Annecy

Well, unreliable wifi connections and other tragedies have taken up the past couple days. I won't take the time to go back over everything at the same level of detail as I was doing, but here are the lowlights:

Dropped my iPad on the train platform in Paris, shattering the screen. It still works, but it looks terrible and I'll need to replace it when I get home.

Arrived in Annecy late Sunday night, in the rain, with no taxis at the train station. After quite a long wait, my taxi took me to the address of my hotel and left me there. There was nobody to let me in, since it's a terrible run-down residential hotel that was particularly creepy at night in the rain. 

Yes, I found someplace else to stay, but it's quite a story.

Now I'm doing the animation festival thing, and seeing quite a lot of good films. I'm not meeting as many people as I should - I hope I can correct that tomorrow after meeting up with the ASIFA people. 

My feet are a mess of blisters, and I don't know how the French manage all their stupid specialty stores. I've been keeping an eye out for a pair of scissors for days, and there doesn't seem to be a scissors store anywhere. It's all either grocery stores or pharmacies, with nothing in between. I'd kill for a Walgreens.

In Paris they can speak English, but don't want to. In Annecy, they'll speak English willingly, but don't always know how. But whenever I try to speak French, they speak Enlish to me anyway, so I'm not learning as much as I would like to. 

At any rate, it's 8:30 tuesday night, and I'm famished. I'll go questing for food, after I've celebrated my return to the world wide web.