no longer clear that these are meant to be admirable things, here or anywhere.

What happens next? No one really knows. Pro-Brexit Britons are happy, of course, even if headaches will follow. This is probably the noisiest and most complicated divorce in modern European history. London is still busy, the Tube is still packed and the pubs are still full. But it is a weird moment. The certainties that sustained a great city are no longer certain.

People have complicated feelings about what might happen to London. “A lot of people my age are not happy--are they going to have to move back to France?” said Antoine Nauleau, a dual French-American citizen who works here for now. But he said he can see another side to the argument in the country in general. “It seems that the U.K. is losing a lot of support, but also kind of defining itself.”

I lived in London for more than 15 years, returning home to New York in 2013. The city changed a great deal in that time, and the city I left felt markedly different from the one I found when I arrived. It felt more open, more international, more enthusiastic, more exciting. The food got better, and places stayed open later. My neighbors seemed to come from a United Nations’ worth of countries, our differences somehow erased because we all shared them.

The city also grew a lot richer, which was not necessarily a good thing: The center of town became all but unaffordable. Russian oligarchs and other members of the world’s ultrarich elite dug up the streets to build subterranean complexes filled with swimming pools and parking garages for homes they planned to live in only a couple of weeks each year.

Europe, which had seemed like a distant concept, suddenly seemed right there on the doorstep. Crowds of French people and then Poles and Spaniards and, later and more contentiously, Romanians moved in. Any time you went to an art gallery or a movie, you saw how British culture was benefiting from European financing. The rise of laughably cheap no-frills airlines made air travel to Europe almost easier than train travel. Tony Blair, prime minister for much of that time, liked to take his vacations in places like Tuscany, in Italy.

I’ve been back a number of times since I left, but it was during two visits in the past few months that I encountered something different: fear for the future and a questioning by many non-Britons of whether they even belong here anymore.

“Even for those that haven’t talked about leaving, there’s something fundamentally ruptured in their relationship with the country,” said Ian Dunt, editor of the website Politics.co.uk. “When people say they’re very anti-immigration, no one thinks that’s directed at German architects or French lawyers. But even those people are beginning to feel that the country is becoming cold and meanspirited and indifferent to their presence, if not openly hostile toward them.”

London is big and unwieldy and constantly changing. It resists easy definition.

Here, despite the anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant sentiments that helped fuel the Brexit vote, is London’s first Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan, whose parents, a bus driver and a seamstress, came from Pakistan. Here are international financiers and playboys, Eurocrats and Eurotrash, as well as economic migrants from Spain and Portugal and other depressed European countries crowding into tiny flats on the edges of town and taking jobs in cafes, on construction sites, in hotels.

“In London I never feel like an outsider, because everyone’s an outsider,” said Paolo Martini, 32, a hairdresser I met in Kentish Town who comes from Brazil and has a Polish wife and a British (by virtue of her birth) daughter. He has lived here for more than a decade; who knows what Brexit will mean for his family?

Part of what makes London different is how closely it all knits together, people from different economic backgrounds as much as different ethnic ones. Every borough has its grand houses and its public housing projects, sometimes right around the corner from one another.

“It’s not just me and you and rich and poor,” said Dara Djarian, 25, a real estate agent in Kilburn whose parents are French and Iranian. He compared the jumbled-up neighborhoods of London with the more uniform banlieues at the periphery of Paris, centers mostly for Arab immigrants. “Everyone’s all mixed up here.”

I looked down Kilburn High Road from his office and saw what he meant. A Polish delicatessen was next to an Italian restaurant across the street from a traditional London pub beside a Halal butcher shop. There was the Shah furniture store, a classic fish-and-chips place, a ladies-only hairdresser, a luxury bathroom-fixture store, some fancy coffee shops and the highbrow Tricycle Cinema, with a program that appeals to hipsters and cineastes.

“The one thing we don’t actually see a lot of here is English people,” Mr. Djarian said. “They’ve moved out to the countryside, or to the suburbs.”

Back in February, a political rally drew a crowd not far from Hyde Park. What was unusual--or it would have been unusual, in a different city--is that the candidate featured at the rally, Emmanuel Macron, was running for president of France. Mr. Macron had come to London because something around 270,000 French people live here, enough to form a city unto themselves. (Many are concentrated in a posh neighborhood in South Kensington known locally, and not very kindly, as Frog Alley.)

The Rupert Murdoch-owned Times of London, which is not a fan of the European Union or, for that matter, of France, sent the political columnist Patrick Kidd to write about the event.

He could not tell his readers exactly what Mr. Macron said, however, because, as he boasted in the article, he does not really speak French, although he studied it in school. But why should he make an effort, seemed to be the idea, when it is so easy to ridicule the French for being French, and when to be English is to feel superior to your neighbors?

“Mr. Macron did not ask for directions to la gare once,” Mr. Kidd wrote, alluding to his French lessons in school. “He didn’t even say ‘zut’ or ‘bof.’ One wondered if he was French at all.”

Mr. Kidd’s hauteur isn’t surprising, given that Mr. Murdoch’s papers and the rest of the country’s right-leaning news media have spent decades nurturing an ancient anti-Europe narrative long reflected in the Conservative Party’s Euroskeptic wing. If London, or at least much of London, has welcomed or tolerated all the changes, many people around Britain, particularly from older generations, have lamented that they no longer recognize the country of their childhoods.

The populist tabloids stoked that anxiety and resentment, often veiling it in easy stereotypes and portraying anyone who objected to the coverage as tediously “politically correct.” They used crude World War II metaphors when England played Germany in soccer. They mocked Europe as a place of humorless Krauts and garlic-eating Frogs, deriding the European Union as an impenetrable, out-of-control bureaucracy sucking up British money and imposing risible, onerous laws on an unwitting populace. Multiculturalism, the zero-sum argument went, was causing Britain to lose sight of what it was meant to be.

“We fly the British flag, not these awful things you are putting on tails,” former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher snapped during the Conservative Party Conference in 1997, upon seeing a miniature British Airways 747 whose tail was decorated with an image from a foreign country, part of a short-lived effort to celebrate the airline’s global reach.

It is an irony of history that it was Mrs. Thatcher who may have given birth to modern London, when her government deregulated the financial markets in 1985 in the so-called Big Bang, paving the way for the city’s rise as a global financial behemoth. Nine years later, the Channel Tunnel opened, a victory for common sense (its detractors had argued, among other things, that rabid Continental dogs might use it to sneak into Britain) and a feat of engineering that seemed to defy the physical and metaphorical laws of the English Channel itself.

Tony Blair’s election as prime minister, in 1997, ended 18 years of Tory rule and ushered in an era when belonging to Europe felt like something verging on cool. Speaking a foreign language was suddenly, briefly, O.K. And then, in 2012, London hosted the Summer Olympics, advertising itself as a city for the world and proving how smoothly and joyfully this polyglot place worked when it put its mind to something, and how unusually well the people who lived here got along.

“People here are coming in from every single nation and just walking around so casually,” Cristina Barba, who is 23 and Spanish, told me, “and it all feels very natural.”

She pays $750 a month for a room in a house on the edges of the city (affordable housing is unattainable closer to the center) with seven roommates who include recent arrivals from Italy and Romania. She works on Brick Lane, home to a large Bangladeshi population, in Absence of Colour, a shop selling expensive monochromatic clothing from an Icelandic designer.

“In Spain you feel like there’s a division between Spaniards and people who look differently,” she said. “But here, there is no division. Everyone just coexists.”

Construction crews are still putting up buildings, monuments to London’s future, as if nothing has changed. But you can hear faint footsteps, too. Banks, investment firms and other companies are making contingency plans to move elsewhere, if necessary. What then?

It is strange to me that some Britons who live outside London seem to mistrust and feel alienated from it, given how essential, and central, the city is to the country and how much people like it when they visit. But the things London is proud of also make it an easy target. In 2012, Theresa May, then the anti-Brexit home secretary and now the pro-Brexit prime minister, said that diversity of language in the capital was helping rip apart the nation.

“You only have to look at London, where almost half of all primary school children speak English as a second language, to see the challenges we now face as a country,” she said. “This isn’t fair to anyone: How can people build relationships with their neighbors if they can’t even speak the same language?”

The rift between what she said and what Londoners think shows why London is struggling so much right now.

“The idea is that we’re all who we are, and we’re all in it together,” said Victoria Prescott, who teaches English and film studies at the Deptford Green School in Lewisham. The students speak 40 different languages at home but acclimate quickly, she said, through immersion courses in English.

The school emphasizes strength in diversity, and to visit it during the morning recess is to see a playground full of students of different colors and cultures all intermingling as if their differences did not matter. But of course it’s only part of the story. Rebecca Cummings, Deptford Green’s deputy head teacher, mentioned one of her neighbors, an older Brexit supporter bitter at the very things the school celebrates.

“She’d say, ‘I’m sitting in the doctor’s surgery waiting forever next to a Somali immigrant with four kids,’” Ms. Cummings said. “That’s London, too.”

Those feelings are now taking root in the city. Pro-Brexit views are hardening, and many immigrants--rich as well as poor--are wondering if there is any point in staying. What London will look like then is anybody’s guess.

“My main concern is that when the E.U. migrants are kicked out, and the students are kicked out, and all the banks that use London as a hub leave because they are no longer part of the E.U., who’s going to be left?” said Mr. Shukla, the author. “It’ll just be full of tourists who have come to see the queen, and Theresa May.”