Meta Resto Summary and Resto Summary

I have to admit that I feel a bit more of a poseur than I even usually do when I write restaurant reviews. I think of restaurants in the same way as as art museums. I prefer the small ones to the big ones, I usually enjoy the good ones, I appreciate it when the staff is friendly, and I like them to be clean. But I know even less about great food than I do about great art. This fact alone makes me feel that any restaurant criticisms I might make are shallower than an inflatable kiddie pool.

And I cannot content myself with the mundane aesthetic bromide, "Well, I know what I like." I don't know why this sentence so grates my raw nerves. Is it that knowing what one likes is passed off as some kind of uncommon virtue? Is it that the phrase is implicitly completed by a self-contented "and therefore I don't feel it's necessary to learn anything more" ?

These Sunday-brunch thoughts aside, I have to agree with friend Sheila who says that it's much more fun to read negative restaurant reviews than positive ones. It's also more fun to write them.

Dei Frescobaldi Ristorante, Via de' Magazzini, Florence is not the worst restaurant we've been to in Europe. But it provided us the least value for the money.

Don't go. But it was pretty damn clean.

S.S. Minnow

Bouncing around in my head recently has been "The Ballad of Gilligan's Island." This is apparently the proper name of the Gilligan's Isle theme song. Truth be told, it's part of my around-the-house singing repertoire. In these (currently) free concerts, I perform only the second-season version, which gives due credit to the Professor and Mary Ann, rather than dismissing them with an anonymous "and the rest."

My point is not to link the plight of the castaways and our situation here in Aix. Really. I just want to relay a fun fact to know and tell.

The show's cognoscenti report that Sherwood Schwartz, who co-wrote the theme song, named the S.S. Minnow not after the fish, but after the 1961 FCC Commissioner Newton Minow. Angering Schwartz, Minow had called television "America's vast wasteland" and had give more programming power to the networks.

By the way, one of the original Minnows was found and sold not too long ago (sitcomsonline, gilligansisle.com )

One quick pump only, hand held not too firmly.

You probably know that men are big handshakers here.

For example, I usually shake the hand of our gardien (superintendent), Monsieur F., when I see him.
But he's often engaged in some thankless dirty task.
And so there's a protocol here in France when you think your hand is not clean enough to shake.
You curl your hand down so that your wrist is at the end of your forearm. To do a virtual handshake, you then touch the back of your hand to the other's back-of-hand, close to the wrist.

But you have to see this move coming. Otherwise, you do what I did the first time, and that's to try to shake the other person's wrist with your hand. It feels pretty silly.

Looking for a warm subway grate in the Luberon: Part II

In the last episode we left our heroine and hero at the doggie rest
area in Pertruis on their way to Lourmarin for a mid-February day of
bicycling, exploring and eating in the hills an hour and a half north
of Aix.

We arrive in Cadenet to start the bicycling. We'll explore
Cadenet, a dramatically situated hill-town (I have only a few quibbles
with the description provided by
beyond.fr.) We'll take a quick ride
up the road to Lourmarin and then through the backroads to Lauris,
Puget and beyond, before returning to Lourmarin to catch the bus back
to Pertruis and then a separate bus from there to Aix.

The route that the bus takes and these surrounding towns are mapped [out?] here.

This being France, where things must be "official" and where a dedicated red inkpad and accompanying stamp accompany every imprimatur, there is
actually an official list of France's most beautiful villages (plus beaux les villages). Lourmarin is one of them.

[Ed. note: So is Les Baux-de-Provence, which we will visit later in the spring, courtesy of French friend Michael. Yes, "baux" refers to bauxite, in case you were wondering.]

We pass an adventurous day cycling, half-riding, half-carrying our new
bikes up to the top of castle-topped hills, climbing the foothills of
the Luberon hills, and trawling through the vineyard plains. We
return to Lourmarin with a little time to spare before the bus arrives
at 5:50 pm. We drink two pots of tea --- it's starting to get cold
--- and ride quickly down to the bus stop at the edge of the village.
The tourist office had told us earlier in the day where to get the bus.

There's a bus shelter on one side of the street and road signs that
point to Cadenet (where we got off the bus on the way up) and Pertruis
(where we have to change busses to get back to Aix). We quickly fold
up our bikes at the shelter.

Right at 5:50 pm, we see a bus appear quickly from around a
corner. Unfortunately, the bus is going in the opposite direction.
It roars past us on the other side of the street. The bus doesn't
stop, and the bus driver, who looks angry and a little familiar, doesn't
glance left or right. He is down the road before we can fathom what
has happened.

Claire, as always, is the first to recover. "This is not good," she
says quietly. Claire knows from having studied the bus schedule that
there's not supposed to be any bus passing through Lourmarin at this
time other than the one that we want.

We whip out the bus schedule. Yep, that was our bus. When's the next
bus? Tomorrow, Sunday, 5:50 pm, some, 24 hours later.

(How could this have happened? We've since realized that this
particular bus visits several small villages before taking a different
route to Cadenet and Pertruis.)

It's mid-February. It's almost dark by now. We're quickly getting
chilly in our cycling clothes that we've labored in all day. We have
no lights on these bikes, by the way.

OK. How about a taxi to Pertruis where we can intercept the bus? We
have a list of taxi companies on our bike-route map. Two are far
away. We call the other two. Neither can come.

OK. I'll go back quickly to the tourist office to find out about
accommodations. I run back. The tourist office is closed.

OK. We stop a couple walking their dog. It's now dark. They know of
one guest house and a larger new hotel a short walk away.
Is there a police station here, incidentally? No, they say. We go to
the guest house, lugging our folded bikes on our shoulders. There's
just an intercom at the outside door. Do you have a double room,
please? No. We are full.

OK. We half-heartedly ask a couple of safe-looking tourist-types
getting into cars if they're headed to Pertruis. No one is.

OK. We'll just shelp to the larger hotel. We find ourselves walking
along a fairly large road under a clear cold sky. Our bikes are
getting heavy and awkward. It's a little farther than the couple had
thought.

When we get there, we see that it's a medium-small, decent-looking
3-star hotel with alot of dark windows. Ah, this looks good. Hotel Bastide de Lourmarin. A
glass-enclosed dining room is brightly lit from the inside. There's
just a couple of waiters there. Looks like we won't have any trouble
getting a room.

We peel our bikes off our sore necks and shoulders and ask the
receptionist for a room. We are full, she says. Full?! How can that
be? Well, she says, this is the Saturday following St. Valentine's
Day. Lourmarin, being known as a romantic, beautiful village, is a
popular destination for couples celebrating the holiday. (Recall from
Part I that the director of Claire's lab got married here.) Do you
know of any other places to stay, we ask? She asks if we've tried the
guest house. We have.

OK. No rooms. No busses. No taxis. No tourist office. No police
station. Is there anyone we can call? No, we can't think of anyone.
[Ed. note: We've since had offers.] At this point, I'm beginning to
wonder how late the cafes close and how early they open, and just how
cold it gets at night. I begin to try to think of a place where we
could keep warm in the interim.

We run into a bit of luck here. The receptionist takes pity on us.
She begins to make calls. But she can't find any place to stay
either. She calls some unlisted guest houses she knows about. They're
all full, too. But one guest house owner knows a guy who occasionally
rents rooms. I call the guy who occasionally.... I can only leave a message.

Eventually, she finds a hotel in Pertruis with a room available. I
make arrangements for the room. And, operating from a decent hotel,
the receptionist has access to taxis. She calls one. We wait 20
minutes in the reception area and the taxi shows up. We thank her.
(Later we write a note to the hotel manager, expressing our thanks to her.)

We glance at our watches. We realize the bus is supposed to leave
Pertruis to go home to Aix at 8:00 pm. It's now 7:35 pm. We ask the taxi driver if he can get
us to Pertruis by 8:00 pm? He says that he can. We speed in the dark
to the bus station in Pertruis. We get there at 7:55 pm, five minutes
to spare. Nice tip for the taxi driver. I call to cancel the hotel
in Pertruis. We're home in Aix within the hour and turn up the heat.

A Change is Gonna Come

Just a quick note to let you know that a change is coming over Aix. Blossoms are out and leaves are out. The mimosa blooms have come and gone already. There is more noise and more people in the streets. We hear more English spoken. Some of it by tourists from England complaining about the prices and the price of the local "vee-no". More bigass-lens cameras. More noise in the streets. People shouting about who knows what. The little tourist bus-train that runs through our 'hood has begun its appointed rounds. The people on board the train always look so grim. Are they just embarassed? Amateur painters are to be seen painting outdoors in the tradition of local-boy Cezanne. (Never mind that it was a group of Americans who bought Cezanne's studio/atelier when it was threatened by real-estate developers on the hillside overlooking Aix. And never mind that the Americans gave it to the University who then gave it to the city of Aix and now the city is doing a really poor job with it and charging high prices for admission besides. All this after we bailed them out.)

To my chagrin, the statue-people have commenced their (in)activity. This year one of the entries is a completely beige cowboy. Maybe he's supposed to be dust-covered. I don't know. Go figure. I don't find this stuff interesting in the least. My favorite statue-guy was a seven-year-old kid in an outdoor square in Regensburg, Germany, who was standing on a chair pretending impromptu that he was a statute-guy. He didn't expect us to press a coin into his hand.

Moto Mojo

My niece in Paris recently confirmed my suspicions. "There is a reason there are sidewalks," she told me.

Both here and there, motorcyclists will often ride on the sidewalk. They'll ride on the sidewalk for a bit to find a convenient parking place. Convenient for them, not for pedestrians. Teenagers on motorbikes (often two on one tiny bike) will sometimes nearly run you down on the sidewalk. But at least you can hear them coming.

Moto's --- two-wheeled motorized vehicles --- trade off noise for fuel economy. But it's not as simple as that. The driver gets the benefit of the gas economy, but, in the language of social welfare economics, (s)he "externalizes" the noise costs. The rest of us pay by having to listen to the noise. The driver gets to pay for less gasoline. But he doesn't have to pay for creating a more hostile environment that is polluted by noise. So the rider is only assuming part of the social cost of motorcycling. In fairness, he should have to pay for the costs of his activity.

To my surprise, noise pollution was an issue raised by the recent municipal election campaign in Aix.

And --- to press the issue a bit too far --- even light pollution stems from motorcycles. Here's how it works here. Motorcycles will often pull right up to a restaurant terrace or cafe and park (on the sidewalk, usually), front-end in, facing the cafe tables. But at night, when the motorcyclist comes and goes, their headlight shines right in the eyes of the patrons sitting at the tables on the terrace. Typically, it takes the motorcyclist a little while to get settled, and during that time people are blinded by the light. On our main street, Cours Mirabeau, we've taken a minute to stand with our backs to a particularly slow-settling motorcyclist to block the exposure of two old women who were obviously disturbed by his hostile beam.

Looking for a warm subway grate in the Luberon: Part I, Aix-Pertruis

The director of Claire's lab got married a number of years ago in Lourmarin in the Luberon region and recommended the area to her.

We decided to head up there in the third week of February for some bicycling on a Saturday. It was cold in the evenings, but almost warm during the day. Claire has found a bike route in this hilly Luberon region. We're trying out our new BikeFridays, our fabulous new folding bikes from Oregon. We don't have a car, so we have to take the bus. It doesn't run very often, but it does go right where we want to go, about an hour and a half away in bus time.

So we ride our bikes to the Aix bus station at 8:00 am on a Saturday and find the right bus. On the wide but dirty sidewalk next to the bus we fold up our bikes and put them in the custom plastic carrying bags with a shoulder strap. (Each bike can also be broken down to fit in a single suitcase, but it takes a while to pack and unpack them. We're just doing what the BikeFriday folks call the "quick-fold" today, for this short haul.)

Since we never take the bus in the US, I don't know how baggage works, but here there are large baggage compartments underneath the bus where passengers themselves are responsible for depositing their luggage. (And presumably for removing only their own luggage.) I climb into the compartment so that I can put the bikes well out of the way of any baggage other folks may be toting. Claire lifts and hands me the bikes, one-by-one, I stow them, and I climb out with the stiff difficulty accorded to 50-year olds who never stretch and therefore can't. We close the compartment doors so the bikes are less apt to disappear when we are sitting on the bus.

After all this, the busdriver steps down off the bus and tosses an apple core onto the litter-strewn embankment behind where we've been folding up our bikes. He wags his right index finger at us. Oh, no, my heart sinks a little, there's a problem with our taking our new folding bikes on the bus, and we invested in them in part for this very purpose. (You don't merely buy these bikes; you invest in them.)

"This bus goes to Apt," he informs us, in garbled Provencal working-class French.

But we have done our homework, careful and experienced roadies that we are.

"Yes, we know. We are going to Cadenet," we say, in second-grade French. Cadenet is on his route to Apt. The plan is to ride the bikes from Cadenet to Lourmarin and then tour around Lourmarin on the route Claire has found. We'll then take the bus back to Aix from Lourmarin late that afternoon.

The driver shrugs, saying nothing. I look at the other passenger waiting with us on the sidewalk, an older North African man. We in turn shrug at each other. Claire and I are almost learning the art of conversing in France through gestures. A finger wag. A shrug. A shrug back.

We board the bus. The fare is surprisingly cheap. Like 2 euros ($3) each for a trip that lasts over an hour. The busdriver takes out a little book and to our amazement commences to write out in longhand a receipt. "Bus Receipt Form 63b. To Cadenet, from Aix, 2 passengers, 4 euros, February 18, ..." The busdriver has his small dog leashed on the seat immediately behind him. While he's filling out our receipt, we ask the name of the dog. The response sounds something like Tippy. We greet might-be-Tippy. Tippy is happy to see people but seems a little nervous to us. The busdriver turns out to be a little heavy on the brakes.

Those of you on the friends and family plan may recall photos of Pertruis, a picturesque village. Pertruis comes before Cadenet on this route, and the bus stops in Pertruis at the railroad station. It's across the street from a regional vintners' cooperative. Big tanker trucks, presumably full of grape juice, pull up there. The busdriver turns off the engine. He and something-like-Tippy get out and disappear down a bushy path off the parking lot of the cooperative. We look at the other passengers sitting with us on the bus and exchange shrugs.

Out of the mouths of Daves

Saturday morning. I walk the 4 minutes to Emile Bec bakery for the weekend breakfast treats. This is our regular boulangerie. A new young woman is behind the cash register in her white apron and hat. She looks grimly formidable, I think. (A polite French description might include "costaude".) Some of the staff there are very nice --- by French standards. Others have been not so nice --- by American standards. I wonder where she's going to fall on this daily mundane spectrum.

I ask for a baguette. I sometimes ask for it "bien cuite" (well cooked), so the crust is crunchy. The French alternative usually is "pas trop cuite" (not too cooked). But I skip all that this morning.

A standard weekend treat for us is a long thin bread that is embedded with chocolate chips. From my non-baker's perspective, the dough is like a brioche's. Kind of like challah dough, except with less egg, maybe? Anyway, it's chocolate-y and only 2 euros 50.

It's called "un pain viennois [vee-en-wa] au chocolat".

I move to motion vaguely toward the pain viennois on the counter. As I do so I glance at her looking at me glumly and impatiently. Our eyes meet. I rise directly to her implied challenge.

I hear myself politely asking her for "un pain nicois au chocolat." Nicoise means the same thing here (at least as a cooking term) as it does in the U.S. --- prepared with garlic, Nicoise olives, tomatoes, green beans, and anchovies.

Thriller?

Please tell me I've missed something. For the previous two weeks, I've noticed that Michael Jackson's Thriller has been among the top five best-selling CDs in France. Maybe I have missed something, which admittedly is quite possible. But failing that, the cultural chasm between the US and France runs deeper than I thought.

Honey, Angelina and Brad are here. Would you get the door, please?

There are more real estate agents in Aix than there is, well, real estate. But they're apparently doing their job. With the help of an Aixois real estate agent, our very own Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have purchased a mas (for 20 million USD) in a small village, Eygalières. A "mas" is a Provence country home. A&B are pretty close to us in Aix ( http://www.google.com/maps?daddr=Eygali%C3%A8res,+France&geocode=&dirflg=&saddr=Cours+Mirabeau,+Aix-en-Provence,+France&f=d&sll=44.012571,4.949341&sspn=1.738266,5.108643&ie=UTF8&z=10 ) but they are right up against the region of the Luberon where we've been doing alot of weekend bicycling.

(Ed. note: Ask me if I care. Have all generations been so concerned with the lives of celebrities? Isn't this excessive concern just a symptom of cultural dyspepsia? )

Aix Ville Propre

My niece L. is in Paris for the year. On a recent visit she told me she thinks Aix is cleaner than Paris. I feel sorry for Paris.

Les Aixois apparently think France is their garbage can. They buy a croissant in the morning. The croissant goes in the mouth. The bakery bag goes on the sidewalk. Both Claire and I have seen this multiple times. They smoke a cigarette after eating the croissant. The cigarette goes in the mouth. After, the butt goes on the sidewalk, usually still smokin'. Then they have to unwrap a new packs of cigs. The cellophane wrapper goes on the sidewalk. And they're only just finished with breakfast litter, mind you.


The white sanitation trucks that hose down the street have the slogan "Aix Ville Propre --- Avec Vous C'est Possible" emblazoned on the side. "A clean Aix --- with you it's possible." The Aix sanitation department is apparently forced to remind the citizens of Aix that they share the blame for the trashiness. (For some reason, the sanitation trucks hose down the sidewalks on the main street, Cours Mirabeau, at lunchtime, precisely the time when there are the greatest number of people on the street. But that's not my point.)

Our friend K. confirms that in Japan folks carry portable ashtrays in which to deposit their butts. That would be a good start for les Aixois --- if they could garner the cultural perspective behind this technology.

There is a small restaurant, La Brocherie ( http://www.eng.cityvox.fr/restaurants_aix-en-provence/la-brocherie_95967/Profil-Place ), on the small street behind our apartment. If I go to the bakery to buy treats for breakfast on Saturday morning, I see enough Friday night cigarette butts littering the sidewalk to think that space aliens have attempted to send les Aixois a message spelled in butts. And I think I know what that message might be.

Plus Belle La Vie

So we're in Paris. We've been invited to the pendaison de crémaillière of Timur and his partner, Cynthia, who have just bought a small apartment near the Place de la République. "Pendaison de crémaillière" is a marvellous French term, the "hanging of the cookpot". It means a housewarming party.

Timur is an American friend who is an assistant professor at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris. He's a researcher in computer networking at the Laboratoire d'informatique de Paris VI (LIP6). I knew Timur spoke good French. This was confirmed by his colleagues, one of whom added that when Timur uses an English computer term (for example, "internet") and speaks it with his American accent, he (his colleague) thinks "Whoa, this guy is serious!".

So, struggling as I am with French and looking for ways to improve it, in the past I had asked Timur how he came to be able even to teach at the university level in French. His answer: "Plus Belle La Vie".

"Plus Belle La Vie" is a TV soap opera. It's on most nights at 8:20 pm and runs for maybe 20 minutes. It takes place down the road from Aix in Marseille and is the pride of Marseille, I'm told. The opening shots of the city make the city look glorious. So Timur watched Plus Belle La Vie religiously and learned how people really speak, in the vernacular.

So, what to bring as a gift to the housewarming party? I look on the web to see what kind of Plus Belle paraphenalia might exist. I didn't find much, but apparently there's an entire series of Plus Belle La Vie books in print. We troll to a large FNAC occupying an entire beautiful building on a corner in Paris. These national chain stores have all kinds of electronic equipment, but also large bookstores. Think of Borders or Barnes and Noble with electronics.

There's an information desk on one of the book floors. There are two middle-aged women there, each with a computer terminal in front of her. I wait in the line. Seems like the two women only help one person at a time. Whatever.

"I'm looking for the Plus Belle La Vie book series, please," I say, having said the obligatory bonjour upon my turn.

"Oh, no. Plus Belle La Vie is a televison program," one woman tells me.

"Yes, I know. But apparently there are Plus Belle La Vie books as well", I say politely.

"No. You don't understand. Plus Belle La Vie is just a TV show, you see.", the woman says condescendingly to this foreigner who doesn't understand the depth of the French popular media.

"Yes, that's what I thought too," I suggest, trying to sound genial, "but I looked on the web and there are Plus Belle books also".

"Oh, no. There are no Plus Belle La Vie books," the woman maintains dispositively. And then --- I've seen this move before in the Aix Sous-Préfecture --- she turns to her co-worker for support against the irrational and uninformed requests of an insistent customer. "There aren't any Plus Belle La Vie books, are there?". "No---", her co-worker confirms, "Plus Belle La Vie" is a television show." The first woman turns back to me. There you have it, her look says. I told you I'm right.

"OK, perhaps you are right. But could you type Plus Belle La Vie into your computer, please, and we'll see?", I, David, the small and meek, ask.

Somewhat to my surprise, she obliges me. The keyboard has been there in front of her this entire time.

The search returns immediately. "Ah oui. There are several Plus Belle La Vie books in the popular fiction section."

We thank her and locate the books immediately. But no apology from the woman at the desk was forthcoming, no explanation why she gave out the wrong information, no recognition of her error or that of her co-worker or why she didn't just feckin search for it in the first place.

Frankly, I'm not sure how large a point this incident stands for. But I have to tell you it is one of my favorite anecdotes about life in France. It's a touchstone for our life here, which has clarified other experiences we've had.

On our way out of the store to go to the pendaison de crémaillière, we are happy to find a table near the FNAC exit staffed by two volunteers who are gift-wrapping books in return for a small donation to a charity. The friendly, older woman who wraps our Plus Belle purchases says, "Plus Belle La Vie is my favorite TV show. But I didn't know there were books."

My French Space

People walking in the street will cut right in front of you here. They walk directly in front of you, so close you can smell them. They act oblivious to your presence and to any claim you might have to continue on a reasonably straight path down the sidewalk. Coming in the opposite direction on the sidewalk, they will rarely move out of the way. We always have to move over.

Mildly irritated, I asked my French teacher what side of the sidewalk French people walk on. He said he didn't know. That's the answer in itself.

This is of course just a minor irritation. I know that. And admittedly, I need more personal space than even most Americans. I'm aware of my prickliness where my two-feet radius is concerned. But I got to wondering about the larger issue. It's the non-rhetorical form of the rhetorical question, "What were they thinking?".

So what _are_ they thinking?

A few possibilities. One, perhaps the most generous, is that they're not thinking anything. They're just oblivious. An analogy is my walking across someone's path 10 feet ahead of them back home in Ithaca. I, as crosser, wouldn't think anything about it. He or she, as crossee, wouldn't think anything either. So this possibility is that cutting off someone is just a matter of degree. I don't think about 10 feet. Here in France they don't think about 10 centimeters. (A secondary question is where such a small number would come from, but let's put that aside.)

The second possibility, less generous, is that they just don't care that they are cutting you off. As someone outside themselves, you are reduced to the status of an object, an object that doesn't have any claim to the space around it. It's like when they ditch lines here --- jump the queue. They don't care that they are trampling on the claims and time of folks who have waited longer. They're just being selfish and rude.

A third possibility results in the same scummy explanation --- they realize they're cutting you off but they just don't care --- but it grows out of a different polluted pond. This is the Mediterranean I-have-a-heightened-sense-of-my-self-worth-that-arises-from-my-sexual-attractiveness pool. When folks walk down the sidewalk, they consider it a personal affront to move for someone else or to select any path other than their most direct. It would be an insult to their machismo as a French man or sensuality as a French woman.

This afternoon, as we returned from sitting in the sun in the park, a tall, late-teenaged guy on a small bike came whizzing across the sidewalk at us so fast and so close to me that I stuck out my elbow shoulder-high to fend him off. (I didn't have the courage just to knock him down as my good friend Andrew did to a bike messenger who nearly hit him as he crossed on the green in a marked crosswalk in NYC.) I hit the bicyclist in the bicep with my elbow, which extended out less than a foot. Just a sec. Lemme figure out how many centimeters that is.

NYY

The most popular sports team in France is the New York Yankees.

This is strange in a country that doesn't even report baseball. (They report on NBA games and standings here in France, to my surprise.) But I see more Yankees caps ("casquettes"), and more recently, MLB-style jackets, with the Yankees logo than any other team's. This includes the hallowed local football team of rare-do-wells, l'OM, Olympique de Marseille.

But I was wondering what statement these self-proclaimed Yankee fans are making. So during the baseball season I would ask anyone wearing NYY memorabilia, "How are the Yankees doing"? Not once --- never --- did I receive an intelligent answer or even a vaguely knowledge response that would at least indicate the wearer knew who the Yankees are.

The sole informed response I got was from a un-logoed guy near the university whom Claire and I saw struggling with two suitcases. When we offered help, he said yes in an unmistakable NYC accent. So I took a chance and asked him how the Yankees were doing. Surprised, he asked us how we knew he was a Yankees fan. But he gave us chapter and verse.

The State of France: The Currency Shortage

Small bills and all coins seem to be in short supply in France. I don't know why.

Storekeepers are ever asking for exact change. The upside is that if you do have exact change, particularly in coins,
they will be happy. Well, as happy as they ever get. Busy cafe owners may even wait for you to count out a bunch of coins to pay a bill. If you pay for something and flash some change, a shopkeeper may ask you for it.

Once in a while in the bakery you will see two lines. One line is for people buying stuff. The other line is for people who have already paid and are now waiting for their change.

The ATMs commonly spit out 50 euro bills (worth about $75 and climbing). But try to get a small store to take one of these things. I usually just wait until I have a large purchase to make (say, greater than 30 euros) and then I try to pass one. I feel like some kind of bizarro-world counterfeiter of genuine notes. Several times I've asked if a 50 is a problem. Every time the answer has been a direct "yes". Shopkeepers are particularly loath to take one of these early on a three-day weekend, when the banks are closed on Monday.