So I promised to blog today, it's been a while. I always mean to but I forget then I have other things to do. Anyway, as my life goes by in this beautiful city, I notice a lot of funny and interesting things about the French. I write down little notes to remind me to blog about the little things which are vital to French life like things as simple as hello, so these notes shall be my sub-headings for this blog. Now I've got a chocolat chaud in hand, the rain pouring on the roof and the quiet clinks of glasses from the brasseries below, so I shall begin.
A chocolat chaud to keep me warm in cold Normandy.
Queues
I like to explore all the different supermarkets around me. I've discovered that the Franprix downstairs has a horrid cashier lady who just doesn't talk to me, not even to say how much anything is yet she speaks to other customers. Also this same Franprix has Nutella pots that cost 4 cents more than the Franprix down the road! This place (Batignolles) has far too many Franprix in a half-mile radius.
Anyway, this little story isn't about Franprix, but about another supermarket that I decided to check out: Monoprix. Monoprix is considerably larger than Franprix and usually sells clothes as well as groceries. I decided to go to the one near Place de Clichy and ventured down the escalators to the non-grocery section. I was in need of folder dividers, the more colourful, the better. (Did I mention how dreary French mathematicians could be?). Victimised by retail trickery, I was distracted and ended up going to the till with more items than just folder dividers when I caught myself in a pickle. For one, the till had a very odd position because someone had oddly put a whole make-up counter too close to it which was causing a weird two-way queue.
In true French customer service fashion, there was one person at a till and 4 empty tills. This Monoprix employee was taking her time to scan each product and make conversation with the customer as if everyone else had written in their diaries that they were to queue at this very place at this very time on this very date and rung that note in the diary twice in red. I emerged from the right side of the make-up counter to find two people on the right and one on the left. The woman on the left had set her basket down because she had obviously written 'queue @ Monoprix' in her agenda and didn't seem phased how slow the cashier was going. In fear of pushing in, I went back round the make-up counter to emerge left so I could queue behind the woman.
Pickle unpickled. Or so I thought. Two elderly ladies appeared from the right side of the make-up counter and started forming a queue there. I looked at the woman in front of me, she didn't seem to notice that these elderly ladies had just taken her and my places in the line of life and etiquette. Suddenly a great stench seeped into my nostrils and a woman had joined forces behind me, in our queue, we were now even: one customer was being served, six were waiting.
I'm going to digress a bit, but you know when you sit on a bus, usually at the back or by a window and there's this smell? Or even worse, there's that guy on the bus who somehow got on without any money and is making everyone around him wrinkle their nose and suddenly find that they want more exercise and get off a stop or two earlier? Or the smell of the guy who comes up to you in McDonald's and tells you to bet on a certain horse which you inadvertently do and win £50 for it? You know the smell? Yeah that one. I've noticed that a lot of French people smell like that. They're not even homeless nor do they look scruffy, nor does the smell come in a variety of odours, just this one horrible stench from many different people. Bizarre.
Anyway, back to the queue. There we were standing and waiting when the woman in front of me blinked and quickly jerked her head as if she'd just woken up, reached down to her pick up her basket and walked away lost in the slipper and nightwear aisle. She left us in the lurch of a queue fight and the first customer had been served and was making her way up the escalators. The first of the two elderly ladies on the right who had arrived after me was then being served. The smelly dame behind me poked me in the back (enough to hurt) and asked if I was before them to which I sheepishly said yes. She then told me to go after the current customer being served.
It was my time to do some 'pushing in' (it's pushing in or it's not, depends on how you look at it) but my Britishness couldn't let me do it. I could not push in in a queue. The next thing I knew, I found myself flung to be the first to be served by the sheer force of the smelly dame who had used all her might and stench to push me there.
"I'm sorry, Madame," the cashier wryly smiled, "The queue actually starts from there." She pointed to the right side of the make-up counter and gestured for me to join the back of the 'right queue'. The stinky lady had already beaten me to it and proudly stood in front of me in the queue, knowing that 2 people had already pushed in front of me, she couldn't have cared less.
The British section of Monoprix in La Motte-Picquet
C'est Vert!It's hard to judge which way to look first when crossing the road in Paris, it's usually the right but you never know. In England there's stop lines and give way lines which easily help pedestrians as to which direction to look first, but these lines do not exist here. When I first arrived in Paris, it would take me much longer to cross the roads because I was polite and waited for a clear and safe crossing. These things do not exist in Paris and you have to commit to cross and wait for the cars to stop for you. If they don't tant pis.
I once found myself courageously on a crossing when the lights had just turned from red to green (no amber) and was in the middle of a large road. The motorbikes and cars didn't seem to care that I was still on the crossing and had gone full speed at me. Luckily I wasn't hurt, but I could have easily been.
Even when the green man is on, you can catch traffic still moving, making pedestrians wait or even buses turning at a green man just after you've cleared their path even if you're still not on the pavement yet.
I was walking with my boyfriend near La Motte-Picquet - Grenelle when the green man was on and we were crossing a busy junction when a car was coming at us at full speed. We obviously had to run to the other side with a French woman who was cursing at the driver shouting that it was green.
Speaking of driving in Paris, you're advised to park without the handbrake (if you can) so that other drivers can push your car in order to get into a parking space. Again around the Motte-Picquet area, my boyfriend and I witnessed a car wedged in between two others where the driver was trying to steer his way out. We stood there for a good few minutes watching this man make tiny reverse turns again and again to squeeze out of the car sandwich. We had left due to timidity but a crowd had gathered and am sure they would have applauded him for his effort (if he ever escaped).
No Uniform
Children do not wear uniform at school, not at primary, secondary nor college. Who knew that this would extend out to what school prepares us for: the real world. I noticed that the métro drivers who all seem to arrive at the platform in the same seated manner: one elbow on the counter and with their cheek buried in their hand, do not wear uniforms. I also noticed how the cashiers at Monoprix do not wear uniforms either but have seen the ones who walk around the shop in uniform just in case you do want help.
Bon-ing
The French do like to bon everything, and I mean everything! I was once eating an apple down the street and a young man came up from behind me and said "Bon appétit!". You can only say "Bonsoir!" after 16h (yes they like to work with the 24-hour clock here) and if you are leaving someone at about 4-8pm you wish them a "Bonne soirée!". If you leave them in the morning, you say, "Bonne journée!" and you must say "Bonjour!" when you enter a shop otherwise you're considered to be rude. I even got a "Bon après-midi!" from the cobbler.
Sleazy Men
Not to say I'm the most attractive woman in Paris but I have had a lot of men say sweet nothings to me. This happens to all women in Paris and I discovered that the Parisiennes do not mind. In fact, they welcome it. I have had smart businessmen, SDFs and sleazy old men say it to me. The most memorable would have to be this guy on the métro. I was on a certain line for a long time and the carriage was getting emptier and emptier. Nearing to my stop, there were just three people left in the carriage: a woman behind me, a man standing near the door and myself sitting near the door on a strapontin. I was a bit wary about the man near me, I didn't make eye contact but he was making me feel very uneasy. When he pulled the handle for the door to open because he was getting off at his stop, he crouched down to come face to face with me and said, "Vous êtes vraiment belle." And disappeared. Frightened with my heart beating because I seriously thought he was going to do something else, I was in shock when I suddenly hear a huff from the woman behind me.
"You are so rude," she tells me, "you can't even say thank you."
That's the Parisienne etiquette, you're supposed to thank the sleazy men.
Eating in Public
I was told in my French lesson that the French find it rude to see people eating by themselves in public. This is because eating is something close to their hearts, a pleasure to be shared and not spectacled with jealousy. If you are to eat in public by yourself, you have to say a quick sorry and cover your mouth when you eat. I found this out in a different way outside the classroom. At my university in Paris, it is very hard to find a time to eat, we are not allowed food in lecture rooms nor in seminar rooms and there's usually 15 minutes break between seminars or lectures (which are used to walk to lectures or seminars). When I finally had some time to eat lunch/dinner before my last lecture, I made my way to the Jardin des Plantes to eat my ready-meal of pasta that I had made the night before. I sat on a bench to enjoy it when a little boy with his mother sat next to me for a break from their walk. In an instant, the boy was crawling near me, grinning from ear to ear and opening his mouth ready for me to feed him. His mother apologetically pulled him back but the boy kept coming back. I was thinking, was my cooking that good? Did my pasta look that appetising? In the end, the mother apologised and brought her son away from me where they found another bench in another part of the park. I quickly realised that the boy had probably only seen food in a sharing environment and when he saw someone eating food by themselves, he instantly thought that the food had to be shared.
It seemed the French animals were in on it too, again I was in the Jardin des Plantes eating another meal which was pasta and this crow did not leave me unless it was fed the chorizo in my pasta.
