Books

I think the secret to getting along in the French world is just to be persistantly dumb. And patient. I used that to my advantage twice today. The first was at the Paul-Valery library. . .

Two days ago I tried to take some books out, but the check-out man wouldn't let me since I'd had Emma for more than a week and if anything's overdue, they block your account completely. So I said okay, and today I brought back my book. I walked two feet to my left to get to the check-out desk, and told the same guy as before that I had just returned my book and I would like to try again with the whole check-out thing. He scans my card and shakes his head vigorously, saying that I had a fifty cent fine for the two days that Emma was overdue. Can I give him the fifty cents? NO! Of course not! We're in France! I had to go down the hall to the secretary's office and give her the money so she could clear my account. Good lord. Okay.

So I fish fifty cents out of my backpack (by some random, bizarre stroke of luck I had exactly fifty centimes + one American penny) and wait in the secretary's room as she is talking on the phone. I explain my plight (it became a plight at this point) and she scans my card. Then she started talking nonsense about me taking out four books for three weeks, which was grossly untrue. Then, she hands back my fifty cents and calls it a gift. Then she says my card is blocked until October 25th. Need I remind you that I have absolutely no idea what is going on at this point? So I get shuffled back to the main library in a daze and re-hand my card to the first, original, mean library man. He makes some joke that I didn't get at all but pleased him immensely and then finally I left with Robinson by Muriel Spark and The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy. They had better be page-turners.

After that interesting incident, I got to be pretty blasé (hee) about having various things demanded of me. I made a point to stop at the Fredrico Fellini Mediathèque to get a membership and gain access to their collections (only around 7 euros for a full-year, sweet). But before I could touch their stash, I had to prove a million different things. Proof of identity, with passport. Proof of student status, with university card. Proof of residency, with a piece of mail addressed to me. Proof of They're Cheap, as shown by me having to bring in my own picture to tape onto the card. After I get all of these various documents out of my backpack, I'm sitting in front of a grumpy man (who looked eerily similar to Other Grumpy Library Man) who then tells me that he won't accept my photocopied passport information page. Why?, I charmingly ask. He says it's not an original document. I ramble off some story about how I don't feel secure carrying around my passport so instead have photocopies made. He won't take them. I won't move. We have a stare-off. Finally he grumbles something incomprehensible and angrily snips out my picture and smacks it onto a card. Excellent.

I was very pleased to see that the French have such exquisite taste in automobiles. This lovely car is an Audi TT roadster. If I had a spare, oh I don't know, forty thousand dollars, this would be my ride of choice.