April 26 2015, 17:46

My second attempt to visit the museum of contemporary art, the Pompidou Center. For 14 euros, you get one floor of the museum (the second one is under renovation) and one floor of a temporary exhibition. The museum itself is practically impossible to enjoy, and the temporary exhibition features Jeff Koons (also known as the husband of Cicciolina). Koons has a series of huge steel sculptures imitating elongated balloon toys that are still worth seeing. Part of the main exhibition is dedicated to Hervé Télémaque – it’s simply absurdity squared. In the main exhibition, there’s a room where no more than 5 people can chalk anything they want on the walls (there’s a queue for this). There’s also a room with a piano where the walls are covered with large felt rollers. I tried very hard to understand all this… tomorrow I’ll go to the Louvre to rectify my impressions.

April 25 2015, 07:28

In Paris, as in the wild 90s, street swindlers operate in broad daylight at every turn, fearing neither the police nor the crowd. On Montmartre, “thimble-riggers” have been encountered more than once, and on the steps of Sacré-Cœur, black men with colored strings for the wrist were “working” – this is outright robbery, they don’t even bother to come up with a proper service. Apparently, all this has been going on for years in the exact same place.