Speechless

Ok, it's true that I still haven't actually seen any apartments yet, but I do feel like I made progress today. I spent the first few hours this morning in the hotel room looking through online listings. This isn't only because I'm afraid of calling people. But even if it was - how many fears can I tackle in a week? Anyway, I got an email response from a woman to my post on craigslist and it was a listing I had passed over since the rent was listed as 3,000 euros/month. Apparently she now offered it at 2,000. This got me thinking that maybe more people were negotiable than I thought. So I scoured the online listings - paris.craigslist.org and vrbo.com - and emailed basically anyone with a listing in the 5th or 6th Arrondisement. Not much has come of that. Tomorrow I will actually have to use the telephone. There also seem to be several promising listings in the site FUSAC (recommended by one of Geoff's colleagues) which list only phone numbers.

Telephone calls are definitely the scariest since there's no pointing involved and you can't ask someone to "écrivez." I remember on one of our first trips to Paris I called this restaurant and made a reservation - nearly took everything out of me. Then Geoff pleaded me to call back again to find out if he had to wear a tie. I think the translation of what I actually asked was something like "Is it that necessary a tie?" Of course they had no idea what I was saying and I eventually just hung up. The real kicker on arrival was that not only was a tie unnecessary, but pretty much the entire staff spoke English. All that effort for nothing.

Every French person that I've spoken to so far has been cordial about my stumbling words. But they squint at me a lot. Perhaps if they could see me better maybe they could understand me better. Or maybe they squint out of frustration of how slow I talk. I must sound like a Southern farmer talking to a New Yorker. Except with a worse accent. Regardless, they don't actually scoff at me to my face. And so far no one has responded to me in English unless I give them an utterly perplexed look or sometimes when I ask them to "repétez s'il vous plait?"

Tonight, Geoff picked Brasserie Lipp for dinner. When we arrived, several groups of people were clustered outside, presumably waiting for their tables. Usually at that point we surrender. The fear of speaking and not understanding is heightened in a bustling place. But then I realized, we've got to eat right? I mean what's the worst that could happen? So I walked right in and waited for the maître'd. Geoff mustered the courage to follow. When someone approached me I simply asked in French how long the wait was for a table for two. He responded if we wanted to go upstairs we could sit "toute d'suite" but it was "pas fumer." Wow - two for two. So we sat down to a delicious, simple Alsacean meal - me with roast chicken and Geoff with a sausage dish.