Robin Sparks
is looking fora country to call home. She is traveling around
the world looking for the perfect spot. This month she is in Paris, meeting
with old friends and meeting new ones. Join Robin Sparks in each issue
of the Escape From America Magazine as she travels around the world in
search of a country to call home.
Paris, France
I'm at the Web Bar, my Apple Powerbook open atop a granite table.
My butt is planted firmly on a green velvet banquet; the hiss of an espresso
machine and the steady pounding of a techno beat fill the room. Soft coral
light caresses the bottles behind the bar where a very suave, 30-something
man pours champagne and red wine for the Euro-hipsters casually posing
at the bar.
One of
the patrons languishes on his elbow, talking into a
cell phone, slowly dragging on a cigarette. A baguette protrudes from the
backpack on the stool next to him. A girl enters the bar wearing tight
black pants, a black leather jacket, and carrying a helmet.
It's 6 PM
and the energy in the room is starting to shift and expand. The young
techies are being replaced by older bohemians. In the next room, tables
are filled with men and women sipping coffee, wine, beer, and the admirable
"coupe de champagne." The sun streams down through a leaded glass
spotlighted stage a man and woman move slowly, acrobatically, in
a display of Live Art. Impressionist paintings line the walls. A man with
long jet-black hair secured in a ponytail rolls past my table on skates.
No one appears to notice. I'm not dressed right -- heavy on
Cute and too light on Cool in my Sandra Dee cropped pants and baby blue
knit sweater. How was I to know that my desperate search for an internet
connection would lead me to the Web Bar on the Rue Picardie?
The focal point
of the interior is the three-story open courtyard.
Along the
walls of the top two stories, and open to the cafe below, narrow ledges
contain perhaps 20 computers. The chairs consist of upended wooden crates.
Earlier, I sipped a double espresso at computer #8 as I attempted to make
an internet connection; computer #8 refused to connect. Jean, a 24 year
old global computer geek with dark curly hair, was the tech on call.
In response to myn obvious frustration, he appeared at my side. I
pantomimed the problem. "I see,"? he said in perfect, non - accented,
English. "You're sure you put in the correct password?"
"You are
American?" I ask as if I'd just met someone from a distant planet I
vaguely remember from my past. Manu tells me he moved from New York 10
years ago with his parents, against his will. But Paris is home to him
now and he's happy here.
"Jean! Pouvez
vous mâaider?" comes the familiar cry and Jean is off to help
another computer user.
I answer email
for half an hour before returning to the bar to write on my laptop. Two
guys enter the room with motorized steel skateboards tucked under their
arms. The tinkling of the ever present cell phone provides an acoustical
testimony to the high-tech atmosphere.
"Bon Soir
Madame," the bartender says as I approach, along with the French version
of "What would you like to drink?" I tell him I don't speak French well,
and does he speak English.
"Yes, a
leetle," he says. As I start to order my drink of choice in Paris,
a Kir Royale, but then have a change of heart."Do you have
Tequila?" Yes, they do. Olmeca Tequila. I carry a shot of the cactus
juice (which I expect will fire up creative juices) back to my table
under the halogen light in the corner...
A young woman
in faded blue jeans, a long sleeved t-shirt, and NIKE tennis shoes
appears at my table. "Weel you pleese pay now?" Her shift has ended.
I pay for my drinks. "Where ees your teeket for rentaul of zee compooteur?"
she asks.
Where is that
little paper anyway? I rifle through my computer bag and a pile of notes,
and under the table, but I find nothing. You weur suepost to geev zee teeket
to zee cashier wheen you weur feeneeshed on zee compooteur. Zee clock is
steel teeking."
"Oh,"
I say. "I thought I was logged off automatically and the bill for the computer
would be added to my drink . "How menee minoots deed you use zee computeur?"
she demands.
"I don't know,
less than an hour. Ask Jean, he will remember."
She disappears
in a huff.
I search through
the contents of my bag again. Where is the ticket? For the umpteenth time
I feel the helplessness that comes from not understanding the langua franca
and speaking even less.
What to do?
The waitress has vanished and as she said, "Dee clock ees teekeeng."
I approach
the bartender -- time to kiss some French butt. The French are predictably
responsive to polite groveling. "I am so sorry," I purr to the Euro
bartender, "but I seem to have lost my ticket. I did not understand
your system." The waitress appears at his side and ignoring me, speaks
to him in French. He turns to me and says, "Madame, Whut ees dee prowblaim?"
I begin to explain how I sat at THEIR computer for almost an hour,
but that when it wouldn't connect, so Jean had to plug my laptop into their
connection, and that somewhere in all of that, the ticket was lost.
