Today we met my friend Wally and his girlfriend Marion in Paris for a drink. We decided to drive into the city because parking is free on Sundays and we hate having to worry about catching the last train at night (which is surprisingly early).
Well that turned out to be a big mistake. The traffic was terrible. It took us half an hour to reach the city, but another hour to crawl the gridlocked streets to Châtelet. And you can forget about parking. We wound up leaving the car in the garage, which was reasonably priced considering we were in the heart of the city.
Wally’s bar of choice was an Irish pub just steps from the front door of the Saint Eustache church (cathedral?). We met him there once on our last visit. It’s a cool place because they play English premier league “football” games. By the way, when we left, Manchester United and Arsenal were tied at nil.
It’s always good to see Wally and Marion because they speak English well and are very patient with our many questions. And we had plenty of questions. Sometimes we get off on tangents and start discussing things like the difference between “murder” and “assassinate” in French and the origin of the word “kabob”. All very important things for us to know.
The traffic out of Paris was just as painful and it has made us put further thought into where we want to live.
Grocery Shopping in France
Grocery shopping in France deserves an entry of its own.
Like I mentioned, our local grocery store is the Leader Price. It’s about a 12 minute walk away in the center of Cergy.
We had both been in grocery stores in France before, but usually only to pick up a bottle of wine or round of cheese to bring back to the states. This time we were looking for sustenance.
On our first trip we got tuna to appease the cat, cheese, pineapple juice, and yogurt. Marie-
France had told me about the extensive yogurt selection in France, and here it was in front of me: an entire aisle of yogurt. Dave walked off to find chocolate and came back to find me pacing back and forth, unable to make a choice. We finally decided on something plain, yogurt “nature”, which turned out to be plain yogurt (duh), and not very tasty stuff.On our second trip, we were more ambitious; we wanted to make dinner that night. The chicken and pasta were obvious, although we spent some time discussing a chicken-looking package that did not have the word “poulet” printed on it.
The produce was sparse, but I’m guessing that’s because everyone buys their fruits and vegetables at the local market that we seem to have missed on Saturday.
When we decided to buy a bag of salad, I combed the aisles looking for anything that resembled dressing. I wasn’t confident, because don’t the French make their own dressing? I found some kind of cream-based dressing for crudités I think, but it works.
Butter presented a similar problem that the yogurt did: how to choose? Thanks to a David Sedaris story on NPR we know how important butter is to the French. Dave finally picked up a brick “demi-sel”, which we assume means “half salted”.
Our French teacher Pauline taught us that sanitized milk will be found on a shelf, not refrigerated. Dave took another guess on this one and got “demi-créme”. Well, I can tell you now that “demi-créme” is pretty creamy. If anyone can tell us what fat free milk is called in France, please do tell.
Anyway, the only other experience of note is the checking out process. Or rather, the bagging process. The cashier sends your food down a little slide, and that’s it. If you’re not gone before she starts ringing up the next customer, she moves a little partition and the next guy’s groceries slide down the other half of her counter. We had heard that we’d need to bag our own groceries, but we had forgotten that you’re expected to bring your own bags. On our first trip we were looking around like a couple of idiots for the bags under the end of the counter. The guy behind us in line started marching off to the front corner of the store and I followed him to a stack of cardboard boxes. So we boxed our groceries that first day.
The second day we brought a few shopping bags. We’re thinking about getting one of those funny bags on wheels that you see old ladies pulling around.
Not giving out bags is a recent fashion that developped in French supermarket to « save the planet ». I guess it's more because it allow them to save money.
ReplyDeleteIt is funny to see that settling in France, you're going through the same issues I met when I first came to the US : how to find salted butter, which milk to choose and what kind of yogourt to pick up. Arrived at the cashier, I was so surprised that the clerk would pack up your stuff HIMSELF while SMILING AT YOU, which is definitely odd in France.
Remind me to teach you how to prepare your own vinaigrette. It's easy, even me can do that.
About the milk, the rule is simple :
Red top - Lait entier (full milk) : with all its cream left in the milk.
Blue top - Lait demi-écrémé : half of the cream left.
Green top - Lait écrémé : Cream-free milk.
[I let you imagine how weird it is for a French guy in the US to choose his milk when he realises that there is no color code and that there is more thant 3 kinds of milk]
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