Author: Rauf Aliev

In Moscow, 23 degrees and sunny? Ehh, tomorrow I’m going for rubber boots and will learn to enjoy what there is.

And where and when will Progress fall? Day after day, I can’t find an answer to this question. It’s clear that much will burn up in the atmosphere, but still, there are about 9 tons. If this thing crashes at a speed of hundreds of km/h into a major city, it will be bad. I wonder how possible it is to accurately calculate the point of impact in advance?

Today’s lunch in Chartres included a salad with tomatoes, cucumbers, cheese, and… watermelon (pastèque). Quite unusual.

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.

In Paris, almost every train station has a spot where one can play to their heart’s content (and/or the pleasure of others – depending on what and how you play there:). Public instruments are found in airports and train stations, shopping centers and hospitals, parks and bars.

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.

In Paris, one encounters scaffolding and huts, comparable in scale to the building being repaired or constructed, looking decent and “expensive”. In the second picture on the left, there’s a freight elevator and stairs.

Pedicab.

// Paris, yesterday.

A man was about to drown himself. He stands on the bridge with a stone around his neck. A woman runs up to him and shouts:

— Sir, stop! Wait!

— Well, what do you want?

The woman, offering a bag:

— Here, take these kittens…

The gates rest after work.