Bread and Frustration!

We'll start with the frustration.

We got a cell phone on the weekend. Our house phone does not have voice mail, and we can't make outgoing calls, so we thought it would be a good idea, especially as I'm applying for jobs, I wan't to be accessible, without having to sit by the phone all day.

Sounds simple enough.

So, we picked up the phone last weekend. It had to be registered under Erik's name because all the banking information is under his name only right now (another small frustration...). Didn't seem like a big deal. I plugged the phone in to charge last night.

When I turned the phone on this morning, it is all of a sudden asking for my PIN. I've never had a phone do this! Well, I've only had one other cell phone, and it was pretty basic. And it spoke English! Anyway, the phone company, SFR has sent me three text messages in the last week all with different PINs. I've also recieved two voice mails with different PINs. By the time I try all the PINs I can remember, I've been locked out of the phone.

Turns out you have to enter the PIN from the SIM card every time you turn the phone on! I will admit, its written quite clearly in French, on the page that the SIM card came with. Except the sales person put the card in, and didn't tell us anything about entering the PIN when we turn the phone on...and I obviously didn't look at that page until it was too late. So, now the phone is asking me to enter my 'code PUK'. Now I'm getting frustrated! At least I know what a PIN is! What the heck is a PUK??!! And where do I find it????

I consulted the English version of the manual that we had to download from the internet, and apparently you have to contact your service provider to get it. Great. SFR advertises on its international visitors page that it has operators available to help travellers from Europe in seven different languages, including English. When you call the advertised number, it turns out that the service isn't available yet. They're probably on strike!

Anyway, I think one of the hardest things to do in another language is talk on the phone. The other person can't see you, you can't gesture, you can't read their body language. Its just a big guessing game. So I call up SFR, and throw out the one sentence I've been practising: "J'ai une probleme avec ma telephone. I'll me demande pour mon code PUK, et je ne sais pas ou le trouvez." (translation: Where the heck do I find the GD PUK code???) Well, her response, after I give her my phone number, was "mais tu est un mademoiselle." Uh, yeah. Unfortunately, she can't help me because the phone is registered to Erik, and he is conveniently at work. She did say at the end of the conversation that she was happy to have helped me. I don't think she could have been any less helpful! And I had to pay for the call!

So, the phone is still locked, but I have 6 more chances to guess my PUK. Hopefully Erik will be able to sort something out when he gets home.

Onto a more pleasant topic. Bread. Yum!

To ease my frustrations, and due to the fact that there's no food in the house, I had for lunch a sandwich a jambon et gruyere. We're not talking Subway sandwiches here, folks, this is half a baguette, buttered, with a couple of slices of ham and cheese. Thats it. And to be honest, I probably would have been happy with just butter. Or just bread. Fast food at its best! The bread (freshly baked, of course in the ovens visible from the front of the bakery) is nice and crusty on the outside, and has a nice flavour on the inside. The butter is nice and creamy, and contrasts nicely with the saltiness of the ham, and the sharp taste of the cheese. I don't think I would ever have eaten a sandwich like that in Canada, but for some reason I wouldn't have thought twice about eating at McDonalds. The French really know how to do it. And for 3 euros, its almost cheaper than doing it yourself.

Anyway, my point, as I stopped by another bakery on my way home from groceries, was that we're eating a lot of bread. I had half a baguette for lunch, and we'll polish off most of another one with dinner. Its just so good. And everyone eats it. Whoever invented the low-carb diet obviously never came to France!

The bread that you get served at a restaurant is a necessary part of the meal. I've discovered that better restaurants have better bread. Bad baguette here tastes like the stuff that you get at Dominion. Not the ACE bakery stuff, but the generic French Bread thats pure white inside and comes wrapped in plastic. The kind that doesn't really have a flavour, but you don't really realize that it can have a flavour until you have the good stuff. My favourite baguette has a buttery taste when its warm. Its crusty on the outside, and chewy on the inside. I've learned that a good baguette has lots of different sized holes on the inside of the bread. This means that the loaves were shaped by hand and not by a machine. I was commenting to my mom that I have yet to see a presliced sandwich loaf, and I'm sure we never will (they don't even have them at the grocery stores). Bakeries are so common, and good bread is so easy to find, that I'm sure the French would never stand for something like that.

Writing this has made me hungry. I'll have to go break off a piece of warm bread...by the way, the bread that I like reminds me a lot of the ACE Bakery baguette. So if I've made you hungry too, go get a loaf of that, and warm it up in the oven. Eat it plain, and guilt-free, and it will be just like you're here in Paris.