Bordeaux and Palmiers

Although we’re all perfectly aware somewhere in our heads that Paris is a city, it’s somehow difficult to imagine that the Paris we see in movies, the Paris of cafés, cigarettes, romantic walks along the Seine… could actually be a thriving metropolis. Let me tell you, when you first get settled in in Paris and you suddenly realize that the people who work at the café on your corner couldn’t care less what your name is, much less what your regular order is, you start to wonder if places like that exist anywhere outside of movies. Places with quirky characters with names like Jean-Paul who smoke Gauloises and drink Pastis.

I found one.

Granted, I didn’t find him in Paris, but in a tiny town in Normandy. He was amused with my French accent, a mix of traditional Parisian school French and some of the Provençal twang I had picked up in my four months in Cannes. We could barely understand him, but as he watched us work our way through our Pastis, a memory of our days in the South, he and his friends came up with an idea.

Though we couldn’t understand one another, this gruff ouvrier from the North bought us a pitcher of sweet white wine and stood across from our table, at the bar, to talk for awhile. He even volunteered to strike a pose for a photo, though I doubt he knew that he would be appearing on my blog, or even has any idea what a blog really is.

When he and his friends left, my friends and I giggled over the rest of our wine, trying to mimic the noises we’d heard coming from his throat and chest, noises that someone, somewhere must have understood to be French, but that we just heard as sound. I don’t think I fully appreciated the gift he gave me, this story, this memory, this true reflection of the stereotypical France we see in the movies, until now.

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