“Welcome back to America, good to have you back,” the Customs agent said with a broad smile. “Great to be back,” I responded, throwing out perhaps the understatement of the year.
And what a 180 degree from my sentiments as I left the States earlier in the week loaded with a guide, phrase book and the terrific ‘Paris 1919’ by Margaret MacMillan. I am fluent in Spanish and so spent most of my education years studying French – thus I arrived in the City of Light with at least a suitable vocabulary for my needs.
None of it mattered or made any difference.
Fact is, if you are not ‘French’ you are inferior and undeserving of their presence, much less their service. They reinforce their self-appointed complex by treating all others like Joan Crawford’s children – all while exposing a vast cultural insecurity. The whole damn country has a Napoleon complex; easy to see why they so felt compelled to colonize the globe.
Now before the Internet pomme de terres get all huffy and puffy about ‘cultural differences’ understand that I am not ‘white’ nor am I a ‘newbie’ – been and lived around the globe. And without a doubt, even in Mideast countries, the French take the cake as the single biggest ‘pricks’ on the planet.
Why? Simple. Their interaction is malicious, borderline barbaric – they are the ultimate conundrum. On more than one occasion I saw a tourist struggle to communicate with a Frenchman who I knew could speak English just fine. Others were given wrong directions. They’ll throw out, and did, full and open bottles of wine because it was 12:01. They’d rather toss it then serve it to those they have judged, via infinite all-knowing wisdom, to be unworthy.
And it is astounding the lengths they go to to purposely and maliciously make everything more difficult for you. In fact, it’s an argument I can validate by describing examples from one hotel room, my hotel room at the show.
The Shower
Getting out of the shower was Russian roulette. The tub ‘base’ was disproportionately high in comparison to the brutal marble floor down below. It was impossible for someone of my size or smaller to keep one foot in the tub and the other on the floor at the same time – so getting out involved a wet-flooted leap onto a tiny ‘towel mat’.
To make it all worse, the shower/tub floor was lubricated-like slippery, my tub foot always slipping when I pushed off. Got so scared I ended up smelling like a Frenchman in the Sahara by the end of the trip.
The Bidet
First of all, they include no instructions and then place a large bar on the wall three feet above that made us all question which way to point our undercarriage.
The Picture
Directly above the television set was a painting of a little girl, a cute smiling redhead girl – with DEMON eyes, pupils black as coal. Of course, they added accent lighting to it too.
It made it almost impossible to watch all the crappy TV stations using a remote that maddeningly worked, yes, but only 30% of the time.
The Blanket
Apparently when Motel6 is done with their blankets, they ship them off to Paris to itch and scratch tourists. Bonjour? Isn’t ‘duvet’ a French word?
The blanket was made of a synthetic I cannot describe although I imagine it may be petroleum based. I put a drop of water on it and it broke the sound barrier. Or in US Weekly terms, think of a blanket made entirely from Spencer Pratt’s beard.
The Bed
Imagine the box the good mattress came in, with a sheet on top.
And this is a four-star hotel as rated by the Ministry of Tourism? No’est possible. I could picture the staff watching me struggle via hidden cam, with wine and cheese, placing wagers on whether the tub would kill me or if the girl or the remote would drive me insane.
Yes, the city has many wonderful and spectacular things to offer; too bad it is all scarred by its venomous inhabitants. Still, as domainers tend to do, we made the best of it and had a great time chatting and partying and enjoying each other, talking and doing some business in between.
And plus, there were French exceptions but I found they were mostly the so-dubbed ‘second class citizens’ like Tunisians, Algerians and such. They need the work and money more than the average Parisian – who seems to have little interest in actually doing their chosen profession as if pushed into their jobs by socialism. You make any simple, trivial request and they sink and mope like you just asked for a kidney.
Finally, also to be disclosed is the propensity for ‘ugly Americans/tourists’ among the group (in fact, the Americans were generally more tame) but to be quite honest, they didn’t become ‘ugly’ until day three or four of being abused – so by that time I did not blame them although some did go too far.
Luckily the show ended, I think a few days more and we would have torched that hotel to the ground. Don’t think we could? I think our contingent was larger than ‘Le Resistance’ (less than 5% of the French during German occupation). I think we could ‘take’ Paris with escargot forks and day-old croissants.
Yet it haunted me all the abusive way to the airport (CDG), where I then nearly broke my back trying to locate a clock, any clock, digital, analog, the time, any time, the frickin’ time in Honk Kong. But no, of course, I had no clue what time it was until I landed in the U.S.
But the clock incident was the ‘eureka moment’, I finally understood. I got it. They love and need our money but we have to earn the right to give it to them. But wait, wasn’t democracy born in France? That no man shall have right over another?
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Forget Paris
“Welcome back to America, good to have you back,” the Customs agent said with a broad smile. “Great to be back,” I responded, throwing out perhaps the understatement of the year.
And what a 180 degree from my sentiments as I left the States earlier in the week loaded with a guide, phrase book and the terrific ‘Paris 1919’ by Margaret MacMillan. I am fluent in Spanish and so spent most of my education years studying French – thus I arrived in the City of Light with at least a suitable vocabulary for my needs.
None of it mattered or made any difference.
Fact is, if you are not ‘French’ you are inferior and undeserving of their presence, much less their service. They reinforce their self-appointed complex by treating all others like Joan Crawford’s children – all while exposing a vast cultural insecurity. The whole damn country has a Napoleon complex; easy to see why they so felt compelled to colonize the globe.
Now before the Internet pomme de terres get all huffy and puffy about ‘cultural differences’ understand that I am not ‘white’ nor am I a ‘newbie’ – been and lived around the globe. And without a doubt, even in Mideast countries, the French take the cake as the single biggest ‘pricks’ on the planet.
Why? Simple. Their interaction is malicious, borderline barbaric – they are the ultimate conundrum. On more than one occasion I saw a tourist struggle to communicate with a Frenchman who I knew could speak English just fine. Others were given wrong directions. They’ll throw out, and did, full and open bottles of wine because it was 12:01. They’d rather toss it then serve it to those they have judged, via infinite all-knowing wisdom, to be unworthy.
And it is astounding the lengths they go to to purposely and maliciously make everything more difficult for you. In fact, it’s an argument I can validate by describing examples from one hotel room, my hotel room at the show.
The Shower
Getting out of the shower was Russian roulette. The tub ‘base’ was disproportionately high in comparison to the brutal marble floor down below. It was impossible for someone of my size or smaller to keep one foot in the tub and the other on the floor at the same time – so getting out involved a wet-flooted leap onto a tiny ‘towel mat’.
To make it all worse, the shower/tub floor was lubricated-like slippery, my tub foot always slipping when I pushed off. Got so scared I ended up smelling like a Frenchman in the Sahara by the end of the trip.
The Bidet
First of all, they include no instructions and then place a large bar on the wall three feet above that made us all question which way to point our undercarriage.
The Picture
Directly above the television set was a painting of a little girl, a cute smiling redhead girl – with DEMON eyes, pupils black as coal. Of course, they added accent lighting to it too.
It made it almost impossible to watch all the crappy TV stations using a remote that maddeningly worked, yes, but only 30% of the time.
The Blanket
Apparently when Motel6 is done with their blankets, they ship them off to Paris to itch and scratch tourists. Bonjour? Isn’t ‘duvet’ a French word?
The blanket was made of a synthetic I cannot describe although I imagine it may be petroleum based. I put a drop of water on it and it broke the sound barrier. Or in US Weekly terms, think of a blanket made entirely from Spencer Pratt’s beard.
The Bed
Imagine the box the good mattress came in, with a sheet on top.
And this is a four-star hotel as rated by the Ministry of Tourism? No’est possible. I could picture the staff watching me struggle via hidden cam, with wine and cheese, placing wagers on whether the tub would kill me or if the girl or the remote would drive me insane.
Yes, the city has many wonderful and spectacular things to offer; too bad it is all scarred by its venomous inhabitants. Still, as domainers tend to do, we made the best of it and had a great time chatting and partying and enjoying each other, talking and doing some business in between.
And plus, there were French exceptions but I found they were mostly the so-dubbed ‘second class citizens’ like Tunisians, Algerians and such. They need the work and money more than the average Parisian – who seems to have little interest in actually doing their chosen profession as if pushed into their jobs by socialism. You make any simple, trivial request and they sink and mope like you just asked for a kidney.
Finally, also to be disclosed is the propensity for ‘ugly Americans/tourists’ among the group (in fact, the Americans were generally more tame) but to be quite honest, they didn’t become ‘ugly’ until day three or four of being abused – so by that time I did not blame them although some did go too far.
Luckily the show ended, I think a few days more and we would have torched that hotel to the ground. Don’t think we could? I think our contingent was larger than ‘Le Resistance’ (less than 5% of the French during German occupation). I think we could ‘take’ Paris with escargot forks and day-old croissants.
Yet it haunted me all the abusive way to the airport (CDG), where I then nearly broke my back trying to locate a clock, any clock, digital, analog, the time, any time, the frickin’ time in Honk Kong. But no, of course, I had no clue what time it was until I landed in the U.S.
But the clock incident was the ‘eureka moment’, I finally understood. I got it. They love and need our money but we have to earn the right to give it to them. But wait, wasn’t democracy born in France? That no man shall have right over another?
Best Films – in order
Vikings! Pump it Up