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TEDx Talks
Published: 2017-09-12
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd1CjZMxKr4
So, good afternoon. My name is Sebastian Eros and I'm a photographer. And today we're going to talk about floors. In fact, we're going to talk about a very specific project I started two years ago. It's a project about one guy, one city, one perspective. And so you might ask yourself, like, who's this guy? No, I'm going to show you. It's pretty cool, you know? He loves
to hang out in the snow, in his hometown, in southern Germany, in the area. And he's a pretty big fan of pastries. Okay, so here. So that's me. So, but he also has a big passion for photography. And one day, after I finished my studies, I decided to go to that one city, the city of light, the city of love, or no for us, it's just
Paris. And the idea was, like, I go to Paris, learn French, and then after a certain amount of time to figure something out, I didn't really know. So I was walking happily to Paris looking at all these beautiful buildings, beautiful sites. And after I mastered the French language, I decided to, I thought was a good plan. You know, like, start looking for girlfriend, you know? Should
be a cool plan, right? I'll let you know no secrets, it's not that easier. So, after this heartbreaking discovery, my attitude changed a bit. Like, I got frustrated, I walked down, heads down to the city, I didn't care anymore about the beautiful buildings and all these things. But I discovered something to new, a different kind of beauty, the beauty of tile and mosaic floors that are
all over the city. And I want to give you a little bit the inspiration for this project. So everything started with this image. I was taken roughly nearly two years ago on a trip to Marrakesh, Morocco, at the beautiful Bahia Palace. And I went there, like, walked around, it's beautiful, as you can see, took some pictures. And then I came back to Paris and I started
noticing all these beautiful floors. And what I do now, I'm going to take you on a very specific special journey to the city of light. So, our journey is going to start in the heart of Paris at the San Chappelle. We're not only we have beautiful stained window glasses, but also we have beautiful floors. And barely anyone of no-notice is there. But we're not going to
stay too long there. We go over. We pass the sand and our next destination is a very iconic site and a must visit for a lot of tourists, the Louvre. Maybe you saw your bin there. And if you have bin there, you know, there's like 500 or thousands of Asian tourists trying to take a selfie with the Mona Lisa. So you have to fight your way
through. No, it's not that easy. But once you fought your way through it, you will discover this. A beautiful marble floor. And these marble floors are all scattered over the whole Louvre. And you know, museum visits are bit tiring. So we don't want to stay too long. So we go out and our next stop we end up in front of the Louvre at Place de la
Palais Réale. Or we have a receipt this. We quickly take a picture. But we're not going to stay too long neither. So our next journey is we want to go a bit further. Maybe like we heard about something about a famous hot chocolate at Angelina Restaurant. So we want to go there. So we walk along with the Rivoli towards Toulier-Regardent. And we quickly take a stop
now because we are in front of this beautiful golden statue of Shondak. We grab a picture. And meanwhile, we catch a glimpse of something really beautiful, really majestic. And it's in front of the hotel Regina. And in fact, it's this floor. So we go, take a picture, continue our journey because we really want to try that hot chocolate. And it's really good. We should do it.
And once we pass Toulier-Regardent, we come along Rivoli and around the corner of Récastellonium. We are on a sidewalk that is covered with different patterns, different graphics, different motifs. And all of them are mosaic floors. It's incredible. It's beautiful. It's colorful. And people walk over it every day. But no one takes a picture or even notices them. But we are better. You know, we do it.
So then our next stop, we had chocolate, you know, it's really good. Then we are in Paris. We need place to stay. So we had towards the second hour on this mall. We passed by a tiny narrow street. And we end up at Hotel Delil de Roof. And yeah, we decided to go and check if they have a well-beroom, you know. We go in and we
discover this. Now we talk to the guy. Unfortunately, they booked out. It's pretty busy in Paris. So we continue. We walk further in the second hour on this mall. We walk to Place de Labours. And we end up at Rivivienne. There's a way there, you know, like already from far away away. We can all come here, you know, like come here and have something. You know,
it's like, do you like floors? Do you like floors? I love them. You know, so it shows us in the first hour. And we see this. Yeah, there should be another picture. Yeah. We have this. Beautiful. So we get into talk, everything. We thought, yeah, go further, you know, like I know a cool hotel and everything. And she got a, then our next step, we walked
towards a further west. And we had boulevard houseman. We look at beautiful housemanium buildings that all of Paris really beautiful. And we end up at historic building. Many of you, I don't know how many master's thieves or bank robbery experts we have, but you should know it. It's where the headquarter of the association around the French bank. And not only it's a beautiful historic building, but
also it has a massive mosaic floor on the first floor. It's crazy. And it looks like this. And not only on the first floor, but also in the basement in the vault. So they took me, they tell us shows this beautiful, big, old vault. And they tell me it's pretty safe. You know, they're secure like they take care of it. So we trust them, you know,
and give them our money and all like, okay, take care of it. Don't worry. We go. Well, we are in a hurry because we want to go to an ex destination. And it's another must visit spot in Paris for many, many tourists. But they go there because of the decor. They love the ceilings. They love the chandeliers. They love the walls. But no one of them
ever notices what is hidden beneath their shoes. But now you know, you have seen we are a lot better. We do that. So we discover this and this. And there's many, many more. It's crazy. It's like you don't even know where to start. But we took our pictures. We saw the beautiful opera. And we continue a little bit north. We're going to the NISER and this
mall. We thought like, ah, maybe a cool idea. You know, like to get some, see some stand-up comedy or a cool show at the theater. So we go to the Palace Theater where we discovered this and the entrance. Now we get some tickets for tonight. It's cool. Something to watch. But the promise we still don't have a room tonight, you know. So we got to get,
keep going to find something good place to stay. So the first recommendation we get, we should go to this new hotel that that recently renovated and it's hotel in Shakir, Opera. We go to the bar and we see this. And this. And we talk to the barman and just explain, you know, they just renovated the hotel and during the renovations they discovered that this floor was
there before it was like all covered with wooden panels and they didn't even know. But luckily for us, they kept it and they restored it. So fortunately, same problem here, no available room. So we continue and our journey for today ends at Hotel Edgar. Now it was pretty tough, you know. We walked a lot. It's like quite a good journey with it today. So we skipped
breakfast the next day. We sleep in late. A bit too late, but it's getting time for lunch. So where do we go? Luckily, we're very close to the neighborhood of the third hour in this mall or better known as Le Marais, which is a great spot for coffees, you know. Like if you want to eat something, go for coffee, perfect there. And we have a few
choices. We could either go to the area or we could either go to Lu Parisian if you fancy some French cuisine or maybe know, like if you try something different, we go to Madame Shaw and go for Thai food. But you know, like I told you, we slept in. It's late. We have a busy schedule so we need something fast. Where do you go when you
need something fast? Right, you go to McDonald's. So we quickly rush to bless the leather public. We go to McDonald's. We have some food. We don't want to stay inside. So we go outside. Just next to the McDonald's, there's a nice door. We wait there. Eat our French fries. And someone comes, opens the door and gives us a peek to this at the entrance of a
beautiful, historic building. And yeah, we finish our fries. We take a picture. It's really beautiful. And what do the French do? The Parisians do after lunch. And they don't go to work. You know, they have a coffee. So that's what we do too. Our next option is where we go. We go a little bit further south. So we go to coffee menu for quick coffee. Get
inspired by the beautiful, mosaic floor. And now it's good. We have our coffee. We continue. We're done. We head towards Place de la Nation. And we end up at a place called Cout-Vancin and we're in front of a beautiful building where the facade is covered all in tile and mosaic graphic designs. Now we think, you know, like by now, we've seen cool stuff inside. So if
it's already cool outside, it should be cool inside too. So we take a peek and we discover this and more floors. A beautiful variety of floors inside on the hallway of this building. But we're busy today. There's still something to do. There's a lot to see in Paris. A lot to do. And for all of you that haven't heard yet, but Paris is also the city
of museums. So a museum visit is always highly recommended. And boy, do they have cool floors and museums? You cannot imagine. So someone told us that. So now we're a bit in a rush. So we skip coffee. We don't go to the next restaurant de la Dalu. We skip it. And we head straight further to the Palais de la Porte d'Ori or the National Museum of
Immigration. And we discover a gigantic hall with a mosaic floor where you don't even know where to start to take a picture. It's full. It's so big. You cannot imagine. So we take our time, an hour or two, take our pictures of this beautiful ethnic inspired designs. And we go out. Thank you very much. Okay. So that's going to work. So we finished our museum to
at Palais de la Porte d'Ori. Took a lot of beautiful pictures. But we are also in Paris, you know. And what you do in Paris, you also go for shopping. It's a great place. So if you want to get rid of your money, come there. They'll take it everything, you know. Don't worry. So where do we go? Close in the south at Blast a little. There's
a shopping mall called Italy do. We go there. We see this. We see this. Pretty cool. Right? And we think we're in a shopping mall. Now we should get some cool shoes, you know, because after seeing all these cool floors, we need something out. It might be good to have something nice to match with all our pictures we take. So we get some new shoes and
it brings us back to the source of inspiration. And we end up in the fifth around this mall at La Grand Mosque de Paris, where we find this. It's pretty cool match with the shoes, now. We're good decision. And we have this. There's more of them. It's also a really beautiful inspired Arabic music design. And I know, like, we've seen a lot so far. So we're
getting like a little bit hungry. And we didn't have a coffee yet. So next choice, where should we go? There's a few options. We could go further in the fifth and go to the Pantheon and we go to a restaurant called Lepapille. Or we pass Shaddam de Luxembourg and go into Sanjama de Play and go for drink at La Cottoire. Or we're more like, we can
try to be a bit more local. So we go into the 14, a bit more south and we end up in L'Ovie for our coffee. Yeah. We still not there. Like our day is long, you know. So we still have some ground to cover. And our next idea is like we should head over into the 16th hour of Islam, which is home to many members of
the Parisian high society. So we're like, okay, let's figure out what this is. So we go there, walk there, and stop, you know, because we see something. We're at the door. It's a glass door. We catch a glimpse of something really beautiful. Unfortunately, the door is closed. And you have to know, like, I'm curious, all these buildings that have doors with codes, so you can't just
go in and out. Either you know the code or you have to wait for someone. So what we do, we wait. First, we wait five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes, and you start questioning yourself. So like, oh, it's really worth it. Trust me, it's really worth it. And we wait another 20 minutes, 25. And then after half an hour, finally, someone leaves the building, opens us
the door, and lets us in, and we discover this. Luckily, we have a backpack with a lot of pair of shoes, you know, so we always have a good matching pair of shoes, you know. And we take our picture, but we still have to continue our journey into the 16th hour of Islam. But we stop at the Resman, take another picture. And finally, we cross the
sand, and we arrive again in the 16th hour of Islam. More precisely, we are Dhrushasma, and we found something, and we wanted to pay tribute to the human's best friend. So we take a picture, right? And, yeah, it's pretty cool. We continue, because it's a pretty chic area with a lot of luxurious hotels. We stop by the peninsula, Paris, have a coffee, some pastries, you know,
because I love pastries, you know. But we still have to go on, because it's a long day, and we still have a lot of ground to cover. So we continue walking to the 8th hour of Islam, but we pass by this little shop, you know, it's a little shoe shop, you know, and shoe shop, you know, we could need some new shoes, because like, you walk
a lot, they get, you know, we need some. So we buy some cool new shoes. Luckily, they have a cool floor, you know. So, perfect match, we take a picture. Finally, we get to the 8th hour of Islam, and as I told you before, like, if you like Florence, you should go to the museums. And we pay a visit to Le Pitti Palais, or the museum
of Fine Arts, where we find this, or this, or this. All beautiful mosaic patterns, designs, all over the museum. It's crazy. But, like, we're in the, like, part east center of the west center of the Paris, so we want to go north. We want to go to Montmartre, show all of you have heard of it. Romantic, beautiful Montmartre of Paris. And it's getting late, we're a