So, just on a whim, (because you all know I really want to climb back onto a plane and fly to Paris to pick up my recovered bag at the stolen bag holding facility in Paris) I sent an email to a former professor of mine, who, from time to time, spends a year in Paris running the junior year abroad program.
And guess what? It turns out that he wasn't running the program, but he happens to be in Paris this week, and he's agreed to help.
So right now, he and I are busy emailing back and forth. I've sent him scans of the letter from my new French boyfriend, Chief Inspector Dreyfus of the Recovered Handbags Department, and a scan of my passport, and a letter from me, telling the French police--in French--to pretty please hand my purse over to my former professor. (Which my former professor had to write for me, because as everyone who reads this blog already knows, I speak some French, but I am not tres fluent.)
So at the moment, I am COMPLETELY mental with a combination of excitement and suspense. Strangely enough, I'm also retroactively loving my vacation more and more. My daughter feels the same way. Like all of a sudden our vacation has morphed from this horrible ordeal where cruel French thieves conspire to make clodhopping Americans miserable to a warm and whimsical scene from a Jacques Tati movie. Can you hear the accordions playing, mes amis? Because I can.
One has this image of Peter Sellers holding a handbag from the strap hanging on one finger, his other hand clenched and behind his back.
ReplyDeleteThen he says, "Zo, yew are looKING for ze BAHG?"
I'm so glad that you are coming to see your vacation for the 1960's french demi-farce en flic that it will be when we resurrect Truffaut to direct the movie version:-)
ReplyDeleteN.
You know, the more I think about this, the more it seems like a covert operation....recalled back to France? For a purse?
ReplyDeleteAha! Madame, I have discovered your secret identity! (twirling my moustache)
Does your blog bite?
ReplyDeleteI don't know... I really think perhaps you should have a do-over trip to Paris. Retrieve the bag and also create more happy memories to make up for the pain and suffering from the last trip.
ReplyDeleteForget Paris -
ReplyDeleteI'm tagging you for the eight things meme...
What, again?
ReplyDeleteI'll have to read my old answers to make sure I don't repeat myself.
I hope everything turns out OK and you get your stuff back.
ReplyDeleteI will be missing France this year. I was planning a vacation on Corsica, but something else came up, so I am not going.