So East it's Ouest

Okay Paris let's call it quits.  Let's stop all this stealing and cheating and bad attitude.  I accept that you will be expensive and crowded and have terrible weather if you can accept that I can enjoy you without loving you.  Sure I realize you can't control if you have terrible weather and if certain areas are stinkier than others, just like I shouldn't expect the baker to be friendly in the morning after the morning work rush, when they are nice all the better.   This is what I want.  No more of these diva outbursts.  No more expensive crappy restaurant food.  No more hassling.  No more dismissiveness.  If someone elbows me in the boob at the market I want them to at least smile an apology.  No more attitude.  Okay Paris...?  ......ok.  Truce.

When I watched the movie 'Bienvenue chez les Chit'is' (Welcome to Chit'is country){chit'is is the dialect/culture up here by Belgium}I laughed at the stereotype of the Siberia styled Nord-Pas-de-Calais and inwardly made a note to bring rainproof gear. I'm from Indiana it snows, it gets below zero; I know what it feels like when your nose hairs freeze when you breathe in a glacial winter blast but this Midwestern girl now knows that yes it's actually cold here.  Rain, humidity, grey, windy...cold.  Now that winter is here it is rare for it to go a day without raining. Many people here live in old brick buildings with only a fireplace in one room.  They are tough.  I see old ladies with water dripping off their hair outside in ja ckets in the rain weeding when it's 40F outside.  I asked some locals why the older people don't move somewhere warmer because it's so tough to live here in the winter, the answer that they don't realize that the...