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Mike, the Francophile 12/11/2011 3:08:09 PM
Mike, a true Francophile, is currently talking about Paris, AGAIN! There are people who like France, but he loves France. He always tells me that within eight years (seven years, this coming January of 2012) he’ll request his company to transfer him to Paris, working in a restaurant in a train station.
He did mention what train station it is, but I can’t recall which one. You see, he was a chef, years ago and now he manages 3 properties at the airport. He married a woman, Alison, who speaks fluent French. And everytime we meet, he tells me of Ombeline and another French girl they hired as a nanny. They went to France, by the Loire Valley to attend Ombeline’s wedding. The wedding was held in a Chateaux and it was a beautiful wedding. He mentioned exotic French cuisine which I can’t pronounce myself which they said they enjoyed, much like when he mentioned it along with the famed Julia Childs, a chef who made French cooking famous here in the United State. In this trip, his family stayed in the apartment of their friend which was right across from the bakery where the movie “Julie and Julia” was filmed. He even took pictures of the place and of the environs which was at Sacre Coeur.
And then he went on an animated exposition of French culture and its history. Aside from the food the French prepared, he was fascinated by its monuments – the art galleries, museums, churches. He mentioned the Louvre and Notre Dame for example. He dwelled on the transfer of dead people from the cemeteries to the catacombs; that the French reburied their dead with their bones stack into vaulted caves underneath the city. And the paintings, boy, was it a mouthful – winged victory, the big framed pictures, the Dutch masters and the Egyptian sculptures. He talked about the people, streets overflowing with them, all thirteen million. Of course, it was not thirteen million for Paris’ metro population is only nine point eight million only. But whether it is nine or thirteen million, it did not matter. It was a huge number.
For the next seven years, he promised to study French. He bought five levels of French with Rosetta Stone, on sale for the price of three. He’ll talk English to his kids while he and his wife will speak French. And then what? He’ll end up in Paris.
I hope he will find happiness in Paris. I know that it will be seven more years of knowing him. But for all of his talk about Paris, France, it was worth knowing him and his love for the country.
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