The French connection

Paris is beautiful fellow readers, just like an old poem on a warm Sunday afternoon. Theres just something artistically enticing about the air here ... but then maybe its just me ... well, who cares, its just a pleasure to be in the beauty capital of the world.

If you asked me to describe Paris in one word, what would it be? Well-dressed. Thats right, the first thing that really strikes you about Paris is that the people here are just so well dressed. Not only do they know what to wear, they actually go ahead and wear it. Every Tom Dick and Harry is wearing a nice savvy business jacket or a hip leather coat and they all look good wearing it. I've been to Chicago and NYC before this and trust me folks when I say that I really haven't found people consistently keeping such a high standard of dressing anywhere else in the world. Its almost as if people here dress to make a point, be it in the airport, in a queue for a bus or even when shopping for groceries. Dressing well is almost as instinctive as breathing and the French grab it as if were their birthright.

The first day I came here I was too shy to wear my Van Huesen jacket in the public, half way down the train ride to my hotel I realised that I needed a couple of such jackets to begin bridging the gap between me and the school kid that stood beside me. Today when I stepped out for the office I was dressed for the occasion, Guess t-shirt, Bosinni jeans and a black VH jacket, overkill you might argue, but folks, in Paris I'm just getting started. Its kinda fun guys, it makes a mundane task like going to the office interesting and fun. Just to add, you can bet that half the people waiting for a bus in Paris are wearing blue jeans with a Black jacket like me and the remaining half are even better dressed. Even NYC or Chicago don't stand to be in the same league as Paris, they've got about 300 years of catching up to do.

The other things that catch your eye are the narrow streets and the parallel-parked-cars on either sides of these streets doubled with the pliable traffic rules. You can walk across a street even when the walking sign is red, you can stop your car and park on the side of the road, you can drive up the sidewalk ... all this made me a little dizzy especially after going to the US where rules are meant to be followed even if fighter bombers are circling the skies above you. You also find a lot of two wheelers in France, something thats completely missing from the States. In all these senses France ends up comfortably in between the two extremes that are the US and India.

The other defining characteristic of France and Europe in general is the atmosphere of calmness and mental coolness that is prevalent here. People are so relaxed here, they wake up in the morning and decide to cycle their way to office and then they end up doing it. If they feel like hiring a mercedes s class taxi to work, they can afford to do so. If they feel like going to Marseille after chucking work and watching a football match, they will go ahead and do it. They find ways of motivating their work and that motivation in turn ends up motivating them. This relaxed attitude towards life in turn explains why people are in such a good shape here. They look good, they dress well and they like to live life the slow way. What else could you possibly ask for?

The French language like the French people and cities is a symphony of the sweetest order. If the looks and dressing sense wasn't good enough for ya, the language has got to be it. It just makes Paris and France a very complete package ... it just complements everything so well and does justice to the word " beautiful".

There are a ton of things that I want to talk to you about here - like the Citroen/Renault/Puegot cars that you see all over the streets, the tons of beautiful restaurants that line every street in Paris - yes the ones with chairs outside the restaurant itself - , the wonderful trains here - the metro, the tram, the local trains and the TGV -, the weather and how it is sunny and bright even at 8:30 in the night, how regular office going folks in in Cisco-France skate to work, how you can pick up and drop public bicycles anywhere in the city and how the city is not made up of monstrous skyscrapers that make you seem small and insignificant. I could talk and talk but you have to see the beauty that is Paris to make sense of it. Trust me folks, its totally totally worth it.

Take some time out people and come to Paris while I take some time out and relax like a typical Frenchman, so folks until we meet again, Au revoir.