Ivan's Tribulations.: Reconciliating with France (the filmmaker journey part 5)

The next morning I went out for a walk, it was 8am and most of the shops were closed. The shopping center only open until 10. In the meantime I waked around and manage to buy a croissant at a bakery. I try to sound french but there is no point in trying to pretend when your 3 year old son is jumping all over the place screaming in plain australian english " I WANT COOKIE, PLEASE, COOKIE, COOKIE, COOKIE".

One thing that I was warned before my trip was to say hello and goodbye to pretty much anyone who meets your eyeline. Specially in shops. This has proven to be truth. As long as you greet, they seem to be pretty nice, not many people speak english, but they recognize some basics, specially young people.

Finally the shopping mall enter and I got into Carrefour, Everything looks cheaper than Australia, even after making the conversion 0.80. to buy a 6pack bottles of water for 2 euros is still cheap. I bought a usb charger, a power adaptor and some snacks for the trip to Montpellier. When I was on the line I realized that they don't provide plastic bags, a bit like ALDI, you have to pack your own stuff. I was trying to see if they sell bags, but I coudlnt see anything. While I am looking a round like a retard, an old, short and heavy guy with an angry look start speaking to me in french. I tell him I don't understand and he picks up my spanish accent and starts speaking some sort of spanish-french that I can half understand.

He is Russian/portuguese, who has been living in france for 50 years after the war with angola. He shows me where the plastic bags are, and then pays 30 cents that I was short and couldnt understand why the cashier kept looking at me. Then he grabs my arm and says "lets go for a coffee"

So I found my self at 10:30, in a cafe in a shopping mall, drinking short expressos (no such a thing as latte here) with a pensioner. He talks for 15 minutes about war, pension, spanish people, and who knows what else, then pays and goes. It was a great way to reconciliate with Paris. At least the people are warm and welcoming. We had to wait around that afternoon until my mom arrived from Cuba. They stop her luggage on the airport and checked everything for cocaine for 2 hours. They even pulled her hair to check if she was wearing a wig. They open all her bags and anything that was in a package, like coffee, took random samples for drug testing. It is humillating, and it comes for free when you have a Colombian Passport.

So we didnt get to see much on the first day, but the next 2 days on Paris were pretty cool. We didnt have time to visit the Louvre, but there are so many things to see and too little time.

Anyway here are some photos of some of the places we went. It is kind of a way of explaning why, at the end of the day, I ended up falling in love with France. The magnitude and beauty of their monuments, buildings and works of art in general is overwhelming.