“Les Nouveaux Sauvages”

October 2004

The diminutive French grandmother drew up toe to toe with my 6’ 2” husband and delivered her scathing assessment: “Vous Américains êtes les nouveaux sauvages.”

An international incident — just 24 hours into our trip!

I’d surreptitiously watched Madeleine Traonmilin since we’d taken the last two seats at the zinc bar at Le Bar à Huîtres in the Latin Quarter on a Saturday night in mid- September.

We’d come without reservations, drawn in by the endless variety of shellfish – oysters, clams, crab, you name it—piled on ice in sidewalk bins that started on Rue St. Jacques and ranged around the corner. Two fellows in white coats and red aprons opened the shellfish with assembly-line efficiency, arraying the icy delicacies on platters of various sizes, including a three-decker feast. Who could resist?

Inside the only two seats left were at the bar overlooking the lobster tank. I noticed the white-haired woman dining alone at a corner table by the window as I climbed onto my stool. With the bar entirely occupied, she was walled off from the rest of the restaurant by our backs. Her isolation struck me as rude.

With the help of the very rusty French my husband, Jeffrey, had last used 32 years earlier as a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco, we met the four men arrayed around the semi-circle bar. Erik and Jean-Christophe were the driver and mechanic of an amateur Formula One racing team from Paris. Denys was a Frenchman-turned-Yank who now lives in Florida. I didn’t catch the name of the fourth man—a dead ringer for the late British actor Leslie Howard – but I did learn that he was of Ukrainian descent.

Soon the six of us seated at the bar launched into a convivial but boisterous party that included debates of international affairs, repeated photo ops with my digital camera and occasional whoops of good-fellowship.

We’d polished off our oysters and lobsters plus a bottle of Pouilly Fuisse and the six of us were enjoying our first glasses of Veuve Clicquot champagne when 77-year-old Madeleine decided to join us.

She marched out of her corner with a face like a thundercloud and lowered the verbal boom on my surprised husband. He took a step backwards, struggling for the appropriate response—in French—while our companions dissolved in laughter. Eight years of high school French had given me enough knowledge to translate “nouveaux sauvages.”

I touched Jeffrey’s arm. “Offer her your seat and a glass of champagne. And apologize for both of us.”

Within minutes, Madeleine had accepted our apology, climbed onto my husband’s stool, agreed to a glass of champagne and joined in a blistering critique of American foreign policy. By the time we’d ordered digestifs, Jeffrey and I had accepted her invitation to dinner four nights later. After that rocky start, Madeleine became our dearest French friend.

The French are famous for their laissez faire outlook on marital fidelity and deservedly so. They’re also famous in the States for rudeness, a reputation I believe is mostly undeserved.

We rented an apartment near the Seine for two weeks to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary, a plan we made when we married on Bastille Day—July 14—1979. Jeffrey had been to France several times, but my only previous visit was a three-hour layover at Orly Airport in 1969.

Before we left, Jeffrey’s sister, Charlotte, a frequent visitor to Paris, sent a few words of advice by email: “When going into a store to purchase something, or just to look around, particularly the smaller ones or a market, always greet the proprietor, ‘Bonjour monsieur; bonjour madame or mademoiselle,’” she advised. “You will get better service than those that don’t. The French are not so much cold as formal, and the greeting is a nice custom.”

Not just nice—essential. Especially for Americans traveling to Paris who want to get to know the natives. Simply stated, the problem is a classic culture clash. Americans’ breezy informality—if we want help, we’ll ask for it and forget about hearing a hello or a goodbye—really raises hackles in France. I saw it over and over—in restaurants, in shops, in museums, everywhere! The punctilious French react to what they see as a rude snub with a silent sneer of icy disdain. Which just frosts the visiting Americans. And so the Franco-American cycle of misunderstanding continues.

Getting to know the natives was not high on our list of priorities for our sojourn in Paris. We wanted to eat great food and drink great wine, explore the city’s most ancient arrondissements on foot, and while away plenty of hours in cafés, bistros and wine bars. To make sure we weren’t overcome by a frenzy of tourism, we laid down strict ground rules—a maximum of three churches and three museums and just a single day of shopping during our entire 15 day visit. Turned out we barely accomplished that minimal amount of tourism because we kept getting sidetracked by our encounters with Parisians.

Like the two fresh-faced seminarians who gave us a tour of their 11th century chapel on Rue des Ursins on Ile de la Cité. They jumped into a lively exchange comparing the divergent views of religion between the old world and the new.

Or the proprietor of La Cave Elzevir in the Marais whose family has been making Armagnac at Chateau Laballe in the south of France since 1820. He wanted to discuss the apparent end of the legendary feud between California winemakers—and brothers—Robert and Peter Mondavi.

And the Latin Quarter’s Francois Cotin was hard to overlook at tiny Les Pipos in the Place de la Contrescarpe since he wore a baseball cap emblazoned “Team America.” After a fun afternoon, Francois and his wife, Giselle, insisted we return another day to sample the Guyac wines they loved.

Two things made those encounters—and many others—possible. Everywhere we went we made sure to return the many greetings we were offered and to make eye contact when we did. In addition, we jettisoned our self-consciousness at our rusty French and plunged into conversation whenever possible.

As a result, a destination we expected to be memorable for its places turned out to be unforgettable for its people.

If you only have time for one…

The people of Paris are definitely worth getting to know. But if you take the time to get to know the natives, you’ll have fewer hours to spend on more typical tourist pursuits. Paris guidebooks list page after page of museums, shopping districts, churches, tours and other activities, enough to keep you busy for years. My advice is to embrace the smorgasbord solution: pick one from each category.

If you only have time for one church, make it Sainte-Chapelle on Ile de la Cité. Built in 1248 by Louis IX to house Christ’s Crown of Thorns, the church is at 4 Boulevard du Palais, inside the walls of the current Justice Ministry on the site of the ancient palace of the Capétien kings. Sainte-Chapelle is actually two churches. The lower chapel, noted for the glowing gold leaf of the Gothic arches that soar just overhead, was used by servants and commoners who worked at the Capétien palace. The upper chapel, noted for 15 towering 50-foot stained glass windows and 12 carved wooden statues of the Apostles, was reserved for the king and royal family.

If you only have time for one museum, head for Musée Picasso in the Marais. The Picasso museum displays a stunning collection of painting, sculpture, prints, drawings and collages in chronological order with concise explanations in every-day language of the complexities of the artist’s life and art. In fine weather, tasty and affordable food is served in the museum’s garden.

If you only have time for one day of shopping, try La Samaritaine on the Right Bank at Pont Neuf. This 1926 department store boasts a terrific and intact Art Deco interior of iron and glass. Two rooftop restaurants offer a choice of casual or formal dining with a bird’s eye view of the city, and on the floors below you’ll find an ample selection of French goods, including everything from fine housewares to designer clothing.

If you only have time for one tour, climb aboard the riverboats of Vedettes du Pont Neuf for a nighttime boat ride on the Seine. Launching from the Square du Vert-Galant at Pont Neuf, the vedettes are quaint, old-style riverboats that carry fewer passengers than the huge new boats but offer the same fabulous views of the city’s riverbank landmarks such as Tour Eiffel and remarkable bridges like Pont Alexandre III.

If you only have one weekend afternoon to kill, spend it with the street musicians and passersby on the pedestrian bridge that connects the Seine islands – Ile St-Louis and Ile de la Cité. Legend has it that in the 1700s a gypsy woman placed a curse on the bridge to make it periodically collapse after her daughter was tortured nearby. Since then the bridge has collapsed at least seven times and the current bridge—Pont St-Louis—dates from 1970. On fine days, the bridge hosts impromptu concerts as street musicians and other performers mix with tourists and day-trippers moving between the public square and gardens at Notre Dame and the intriguing shops on Rue St-Louis-en-l’Ile.

No matter where you go, be sure to greet people and look them in the eye. And if you’re lucky, you’ll find it hard to get very far without winning friends in France.

Recommended Reading

Two books offered wonderful insights into Paris and the people who live there now: Adam Gopnik’s Paris to the Moon and Thad Carhart’s The Piano Shop on the Left Bank: Discovering a Forgotten Passion in a Paris Atelier. To learn how the City of Light affected the “nouveaux sauvages” who visited in times past, try Americans in Paris: A Literary Anthology, edited by Adam Gopnik.

Copyright 2004 © by Beth Quinn Barnard of text and photos. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.