I want to join the army.

Or wanted to, at least. For a few brief moments, on Friday night (that's Day 3, for the lazys out there). You see, we'd had a fairly low-key day strolling around a graveyard looking for Francois Truffaut and Henri Clouzout's graves. The highlight of the day might have been discovering a Mozarella/Tomato/Basil paninni for only €3. We'd climed up Sacre Coeur twice (once in glorious sunshine, once at nightfall) and when we got back to the hostel we were just about ready to hit the sack. We decided to take some cards and books into the social area until it reached a less embarrasingly early bedtime, and I set to reading the book I currently have on the go, "Bush at War" by Bob Woodward.

We'd been there for about half an hour when to guys at the table next to us offered us a bottle of whisky. Well, of course, there's only one answer when someone asks you "Want some whisky?", so we did the moral thing and duly accepted. In retrospect, from this point onwards we were theirs for the taking. As the drink flowed, the stories flowed thicker. One was Japanese-born, from California, named Oyama (but we could call him Mo, he told us.. no-one called him Mo). His friend was from Venezuela, and they'd spent the last six months being trained for combat by the French Foreign Legion. They told us about their boot camps and life on "the farm". They told us about the beatings from power-hungry corporals. They told us about poorly-supervised new recruits mis-firing grenades and nearly blowing up the whole command troupe. They told us everything, in minute detail, and as we moved from the hotel to one bar to another to another, we got more and more sucked in. If they'd had contracts right there with them, there's a good chance I'd now be typing this blog from an army training camp. We finished the evening buying chips from a greasy kebab shop run by a Tunisian immigrant who took great delight in acting out a less-than-deep immitation/analysis of the Bush/Bin Laden conflict, much to our amusement.

The next morning we awoke with hangovers for the hall of fame and an ironic sense of amusement at how easily we'd been swayed. Back in our right minds, we were tourists once more, and headed off for a day of tourist-y behaviour: The Louvre (boring), L'Arc de Triomphe (alright), then up the Eiffel Tower (scary as shit).

More details on all of that (plus photos and a Paris summary) next time..