Parlez-vous anything?

For many years I was blessed to have dear friends living in various European cities. It made travel so easy. I might not have been able to communicate in German, Danish or other languages, but they could. Last week I made my first overseas trip in many years without that communications backup. Oh, my! My French is very, very rusty. And I am now aware of how tourists to our country feel when they encounter a blank stare when trying to get directions, ask a price or order a meal.

I took French in high school and college and even traveled to Paris shortly after and managed to communicate reasonably well, but that was a very long time ago. In the interim I moved to Miami and tried to add Spanish to my language repertoire. Now I merrily mix the two and wonder why people regard me very oddly.

I did okay in restaurants. When you love food as much as I do, that's a necessity. It's alao the only way to avoid eating something that is not meant for human consumption, except in an upscale French restaurant. There's not enough wine in the entire country to convince me we should be eating snails, for instance. Fortunately I know an escargot when I see it on tbe menu.

I managed fine at the hotel, with shopping and mostly at the tourist attractions, though it did befuddle me that many workers at tourist sites were not multi-lingual at least for basic information.

So, where did words fail me? With taxi drivers. I've never seen so many blank stares in my life. Add in a few little oddities like a driver who pulled off the expressway in rush hour traffic en route from the airport to race into a mini-mart restroom, and getting around was a challenge. Most of the drivers did try. Most even managed with a little coaching to get us where we intended to go. Some even smiled.

Then, though, just to wrap up the trip with an experience from hell, we had a driver going back to to airport who assumed every American flew on American Airlines. Nothing I said in any language could dissuade him. I repeated United Airlines. Of course, United hadn't helped matters by not including the terminal on the flight confirmation. So, there we were in terminal two, only to discover we belonged in terminal one, which is seemingly in another part of France!

"A short walk," we were told. So we hiked and hiked, then asked again. "Five minutes walk," we were then told, "and then downstairs to the train, past two parking garages and terminal three."

"Are you kidding me?" asked the weary, unhappy traveler.

"Sorry, no."

If I every get back to Paris and spot that taxi driver again, I'll have plenty to say...in French and English.

Stay tuned, though, because there were many, many wonderful things to see and do in Paris, including a dessert cooking class that was fabulous. And I'll be sharing recipes...in English!