Sunday, January 07, 2007

Spellbound and speechless

It's the name of a song, but it also describes me -- when I saw the cathedral at Chartres.




Friday, January 05, 2007

Metro intimacy

Bonne Année! I continue to write 2006 on things instead of 2007.

I spent the day at a museum in St. Germain. When I got on the metro at St. Michel to come home, an elfin French girl sidled up to me and very nicely asked me…something. I don’t know what she said. From her body language I thought she was asking if she could go into the turnstile before me, so I stepped out of her path.

In surprise, I thought, “That was a really polite way of asking me to move.”

Then, with an impatient look, she blurted out, “AVEC vous! AVEC vous!”

Oh. Sorry, I’m a little slow, wasn’t expecting a request to help steal the metro! Okay.

She jumped in the turnstile with me, flattened herself against my back, and quickly disappeared once inside.