Are you known to the police?

I remember my glorious arrival in the United States two years ago. The plane landed at around 11PM at Chicago O'Hare, so we had to take the much hated Lex to get to campus (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). Of course, once there, there was no way we could go into our designated residence hall because, well, there was no-freaking-body at the reception. It was me and a bunch of other Italian students. The only other people we saw on the street were some American guys who were so wasted they couldn't even remember where they were. Nice start.  As soon as we saw a student getting into the dorm, we trapped the door open so that we could actually wait for whoever had to give us the key to our rooms, inside. After a lot of calls and no luck, what do you think happened? Well, the police arrived! Yes, that door being kept open for 20 minutes or longer triggered an alarm somewhere on campus and a couple of policemen made their appearance and questioned us about what was going on. They couldn't identify us all (of course they identified me) because the person in charge of the reception desk that night eventually showed up and let us in, so the police could finally leave. He was saying stuff like:"My boss told me to periodically walk through every floor, you know, to check everything's all right". Whatever.  It turned out that the guy in question would be my roommate and would always take a one-hour nap at 2AM while at work.  Nice.

So what's my point here? Well, could I have made myself known to the US police and not the French one? Of course not! Here's what happened this time.

My means of transportation around the city is the velo bleu, namely the blue bike. These bikes are owned by the city council and upon payment of a weekly/monthly/annual rate, you can take one from any "velo bleu parking lot / station" (or whatever you might call it in English), use it for free for at most 30 minutes, and then leave it at the nearest spot. It's amazingly useful. Maybe not as efficient as in Paris, but whatever. Still the best way to get around town. So one afternoon I took one bike and rushed to Place Massena. I was running late, and since I had already noticed how carelessly people drive their cars and motorcycles in here, I took the liberty of passing some red lights, while still making sure nobody was coming. I think this is common sense everywhere. But hey, this must have looked really bad, because a huge car passed me way too quickly and pulled over right in front of me. It was pretty obvious that they wanted me to stop right there. At that point I didn't know what the hell was going on. Three men stepped out of the car, all in plain cloths. One shouted at me something like:"Stop, the police! You passed all the red lights! Stop right there!".  Now, why would any local policeman not wear a uniform and care so much about a cyclist? So the first thing I thought was that these were some impostors trying to rob me or something.  What you do in Italy when policemen aren't wearing a uniform is to ask them for their police ID, so as to make sure who you're really dealing with. It is your right to do so. My teatime conversation with them (A, B, C) went like this:

Me: Oh ok, can I please see your ID? I need to make sure you're the police.
A: We're the police. Did you steal the bike? Why were you running so fast?
Me: Well, I want to see your police identification before saying anything to you.
A: We ARE the police! Damn it, don't you see I have a police transmitter? So is this your bike? do you have a velo bleu card? Did you steal it?
Me: I asked for your police ID, sir. I could as well have a walkie talkie attached to my belt, you know.
B: what the hell, we TOLD you we are the police.
Me: I wanna see your IDs, sorry.
A: I've got a gun, is this enough for you?!?

Well, I guess it was. I gave him my velo bleu card and his partner started asking me questions like:

B: What were you doing in a such a hurry? Where did you get your bike from? Where were you going? And to do what?
A: Give me your identity card. Do you even have one?
B: Are you known to the police? Do you have a criminal record? Are you by any chance Romanian?
C: "No, he's Italian. You see? Italian driving licence. 
A: Should we let him go?
B,C: Yeah, ok. Let him go.

Me: Thanks...

C'est pour ça qu'on dit "merde!"

Here's a lovely souvenir some douche left in my building this evening.

Nice by night

 The thing about being here is that you never forget how peaceful your hometown is. And yet you might even like it.

 To the left is what Avenue Jean Medecin looked like this evening at 8. Bomb alert. Fantastic. But I'm not here to talk about this - yet.

So the second weekend since I had arrived was pretty eventful. Even though it all happened more than 20 days ago, I think it's worth a recap. I knew even before coming here that this wasn't the safest place in France. People had warned me that car stealing is commonplace, getting robbed even more frequent and stuff like that. Luckily, there was always somebody saying that it wasn't all that bad, you just had to deal with it like in any other European city.  Some poster on a newsgroup even went as far as saying that this is the only place where when you arrive by car street signs tell you that you should close the car windows and lock the doors. Now, I came by car but I didn't see any of that. Also, I spent one month in Paris taking a French course (more on that later - maybe) and I never felt unsafe in the city centre, even very late at night. I might have been lucky, I don't know.

Back to my story, it was a Friday night at around 2AM when a few (say 7-8) friends and I were walking across Place Massena, the main square in Nice. All of a sudden we saw two men from north africa going toward us, one of them aiming at one of the girls. So what did he do? He grabbed the girl's hair just because he felt like it and then, when some other people in the group weren't too happy about it, he tried to look as if it was all just a misunderstanding, saying he didn't do anything wrong.

While being backed up by another man, often times their strategy is this:

1. Provoke somebody to start a fight
2. Say your intentions were good, you always meant well
3. See how the chosen victims react. If they get mad, all the more reason to do the same and start threatening them little by little or even escalate. If not, do something stupid to piss them off and then go back to step 2 until you've actually managed to have a fight with someone and possibly rob them or else you give up and go away, looking for your next victim (step 1)

Indeed what happened was that these two guys began to yell at us that they had knives in their pockets, that we should behave ourselves and that they felt insulted,  until I briefly apologized for everything so we could leave.

The following night we were  all pregaming on the beach, and when I say "all" I mean some 30-40 people. Some sitting in a circle, some standing up. There are always some iffy people intermittently sneaking around, trying to steal people's belongings, but you sort of know that already when you're there. If not the first time, the second one. But this once two men came around (it's always two, yeah) and put all their efforts into bothering two of the girls who were sitting next to us by making stupid remarks, in a desperate attempt to be as annoying as possible. So you're already aware that in this case all you can do is stand up and leave, and that's what everybody did. Not at all happy with this, one of the two men, while keeping a big smile on his face, took the ukulele from a student, and decided it was about time he self taught himself how to play it.  So he went on like this for like twenty minutes, after which he must have thought that it was not his path in life, so he left.

Good lord.

The morning after that I read on facebook that one of the guys we had run into the previous night had been attacked, but he was lucky enough to be able to stand up and run into the closest club to seek shelter.

Now, that wasn't the warmest welcome this city could give me. I must say, though, nothing else that I know of happened after that. And I hope it won't! (see bomb alert above... I actually wrote this post last night. I shouldn't make any other predictions, right?)

An introduction

Ok, so I've been here in Nice for a month now and there's a post-it on my desk that says "write first blog entry". I left it there around 20 days ago. So maybe it's about time, huh?

  I'll try to stick to writing in English as opposed to French, my first language. Ahah big laughs, I can hardly speak any French.

Good.

Here's a few words about the title. A few weeks ago I went to Subway. I know, I'm in France and all that, but at 10pm you can only have a 5-euro kebab, a crappy burger at McDonalds or a French pizza. We all know where this is going.  I never particularly liked Subway back in the States, but whatever, I thought I'd give it a go. So I went in, saw how freaking expensive it was, but I didn't care this time. I happily noticed how the only other people inside were a few Americans, maybe getting away from the baguette-and-camembert world. Anyhow, I ordered my usual Italian sub (yeah, don't even comment on this) and after a while the French girl at the counter - she looked more or less my age, said to me: "Vous avez un accent, monsieur. Vous etes d'ou, par hasard?".  If we forget for a moment that she was addressing me using "vous" and "monsieur", something that I'll never get used to, I know that she didn't mean to be disrespectful or anything by making a remark on my accent. Well aware that my French isn't that good, I could have easily felt a little bit insulted or at least annoyed, but I found it funny that she used the language as an excuse to ask where I come from, when it was pretty clear that I wasn't French. 

Last year my flat mate from Colombia once said that her friends who live in Paris, no matter how perfect their French is, always get told that they still don't sound like native speakers. (Well, no big deal, I'll never pass for French!)

I remember getting lost several times in Nice and asking passers-by for directions, and getting ignored pretty much 50% of the time. Now, the only other time that happened to me was in the Bronx two years ago, and back then I thought I wouldn't try again, you know. But here it's like, you can either run into the kindest people, who will occasionally switch to English even though you used the right intonation and phrasing, or you can find people who will look at you for a nanosecond and then shamelessly turn away, or even tell you they have no clue as to where the main square is.

By the way, it's not true that everybody here refuses to speak English to you. There was a time a few weeks ago when every single person would reply to me in English. I wasn't too happy about that, but whatever! Same thing happened in Paris.  This doesn't mean that there aren't people who won't even bother trying to communicate in English with you, even after realising you're French doesn't allow you to fully express yourself. Banks, insurance companies and government offices will gladly make you sign tens of papers where you have no idea what is going on.

ANYWHO, I think it's enough for now. I believe I was going to make a point, but now I don't remember. Great. Also, if next time I add a picture or two, it'll all look nicer, huh?

Well, à la prochaine!