Paris

Here are some pictures of Tennis Club de Pontois, a cool clay court club where my latest tournament has been. Hey everyone, Marc reporting in. So Colin is back in California and I'm living in a small apartment in the 14thème of Paris to play tournaments in and around the city. It's sad that our camping adventure through Normandie and the Langdouc region has come to an end, but I'm excited about Paris and it's defenitely nice to be settled in one place. My apartment is shared with 4 other students, all going to school in Paris. The apartment is really small and the building was built in the 1800's so it has a weird funky feel to it. The location is great though; it's in the Latin Quarter and right on a key metro line that lets me get to the tournaments. Colin stayed here for a few night before flying home and we had a great first night out in the city with my new housemates.

I just finished my first tournament at the Tennis Club du Pontois, about an hour comute out of the city from my apartment. Colin's last week in France was pretty hectic and included a couple nights out in Montpellier with our tennis friend Demaz, sleeping on the beach, getting woken up by German Shepard police dogs, and surviving a night on the street in Montpellier after Colin's attemt at booking a hostel at a McDonald's cafe failed. So it was nice to turn my attention back to tennis and getting ready for the Pontois Open. The tournament was played on both indoor and outdoor red clay (the terra battu). After a couple days of solid practice with some english guys who were also playing the tournament I felt ready to go. In my first match I ended up playing Pete, one of my new British friends. The match was gritty; Pete hit a high topspin forehand and had a really good chip backhand and would give up very very few errors. This, combined with the slow indoor clay, made for a tough opponent and I realized I could be in for the long haul. After three hours of sliding side to side and getting covered with dusty indoor clay, I finally won 5-7, 6-4, 6-3. On to the quarterfinals and 50€ richer! A hard earned 50€ at that.

In the quarterfinals I lost 4 and 1 to a good french guy ranked 0. His rafa style was just too much for me on the terra battu. Give me a bit more practice on the dirt and maybe i'll take him next time. I was happy to be taking home prize money from my first terra battu tourny though!!

The next night the three english guys from the tournament (including the one I beat) called me up to go out with them in Paris. I met them at their friend's apartment. These guys were crazy!!! The guy I had beaten the other day was just getting hammered and they told me about a tradition they have on their tennis team (university of bathe). If someone losses a set 6-0 that person has to take a shot of one of the other players' piss later that night when they are all partying. And they actually do it! They launched into a series of remember when stories of all the times they've taken shots of each others' piss. I was really glad I hadn't gotten bagled in my first set loss to Pete.

I've been a major metro rat the past 5 days, going to and from Pontois, and felt like I was only navagating the city underground. On one of my days off I escaped the metro and walked a ton around the city with Clemants, a french student who has been living in the apt with her boyfriend. First we went to the Jardin de Luxembourg which is pretty close to our apartment and has some cool public tennis courts wedged between the park's gardens and its palace. Then she showed me the fashion district and we walked down the main fashon street, Avenue Montaigne which is laced with all the famous fashion brands. Walking down the fancy street marked with quadrouple Euro prices made me look back on the days with Colin and when someone would suggest to us, "Oh you guys should go do such & such, it only costs..." And Colin would interupt, "Nope, if it costs money WE'RE NOT DOING IT." We stopped by the Champs Elysèes and then, after walking for like 4 hours, decided to take the metro home (haha).

Living in a sweet spot in Paris is awesome but part of me misses the huck-finn moments with Colin. Perusing my memory for our cheapest moments, I've come up with a few:

-stealing silverware from every grocery store we entered.

-colin refusing to pay 15 euros for the hostel in Gruissan, opting to sleep on the beach and getting drenched by early morning beach irrigation.

Next tourny: TC Du Grand Versailles. 4,730€ terra battu!!!

Goodbye to France for Colin

Peqce out France

The Eiffel Tower tonight

The Louvre - its free on the first sunday of the month so we didntpay qnything

Art critics

Varts apartment is on the 2nd floor of this building

close up view of our cooking utensils for the past 6 weeks

Vartas lofted Parissian bed

Train ride after escaping Montepellier

Courts in Carnon, with a view of the locals

We just spent two great days in Paris, and all my bags are packed and ready to go in the morning.

We spent a hellish night in Montpellier on Friday night. What we thought would be a triumphant conclusion to the journey in the South took a detour for the worst really fast. When we got into Montpellier it was around 6 on Friday, and we went to a mcdonalds to use internet and book a hostel. We found one really fast, but ended up staying in the plush leathercouchs in mcdonalds for four more hours!! We found the discotechue that we were going to party at, which bus took us there, and directions to the hostel, and Marc was planning his tournaments in Paris, so atleqst we were being productive.

By the time we got out of there, it was dark. As we began roaming to find our hostel we each started to get a bad feeling, and when we arrived outside of Hotel de Franc the whole road was shut down for the construction of a tramway. Turns out the hostel never got our online booking because their internet connection was shut off for construction purposes. Suchhhh a bummer. We spent the next two hours looking for another roo, but they were all full or way out of our cheap budget. We decided to take the 7 amtrain to Paris qnd sleep^in the train station until then, so we had about six hours to kill.

Turns out the train station only stays open until 2. So we got awoken qnd kicked out by two French security guards and a terrifying German Shepard. We reloacted to the corner of the train station, which was a horrible place to sleep bc drunk people were roa,ing everywhere. We were sqfe, becquse a few other groups just like us were out and the security guys were always on the scene, but it was still pretty unnverving. Colin didnt sleep the whole time. Varta ended up getting woken up by the killer attack dog German SHepard two more times, once to let us know we could go back in the building qnd another time to tell him it was "interdit" to sleep in the station.

We got into Paris saturday around noon and moved into Marcs new flat in Paris. He lives in a sweet park of town just south of the Seine and in a heavy student area. The guy who owns the flat is retired and has 5 students living in a small parisian apartment. It perfectfor Vart though.

Saturday we walked around for awhile, and then went out to a few bars with Marcs new roommates. We woke up this morning pretty hungover but managed to have a great day, going to the Louvre, the Montmarte area, and theEiffel Tower. We even attended a legit French Catholic mast in Sacre Couer, which is a huge church on the top of the city. We had just finsihed a bottle of wine, and got very absorbed in the experience.

Colin flies back to the states in the morning. I had a blast, and so happy I made the trip despite so little planning and money. Varta is gunna play the xwhole month of september qnd has 5 tournaments lined up starting on wednesday. The is Colin signing off, see you all soon

Carnon & Montpellier Pics

Carnon beaches - alle a le plague - our playground, backyard, and most importantly, bedroom

yesterday we went into Montpellier

This is one of the most famous buildings in the area

Taking a nap in the grand park at the top of the city

All Slug Final in Perpignan

All slug final & Carnon

The finals of Perpignan was exclusively an all-Slug final. After we both won in the semi’s we were SO stoked, and got treated to a nice dinner with three of the women at the club. We tried our best to learn some French with them, and we taught them some very important English words like “dude”, and “whats up dawg”.

Varta took home the bacon in a hard-faught match that definitely was one of the highlights of our trip. We both had good wins to get to the finals, and both played well. The difference in the match came down to a few plays, and who executed better on the court and Marc’s serve proved too hard to break. We got treated great at the tournament, and after the match we got 400 euros, our biggest payday of the trip! We had some wine and beer at the tournament banquet after, it was BOMB.

Turned out that our next and last tournament in Southern France started the very next morning. It was in Carnon, which is a beach city right outside of Montpellier. We got a ride to the airport from our Legionare friend Andre in his big green tank (Land Rover) and took a train to Montpellier. When we got off the train, we stumbled onto two different buses that eventually took us out onto a long peninsula that separates the mainland from the beach towns that Carnon is a part of. Before starting the travel day, we kind of starting to worry that our travel luck may have run out because we didn’t even have the address for the tennis club, but the bus dropped us off at the main bus stop at the Tourism office and to our disbelief, the courts were RIGHT next to the bus stop.

The Carnon club has 6 courts and 3 different surfaces: one really fast hard court, 3 quick courts, and 3 Gasol courts which is carpet with sand all over it. Basically its synthetic red clay. The club is in the middle of a major renovation and is filled with buzz-saws, hammers, drills, concrete pourers, big trucks, and weathered construction men from 7 in the morning until 7 in the evening. The club said we could stay there, up in the locker rooms on the second floor. The only catch is that at around 7 in the morning the cleaning ladies have to come up, but they told us we would probably we awake from the construction anyways. Turns out they were very correct, because every morning we have been violently awoken to huge banging noises. We have the routine down pretty good now though, at around 7 we pack up our sleeping pads and pillow and sonder out onto the beach, which is about 50 yards from the club, and sleep for a few hours in the beach as the sun comes up. Its actually pretty nice.

Colin scrapped out another victory in the first round against a 2/6 player. It officially meant that Colin has a winning record for the trip whooo-hoooo which was his main goal as far as the tennis goes. Groundstrokes were still all over the place, so he spent about half of the match at the net and serve and volleying.

Varta had a rough outing against a guy who used to be around top 15 in all of France back in his hay-day. The guy played very unorthodox and it was pretty hard to catch a rhythm.

The next day Colin played another 2/6 on an extremely windy day, so windy that you could practically hit it as hard as you could on one side and it would go in, and exactly the opposite on the other side. Turns out his opponent just finished school in Michigan. Colin lost pretty bad in straight sets, and officially ended his French tennis career chipping and charging and serve-and-volleying for the second part of the second set haha.

We are officially done with tennis for this leg of the trip. Colin goes home on Monday and Varta just put the finishing touches on renting a room in Paris to play tournaments for the month of September. We have just been bumming around the beaches and went out to a bar last night in Montpellier.

We told all the guys around the Carnon club that we wanna go out to the nightclubs, so they are gunna go out with us tonight! The main guy running the club, named Damaz, is super cool and took us out last night to a club called “the rum room.” Tonight were going out with Damaz, the main tennis pro here named JB, and then the top tennis player in this area who is around 120 ATP. Should be pretty fun.