I bought a piano phone

On the weekend I went down to Lyon for their annual Vintage Market. The market was pretty rad. But what really upset me was the city in general. Lyon was my 3rd or maybe 4th preference for exchange. I knew nothing about French cities so I just assumed everywhere in France would be roughly the same apart from Paris which would be big and scary. But Lyon is amazing. Everything about it is cooler than Orléans. It’s pretty, it’s easy to get around, they have gallo-roman ruins for goodness sake. And a free zoo in the middle of a park, and a funicular, and a miniature museum, and probably 800 more shops than Orléans. Plus their river is a greenish blue colour instead of a greenish brown like ours. People in Lyon are actually interesting. I saw proper hippies there and a goth. And brass bands (plural) performing randomly in the street. In Orléans I’ve seen maybe two people in baggy pants and one kid carrying a French horn in a case. It’s as if people sat in their home towns and said to themselves “You know, I’m pretty boring, I think I’ll move to Orléans, I hear our kind are congregating there and planning something mild”. Meanwhile, other people all over France were saying “Wow, I am young and unfathomably attractive, why don’t I move to Lyon?” And another thing, in Lyon I did not once fear for my life. Here I can’t walk across the university campus without having rocks thrown at me by teens, can’t get to a friend’s place without guys on scooters trying to run me over and shouting things, can’t go to the supermarket without having obscenities yelled at me by men of all ages or being followed by a creepy boy who works in McDonalds. In Lyon I could wear a short skirt with no tights without fearing rape. When people on public transport spoke to me it was to ask where the bus went, not to ask if we could do a “cultural exchange” over drinks because they couldn’t help overhearing I spoke English.

Anyway that was fun. Now I’m back in Orléans surrounded by accommodation bills and uni work. W00t.