Read Online The Sweet Life in Paris: Delicious Adventures in the World's Most Glorious - and Perplexing - City by David Lebovitz - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: David Lebovitz
Tags: Travel, Essays & Travelogues
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Vichy, and Vittel. But wait, you’re not done yet!
Demie
or
grande?
Unless you specify, you’re likely to get the biggest and priciest of thelot, since no waiter anywhere enjoys playing twenty questions in his non-native language and that’s your punishment. If you’re terribly thirsty, spring for a bottle. Ordering
eau du robinet
means you may need to ask the waiter two—perhaps three—times before you get it, if you get it at all. They seem to have no trouble remembering those money-making bottles, but free carafes are somehow easily forgotten.
Yet there’s relief for the parched palates walking the streets: a law on the books dictates that all cafés in France have to give anyone who comes in a glass of tap water upon request. Unless they have a sign posted somewhere saying they don’t do that. I haven’t built up the courage to ask anywhere to see if it’s true, but I wish they’d pass a similar law when it comes to another urgent need around here.
The flip side of finding a drink of water is finding a place to get rid of it. This is nearly impossible if you’re out and about, so it’s easy to understand why the French avoid drinking it in the first place.
While
la loi
does give you
le droit
to ask for water in a café, there’s no law that gives you the right to demand to get rid of it thereafter. Cafés are notoriously less than accommodating about allowing you to use their often shabby accommodations
sans
purchase, unless you’re pregnant or can distend your stomach and rub it lovingly to make a convincing demonstration that you might be. Considering how many
macarons
and
pains au chocolat
I tuck in, I may soon be able to pull it off. For the rest of you, if you want to use the bathroom, paradoxically, you must drink something first, thus perpetuating a vicious cycle that works for the café owners, but not so well their patrons.
I used to buy my weekly
carnet
of Métro tickets at a grubby local
tabac
on the rue Faubourg Saint-Antoine. One day I headed to the back of the place to relieve myself of the excitement from making such a transaction. I didn’t think it’d be a problem since I was a steady, paying customer.
As I reached for the doorknob, the proprietor hollered across the room, his voice booming to all the patrons (who stopped what they were doing to turn and watch), yelling that that room was off-limits unless I had a drink. He clarified the verbal assault by making a drinking motion, rocking his extended thumb and little finger toward and away from his mouth, in case I didn’t get the point.
I got it. But he almost got my middle finger back, and I never got my Métro tickets there again.
He wasn’t acting alone, though. Parisians have little sympathy for those who have to go to the bathroom because they don’t ever have to go themselves. They have no idea what it’s like. I’ve spent eight to nine uninterrupted hours with my partner, Romain, and not once did he excuse himself to go. I guess they know better, and lay off the water.
When men do get the urge, they simply pull up to a little corner of
la belle France
and take a break. If you’ve searched your guidebook to find the historical significance of those corners of semicircular iron bars guarding historic buildings, now you know: they’re to discourage men from relieving themselves on history.
The problem’s gotten so bad that the authorities in Paris came up with
le mur anti-pipi
, a sloping wall designed to “water the waterer” by redirecting the stream, soaking the offender’s trousers. The prototype is now being tested on the most
pipi-soaked
street: the cour des Petites-Ecuries. (Don’t ask me how they figured that one out. I don’t want to know.)
Perhaps you remember the old solution, the city-sanctioned open-air
pissotières
, where men were allowed to do their business
en plein air.
In the early ‘90s, though, Paris started replacing those stinky yet terribly convenient (for us men)
Demie
or
grande?
Unless you specify, you’re likely to get the biggest and priciest of thelot, since no waiter anywhere enjoys playing twenty questions in his non-native language and that’s your punishment. If you’re terribly thirsty, spring for a bottle. Ordering
eau du robinet
means you may need to ask the waiter two—perhaps three—times before you get it, if you get it at all. They seem to have no trouble remembering those money-making bottles, but free carafes are somehow easily forgotten.
Yet there’s relief for the parched palates walking the streets: a law on the books dictates that all cafés in France have to give anyone who comes in a glass of tap water upon request. Unless they have a sign posted somewhere saying they don’t do that. I haven’t built up the courage to ask anywhere to see if it’s true, but I wish they’d pass a similar law when it comes to another urgent need around here.
The flip side of finding a drink of water is finding a place to get rid of it. This is nearly impossible if you’re out and about, so it’s easy to understand why the French avoid drinking it in the first place.
While
la loi
does give you
le droit
to ask for water in a café, there’s no law that gives you the right to demand to get rid of it thereafter. Cafés are notoriously less than accommodating about allowing you to use their often shabby accommodations
sans
purchase, unless you’re pregnant or can distend your stomach and rub it lovingly to make a convincing demonstration that you might be. Considering how many
macarons
and
pains au chocolat
I tuck in, I may soon be able to pull it off. For the rest of you, if you want to use the bathroom, paradoxically, you must drink something first, thus perpetuating a vicious cycle that works for the café owners, but not so well their patrons.
I used to buy my weekly
carnet
of Métro tickets at a grubby local
tabac
on the rue Faubourg Saint-Antoine. One day I headed to the back of the place to relieve myself of the excitement from making such a transaction. I didn’t think it’d be a problem since I was a steady, paying customer.
As I reached for the doorknob, the proprietor hollered across the room, his voice booming to all the patrons (who stopped what they were doing to turn and watch), yelling that that room was off-limits unless I had a drink. He clarified the verbal assault by making a drinking motion, rocking his extended thumb and little finger toward and away from his mouth, in case I didn’t get the point.
I got it. But he almost got my middle finger back, and I never got my Métro tickets there again.
He wasn’t acting alone, though. Parisians have little sympathy for those who have to go to the bathroom because they don’t ever have to go themselves. They have no idea what it’s like. I’ve spent eight to nine uninterrupted hours with my partner, Romain, and not once did he excuse himself to go. I guess they know better, and lay off the water.
When men do get the urge, they simply pull up to a little corner of
la belle France
and take a break. If you’ve searched your guidebook to find the historical significance of those corners of semicircular iron bars guarding historic buildings, now you know: they’re to discourage men from relieving themselves on history.
The problem’s gotten so bad that the authorities in Paris came up with
le mur anti-pipi
, a sloping wall designed to “water the waterer” by redirecting the stream, soaking the offender’s trousers. The prototype is now being tested on the most
pipi-soaked
street: the cour des Petites-Ecuries. (Don’t ask me how they figured that one out. I don’t want to know.)
Perhaps you remember the old solution, the city-sanctioned open-air
pissotières
, where men were allowed to do their business
en plein air.
In the early ‘90s, though, Paris started replacing those stinky yet terribly convenient (for us men)
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