Going native :: 06:08 PM :: easyjetsetter

Hexagon I ran some errands this afternoon. I had bought my train ticket to the Netherlands online and needed to pop down to the Gare du Nord to pick it up and pay for it, I needed a new plug for the bath and I wanted to join my local library (the easiest administrative task I have ever performed in France.) On the way back I got some more devil pudding, aka danette dark chocolate extra noir, so called for the black and red pot it comes in and my inability to stop at just one.

These errands, altogether, took me one hour and fifteen minutes. Considering that when I first got here, between two screwdrivers that didn't fit the screws on the light's cover and the lack of screw-in 60watt bulbs in a 100 meter radius, it took me an hour to change a lightbulb, I feel we have made progress. Of course, the bath plug is too small, and I have to go back to the hardware store and get a wider one (11 euros!!!) but that is not the point.

The key, I feel, is knowing the bonnes addresses for what you need to do. You cannot do this until you have tried several different places that purport to provide the service you are after. There are plenty of places that have signs outside saying that they are keycutters, internet cafes, or hardware stores.

Do not believe them. They are (mostly) lying. Sure, they might sit in their shop all day, but often, they do not do what they claim to. Or, to be more precise, what you need them to do. A street may have a profusion of philatelists, say, but only one or two will be any bloody good. It is not up to them to win your business by doing their job. It is up to you to find the right one.

This is your bonne addresse. Once you become a regular, chat to the proprietor and buy things there they will start giving you discounts, keeping the best things for you and whispering rude things to you about other customers. I have a bunch of these places in my neighborhood now, and on sunny days when people stand in the doors of their shops I get nods and smiles (yes! In Paris!) as I go by. One shopkeeper presses cans of free mango juice in my hands every time I go in.

Finally, the other day I was drinking tea with a French friend, who made an exclamation as I removed the teabag from my cup. I froze, believing I had yet again broken another social taboo.

"Show me how to do that!"

"Do what?"

"THAT with your teabag and the spoon, the way you squeeze the water out. I've always wondered how to get the teabag out of the cup in a more elegant way!"

Yes, dear readers, a French person considers me "elegant." It's official, between the nods and the smiles and the "elegant," I am practically French.