First Day in Paris according to Sevak

Yes, I know this might be a shocker to those who read this blog, that this post is published by me (Sevak). It will especially be a shocker to Chrissie when she wakes up tomorrow morning only to find out that I published this without having her edit it. But, I thought I would try anyway.

Chrissie is tired and passed out on the bed; I am mapping out our day tomorrow. My first impressions of France is that it seems a lot more technologically savvy than the US, even supermarket price tags are electronically updated in this little town of Colombes. And the Courtyard Hotel is a bit fancier in its design and European style than the ones in the US. I had never known that toilets have a variety of flushes; I guess one from the bottom and the one from the top, pick your choice. And especially thank goodness for the very nice weight room facility with its state of the art treadmills and weight machines, much cleaner and nicer than any I have used before.

Chrissie and I have dreamt of coming to France and eating French food at a little French café. But after our 7 hour overnight, brutal, sleepless flight from Chicago to Paris, followed by rather a very nice French taxi driver who, avoiding traffic, cut through the backstreets of Paris, bringing us all the way to a Paris suburb, known as Colombe; we crushed into our bedroom and without even thinking of doing anything else fell on our bed and slept for over three hours. I woke up at 5 pm, Paris time, from Chrissie nudging me and telling me that its time to get some dinner and see the city. So we went on a little walk, and instead of finding a French café we dined at a little Turkish-Kurdish restaurant, eating a meat-lovers paradise sandwich stuffed with pork, maybe beef and who knows what other kinds of meat. Ahh, and how I have missed the “Fanta” orange drinks from my childhood, that in spite of my soda diet, I had to order it to remind me of the times when my brother and I would run around the open markets in Armenia trying to convince my mom to give us 70 drams for a bottle of Fanta.

Today I also learned that the French cashiers will not mind holding the long line of people waiting to check out their dinner and finally get home, simply because two tourists from California did not know the fact that they should have weighted the fruits before checking it out. You would think with all this technology saviness the cashier desk would include a little fruit and vegetable scale like they do in the United States, but why would an employee bother to scale your fruit if you can do it yourself. After all, it is much nicer to hang out with your co-cashier whose chair is so surprisingly cramped right next to yours in a very tiny space. Personal space and perception of time seem to be far less important than the social interactions between workers and customers. And even though almost everyone uses credit cards, they do not have the same intent of speed as they do in the US. Surprisingly however, things seem to get done rather quickly and efficiently, and lines move extremely fast (I would say as fast if not faster than they do in the US) despite the conversation friendliness of the workers and the people. And it is nothing like the slow paced, unimportant perception of time managed in central Americas or even in the Marshall Islands.

So far, France, this socialist country, disguised under the name of democracy seems to have a very attractive and rather successful face.