(I was sitting here humming It's a Small World After All and then...)

"oh don't listen to them, they're just Americans"

Ouch.

I was sitting around in New Jersey a few weeks ago with 5-6 guys I *used* to work with and, since we had all traveled quite a bit over the past few years, we compared notes. The guy that was probably the friendliest and nicest in the bunch had been sent to France for a few gigs and pretty much decided he had no interest in ever going back based on what he considered to be crummy treatment. I have witnessed cases where Americans got less-than-friendly service because they behaved like oafs, but yours is not the first story I have heard from someone who was treated badly without provocation.

Having spent maybe a total of 4-5 months total in France, I think the worst treatment I've received was being ignored by a waiter (and I walked out), and I've seen a fair amount of low-grade brusque behavior by waiters, in Paris anyway, which I tend to weigh on the scale of how I get treated in other places like NYC. I think Paris is worse: the love-hate relationship with tourists and tourism.

For your nasty point #3, I would always think of my grammar school class at St. Bernard's School and the school's most notorious bully, Alfred. Guess what Alfred's occupation is now?

I hope that someday you are compelled to return for some reason and that you get treated well -- balance out that nasty cop! Oh, and to get myself back into a humming mood (actually, I *hate* that song!) I'll give you another travel tale where a certain amount of French officiousness worked to my advantage (I think).

On a month-long trip in the early 80s (the ill-fated honeymoon!) we picked up a little red Ford Escort rental in Brussels and drove south. Somewhere between Rouen and Caen it started running like crap. In Caen, we were fortunate to spot several Ford advertisements on bus shelters that all referred to a Ford agency on the "Avenue de Paris" (or something like that). Piece of cake, we got on the ring road, drove east, found the Ave and found the Ford dealer.

I composed myself in the car for a few minutes with my Berlitz book piecing together some lame, mangled sentence about "J'ai une probleme avec mon voiture...Je pense c'est une bougie" (I have a problem with my car. i think it is a spark plug) then I walked in to the service desk and blurted out my lines to a guy standing behind the counter.

Behind that gent, the service manager turned around. He was a slight, fairly short gent with what I vividly remember as perhaps the most precisely trimmed moustache in the world and he was wearing a bright, spotless white lab coat with a natty Ford emblem embroidered in. Without a word he brushed past me and marched outside to the Escort, popped the hood, motioned for me to start it, and started pulling plug wires. Sure enough, one wasn't firing. He turned on his heel, went back inside and came out with a socket and ratchet, pulled that plug, produced a new one from the pocket of the lab coat, cranked it in, waved for me to start it, and "Voila!", all was right with the Escort.

I got out of the car to follow him back to the office and started fishing in my pocket for some francs when he stopped short, spun around, raised his arm and, with his nose just a little bit in the air, delivered two very sharp upward flicks of his right hand.

We were dismissed.