Published Tuesday, August 11, 1998, in the Miami Herald

Parlez-vous Français?

By DAVE BARRY


This summer, for my vacation, I went to Paris, France. I went there to follow in the footsteps of such great writers as Ernest Hemingway, Henry Miller and ``F.'' Scott Fitzgerald, all of whom, for the record, are currently dead.

I blame the Parisian drivers. Paris has only one vacant parking space, which is currently under heavy police guard in the Louvre museum. This means that thousands of frustrated motorists have been driving around the city since the reign of King Maurice XVII looking for a space, and the way they relieve their frustrations is by aiming at pedestrians, whom they will follow onto the sidewalk if necessary. Often the only way to escape them is to duck into one of Paris' historic cathedrals, which fortunately are located about every 25 feet (or 7.83 meters).

Nevertheless it's very pleasant to walk around Paris and feel -- as so many Americans feel when they're in that incredibly beautiful city -- fat. Because the fact is that we Americans look like enormous sneaker-wearing beef cattle compared to the Parisians, who tend to be very slim, with an average body weight of 38 pounds (83.13 liters). It's odd that the French appear to be in such good shape, because the major activity in Paris, aside from trying to run over pedestrians, is sitting around in cafés for days at a time looking French.

Sometimes we Americans try to blend in to the café scene, but the French immediately spot us as impostors, because we cannot pronounce the Secret French Code letter, which is ``r.'' They have learned to say ``r'' in a certain secret way that sounds as though they are trying to dislodge a live eel from their esophagus. It is virtually impossible for a non-French person to make this sound; this is how the Parisian café waiters figure out that you are an American, even if you are attempting to pass as French:

WAITER: Bonjour. Je suspect que vous etes American. (``Good day. I suspect that you are American.'')
YOU: Mais je ne portes pas les Nikes! (``But I am not wearing the sneakers!)
WAITER: Au quais, monsieur pantalons intelligents, prononcez le mot ``Rouen.'' (``OK, Mr. Smarty Pants, pronounce the word `Rouen.' '')
YOU: Woon. (``Woon.'')
WAITER: Si vous etes Francais, je suis l'Homme de la Batte. (``If you are French, I am Batman.'')


The other sure-fire way to tell the difference between French people and Americans in a café is that the French are all smoking, whereas the Americans are all trying to figure out how much to tip. The tourist guidebooks are vague about tipping: They tell you that a service charge is USUALLY included in your bill, but it is not ALWAYS included, and even if it IS included, it is not necessarily TOTALLY included. On top of that, to convert from French money to American, you have to divide by six, and I have yet to meet anybody who can do this.

And so while the French are lounging and smoking and writing novels, we Americans spend our café time darting nervous glances at the bill, which is often just a piece of paper with a lone, mysterious, not-divisible-by-six number scrawled on it such as ``83.'' We almost always end up overtipping, because we're afraid that otherwise the waiter will make us say another ``R'' word. I frankly don't know how the French handle tipping, because in my two weeks in Paris I never saw a French person actually leave a café.

Not that I am being critical. As a professional journalist, I like the idea of a society where it is considered an acceptable occupation to basically sit around and drink. In fact, I liked almost everything about Paris. The city is gorgeous, the food is wonderful, and they have these really swoopy high-tech public pay toilets on the streets that look as though, if you went into one, you might get beamed up to the Mother Ship. Also Paris has a terrific subway system, Le Metro (literally, ``The Metro''). I always felt safe and comfortable in the Metro, although one time, when I was waiting for a train, the loudspeaker made an announcement in French, which was repeated in English, and I swear this was the whole thing: ``Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please. Robbers are in the station. Thank you.'' None of the Parisians seemed the least bit alarmed, and nobody robbed me, which was a good thing, because I would have had no idea how much to tip.

I have run out of space here, but in next week's column I will tell you about some of the famous tourist attractions of Paris, such as the L'Arc D. Triomphe, Notre Dame, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, etc. So until next week, as the French say, ``Au revoir.'' (Literally, ``Woon.'')

Published Friday, August 21, 1998, in the Miami Herald

An Aesthetically Challenged American in Paris


Today I'll be concluding my two-part series on Paris, France. In writing this series, my goal, as a journalist, is to provide you with enough information about this beautiful and culturally important city so that I can claim my summer vacation trip there as a tax deduction.

My topic in Part Two is the historic tourist attractions of Paris. The Parisians have been building historic attractions for more than 1,500 years as part of a coordinated effort to kill whatever tourists manage to escape the drivers. The key is stairs. Most tourist attractions, such as L'Arc de Triomphe (literally, ``The Lark of Triumph'') and the Hunchback of Notre Dame Cathedral, have some kind of lookout point at the top that you, the tourist, are encouraged to climb to via a dark and scary medieval stone staircase containing at least 5,789 steps and the skeletons of previous tourists (you can tell which skeletons are American, because they're wearing sneakers). If you make it to the top, you are rewarded with a sweeping panoramic view of dark spots before your eyes caused by lack of oxygen. Meanwhile, down at street level, the Parisians are smoking cigarettes and remarking, in French, ``Some of them are still alive! We must build more medieval steps!''

Of course the tallest monument in Paris is the Eiffel Tower, named for the visionary engineer who designed it, Fred Tower. The good news is, there are elevators to the top. The bad news is, pretty much the entire tourist population of Europe is up there taking flash pictures of itself. There are so many people crowded into the smallish observation area that you get the feeling, crazy as it seems, that the whole darned Eiffel Tower is going to topple over. Ha ha! In fact this has happened only twice since 1991.

Paris also has many excellent art museums, the most famous being the Louvre (pronounced ``Woon''). If you plan to visit it, you should allow yourself plenty of time to see everything -- say, four years -- because the Louvre is the size of Connecticut, only with more stairs. The museum contains 30,000 pieces of painting and sculpture, and as you walk past these incredible works of art, depicting humanity through the centuries, you cannot help but be struck, as millions of people have been struck before you, by the fact that for a whole lot of those centuries, humanity was stark naked. To judge from the Louvre, until about 1900, everybody on Earth -- men, women, children, gods, goddesses, horses -- basically just stood around all the time without a stitch of clothing on. There's one gigantic painting of a bunch of warriors getting ready to go into battle, and all they're wearing is swords. You expect to see a comics-style speech balloon coming out of the lead warrior's mouth, saying, ``Fight hard, men! If we win the war, we can afford pants!''

I think the reason why the Mona Lisa is so famous is that she's just about the only artistic subject in the Louvre who's wearing clothes. On any given day, every tourist in Europe who is not on top of the Eiffel Tower is gathered in front of the Mona Lisa, who gazes out at the crowd with the enigmatic expression of a person who is pondering the timeless question: ``How come they keep taking flash photographs, even though the signs specifically prohibit this?''

I enjoyed the art museums, but for me the most moving cultural experience I had in Paris was -- and you may call me a big fat stupid low-rent American pig if you wish -- visiting a gourmet food store called Fauchon (pronounced ``Woon''), which contains two-thirds of the world's calorie supply. In the great art museums, I eventually reached a saturation point and found myself walking right past brilliant masterpiece paintings by Van Gogh, Renoir, Matisse, LeRoy Neiman, etc., without even glancing at them; whereas after a lengthy period of browsing in Fauchon, I was still enthusiastically remarking, with genuine artistic appreciation: ``Whoa! Check out THESE éclairs!''

In conclusion, I would say that Paris is the most beautiful city in the world, and its inhabitants have an amazing sense of ``savoir-faire,'' which means, literally, ``knowing how to extinguish a fire.'' I say this because one Sunday afternoon I was in a crowded café when smoke started billowing from a cabinet into which waiters had been stuffing trash. It was a semi-scary situation; I stood up and gestured toward the smoke in an alarmed American manner, but the French diners paid no attention. In a moment, a waiter appeared carrying some food; he noted the smoke, served the food, went away, then returned to douse the fire with, I swear, a bottle of mineral water. And you just know it was the correct kind of mineral water for that kind of fire. So the meal ended up being very pleasant. It was also -- I state this for the benefit of the Internal Revenue Service -- quite expensive.