After almost a week in Paris we’re beginning to wonder what happened to the Frenchmen from before. We remember Paris from 1968, the last time we were here.
In those days, Frenchmen acted like Frenchmen. They snarled. No one spoke English. Even professors of English suddenly lost their ability to speak English and made you try and stumble through with some very bad college French. And everything cost a small fortune.
Well, those Frenchmen are gone, along with those prices.
Where to, no one seems to know. They have been replaced by a very affable, multilingual (English being one of those languages) and polite new species. Most of all, Paris has become relatively cheap. This city abounds with wonderful little restaurants. For about 100 francs (roughly $14 in U.S. dollars) for lunch and 200 francs (about $28), you can get a wonderful meal in a small restaurant and a first-rate bottle of wine for about a third of what we pay in Malibu. Of course, I must admit we’ve changed also. We’re no longer stumbling around holding our dog-eared copy of “Paris on $5 a Day.” (Older readers might explain that cultural reference to our younger readers.)
There are some things about Paris that are immediately apparent.
All Parisians smoke, particularly the younger Parisians. It’s a rare restaurant or cafe that has a “No Smoking” section. Their clothes and hair reek of tobacco. If their lung cancer rates aren’t skyrocketing, I’d be very surprised.
The French also love to eat. They take food very seriously. They eat full meals, dishes cooked in butter, order rich desserts and yet it’s unusual to see a fat Frenchman. True, portions are a little smaller, and the French certainly appear to walk more than we do, but that wouldn’t seem to be the answer. Perhaps, we Americans really are putting things in our food to fatten the animals that end up fattening us also.
We’re staying in a lovely fifth-story walkup in the 4th arrondissement, which is near the Sorbonne in the St. Germaine area. It’s a little like Westwood or Brentwood.
We’ve also fallen into the French habit of shopping daily with a little sack, lightly filled with a few items. You don’t carry heavy packages in a fifth-floor walkup.
Next to their food, the French people love their dogs. It seems like everyone has a dog, and the dogs go everywhere. Into the shops, the restaurants, onto the metro. It’s a rare cafe that doesn’t have its own “in residence” dog. Our Health Dept. would go bonkers if they saw dogs ambling casually through a restaurant kitchen in the middle of lunch. Somehow the Parisians have survived that assault on their health.
Their cars are small and usually French: Renaults, Pugeots, Citroens and, occasionally, a VW or BMW. Very few American or Japanese cars. If you’re wondering if there is life after SUVs, we can report that we saw one Jeep Cherokee and that was it. The French get around quite nicely in those small high mileage cars that are easy to park, which is a very good thing, since the parking system of Paris was designed in 1200 AD.
France has been globalized. Perhaps we’ve all been globalized. There was a time when you could look at someone and immediately know their nationality, but not anymore. We were stopped on the street several times by Frenchmen looking for directions. The movies are principally American, Jennifer Anniston’s picture is plastered all over signboards. And whether French, American, Canadian or Japanese, we all wear the same designer label clothing.
Although Paris is foreign, it’s also very familiar. I’m writing this column from a cyber cafe in Paris, and around me I can hear a half dozen different languages being spoken.
A last thought. I always thought of the Germans as orderly and the French as much looser, but that’s only partially true. The French have their rules, so for Americans who are always trying to substitute French fries for mashed potatoes, or something similar, I’d say “forget it.” If it comes with mashed potatoes, it’s just easier to eat the mashed potatoes and avoid trying to get a substitution, which I can assure you is “not possible.”
So au revoir from Paris.
As the man said, we had Paris and lost it. Now we’ve got it back again and I’m going to find myself a gin joint and get my afternoon aperitif.