Most Overrated: 1. Duke 2. Paris

Hey, I’m back in front of a PC! yay blogging time.  I’m get hated on for this one, but it’s ok.  So let me catch yall up.  Monday, I caught the first train out of Kassel, Germany to Paris, France.  I had to catch two trains, the first one was cool minus the morning commuter crowdedness.  The ICE train in Germany, lovingly called the bullet train.  But the second French train to Paris was the worst.  Small and mildew smelly.  Also is was packed, knees to knees.  Two buzz cut French punk looking dudes thought they was slick sitting in our seats, I don’t think the spoke english but they knew what I meant when I said those are my seat, you need to bounce.  They move across the aisle to what was probably their tight ass seats bunned with a grimy looking guy.  They was blown, I can tell because they had no room- knees touching, fidgeting, and shooting cold looks over at us.  Whatever, we go hard.

So as we got off the train, it was clear Paris is nothing like what we have been seeing in Germany.  The diversity was apparent.  Let’s be honest for a second there is a about 6 templates of the majority of German residents.  Like the Sims or a video game, you have several base types and you make small variations to them so your avatar looks different from the next person, but they all loosely look a like.  But Paris has the diversity that maybe only New York City can come close to.  It felt good.  And the people were nicer and not staring at me like there was a problem.

After checking in to our leaning hotel, the building didn’t lean, just the floors, we went to a hole in the wall restaurant near by.  The people in there was eating some kind of eggs and mayo dish and something that looked like mud.  But we played it safe and order chicken and sausages.  Sausage in normal non-fancy Paris must mean hotdog, because that what it looked and tasted like.  But it was bad, actually it was pretty good for a hotdog with no bun.  And every dish had french fries with it.  Come on, Paris, have to do better.

Because of our 3 countries in 3 days schedule we only had hour to do a lot so decided to take a tour bus, but the catch is that the tour bus locations wasn’t anywhere near our hotel.  Looking at a map and being city folks ourselves we decided to walk to.  Item on the map appear closer than they are.  But it also gave us an opportunity to get a feel for the city and people that roam it.

The tour bus was cool but GPS audio sucked and mistimed. So didn’t know what I looking at a lot of the time.  We had the option of getting off and checking out places but wasn’t on our side and was content with taking pictures from the bus.

After the tour, I had to go back to the hotel I was feeling pretty bad, my cold was at it’s worst part.  I was on top of the tour bus in the open air and it was cold and windy.  Also it threaten to rain a couple of times.  I rest for a while until the family came back the room and then decided to eat and run to the pharmacy to get something for my cold.   Because it was my parents 35th wedding anniversary, we want to eat somewhere nice.  Found several fancy looking places but picked the one that had France in the name.  Good move.  The place was great and food was amazing.  I decide to not play it safe and try new dishes so I got a duck appetizer and rabbit smothered in some kind of amazing creamy sauce with cook vegetables.  The rest had lamb chops and chicken.  Tasted each others food but everyone agreed I was the winner with the rabbit.

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Video:

Now if you are a Paris lover then you would want to stop reading because I about to go on an unfocused rant about what’s wrong with Paris.

Paris has a lot of hype around it.  It’s a major city in the world.  As I left the train station, I thought that this is what New York would look like if placed on Mars and it was never cleaned up by the mayors.  It is hard to formulate my thoughts so let me try doing it in a list.

1. There is an odor.  They got the same NYC trash issue, that shit is on the sidewalk in front of the buildings.  So you know the rats ain’t far away. Paris is dirty.
2. Related note: The pigeons.  Them flying rats are everywhere and ain’t scared of people.  Shitting on everything.  Their number is in the millions.  I walked past the area where there was a nice arch building (would be photo op) but I couldn’t take a picture for several reasons, but the pigeons was one. There was hundred of them there.  Who the f**k is feeding them?  And it stunk over there because there was a dead pigeon in the middle of them rotting. The city needed to remove the dead animals in the middle of a heavily populated sidewalk.
3. The questionable people.  I started to question myself because I smelled a dead bird with a stuffy nose yet people was chilling in the square like there was nothing wrong. ???  Am I missing something, how could people post up and eat around a hundred pigeons and a funky ass dead animal smell?
4. Unfashionable people.  I know Paris is the fashion capital of the world.  It was clear because the people there was “trying” to do their part.  I seen rack of girls and funny guys put together some outfits.  BUT for having 600 hair stores in 3 blocks why wasn’t there one decent weave in a 30 mile radius?  I’m not a weave expert but I know what don’t look good.  The Dominicans need to set up shop in Paris.  Your clothes can be the freshest but you are, not just look, busted if your hair ain’t right too.  The African women had the messed up synthetic weaves and the racial mixed girl had nothing going on with theirs.  You know what I mean, the poor little mixed girls caught between worlds.  No one showed them or took them to a hair dresser, so they got the thicker than straight hair but try to style it like you got the easy to work with it hair.  Some call it “The White Mom” syndrome because it’s common for a White mom with a black or mixed child not to know how to control her child’s hair.  Anyway, I seen a rack of that.
5. African Men.  They are scary.  Straight terrorist.  The way they was acting I would want them out my country too (Germans, but later subject).  There is a gang of them just wandering the streets with no job, all trying to hustle.  30 bammas can not all be holding down one corner or stoop.  Yall over perfumed motherf**kers need to spread out.  When I see that many broke people gathering in one spot, I get scared too.  Normally, I would take a picture or video of foolishness like that but they was everywhere like project roaches.  I was scared to pull out anything of value.  I mean, I can take on 2-3 dudes if they tried to rob me, but I don’t know about a village or a tribe.  My hands ain’t that good.  I don’t know what they were hustling or trying to do and I wasn’t trying to find out.  I walk about 5 blocks through African territory ( main streets too, from Boulevard de Strasbourg to Galleries Lafayette) mean mugging, like I ain’t one of you, don’t say anything to me.  So for the most part I wasn’t harassed like other people walking the street.  But I did make the mistake of making eye contact with this one dude, he asked me what did I need.  I said I only speak English, he was like I speak English too.  He had some type card in his hand.  I said, I’m good and walked off.  But the thing that took the cake and really upset me was that their was like 40 African dudes standing in front of the Subway entrance waiting for people to walk out, I know was scared for them.  This one young lady walked out and they got aggressive, cat calling and following and reaching.  Like that was going to make her interested in any of them.  Where was the police?  Man, in DC it’s safer to kill a local than harass tourists.  They don’t play when it comes to the image of the city.

In all, Paris has a lot of history and other things to offer but it’s not as great as people make it out to be.  The potential is there.  But they need a good mayor to clean up the city like NYC.  Hide the homeless, clean up the trashy buildings, and reduce crime and traffic.  They need standards.  Because it’s Paris they take it for granted.  People will always want to come, but the hotel situation needs to be addressed.  The city hotels are almost always sold out like here in DC but they ask for top dollar for subpar rooms.  Maybe people give them a pass because it’s Paris, or Europe, or whatever, but the hotels need to earn their star ratings.  Fix the buildings up too.  Hey but at least the food is good.  That’s something good I can say about Paris, they have really good food even if the table is wobbly and the plate is dirty.