Not a tourist

I explained patiently to Bertil, as we wandered around Paris on Sunday afternoon, “I’m here for work and to visit a friend. I’m officially not a tourist.” And while he smiled with quiet scepticism at me, later in the day as I walked around St Germain, I was asked for directions to the Musee D’Orsay (where I had spent the afternoon) and was able to respond in French. So there!

AXA’s head office in based in the 8th Arrondissement in Paris, and I had gone over for 3 days to learn website content management and search engine optimisation. And while I had joked to Bertil that I was not a tourist, it was indeed a different experience being here for work. The 8th is very upmarket, with many of the large corporates based here, as well as the most expensive clothing and antique stores, which made it a far cry from the Marais of the summer. At any time of year Paris is beautiful, although the Christmas lights were subdued and not readily apparent in most stores. The full commercial Christmas of the US and the traditional Christmas of Germany don’t seem to have taken effect here at all.

Despite a heavy workload, still managed to eat very well, explained perhaps by the difference in French work culture. The office has a subsidised canteen which offers 3 course meals – including daily regional specialties, a grill, and a full selection of desserts and cheeses followed by coffee. I really liked this – it gave work colleagues a chance to sit down together and relax over good food – which made Bev and me feel quite regretful that lunch for us was normally a sandwich at our desks.

And don’t tell anyone, but I had steak and frites for both lunch and dinner on Sunday – first with Bertil at ‘Le boeuf sur le Toit ‘ (The cow on the roof), and secondly with Bev for dinner at ‘Le Relais de l‘Entrecote’ (Steaks r Us) – There are no menus as they only serve one thing here, so you sit down and they ask you how you want your steak done. They bring you a salad, and when this is finished they bring a reasonable sized portion of steak and frites, doused in their special secret sauce. Finishing this off you turn to thoughts of dessert, at which point they bring you the rest of the steak and frites that didn’t fit on your plate to start with. (Oh yes and lemon tart for dessert…)

And so with other visits to Le Pain Quotidien, La Duree, Fauchon and Galeries LaFayette (where I bought myself a classic French beret as a souvenir) it’s a wonder I got any work done at all.