Rue Rude

Conversation at La Poste

"You can't send chocolate to the United States," said a young man of La Poste to a glamorous-looking older woman.

"But it's Easter candy for my grandchildren!" said the woman.

"Anything alimentaire is forbidden over there. The customs may seize it."

"What!" I said. "I send stuff all the time. I never heard of that before!"

"They have become crazier and crazier," said the man from La Poste. "Everything is terrorism."

"It's worse when you go there," said the woman. "My daughter lives in California and they're détestable. They treat you like a terrorist. So suspicious if you're French! They look you up and down as if you're an insect. It's horrible."

"But people love the French over there!" I said. "Are you talking about l'Immigration?"

"Well, yes, of course," said the woman. "Ordinary Americans are so friendly. But the Immigration officers hate us French! I don't like to go there any more."

The Faux-Yanque

I met a man whose English seemed unusually good for his background-- someone who had never finished lycée-- and asked how he learned it. "After I left school, I was a diver au fin fond de l'Angleterre," he said. [= in the depths of the provinces]

"A diver?" I said. "You mean like under the ocean?"

He laughed. "No, a plongeur means someone who washes dishes in a restaurant," he said. "That's where I learned all my English!"

"Well, you speak it pretty well," I said. "It must come in handy in Paris."

"It comes in handy sometimes, but not the way you think!" he said. "I was in a nightclub and I told all the girls I was American. They thought I was so cool because I spoke such good French! But then as we left with the girls, some friends of mine saw us and called out to us, 'Mais qu'est-ce que vous foutez ici?'* I wanted to kill them! The girls dumped us as soon as they figured out we weren't really American!"

*WTF are you doing here?

No more veils-- or Halloween masks

The poster that is being put up to explain the law. The quotation cites the law: "No one may, in public, wear anything designed to hide the face."

As of today, the wearing of any kind of face cover is illegal in public spaces in France. An officer of the forces de l'ordre is not allowed to take off the veil but can order the person to be brought to the nearest police station to have her (or his) identity verified. Under normal circumstances the fine is € 150, but if the veiled person is a minor, the fine is doubled.

I'm curious what will happen with this law. There aren't many women in France who wear a burka-- one estimate I saw was twelve of them-- but there are some who wear niqabs, which allow only the eyes to show. I saw one yesterday at the Eurostar, along with a jolly-looking man and a teenage girl wearing an I ❤ London t-shirt. They didn't look French, but this law applies to tourists too.

But not only tourists. I could just see the cops going up to some nice new Paris Americans taking their kids  trick-or-treating or going to a Halloween party in the fall. "Vos papiers, s'il vous plaît!" Who would think that letting your child wear a Batman mask could cost you €300?

The Presidential crash

This weekend I went to London, and for a change, the weather was lovely! I think it's the first time I've ever found better weather in London than in Paris. We had blue skies and temperatures in the 70s the whole weekend. 

My cab driver from the newly renovated and gorgeous St. Pancras station, where the Eurostar now arrives, was a pink-faced, friendly guy. I had known that British cabbies, the envy of the world, had to study The Knowledge for years before being allowed a London taxi license. He told me that he had had 18 to 20 tests on his knowledge of streets and destinations within a six-kilometer radius of central London. That took a couple of years, but it doesn't mean you are allowed your license yet. Once you pass that part of the test, you have to spend at least another year learning all the routes to the various airports from twenty or so different areas around London. London has at least four airports (Gatwick, Heathrow, City and Stansted) so it's a formidable task.

I don't know how we got on this subject, but as we passed Trafalgar Square-- where there is an enormous ship in a bottle on a pedestal-- he told me that he had once witnessed a U.S. presidential motorcade crash.

"It was fifteen or twenty years ago," he said. "As the first car went by, it had to slam on the brakes for something, and the second car ran into it. Then the third car rammed into both of them and shoved them out of the way for the rest of the cars to pass. There wasn't even a moment's hesitation."

The helpful pharmacien

"How did you get that prescription?" I asked my family member. "When did you go to the doctor?"

"Oh, I didn't go to the doctor," he said. "I didn't have time, so I just went to the pharmacist and showed him my old prescription, and he gave it to me."

The pharmacists in France are much more highly respected than pharmacists in the U.S. For one thing, a lot of them are just former medical students who studied medicine for a couple of years, then didn't pass the draconian winnowing-out process, like Alexandre, the son of some friends. For another, all of them know how to tell you if the wild mushrooms you picked are safe to eat-- mushrooms are part of their training. Also, a lot of them seem to be pretty young women. The girls in my daughter's class all wanted to be pharmaciennes, which at the time puzzled me, till I saw the maman who was one.

But maybe another reason for their relatively high status is their helpfulness. Unlike an American pharmacist who tends to be the soul of legality, a French one will very often bend the rules. After asking you a few questions, the same ones the doctor would, and if your medication is something fairly normal, half the time you can get it with an old prescription or sometimes none at all. 

The pretty American woman who rented our apartment last year  came back through Paris recently. "I miss the food here, but I miss all the local shopkeepers too.  I went to the pharmacy [a different one] and he just gave me my [medication not available in the States]. He remembered it. In the U.S. I'd have had to keep going back to the doctor and paying $250 a shot each time I did. I miss France so much!"