French Parking and Dressmakers Heaven

This car is right in front of the apartment. It's parked for real and it was there all day.
Hey Sullivans, look, it's TinTin in it's original french!


I had the morning off so I planned carefully. After trotting down to the bank to open an account. Let me stop there and say some more about this account. This bank, Societe Generale, is a European bank. For a person my age a savings account is free and the carte bleue, debit card essentially, is 4 euros per month, usable anywhere in Europe. I was told this in a tiny bank not one block from the apartment I live in, in an office accessible by a lillipution spiral staircase. So after that I walked to the closest metro station and took the metro line one to Charles de Gaulle. Metro line one is for the uppities of Paris, they keep it very nice. Metro line 2 is kind of for everyone else. I was the obvious minority once I got on line 2. Suddenly there were no walls on the side of the track or voices announcing each stop and also there was suddenly a myriad of questionable french to learn from the walls. I hopped out at the fabric center of the world. I'm not kidding, this place was several blocks SOLID fabric stores. Every kind of fabric and most several stories high. I immediately bought nine yards of summer color discounts at good prices per meter. This meter thing is new for me in sewing. Of course, everything is new for me, like watching cartoon network in french dubbing.

So after speding a fair amount of time ogling all the fabric I headed back. Since I was in the mode I decided to stop at the grocery store while I was out and see if I could find something to make guacamole with. The microscopic ethnic center of the store had tortillas a few small bags of chips and chile peppers. After giving up on lmost everything but the chips and avacado I headed back. Later in the afternoon I went with A to go grocery shopping. They deliver here. It's pretty sweet. Grocery shopping is relly interesting. All the cultural food things suddenly become this huge thing. I could hardly believe the wall of cheese, it was bigger than everything else. But I'll have a good time buying things to cook. I like to grocery shop, it's not too bad when someone else is paying and delivering. After we finished A asked me if i wanted to drive her car. Her car is everything posh and european. Not only does the idea of trying to parallel park make me quake, the actual driving kind of totally seems like a nightmare. There is nothing oganised or familiar in the way these people drive. They gas and brake constantly and come within inches of bikes, pedestrians and other cars. They park with five inches of space in the back and one in front; they park on the corners, yep, right on the corner where you walk across the street; they park facing echother. Each road looks like one way street and the lines between two directions of traffic are white just like the lines between two lanes. And lanes, they don't care about lanes, who uses lanes? So I'm little worried about all that loud and pushy driving. I'm anything but loud nd pushy when it comes to driving.

One thing about buying things is that all you have to know is this, "oui, merci. Au revoir." And numbers, fortunatly I know numbers, I even had to correct someone who gave me 12 extra euros for change. So now my top priority is a french press. As much as I like plain espresso a substantial cup of good coffee can't really be replaced.


Here's one funny little thing about the french. They don't learn to type so there is this universal two finger picking. It's everywhere, even the receptionist at the bank. I'm a terrible typist but here I kind of look like a keyboard superstar.