Travelling to Paris
Or: The troubles of memorizing times
So on Thursday evening, Maren and I prepared for the trip by finally packing everything together, wearing comfortable close and taking our blankets in the hand luggage. Each of us had one bag and a purse, all in all not too bad or to heavy, perfect for travelling by bus. Maren's mom would drive us to Dortmund so we could catch the Bus at 11:00 pm at the central bus station there.
When we finally got to the train station and absolutely nobody was there, we got a little suspicious and looked at our tickets again… Made sense nobody was there, since our bus left the station at 8:30 pm. Oh well.
Since we went to Paris last year by train, we decided that’s our only way to get there now… First we needed our discount cards (BahnCard 50) that we left at Miss Bee’s place. So her mom drove back to their place and then back to the train station within half an hour. Which is amazingly fast.
We had to take a train to Wuppertal, then to Cologne, where we had to wait for three hours to finally take an ICE to Frankfurt, where we had to change again to get to Paris Gare de l’Est.
Remember that we got to Dortmund at around 11:00 pm? Yeah, exactly… We stayed in Cologne from 01:20 am until around 4:20 am, I think…
First we went outside the station, because the Dome of Cologne is right there. It was super funny, last time we went to Paris we did the same, but forgot to snap a picture. So here it is, the Dome at night. :D
While at the station we also got told by a Spanish guy that Maren wa super hot. He asked if we wanted to go outside with him for a while to smoke and whether she had a boyfriend... So I was like "No fumar. And I am her girlfriend!" Then he asked for us to kiss him (all in Spanglish... >.>) and we said no and ran off...
We snapped one more picture of an adorable chocolate ad there!
It was so funny. :3 Ritter Sport is the brand by the way.
It was terrible, really… But afterwards we were even able to sleep a little on train.
Concert preparation and waiting in front of Le Zenith
Or: Merchandise war and waiting
When we arrived in Paris, Wesley was already waiting for us. So we met up with him, sat down for a while and afterwards went to buy some tickets for the Metro, which took us way longer than expected. Anyways, when we finally got our tickets it was already 11:00 am and so we decided to go to the Parc de la Villette and look how far our hotel was from there.
I think two Metro stations is far enough… and we walked… It wasn’t way too far anyways.
When we got there we were luckily able to check in already, even though it wasn’t twelve yet.
So we went to our room and took turns at taking showers, put on make up, styled our hair (oh well.. if we knew what was going to happen… yeaah…) and packed our stuff for the concert. I also got about 200 glow sticks, since they said light sticks wouldn’t be allowed… Oh well. We took those, some money, little food, our homemade fan signs and went to the Zenith.
When we arrived, at around 2:00 pm we saw what felt like a few million people waiting in front of the Zenith. Turned out it wasn’t so bad. They quickly checked our tickets and let us into the area in front of the building. We watched as they sat up the merchandise stand, just as many other people did… When they said that only people with VIP goody packages and sound check tickets where allowed to buy things we got really sad… And Wesley was still super excited to get something, not for himself though…
We met some really nice Swedish fans who also made signs. One of them was a big fan of Zhou Mi as well and told me that, due to Visa problems, Mi and Henry weren’t there… First big downer of the day, besides not eating enough and no sleep, that is. Anyways, they also told us about many other things, like that they were there when the artist’s bus arrived, that they had sound check tickets, and so much more stuff. The Mi sign was super adorable, btw, a Super Mario Mushroom with Mi’s name in Chinese! D’awwww! She also had an adorable Changmin sign..
Here is an example of the ones we made, Key of SHINee:
While we were still talking to them a little bit, they suddenly announced that everybody could get something from the merchandise stand. When Wesley heard that, he ran to get in line and got us some really nice spots, which was great, since it was first come, first serve, I guess. When we were in the fenced area and people were pushing towards the stand, Maren told me what she wanted (fans… oh well) and I pushed forward. After a few minutes it was first Wesley’s than my turn. He got three fans and I got six, three for Maren, three for myself.
Super Junior's Kyuhyun, Sungmin and Eeteuk:
SHINee's Taemin and Onew:
And SNSD's Sunny:
Intermezzo: Interview with MBC
Or: Too bad I can’t sing a SHINee song. >.>
After getting out of there, some camera crew suddenly approached us and asked for an interview. We happily agreed, of course, what else would we do?
They asked who our favourite artists were from SM Town (I almost blurted out Beast… Maren kinda saved me on this one) and Maren and I replied Super Junior, while Wesley said SHINee, which was really amusing for the woman in the team. She started laughing and asked why that was, since he was a guy. He replied that they are role models to him and she had another nice laugh.
They also asked us where we came from (“Netherlands? Where is that? Is it far?”) and then did something fatal… They wanted us to sing a song… By SHINee. I must say, I really adore the boys, I love Onew to bits and pieces… But I can only blurt out some of the Chorus lines of their most famous songs. D: So we did a messy interpretation of Replay (“Noonan neomu yeppeo… REPLAY, REPLAY, REPLAY”) it was kinda sad.
In the end, they asked us to send a quick message to our favourite stars. I don’t know if it was then or earlier, when they asked for our favourite members. But they also did that. Sungmin, Kyuhyun and Key should feel honoured. :3 We told them we were thankful, yadda, yadda… And so on.
You might wonder, did it go on TV? Yes, it did. 2 seconds of us singing Replay were seemingly aired on TV in Korea. Sadly, a guy is talking while were shown and I look like a ton due to my unfortunate choice of clothing. :D Still. We found the video of Youtube, but it's deleted now, so whenver we find it again, I'll edit it in!
Still waiting in front of Le Zenith
Or: Skinship wars, lots of rain and more waiting
After that, nothing much happened… Until a few little raindrops started falling and we were all like. “Oh, that’s nothing, gonna stop soon!” Ha! The rain had a different opinion… It started pissing like hell and we were lucky we had two umbrellas. One we even gave away to a good looking French guy. :D You are welcome, beautiful stranger.
The mood went down for a while and more and more people approached the Zenith, so it got quite crowded. Since there were too many umbrellas, we still got wet. In between the rain showers, different stations camera teams stood on the roof of the building in front of the waiting area and gave us commands to sing or scream. We did so and waved our SHINee fan signs that can be seen quite well on the footage. At least sometimes.
Everything else is just waiting, passing out the glow sticks to people and more waiting. There were some German’s around us, but since we talked in English most of the time, they didn’t recognize us. And we were too lazy to walk over to them… Not exactly lazy, but we couldn’t do it anyways, way too stuffed there! When it got too cold and boring we listened to music with our phones and sang along. It was nice being there with so many other fans.
I think some time past 6:00 pm the masses started pushing forward towards the entrance.
The entrance control was a joke. They touched my purse once and let us pass. So I regret not taking the light sticks a little… But then again, we had beautiful fan signs that stuck out more than light sticks. :D
We entered the building (another line had formed in front of that and they had to check the tickets again… Then we ran, or better, Wesley ran and pulled me with him.
We got amazing spots, facing the right side of the stage behind, with the walk and the front stage being only five people away from us. And then, we started waiting again. :3
And from there on, you can follow this Concert Report if you want to know what happened during hte concert!
After the concert we went to our Hotel and straight to bed. Well, Wesley took a shower, but he never came back~ I was sleeping deeply when he returned.
China Town
Or: How to empty a fangirl's wallet in the shortest amount of time
The next morning at least Maren and I felt dead. But we still got up at 9:30am, showered, packed and left the hotel to go to China town.
We took the Metro there, walked out of the station and since we did only eat a few snacks since Thursday evening, we decided to eat breakfast... I had a wrap and some orange juice.
Then we started looking for the K-Pop store Wesley had found online. It's called Tai You and if you ever go to Paris and like K-Pop, stop by over there!
We walked and followed the description Wesley had printed out. Of course we missed the store and Wesley asked some girls who had plastic bags with the logo. And think they liked his looks. Really. They were so nice and even walked us there. It was inside a little passage with some other stores in there as well.
They had lots of nice and also (afaik) original stuff. CDs, posters... Oh whatever a fangirls heart would want!
We were so lucky we got there on time, because it was super stuffed after a while.
Anyways... We spent quite some time there and I'm really happy about that, because at first I was willing to buy basically everything! After a while I decided to just buy a few things. I bought a CN Blue, a small one, but I really liked the picture and I couldn't find a CN Blue poster that I really liked.
Maren got some more stuff. I also got two small posters of Beast and FT Island's Seunghyun. I really needed a Seunghyun poster, because the FTI poster on my wall is super old and still has Wonbin on it. I don't have pictures of these posters though.
The girls also told us that there is another store with K-Pop things and CDs in the mall, so after spending quite some money at Tai You we went a little further into the mall and found the other one.
They had even more CDs and posters. But also key and phone charms. And big lightsticks. I think they got their stuff from KpopTown.
We looked through their stuff for a while, but the store was even smaller than the other one and Maren had already bought a phone charm.
So we looked through the posters again, to see if they had any posters the other store didn't have... And we found this.
One of my favorite pictures of Inifinite by far! All of them look so innocent and adorable... Awwww~ Still have to put it on my wall. :D
After spending even more money on K-Pop, we decided to go to some Chinese super markets and then to the other big thing that Paris has and Hamburg doesn't!
The Angelic Pretty store
Or: Over there! Four dresses and three skirts!
We went to the Angelic Pretty Store in Paris, which is located inside a store called Boddywood.
I'm not gonna lie... I was a bit disappointed. At least with the AP stuff they sold. Since I am far from being a Lolita, but still love AP, I was really excited. Only to discover that in the right corner in the back of the store they had few dresses, skirts, some over-knees and a bunch of bags and shoes... Not what I expected. D:
The window outside was really nice though.
And they also had Vivienne Westwood stuff. The store wasn't too bad at all! Just not as AP as I expected it to be... And the sales woman... Oh well, don't get me started. D:
The street was really funny though. There were poles with eyes on them. :D
We still had lots of time to kill... Sooooo~ We went to...
The Disney Store and Champs Elysee
Or: Where the inner geek and inner fangirl had a fest
The magic word is MARVEL! I am a big comic fan and I am Team Marvel. :3
So all the Thor merchandise (Boo! No Loki action figures!) and the general Retro-Marvel stuff made my heart pound faster!
But we didn't take picutres of it. So have some Toy Story pics to make up for it.
Oh and they had Toy Story 3's Barbie and Ken! I got so excited when I saw them and I really wanted them! But what would I do with them anyways? Too expensive~
After this short trip, we went to McDonalds to eat dinner... >.> yeah, exactly. the second time that day... Uhm.
When it finally was time to head for the bus station we walked a little further down to get to the next Metro station... And there it was. I won't say anything else now, just look at the only tourist picture we took in Paris.
Yup... And that is pretty much it. We went to bus station and drove home... I could go in further detail there, but I don't feel like it now...
The weekend was fantastic and I had so much fun! Especially because Wesley and Maren were there.
Thank you for giving me such a good time! :D
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