Paris, Day 3: Heights and History

Today, I started to do real work. Well, the interview was at 4pm, so I still had more time for more tourism. I did not go to the top of the Tour D'Eiffel as the long was way too long. Instead, I took the stairs--good exercise and was lucky to go up without getting stuck in the stairs behind a group of students.

It seemed like the most common language, after French, might just have been German. Probably English, but it would have been ironic after the D-Day ceremonies to have more Germans than other folks on the symbol of Paris.

I then went over, in the rain, to the Hotel Des Invalides--now a history museum and tomb of El Shorty. I posted earlier about the history experience. I then went to my first interview with a scholar working on French civil-military relations, among other topics. Turns out he is wondering how European parliaments do oversight, while I am wondering (overlapping with the project that has brought me to Europe) about British-style parliaments and oversight of militaries. I hope to go to Australia and New Zealand next year to pursue that set of questions, as they are most comparable to Canada (thanks for the suggestion, Paul Martin).