Centre Pompidou, Paris (2006). Photo by Aki Kärkkäinen.
Paris, France, Spring 2002 (6 months)
This article is Part Six of the series. See the bottom of this article for the other parts in this series.
This photo (2006) shows Pompidou Centre (Centre Pompidou), where I spent lots of time writing my Master's Thesis entitled "Spatial sound in a user interface as a method to deliver hidden information and to relieve visual burden" (see thesis in Finnish). I didn't want to mess around but just get it done. I had sorted out my sources beforehand.
After about six weeks of intensive reading, writing and editing every day, I printed the whole thing out, went with my friends to the student cafeteria of Université de la Sorbonne nouvelle Paris III where I was studying as an exchange student, and deliberately poured some coffee on the cover page. This was to mark it "Done Done". Not sure if I had a beer afterwards.
After that, I immersed myself in French - or I should say Parisian - culture, exploring museums, music, and architecture. I was queuing for a metro ticket once. The guy in front of me started speaking English to the ticket officer, who stood up without saying a word and went away from the counter, turning his back to the customer. When it was my turn, I made sure to speak French. Paris (France) can be like that, but it depends on who you meet, and how you react.
Anyway, after completing my thesis, I lived in an apartment at Montmartre, owned by monsieur Wolfgang Kukulies, an intellectual and a translator. He had another place in Southern France where he spent most of his time. There are people who doubt that Wolfgang ever existed because he was never around, but to those I say: just look at the photo negatives! He had literally tens of thousands of books in his apartment. Every wall was a bookshelf, floor-to-ceiling. In one of those bookshelves, I accidentally found a box of photo negatives of him. Being one of the few that actually met him in real life, I can confirm it was him in the negatives :) Good times.