Getting out

[indigo_rose99]

I dragged myself out of the hotel today, despite my despondency over T's absence.  In doing so, I learned a few things:

• It is not as easy as it sounds to simply "go walking for a few hours.  Perhaps until it gets dark."  This is especially true if you have spreading blisters over both feet and are still sore from the last five days of walking.  (livingdeb, 15K steps by 4pm.  I may beat you this week.)
• Many shops in downtown Montpellier are closed on a Sunday.  In fact, the majority of shops are closed.  One a few big ones on main pedestrian thoroughfares are open.  That was OK.  I wasn't out for shopping.  Looking, but not shopping.
  
• Far fewer people are out on a Sunday than Saturday, even though the weather is much better today.  Sunny, not as windy.  I kinda like that part, because the number of people yesterday was making me claustrophobic.
• Evidently a woman alone is much more approachable than a mixed-gender couple.  I got approached by no less than three beggars!  Or, at least, I assume they were beggars.  Two of them left me alone when I trotted out my "I'm sorry, but I don't speak French."  The third one switched to English and asked for a cigarette.  Why she thought I smoke, I have no idea.
• All those stories about how French people are rude and hate speaking other languages?  I cannot speak about how true that is for Paris, but I can tell you that for Montpellier, it is totally untrue!  I was pretty worried, when coming here.  But these are some of the friendliest people I have ever encountered.  I cannot even pretend to speak French, and pretty much everyone is very willing to work with me to communicate.  The vast majority of them speak such excellent English that I would call them completely fluent, although they seem to think differently.

Comments

[sclatter.livejournal.com]

I had a couple of experiences of naughty French person behavior. In one, it had nothing to do with me or any of the other Americans I was with, but was wholly Frenchman-on-Frenchman violence, as it were. Still a little shocking. In the other case I was singled out as a foreigner in a train station and harassed. That sucked.

Almost everyone I met in Paris spoke pretty good English, though I had a giggle when asked if I wanted my water "with or without gas"? I did pick up a very, very helpful pocket book of restaurant vocabulary. No one can tell you that that alien word means "red snapper". The book was key.

In Pompadour, no one spoke much English, but they were all super apologetic about it. (It was a Club Med; I guess they were probably supposed to be able to handle English speaking guests.) I took riding lessons in French, which went surprisingly ok. At night they had these themed entertainment things you could go watch after dinner. One night it was a Western theme, and they did the whole thing in a sort of Franglais. They were dropping f-bombs to make a sailor blush!

But mostly, I saw Americans acting like jerks everywhere I went. Refusing to pay for a bottle of wine because they thought they were paying the price for a glass. Loudly demanding that the remainder of a carafe of wine be packed to go. That sort of thing.