The Inspiration: Accurate stereotypes. Seriously. And, if you haven't noticed yet, a fondness for delicious food. Today I was reading and writing about ethnic stereotypes and humor for one of my classes, and came across this joke:
“Heaven is where the police are English, the cooks are French, the mechanics are German, the lovers are Italian and everything is organized by the Swiss. Hell is where the police are German, the cooks are English, the mechanics are French, the lovers are Swiss, and everything is organized by the Italians.”
It was in the article “Science gets the last laugh on ethnic jokes” by Kathleen Wren, and although she said it was an old joke, I hadn’t read it before, and thought it was hilarious (the rest of the article is pretty interesting, too). I haven’t visited Switzerland yet, and I’ve only been to the airport in Munich (which was, incidentally, a model of efficiency on which all international airports could be based) but it got me thinking about the fact and fiction of stereotypes that I encountered when I’ve been in Europe.
When we were in college (for the first time) my best friend, who has always been braver than I am, decided to spend her junior year studying the French political system while in France. I promised to visit her, and since I always work very hard to keep my travel promises, I went at the end of her school year in Paris. I took French in high school, which was close to useless, and a year of French in college, which was marginally better, so it’s generous to call my linguistic abilities “limited”. So, stereotype in mind, I was really worried that I would have a terrible time in Paris not being able to speak to anyone. Of course I was wrong; I loved all of it. I had S to speak for me when my words were inadequate, and I didn’t encounter a single rude French person. Every time I tried to speak French, I was met with encouragement, understanding, and often a reply in English to help me along. I read somewhere a few years ago that the number of tourists visiting Paris ever year is nearly 10 times the size of the population. When I imagine living in a place where only one out of every ten people on the street is a citizen, I find it staggering that the locals would acknowledge the visitors, let alone go out of their way to be kind to the deluge of tourists. However, when I got myself a wee bit lost on my independent day in the city (S was finishing a term paper) I met several Parisians, and that’s exactly what they did.
There are a zillion lovely things that I could tell you about my week in Paris, but I started writing today with the intention of telling you that the food in Paris lives up to whatever lofty, stereotypical expectations you may have, from the street vendors to the nicest restaurant we could afford (which, notably, was far from the best restaurant in Paris). The only meal that was less than excellent was when we went to the Mexican restaurant that S took me to because it was where she would go when she was a bit homesick; the food was beautifully prepared with quality ingredients, but it was astonishingly bland. However, after that dinner I got my first taste of gelato, the most delightful dessert on the planet, so it was a great culinary evening after all.
Lovely reader, I was going to tell you all about how I went to Rome for the history and the food, and how each exceeded my expectations there as well, but I think that will have to wait for now. In the meantime, I did dig up some photos of my trip to Paris. They’re each worth a story of at least 1000 words, but this will have to do for now.
This scene was on the cover of my high school French book, so when I was in Paris I had to go have my portrait drawn. This artist is Damien, and he has twinkling eyes, and only one arm, so he'd hold one pencil in his teeth while drawing with another.
This is where I first tried real gelato. I was excited enough to be taking pictures before I'd even tried it.
S and me at Versailles. There are somethings that you have to see to believe; Versailles is hard to believe even once you've seen it. =)
