Je suis tres confused

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They say it is the City of Love. They say it is the City of Lights. They have never mentioned that it is also the City of Matters that Confuse.

The past two days have made me feel as if I tried to go about solving a not so hard mathematics problem stoned out of my mind, and somewhere along they way I decided to down some shrooms as well for fun. I repeated 5 phrases in French about 200 times, and hey, if I don't want to go back into Finance it seems I have a promising career ahead of me as a mime, or perhaps a circus clown as I have gotten to be pretty good at dodging all these mental daggers coming at me as I stutter in desperate Anglaise.

To start with, where are the 711's? The Quik-e-Marts? As somebody who easily drinks 5 bottles of water a day, that quick stop on every corner is pretty much essential. Yesterday morning on my way to the Sorbonne, I scoured every street, checked all the nooks, lifted up all the bums, and alas the 711 would not show. Streets are lined with too many brasseries to eat and too many cafes to coffee at, but apparently the French are not big buyers of the convenience store. Even the newstands just shrugged their shoulders at me and muttered, "No more." I thought smoking lent itself to thirst? This doesn't make sense. Confusion ensues.

After half an hour of my esophagus shriveling, wrinkles around my eyes forming, I finally found a little sandwich man across from the Sorbonne that sold me a bottle for a cheap Euro. There is a God after all. I proceeded to leave this miracle bottle on the desk of the registrar 20 minutes later. I want to kill myself. Too bad there is no 711 around at which to buy the sleeping pills.

And what is with all the bookstores? Don't get me wrong - it is nice. It creates a warm, albeit misleading, fuzzy feeling in delusional me that makes me think with each casual passing I am gaining a sliver at a time back any sort of literary intelligence I possessed before I lost it all tapping away in bullet points at the keyboard for The Man. However, there can't possibly be that many people that read that much to warrant a bookstore every 10 yards. I mean they live at the cafes, expressly NOT reading and just staring and crunching their noses at the flip-flop clad Americans that walk by. Confusion.

Which leads me to the next one, although this one is less surprising. It's as if the French people don't care about the success of their businesses. Efficiency? No need. I was walking down St Germain at 5pm on a Wednesday, and the cafes along this rather busy boulevard were ALL full. I mean, do these people really get off at 5? It's so weird - it's like early happy hour but without beer or any sort of indecency. It's not even people unwinding and letting it all hang loose after a hard day, well how could it be as they are clearly not stressed whatsoever. And risking judgement I will say that Americans are often targeted to be the rich tourists waiting to be ripped-off. If I stand there in front of you, speaking Anglaise with my little American accent, wouldn't you try to help me and charge me 6x the regular price? Not so much - I get a hand wave and a "Francaise (something.)" Seriously, you don't want to sell your product to me? Nobody else is gullible enough to buy this piece of shit from you! Confusion.

Frederic's apartment is ideally situated literally about 15 steps from Boulevard St Germain in the 7th. Being the ridiculously happy American in Paris, I thought I would stock his place with some fresh baguettes and Nutella for as with all bankers he has absolutely nothing edible in his fridge save for a couple pots of yogurt and like 5 boxes of Cocoa Puffs for breakfast. Oh, and a lot of butter for that third of a baguette that had been sitting on the counter so long the crust could have been carved into a "rustic" engagement ring. So I go looking for my items feeling rather with purpose and challenge as I always do when I embark on any domestic task. It seriously takes me 30 minutes of wandering and going in circles around the 7th to (finally!) stumble across a rare supermarket! I was getting so desperate that I contemplated bargaining with the crepe man on the street for a tub of his. And BONUS POINTS I scored my second miracle bottle of water at said supermarket as well. It seems like Parisians are not so concerned with convenience. You want your staples? You better be willing to work for them! (Although how would that happen after the mentality I encountered in businesses above?) Confusion permeates my brain in a manner similar to when a boyfriend Dutch Ovens you.

And finally for the biggest point of confusion thus far. I stand there and ask for une baguette et une banette s'il vous plait (I decided to make it my day's purpose to determine the difference) and feeling accomplished in the success of the purchase, I step onto the pavement riding a new wave of confidence. That wave quickly closed out as I started walking. How is one meant to carry a baguette? I mean, the boulangerie gives it to you with half of the product sticking out of a long thin paper bag. Are you meant to walk in public, in the rain, in the exhaust of cars on the street, in target of vengeful pigeons, with your precious breads hanging out in the open? What if I have like 10 blocks to walk, and in my case, I'm already lost so let's just x2 that. Say what you will, that Americans are slovenly and uncultured etc, but we're pretty sanitary with the food. I don't put food I forsee eating directly on a table or a tablecloth, and I certainly don't buy a turkey I plan on eating to carry home swinging by the neck without proper packaging. Am I really supposed to be crossing these boulevards with my food hanging out for everybody and everything to respire on? Not only that, but I also then realized that I had no idea how I was supposed to physically HOLD the baguettes. Do I rock it like a baby? Do I squeeze from the middle a la toothpaste tube? Do I (God forbid) hold it by the fresh end that is sticking out of the bag? Do I turn it upside down and stick it into my purse? I mean, geez, who would have though they would have to create transport manuals for baked goods.

In the next wave, this one of sheer panic and looming ridicule, I jerk my head around in all directions for a Frenchman to model off of. You always hear about the French, their boulangeries, and their baguettes. Both the boulangeries I have been in today, and all that I passed, were always overflowing with people waiting to buy their carbs and those big, long baguettes. But where do these consumers go when they leave the boulangerie? I certainly didn't see, and realize that all day I didn't see, any French people carrying said baguettes home! This must mean that there must be some way to yes, conceal the baguettes and protect them from the threats of urban enviornment. This somehow was lost on me, as I decided for this time only I would have to look the fool carrying my baguette in whichever un-French way I could manage. It didn't help that I was canoodling the baguettes while flipping through my little red book of Paris maps, all the while also frantically guarding my miracle water.

Adding insult to injury, later that night with a squeeze near the ears, my baguettes Fred said were not good. 'What boulangerie did you go to!' He says he can tell by the sound of the crunch or something. Confusion... He says I will learn in time all about bread in France. I'm not so sure about this. Don't get me wrong, don't mix Amy's confusion with dislike. I quite like being confused and it keeps things fresh and moving, and for the record I really enjoyed my first days in Paris. From a Year in the Merde, to Paris je t'aime, to Pepe le Piu, this was all I imagined Paris to be. Perhaps I should mention that I spent the whole first day between Fred's apartment in St Germain 7e, 6e, and over into the Latin Quarter 5e. Maybe this is a warped zone of Paris or something or maybe it is actually the norm, I don't know yet.

So today I set out to acquire a French SIM card. Long story short, I think the Orange people are trying to gyp me and some unhappy conversation (more just gesturing and poor attempts at French and English) ensues. Enter friendly blond German guy who can speak both English and French to my rescue. After that is sorted I leave in a confused huff and go down to Orange competitor SFR to offer my business there. Zip, boom, bang, Amy now has 65 Euros of credit and happy days. Original plan would have been to spend half an hour sorting my phone and then head to Roland Garros for the French Open. As the SIM fiasco ended up taking me nearly an hour and a half to sort, I no longer had the time to make it to the stadium with time to get to Gare du Nord for my train to London later.

After I eat some baguette sandwich on the street, I am wandering around with nothing to do for the next two hours. I get speckled with a few drops of rain. I think it is getting cold and I don’t feel like catching pneumonia before I hit up the Middle East, so I head for St Germain on my usual path. Enter blond German guy from the Orange store walking down the street next to me! We end up chatting in the drizzle in the middle of the sidewalk in blessed English for something like half an hour. He informs me I am supposed to carry the baguettes under my armpits. I crinkle my nose at that.

His name is Jorn (‘It’s like yearn, like when you yearn for something?’), he is German, and he has all sorts of crazy background information including he currently lives in the Netherlands, took classes at the Sorbonne last summer, spent the last year in South Africa working for an NGO, is working for the German embassy in Bangladesh for the summer, will be back in France after September... I mean I could go on and on. He speaks English, French, German, and Dutch, and above all, he was my savior an hour ago. I end up walking around running errands with him near the Sorbonne, and after than we walk from the Sorbonne through the Marais all the way up to the Jewish Quarter because ‘I swear they have the BEST falafels!’ And then it starts to pour! We get wet! I am happy though because it was my first time actually out of 5, 6, 7e and I finally got to see north of the Seine. So all in all, the afternoon turned out to be a lot of fun anyways.

I love Paris and I cannot wait to spend the summer here. I took like no pictures as I spent these days settling living issues and not so much touristy things except for those couple hours with Jorn, but I have two months to do that later so I promise for then. Amazing, I hadn't seen Frederic in almost 2 years since our 2006 summer in London, and it really felt like no time had passed when we caught up. Thanks so much to Fred for the delicious steak frites, croque monsieurs, all the 911 calls in French... and even my new French phone!

But to be honest, after all of this the baguette and the banette taste the same to me.

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Photos

Fred, me, Jose
Floridita London, my 22nd birthday, Aug 2006

Comments

[diana]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! amy i miss you!!