I sat down at a nice looking café to have breakfast. Tomorrow I was to give a conference presentation about graph theory but today I was going to ramble about the streets of Paris and get to know what the city had to offer. I did not have any particular itinerary planned. I was simply going to go on a random walk along the city’s street network and see where my feet would take me. The only thing I knew for certain was that I had decided to try not to behave like a tourist. I was going to blend seamlessly into the crowd as if I were a local.
A waiter came over to my table and asked what he could offer me. I pronounced the sentence I had repeated constantly in my mind since opening my eyes this morning.
“Croissant et café au lait,” I said as confident as I possibly could. Nevertheless the sentence did not sound quite as good when I said it out loud as it had done in my mind all morning. The intonation was different. Stiffer. Out loud, the words flowed like a pile of rocks falling off the back of a truck in pouring rain, but not like the calm brook on a sunny day I had imagined all morning.
“Un croissant et un café crême,” the waiter murmured as he dutifully wrote down my order in a small notebook.
Rather than walking away from the table and into the kitchen to prepare my order, the waiter stood at my table and poured over me a river of french words whose meaning was completely beyond my level of comprehension. It had not been part of the scene I had imagined all morning that the ordering process would include anything beyond a simple request and an unconditional execution. Now I had to stay strong and don’t admit defeat. I couldn’t give up. I couldn’t lose the cool. I had to imagine how a proper Parisian would react.
“Oui,” I said casually when the waiter finally stopped talking.
The waiter nodded, smiled and walked over to the kitchen. I had to admit to myself that it could be a challenge to try to behave like a local without knowing hardly any french. Was I perhaps getting myself into trouble? What could it possibly have been that I had said yes to? It could hardly be anything serious, though, since the waiter had taken my answer as if it had been quite expected. I could therefore relax again and turn to my premeditated plan.
I observed the people in the street and tried to find something in their conduct that I could imitate in order to fool people into thinking I was a local. A quick observation revealed two aspects that were noteworthy about the Parisians. They smoked cigarettes and walked across the street against a red traffic light. I decided to pass up on the smoking but I was determined that on my rambling along the city streets I was not going to wait for a green light if the traffic allowed me to cross.
It wasn’t long until the waiter returned and put a cup of milky coffee and a croissant on the table in front of me. The breakfast looked exactly as I had imagined it. My yes to the waiter’s oration did not seem to have done any damage—whatever it had been I had said yes to. I decided not to dwell on that thought any longer. I would just have to accept my fate and go through the rest of my life without ever knowing what the waiter had said.
