“You realize that your blog has become a cooking how-to, right?” Andrea asked the other day. And she’s right. And it’s not that there’s nothing else here, of course, but rather that I haven’t figured out how to turn those other things into a coherent entry.
So here goes.
- Debit cards work differently here. For one thing, ATM’s give you your card back before they give you your cash, which Nick is quite fond of telling anyone with a pulse (Aaron, I know I have you to thank for that). Far more frustrating for me, though, is the way that they work, well, everywhere. The card readers look just like their American equivalents, but quickly swiping and removing your card (my reflex, apparently) will invalidate the transaction. And it won’t say why. They expect you to just know that you’re supposed to leave the card in for the ages it takes until the machine says that you can take it back, and not doing so results in a line of angry people behind you, and a very cranky cashier.
- Hey, you know what really pisses off French cashiers? Digging around trying to find 24 cents in a currency you really don’t recognize well enough to do this on the fly with while the line behind you builds up.
- Even better? Finally giving up and giving her 40 cents instead.
- You have to press a button or turn a latch to make your subway car’s doors open. Usually, someone else gets there first, and the buttons are fine, but the other day I seriously considered missing my stop because I was worried that I would mess up the latch, resulting in my having to go another stop anyway with a bunch of people whom I had just embarrassed myself in front of. I did get off, and it went just fine.
- The Germans named syphilis “the French disease.” That one was brought to you by Nick–of course.
- There is no substitute for a local (or two). Olivier and Penny, Nick’s boss and his wife, came over for dinner last night. While Nick slaved in the kitchen (but I won’t mention over what, Andrea), I peppered them with questions: What is reasonable to pay for dry cleaning a sweater? How do you say “animal shelter” in French? How about “Just looking”? Where should we get bicycles? What is with all the vicious little old ladies in this district? When Nick returned, he proceeded to run down the same list, often verbatim.
- We are overpaying dreadfully for our dry cleaning.
- We saw a huge Shepherd-like dog in the fountain at St. Michel yesterday, splashing around. And then realized that the homeless guy off to the side had trained the dog to retrieve bottles and cans for him, and that was what it was doing in said fountain. Now that’s entrepreneurial.
- Paris has embarked on an anti-anti-social behavior campaign. There are ads up everywhere–on the roads they are stories of normal people killed by bad driving choices, and in the Métros they’re aimed at people who are either careless or annoying. In other words, Paris has mounted an ad campaign against recklessness…and rudeness. Insert joke here.
- We have the first draft of a wedding guest list, and yet the stupid store still has not gotten my ring back. I’m wearing the silly fake one we picked up, and probably will be for the rest of my life.
- Nick’s brother Blake is arriving as I write to visit Paris for a week. Ironically, although US Airways lists his flight as having landed 35 minutes ago, they still do not report an arrival gate. This is likely because Charles de Gaulle’s roof fell in a while back, and so they no longer really have gates–and the remaining few are reserved mostly for smaller planes. Those of us who have just spent seven hours in coach not sleeping because the moron in front of us keeps thrashing around in his fully reclined seat while the moron behind us doesn’t get the concept of a touch screen are loaded onto shuttle buses that can take half an hour to reach our “gate,” aka: “the door they let us walk in through.”
- Nick, of all people, has developed a taste for rosé champagne. We’re talking here about a man who categorically dislikes champagne. And anything rosé. Somehow, it works.
- We have more or less agreed on a type of dog after I dragged Nick into the pet stores–seeing puppies is the surest way to fall in love. And he fell hard, for a scrappy little black English cocker spaniel who was being eaten alive by a bulldog and a black lab when we walked into the store, and had pinned the bulldog and completely won over the lab by the time that we left. Mom, if we get her, I’m pushing for “Molly Noir.”