Re: CHAT: A pretty bad language joke :]

On Wed, 11 Apr 2001 09:00:09 +0200, Christophe Grandsire
<christophe.grandsire@...> wrote:

>En réponse à Frank George Valoczy <valoczy@...>:
>> I have a funny story...I went into a cafe the first time I was in Paris,
>> in 1995 (well, maybe second time; I was two months away from being born
>> there!). I asked what is a croque monsieur, and the man there told me to
>> leave...
>
>What a strange reaction! I know that in Paris, cafés are quite unwelcoming
with
>foreigners, but I wouldn't have thought of such a reaction! After all, most
of
>their income comes from tourists... Well, even for people from the province
like
>me, they are not very nice, so...

Ah, what an excellent opportunity to field my frustrations with Paris ;) I
remember going to a restaurant (brasserie) with an Australian friend. He
noticed a "hamburger" on the menu, and ordered it. When it came, there was a
single meat slice with an egg on top (a "hamburger"), plus salad and stuff,
plus French bread separate (intended as hamburger bread?); I laughed
big-time when I saw that plate come. He was very angry, and asked me to have
a word with the waiter (as I spoke French, but not him). So when I made a
polite suggestion to the waiter that the Australian would like his hamburger
served with the proper bread and salad inside, he just snapped back, in
passing: "C'est pas le MacDo ici, hein!" Jeez. The poor Australian was just
boiling mad, and hardly even ate his 40-50-something-franc meal; we left he
place in extreme frustration.

I'm rather sad to report that during my stay in Paris, I sorely regretted
those 5 years I had spent learning French. One day I was so annoyed that I
spoke English the whole day, and pretended not to understand any French;
"They want war, they get war..." I was thinking (!).

Óskar

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