289. Paris | my encounter with a Russian Mr. Bean

I wish I could rewind time to this night, sitting in front of the Eiffel Tower listening to Hotel Costes..
My Eurotrip was like 5 months ago. Will I ever finish posting these vacation photos? It's like deja vu of my attempt to post all my Asia photos of 2009 hahah. I figured was due for another Paris post.

After years and years of listening to Hotel Costes compilations on repeat, I finally got the chance to visit the real Hotel Costes! This place was near the top of my list of "to-do"s (both on my Paris and life lists) and luckily, I found a friend willing to come with me. He works at the Chanel store, so after he got off work that day I went to meet him at Rue Cambon and we walked over. It's located right near Place Vendome and the Tuileries which is one of my favourite areas (ah totally reminiscing about Paris right now....!!!!)




These are actually the only photos I took there (I hate being all tourist-y when I'm with someone). We just had drinks on their patio. The only place I've seen where servers wore Hermes belts and CDCs. After Costes, we parted ways and I headed over to the Mothership (aka Champs Elysees LV). I visited this store everyday when I was in Paris, somehow managing to bypass the line-up each time:




Picked up my hot-stamped luggage tag! Great service here - was able to drop it off and pick it back up within the day. In most other cities I'd have to wait a week.

Jardin des Tuileries - spent the most time here. I love how you can see all the way down Champs Elysees..




I met more random acquaintances everyday in Paris than I could count..most of them were actually quite memorable including this one. As usual, I was sitting by the Eiffel Tower minding my own business...when this guy comes up to sit next to me. We sat there side by side, without saying a word to each other for about half an hour.
He was slightly intoxicated, drinking a bottle of Diabräu 1516. Suddenly he pulls another out from his bag and silently offers me one..sticking it right in front of my face. He did not speak A WORD OF ENGLISH. I think he spoke some French but he was Russian. As I didn't know any Russian and my French is horrible, we had the hardest time communicating.
Somehow we ended up "talking" for over an hour. I've never experienced this before, where neither of us knew each other's language and all we were able to do were use hand gestures and keep speaking in our own language with the hope that the other person would somehow understand. It was such a funny conversation though..I just remember we laughed a lot..or maybe that was thanks to the beer. He rambled on in Russian while I told him all about myself & my trip in English. From our hour long conversation, all I learned was his name (which I totally forgot now) and that he's from Russia. How did I manage to stay there for so long? He was so amusing. If you want to visualize...he looked like a Russian Mr. Bean.
After each bottle of beer, I increasingly grew more and more frustrated with our attempts to communicate. I stood up and just said "I need to go!" and walked away as he kept yelling at me to come back.

More stories of random encounters to come soon....

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