Tuesday, the last quiet day before the Lamborghinis revs their engines and festival begins, is almost over. Early on I went to pick up the badge, saw a few familiar faces in the queue and some obvious newcomers, collapsing under the weight of the ever thicker market catalogue.
If you are feeling lonely in the crowded streets, the best place to go is the Monoprix by the train station where sooner or later you will run into people with badges around their necks, filling their baskets with what their habit dictates them - from pasta to instant Chinese soups. And there will always pop up a familiar face and after often a slightly awkward exchange and a hurried goodbye, that is when you will realize that another year has passed.
The beach is still a constructions site but the white stands are already there, and as I was passing by the UK Pavilion, once again I was hit in the face with the undefinable but definitely unpleasant stench I always smell when passing by its doors... It is worse in the sun but even now it was there, and I promise to myself that I will find out its source.
Later I am sitting on the sidewalk that stretches along the beach and flipping through the magazines while watching the people stroll by. Again they will all be here - the sleek, quickly moving carnivorous sharks, the big lazy whales, the tiny species which never stay in one place too long.. all on the shore, and everyone of them, at least sometimes, feeling stranded.
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