So you are planning to purchase the Navigo Découverte pass for the two weeks you’ll be in Paris? I’m not sure if it’s possible to purchase the pass somewhere inside the actual terminal, but you may have better luck at one of the RER stations connected to CDG (Aéroport Charles de Gaulle 1 or Aéroport Charles de Gaulle 2-TGV). I haven’t tried to buy the Découverte at these stations, so I can’t say for certain that they’d be available, but I do know that it is possible to buy them at the major Métro stations on the RER B line from the airport (Gare du Nord, République).

I will be in Paris in Decem15 to 28th. I found according to my trip buying navigo for 2 weeks is cheaper.

I am arriving at the CDG airport around 4 pm. Is there a counter I can buy Navigo at the airport? Can anyone happened to know where abouts of it, so that I may be able to get it

thanks so much

Niro

Glad to know we’re not the only ones who have found this type of bureaucracy tough to navigate. And thanks for the tip about using our Navigo passes for Velib’.

Thanks! And thanks for letting us know about your book. We’ll have to check it out.

That seems very sensible. I don’t often need to use 1 or 2 cent coins here, but somehow we’ve accumulated a bunch of them already — similar to pennies in the US.

Have you seen the movie Office Space? In it, there’s a plot that revolves around that idea of rounding transactions up or down by a few cents.

I was surprised the last time I was in Paris to see the little coins in my change!

It’s true that in the US there is not such a demand for exact change, or if there is, there are usually change machines nearby. Having only $1 and $5 bills (no $2 coin or bill) makes keeping exact change around a bit more challenging. In Canada, where I grew up, they do have $1 and $2 coins, so it’s more similar to the Euro situation in Europe. We’ve found it takes a little getting used to have heavier coins jangling around in our pockets (haven’t invested in coin wallets yet).

I had some of those kinds of experiences when I first moved to the US too. I guess what seems reasonable and normal in one country can seem very strange to newcomers in any language. I’ve never had a driver’s license, but Joe would like to get one here, so I’m sure we’ll have lots of interesting stories to tell about that process!

Glenn:

Speaking of driving, I like your metaphor about how these exchanges sometimes feel. When I’m in a store there are times things seem to happen at a normal pace, but at other times, things start to spin out of control and I leave thinking “Whoa, what just happened there?”

I also speak a bit of German (actually my German is much better than my French I think) and I remember visiting Switzerland and being disappointed because I couldn’t understand a thing people were saying! The whole Swiss-German dialect(s) was very confusing to me.

A kilogram of mushrooms! Wow. We’ve had plenty of misunderstandings already, but so far none of them have been irreversible. I’m sure it’s inevitable that it will happen to us one of these days.

I recall walking into a neat little market with my wife (then girlfriend) in Basel, Switzerland, a few years ago. I was pretty pleased with my recovery of several years of studying German that I could speak it reasonably well after a day or so immersed back there. (My wife had run into a Spanish couple when she was looking for a restroom, and stunned them by speaking Spanish in Basel, a language not generally heard by or from tourists there!)

I asked one of the shopkeepers for what I thought was “one of those and one of those” pointing. She was very charming and so forth, but as she pulled two of one item out, I said, in my politest German, I beg your pardon, but I meant to say I want just one of each. She looked intensely irritated, like I had practically insulted her, and gave me the correct quantities.

An American friend who lives in Paris and who was once told she speaks like a Frenchwoman, wound up purchasing 1 kg instead of 100 g of mushrooms at a nearby market just before I visited her several years ago. She misspoke and said mille instead of cent or something, and as the grocer was pulling out the massive quantity, tried to get him to stop, but he refused. She went along with it, because you have to keep the peace; she realized she’d be going back there all the time.

An Italian friend who lives in Seattle can hardly bear to return home to visit her family because of the customer service attitude in that fine country.