Mon Dieu. Paris.

This seems to be a conversation that I'm having a lot lately.

After watching the two ladies wail on their kids in the station, I had had enough.

Me (to the Ticket Man): There are two ladies beating on their kids. Can you do something?
TM: I am not a policeman!
Me:.... I know you are not a policeman. But someone has to do something. Can you call someone?
TM: What are they doing?
Me: They're hitting their kids!
TM: This is Paris, everyone here hits their kids. Like this. (makes slapping motion)
Me: .......................
TM: Where are you from?
Me: Australia.
TM: And do people not hit their kids in Australia?
Me: Not as far as I can see.
TM: You need to travel more little girl and see the world. Things are different here.

Girls: I can relate and yet I can't. I hate this show.

So on my day home sick from work, I decided that it would be a fun idea to sit down (or lay down) and watch the entire season of Girls. Girls, for the uninitiated is a new HBO series which follows four twenty something girls around New York as they navigate love and life (.. If I'm starting to sound like a movie poster, lay off it's midnight and I'm past my bedtime).

Well fun is kind of an overstatement. It was more like a precise instrument delivering kidney kicking torture and I slogged through the entire thing even though I hated it and I hated (almost) everyone in it. (We may need to talk further in another post about masochism, specifically my masochism). So blah blah blah if you've read any of the reviews, you'll know that it's supposed to be 'true to life'. These are supposed to be normal girls in normal apartments wearing normal clothes doing normal things. It's targeted to Gen Y females and we're supposed to love it because we relate.

Firstly and foremostly, I don't understand how anyone can relate to Hannah Horvath (the anti-heroine) because she is just an atrociously annoying human being who has yet to show one damn good quality in ten episodes (maybe optimism?), and I think there were more than a couple of Hannah Horvaths in my high school and they were weird and friendless and kind of mopey and I didn't want to be friends with them then anymore than I want to watch her on my tv now. Sorry, Hannahs of the world, I'm sure you don't want to be friends with me either.

However barring Hannah, there are things that (hooray?) the show got right, which are kind of integral to the Gen Y female experience. Here we go:

At some point, in your living-outside-of-home-experience, your flatmate will snippily ask you for rent. Or maybe you are the flatmate that snippily asks. Anyway, money will change hands snippily.

You will botch up a job interview. Maybe you're super lucky and you're as suave as James Bond in a dress and this has never happened to you, but for the rest of us, it's happened. Probably not as bad as jokily accusing your interviewer of date-rape (Oh, Hannah.) but never talking about it again sounds pretty good.

There's always a boy who plays the I-won't-text-you-back game. You don't need me to tell you to dump him right? Right?

Shredding your friends when they're not around is kind of a given but it doesn't mean that you love them any more or less. It's anti-sisterhood but it's the truth. Girls are prone to taking about each other and sometimes that talking turns to shit talking. And if you tell me that you happen to be the patron saint of friendship and you never ever talk badly about your friends, then I think you're a liar. Or deluded. Maybe both.

Surprise anal. I don't know what it is about guys that think you won't notice them trying to stuff up a meat sausage up your butt. It's your butt, that's a small hole, ergo it's kind of hard to miss what with all the nerve endings.

Public fighting with your boyfriend. Been there, done that.

And then there are things that most people can't relate to (list is long):

• Trying to extort your boss for sexual harrassment
• Not knowing where your boyfriend lives after dating him for four years.
• Marrying a stranger after two weeks. A stranger that tried to have a threesome with you and then yelled at you when wine was spilled on his ten thousand dollar rug (yes, that sentence is as absurd as it sounds)
• Masturbating standing up in a public bathroom. Sorry, I get how this works for men, I'm not sure that women do this. I'm not even sure that they can. How do you climax exactly? Do you squat? 
• Mistaking crack for pot. .... I'm not even going to touch this one.
• Spitting on two perfectly nice men having a conversation and then taunting them for fun

And the last last thing before I leave this show and scrub my brain of it forever, I understand it's a really short show (half an hour) and they don't have time to detail all aspects of their hipstery lives but do these girls ever buy groceries or do laundry?? I only ask because I feel like I spend a whole chunk of every damn weekend getting these things done (as does for some reason, Penny from the Big Bang Theory. Random.)

 I feel better having vented all that out. Still hate the show.

Italy. Briefly.

The men are very very forward and will always size you up down wherever you go. All the cars are small and especially in the cities, all the fenders and bumpers are always cracked. The children are all impeccably dressed. No-one actually eats pizza. Coffee is cheap. Speaking of, cappucino is a breakfast drink. Coke is expensive. The streets of Rome are cobblestone so don't bother to bring a rollie suitcase unless you want it destroyed.

When you have a Madonna and Child painting gazing down at you from above the hotel bed, you are much less likely to feel amorous.

David is disproportionate. But still amazing.

I didn't throw a coin into the Trevi fountain but I do feel like I will be back. I did love Milan.