Paris is a Rip-Off
and Parisians are Horrible

At the time, I didn't know anything about Paris, except that everybody said that the place was a rip-off and that Parisians were horrible. That's what everybody said in those days.

Up to that time, my entire French experience had been four years of failure in high school French, and a ride through France in 1964 with an overnight in Lyon - arrived after dark and left before dawn - on a Europabus running from Barcelona to Munich. Other than that, I had crossed France several times at 10,000 metres altitude, but France was always covered by cloud.

This is how it happened. My wife and I were frying on the Costa del Sol in September of '75, and we were idly casting about for an alternate residence to Hamburg. We were doing this because we were well-fixed there, but frankly, the future there looked a bit - boring. To be truthful, Hamburg is not at all boring - far from it, heh, heh - so I guess we had plain old itchy feet.

We went through the major alternatives; the great cities of Europe, and after muchos vinos tintos blancos vodkas con gas and a considerable number of appertivos diversos - every one of these magnificent cities was eliminated and Paris was left. Sounds a bit like last choice doesn't it?

But, really, there was no other possible choice.

It turned out that my wife knew a guy who lived in Paris, and had three colleagues at work who were French. The three colleagues had all lived so long in Hamburg, that they knew little of practical value about Paris. The guy who lived there, paid us a visit after our return from Spain - and painted a pretty grim picture of the place. We hadn't quit our jobs then, but this 'grim picture' was a bit dubious, because this guy did live there and had been doing so for ten years. So, he was a pessimist, that's all. And besides, there was no other choice - it was Paris or nothing.

So we gave in our notices, cleaned up the administrative books, had our going-away parties - these are mighty affairs in Hamburg! - closed the sixth-floor cold-water walkup flat, packed the car, put the bikes on the roof, and drove to Paris for the first time in our lives.

We arrived at the Porte de la Chapelle on an ordinary Friday afternoon about 17:00 - right in the rush hour. We had a place to flop in Montparnasse, but the map we had did not show the existence of the Tour Montparnasse, nor what happened to the avenue du Maine. We didn't have a return ticket so we found the place - and! - parked within eyesight of it. In Paris! On a Friday evening; in Montparnasse. Only because we didn't know it couldn't be done.

Just like everybody, we'd heard stories... so we packed the bikes up four floors to another coldwater walkup flat, plus heaved up all the other bags and junk, and when we were finished - we were hot, dirty, tired and beat - and exhilarated: we were in Paris and installed! Hey now. It was waiting for us so we went out.

I had really studied the map hard. Paris is a lot bigger than Hamburg, and I had decided to keep to the Left Bank; thinking half of it maybe I could handle. My wife said St Germain was four métro stops away, so I went in the métro for the first time and was amazed to arrive at St Germain in only minutes. Then up all the stairs, and there it was: downtown Left Bank - holy moley - only minutes from where we flopped. Hey now.

We went to a tabac and I had a 'demi.' The air smelled like Gauloises inside and out; not bad. Different. The métro had smelled too, like burnt electricity. One beer was enough and we went back to Montparnasse.

There was an ordinary Bar-Café-Tabac right beside where the car was parked and we went in there to eat. We had the all-time French national dish: steak-frites. We were hungry and it was good.

The waiter brought the note and there was a mistake on it - the addition was wrong. We called him back and said there was a mistake. He got furious. Before he could explode - we pointed out he'd forgotten one of the steak-frites. He was still furious; it was the end of a long and humid day for him - for us too - and if we had not pointed out the mistake, he would have had to make it up out of his own pocket, for that is the rule. He did not say goodbye when we left.

I thought that was a bit churlish - but as the weeks passed, I noticed that in the business of the additions, I was consistently a net winner, although still fumbling with the currency, and getting the 'quatre-vingt-dix-huit' wrong in my head every time after all the time in Germany spent learning to say the numbers backwards.

So, that was what everybody was complaining about. The Parisians do lousy sums.

Outside of Paris, where people don't drop their pocket money all over the streets and ladies don't absent-mindedly leave their car keys at post-office windows, outside of Paris; the French count their money carefully and do their sums correctly. Fair, but correctly. Take my word for it.

And finally, Parisians are not horrible. They are just a little over-stressed at times; like you, like me.