How to Cancel a Gym Membership in France

From ages 4 - 18, I spent the bulk of my time...oh, how to say this in a sensitive manner...fat. My grandmother, who is from an impoverished area of Chennai, India, had spent much of the 60s and 70s in America discovering all of the ways we package sugar after she immigrated to the States. She passed this knowledge down to me during my many childhood visits. Unfortunately, without the lesson of moderation, I went from a typical skin and bones Indian girl to a rather round Indian teenager.

After seeing myself a little too jiggly on camera, I decided to make a life change, and have been an avid gym goer since the era of blob-dom. Even though I spent my first few months in France...oh, how to say this in a sensitive manner...poor, I joined a gym in Lyon, and lived off of eggs for three months to cover the cost.

Florian, the guy who signed me up, treated me like a celebrity because he saw I was born near Los Angeles. The rest of the staff, however, failed to acknowledge my existence. Sadly, this is what I prefer. But, the weight room smelled like a dead animal, the rest of the patrons looked at me like vermin because I wore brightly colored shorts on occasion, and the equipment itself was outdated. And even with the student discount, it was overpriced. Still, at the time, this was the best choice for gyms in the city of Lyon, so I stuck with it the entire time I lived there.

Seeing as buying a SIM card in France took more paperwork than opening up a small business in America, I decided to ask about closing my membership a full three weeks before I left the country. This took some dancing (I accidentally ended up in a Jazzercise class), but after four days, I finally found my trusted Florian, and asked him how to close my account. The conversation went like this:

(Translated for your convenience)

Me: Hi Florian! I am leaving France in a few weeks, so I need to close my account here.
Florian: Why are you closing your account?
Me: Uh...I'm leaving the country.
Florian: Why?
Me: What? Because...wait. No, I just...I want to close my account.
Florian: Is there something wrong with the gym?
Me: No! Well, that's not the reason I am closing my account.
Florian: What if you come back to Lyon and want a gym membership?
Me: Yeah, I'll deal with that when it happens.
Florian: Hmm. Okay, well I will need a letter of explanation along with proof you are leaving for good.
Me: Proof I am leaving?
Florian: Yes, like a copy of your plane ticket, or a letter from your employer. Like that.
Me: (In English) Geez. At the last gym I belonged to, I told the guy I wanted to quit the gym because the cardio equipment smelled like potato salad. That was enough.
Florian: What?
Me: Nothing. ::sigh::

A week later, and I hadn't been able to catch Florian to present my "proof." Stupidly, I decided to try my luck with another employee. After she carefully eyed how poorly dressed I was for their gym, and spent a little too long eying my arm fat, she looked at the letter, threw her arms up in the air, and exclaimed how insufficient that was. Apparently, writing down my flight numbers in the letter and showing a copy of my e-ticket wasn't enough proof. "We need to see a copy of your boarding pass," she explained. I tried reminding her that paper boarding passes died at the invention of the internet, but she wouldn't hear it, and told me "try again."

Great. I felt stupid asking my boss for a letter to cancel my gym membership, so I tried handing the same letter to two other employees. One told me that the gym has never had to cancel a membership before, so he wasn't sure whether my letter was good enough. Another one told me she wasn't sure a one way ticket constituted "proof." To this, all I had to say was, "Where the hell is Florian?"

Finally, two days before I was set to leave France, Florian magically appeared at the gym. I hid behind the giant stair climber machine until I was sure he was alone, and carefully approached.

(Also translated for your convenience)

Me: Florian! (I half whispered.)
Florian: Oh, Ms. Los Angeles, hello!
Me: Hey, so I have that letter to close my account.
Florian: (Takes sheet) Hmm...I don't know. We usually need a boarding pass.
Me: ::sigh:: I can't get that until tomorrow! It has to be less than 24 hours before take-off...
Florian: Oh, well I'm sorry, this is not enough proof.

So I paused. I knew I would have to lie. But which one!?

This one:

Me: Oh really? That's too bad...I'm flying to Los Angeles (LIE!) after I get to New York. I was hoping you could come visit me sometime (LIE!)...
Florian: You still live in Los Angeles?
Me: Yes! (LIE!)
Florian: Oh, well you know, I know you, so I will just go ahead and close this account for you.

Florian clicked the mouse like twice, and out spat a membership cancellation confirmation. As he handed it to me, he said:

Florian: So where do you live in Los Angeles?
Me: Oh, um...Hollywood? (LIE!)
Florian: Ah okay! Okay okay, I will come visit you then! I will email you soon, okay?
Me: Okay! I look forward to that! (LIE!)

You would think I darted out of there after that conversation. But no, I stayed to work out. That damn place was so overpriced, I wasn't about to get cheated out of my money!

Oh, and Florian never emailed me. Thank God.

The Sophistication of Wine Tasting en France

There are two kinds of people in this world: me and everyone else. Unfortunately, this distinction does not narrow down the latter category by any significant amount, so many Americans seem to draw a line between the "Average" and the "Sophisticated." The "Sophisticated" group enjoy finer things of life, such as the theater, dark clothes, gym memberships, and WINE. Some "Averages" also try to partake in the joys of wine, though the "Sophisticated" tend to pair their wine with aged cheese, pretentious topics of conversation, and corkscrews that cost more than the GDP of many countries.

For many years, in an attempt to place myself with the "Sophisticated," I would partake in wine tasting parties, while overusing words such as "crostini," "aroma," "palate," and "delightful." Though I tend to ride comfortably between the "Average" and "Sophisticated" of America, when it came time to prove my wine abilities in a tasting in France, I was prepared to take the plunge into the land of sophistication with no intentions of turning back.

The Rhone region in which the city of Lyon (where I lived) sits, is home to a type of French wine known as Beaujolais. Most of the small, private wineries in the area debut their Beaujolais wine in the late fall in "caveaus" (large underground cellars), where the wine is aged in barrels. Veeeeery Sophisticated!

Nearly all of the French roommates I had in France were, how to say this in a sensitive manner...f**king crazy. Before I discovered the dormant crazy in the second set, I managed to secure a ride to a Beaujolais caveau, owned by a family friend of one of my roommates, at the debut of their wine season.

Did I mention Americans think of wine tasting as a "Sophisticated" endeavor? Well, French people think of wine tasting as a "Everybody" endeavor. That is to say, rich or poor, black or white, "Average" or "Sophisticated," EVERYONE in France goes to wine tastings. I was not prepared for that fact.

For starters, I was the ONLY brown person that had ever been in this particular Beaujolais caveau. I had chosen to wear a black sweater, dark jeans, and black shoes. Combined with the dim lighting, the very pale selection of French people had trouble separating rock formations with my person, and made it a habit of bumping into me as I drank copious amounts of free wine. Second, most of the people in caveau looked as though they had just come from a long day of shopping at Wal-Mart. Granted, they were still better dressed than actual regular patrons of Wal-Mart, but I attribute this to the lack of obese people. French women really don't get fat.

Needless to say, I was uncomfortable. Somewhere between my fourth and fifth glass of Sophistication, a man heavily bumped into me, and my dormant crazy began to unfurl. He turned around to see what he had hit, and was shocked to see it was an angry brown person brimming with Sophisticated insults. Unfortunately, none of my Sophisticated French words made an appearance, and I instead noticed this poor country Frenchman was wearing...A YANKEES HAT!

After I sloppily set down my glass of red Sophistication, I said in my best slurred French (translated for your convenience): "Why are you wearing a YANKEES hat!? Do you like BASEBAAAALL!? Do you have ANY idea of the cultural significance that hat bears? Do you!?" Then I started to growl. Seriously. For some reason, I assumed a threatening posture, and I started to growl. My roommates were having a fantastic time letting me go about my Sophisticated business, but at this point, decided it was best to stop my Sophisticated drinking, and feed me cheese.

Half an hour later, I was sober enough to realize that I am quite good at growling, but unfortunately, had discovered that in public. Monsieur Yankee casquette had mercifully disappeared, so I bumped my way over to the sales table, and bought three bottles in the hopes that all would be forgotten. As I got out my money to pay for the bottles, the cashier and daughter of the winery owner leaned over to me and said (also translated for your convenience), "You must come back next year! This was the most fun beaujolais debut we've ever had, thanks to you! They are usually so...average."

So there you have it. In my attempt to be a "Sophisticated," I was inadvertently thrown in with the "Average," only to end up thoroughly entertaining. Riding the fence once more. You're welcome.

Italian Churches

The last two months I was in France, I found a group of friends through another English assistant. The group consisted of us two Americans, two Spaniards, an Italian, and one Austrian. No French people of course – they were busy watching American movies, listening to Spanish music, and eating Italian food with the sole intention of never interacting with any respective nationals of those countries. (We all do that in our native countries, whatever.)

On the last full weekend I was in France, one of the Spaniards and her German roommate decided to throw a party, so those of us in town dragged our lazy asses up 343 flights of stairs to the top of a mountain for the sake of free food and the opportunity to speak in broken French to each other.

Alongside was the other American, and my Italian friend, Fiòrella (Fiò) Milano (I kid you not, that’s her real name). We got there early, despite a pit stop to question a few French people on why there was a giant pile of rubbish set afire in the middle of the street. The only others there when we arrived were a mousy Chinese guy we met the previous night, and some other guy we had never seen before.

Somehow, Chinese guy had slipped through the cracks and never managed to pick up enough English to hold a basic conversation, and to add a little fun in his life, his academic advisors shipped him off to France to study some sort biomedical engineering without acknowledging the fact that his French speaking skills are equivalent to that of a deaf-mute 5-year-old. On his quest to find a social life via this party, he got horribly lost, but through a series of hand gestures and smoke signals, found a Nigerian guy with a car who drove him to the party, who was then invited in for a bit.

Naturally, Fiò wandered over to poor Chinese guy and his new found friend, and decided to strike up a conversation about the role of Italian cathedrals in modern-day society. I might add that Fiò is gorgeous, and has the body most modern-day women (and some men) would kill to have, so the very sight of her makes most guys (including Mr. Chinese guy) faint. It is also important to note that Fiò is not blessed with the ability to go more than 1 hour without eating (and that b**ch never exercises[1]); she also wrote her Masters thesis on churches and modern-day society, and she speaks French pretty well.

So poor Mr. Chinese guy’s question of “What time is it?” was answered with a summation in French of Fiò’s thesis work interspersed with breaks to consume a bowl full of nuts for sustenance. I might have saved Chinese guy had I known sooner, but I was busy questioning every German in the room about whether they know my other German friend. Luckily, Nigerian guy escaped after I asked him a series of overly complicated questions about Africa, and only ten minutes of Fiò’s recount. But poor Chinese guy…hopefully Fiò’s speech will at least help him with his biomedical research.

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[1] Fiò is a really awesome person, and absolutely hilarious. I’m just insanely jealous of her metabolic rate.

Charlène

During my stint as an English teacher in France, I had thirteen classes of “eager” French primary students to occupy into delusion of actually learning something useful. By class # 12 on day two, I hit my natural reaction when faced with difficult situations – my face glazed over with an overly jaded expression, and the only words I could steadily process were “gratuit” (free), “chocolat” (chocolate), and “chocolat gratuit” (free chocolate). Needless to say, I wasn’t prepared for the commentary of Charlène.[1]

Teacher 12 was nice enough, and the kids were admittingly adorable, especially Charlène. Then she opened her mouth. One might expect a jolly hello, or a welcome to France from something so cute, but Charlène’s first words were, “Ma mère a dit que les anglos sont fou!” (My mother said that English-speakers are crazy!). Since none of these words involved free chocolate, it took me a solid 5 minutes to process what she said, but when my brain finally decided to turn itself on, damn was I pissed.

Having the attention span of an average 8-year-old (roughly equivalent to a meat-head at a vegan convention), Charlène had no idea what I was talking about when I finally got a chance to confront this 8-year-old piece of work. My quest to stand up for English-speakers around the world didn’t go as valiantly as I pictured in my head, but I did manage to get a head-tilt and a sigh.

Charlène and I spent the next few weeks suspiciously eyeing each other until week 4, when I assigned the toughest of all assignments: draw a picture of your family and for each member write IN ENGLISH, a one-word relation to you. (Example: sister, brother, my guinea pig). After a little perusing, I noticed that dear Charlène wrote the following: “This is my mother, her name is Sabine. This is my father, his name is John.” The typical responses of other kids in the class consisted of something along the lines of “sester,” “bruzzer,” “muzzer”, and “mon oiseau”. Between Charlène’s genius response, and the fact that she listed her father as “John”, I finally added 2 + 2 to get 4, and asked if her father is a native English speaker.

He is, en fait, she said, along with, “Mes parents sont divorcés, il habite en Angleterre…ma mère lui déteste.” (My parents are divorced, he lives in England…my mother hates him.) If there are two reasons I understand French people hating English-speakers, it’s for our abysmal selection of crème fraîche, and bad divorces. It turns out Charlène can actually form a few sentences in English thanks to her father. From that day on, I often let her help “teach” the class the fabulous world of colors and numbers while I wandered off to find the free chocolate.

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[1] Charlène’s real name has been changed to protect her 8-year-old identity, and because I can’t remember her real name.