Learning Paris, part two

After my first trip to Paris, I swore I would never go there again. I hated it. This is part two of a series on Learning Paris. For part one, click here.

            Looking back, I realize that the apocalyptic feeling I had the first time I went to Paris was my own fault. I was so stereotypical. I put myself in that situation. I know how people react to foreigners coming to America expecting us to speak their language. The French take pride in their language- it is beautiful. It was my fault I didn’t learn how to say bon jour, s’il vous plait, and merci. It was my fault that I didn’t pick up a map. It was my fault that I let my fears stop me from fulfilling my most basic needs in Maslow’s hierarchy. Fortunately, two years after my whirlwind nightmare, I was given an opportunity to give Paris a second chance.

Window in Paris

         My best friend at the time- a brilliant, beautiful bartender at the restaurant I was working at- left Arkansas to study in France. When I found a plane ticket for $425.00 round-trip, I booked it and planned to go visit her. This time, I prepared in advance to make the adventure a better one. I looked at Google Earth, I bought a phrasebook and highlighted important things to know how to say- they are all still written in my journal:

Ou se trouve- where is

Je voudrais- I would like

C’est combien: How much

Je suis perdu: I’m lost

Au secours: Help

Merci: thank you

Jen e comprends pas: I don’t understand

I even wrote out how to pronounce each thing for my English speaking brain. Plus, I would be meeting Emily in Paris, and she spoke fluent French. 

           She and I were talking on the phone one night before I left, and she told me to get from the airport to the train station Chatelet Les Halles. She would be waiting for me there. “If I’m not there, just act French, and wait.”

“How do I act French?”

“Smoke a lot. Don’t look people in the eyes. Don’t smile at anyone, and walk like you know exactly where you are going. Act like you are invincible. No one will mess with you then.”

            Like I said, she was brilliant. I have used that French walk in every city I have been to since- New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Chicago, Rome, Athens, Venice, Nice. No one messes with you when you walk like a French woman.

            When I got on the plane, I sat next to an old French man. “Who is he?” he asked me. “Excuse me?” I asked, bewildered. “Beautiful girl, alone, flying to Paris- there must be a man waiting for you,” he replied. I explained to him about Emily. He asked me if I spoke French. “No, not really,” I said as familiar shame crept up my cheeks. He just laughed. “What do you call someone who speaks three languages?” he asked. “Trilingual?”  “Yes, yes- and what do you call someone who speaks two languages?” “Bilingual?” He laughed again. “And what do you call someone who only speaks one language?” I told him I didn’t know. “American!” he replied. I decided he was the nicest French person I had ever met. I didn’t explain to him that I had taken two years of German and three years of Spanish in college. I was afraid I would offend him because I hadn’t taken French.  That man turned out to be another guardian angel. He and his son helped me with my luggage and accompanied me on the train to Chatelet Les Halles to meet Emily. She was sitting on a bench wearing a black dress and the biggest pair of black sunglasses I had ever seen in my life. I was so relieved to see her.

         This trip to Paris was the total opposite of the one before. With Emily, everything was easy. She spoke for me, she showed me where to go, and nothing we did was touristy.
 

We went shopping in vintage stores and flea markets, bought wine in tiny wine shops, ate food in sidewalk cafes, and went out in hip districts where the Parisians play at night. It was wonderful. 

We spent two nights there and then went to the sleepy, beautiful town, Le Mans (more on Le Mans to be written later), where she was going to college. We cooked food at people’s houses, watched American movies overdubbed into French, played Frisbee, listened to French rap, shopped in local markets, and rode our bikes through the cobblestone streets. It was this second round in France that made me fall in love with all things French. 

When I came back to Arkansas, I enrolled in a French class- determined to learn this poetic language.


To be continued...