Pictures here though there aren't many....
https://photos.app.goo.gl/i2HXmECtkzypB177A
I think my first mistake was that I forgot both my Giants hat and my Raiders jersey when I was packing my stuff. I never travel anywhere without at least one of them.
So I get to London and manage to ascertain exactly how the preparations are going. No reception booked. No tux. No wedding rings. This is 5 days before the wedding. Ah... of course. At least Stefano's predictable. Anyway, after dinner we went to this bar called Corum to arrange for the reception, which was negotiated by yours truly. The night ended back home with Stefano, taking advantage of my weakened state, beating me with my laptop while I was trying to pass out. Typical first day.
At this point, I'd like to take some time to explain the shower facilities in Stefano's house. Actually, it's not even a shower. It's a garden hose attached to the hot and cold water faucets. I'm attaching a picture so you can get an idea of what I'm talking about. I had better facilities in Thailand. "The Tube" quickly achieved legendary status among the houseguests. So that afternoon I went out with Stefano and Caterina to pick out their wedding rings. Did you know that the best man is supposed to pay for the rings? I wasn't aware of this but apparently it's an Italian tradition. Luckily, Stefano and Caterina decided to take it easy on me and we went around the Lewisham area looking for wedding rings at pawn shops.
They were really specific about wanting a matched set of three interlocking rings. I'm thinking that there's no way in hell we're going to find something that esoteric wandering through pawn shops in the London version of the Tenderloin. Well, lo and behold, at the 4th place we entered we found a matching wedding set that actually fit both of them. Weird.
So the next day Stefano, his buddy Michele and I go to pick out a tux on Oxford street. Stefano tried on this gray three-piece that with his crazed haircut made him look like a mutated hobbit during Bilbo's party scene in the first Lord of the Rings. So the guy asks him when he needs it and Stefano says in three days. The guy basically laughed at us and said the only thing he could give us by that time was a charcoal gray suit, which is what we ended up getting. At this point, Ste turns to me and says "Could you spot me for the tux? I'll pay you back after the wedding." Okay, there's no way in hell that I'm going to take his wedding money, so let's chalk another one up to travel expenses. Too bad I couldn't expense it to Keynote, like that time George and I took Stefano out to a 200-quid sushi dinner. Heh heh.
So on sunday after dinner we all headed out to a dance club, which was pretty cool. Once again, much drinking occurred. We're hanging out at the bar and I decided to take my camera out of my man purse and snap a couple of shots. As I was putting it back, I noticed this couple looking at me. I put the bag closer to my leg. I turned away to talk to Stefano for a couple of seconds, and when I turned back my bag was gone along with the couple. Fucking hell. I went to the front to talk to the bouncers. They said I'd come to the right place, that there'd already been another theft, and that they had a bead on the thieves. I waited out front for about 15 minutes and then saw as some of the bouncers were escorting the couple I'd seen earlier to another room. I grabbed one of them and said I recognized the girl as the one who'd been near me when my shit got pilfered. They told me to hold tight since they'd called the cops. A minute later they said I could pick up my bag with the coat check girl downstairs. I went down to get it and the girl gave me the bag... minus my camera and cell phone. The guy who stole it had that stuff on him and they're holding onto it until the cops come. Anyhow, the cops finally come around and the coat check girl comes up to the bar to get me and bring me down to this other room. I'm there with this other chick who had her wallet stolen and across the room is the couple being interrogated by the cops. She was really fired up and kept looking over at the couple and yelling shit like "You're getting what you deserve"
and "You're not laughing now, are ya?" Turns out the couple is Italian (of course). The English cops are being total hardasses when they're interrogating them and the girl just breaks down and starts crying up a storm. Very dramatic. Anyhow, I'm down there two and a half hours between identifying shit, waiting, and giving a statement. They ask to hold on to the cell phone and camera for evidence in case they need to go to trial, I say ok because I want them to get nailed for this. By the time I get out it's 4 am and everyone's gone. I get home about 5 o'clock and everyone's still awake. When I walk in the house everyone starts high-fiving me and patting me on the back. They said they saw some chick (the coat check girl) come up, point to me, and take me with her so they thought I was off banging her. That would've been legendary, just having some chick point to you and take you home. What am I, Hugh Hefner? That shit doesn't happen in real life. Instead I was hanging out with some fat English cop.
A couple of days later is the big wedding. The best part of the morning of the wedding was that 7 people (Stefano, Caterina, Anna, Michele, Bruno, Letizia, and me) not only had to share one bathroom, but washing up with the tube takes about 3 times as long as a normal shower. You have to get in some kind of prone position in the bathtub, rinse yourself off, soap yourself up, repeat, etc. Plus, the low water pressure makes your hair turn out all goofy after you wash it, kind of like that Seinfeld episode with the low flow showerheads where Kramer's hair is all flat. Awesome. The ladies especially loved the tube. Still, we managed to get to the site early and have a couple of pints at the pub across the street. The ceremony itself was great. The justice of the peace was formal and professional, but not cold. There were about 40-50 people there, Stefano was choking up, there were surprise notes from his friends, it was really nice. Afterward we hit the pub across the street for a couple of hours, then around 5 we headed over to Corum for the reception. The way we had negotiated, Stefano said he wanted to spend a total of 500 quid. So we figured about half on food and half on wine. Then he says how about 200 on food and 300 on wine? Then, a couple of minutes later he says how about 150 on food and 350 on wine? We had lots of bottles of wine and some crackers and hors d'oeuvres, so everyone was really lit. It's always fun to throw back a few glasses of wine with the elder Bresci. Plus I spent some quality time talking to Caterina's stepdad who is a Freudian psychoanalyst. Free therapy is great, especially when you're drunk. Anyhow, at about 1:30 a bunch of cabs came to take us home. Us and about 30 other people (not including the parents and family). That was great... 40 chain-smoking Italians partying it up in your house. I passed out in an upstairs bedroom with the door closed and woke up in the middle of the night coughing from the amount of smoke in my room. It was like I was on the set of Backdraft. That's my brother goddammit!!! You burned him Stephen!!!
The next day everyone who came into town for the wedding left and that evening Alex flew into town to hang out for three days. She'd never been to the UK before so I was going to be her tour guide for the London part of the trip. I didn't mention this earlier but I managed to get my old company Keynote to subsidize my trip by agreeing to do some server installations for them in London and Paris. The next day I manage to perform a server installation in the exciting town of St. Albans, lock myself out of Stefano's cell phone by trying to guess what his PIN code is since he didn't tell me (what the hell is a PUK code?), lose Alex with no way for her to get a hold of me, then finally find Alex. The day after we wake up to no power in the house which means, of course, a cold shower. Actually, it was a cold tube, which was even better. Turns out nobody paid the electric bill. I had to go down and recharge the power card at the local minimarket. We decide to take it easy just took the bus around London (I showed Alex where I got my nose pierced in Camden Town, we walked around the center, she had a rancid iced latte, etc.) and met up with her friend Roy later on in the evening for dinner and drinks. Between the dodgy Indian food and the rancid latte I think London left quite an impression on Alex.
Alex left with Roy on Saturday to tour around England and I sealed myself up in Stefano's house for the next 4 days. I hadn't gone to bed before 3 am since I arrived, which was 10 days ago. I was still waiting for word from Keynote on whether or not I'd be able to go to Paris because they hadn't shipped the servers yet. I was still trying to get a hold of the supervising officer so I could get my camera and cell phone back, which finally happened on Wednesday... a week and a half after the incident.
Stefano and Caterina returned on Wednesday after a well-rested, tanned week in Sardegna. They had 5 days to find a place to live before getting kicked out of the house. Stefano was explaining to me how he was just going to stay in his place until they found another one. He actually used the word "squat" which was cool if only for the fact that he said it with a thick Italian accent. I thought the last time anyone squatted was in Oklahoma in the 1870s. Anyway, I finally got the ok from Keynote that the servers would arrive in Paris on time so I booked my trip to leave on Friday. I called a hostel near the Louvre to try to book a bed for four nights, but let me explain something about my French-speaking abilities. You know when you go down to Fisherman's Wharf and some hapless Japanese tourist asks you for directions? Then you start talking to him and he gets this glazed-over look in his eyes as he's futilely trying to comprehend what you're saying. Then he tries to repeat what you told him and comes up with something like "then you... make left... at pancake... then go... then stop at dishwasher, yes?"
So you spend the next 10 minutes trying to help this guy and wondering if it's just a language problem or if maybe you should start looking for his guardian because he's a foreign retard. Well, that Japanese guy is me, except with French. So at the end of the phone conversation I could only hope I had a reservation and didn't order a pizza or donate an organ or something.
In spite of my language difficulties I managed to enjoy what is in my opinion one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Paris should really be seen by night to truly appreciate it. I don't think there's any other city that's lights up its monuments and historic buildings in a more striking fashion. Plus it always seems like there's something going on. Saturday night I was just wandering around and ended up hanging out at some kind of salsa dancing competition that was happening on the banks of the Seine. Sunday there was a very moving pictorial display outside the Jardin du Luxembourg commemorating the liberation of France at the end of WWII. Oh, and let me suggest that if you ever do go see pictures of wartime Paris that you don't follow it up by going to see Fahrenheit 9/11. I almost threw myself into the Seine.
Sunday night I get back to the hostel just looking to relax because I have to get up early in the morning to do an installation for Keynote. So it's about 11 and I'm just chilling out on my bunk reading my book when a new guy comes into the room and introduces himself. He's a dancer from Spain who's studying at some academy an hour and a half outside Paris and is in town for a week's vacation. He goes off to take a shower. I continue reading on my bunk. When he comes back he towels himself off and flops onto his bunk, buck naked. I'm thinking, okay, well, we're in Europe. So he's just hanging out, and I'm reading my book trying not to look over. Still, I can see out of the corner of my eye that this guy's not going to put any pants on. Eventually I shut off the light and try to get some sleep. About a half hour goes by and I can't sleep. At this point, I start to hear some... sounds. At first I think I must be mistaken, but after about 30 seconds there's no doubt what's going on in the
bunk below mine to my right. Okay, I'm not sure what to do here. I start
kind of shuffling and rustling, but that doesn't seem to stop this guy. Honestly, the thing I wanted to do most was just laugh out loud, but I decided to play it cool and try to wait it out. Well, this guy must be some kind of Spanish champion because he was going on for a while. Finally he decides to give it a rest right before the third bunkmate comes in. So after the third guy goes to bed I figure I'm safe. A few minutes pass by and I think no way this guy's going to start up again with two other guys in the room right? Wrong. So I'm wondering if the other guy's going to say anything or what, but it sounds like he's asleep. Anyhow, eventually he lets up and I get to sleep.
The next morning I'm having breakfast and the third roommate comes up to talk to me. He's French so he's speaking to me in somewhat broken English. He says "you know that new guy in our bunk? He was naked when I came in last night." I say yeah. Then he says "I think he was..." And he makes a gesture which transcends language, race and culture... the universal wanking gesture. And I laughed and said yeah, I'm pretty sure he was. Then he says "That's disgusting... I'm moving rooms!" Now, I could've moved rooms too, but I figured a) I'm leaving tomorrow and b) I'm meeting up with Luiz tonight so I'll probably be out late. So I leave and do my final installation and meet up with Luiz that evening at Les Deux Magots in front of the Eglise St. Germain. It's a famous cafe where Sartre and De Beauvoir hung out, which of course means my espresso cost 5 euros. We wandered around the Latin Quarter and ended up having an excellent dinner at someplace that Luiz had read about in Cool Restaurants Paris. Then we wandered down to the Pantheon, around the Seine, in front of Notre Dame, and in the area of Marais. Luiz spent most of the night trying to convince me to change my flight and get a one-way ticket back to San Francisco so I could hang out with him for a week in Paris.
I got back to the hostel around 2:30. I opened the door to my room and found all the lights on, The Spanish Wanker lying under a sheet wide awake with his glasses on, and the entire room smelling of Aloe Vera. I had no idea what to make of this scene so I quickly jumped up on my bunk, shut off the lights, and tried to sleep. It was just me and him. I decided that if he started up again I was going to tell him to take it to the toilet. It was like some kind of perverted showdown. Every time I heard him rustling or turning over I expected him to go for it. He never went at it, but I didn't get any sleep.
Now I'm back home, trying to recover from the flu that Roca brought me back from Brazil. I think I'm going to stay put for a while.
As always, the dude abides. From home.
Dave
