Le Vendôme I: First Impressions

Paris. The city of lights, the city of love, the city of snails, croissants, baguettes and the infamous snootiness of the local residents. Columnist Jasmine Eden Gray shares humorous and insightful stories from her time in the French capital during what can be an exciting but also tumultuous period - the year abroad.

You’ve been learning French at school since Year 3. You’ve been studying the language at university level for the past two years. You’re told to go live in France for a year to perfect your fluency. Then on your first day in town, when you just need to buy some instant noodles at the supermarché, you can’t for the life of you remember how to say, ‘How much is it?’ You know how to articulate opinions on the state of post-colonial France and translate passages from Classical French literature, but you can’t manage to buy yourself a sad student ‘girl dinner’ without losing all dignity when they answer back in English. The ultimate defeat of the year-abroader. But slowly your common phrase bank grows, as does your confidence in communicative situations, and your ability to brush off so-called ‘failures’ in your French interactions.

I knew moving to Paris would inevitably involve run-ins with the well-known stereotypes associated with the locals. ‘Rude’, ‘snobbish’, and ‘chic’ are words that tend to get thrown around. And to be fair, coming over from Australia in September, walking through the 9th arrondissement in my boardshorts and flip flops, I did feel incredibly out of place. Parisians simply are chic. But I think the overriding conclusion I have drawn after 4 months in the city is: Parisians are crazy. And I love it. From an unintentional Timothée Chalamet lookalike in a bar on Rue Princesse to an American tourist telling me how knitting cured her plane anxiety in a yarn shop – how are you getting knitting needles on a plane?? – you’re always in for an interesting interaction on the streets of the city of lights. Especially in retail.

When my sister came to visit, she noted that she was running low on perfume and expertly pointed out her preferred bottle at Galleries Lafayette, saving me the trouble of thinking of her upcoming birthday present. A few weeks later I return, with my spiel prepared, to ask if they have it in store. I am quite obviously identified as not French, but I confidently persist in my pursuit to complete the scenario in French. This subsequently led me to mishear the price as 50 euros rather than 150 euros – why is smelly water so expensive?? – and also to refuse the free samples, as my instinct was to respond ‘no’ to a word I didn’t understand. This refusal was received with understandable confusion, as the shopkeeper kept repeating her question hoping I would change my answer until eventually I was forced to relinquish my local façade and ask in English. With the free samples, the gift-wrapped present, and a 150-euro-shaped hole in my bank account, I believed I had made it through the interaction semi-successfully. One foot out the door, the young woman asks if I’d like to be sprayed before leaving. At this stage both of us are outright giggling at the bizarre exchange as I stand in front of her with my arms extended, ready to smell like a quarter of my monthly salary. However, not all shopping interactions can be as whimsical as this.         

We had an unconventionally warm September in the city, but our false sense of weather security was shattered in mid-October when Paris decided to drop 15 degrees and our wardrobes were in a shambles - ‘No Jasmine, you cannot just wear a t-shirt and shorts today you insane woman’. My flatmate decided she was in need of a warm jumper and attempted to find one in a vintage shop in the 3rd arrondissement. To set the scene, she had to ring a doorbell to be let into the shop. Yeah, that kind of shop. This shopkeeper immediately had it out for her in a very ageist Pretty Woman-esque manner. For a start, she asked my very well-dressed and nicely presented flatmate to put her tote bag down for fear of ‘damaging’ the clothes on the rack. Then, after considering a yellow jumper in her hands and moving to place it back, the shopkeeper snatched it out of my flatmate’s hands to put it back properly. The grand finale, the big, huge mistake movie moment, came when my flatmate was looking at a lovely Givenchy shirt and the shopkeeper claimed it was already sold, even though it still had a price tag and was very clearly on display for sale. Translation: ‘Please leave my store, young peasant’.

Despite this quite perfect example of the rude, scary Parisian, there have also been instances of stereotype-busting. Look out for a following column to hear about my slightly insane experience of the kindness of strangers in the metro. However, I think it is telling when, at my new local swimming pool, simply having a short, pleasant conversation with a French man that didn’t involve an eyebrow raise as sharp as the Eiffel Tower or a look of judgement as if I came from another planet, came as a revelation worth writing home about – or writing a column about. 

Every new day I take as an opportunity to improve my fluency and develop connections with the wild and wonderful locals of Paris. Actually, that’s a lie. Many days I am just trying to get by without total humiliation or confusion due to my sorely lacking colloquial vocabulary. But it’s good to know the option to broaden my French speaking horizons is there, right? Coming back to Cambridge for a weekend I even found myself instinctively preparing to ask the Sainsbury’s helper why the scanner wasn’t working in French, and was almost tongue-tied in surprise when they addressed me in English. So even when you might ask a question that a Parisian doesn’t know the answer to and they look at you like you’ve just told them their grandmother had to have her leg amputated with no anaesthetic, you just have to realise in these moments that the apocalypse has in fact not begun, despite what their facial expressions might portray, and that life may be able to continue in the pasta sauce aisle.

All images belong to the author, unless otherwise stated.