They are somewhat correct, though: Parisians are complete assholes.
Excuse me, zin, but what the hell do YOU know about Paris and Parisians? And based on WHAT, your two day stopover during your two week tour of "Europe"?
Let me tell you MY personal experiences with Parisians. The first time I ever arrived in Paris, I didn't know anyone there, but I was determined, as always, to avoid the youth hostels and tourist traps and just . . . meet . . . the . . . people.
Anyway, it was raining and so I ducked down the Metro stairs until I was out of the rain and sat there on the steps. Soon, a Parisian guy sat down beside me, noticed my back pack, and asked, "Vous etes American?"
"Mais oui!"
"Shook Berree, Shook Berreee, rock and roll," rock and roll," he happily exclaimed over and over and eventually took me to a good, cheap restaurant that only the locals would know about for a meal and then to his home where gave me a place to sleep that night.
The next day on the streets I met this crazy artist of Vietnamese descent. He spoke enough English that we mostly conversed in English. We hit the kind of nightlife spots I could afford, had a great time, and scored les babes together! He came from money and had a great, airy apartment. I stayed in his place for a week.
One night, we went to a couple who were friends of his and who lived in a fourth floor, walk up, cold water flat where the guy cooked a semi-gourmet meal featuring rabbit all on a single burner camp stove! Outrageously good but outragesously inexpensive French wine made that night!
After a week, I left for London at midnight on the London to Paris train>ferry>train. This was before the tunnel was completed. On the train I met a lovely French girl from Paris and we boarded the ferry together. On the ferry I fell in with a bunch of hard partying French guys. I didn't pay enough attention to the French girl and she wandered off (there was a happy and near-miraculous eventual re-meeting.)
These guys were going to Wembley stadium for a concert that featured Joni Mitchell, Jessie Colin Young, and some other really good group whose name escapes me now. The French guys all had tickets, but they said, "Hey, come along. Slip the ticket taker a pound and he'll let you in." I was dubious but game, and damn it if didn't work! So I enjoyed an ace concert for one pound, all the while smoking primo hash courtesy of my Parisien friends.
The next time I hit Paris, after about 7-8 months in England and Wales, I made a bee-line for these guys (and their girls.) The guys, all four of them, worked for the French post office. In those days, the schedule was, "3 twelve hour days, 3 days off." So they would often switch with other workers so they could regularly have 6 straight days off. Do you know how many borders you can cross in Europe in 6 days?
Every morning I'd wake up to a chillum being handed to me. These guys partied HARD!
The evening I was ready to leave, the whole group of 7 guys and girls partied me up and then accompanied me to Gare du Nord, the train station. Many warm good-byes and hugs were given, but as I went at the last moment to get on the train, it had started to move and the conductor barred my way.
C'est domage!
Back to the apartment for more fun until the next evening, when we repeated our merry procession. Damn if the SAME dang thing didn't happen!
Lololol, nobody was upset, it just meant another day together, and the next evening I cut my goodbyes short in enough time to board the train.
Hey, zin, THAT'S just a very small portion of the stories I could recount of my personal experience with Parisiens! I could go on and on.
Once, I was helping two American girls I'd met secure a room in a hotel. I used the high school French I'd thought I'd forgotten but had not, so I was correctly using conditional tenses and such.
Now, you must remember, in those days, people regularly told me I looked like either Jesus Christ or Charles Manson! Anyway, the very proper and middle-aged women behind the hotel desk very kindly asked me when I was done interceding on behalf of the girls if I were French!
You must realize that my French accent then was not very good (it got better), and that it was beyond obvious I wasn't French, but that was her very polite way of complimenting me on my proper grammar and effort.
It's what can happen when you at least make a fuckiing effort to speak the language of the country you're in.
In the early mornings I would always go into one of the many, many very small boulangeries (bakeries) for the obligatory fresh baked baguette, and despite looking like Charley M., was always greeted by the middle-aged and always female French proprietors with that extremely high pitched, upper register, sing-song, "Bon matin, monsieur! Comment allez-vous, monsieur!" said with what at least
felt like genuine warmth, and at least never stinted on
genuine politeness.
So there you go, zin (and sorry for using you as my foil, but you stupidly and lazily post what you did,) these are some of MY experiences with the people of Paris.
You know, just as in New York if you're a tourist in the tourist places, you're going to get a really bad impression of the locals,
exactly the same one they have of you.
But, zin, you flatly posted, "Parisians are complete assholes." How long were you there? In what depth did you interact with the people? Did you even try to speak any of their language? Did you stray from any of the well-worn, bus-tour, plastic Disney-levle tourist traps out into the
real city at all? Well?
So, when I hear some bloated (not you zin), ignorant fat ass who, with his even broader-beamed wife Agnes, spent two days in Paris clomping around in his madras shorts and wielding his 800mm zoom-lensed Nikon like the penis he (and Agnes) only wished he had while all the while demanding the natives speak
his language in
their country render his opinion on Parisians, I'm just not that sold, you know?