Snow - Paris

The song says « I love Paris in the winter, when it drizzles » not «when it snows », and there's a reason for it – apart from the obvious oh, crap, it doesn't rhyme : because you cannot walk anymore. No one has snow boots, except maybe for the odd Uggs pair trendy girls bought two years ago, but only nice looking and uncomfortable ones. It usually snows once a year, though, so that parisiens and parisiennes can shrug and say « bah, c'est la vie ». Now, attention, ladies and gentlemen, Parisiens and Parisiennes never ever say this, or they're 80 years old. And they don't shrug that much either, I'm still wondering why every author/expat in Paris says that. Anyway, once a year, it snows for about five minutes and it gives us a reason to moan : now that, we do a lot. It gets muddy the minute it falls on the ground, and it usually turns to slippery ice within the next day. Children are systematically disappointed and blame their parents – I told my 6 year-old it was Nicolas Sarkozy 's fault, he looked dubious, but I think that'll do for a year – and you can actually hear people praying not to fall on the métro stairs.
This year, we saw the usual 5 minutes snow fall, ran like mad people outside, thinking how lucky it was that this was a Sunday, and then we stayed out to play for a good half hour, under the snow. Children got to do real snow ball fights and actual snowmen, Paris looked more beautiful than ever, its rooftops covered in white, shining under the sun. And then it kept on snowing. It was mid-december, we were hoping it would snow again for Christmas, but little did we know it was going to snow until and way past Christmas. I, who fall way too often for a girl my age, heroically managed not to fall once on the streets, but I cannot help thinking of all those very well dressed people falling Bambi-like everywhere. Old parisiens and parisiennes say this is the way it was in their youth and you cannot walk in the streets for ten seconds without hearing someone say such things like « Oh, it was fun at first, but now it's getting old » or « I just paid 2,000 euros to go skiing, this is ridiculous ». Now that there's a big storm in the States, you may think we'll stop complaining, but of course we won't : we're parisiens and parisiennes, that's what we do.