Pais, monsieur carrotte et moi

 Apart from being surrounded by some of the warmest beers in the world, the other major benefit of living in London is it’s proximity to Europe. For a weekend away, you only need a desire to go somewhere, maybe someone to go with, a small amount of cash and you’re there.

In practice however it’s not quite that simple. You deal with airports, trains to the airports, delayed flights, cancelled flights in remote Italy, leaving you to sleep inside the airport eating your Hungarian mate’s cheese, sausage and wine, doing performance art. Quickly, you realize that weekend trips away to Europe can be a lot more hassle than they are worth.

But when your friend from Sydney is protesting around Russia about the importing of some reasonably dodgy Kangaroo meat being made into salami and she talks to Adam about going to Paris… Well, you get on that bandwagon to ruin their romantic getaway, book some tickets on the Eurostar, make up a story about working on the train, skive off from work early and go to Paris for a glass of vin rouge.

Of course, once you get there, one glass of vin rouge is never good enough, so you drink more, go look at some old buildings, wrestle with Angie, talk a bunch of crap about how your work in software contributes to world peace, see touristy sights, spend time in uber cool under ground jazz bars, test your patience with the vegan who wanders for hours around the St Germain area of Paris looking for a falafel shop, visit the cafe where she was almost arrested and basically spend a lot of time in coffee shops drinking espresso having a chat with one of your best mates and your favourite animal rights super woman.

Such a good weekend, I almost converted and became a vegan…. Almost