Ah, Paris in zee springtime, when young people's thoughts turn to zee, how do you say, rioting? Spent the weekend in Paris, where we saw few signs of the protests whose main point was, "We're young and unemployed, but we don't like laws that would make it easier to fire us if we ever got jobs." Some stores were closed to avoid looting (or perhaps because the employees were off looting other stores), there were police and soldiers milling around, and we could see the remnants of temporary barricades used to hem protesters in, but otherwise, Paris was Paris. We tried to stage a few riots and protests ourselves. Not very effective, but amusing, nonetheless.
The French dating scene is bizarre. My friend who lives in Paris brought his French friend out, whom I'll call Jean. Jean has been dating two girls "exclusively" at the same time for a year. They have the same name, which is the feminine form of his name, so I'll call them Jeanne One and Jeanne Two. About eight months ago, they found out about each other, but Jean told each of them that he had broken things off with the other. Jean brought Jeanne Two out, and it was strange, hanging out with Jean and Jeanne Two, and knowing about Jeanne One. Valentine's Day must have been awkward, and he's trying to figure out what to do about his upcoming anniversaries, since he started dating them at the same time. How strange, to date two people who share the same name, which is almost the same as yours.
The French know way more about wine than the rest of us, but there are ways to catch up. One way is to buy a special wine-tasting book with a set of about 40 vials of scents that commonly show up in wine, so that after some self-study, you can look very knowledgeable when you proclaim that a certain wine is "full-bodied with a lot of fruit, a hint of leather, and a slight aftertaste of pepper." I played around with one of these sets once, sniffing at poire, litchi, bois, and brioche (pear, lychee, wood, and bread roll), all of which seemed as if they might show up in a fine wine, then picked up pipi de chat (helpfully translated as "cat piss"). My guess is that if a wine reminds you of pipi de chat, it's probably in a screw-top bottle in a brown bag, and it's not really a wine-tasting kind of situation.
I've grown accustomed to the fact that Switzerland shuts down on Sunday. When I visit big cities, however, I still expect things to be open. Maybe not to the extent that things are open in New York, where you can walk down the street at any hour of any day and find places that are open, but at least to the extent that you could go shopping on the weekend. Sunday afternoon, I wanted to do some aimless shopping: clothes, books, random doodads, I had no real goal, so any stores would have sufficed. I could only find one bookstore (run by a Brit) and one clothing store that were open. Everything else was closed. How can stores in a big city close on Sunday? Do they realize that tourists, who make up a large percentage of the weekend population, are especially careless with their cash? Are they too busy protesting and rioting to care?
On the way back, we left for the Paris airport over two hours before our flight. I sometimes forget that in the rest of the world, you have to leave for the airport more than an hour before take-off. Later, on the train from the Zurich airport back into town, there was a children's car with a slide and a jungle gym, both shaped like dinosaurs, and some other dinosaur-related games. They were sized more for 7-year-olds than for 27-year olds, but that didn't stop my friends and me from playing on them. It was the first time I have ever climbed on a dinosaur while taking the train, and I'm pretty sure that few, if any of you have done the same.
The French dating scene is bizarre. My friend who lives in Paris brought his French friend out, whom I'll call Jean. Jean has been dating two girls "exclusively" at the same time for a year. They have the same name, which is the feminine form of his name, so I'll call them Jeanne One and Jeanne Two. About eight months ago, they found out about each other, but Jean told each of them that he had broken things off with the other. Jean brought Jeanne Two out, and it was strange, hanging out with Jean and Jeanne Two, and knowing about Jeanne One. Valentine's Day must have been awkward, and he's trying to figure out what to do about his upcoming anniversaries, since he started dating them at the same time. How strange, to date two people who share the same name, which is almost the same as yours.
The French know way more about wine than the rest of us, but there are ways to catch up. One way is to buy a special wine-tasting book with a set of about 40 vials of scents that commonly show up in wine, so that after some self-study, you can look very knowledgeable when you proclaim that a certain wine is "full-bodied with a lot of fruit, a hint of leather, and a slight aftertaste of pepper." I played around with one of these sets once, sniffing at poire, litchi, bois, and brioche (pear, lychee, wood, and bread roll), all of which seemed as if they might show up in a fine wine, then picked up pipi de chat (helpfully translated as "cat piss"). My guess is that if a wine reminds you of pipi de chat, it's probably in a screw-top bottle in a brown bag, and it's not really a wine-tasting kind of situation.
I've grown accustomed to the fact that Switzerland shuts down on Sunday. When I visit big cities, however, I still expect things to be open. Maybe not to the extent that things are open in New York, where you can walk down the street at any hour of any day and find places that are open, but at least to the extent that you could go shopping on the weekend. Sunday afternoon, I wanted to do some aimless shopping: clothes, books, random doodads, I had no real goal, so any stores would have sufficed. I could only find one bookstore (run by a Brit) and one clothing store that were open. Everything else was closed. How can stores in a big city close on Sunday? Do they realize that tourists, who make up a large percentage of the weekend population, are especially careless with their cash? Are they too busy protesting and rioting to care?
On the way back, we left for the Paris airport over two hours before our flight. I sometimes forget that in the rest of the world, you have to leave for the airport more than an hour before take-off. Later, on the train from the Zurich airport back into town, there was a children's car with a slide and a jungle gym, both shaped like dinosaurs, and some other dinosaur-related games. They were sized more for 7-year-olds than for 27-year olds, but that didn't stop my friends and me from playing on them. It was the first time I have ever climbed on a dinosaur while taking the train, and I'm pretty sure that few, if any of you have done the same.
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