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d-day + 187 through 193 ✯ spam
May. 23rd, 2015 07:53 pm[Open Spam, throughout Port]
[Gene doesn't regret joining the Marines - God help him, it's true - but there's no doubt that the Army, Air Force and Navy guys over in Europe have the better deal when it comes to leave. There's no Paris or Rome to liberate in the Pacific, no London to be shipped back to for R&R, just the shitty shacks and tents on Pavuvu, overrun with land crabs and rats and still reeking of rotting coconuts.
So the idea of actually getting to explore the city - especially now that there's no war on, no Nazis running the place or snipers to look out for - is kind of neat, even if Gene's not so sure it's enough to really make up for the ship seeming like it was falling apart. Or the last port.
But he still hits the town - in civvies, probably for the first time since getting on board the ship - and does his best to enjoy himself. He doesn't speak French well enough to really communicate with anyone, but Snafu does, and they're so used to being in each other's company that it just makes sense to team up anyway... even if Snaf nearly gets them kicked out of at least one museum.
Because Gene's that kind of tourist - he gets up as close as people are still allowed to be to the Eiffel Tower and goes to the Arc de Triomphe, visits the Louvre and eats at some of the more modestly priced restaurants, walks along the Seine and finds himself oddly drawn to war memorials and places he recognizes from pictures when the city had fallen to the Nazis.
He can also be found in book shops and staring with mild confusion at the Apple Store. This Paris is very different from the one he imagines his brother had seen. Everyone's on their phones and looks different from what he's used to, and it's not bad, but he feels out of place. He has no idea with how Steve coped with waking up seventy or so years in the future, because even just this is very, very eerie.]
[Gene doesn't regret joining the Marines - God help him, it's true - but there's no doubt that the Army, Air Force and Navy guys over in Europe have the better deal when it comes to leave. There's no Paris or Rome to liberate in the Pacific, no London to be shipped back to for R&R, just the shitty shacks and tents on Pavuvu, overrun with land crabs and rats and still reeking of rotting coconuts.
So the idea of actually getting to explore the city - especially now that there's no war on, no Nazis running the place or snipers to look out for - is kind of neat, even if Gene's not so sure it's enough to really make up for the ship seeming like it was falling apart. Or the last port.
But he still hits the town - in civvies, probably for the first time since getting on board the ship - and does his best to enjoy himself. He doesn't speak French well enough to really communicate with anyone, but Snafu does, and they're so used to being in each other's company that it just makes sense to team up anyway... even if Snaf nearly gets them kicked out of at least one museum.
Because Gene's that kind of tourist - he gets up as close as people are still allowed to be to the Eiffel Tower and goes to the Arc de Triomphe, visits the Louvre and eats at some of the more modestly priced restaurants, walks along the Seine and finds himself oddly drawn to war memorials and places he recognizes from pictures when the city had fallen to the Nazis.
He can also be found in book shops and staring with mild confusion at the Apple Store. This Paris is very different from the one he imagines his brother had seen. Everyone's on their phones and looks different from what he's used to, and it's not bad, but he feels out of place. He has no idea with how Steve coped with waking up seventy or so years in the future, because even just this is very, very eerie.]
