On my second day in Paris, I woke up to find the city covered in a thin layer of snow. I immediately got changed, grabbed my camera and hopped on the metro. I wanted to spend my day among the dead, starting with a visit to Cimetière du Père-Lachaise. The cemetery was closed though: apparently the French are not fond of people visiting graves in the snow. So I went to the next best place: les catacombes de Paris.

The metro quickly brought me to Avenue du Colonel Henri Rol-Tanguy, where I bought my ticket to the catacombs and started my underground adventure. A winding spiral staircase of over 100 steps took me over 20 meters down from ground level. I was all by myself already, which was good: it gave me the time to leave my sticker among the many others on the lamps that lit the way down. Soon I entered an old quarry. A few tourists caught up with me, so I lingered around for a while so I could explore the route all by myself. Usually the place is packed and lots of people choose for guided tours, but towards the end of January, I had the catacombs almost all to myself. Exactly what I wanted.


The first couple of hundred meters took me through the 15th-century quarries that provided the city with the stones it needed to build just about anything. I mostly paid attention to the stickers on the electric wires here (and left one of my last ones there too) while daydreaming about books I'd read that were partially set in the catacombs. In Michael Scott's books series about Nicholas Flamel, the catacombs were a prison for the Roman god of war Mars. In World War Z, the place was infested with zombies. None of that exciting stuff was happening during my visit of course, but thinking about those books added to the creepy ambiance.

I walked alone for a good 20 minutes, occasionally letting other tourists pass and get out of earshot again. Then I entered a big room that took me from the quarries into the domain of the dead. The catacombs weren't always a place to stack human remains in an "artistic" way: the started out as the simple quarries I'd just walked through and some of them always remained just like that. Others were turned into underground graveyards. Officially I should use the word "ossuaries", but that's basically a fancy word for a mass grave. The people buried here were for a big part buried in normal cemeteries right after their death, but overpopulation of both the city and its cemeteries plus health risks made it necessary for a lot of skeletons to be moved into the catacombs. You can still visit these poor souls there to this day: they're waiting for you behind the gate that says Arrête! C'est ici l'empire de la Mort.


Stop! This is the empire of the dead. I did not stop. I walked in while wiping my camera lens clean; the humidity in the catacombs made it fog up in no time. Some of the skulls around me were green with algae. It was a fascinating place that made me wish I could see more of the catacombs than what's open to the public. I'd already passed a tunnel that'd lead me to the lower catacombs, but it was completely locked off. For my own good of course, but I couldn't help but think about the things I could have discovered down there.

I roamed through the hallways, took pictures left and right until suddenly, from the deepest part of my soul, a voice screamed: "WHAT SICK BASTARD STACKS PEOPLE'S BONES LIKE THIS?!"
It was shocking, disgusting, but also morbidly interesting. Skulls formed hearts, crosses, weird house-like shapes. I can understand having to move a surplus of anything to a new place, but why were these people taken apart and used as pieces for a mosaic? They're dead, but still they're people... It made me feel so weird when I looked at the skulls, knowing they never chose to be part of this creepy display.

As I followed the route, I gradually felt more and more uncomfortable. I almost jumped out of my skin when I suddenly heard footsteps coming down the empty hallway on the other side of a fence. It turned out to be another tourist who was ahead of me on the route through the empire of the dead, but my mind immediately concluded that I was going to be killed by a World War Z zombie.

A bit further down the hallway, the poetry started. It was all in either French or Latin and all about death. The little bits of it that I could understand were quite depressing and since I didn't want to launch myself into my next existential crisis, I quickly walked past most of the poems. To be honest, I'd had quite enough of the place by then.

After almost two hours, I left the domain of the dead behind me. I hadn't come across Mars or any zombies, but I'd seen what I'd wanted to see for years: the skeletons residing in the catacombs of Paris. Call me morbid, but I loved it. Almost every second of it, until the walls started lecturing me about death and decay. The creepy vibes, the darkness... it reminded me of the Edinburgh Vaults. For someone like me, who got sick and tired of Paris' romantic clichés very quickly, the catacombs were a perfect place to go. Who know, maybe one day I'll go back and try to see more. I've heard there's a hidden movie theater somewhere down there. Care to join me on my search?

A quick look at my Instagram feed could lead people to believe that I spend most of my time traveling. In reality, I'm stuck in university buildings for lectures and seminars five days a week. "Stuck" is a bit of a strong word though. It implies that I'm not enjoying my time as a university student. And if there's one thing I did in the second block of my first year, it was enjoying my classes.

Block 2 started in late October. I took three classes (Literature, Linguistics and German), was completely stressed out about the amount of work I'd have to do (seems to become a tradition at the start of each block) and went on to score some top grades on most assignments (my first score of 100% became a fact in the second week of block 2). To my own surprise, I didn't fall into a state of half-depression when the sun started to set earlier and earlier. Everything was pretty great throughout November and December. Sure, I had a lot of stress on deadline days, but I'm actually at my best when I'm running on stress hormones. Before I knew it, Christmas break started. I'd made a schedule for those two weeks so I'd be able to finish all my essays at least a week before their deadlines, which were all coinciding with final exams.
I stuck to my schedule for three days. Then I spent Christmas with my family, Lydia from Mademoiselle Women came over to Rotterdam, my boyfriend celebrated his birthday, I ran the traditional "Oliebollenloop" on December 31st... All of a sudden it was 2019. I'd finished one essay. On Sunday before university would start again, I set up my workspace to start writing about Doctor Faustus. I sneezed once. Twice. Three, four, five times in one minute. Two hours later, I was sick.

I spent a full week in bed and on the couch. I had the flu, like many others around me. Even though I was feeling awful, I went to university once. I had to give a presentation on the German graphic novel Endzeit, which counted heavily towards my final grade. To this day I don't understand how I managed to score 81%, as I forgot half of my presentation. The two essays I still had to write were thrown together in what felt like a fever dream at the last moment. The entire process was horrible and stressful. By the time I'd more or less recovered from the flu, it was time to hit the books: I had less than a week left to study for my finals.

Looking back on it now, I have no idea how I pulled it off. I winged my German exam, which I passed mostly because I'd taken similar classes in college. I scored 100% on my accent analysis test for Linguistics, the only exam I'd properly studied for. Literature turned into a living hell though. Literature courses are a struggle for me anyway, but it got even worse after missing two seminars. I panicked, blanked, and ended up writing as much as possible even I wasn't sure if the topic I was writing about had anything to do with the correct answer.

It's now been two weeks since that dreadful finals week. I went to Paris to get away from all the stress for a while. Not being able to study and work at full capacity had dealt a huge blow to my self-esteem. I felt like I was constantly behind on schedule, constantly missing out on important information. I hadn't felt so low in two years. A short trip abroad was just what I needed. Receiving e-mails to confirm that I'd passed my German and Linguistics classes made me feel much better when I came back home.

Since then, I've started block 3 of my first year. The second week of that block starts today. Time really does fly. As before, I'm taking my personal holy trinity of classes this block: Literature, Linguistics and German. As before, I'm overwhelmed by the amount of work that lies ahead of me. But I'm sure it'll all turn out fine. It always does. Even the Literature exam I took with the bare minimum of preparation wasn't the disaster I expected it to be: just after I finished writing the draft for this post, I received confirmation that I'd passed with a 71% score. Now I can fully focus on this block's classes. Especially Linguistics is very interesting now, with phonology joining the game. I'm the kind of geek who wants to make recordings of key words so I can measure the frequency of vowels in my speach and turn them into a vowel diagram. It's challenging and totally awesome.

Just a year ago, I doubted if going back to school was the right way to go. Five months ago I doubted if I'd be able to pass any of my classes. Now I know I made the right decision. Linguistics is the love of my life and I'm grateful that I get to study so many other subjects as well. It's cheesy, but it's true: I can't wait to see what this block will bring me.

"Have you seen the Eiffel Tower at night yet?" asked the only other English speaking person who'd joined the Civitatis walking tour in Paris.
"No, I just arrived this morning," I answered.
"It's so beautiful," she said. "You should go take a look tonight."
"I want to." My mind immediately rushed back to the time a chicken foot was thrown at me when I walked down a street in Rome at night. The time my dad was threatened after dusk in London. The time... "But I'd rather not go out after dark by myself."
"Yeah, I get that. Maybe we can go together directly after the tour."
It sounded like a good plan. But first, we had a walking tour to do.

A little over two hours later, we were both in a horrible mood. The tour operator had canceled the English tour and the Spanish tour, which we joined out of desperation, was 80% rapid-fire history facts and only 20% walking to beautiful buildings. On top of that, it was raining. A freezing cold drizzle fell down on us. We were cold, angry, and didn't even wait for the tour to finish at some random point in the Jardin des Tuileries. The sun was setting, so we left for the Eiffel Tower.

I never learned my temporary travel buddy's name. She was from Bulgaria, but lived in Poland. She took pictures with an old-fashioned analog camera. We got along just fine. Before we'd left the Jardin, we were already smiling again. As darkness fell, everything around us became more beautiful. Our plan was to simply walk to the Eiffel Tower. Since the thing literally towers over everything, it wasn't difficult to find our way.


We crossed the Pont de la Concorde and followed the main road along the Seine a while. We were giddy with excitement. It was completely dark already and the lights on the Eiffel Tower were shining brightly. After a while, we took one of the roads that led us away from the riverfront. It looked like it'd be a faster route. This specific part of Paris seemed a bit less touristic. Every now and then we saw the Eiffel Tower peeking through the concrete jungle. Finding our way was as easy as we'd thought it would be and we stuck to well-lit streets with lots of stores and restaurants. We talked endlessly about all the things we wanted to see and do in Paris. People walked by without paying any attention to us. Except for one man. He came from the opposite direction. The Bulgarian girl bumped into me as he pushed his way past her, even though there was enough room for him to pass.

Then life turned into one of those cliche movie scenes, when everything happens all at once. Some metal object clattered onto the sidewalk. I assumed it was something the rain had washed off a roof. The man started screaming English swear words. I had no idea what caused him to freak out like that. Until I looked down. There was a knife on the ground. The man was still screaming.
"Keep walking!" I told the Bulgarian girl, who seemed a bit in shock. "We've got to keep walking!"
I walked away and she quickly followed me.
"He hit me in the knee," she said a few meters down the street.
"What?"
"He hit me in the knee so I'd fall over. With a part that wasn't sharp, I think." She wasn't bleeding. Neither was she badly hurt. Just in a bit of a shock. Just like me. I could not process what had happened. So I walked on.

By the time we'd reached the end of the street, I just wanted to go home. I did not feel safe anymore, but I was also very far away from metro stations. But as we turned the corner, I saw the Eiffel Tower again, this time with dozens of tiny white lights blinking all over it. The light show looked magical and reminded me of why I'd come there that night. It was beautiful. And so we walked on.

About 15 minutes later, we finally arrived at the security checkpoint that we had to pass to get to the tower. It was cold and rainy, I was still half in shock, but still it was awesome. I wanted to go touch the Eiffel Tower, as I've always thought I would be so overwhelmed by it that I wouldn't believe it's real until I touched it. Sadly, the base of the tower is locked away behind fences, to protect them from graffiti and other more serious threats. So instead of touching the thing, I just took a million pictures. We waited for the light show that'd convinced us to keep going to start again. It was worth all the weirdness. We ended the day with a crêpe Nutella under the Eiffel Tower. We saw a man propose. It was the picture perfect Eiffel Tower visit.


Two days later, I found myself scrolling through pictures on my phone. I looked at those I'd taken of the Eiffel Tower, thought about how long it'd taken us to get there... and how the Bulgarian girl had almost gotten stabbed. "What the hell was that?!" I said out loud to my empty dorm room. I don't think I'll ever get an answer to that question. One thing I do know: it's the weirdest Eiffel Tower related story I've heard in my life, and I hope none of you will go through something similar if you decided to go to Paris.

I don't know where my fascination with Paris came from. Maybe it started back when some high school friends visited the French capital and shared all their stories with me. Maybe it started when I read a book that took place in the catacombs. Maybe it started long before all that. I honestly don't know. I do know that every time I thought about the place, my mind would blast that Chainsmokers song and I'd wonder what Paris would be like. It might come as a surprise, but I'd never been to Paris, despite all my trips around the world. I decided to change that in 2019. A few days after my exam on Medieval English literature, I hopped on the Thalys to explore the city I'd heard and read so much about.

It took me only 3.5 hours to get from my doorstep to that of the hostel I'd be staying at. Not bad at all, considering most people think taking the train to Paris is the slowest option. I like trains and our planet though, so I happily took the train.
After dumping my luggage at the hostel, I immediately set out to explore Montmartre. I only had four days to spend in Paris before I had to head back home for university, so I needed to pick up the pace. Luckily my hostel was located almost on the staircases to the Sacré-Coeur. Within an hour of arriving in Paris, I could tick the first landmark of my list.
I walked through Montmartre with a Chinese girl who'd checked into the hostel right after me. Not being alone made the human wall of souvenir sellers on the stairs seem a little less intimidating, even though one still tried to grab me by the arm. Together we walked around in the freezing cold, checking out street art, before rushing into the Sacré-Coeur to warm up.


In the afternoon I tried to join a free walking tour that would take me to all the major landmarks. Sadly, the English tour was canceled the minute it'd start, because only three English-speaking tourists had shown up. I joined the Spanish tour instead, along with another girl who didn't speak Spanish at all. We were pissed about the way the tour operator had handled things, so after walking past the Notre Dame, the Pont Neuf and the Louvre, the two of us left the group and walked to the Eiffel Tower ourselves after dark.


Although my time at the Eiffel Tower that night was awesome, the canceled walking tour seemed to mark the start of a bad luck streak. When I woke up the next morning, Paris was covered in a thin layer of snow. I immediately jumped on a metro to the legendary Cimetière du Père-Lachaise, only to find out that all Parisian cemeteries are closed if there's half an inch of snow on the ground. Quite annoyed, I took the metro again to visit the catacombs. For a second I feared they'd be closed too, but within ten minutes of getting off the metro, I entered the domain of the dead. I'd been dreaming about this for years and thought that was the end of my bad luck. It wasn't. The Archeological Crypt, the next place I wanted to visit, was also closed. No one could tell me why and according to their website, the place was open. In reality, it was very much closed and even guarded by heavily-armed police officers. By this time I was so frustrated that I gave up and went back to the hostel.


Paris wasn't living up to all it had been made out to be. I was in a bad mood and retreating to my dorm did not make things better. My bunk bed was shaky as could be, I had no place to put my glasses at night and the power outlets were positioned so randomly throughout the room that I spend hours in front of the bathroom door to get my phone charged. On top of that, I had to share the dorm with two older Spanish ladies who didn't speak English and who passive-aggressively let me know I was an inconvenience to them. They also weren't big fans of turning the lights off at night, or flushing the toilet after using it. As I slept in the top bunk, one of the Spanish ladies 'slept' below me; Every two hours or so she'd have such violent spasms that it seemed like she had continuous exorcisms performed on her. She'd thrash her limbs about so aggressively that the entire bunk bed balanced on the verge of collapse all night long. I was not a happy camper.

My bad luck streak continued on the morning of the third day in Paris, when the metro line I needed to take to get to the Louvre broke down. I'd planned to visit the museum first thing in the morning, but went to the Arc de Triomphe instead. From there I walked the 3.2 kilometers to the Louvre in subzero temperatures. Once there, I elbowed my way to the Mona Lisa only to realize I honestly didn't care all that much for that painting. I went to the Egyptian wing instead.


As I was wandering through rooms full of Egyptian artifacts, my luck finally changed. The Louvre offered one nice surprise after the other and I loved every second of my time away from the crowds in the Italian wing. I even found €5,- in the gift shop.
With Lady Luck now on my side, I decided to venture out to the botanical gardens, which bear the very creative name of Jardin des Plantes (no idea what else you'd put in a botanical garden, but okay). The gardens were open, access was free and best of all: there was almost no one there. I spent ages in the tropical greenhouse, taking dozens and dozens of pictures. Afterward, I decided to try getting into Père-Lachaise again. This time I was successful. The gates were open and I roamed around, wondering about the stories this place could tell were it able to talk. I would have stayed there till dusk, but left when I couldn't feel my feet anymore.


All was well again by the start of my fourth and final day (except for the Spanish ladies not flushing the toilet, which was disgusting). I wasn't in the mood to do a lot of walking again, so I went to Shakespeare and Company, a bookstore next to the Notre Dame. I fell in love with that store, from the building's exposed wooden beams to the endless rows of books to the bookstore cat.

After a quick lunch at the bookstore's café, I shot one last glance at the Notre Dame and went to the train station to catch my train back home. I'd been staying in Paris. It'd been challenging, frustrating and at times not as much fun as I'd hoped, but I'd done it. Soon I saw the north of France flash by the train window. I couldn't help but smile. Maybe my trip hadn't been all I'd hoped for, but I made memories and experienced things I wouldn't want to have missed. Paris was another lesson learned.