Paris, I ♥ You But You're Bringing Me Down

I'm reading, Paris I ♥ You But You're Bringing Me Down by Rosecrans Baldwin - another book of Paris vignettes (much longer) of his 18 month stay working in a Champs-Elysees ad agency - a different sort of love story.

'One year, when I was fourteen, my parents took me and my little sister, Leslie, for a week's vacation in Paris. Our hotel, near Place Saint Sulpice, was miniscule.'

'That's when I began drinking coffee.
I was hung up on every little thing. I LOVED Paris, and felt straightaway at home. Not to be grandiose, but it seemed like the city had been waiting for me.'

An opportunity comes up for Baldwin to be a copywriter years later and he jumps at it. He comes back with his wife, Rachel and they adjust to a very different Paris from the one of his boyhood.

Still there's much to love.

'The air was adhesive, hot and fragrant, and we walked the streets up and down and saw everything.'

But life at the office/bureau is a bumpier ride - full of mishaps, misunderstandings, malapropisms.

Have you seen the video, What Parisians say at the office?

'Typically, coworkers preferred takeout, bringing food back to the canteen, where they ate in groups. Almost no one ate alone...

But eating at your desk was not cool...

Olivier complained,Why couldn't I eat in the canteen like a normal person?'

'For months, I'd feel like an infant wandering into rooms that filled with tension the moment I appeared:
What is the giant baby doing here?

A pattern emerged: whenever, wherever, I would glue my foot to the roof of my mouth.'

'There was a 'pot', an office party, organized for an employee who was leaving us...
I saw Keith, a Scottish copywriter I'd come to know...and started threading my way toward him. Then I slipped in a puddle and went down in a split, and knocked a small cake off a bench while my drink shot out of my hand and exploded on the feet of Guy, the guy in whose honor we'd gathered...

I picked myself up and shrugged. I knew just what to say to him, because nothing else fit:
"C'est la vie."

There you have it, that's life in Paris for us bumblers, what could we do?'

'Tactics to learn French via shock immersion:

Accept and make telephone calls.

Do this despite a crippling fear of conducting phone calls in French, terror so real you begin to experience it in nightmares...

Still, do it, call strangers.

Answer telemarketing calls...

Keep a notebook in your pocket for words and phrases you don't recognize, so later you can ask your boss or other friendly Parisians to define them for you.

For example:
Ca m'enerve. (That annoys me.)

C'est classe. (That's classy.)

Deguelasse! (That's disgusting!)'

'Finally, when you are unable to indicate what you want, explain what you do not want.
For example, say you desire a coke. Specifically a can of Coke, because the can version is colder than the bottle, in your opinion...And you don't know the word for "can."
So request un Coca, but specifically un Coca qui n'est pas dans un bouteille.'

Baldwin's book fills you in on the day-to-day quotidien details that make living in a foreign culture so unforgiving. He can also knock your socks off describing a park or the weather.
Listen to him on NPR here.

'Early autumn in Paris was temperate and dry. My lunch park, a rolling grassy lawn in the eighth arrondissement, was about an acre in size, engraved by gravel paths. Paris was dotted with tiny parks such as this one, and lunchtimes were crowded with office workers picnicking, students smoking and chatting...'

'On the Metro ride home from the park, Rachel and I composed a list of what we loved about living in Paris:
Loved living within walking distance of most everything that made Paris great.

Loved Parisians' way of lingering, and how commonplace sensuality was a habit in exchanges.

We loved the everyday beauty of Paris, its tidy deterioration.