You know you've been in Paris too long when....

"Mais... on se connaît*!" said the taxi driver. He started telling me a story I had told him last time I was in his cab.

I remembered him, too. He was a handsome gray-haired Portuguese man about 60, and we always have nice conversations; he and I are both the talkative type. He left Portugal after doing his military service in Angola (Portugal was trying to keep its colony... that didn't work) because "there was nothing for us in Portugal." In the sixteenth arrondissement, where I live, the Portuguese immigrants to Paris are usually mentioned like this:

"... et les portuguais... ah, si les autres immigrés étaient comme eux....!**"

"Until next time!" he said when I got out.

 

* But we know each other!

** "And the Portuguese... if only the other immigrants were like them!"