On To Paris!

The bouchons (literally "corks" but meaning traffic jams) were, fortunately, on the other side of the highway as we approached Paris. They were the product of the laggards, late risers, the totally clueless, the eternal optimist, or people who did not have the wherewithal in their jobs to get away at an earlier date. They would sit in their cars for hours just to get to the toll station and on to the autoroute where they would again encounter other bouchons on their way to a crowded, over-priced vacation spots.

Last Wednesday, there were two amusing and relevant cartoons in "Le Canard Enchaîné": one is titled "Vacances, Les Nouveaux Arrivants" (Vacations, the new arrivals) in it a bronzed fat man and his fat bronzed wife are leaving a beach and the new arrivals, a fat pale man and his fat pale wife, greet them and thank them for the vacant spot they are leaving behind; the second one is a depiction of a highway clogged with vacationers and the caption says that the subject of conversation this summer of 2011 is the history of sex scandals among the ruling class and politicians. The cartoon vacationers in the traffic jam haven't a word to say about the congested highways, they are as used to those as the sex scandals they are commenting. As usual, the fabulous political-satirical newspaper summed up the situation in France as we approached its capital city.

Although the lanes into the city were not as crowded as the ones one uses to leave it, it was by no means an easy drive. Parisians, even more so that regular French drivers, are speed crazy. (The night we arrived we saw on the news a French police woman yelling at her colleagues to go after a car that had just sped by at 188 kilometers per hour!) We hugged the "slow" lane (where cars go at only 120-130 kph) and listened dutifully to our GPS as it guided us through the "peripherique" and on to the maze of roads that surround the city.

Soon we were in a quieter section: the one between the Parc St. Cloud and the Seine. Suresnes, the suburb where we were to stay for the next three weeks, is to the west of the city, across the river and opposite the Bois de Boulogne. This is where Louis Bleriot, famous for being the first to cross the English Channel in an airplane, had his digs.

Our little GSP led us straight to our destination without a problem, but, as luck would have it, fate stepped in disguised as my wife.

"Ahhhh," she gasped. "We don't have a key to the apartment. We were to pick it up at the real estate agency."

"And, where is that?"

"It is in center ville Suresnes."

"No problem," I said, still feeling calm and collected. "We will park the car in front of our apartment building and then we will walk to the real estate agency. Downtown Suresnes is not far from here."

"No, no, no, no," she cried. "It is nearly five o'clock and they close I think at five."

"OK, so call them and say we will be a few minutes late. I am sure that they..."

"No, I don't have the phone number. Turn here!" She yelled in such a frantic way that I turned to the left without thinking, much to the disgust of the cars behind me and also those that had to screech to a stop in the opposite lane.

"Drop me off here," she said jumping out of the car. "I will go to the agency on foot and I will meet you in front of the apartment building."

She ran off before I could protest and the GPS, in it most urgent feminine voice kept urging, "Maintenant, fair un demi-tour!" It wanted me to return to the path it had calculated for me. Of course, I could not. I was in a one way street and there were cars behind me honking their horns.

I went off into a knotted mass of streets. The GPS was going mad, asking me to turn left and then quickly right, and sometime begging me to make a turnabout and go the opposite way I was going. I turned it off and decided to try to figure out how to get to our apartment building on my own.

An hour later I was still hopelessly lost in the maze of streets of downtown Suresnes. Salvation came in the form of a pizza delivery guy. "Where is rue de Raitrait?" I asked in desperation. He motioned for me to follow him.

Five minutes later we were there and incredibly enough there was a parking space near by. I thanked the pizza delivery guy and tried to tip him but he just waved and buzzed away.

I looked at the clock on the car's console. It was fifteen minutes past six. Surely my wife would be back soon. Or not! She can get lost in the middle of our living room! Panic seized me! Why did I let her out of the car? She can't find her way to our garden at home without a map! What was I thinking? "Surely," I though, "she is wandering around in downtown Suresnes trying to find the agency. What shall I do? Should I go and try to find her?"

I was about to go search for her when a black, shiny car pulled up in front of me. From the driver's side a smartly dressed young man got out and from the passenger side, my wife popped out!

"Ah, there you are," she said as if I was the one who was lost. "Well, let me tell you that I had an adventure. This young man rescued me."

The young man came and introduced himself.

"Did you know that there are THREE real estate agencies in Suresnes? Well, there are. I went to the wrong one!"

Of course, I thought. It would have been a miracle if she had gone to the right one.

"But, this young man took me to the right one. He works in the wrong one; and as it happens, he knows the fellow who was supposed to give us the key, but you see, he was not there."

"Who?" I asked befuddled.

"The man who was supposed to give us the key! Augh, are you not listening? Anyway, he was not there, this man, so we had to rummage in his desk for the key."

"And you found it."

"Of course not," said my wife opening the front door with the key. "But this young man had the telephone of the man who was supposed..."

At that point I gave up trying to follow the story. I knew that it would take a dozen more twists and turns before we would get to the point where she had found the key.

The young man who had helped her find it had brought her to the apartment to make sure it was the right key. He said good-by and smiled knowingly at me as if saying "Good luck!"

We went into the apartment I and plopped down on a sofa, worn out but not from the six hours of driving I had done that day.

Tomorrow: A walkabout to reacquaint ourselves with Paris.