People Keep Asking Me for Directions

I’ve been in Paris for a total of ten days now, and on every one of those days but one, a stranger has approached me on the street and asked, in French, for directions.

This actually happens to me whenever I travel. I must look knowledgeable and approachable, like someone who knows his directions and won’t mind being asked. That it’s happening in Paris is surprising, but that it’s happened nine out of the ten days is kind of amazing to me.

There’s actually been something of a narrative arc to these encounters. On my first day here, when a woman stopped me on Boulevard St. Jacques and spoke French to me, I blurted out that I didn’t speak French. This was sort of a panicked response to a question I didn’t expect. She nodded and smiled and walked away. Only then did I realize she had merely asked if Boulevard Glaciere continued straight ahead on the other side of the metro station. I actually knew that it did. So it’s possible I could have answered her question with a simple “Oui, madam,” and successfully given a local Parisian directions on my first day in her city, which would have been one for the books. But no, one more missed travel opportunity had to be recorded instead. 

In the next couple of encounters I was a little more well-composed, and managed to say clearly that either I didn’t speak French, or only spoke a little French.This happily sent the group of teenage boys who approached me at the street cafe in my neighborhood on their way, and it did the same for the guy who stopped me outside the Luxembourg Gardens and asked me a question I didn’t understand.

Last Saturday, before I flew to Tunis, my random encounter with a stranger asking for directions involved a young woman in a blue dress who was standing just outside a metro station on Rue de Rivoli, a major street downtown. She caught my eye as I crossed the street, and then when I had gained the curb, and looked up at her a second time, she stepped up and said something in French. I don’t know what she said, but I answered that I was sorry, but I didn’t speak French.

It was only when I was down in the metro station that it dawned on me that all of this time I’d been brushing off strangers who were asking for directions, I had also been carrying around a map of Paris. “I should start sharing my map of Paris with these strangers who are asking me directions,” I thought.

I even tried to start with the young woman in the blue dress, but by the time I doubled back and climbed the steps out of the metro station, she was gone.

The next day I flew to Tunis, but on my return, on Saturday, I was ready. If any Parisians asked me for directions, I was going to share my map with them. It just so happened, however, that Saturday was the one day on which no one asked me for directions.

Yesterday I took the metro down to the Luxembourg Gardens station, and sat in a cafe on Boulevard St. Michel having breakfast and writing in my journal. After breakfast I was headed to the Louvre. As I sat there, two guys with backpacks walked up and asked me in French if I knew how to get to Port Royal. In fact, I not only understood the question, I knew the answer. Port Royal was the next stop up on the B line. I started to tell them this, but they interrupted to tell me they were traveling on foot. They needed walking directions. That was more tricky. Then I remembered: I had the map.

“Je ave un plan du Paris,” I said, and I pulled out the map. They were delighted. “Ah, superb,” one of them said. I handed the map over, and they began the unwieldy process of unfolding it and figuring out their route. I had done it! Finally, I had been able to offer a native French person directions in his own country.

Having achieved success, what else was there to do but go through the looking glass? This morning’s encounter was just weird. I was in the metro, and again a woman stopped me to ask if I spoke French. “Soloment un peau,” I said, and she smiled, as if to say “oh, well,” but then she didn’t move away. “Je ave un plan du Paris,” I said. I pulled out my map, but when I had unfolded it, I noticed that she was also holding a map of Paris. In fact, it was the same map I had, the map you get from the tourist information kiosks downtown.

I pointed to her map. “Vous ave un plan du Paris,” I said, you also have a map. It was more of a question than an accusation. She nodded and smiled. “Oui,” she said. I began to put my map away.

Then she looked at me and said, “Glaciere?” I had just come from the Glaciere station, but there was no way she could have known that, so I assumed she was asking for directions to Glaciere. I happened to know. It’s on the 6 line, in the direction of Nation.

“C’est en ligne seis,” I said, “a Nation.” Behind her, on the wall, was a sign indicating that the 6 line to Nation, which stopped at Glaciere, was just down the hallway. I pointed to the sign behind her and repeated, “Ligne seis, a Nation.”

“Oui,” she said nodding, and then she turned around and pointed to the sign as well, indicating that she understood that the Glaciere station was on the 6 line to Nation, and that it was just down the hall.

“My work is done,” i thought. I waited, and then I watched her walk off, in the opposite direction. Clearly, she was not trying to go to the Glaciere station on the 6 line.

It made me think that I really do only half-understand the regular encounters I am having with the people of Paris. Sometimes it’s a stranger asking a straightforward question about whether a street continues in the same direction, or how to get to an easy and close-by destination. But sometimes it’s someone underground, a ghost from a half-known world, who appears to need directions but is carrying the same map I’m holding, and who, when she does ask for directions, then indicates that she knew the answer to her own question and had no intention of going there anyway.

All I know is that I have five more days in Paris. Unless I have jinxed myself by writing this blog post, that’s five more days to handle at least one more of these enounters in French and somehow get it right.