Things overheard/seen in Paris. Day one:
- a French girl wearing flip flops!
- An American tourist get knocked off his Velib after being mowed down by a Japanese tourist, also on a Velib.
- a French man totally kitted out in full Breton regalia: slightly, angled beret and everything.
- a riot that wasn't quite a riot at the Forum des Halles. Either this is a good measure of French racism or I completely missed something. There was a group of about 25 black men - it sort of looked like two rival groups winding each other up - but I didn't stop long enough to look. Walking past, there must have been about 20 police vans and the police easily outnumbered the men 3 to 1. I've never seen more police in one place in my life. I still don't know what was going on.
- The Pont des Arts turned into a giant picnic bench.
- the inside of the beautiful reading room at the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal
- An American tourist standing outside the Notre Dame approached by a scammer. When the scammer asked the tourist if he spoke any Enlish, his immediate reply was, 'a little.' How true!
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1 comment:
I like the way French translations of American writing--Laure Verniere's translation of Plath's Ariel, for example--say "traduit de l'americain" rather than "traduit de l'anglais." As Henry Higgins observed, we Americans haven't spoken English in years.
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