We've had a long stretch of beautiful weather for the past two weeks here in Paris. Last weekend, when my friends were visiting we spent a lot of time walking around the city. Today, however, I cancelled a brunch to due to violent storm but then decided that it would be a good idea to get out and visit the Louvre. The more so because during all my time in London I never randomly went to the British Museum or the National Gallery for no particular reason (ie no special exhibition, friend in town, etc.), because the thought that I could any time and would some time was enough. And yet, whenever I have the usual conversation about why it is so great to live in a crowded, expensive, cosmopolitan city like London or Paris, one of my main arguments is the "availability of culture in incomparable abundance" - argument. So, I thought, from now on I am putting that argument into practice. (Perhaps, that is also because I feel that my time here in Paris is decidedly finite.) Needless to say, the museum was crowded, packed with irritating tourists from all over the world taking bad pictures and even worse short films of various pieces of art completely indiscriminately, while racing towards the ultimate goal: La Joconde (a.k.a the Mona Lisa). In a way the democracy in access to culture and art is beautiful, but every time I confront this phenomenon I cannot stop myself from feeling for all those poor souls back in the respective homes of these people, who will have to suffer through endless nights of excruciatingly boring photo and film viewing sessions. Not that I am such a great art connoisseur of course: each of my visits to an amazingly rich museum like the Louvre only makes me realize how little I know about ancient history, Greek mythology, Christianity, the renaissance, and everything else. I feel frustrated at first, and then motivated to read and learn in an organized manner, but then, inevitably, I realize that compared with many of the people I am surrounded by I can still hold my own in a superficial conversation and I fall back into my default intellectual laziness. Now that I have verbalized this I, again, aspire to be more like my uncle, Peter, who is a professor at Yale or my good friend, Bence, who both have an amazingly deep knowledge  of most things from literature and philosophy through architecture and poetry to classical music and art history. As soon as I finish this - I will start the self-education...will keep you updated.