Easy and Dangerous

A stream of apartments blurred by today. Upon waking, I forced myself to pick up the phone. Each conversation started with me saying, "J'ai vu votre annonce à FUSAC," meaning (hopefully) I saw your ad in FUSAC. Then, "Parlez-vous anglais?" Twice the answer returned a firm "non." Luckily, they seemed to understand me better than I had expected. Perhaps when you're a potential customer worth thousands of euros, bad French is worth stomaching. One man I called, who probably could hear my heart pounding through the line, kept saying "Je vous écoute" ("I'm listening"). Ironically, even the English conversations seemed a bit strange. One woman warned us about the tricky stairs to her apartment and bluntly added that if we weren't interested in walking up two steep flights of stairs then please don't come. Quite a sales pitch. Another man asked my nationality and age. Apparently my bust size he could deduce in person.

Somehow I arranged four appointments. Our first stop was rue de la Grande-Chaumière. The owner had given me the code to the outside door. Once inside, there was another door in the courtyard to buzz the apartment. In fact, it seems most Paris apartments use this system. Those 20-foot high imposing iron doors throughout the city open up into courtyards which then lead to a variety of doors. It's the portal into the interior of Paris. After being buzzed in, we began the climb up. She wasn't kidding about the steepness, although I'm not sure she mentioned how narrow it was. There were actually ropes on either side to grab onto, but really it was just as well to press each hand upon the wall on either side and climb on. The zenith led out to a old wooden balcony. When we peered out, she was standing at the end. "Don't be afraid, come, come." So on we went. Finally inside the apartment, I breathed out again. The apartment was lovely. Very modern and open - with a nice loft bedroom and lots of airy windows. After the tour, she asked us to please sit - which often is requisite apparently. We proceeded to have about a half hour conversation on a variety of topics. Good thing I didn't book any appointments closer than one hour apart. She prided herself on her concierge services and said she could recommend places where we can rent some bikes for getting around the city, because it is "easy and dangerous" as if these were both great advantages.

After that, we grabbed a quick lunch and ate in a park. I almost didn't stop because there were a lot of pigeons and I hate competing for my lunch. Especially a yummy French jambon et fromage sandwich. Luckily they were busied by some French people feeding them and they left us alone (the pigeons, that is). After that, we travelled across town to place du Panthéon to meet our next prospect. We found him sitting outside, an older Frenchman about late-50s. On the way up he voiced his hope that we liked things that were old. The apartment was just that - old. Or as he prefered to describe it - historic. The ad actually had mentioned the XVIIth century character. I didn't interpret that to mean it hadn't been updated since then. He proudly showed us the 'historic' bidet that his wife wanted him to get rid of, to his refusal. He knew its value. He said you can't even find the parts for it anymore, you have to wait for someone to leave something on the street and collect it for repairs.

After our tour, he invited us to sit, which we did. He informed us that his wife had 'quit' him (probably over the bidet). But now he was with an American girl - only 30 years old. And in fact, she was Marlon Brando's daughter or as he described 'his bastard daughter.' Still reeling from him calling his girlfriend a bastard, I received the next shock when he went to retrieve photos of her. Very pretty, I said. He set the pictures on the mantle in front of us as we continued to talk.

Meanwhile, I had missed a call from one of the other owners on my cell phone because I didn't want to interupt our tour. So I tried to call my voicemail on my new French cellphone. Can you believe it - the instructions were in French? I called about three times extremely frustrated - probably cost me $3 - and got nowhere. I gave up. The message would remain unretrieved. Instead I decided to call the owner (this was for apt #4) and have a strained conversation in French. He seemed to think it was easier to instruct me on a meeting place rather than tell me the address of his apartment. Wrong. Several minutes later, he handed me over to his wife who spoke English about as well as I speak French. But we made arrangements for 4:30 pm.

The next apartment was completely unmemorable - small, old. The kitchen was like a dirty closet. Apparently that's what you can get for 1,300 euros/month in the Latin Quarter. Good to know. There was no conversation after because either the owner could see our disgust or neither of us could speak the other's language well enough. Either way, we were glad. For a break, we sat at a café. Geoff got a diet coke and I ordered 'jus d'ananas' which I asked for in French. The waiter had no idea what I asked for so I repeated with more effort. A light when on and he said "Oh jus d'ananas." I was pretty sure that's what I had said the first time, but of course the accented syllable is key which of course I had wrong. Then I wondered, is there some sort of juice shortage in France? Why would a small cup (about 6 oz) of pineapple juice cost $6? The same cost as a beer or glass of wine. C'est bizarre.

At promptly 4:30 pm, we met our next host, a jolly older French man reading a paper as he waited for us. The conversation went pretty well except for once I thought he asked how long we had looked for an apartment "due jours" when he really asked how long did we want to rent for "trois mois." He showed us his place which was all new, but not yet furnished. It was on two floors, very small with a minute upstairs kitchen. He also preferred someone for at least eight months, which put us out of the running anyway.

Finished with our day, but not sure what to show for it we decided to take a walk by the Seine. We happened upon Citadines - one of the hotel apartment complexes - so we went in for a tour. For a mere 240/euros per night you can get a carpeted hotel room with zero character and no internet in the room. At least we weren't missing anything there.

Resting on the riverside with Geoff's head in my lap, we were happy to be here but so tired. My cold that had started yesterday got progressively worse. I was exhausted and just desperately wanted a Claritin D. Fortunately I wisely packed all my own medicine (although I'm starting to realize not enough). Back at the hotel, I crashed. Geoff was on the computer so I told him to find us an apartment while I was sleeping. There's nothing more satisfying then knowing something is getting done while your sleeping. When I rolled over at one point I asked him if he was looking for apartments and he said no. I slept anyway.

Meanwhile, he must have begun the search at some point because he wound up finding a service called NY Habitats which helps find English-speaking suckers a wonderful apartment for an absurd fee. That's us! But really they had some nice places listed and they listed them as available immediately. We already realized our tomorrow (Friday) checkout was impossible and the days after that seeming just as unlikely considering the French prefer not to work on the weekends. I perked up long enough to convince Geoff to call the service which he did. But on the phone we learned that you didn't actually get to see the apartments in advance. This seemed strange. Could they make an exception since we were here in Paris already? We would hear back.

Wanting some soup, we headed out for dinner at about 10 pm and wandered, wondering which place would have decent soup and would serve dinner at this hour. One place where I asked dinner was 'fini.' In Paris, there is a tacit rule that lunch must be consumed from 12 to 2:30 pm and dinner, 7:30 to 10 pm. In protest, my stomach seems only to require food on the off-hours. So we went back to Brasserie Lipp which is open til 1 am. I had a delicious vegetable soup (same as last night) and a tuna steak with vegetables. Geoff ordered steak tartare, which is basically a raw hamburger with mustard in it. He seemed amused by his order, as if he were feigning to be a local. It reminded him of when we were in St. Martin, where all the nude sunbathers we thought were French were really just from Omaha.