So, I moved to Paris. For a
year. To live, and work, and (hopefully) learn French.
(The jury’s out on how that will
go – yesterday, my brain refused to understand a lady charging me 29 cents for
a bottle of water, to the extent that she was forced to point at my handful of
change saying loudly, ‘The yellow one, the YELLOW one,’ until I managed to hand
over the right amount.)
And so, in the interests of
trying not to forget all the important life-altering memories that I acquire
here, I think I’d better write them down. For posterity and whatnot. And to
confirm that I didn’t imagine them when I look back on all this in years to
come.
Yesterday I was up and about early
to get to an appointment with a bank manager, and successfully managed to open
a bank account! Anyone who has experienced anything to do with French banking
will know this is much easier said than done. Anyone who has heard the story of
the hoops I jumped through to try (unsuccessfully) to open an HSBC account
before I left the UK will understand I was quite nervous about the whole thing.
But it was fine. The lovely
heavily-pregnant bank adviser was super-helpful and nice and, more to the
point, spoke quite a bit of English. I even managed to say some useful things in
French, such as ‘Is it possible to have a cheque-book?’ and ‘Which ATMs am I
allowed to use?’
It was all going swimmingly.
And then I whipped out my useful
list of important vocabulary and questions from my filofax to impress her. Only
to find that I had inadvertently whipped out the wrong piece of paper. I was
brandishing one of my ‘ideas pages’ for a writing project. More specifically, I
was showing her a line that said ‘GRAPEFRUIT – forbidden if you’re on statins!
WHY?!’
Let’s hope she didn’t look too closely.
Anyway, after my triumphant bank
visit, I spent the day wandering and exploring the areas north of the Seine – Les
Halles, the Marais, Bastille and then the Louvre gardens. Lovely. I took photos
and sat in parks and did my best to be observant and good at noticing things.
Here is what I noticed:
1. French women wear a lot of
perfume. And they’re really good at sweeping past you and leaving a cloud of it
in their wake. French shops seem to pump out clouds of it from their doorways
too. Not sure how they do this.
2. Place des Vosges is my new
favourite place. It’s got lovely fountains and gardens for sitting. And I got
to watch a troupe of 8 Dutch women elaborately set up a self-timed photograph about
12 times before they got one they were happy with.
3. I saw a man clearly unhappy
with the signs that said he was not welcome to walk his dog in a particular
park. He neatly stuck labels over the crossed-out pictures of dogs on each sign
he came to, and then proudly marched in with his dog. A subtle protest.
4. The glass pyramid outside the
Louvre would make a lovely backdrop for wedding photographs. Ah, look how happy
they are, I thought, as I watched a bride and groom lovingly gazing at each
other while the photographer snapped away. And then I realised the only
spectator was a grumpy-looking assistant, and that it was some kind of
photo-shoot. Not quite so romantic.
5. Great idea to use my friend’s
Paris Lonely Planet guide to help me with my explorations. That way, I found
out about some of the more obscure things to go in search of, such as the
Défenseur du Temps (pictured), an elaborate clock where the eponymous Defender of Time
battles a crab, a phoenix and a dragon on the stroke of the hour. I was
especially excited to be there at midday, when ‘particularly lively combat’ apparently happens.
Shame that the Lonely Planet guide is now 10 years old, and the clock
doesn’t actually work anymore. Shout-out to the nice French lady who explained
this to me and the other mugs waiting patiently while a posse of local pigeons
smugly looked on.
