Observations Aléatoires

Today (Sunday, September 27^th) was an interesting day in Paris. It was declared as “Paris sans voiture” (Paris without cars) day, with the encouragement to get out and walk or ride bikes without worrying about vehicle traffic. I walked to the Arc de Triomphe so that I could walk down the Champs Élysées to the Louvre. This boulevard (Champs Élysées) is 8 lanes wide, and at about the cross street of rue Balzac the entire Champs Élysées was closed for pedestrian and bicycle traffic only. There were 10,000’s of people out walking the Champs Élysées – it was awesome; I walked down the middle of the boulevard the entire way. The photograph below is on Champs Élysées facing towards the Arc de Triomphe (I actually walked the opposite way – I did not take this photograph I borrowed it from the BBC website).

 

 Paris sans voiture jour - 27 September 2015 -Champs Élysées

 

 

Below are just random comments on some observations I’ve had during my 27 days here (yikes, I’ve almost been here a month – on one hand it’s like where did time fly, on the other it’s like I’ve lived here forever):

 

Laundry (again): D’accord (means = okay) I didn’t want to make my last post about laundry (clothes – not money) any longer than it was but I always knew I’d be writing a part 2 and here it is …. Donc (means = so; I’m subtly teaching you French – ha!) in my research for moving here I had read that the French iron their sheets and of course my reaction to that was they’ve got to be out of their friggin’ minds, this IS the 21^st century …. And then when I signed my lease for the apartment, part of the things required when vacating is that the sheets must be IRONED (their capitalization, I’m just repeating what the contract stated) … and again I thought, this is really weird who in bloody-hell does that (see, I’m becoming multi-lingual ….) therefore I decided that there was no way on God’s green earth (or should that saying be changed to God's brown earth?) that I’d be ironing sheets, until the time I vacate my apartment …. Ha! The joke was on me …. When I had made that decision I hadn’t yet met my washer/dryer (aka: “the monster”) …. I’m guessing because of the way the monster works (as mentioned in my previous post) in sucking out the water to dry clothes – well my tea towels (kitchen towels) and my sheets came out all wadded together and no amount of smoothing them with my hands did any good at trying to push out the wrinkles ….. so guess what I now do ….yep you got that right, I feel like a friggin’ scullery maid from Downton Abbey (okay, I know that a scullery maid was in the kitchen but I like the sound of it and I don’t know what the maid who did the laundry was called) and I too now iron my tea towels, duvet and pillow cases, and I have to admit ironed sheets feel wonderful when you climb into them for the first time!

Paying in cash: In 1360 the French monetary system was started with what they called the Franc, which stayed the countries monetary unit (with a few updates over the centuries) until 2002 when the Euro bills and coins were introduced and the Franc was retired during a two month time period. The Euro, which I’m sure you know, is the monetary unit used by those countries in the EU (European Union) so that a like money is used by all those countries (but a country does not have to change to the Euro to be in the EU – a prime example of that is England). Using the Euro is quite simple because it’s just like the US monetary system – we have 100 pennies (.01 cents) to the dollar, the Euro is 100 cents (.01 cents) to the euro. Donc (so), the bills are: 500 euro, 200 euro, 100 euro, 50 euro, 20 euro, 10 euro, and 5 euro (notice there is not a 1 euro bill) …. The coins are: 2 euro (would be like a 2 dollar bill in the US), 1 euro (like a 1 dollar bill in the US or a dollar coin), .50 cent euro, .20 cent euro, .10 cent euro, .05 cent euro, .02 cent euro and .01 cent euro …. (Warning alert – the following involves math) … Now, the reason I bring this up is don’t even think of trying to do creative thinking when paying for something – let me explain: Si (means = if) I purchased something in the US for $1.77 I most likely would give them two $1.00 bills and two pennies ($2.02) so that I was given back .25 cents ….. makes sense, oui? Oh good lord, don’t even try to do that with a French cashier – I had such a purchase for 1,77 euro and gave the cashier a 2 euro coin and two .01 cent euros (2,02 euros – in Europe a comma is used to signify the place holder for the cents to follow and as the number gets bigger – ie: 10,000.00 US – the period is used – ie: 10.000,00 euro) thinking that the cashier would give me back .20 cent euro and .5 cent euro … Oh my God, you’d think that I had green skin and two little antenna sticking out of the top of my head … the cashier looked at me with a shocked look on his face, pushed the two .01 cent euros back at me and then proceeded to give me one .20 cent euro and three .01 cent euros ….. I learned my lesson, just give them whatever is closest to the dollar by rounding up and let them give me back the change … and dang it, those little .01 cent euros are small little buggers! (Aimee L. – you and your cash register brain would go batty over here!)

Sunglasses: I’ve noticed that generally French people don’t wear sunglasses. Particularly interesting because there are glasses shops (prescription) everywhere! Although today in that mass of people there were a lot of sunglass wearers - so maybe they only wear sunglasses on the weekends because they sure don't wear them during the week!

Homeless: Something I never saw in Chula Vista or San Diego – but it seems almost every homeless person here has a puppy. They either sit on the sidewalk or lay on the side walk with their puppy strategically placed so that you see it. I’m of two minds – (the compassionate me) that everybody needs somebody/thing (ie: animal) to love and I’m glad that they have the ability to do that … my other mind (the cynical me, which I’m afraid is more where I’m leaning) is that it is nothing but a ‘sales ploy’ – to make people seeing the puppies think ‘ooh, how does that puppy get it’s food, I’ll give him some money to make sure the puppy doesn’t suffer’ and that just keeps the circle going round and round – put out puppy, get money …. And then I wonder, what in the heck happens once the puppy grows into a dog? (I have yet to see a grown dog with a homeless person, only puppies)… Does it get abandoned and then another puppy is procured to wrench at people’s hearts?

 

Et (means = and) then I came up with a third option – (this is just me thinking crazy) that the pet shops use the homeless people to sell their dogs – when somebody sees a puppy with a homeless person that they want to buy the dog from them to “give it a good home” so it is sold, with the homeless person getting a percentage of the money, and another puppy to sell [please note, I have absolutely no evidence of this – as a matter of fact I’ve never even seen a pet shop in Paris, this is just my mind wandering and conjuring up scenarios] … but something interesting just hit the news (saw it posted on Facebook, so you know it’s a hot topic … LOL) … in Lille, France there was just an incident where an animal rights activist forcibly took a puppy away from a homeless person which has raised the ire of the masses in France …. It was caught on video (of course) and the homeless man is crying for his dog …. I don’t know if that was the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do …

Food: It took me about a week but it finally dawned on me that I haven’t seen any celery …. D’accord (okay), a ‘grape’ in French is a ‘raisin’ … and a ‘raisin’ in French is ‘raisin sec’ (dried raisin) … an ‘apple’ in French is a ‘pomme’ … and a ‘potato’ in French is a ‘pomme de terre’ (apple of the earth) ….. et (and) I always thought that eating prunes was for old people but apparently I’ve been eating them all my life – a ‘plum’ in French is a ‘prune rouge’ (red prune) … and a ‘prune’ in French is ‘pruneau’ …. Just a little play on words here ….

Ainsi, quelques-uns de mes observations à ce jour