by Das Govind

Created on: March 25, 2008

Last year, I traveled through Europe with a group of strangers on a coach tour. A lot of friends I had made were American, and one of them in particular I had struck up quite a friendship. We even eventually started sharing a room together. Unfortunately while in Paris, dining at a local restaurant, sampling french cuisine, she suddenly became very sick. Assuming

she was just drunk, her other girlfriends sent her to bed and tried hydrating her with fluids. To our disdain, however late into the night and early the next morning, she still kept vomiting.

The tour group was departing to the wine regions at 8 am that day, but my friend was still very sick. She had eventually made the decision to stay back at the campsite and receive medical attention, at the nearest medical center, which was about 5 miles away. We had all in the mean time got on the bus and departed for the wine regions, which was quite a long trip.
We arrived around 5 pm the same afternoon, tired and having received no news from our lost friend.

As we were having supper at the dining hall, she suddenly appeared carrying her hand -luggage. Physically exhausted and fed up with the unfriendly and rude locals, she started voicing her frustrations. I, personally was shocked at how rude the local people and even the Parisians had treated her. They had not even been friendly enough to give her directions on how to get to the train station. It was a real nightmare and more because of the language barrier, they just sort of walked past or swear out in french to her went she attempted to ask them for directions. She was so fed up she was ready to go straight home and abandon the rest of the trip. The worst part of all was that she had vomited on the mattress during the night and she had to pay a hundred euros for it to the campsite manager. This had brought her spirits right down, but fortunately after a while she changed her mind and decided to stay on.

In my own experiences of the French I have actually found them to be incredibly rude and unfriendly people. I had an incident in Nice, on the French Riviera of a restaurant manager
swearing me in French as I had not ordered an expensive dish, and while being lost and asking for directions most French just stare at you blankly, refusing to speak English, even though they do understand it.

Paris, I must say is a beautiful city, adorned by gorgeous architecture and ascetically pleasing to the eyes, but the people can just turn your mood sour, especially since the food is quite unappetizing as well. When we dined at a restaurant in Paris, I remember ordering a
salmon starter. When the meal had arrived it was more like cat food and tasted awful. The more adventurous of the group tried the snails, which I have to say did not go down well with me. Oh, yes and my friend got sick because of eating off snails, Urrgh! She was diagnosed with food poisoning and given some medication. Thankfully shes a lot better now.

As we crossed the border into Italy, people just seemed to get friendlier and more jovial, a huge contrast to their sour neighbors. Hey, some of the gorgeous Italian waiters even flirted with us at our dinner tables, but as for the French, I don't think I can go back there
equipped with 3 words, which are pardon, wee and non.

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