Risen from the dead

26 july, Paris CaveSurfing

I am now in a park in Paris, i have no idea what park naturally, i have no idea where i am.
Today is the day of the CS work meeting, meaning all the people that are involved in the CS organization get together and talk about what they have been doing the past time to improve CS. I had no idea they where so serious and you never give it much thought that people are really working hard to make this thing work. It is working and growing in a trippy speed.
There have been collectives in different countries working on different aspects of CS like website, verification of new members, how to make it even safer and lots of important stuff that i took for granted before.
Tonight there is a benefit party to raise money and this party also offers the opportunity to get verified. (if you want to be a verified member of CouchSurfing, you need to identify yourself to one of the people in charge of Verification of CS by showing an ID-card/passport or drivers license, it costs money and in this way members will know that you let CS check your address and name and stuff)
Anyway the party was in a Gothic club in Paris, in a cave underground. Niiiiice location! i met lots of people that i had met the days before and Duke even met a Mexican girl from Puebla where he was born. The party lasted till some time in the night but because we are already not too great at getting out of bed in the morning, Duke, Antoine and I go back to Antoines place with the last train and Doulglas and Ben stay behind to check out some of the local fauna.
At home another snoring contest begins, and guess who is the great winner...

27 July, Paris, A bit of Russian hospitality
Antoine leaves at half past 7 in the morning for a paella party in Switserland?? this weekend. We can stay in his house with Ben but because Antoine lives quite far out of the center of Paris it is more expensive to buy train tickets to Paris every day than it is to park the car without paying for it and receiving an 11 euro parking fine. Around noon Dounglas and Ben show up, they have been all over the place and after waking us up with an improvised serenade on the guitar they go to sleep and so do we. Lazy bastards we are, waking up around 3. It takes us forever to get out of the house, trying not to forget half of our stuff (eventually we do forget dukes cd case) and the Father Duke, Son Douglas and Holyghost Nanouk are back on the road. We've arranged a couch at Macha's place, she is a Russian host who lives in Paris.
First we make a completely useless move by driving to the center of Paris to park the car for free at Steve's place...when we find out that at Macha's place it is also free and we won't have to drag all of our stuff around in public transportation.
By this wonderful sightseeing tour trough hectic Paris, i improve my driving skills, and we lose a lot of time. Duke is going to the birthday party of Caroline tonight and we will have to pull a 'back to the future' trick to get him there in time. So i decide to kick him out of the car halfway and Douglas and i drive to Macha's place by ourselves with our Saviour called Tom, TomTom...

We arrive at Macha's place fashionably late and without Duke (Duke and Macha know each other) but she is very sweet and helps us with our bags. She even cooks us pasta (Douglas and i are starved, and probably look like couchsurfing-zombies by now) After the dishes we go to a karaoke pub in the red light district of Paris. After a couple of ear numbing hours, the birthday group crashes the pub and Duke comes to the rescue singing "I wish" by Stevie Wonder. Of course he is surrounded by screaming Couchgirls :) We take a taxi cause the last train is long gone...