This is my dinner from this evening, a little while before I finished it. On Mondays, I have class from 5-7 at Paris 3 and then choir rehearsal from 7:30-9:45. I grab dinner between the two and eat it once I get to my seat at Eglise Saint-Marcel, where we rehearse. I know that, to the average French person, this sort of on-the-run eating is incomprehensible and precisely the reason that Americans are obese and carry guns. Nonetheless, I persist, because if I have to wait until after 10pm to eat dinner, I'm kind of a mess. Spanish I ain't. At any rate, while I'm eating my dinner on any given Monday, a few of my French choirmates will catch my eye and, while looking at me as though I have two heads, wish me bon appétit. My question is:Do you think they're saying this sarcastically?
As though to say: "nice dinner ." They're sweet people, but I know that what I'm doing goes against everything they hold sacred.
I'm not sure they are being sarcastic, but I'd wager they are coming from, as you suggest, a place of complete cultural befuddlement as to how you could wolf down a salad between engagements. If there aren't a couple glasses of wine involved, a coffee, and a cigarette or two, it's just not really dinner!
ReplyDeleteWho said there weren't all those things? ;)
ReplyDeleteI saw a parisienne wolf down a giant macaron in the subway today in about 30 seconds. She was wearing businessy clothes and leafed through a portfolio that looked decidedly businessy. Looked like someone who didn't have time for a proper lunch and wanted to eat something to put the hunger at bay for a while until the real lunch could happen. It was right around lunch time too. So I think they do it too, that's the necessity of modern life.
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