Michelle’s travel journal

Paris, France

 

Tom, my sweetheart, my other half, had arranged for a romantic holiday in France, starting in Paris.   We had no set itinerary.  True lovers that we are, we were going to linger over coffee and croissants, stroll aimlessly and let the holiday unfold without Michelin guides and tourist maps.

 

First of course, we had to get to our hotel from the airport.  Jet lagged from the trip across the ocean, I must have dozed in the taxi, only to open my eyes as we neared the Arc de Triumph.  I closed them tightly again and prayed to St. Joan, patron saint of the Arc and flaming deaths, because it seemed to me that there were 12 lanes of traffic, with each driver on a mission to drive faster than the driver beside him.  We could not complain, as some tourists do, that our driver was taking a circuitous route—he followed his nose in a straight-line diagonally across the lanes, cutting an almost surgical swath to our small hotel. 

 

Tom entered and engaged the clerk in the registration process. 

 

Tom grew up in Quebec—Canada’s Belle Province, home of French language police and separatism.  His French is more fluent than mine, of course, bien sur, how could it be other than this?  Mine was a fine amalgam of faded high school drills overlaid with more recent fine dining experiences.  So naturally, I left the registration to him.  On joining him at reception though after a time, it became obvious that he needed some assistance.  The clerk seemed to be having some trouble.

 

Yes, Tom was born in a French speaking region, but his greatest facility for the French language came from his total lack of self-consciousness in speaking it badly.  He was Anglo through and through, and most of his French skills came from his student days when he worked on a summer building project with Italian construction workers. 

 

And so, Tom and I worked as a translation team:  English to Franglais, Franglais to Parisian French.  (My high school teachers had been Parisian trained.)  Even though I had very little vocabulary at my recall, once reminded of the words by Tom, I could impeccably and imperiously accomplish the task at hand.  Armed with a room key and instructions about breakfast the next morning we went exploring.

 

Imagine my surprise on re-entering the lobby, later the next morning, and overhearing a phone conversation, with the same clerk.  He spoke English very clearly, with only a hint of an accent.  Welsh accent that is. 

 

We engaged him in conversation after that and asked why he let us Babel along.  His reply:  “Actually, I think you were doing rather well.”  Thus cheered, we headed out for more adventures.

 

And so that afternoon, we wandered through some of the shopping streets.  A fitting souvenir of our trip was in sight.  We passed a small lingerie shop.

 

Yes, perfume would have been easier.  It wasn’t so much that I thought that I couldn’t get what I wanted without Tom’s French skills, but I was metric impaired.  What was the metric equivalent of 34B?  Let’s see, it is roughly 34 inches times 2.54 centimetres to the inch.  Vite, vite.  Quickly.   En Francais.  I know it is less than 90 centimetres, and more than 80—but that describes the vast majority of womankind. 

 

I am pained to admit that Tom was no help.  He looked at me like a deer in the headlights and retreated to some male safe spot outside while I made my purchases.

 

Tom’s travel journal

I had a large vocabulary from growing up in Montreal, and French didn’t seem too hard to learn…  Le weekend, le hamburgois, le two-four, le steady-job . 

As well, I had a couple of French-speaking girlfriends who helped in my education.  One was particularly intrigued by my ability to distinguish between masculine and feminine nouns—something that others have difficulty with.

 

I told her my rule:  If it has four legs (or corners) it will be feminine—and used examples like cow, chair and window (la vache, la chaise, la fenetre).  Her eyes blinked rapidly as she tried to assimilate this outrageous tidbit, only to morph into a wide-eyed stare as she struggled to come up exceptions.  

 

As for the lingerie shop, nothing had prepared me for the experience.  I told the clerk:  grande comme les oranges**  (which seemed like a respectable size) and next thing I knew I was out the door.

 

Parisians were intrigued with my accent—they guessed I was from Martinique.  I took it as a compliment.

 

** As big as oranges