And the good news is that it’s really not too difficult to become a Parisian. There are no painful tattoos or initiation ceremonies to go through, just a change of look and attitude. And most Parisians have had to undergo this acclimatization process, because a very large proportion of them weren’t born that way. They came here from all over the world, including other parts of France, and have battled their way through the city’s obstacle course of manners to arrive at the finishing post as fully fledged Parisians. Even I, who was terrified of driving in Paris for the first five years, am now capable of swerving, swearing and hooting with the best of them.
Appropriately, it took a non-Parisian writer to define the process of Parisianization (Parisians don’t have time to do such a thing). In 1938, the Swiss writer Charles Ferdinand Ramuz published a book called Paris, Notes d’un Vaudois (Vaud is a Swiss canton), in which he said that:
Paris still enjoys the privilege of showing everyone how things should be done. And everyone living there shares this privilege. They don’t need to be born in Paris. All they have to do is be in Paris and conform to Paris. The city will exclude anyone who doesn’t belong there, and who does nothing to look as though they want to belong—people who refuse to adapt their appearance, their gestures and their way of speaking, and who try to impose their habits on Paris, immediately become suspect.
This need to conform is why Paris never really changes. Unlike cities such as London and New York, where newcomers bring fresh influences, everyone arriving in Paris gets pushed through the same pasta mould and ends up as a length of typically Parisian spaghetti, intertwined with all the others in the tasty but rather over-rich sauce that the city throws over everything.
And adaptation is not just about clothing and ways of speaking. What you have to do to become a Parisian is get it into your head that you are the most important being in the universe. Other people might think they are important, and must be humoured, but they are wrong. The only truly important thing is you and your life. Everything you want to do (or rather, need to do) is urgent and of vital importance, and you are therefore (regrettably) obliged to ignore the wishes of the other, lesser, beings, including your fellow Parisians. If anyone tries to stop you, you are perfectly entitled to get annoyed at them because they are just being ignorant.
And it works—as soon as you start acting like a Parisian, you will be accepted as one. Before you have completed the process, however, there is one vital skill that you have to develop as a survival tool …
How NOT to annoy a Parisian
A few hints on how to avoid treading on a Parisian’s toes, or getting trodden on, both literally and metaphorically:
In a café or restaurant
If you only want a drink, don’t sit down at a table that has been laid for lunch or dinner. Laying these tables in preparation for mealtimes, and thereby limiting the number of drinks-only tables, is the waiters’ equivalent of herding sheep. Sit in the wrong place and they will set the dogs on you (verbally, at least).
Except in fast-food places and English- or Irish-style pubs, never order at the bar and then take your drink to a table. Usually, the bar and the tables are governed by two different cash tills and the drinks are priced differently, so by doing this, you will plunge the café into accounting hell, as well as making the waiter very indignant. Smokers wishing to drink a cheap coffee must alternate—sip of coffee at the bar indoors, puff of cigarette outside (unless they’re regulars, in which case they will be allowed to take their cup—but not usually their saucer—outdoors). I have actually seen a fist fight between the owner of a café and a smoker who paid for his coffee at the bar and then came outside to sit at a table.
If the waiter comes to your table while you’re perusing the menu and asks whether you’ve chosen (‘Vous avez fait votre choix?’), make damn sure before you answer ‘yes’ that everyone at the table really has decided what they’re going to order. The slightest sign of hesitation from anyone in your party will mean that you have been lying, and the punishment for lying to a waiter is to watch him raise his eyes towards heaven and pray that God will strike you dead. And then disappear for at least ten minutes while you try in vain to attract his attention.
Do not, under any circumstances, mention the words ‘Vegetarian’ or ‘food allergy’, because doing so anywhere except in a health-food restaurant will only cause unnecessary panic, like saying ‘bomb’ in an American airport. Instead, you must either choose something on the menu that you’re sure you can eat (and most cafés and restaurants will have something) or say, ‘Je prends le/la … sans le/la … s’il vous plait’ (‘I’ll have the … without the … please’). The waiter will respect you for knowing what you want in life, and probably won’t ask you why you want it.
Don’t just breeze into a café and ask to use the toilets. Toilets are for customers only. Simply order a coffee at the bar, wait till it’s served, and then go to the toilet, which will almost always be downstairs or in a corner of the café, and is usually marked with a Toilettes sign. Some cafés, especially in touristy or crowded areas, will force you to ask for a token (jeton) at the bar, or even the key, and will only give it in return for a food or drink order.
In shops
In boulangeries, people queue in an orderly fashion, mainly thanks to the boulangères strict discipline. But things can go awry—when, for example, there are two women serving and one
