When we first arrived in France, I lived in a farm village and Karin did not have hot water for weeks, due to an all-too-expected administrative fuckup that involved Gaz de France and Electricité de France pointing Tweedledee/Tweedledum fingers of bureaucratic responsibility at each other.   Over the four years that followed, we gradually built up our networks, got to know the neighborhoods, and learned the ins and outs of navigating a perennially stressed out, stylish, expensive city.

Paris has innumerable downsides.  It’s expensive, sometimes dirty, full of dogshit and attitude, frequently inconvenient, infested by gypsy pickpockets, bums, and visitors playing at human pinball with pedestrians while staring into their maps.   Traffic is a nightmare, it’s loud, people are packed in like sardines, and even foreigners with a lot of tolerance for inefficiency and different cultural norms have a hard time making a go of it, both personally and professionally.  I’d hate to be an old or infirm person here, or someone without the financial means to enjoy the place.

But it’s beautiful, by anybody’s standards – jaw-droppingly so at times.  As stupid as it sounds, there is a vibe to the place that’s hard to miss.  Things are always moving, and just walking down the street feels somehow glamorous.  I love the miniskirts (oh god, the miniskirts), the food, the fluid, aggressive predictability of the drivers, having a glass of wine outdoors after work, the feeling of having your shit together when you know what you’re doing in the Métro, the confidence you get from being to stare down a waiter with an attitude.  I’ve even come to appreciate the civility and wry humor that tends to get lost in what is usually mistaken for brusque, impatient, and snotty rudeness.

I’ll miss the Marais especially, with its little details like two orthodox Jews arguing finer points of talmudic theology while two gay men in pink shorts walk past them, holding hands.  There’s even the occasional guilty bit of entertaining sadism, having a glass outside a restaurant and watching the same car with 94 plates circle fruitlessly for half an hour on a futile search for parking, or annoying the BoBo couple hovering over your table, desperately wishing you’d stop ordering drinks so they can sit down and talk about having sex.

Maybe part of my enjoyment is precisely due to the impracticality of life here.  People fuss over small things in a way I’ve never seen elsewhere, like the employees at my bank or the nice people who handle Vélib subscriptions (one of the greatest inventions of all times) – it’s a pain in the ass to get through to them, and the rules often make no sense whatsoever, but lucky me, I’ve had almost exclusively good experiences with service in this city, that run totally contrary to what seems to be the rest of the world’s consensus about Parisian attitudes.  Serendipitously, I have never faced the Kafkaesque nightmares of bureaucratic purgatory that seem to be the hallmark of even French people’s interactions with any sort of authority.

Still, returning home from a Sunday morning shopping trip to cheesy accordion music from a nearby busker, having the local shopkeepers and waiters wave at you, makes even the banal seem like it belongs in a 1950s movie.  And being able to help lost tourists without so much as a glance at their much-folded city maps is just a great feeling – to say nothing of what’s probably the most glamorous cab ride in the world, Eastward up the Quai Georges Pompidou at night past the Eiffel Tower glittering across the Seine.  I’ve always found the searchlight from that monument, sweeping across the city after dark, somehow comforting, and I will miss it as much as biking home from work, looking left and right before crossing a street, and oh hey, it’s Opéra Garnier, oh hey, there’s the Louvre, oh hey, look, Notre Dame.

There’s also something incredibly surreal about the luxury of being able to take for granted what for many people is the trip of a lifetime.  That said, I’m happy that I never lost the sense of marvel and appreciation that I get, just ambling around on foot, enjoying the architectural details and watching people.  Simply being here has made me happy, more so than I’ve ever been for any prolonged period in my life.

Weirdly enough, it all feels so real and full of life, throughout dozens, perhaps hundreds of neighborhoods, much more so than the urban dead spaces that don’t just characterize many other European and American big cities, but also much of the suburban wasteland surrounding Paris.

And underground, both figuratively and literally, lie worlds that even many long-time residents don’t ever get around to discovering.  Whether it’s a back-alley little open-air market, or an illegal party in the catacombs, it feels great to peel back layer after layer of such a historically laden metropolis and to be in the know about something hidden and exotic.

Because our new Cologne apartment was not yet ready by the time Karin began her new job, I had a month’s stay of execution to take in everything around me.  I spent most of that time visiting friends, just knocking around town, and going on some final urban explorations with my mad local friends.  As the movers had hauled away most of our furniture at the beginning of October, this meant I lived like a bachelor squatter in our big empty living room, with nothing but a mattress, rope climbing gear, several servers, tools, and photo equipment to share the space.  It looked like I was plotting a bank heist.

And now even that is gone, the apartment is empty, and soon I’ll hit the road, maybe stop somewhere for a parting drink at a sidewalk café, then head out of town via one last rumbling, potholed cobblestone boulevard as the monuments and rooftops of Paris recede in the rear-view mirror.

Change is good; while we lived here, it was always clear that it was too good to last.  All things must eventually come to an end, but some of them more than others make you wish it weren’t so.

It’s been real, au revoir, and would the last one to leave please turn out the lights.

For some reason, the games that stick in my mind aren’t classics, like Monopoly, nor was I ever really attracted to “serious” games like Settlers of Catan (despite rave reviews.)  The ones I really remember are hilariously absurd and stupid.  Like my sense of humor.

Illuminati

The Steve Jackson Games classic, modeled on Robert Anton Wilson‘s Illuminatus! trilogy.

Play any of 8 conspiracies, each with different powers and objectives — including the UFOs, the Society of Assassins, and the Gnomes of Zurich.  Using money and power, try to take over the world by infiltrating groups like Mad Scientists For a Better Tomorrow, the Fnord Motor Company, and the Robot Sea Monsters.

Relevant:  23, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Meta-relevant:  The Cuckoo’s Egg, the book that first got me interested in security.

I never played any of the expansions — it gets too confusing, and I’m a simple minded kind of guy.

Nuclear War / Nuclear Escalation

Or, “does anyone have change for 50 million people?”

A very funny game from 1965, published by Flying Buffalo.  If the humor in Dr. Strangelove is up your alley, you’ll like this.

Each player starts out with a bunch of cards showing population, in millions.  Other cards include nuclear warheads (kill people), delivery systems (carry warheads), propaganda (steals an enemy’s population before the war), secrets (steals population and has some other effects), and special (increases/decreases destruction of attacks, steals population).  Attacks also use the radioactive fallout spinner to determine additional effects of your nuclear strikes:

The game starts as a cold war, during which you try to steal each others’ population, until someone starts throwing nukes around.  This site gets way too enthusiastic about expansions, considering that this is a very silly, cynical spoof of a game.

Risk

The classic strategy board game.  Roughly corresponds to Napoleonic-era strategic combat, or no era at all, actually.  Yes, it’s originally French.

Risk is the perfect antidote to the hyper-complex, hyper-involved Avalon Hill war game I bought at a garage sale once, which (in my limited experience) involved more setting up and rule nitpicking, not to mention hundreds of statistics and die rolls and and and.  That’s not a game, that’s accounting.

It’s a quick, fairly easy to learn game, despite the apparent insane complexity of the rule description in the Wikipedia page above; players use armies (indicated by Roman numerals, or little plastic figures, depending on your version) to try to conquer first neutral areas, then each others’ territories.

Risk is turn-based; each turn consists of (1) getting and placing your armies, (2) combat, (3) fortifying your territories / moving armies around.  Combat is decided by dice roll depending on the number of attacking / defending armies; the defender always has an advantage.

Territories are grouped by continent (more or less).  The more territories you have, the more armies you get.  Holding a whole continent gives you extra armies (depending on the continent), as does territorial conquest.

Each time you conquer a territory, you gain a card.  Cards show either cavalry, artillery, or infantry.  When you have five cards, you turn in either three different ones, or three identical ones, for bonus armies.  Each time you turn in a card, you receive more armies.

We’ve played this for hours on end, mainly in high school and college.  Free online single- and multiplayer versions exist, but with a lot of beer, in a room full of other drunks, is the best.  Never get involved in a land war in Asia.

Axis & Allies

This one’s unfortunately a bit more specific and complicated (Wikipedia page here), and harder to find other players for.  There are tons of expansions and versions, none of which I ever tried, plus nearly infinite variations on the rules (given that Karin and I play Scrabble on steroids by allowing any word in any language, I probably shouldn’t even mention this.)  Takes a little while to learn, but well worth it.

You’re start as Nazi Germany, the USSR, Great Britain, Japan, or the United States.  Each country’s territories (including allies) are pre-defined, as is initial unit placement.  Order of play is fixed (it follows the previous list of countries).  Each country gets to buy units (or try to research extra technology), move units, attack, move units again, place new units, and collect income.  Income is determined by the number of and value of territories you own.  Attack and research is governed by die roll, which can be hilariously unfair.

Units consist of several types of naval units (submarine, destroyer, transport, carrier, battleship), aircraft (fighter, bomber), land (tanks, infantry), fixed (antiaircraft guns) and factories.

Combat and movement have some fairly specific rules, including being able to destroy another player’s income with bombing raids, submarines being able to attack separately, fighters being able to land on aircraft carriers, etc.  Each unit also has a different attack and defense strength, meaning you have to allocate and prepare accordingly.  Last man standing wins, unless you play as a free-for-all.

Diplomacy

My all time favorite.  Unfortunately, to do this “right” (i.e. my way) requires some planning and patient players.

The turn-based game takes place in early 20th century Europe, with the great powers (France, UK, Russia, Italy, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey) gearing up to screw each other as royally as possible.

Initially, players attempt to negotiate, both publicly and in secret, to build alliances and prepare for war.  The second phase of the game involves open, knives-out attacks.  Millions of patriotic young idiots rushing into muddy trench warfare massacres are conveniently abstracted as army and navy markers; it’s a highly strategic game, and combat is determined purely by number of armies you can bring to bear on an enemy (you can only have one unit per land or sea territory, reinforced by units in neighboring areas.)  No dice are involved, making it purely dependent on player negotiations and strategy.

Why is this fun?  Because, if you’re doing it “right” (i.e. my way) you have a large map out in an open space, with teams of players required to submit their moves in secret once or twice a week, by paper or email.  I’ve run Diplomacy games in college shared housing, where several players would usually be found congregating around the map, analyzing, plotting, getting pissed at each other, and discussing, with other curious types watching the skulduggery.  The attention you get when updating everyone’s markers based on their moves is hilarious.

Victory is the result of conquering 34 “supply centers”, or strategic territories.  Losing all your supply centers results in defeat. Despite the seemingly slow nature of the moves, it can actually be a fairly fast game — most of our games were over in about 4-5 weeks, with 3 move deadlines per week.  You can, of course, also play it as a tabletop board game, but then it becomes a bit difficult to have teams running each country — which is half the fun.

Several web-based free versions of this also exist, which you are doubtlessly able to find on your own.  This site has a large collection of maps, suitable for printing, not to mention rule variants.

…and those are actually real WWI diplomats waiting for me to post the latest diplomacy game updates.

Members of this species are not only not nearly as cosmopolitan as many of them may think, but aside from a slightly pretentious take on 6 months spent wasting daddy’s money in omg Alysa, I was like so at the Sorbonne (she wasn’t), it was the Institut Supérieur de l’Education Internationale (expecting its formal academic accreditation any day now), their Parisian experience consisted primarily of infesting otherwise perfectly good brasseries and chattering inanely about the awesome party at Jason’s-in-the-sixième or pontificating loudly about the intellectual depth of their Philosophy of Haute Couture lecture at the aforementioned Institut while traveling in packs.

These marauding beasts are particularly impressive, given that most reasonably well-traveled people who enjoy a bit of peace and quiet seem to share a natural tendency to cringe at the sound of loud compatriots abroad — they manage to elicit this reaction from even the most hard-boiled local exposed to their chatter.

Frequently lumpy, always loud.  Often seen wearing a University of Michigan sweatshirt, a beret, tote bag, (possibly fake) glasses, and bad skin.

The standard uniform of the aspiring bank teller, accountant, pork scratchings inspector, or other clerical-level white collar worker (their management-level betters, having attended a serious Grande École — with which they will still be identifying themselves at the age of fifty — are fuming audibly in traffic up on the surface, gesticulating obscenely at the taxi driver who just cut them off) is a pair of pointy, thin-soled business shoes, tight-fitting slacks, tight-fitting shirt, narrow tie, English-school-boy duffel coat, and stubble.  As they stare vacantly, fiddling with their iPhone (the white headphones give it away) while listening either to some sort of Molière audiobooks, obscurely mediocre government-subsidized French pop, or inspirational audiobooks meant to give them the confidence to ask their HEC-educated boss for a raise/promotion/better-looking secretary (in vain, as it turns out, the job will be given to d’Aligot’s son), they wish they could be up above, sitting in a Clio alongside the cool kids from the HEC, raging at taxi drivers.

The legions of drunks infesting the Paris underground occasionally manage to stumble into a Métro car — we believe they are just looking for a bathroom.  At the very least, that’s how it smells.  Generally, the omnipresent alcoholics are a potpourri of nationalities, in all stages of disrepair, from peacefully sprawled across at least three uncomfortable-looking orange plastic seats, snoring to wake the dead, to slobbering over a can of 1664 (note to travelers:  drink wine.  France is not beer country.  That is next door.)  When staying warm on platforms in packs at night, cheerfully and drunkenly disregarding France’s absurd level of social spending, the underground bums enjoy enveloping unwary passerbys in greenish clouds of cheap cigarettes, bad wino breath, and haphazard shouting.

Sometimes, the drunks resort to active scavenging, thus overlapping with the army of beggars entertaining commuters each day.

The locals mostly disregard the derelicts, preferring to think of them as foreigners.  This makes sense, as it is a commonly known fact that anyone from outside the Périphérique is a barbarian anyway.

The children of French privilege (and those who seek to look like them) are distinguishable from their often similarly-aged compatriots by a comparatively expensive and thought-through wardrobe, wavy long hair, proclivity to cluster outside of schools self-importantly smoking, and serious demeanor while discussing Marxist political trends or who is sleeping with Jeanne and what they’re doing to her in bed — most likely while talking with Jeanne.

Art folios under arms, horn-rimmed glasses firmly perched on noses, red Chuck Taylors contrasting well with too-tight jeans and carefully thrown scarves, these teenagers are sometimes spotted underground in packs, trying to impress each other and projecting an air of having determined their professional futures as union agitators, something practiced on a regular basis by organizing student strikes — to the general approval of maman and papa.  They will end up as financial controllers at mid-sized transport firms in Evry.

Athletic shoes, backpacks, blousy jackets, slightly-too-short jeans, and a happy-go-lucky demeanor mark these intruders as much louder than they actually are as they marvel at the snooty, grumpy hordes blocking up the doorways.  At street level, the more confident males would unabashedly approach their friend the garçon and begin cracking obscure jokes in English (Americans only — representatives of other countries would be too busy bashfully-yet-unsuccessfully trying to fit in, it’s suspected that the waiters, their reputation to the contrary, actually respect the former more for their perceived lack of decorum and near-Parisian utter failure to give a fig).

In the tunnels, however, their contributions to the ambient noise are limited to the latest news about Sally-from-Wichita, and arguments over the microscopic line maps partially obscured by the annoyed accountant trying to be unimpressed while listening to his iPod.  Welcome, world travelers.

Not above putting fellow passengers at ease by lighting a cigarette or listening to loud American gangster rap music (notwithstanding the fact that, in all likelihood, he is a white kid named François-Marie who would probably have his little red wagon fixed within thirty seconds flat upon venturing into an American inner city), the oaf happily lounges on folding seats during most crowded commute hours, legs akimbo.  His disdain for the more passive members of the herd marks this young buck as a true catch for the aspiring lady; expressing himself with his oft-present broodmates with clipped, guttural grunts, he marks his territory both visually and aurally.

Despite buzz cut, artificial gold chains, and air of intimidation, the oaf is often surprisingly passive and respectful when challenged, quickly losing his testosterone-fueled veneer in the face of determined opposition.  Caution is advised, as a small proportion are actual psychopaths who may fly into aggression at the slightest provocation.  The drinking age in France is 16, which does not automatically translate into a tolerance for cheap beer.

Artists roving about underground trains are usually (but not always) off-key, cheerfully massacring “Guantanamera” on a wheezing accordion, or abusing a battered guitar to prove just why they were never discovered as the next Bob Dylan.  In contrast to station musicians who, according to RATP stickers advising patrons against encouraging the traveling bards by giving them money, are vetted through a careful casting process (proving, at the very least, that the RATP cares about entertaining its passengers, whether through the musicians or the stickers), their mobile counterparts are often mediocre, always loud.

Exotic variants have been spotted, including one example performing a twitchingly random hand puppet show behind a hastily erected curtain, to a particularly smelly drunk who would not stop warbling French patriotic chansons, even when offered money to go away and be quiet, proving that a true artist is willing to suffer penury for his music.   After all, the values of liberté, égalité, and fraternité allow all to practice their art in the face of an uncaring society.

Performers may react with hostility when confronted with patrons who do not contribute after effusively digging through their pockets for change.  Caution: when bringing musical instruments onto a train car currently being entertained by a bard, passengers may give you beseeching looks to drown out the current act.

Inevitably, the beggar is a decent human being, befallen by misfortune beyond his control, completely abstinent from drugs or drink, looking for some spare change or maybe a restaurant ticket to help bring his life back on the right track.   Nimbly hopping the turnstyle or entering through an open “out” door, past the disinterested station agent, the beggar wanders from car to car, launching into a well-practiced soliloquy in each.  The alert passenger can hear him approaching from three cars away, but as soon as the doors close behind him, there is no mistake.

The sad need for this underground mendicancy has been foisted on most of these poor souls by the parsimonious social system, strangled by France’s miniscule tax burden, bringing guilt and responsibility on most better-off citizens.

Mostly middle-aged or younger (with a few regrettable retirees obviously down on their luck), beggars come in various olfactory states, and range from well-kempt to disheveled gutter punk.  The latter can sometimes be seen comically downing a beer can in one gulp after exiting their grazing area, at least one species having been observed bouncing the crushed can off the window of a departing train car.