I arrived in my hostel, Les Piaules, at around 12. I couldn’t check in and take my well-deserved nap until 3, so I checked my duffel into the locker room and went out for some lunch!
Darn, if I wasn’t in a neat neighborhood! French-African and Vietnamese folks comprised the dominant demographics, and the little, unpretentious street facing restaurants on my block served fried chapati, African breads, Indian and Middle Eastern candy… I grabbed a 1 EUR chapati from a lady just outside the hostel (it was good but I should have got whatever she was making fresh)–and walked to a dumpling place I’d surveilled on Yelp. It was packed. I had a hard time communicating my intent to sit down in English–some ladies sitting next to where I was standing translated into Vietnamese (I think) for me. I ordered a peanut salad and a plate of their #1 dumplings. Mmmm, it was tasty! The peanut salad was just raw peanuts, carrot and cucumber in a spicy dressing, but it was terrific. The dumplings were crispy-fried and soaked up a spicy chili oil that reminded me of Chongqing. I paid and headed out for a top rated crepe stand 20 minutes away (the Elo Creperie). The crepe I had there had to be the best I’d ever had in my life and it wasn’t even close! With difficulty I obtained a recommendation from the friendly gal behind the counter–salted caramel and Dutch speculoos, which closely approximates brown sugar. She fried the crepe on a large hot grill–it looked no different from any other crepe-making setup. But, after she’d cooked one side, instead of cooking the other to the same degree, she just barely toasted the other side to solidify it, then flipped it back over when she added the toppings. The extra flip was facilitated by a long implement over which she delicately folded and unfolded the crepe when she flipped it, and made for a magnificent contrast between soft and crispy. By the time the gal folded the crepe and handed it to me, the brown sugar had melted into lakes of almost boiling goo, and the top was beautifully feathered and crunchy. I sat there at the little table eating it and marveling.
I was short 50 Euro-cents and offered to run to an ATM (I managed to survive the rest of the trip with no cash to avoid the ATM fee), but the gal waved me off with a “Se bon”. I thanked her with a tip of 200 Hungarian Forints ;). She and her colleague tried to get it out of me which country the currency was from and I think I finally got across with Budapest that it was Hungarian. I ’Bonjour’ed and then, realizing my mistake, ’Au Revoir’ed my way out of the creperie and headed back to the hostel.
It was nearly time to check in, and I was just looking over one of the games in the chess Candidates’ Tournament to pass the time when an adorable Armenian grandmother came over, and in the softest voice said, “You love this man? Levon?” and pointed to the match. Levon Aronian was an Armenian grandmaster who should have challenged the World Champion many years ago, but always did badly in the crucial Candidates qualifier, and this year was no exception. But he did play thrillingly–several times in our blitzing Martin and I egged each other on with the exhortation to ‘go Aronian’–to throw up a wild pawn storm. I talked nearly an hour with this kind woman–Victoria was her name. She had met Levon Aronian in Berlin, along with his wife, and apparently they kept up a correspondence. We even talked a little bit in German once she found out I lived in Zurich–she was a language teacher with 8 languages under her belt. She suggested I keep up the German–she said it was a very important language–and suggested I learn Russian or Mandarin next ;P. We lamented the failing popularity of chess in the States, and talked a bit about education. In the end she went back to writing some letters, and I checked in and went up to my room.
I opened the door and was swiftly greeted by a quite fetching American girl named Sofia. We chatted for a little while and I turned in for a nap.
When I woke I found I’d slept past my alarm–it was almost 7:30! Eleonore couldn’t meet tonight, since she had an important meeting with her swing club. So, after a refreshing shower, I went out on my own. The first place I’d looked up was closed–they appeared to be having a live show! I moved on to the second place, a classic French bistro. I was pretty excited when I finally made it there–after walking past lots of raucous nightlife–and sat down at a table. Hardly had I sat down when the chap sitting next to me turned to me, and with a smile said, “I guess that makes 3 Americans taking themselves out on dates tonight.” The guy was 26-27 or so, from San Francisco originally, but off on a wild journey of activism and learning. He was an interesting and intellectual fellow and we hit it off right away. He told me about his travels to Istanbul, (taking his SF tech job long distance) in order to learn Kurdish and get involved with a nascent and very progressive Kurdish state. (He filled me in–the Kurds had been oppressed from multiple sides for almost a century, to the point of outlawing the Kurdish language, but some Kurds had recently struck a deal with the dictator Assad and in return, gained a territory, which they administered extremely progressively in terms of women’s rights, LGBTQ, immigration…). My new friend Brandon was really excited about this and went to see if he could help. He had a great time in Istanbul, but was finally forced to leave for some visa reason. In the meantime he had traveled to Athens and got involved with a commune there; so after a brief stint in the States here he was, headed to Athens. We also talked a little bit about “critical theory”, which he described as starting with Marxism and relating to the description of whole-society problems–I expressed suspicion, but asked for a book recommendation. Very cool fellow. I got escargot for the first time ever. It was decent–of course the sauce was amazing–but the meat had a strange grassy flavor. Then came a delicious delight–crispy confit duck with fried potato rounds. It was absolutely incredible. I washed it down with a glass of wine and had some apple tart for dessert to boot. It cost me 30 EUR, but that’s nearly what I would have paid for a glass of beer and a plate of rosti in Switzerland. I was quite content. Walked with Brandon to a metro and went our separate ways.
Got back to the hostel; it was pretty late so I just crashed.