Paris Boheme: A walk in the 14th and later a Marilyn moment!

According to Urban Dictionary

Boheme - Carefree lifestyle unbounded by convention.

Bohemian - Movement of artist and poets in late 19th century France, especially in Paris. Bohemians believed in living outside of the bourgeois (conventional, middle class) mainstream culture. Bohemians were against the Salon (the institution that controlled the literary and art market in France until the turn of the 20th century)and believed that art and literature should be radical. They often gathered in "cafes" and drank absinthe. Many Bohemians were politically radical, being either anarchists or members of the Commune de Paris during the Franco-Prussian war. The Bohemian movement died out at the turn of the century but had a large influence on later movements such as surrealism, the beat generation, and punk rock.
Toulouse - Lautrec depicted the romanticized life of many Bohemians, although the reality of the life-style was often very difficult and tragic.

Sunday, February 1, 2009

A walk in the 14th and later a Marilyn moment!

Yesterday I went to another meetup group the new in town meetup. It was a walk around a certain part of the fourteenth arrondissement. This is actually the arrondissement where I am living luckily though it was a different area to those I usually frequent and was very insightful to see another side of Paris. Edward the organiser was showing us an area that is like a little village instead of a city in behind ugly modern buildings were little culsdesac of houses and little twisting laneways. We ended the walk in a cafe by parc Montsouris and it was a very pleasant way to spend a saturday afternnoon unfortunately it all came to an abrupt end with a sudden mass exodus, but four of us headed to china town(if you can call it that) for dinner. I have to say I'm not sure if we actually found china town or not because what we came across was a street with asian restaurants on it, I was expecting a bigger area like in Sydney or other major cities. On the way to china town I experienced a Marilyn moment when I walked across an airvent and my skirt blew up, thank goodness for leggings. All in all it was a good saturday afternoon in Paris.