During my first few weeks here in Paris, I naturally assumed that the French word embrasser meant “to hug”. When I discovered it actually means “to kiss”, my mind raced back to all the times I had misused the term, and I prayed I would never see those people again. In fact, “to hug” in French is serrer dans les bras, which literally translates as “to squeeze in one’s arms”. It sounds a bit cold and clinical, which pretty much sums up how French people react when I try to hug them. Parisians prefer to turn cheeks and make fake kissing sounds. In North America that’s considered pretentious.
To further confuse things, the French word for “kiss” is baiser, which also means—pardon my French—“to f**k”. Either these people are deliberately trying to baiser with my mind or they don’t see a difference between kissing and boinking. Considering this is the land of “French kissing”, I’m leaning toward the latter. If jamming your tongue down someone’s throat isn’t a precursor to sex, I don’t know what is. To be safe I avoid using these words altogether.
Parisians aren’t big on gratuitous smiles either. As a hotelier, smiling is one of the basic tools of my profession. As a Canadian, smiling is how I try to make people like me. When I first arrived here I didn’t have any friends, so I smiled a lot. Since then I’ve learned that Parisians perceive smiling at strangers as a bit desperate. It’s not that they’re unfriendly, they just reserve smiles for people they know and like.
If you want to know who the tourists are in Paris—not that it requires a PhD in anthropology to spot them—just look for the people in shorts. Because I want to fit in, I wear pants almost exclusively, which means I’m often glistening with sweat and panting. I’m still trying to find a park in this city where I can suntan shirtless without feeling buck naked. Sometimes I long for my days in Rio, where men feel perfectly comfortable walking the streets in a thong.
During summertime, like other Vancouverites, I love to get outside and run, rollerblade, play tennis, hike the Grouse Grind, and ribbon dance on the beach. In Paris the favoured activity seems to be sitting in cafés, smoking and being cynical. At first I felt so exercise-deprived I didn’t think I could live here. Now I just drink wine in cafés and look back on my days of fanatical exercise with cynicism. And I’ve never felt happier or more at peace.
Part of the cafe culture here involves waiting. Once waiters get around to taking your order, they either disappear and never come back or avoid eye contact at all costs. Recently, I adopted a tactic my father uses at home when he gets tired of waiting for the bill: it’s amazing how quickly a server will resurface when you just get up and head for the exit. A local woman explained to me that North Americans come to Paris expecting servers to behave like back home: befriending us, fussing over our table, swinging by every three minutes to offer more drinks and to update us on boyfriend troubles. To the French this style of service is overly familiar and intrusive. Here waiters leave patrons alone, knowing they’ll be summoned when needed. Personally, I think the difference is more related to tipping practices. In North America servers have to hustle for tips. Here it’s included, so why hurry?
While I was lunching with friends at Les Deux Magots in St. Germain-des-Prés, a former haunt of Hemingway, de Beauvoir and Sartre, our waiter marched up to our table and accused me of stealing the menu. It turned out I had accidentally placed it in my bag along with some brochures I had been thumbing through. I thought it was funny, but the waiter was not amused, and my friends were mortified. I guess I’m not the first patron to try to run off with memorabilia.
One question comes up regularly. “Why are zee Americans so fat?” French people ask me as they stuff another wedge of bread into their mouth. Given the volumes of cheese and pastries the French eat, you’d think they’d be the heifers, but they’re just a bit squishy. I never know how to respond, so I wave away their cigarette smoke and ask them why the French smoke so much.
While visiting the Picasso Museum, I was surprised to see that some of Picasso’s early work is classic and realist, no grossly distorted body parts or eyes stuck to breasts. I’ve always been a bit suspicious of Picasso, thinking he might be some no-talent who had fooled the world into thinking he was a genius. But these pieces were brilliant. It taught me a lesson: before you can break the rules, you have to understand them. That night, I pulled out my French grammar book and dusted it off.
My friend Fabrice took me to visit one of his friends, and just before she answered the door he casually mentioned that she was handicappée. I braced myself for what kind of gross disfigurement I would spend the afternoon trying not to stare at. But she seemed perfectly able save for a small limp. It occurred to me her disability was mental, and my spirits soared, thinking our French might be at the same level. But she spoke French as rapidly and incoherently as everyone else here. After we left, I asked Fabrice what exactly was handicappée about her, and he said she had sprained her ankle. Apparently the term can refer to a long-term disability or a temporary injury. The French are so dramatic.
After four magnificent months in Paris, I have fallen in love with the city and its people. Living in Paris is like living in a massive museum, its architecture, history and culture lovingly presevered. Unfortunately, it’s time to move on. Next week I’m heading to Madrid, with a stopover in Greece to rendezvous with my Opus friends. When I go back to Vancouver in November, I’ve decided to be one of those annoying people who returns from France with a petit French accent, compares everything disparagingly to “Paree”, and inserts French words into English text, bien sûr. I’ll insist on air-kissing everyone, and while they’re out running marathons I’ll be drinking wine in cafés and being cynical. One thing I won’t mess with, however, is Vancouverites’ tendency to wear shorts year-round. Now that’s a tradition worth preserving.
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