Chapter 2: Paris(ish)

Lesson #1: French elevator doors do not reopen if you attempt to walk through them as they are closing.
Lesson #2: It is tough to play off an embarrassing incident in front of a stranger if you don’t speak their language. You can’t say ‘Holy cow, guess it didn’t see me, huh?’
Lesson #3: If you are a large American man who got your entire body violently smashed in an elevator door while trying to get on, then squeezed through to maniacally say ‘Bonjour!’ to the French woman onboard, you will not make a new friend on that elevator.

On June 21, Rachel and I flew from Charleston, SC to Paris via JFK. Everything we owned was packed into two top-of-the-line 90-liter Osprey travel bags each costing approximately as much as six years of tuition at Cornell. Our destination was Le Perreux-sur-Marne, France, an eastern suburb of Paris whose name translates to “The Chicken of The Sea”. (Or maybe that’s just the tuna fish slogan, I’m not sure.)

Anyway, it’s on a river. The skies were slate-grey and the temperature was in the 60s, a welcome respite from the heat and humidity of South Carolina.

The French have a reputation for being a bit snooty with respect to their language, so the best method is to just speak terrible French until they get so frustrated that they switch to English. This is especially effective when speaking loudly with a redneck accent: “JAY VOO-DRAY UN BEER”.

Many Europeans in the big cities speak at least passable English. While visiting Munich for Oktoberfest several years ago, my college buddies and I realized that they couldn’t understand us when we switched to a hard Deliverance-style twang. So whenever we were sitting at the communal beer tent tables and wanted to speak privately, we could: “Y’all wan git sumda et?” “Yup wur stervin.”

Back to Paris. Rachel and I spent the next few days buying baguettes and cheese and eating them on the balcony of our well-appointed AirBnb.

But everyday life in France isn’t just eating Brie and baguettes on your balcony! It’s also eating Brie and baguettes at your kitchen table, eating Brie and baguettes on your couch, and occasionally even maybe eating Gorgonzola and crackers in bed. It’s a rich tapestry of experiences, this life.

We’d been to Paris years before and saw the famous sights, so our goal this time was to avoid touristy things and try to embed ourselves in everyday French life, for which our small suburb was an excellent location. We went to a local brewery, bakery, and even saw a veterinarian for Lily’s EU Pet Passport. (Watching a non-English-speaking vet receptionist and Rachel trying to mime “rabies vaccine” and “microchip” to each other was especially entertaining for me, but my wife may have other thoughts.)

We went into downtown Paris once, to tour the Catacombs, underground ossuaries in the old limestone quarries under the city which hold the desiccated remains of more than six million people.

Spooky.

We took time to see how work was going on the renovation of the Notre Dame…

…and took the obligatory tourist photo looking out over the Seine.

Our original plan was to leave Paris after a week and spend a few weeks in Normandy, near the English Channel crossing that we were sure we’d need to take shortly. However, COVID cases in the UK began to tick upward, and we realized that we wouldn’t be dining on tea and crumpets any time soon. About this time, I got an email from my uncle who lives in Milan, asking us if we wanted to meet him in Florence for a few days. Yes please.

We again explained the itinerary change to Lily, who nodded sagely and burped her approval.

So we packed our bags and said goodbye to our little Parisian AirBnb. Now if only the bruises from that damn elevator door would heal.