I’ve officially lived in Paris for over a year now. In my first post on this blog, I said that I’d created it to keep my friends and family informed about my doings and to let them know what it was like to live here. But I haven’t actually done that much, as you may have noticed. To see what I’ve written about life here, and to filter out all those depressing, sanctimonious political and environmental posts, just click the Living in Paris category in the sidebar.
Today I have to rant about French pharmacies, which drive me utterly insane. They are generally the size of a walk-in closet. You go in and there are three bottles of shampoo, three boxes of Q-tips, rubbers, toothbrushes, skin-care products, fancy perfumed soaps that stink to high heaven, and not much else. And each of those three items is only available in those cute little travel-sizes. Cuz who would want to buy 500 Q-tips? Thirty should be enough for anyone. And the stuff you really want, like Advil, is not out on the shelves. You have to ask for it.
1) I had some eye cream, L’Oréal, that I bought in the States and have used for years. Went into the nearest pharmacy to replace it. Pharmacist lady tells me you can only get l’Oréal products at parfumeries or department stores. Went to a parfumerie. Nope. Only department stores. Went to the department store and voilà. (This is the real reason why French girls are skinny. Because within the city of Paris, one-stop shopping does not exist and you have to walk everywhere or go up and down métro stairs. I don’t know how people have time for anything but running their errands here. Seriously.)
2) So I go in one day for cough medicine. I have a cough that’s keeping me and Vincent up at night. Pharmacy lady asks me if it’s a dry cough or wet. I say wet. And she says What you need is the expectorant, which makes you cough the junk out. I say I need to suppress the cough, we can’t sleep. She says But you don’t want to suppress a wet cough. OK, give me the stuff. Told Vincent it burned my ass to have to argue with somebody over what kind of cough syrup I wanted. Went into another pharmacy and told the guy I had a dry cough. Ha!
3) Yeast infection, shortly after I got here. Went up to a rather snotty pharmacist and told him I had a yeast infection. Cuz of course the stuff isn’t out on a shelf where you can just grab it. He said What kind of yeast infection. Duh. Meanwhile, I’m surrounded by other people waiting to get up to the counter to ask for their frikkin’ Advil and, as you may know, the French don’t have a problem with breathing down your neck. Different personal space requirements in this culture. So I quietly say Feminine hoping he’ll get the drift. Blank stare. So I have to say vaginal. Ok, was that really necessary? Please.
4) Toothpaste. Since every pharmacy has no more than three of any product, they run out of everything all the time. I have never, I mean literally never, in over a year, gone into a pharmacy (or grocery store for that matter) and found the exact same toothpaste I just ran out of. And because of the travel-size tubes, I run out of it frequently. Because I brush my teeth a lot… I never know if I’ll end up with turquoise or white or stripes or sparkly things or spearmint or peppermint (which I abhor).
When I get to LA next month, I’m heading to the nearest Long’s Drugs, pulling out one of the lawn chairs they always sell there, and sitting in the middle of the store just to revel in the bounty. When I’ve recovered, I’ll get up and wander through the aisles as if I were at the Louvre. I’ll read the signs over each aisle. Maybe out loud. I may count exactly how many different kinds of cough syrup there are and rejoice in the fact that I could buy one of each in three different sizes and drink them all at once if I felt like it. I’ll fill a basket with jigsaw puzzles and crayons and a Hawaiian shirt and flipflops and a candle and a humidifier and cheap earrings and batteries and some of my eye cream and film and drugs and chips and canned soup and a sponge mop and greeting cards and cigarettes and a stapler and pens and sewing notions and a styrofoam cooler and a mosquito coil and sunglasses and light bulbs and little hooks you screw into the wall and wrapping paper and motor oil and a bikini and a lightswitch faceplate and a heating pad and a trash can and a shower cap and hair dye and make-up and an obscene-looking massaging thingy and paperback books and magazines and nylons and toilet paper and beer and Coke and vodka and maybe even adult diapers just because I can. I may cry.
The grocery store rant I might do another day. You have no idea. Just believe me when I say that when they kick me out of the Long’s, I’ll be going to Ralph’s and doing the grocery store version.
Very good post.
Personally, I like the small, mom and pop specialized stores. I like the fact that my fishmonger is not also a pharmacist or a sporting-goods vendor. I love to visit giant supermarkets in the US (giant pop-art museums), but I’m glad I don’t have to shop there on a regular basis.
But that just shows my age. the “commerce de proximité” is going extinct in France. They are being replaced by “hypermarchés” everywhere. And the biggest supermarket chains in the world are now French companies. But, the only thing that keeps giant supermarkets out of Paris is the lack of–and price of– real estate.
Still, let’s not forget that giant supermarket chains are the epitome of corporate evil, paying slave-wages, forcing small farmers and producers out of existence by pressuring them on price. So only the big, industrial producers (the GMO and nitrates-in-the-drinking-water kind) survive. A giant-corporation buddy system designed to weed out the weak in favor of giant conglomerates that pump dangerous chemicals into the environment and your unsuspecting body.
So my preference is also the responsible choice ;)
(By the way, the fact that you can’t find the same product twice is often a corporate marketing technique, not a choice of the retailer).
Oh, you made me laugh! Yes, I myself remember well a pharmacy trip with the yeast infection (“mushrooms” when translated directly, right?), and the fact that apparently there is no such thing as privacy. The positive thing is that the pharmacists actually know a thing or two and will dispense quasi-official medical advice over the counter. But yeah, no products worth even buying and where the hell do they get off charging so much for a damn bottle of Revlon nail polish?
The thing that I loved even more when I lived there was our neighborhood grocery store, (there was only one to choose from), which was accessed only by stairs, and once one descended to the grocery store, it was on two different levels! There was actually a set of about 4-5 steps to get from canned goods to produce! No one packed my bags (WHAT?!?), and the few times I got ambitious and went to the large market 3 metro stops away, they charged for the friggin’ carts!
I love France, I really do, but everyday life can be so damn hard. I admit, I’m lazy, and I love Albertsons and Longs!
Keep the updates coming!
You made me smile ;-)
But being a rampant consumer myself, I perfectly know what you mean.
I even like to have ample built-in closets in every room of my house to store all my super-sized bottles of Advil (which is basically an overpriced version of Ibuprofen – I pay mine 2 Euro for 50)
May I advice a trip to a huge Carrefour Hypermarket in suburban Paris?
http://www.carrefour.fr/magasin/trouver/
Look at all those one-stop shopping Americans in the States: notice how grossly overweight many of them are.
At least, apart from the minor inconveniences, shopping in Paris keeps you thin!
:-))
Hi Peter! I just had a friend mail me a giant Advil bottle from the States… Tired of a box of 30 being the “large” size here… Interesting point about one-stop shopping and weight. It probably does have something to do with the obesity. Not only do they not have to get around physically, but they can really load up their shopping carts and then dump all the stuff in their cars. We don’t have cars to take 15 bags of junk home… We have to carry it ourselves (and burn the calories). Which is the very reason why going to the Carrefour might not be practical for me! Although it would be fun. Maybe I should do it just for therapy. Thx for the link. Vincent thinks I like to go to Normandy for the rustic, rural charm, but that’s only part of it; I also go there for the giant Intermarché grocery store! ;-)
Although I’m actually partial to French pharmacies (heh heh — you shoulda asked for Netux, m’dear!), I cackled in glee and self-recognition over your Long’s longing and long list. Too funny!
Last trip back from the states, I brought megabottles of advil, tylenol, etc. — enough for a zillion aches. Now a friend here wants me to bring back Exedrin Migraine. That plus trips to TJMaxx are why I always take an extra suitcase inside my suitcase when I go back to the US. But first on my US shopping list is magnetized pot holder hooks. Don’t ask.
I won’t ask. I’m taking a giant suitcase with a big one inside it next month too. This twice-a-year soldes insanity is for the birds. And first on my list? File folders, manila and hanging. Because I shipped my file cabinet and thought that just because A4 paper fit, the file folders would too… Oh well. I’m going to look into air freight for those and a case of diced green chiles and a dryer lint kit (don’t ask either) and some other stuff too. The big suitcase for is for Ross, Goodwill. I have to dress the whole family this summer…
Hey! Girlfriend, while I appreciate the “rant,” I feel compelled to remind you that you ARE living in Paris! To paraphrase Tom Hanks, there’s NO WHINING in Paris!
You’re right. The nerve! Anyway, I spend far more time raving about France than ranting. It was just one of those days I guess! When people said “I can’t believe you’re moving all the way to Paris” I’d say “It’s just a place, like any other, and I’ve lived in lots of them.” This place happens to lack gallon bottles of Advil. Nonetheless, I much prefer it to the one I came from… No contest.
I can’t stand pharmacies in continental Europe. It’s the pharmacists’ union that prevents them from being more useful. The first thing we do when we visit NYC is head to Duane Reade.
[...] have looked a little weird, I admit. It wasn’t quite as bad as what I described at the end of this post, but it wasn’t exactly normal. Most people don’t go into one of those giant [...]
[...] By the time you’re the age I was when I moved to France, dealing with life’s little glitches, like the flu, doesn’t require any thought or effort. You know your brands and you have your methods. The other night, when I couldn’t breathe through my nose, my wonderful husband ran down the street to the pharmacy to get me some stuff to spray in my nose (prescribed by Doctor Number One of strep throat fame). I hadn’t filled that perscription because my nose wasn’t stuffy at the time and it doesn’t get stuffy with strep. But I asked Vincent, before he left, to ask the pharmacist if she had anything like Nyquil she could give me instead (explaining that it was the nighttime sniffling sneezing coughing aching stuffy head fever so you can rest medicine, so that he could explain it to her). There is no self serve for meds in French pharmacies. Over the counter means over the counter. You have to go through the pharmacist/firewall to even get Advil. (Full rant on French pharmacies here.) [...]