Looking back on Symfony Live 2011: part 1

After a three hour Thalys-train ride we arrived at Paris Nord station. Another 20 minutes by RER brought us to a station just across the university complex in the south of Paris adjacent to the Montsouris park. From there we could walk to our apartment which was located uphill on the end of a cobblestone road with expensive looking houses and matching cars on their tiny driveways. The scaffolding around our building made us wonder if maybe we had booked for next year.

After we announced our arrival by a quick phone call, we were welcomed by the Romanian landlady Anna who led us to our suite. The funky smell of urine mixed with rotten edibles, in the hallway wasn’t very promising. Luckily inside the apartment it smelled a lot less fishy. Time to celebrate our arrival. Vive la France!

Unfortunately it was too late to get some beers at a supermarket, so we decided to drop our bags and go for a drink in a local bar. But first Anna gave us a tour around the apartment. Which, to my surprise, came close to the pictures we saw on the rental website. It had three large bedrooms with double beds and another two sleeping couches in the living area. Plenty of room for the seven of us. Minor shortcomings were the 40″ flat-screen TV which was replaced by a 30″ old-timer and the toilet which was slowly falling apart. It think it was transforming into a squat toilet. By the end of the trip we had to practically dive into the cistern to manually start the flushing mechanism. No need to wash your hands after that!

After we set up Wi-Fi on all of our ninety-nine lappadpods and changed the keyboard layout on the top-de-desque from god knows what to QWERTY, we were ready to hit the road. Or, as the French like to say: “‘It ze route!”

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