Better later than never and electric differences

Today I succeeded in meeting up with the friend I wanted to eat lunch with yesterday and we did eat lunch today together but...she arrived one and a half hours later. Well, she could justify her being late but I was still annoyed. Before meeting up with her I saw a swimming pool inside a nearby ship on the Seine. Come on, this is crazy!

We ate at the barge and then went to campus together. We took a double-decker suburban train to get closer to our destination. Until then I saw this kind of train only in Switzerland but the idea of more or less doubling the capacity of trains is not bad.

 

Tuesday's update: It was less cold on Monday and Tuesday than it used to be and on Tuesday I had a similar experience like back during my bachelor years. The university is heating just the same as when it was below 0 degrees. Now it is like 10 degrees outside. I felt like the university is one big sauna.

While having my sauna at the window I saw that there IS a difference between the sockets in Europe. In Hungary it's the same like in Germany and Austria (which I can confirm) and the most part of Europe. This is the classic German plug and socket (pictures exceptionally from a Wikipedia article).

Since I've been living in Switzerland, too, I can confirm that the Swiss plug and socket is different there. It's like this (from another section of the same article).

And in France there is another type of socket. At least now I get why there's a hole in the CEE 7/7 plug of my laptop.

The CEE 7/7 plug fits most of the EU countries' sockets (not sure about all Italian sockets) so that you can charge e.g. your laptop everywhere. Except for Cyprus and the UK, as I can confirm, where there is a socket like this (picture from the web site of World Standards).

In the evening I brought both of my suitcases to a friend’s place since I guess can’t bring a suitcase to campus because of the security protocol at the entrance. Or at least I don’t want to take everything out of my suitcase and get everything back again twice. This friend of mine has a pretty tiny room for himself. It’s like 8 m² big. But he put the suitcases in a storage room so both of us were at ease. I stayed at his place ‘til late in the evening while realising he had an awesome night sight on the Eiffel Tower. (I forgot to take a picture. I know, I know, it would have been way more interesting than some random sockets, sorry).

Parisian scenery, the CROUS's barge and some Luxembourg in Paris

On Saturday I wrote my blog at campus. I ate lunch with friends while finding a gigantic hole in my baguette. I know, veeeeery interesting but lunch was the highlight of my day...now try to imagine how exciting my day was.

On Sunday I went for a stroll again. On my way I found some decoration in the urban environment.

I had a cup of coffee at a fast food restaurant while trying to fix an appointment for lunch with a friend, sadly, without success. I headed towards the CROUS restaurant I wanted to eat at with the friend.

I should have waited for the bus for about 15 minutes so I thought that I could walk to the next bus station to pass some time and to do some very light cardio. At the next station the timer showed that I still have 14 minutes until the bus arrives so I continued my walk. I continued my light cardio for quite some time. I CAN call it light cardio since I prefer to walk swiftly and that’s also the reason why I kept walking for a long time. In the end I missed the bus…but I continued walking and I stopped when the timer showed 3 minutes.

I haven’t mentioned why I’m walking this big a distance to get to a CROUS restaurant yet. The restaurant is on a parked barge on the Seine. It's called the CROUS barge.

By the way, on Sunday France is quite a peaceful place, maybe too peaceful. There is barely a shop that’s open and there are no libraries to study at. Every campus is shut, too. Since I have to leave the hostel during the day anyway I didn’t have the chance to study anywhere. This is also the reason why I tried to pass time by walking around Paris. In Budapest I couldn’t study anywhere either but for at home (which was a shared flat. No indication of anything). Compared to Paris/France almost all shops keep open in Hungary on Sunday and there’s plenty of or at least not much less people on the street.

After my brunch at the barge I went to the garden of Luxembourg. I have to say it’s a pretty big garden. It wasn't that charming, though, but maybe this was due to the winter. First, I couldn't get an honest smile on my face for a selfie but eventually I succeeded.

When I first saw this guy I thought I can't believe my eyes. I thought it is a statue of someone taking a selfie... but after examining the statue from less afar I realised that he's holding a scroll not a cell phone. Well, today's society does have an influence on how my brain tries to interpret the world

 

It was funny to see half of the seagulls standing on the ice while the other half was swimming in the water next to them.