MORE CENTRAL, IMPOSSIBLE!
Close to the Centre Pompidou, Louvre, River Seine.. 1st Arrondissement.

Welcome to my home! ,

More central, impossible!
I live in the more central district of Paris: Châtelet Les Halles.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

                            
My name is Régis Estricht. I belong to that generation who was born in the fifties and schooled in the sixties. We graduated after the Algerian war and after the May-June 1968 revolt in France, and before AIDS. The happy days!

We developed a passionate interest for politics, talked sometimes a lot of garbage about it! Our political concepts and visions had been a little confused... Like most students in my class, I sold Chairman Mao Tse-tung's "Little Red Book" in the Latin Quarter of Paris when I was 16. Chairman Mao, Marx, Engels, Lenin, Che Guevara and Hô_Chi_Minh had been our Idols.                                                                                                                                   

When I was 21, I lost my idols, felt free and hitchhiked around Europe, like many other young European people. "Peace and love" became our motto. Our favorite singers and musicians were Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Joan Baez, Jimi Hendrix... We stick out our thumb, wincing at old Renaults and Citroens. We wore bell-bottom jeans and T-shirts. We went to the exit ramps leaving Paris and we had been waiting, for hours, for a day sometimes. Couch Surfing didn't exist, we slipped in the home of unknown people. Most among the many young students we met we didn't know who was the tenant of the room and the owner of our bed.
                             
I definitely was a travel-addict. I have lived and worked twenty-five years abroad. I spent 10 years in Sub-Equatorial Africa (Chad and Cameroon). I have lived and worked many years in Russia and in Germany.

Now I'm 70, I live in the heart of Paris, the city of my childhood.

Interests

I live on Rue Rambuteau in the first arrondissement. On the right the district "LES HALLES", and on the left "LE MARAIS". I spend my childhood and I have been living there for many years.                                                                                                                                         

🔸  LES  HALLES  :  Les Halles belong to the first arrondissement. Maybe you think "Parisians from the first are snooty ! " But les Halles have never been posh. You don’t meet the "upper class" of the first arrondissement in les Halles, but the young suburban residents. They come from the banlieues on the the suburban subway. For these young people Les Halles is clearly heaven on earth! They find all what an human being needs during his earthly life : exquisite sneakers, nose rings, sprays to do artistic graffitis on the walls of our buildings. No, les Halles is definitely not a quarter for snooty Parisians.

Marie isn't snooty. Every day I go shopping. Sometimes I see Marie at the corner of the rue Saint-Denis "Bonjour Marie ! Il fait beau aujourd'hui!" ("good morning, Marie, it's nice out today). Always Marie has a friendly smile and gives me a warm replay. Marie is an old prostitute. I have known Marie for more than twenty years. She don't know exactly who I am. Maybe she thinks I'm an old client from the early happy days :-D

🔸  LE MARAIS  :  It was a poor neighborhood after Word War II in the fifties. I remember the cries of the boys who "played war". I remember the dark and dirty houses, I remember the smell of coal.
Nowadays Le Marais is definitely the trendiest and most fashionable district of Paris. The Marais has a nice cosmopolitan atmosphere : gays, jews, artists, tourists, "bobos" (hipsters in French).

• politics
• africa
• paris
• vietnam
• religions
• asia

Music, Movies, and Books

🔸Music ? In the early seventies the « Plazza » in front of the Centre Pompidou was full of young people with long hair and funny elephant-bottom pants. I was one of them, played guitar and sang in an atrocious English "Imagine" by John Lennon , a song against the Vietnam War .
Today I live a few steps from the Centre Pompidou , but nobody plays guitar any more, nobody sings political songs any more. When my little nephews and nieces come to me , I sometimes get my love and faithful old Takamine guitar that has accompanied me during my long stays in Europe or Africa . Then my nieces and nephews tell me, "Maybe another time , Uncle " ;-(

Countries I’ve Visited

Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Central African Republic, Congo, Czech Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, England, Gabon, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland

Countries I’ve Lived In

Cameroon, Chad, France, Germany, Russian Federation