Life is full of...

Life is full of pleasant and unpleasant surprises; the unpleasant one first, if you have a bad day, the travel time from Paris airport to Paris is more than Paris to Frankfurt. Yesterday my friend Micha, left to New York, I went to see him off in the airport, and on my way back I took the FAST train, the RER. The ticket counter for the train had a kilometre long queue of sad tourists, after giving a sarcastic smile and bit pity; I proudly took out my French ATM card, and walked to the automated ticket dispenser, where the queue was definitely not a kilometre long may be few centimetres less, after 20 minutes, when I got my turn, the stupid ticket dispenser brutally refused my ATM card, next 20 minutes, I ran around the whole terminal and bought stupid things just to collect eight euros and ten cents as coins, well rest is a history, I got back to Paris, by the same time Micha got into his connecting flight in Frankfurt. The most unpleasant part is that all this happened in the airport of the city which has world’s highest number tourist.

So, now to the pleasant surprise part of the life, when you are searching for French words to talk to a foreigner, he may reply back in your mother tongue. “Cordonnier“ , is a special type of shop which makes keys and repair shoes, you will find this in almost every corner of Paris. Today morning, I took my favourite shoes to one such shop to replace a very noisy half broken heal, I was trying to gather French words to explain them and telling myself , “ Yes I can do this”! Entering the shop I said Bonjour! And as I was trying to take out my shoes and other French words, to continue the conversation, the shop keeper said, “Bonjour! d'où venez-vous ?” ( where do you come from?) Thank god! I can answer this and I said “d'Inde, sud ”, hearing this, he started talking to me in Tamil, he is from Vietnam and learned Tamil just by seeing “Kollywood” Movies it seems.

Leaving my shoes with its Tamil speaking doctor, I am back to my computer to hear the live commentary of the India’s first match in the world cup cricket, let’s see if they put me in a pleasant or unpleasant surprise.