Random Stories

I've had some funny things happen to me over the past few weeks so I figured I would summarize a few of them.

Story #1: The Tabac
The Tabac is a store that sells...tabaco, but also sells other things like beer, wine and coffee (usually at decent prices). They also sell stamps, which is usually the reason for my visit. I can do a few things totally in French, and buying a stamp is one of them. So I walk up to the counter and say (in French) "Hello, I would like to buy a stamp for Canada." Usually that's the extent of my conversation as the person hands me the stamp. Except in this case she said something back to me that I couldn't understand. I told her I don't speak much French so she asked her co-worker something and he laughed, told her something with the word "Amerique" in it, and she handed me a stamp. As I was leaving I realized that she was asking him if Canada was in Europe and that's why he laughed.

Story #2: The Cafe
We went to a cafe in Fontainebleau and as we sat down a guy greeted us and took our order, which is the usual protocol. After a few minutes another lady came to take our order. Confused, DJB explained to her that someone had already taken our order. She also seemed confused, DJB explained who took her order, then she realized it was the town drunk who came out and pretended he worked at the cafe. He left a few minutes later and ran past our table at top speed.

Story #3: The physiotherapist
I made my fist visit to a French physiotherapist. I figured it would be okay to go without knickers that day as my experience with Canadian physiotherapists involved no disrobing. Well, either I picked a really liberal therapist or stripping to your underwear is common place in France because guess what....he asked me to do so!! After turning all kinds of shades of red, I told him I had gone commando that day. Good thing he had a sense of humour about it and said it wasn't the first time this had happened to him! Note to self - NEVER assume that practitioner visits are the same in all countries!