Je Suis Sortie en Vain!

Bien, I just returned from an amusing little excursion into la nuit de Paris. I was going to the Latin Quarter to meet some of the other Skidmore students, and when I got to the station where I was supposed to find them, I realized I had entirely run out of cell-phone minutes. No calls, no text-messages, nothing could go through. So I asked a waiter (or more likely a chef--he was wearing an apron) on his smoking break "ou est le tabac?" to find a tobacconist where I could buy more minutes. He gestured down the street and said something in French (of course) that I couldn't quite understand, but I started walking in the direction he had indicated. I got all the way down to an intersection and, while trying my phone again, heard three girls about my age speaking English. It turned out that they were students from California who were studying in Germany but had come to visit Paris while they were abroad. I asked them if they had a cellphone I could use, but when I tried to call my friend, the number didn't work. So I turned back around to a little street-grocery owned by two Cubans... or maybe they were Moroccans--I wasn't sure. Anyway, I asked them if I could use their phone, and spent quite a while trying to explain what I wanted since neither of them spoke English. Meanwhile, a very tall, very drunk looking fellow tried to join the conversation, and telling me (I think) that I could use a phone for 2 Euro. Eventually, the Cubans (this is all assumption here--I also assumed that they were brothers, don't ask me why) told me that the tabac was closed, but one of them was kind enough to lend me his cellphone, by which I was again unable to reach my friend. Also, while I was trying to call, the very drunk fellow walked around the shelves to get his bottle of wine and surprised me with a loud "bonjour!" at my left shoulder--a bit unsettling. At this point, it was after 11pm and I figured I would just head back home. There will be other Thursday evenings! Also, tomorrow is Friday, and we will certainly be going out then. 

Back on the metro, I took the 7 line (on which I saw a man who looked so strikingly like Barack Obama that I almost tripped on my way off of the train) to meet the 1 line at Chatelet Station, where, while I was walking towards the "Depart" of the 1 towards La Defence, I passed a pair of Parisian men locked in a passionate discussion of some sort. And I suppose the stereotype of the tres active Parisian conversation is true, because one of the men was gesturing so furiously that he accidentally smacked me in the collarbone as I walked by! He and his friend thought this was hilarious, as did I--it was not a very hard smack--and I could hear them laughing down the corridor all the way to the train. At that point, I decided that this night, however futile, simply had to be recorded.

I took the 1 back to Pont de Neuilly, spending part of my ride trying to guess which passengers were Parisian and which were not, and also musing on a group of Muslim women wearing head-scarves, which, if Sarkozy had his way, would be interdit (forbidden). I always wonder when I see Muslim women with the traditional head-covering whether they wish they could have their head bare like mine or whether they consider all the bare female heads around them to be vulgar... But really, Sarkozy, it's all about freedom of choice. Banning religious garments has the same ultimate effect as enforcing them! Ah, mais je digresse... 

From Pont de Neuilly I took my regular stroll home, past the closed boulangeries and fromager and bon marche (like a convenience store), and to be honest I was not entirely disappointed with my evening. I didn't spend a single Euro on a drink in a bar or a club, I didn't get lost, and I didn't come home awfully late on a super-crowded, or worse, nearly-deserted metro, and I got a lot of people-watching in. I did feel a bit of a fool trying to talk to the Cubans, but I think I made a good decision in coming home rather than continuing to wander the Latin Quarter in search of a phone. C'est la vie! Plus, I can sleep in tonight, because there are no classes tomorrow! Alors, pour maintenant, bonne sioree!