Paris!

It’s Friday night and I’m sitting here in a café in the “arts district” of Paris, drinking a glass of wine, listening to Elvis, and catching up on what’s happening in the world. I am feeling particularly inspired to write a little bit about this city. I’ll approach it in two ways – by the unique experiences and things I have seen, and how it differs from Germany.

I mentioned last time that Paris reminds me of NYC. Everyone is extremely fashionable and I have never seen so many well dressed, well groomed people in one place before. The subways (“metros”) are also an experience unto themselves, but in a different way than New York. You don’t fear for your life when you make eye contact with someone, but it’s still a great place to people watch. Musicians also like to camp out in subway stations, or even get on trains, and play – on the trains I have seen accordion and fiddle players, and in the stations I have seen soprano sax with backup soundtrack recording, “karaoke” singer with backup recording, guitar, accordion, fiddle, and even a sitar. No joke – a sitar.

The difference between Parisian transportation and German transportation is the efficiency of the people who use it. In Germany it is typical for everyone who plans to get off on the next stop to move toward the doors as soon as the train leaves the previous stop, so as soon as the doors open everyone is ready to go. Here in Paris, however, no one moves until the doors open at the stop – then everyone gets up from their seats and deboards. In addition, no one pays any attention to the little red and green men for crossing the street – whereas the Germans would rather die a slow and painful death than cross the street on red. Both of these habits are behaviors I have had to adopt in order to blend into the German society but cause me to stick out when I am here. Paul laughed at me for hesitating every time we crossed the street, which I never did before my Germanification, and it was funny too because he said all his other friends who lived in Germany developed the same habit.

Parisians are badasses, and they know it. I mean, living in Paris automatically makes you a badass, and you have to be a badass to live in Paris. I have been pleasantly surprised by how nice people have been to me as an English speaker (because even though I speak another language it doesn’t matter, because I don’t speak FRENCH), but you can tell the people know they are all that and a bag of potato chips. They will sometimes ignore you and look down their noses at you, much like NYC, but I don’t mind it. To me it is actually a much more comfortable atmosphere than Germany – the people have to acknowledge your existence in order to choose to ignore you or choose to be “rude” to you, but in Germany the people look right through you and never acknowledge your existence in the first place. In Paris you know you’re not Parisian, but in Germany you feel invisible.

Last night at my hotel I met two guys from Cameroon – one was the desk clerk and the other was his friend who was just hanging out. As I came in for the night we struck up a conversation, and I ended up talking to them until almost 2am. They were wonderfully nice, and were very interested in hearing my abroad experiences and were eager to tell me about Africa. From the way they described the community atmosphere in their city, where everyone looks out for each other and everyone’s primary goal is to love life, it sounds wonderful. I also had an interesting insight into their culture when we spent almost an hour discussing a theoretical argument between husband and wife, and how it should be fixed and why. It was filled with “well what if this happened, what if she said this, how would you respond? But that won’t work, because a good husband would always do this. What happens if the situation is like this? How would you reach an agreement? Whose job is it to do this?” To me it was interesting to see how their community culture, described earlier in this conversation, was manifested in this problem-solving discussion as they helped each other talk through how to amend theoretical situations, how to be prepared for curve balls, and how to be honorable.

Apparently in Paris there is no tip in restaurants. I did not know this. My first Parisian meal was lunch, and I left the waiter a typical German 10% tip. The waiter was nice, and as I got ready to leave he chit chatted with me, asked me where I was from and how much longer I was in Paris, then invited me to come back to the restaurant before I left, then gave me his business card and said “I don’t work tonight, you should call me and we’ll get drinks.” I just smiled politely and said thanks, shrugged it off as “I’m in France,” and told the story to Paul as a good laugh over dinner. When we calculated our dinner bill and I went to put a little extra money for tip Paul set me straight, and then laughed because he said that’s probably why the waiter tried to ask me out – because I’d left him a tip on my lunch bill. Oops.

Speaking of French restaurants, they have a cool system called a formula where they create a 3 course meal (or 2 courses and coffee) for a set price, and each course has about three options to choose from. These formulas are much cheaper than ordering everything a la carte (see look at my French language skills!), although Paris in general is quite expensive. I also ate beef tar tar yesterday without knowing what it was – I knew I’d heard of it before, so I figured I couldn’t go wrong, until I got my plate and it was a patty of minced raw beef. It tasted ok, and I’m still alive, so I guess it was all fine.

I went to the Louvre today. Aside from being a tremendously huge and good museum, the building itself is beautiful. I didn’t know this before, but the building is actually the castle of the old French monarchy – so a corner of the museum is actually the old parlors, salons, and bedrooms of the castle. In addition, most rooms in the museum are pieces of artwork themselves due to the magnificent moldings and ceiling paintings. I got a front row view of the Mona Lisa, saw some Michelangelo sculptures, some mummies, and lots of other cool stuff. I’ll post pictures later.

I can’t remember much else now, but I’m sure I’ll have more stories later. I have one more day, then I head back to Dresden on Sunday.