First day in Paris, continued...

Eating my peach and apricots, I meander up the street, looking in shop windows. This is a good place to stay. There is a beautiful bakery, three pizzerias and a supermarket over the road. And, just what I need, a laundromat! I decide to go back and get my clothes. Returning to the laundromat, I can make sense of the instructions for using the machines, but I can't figure out how to get washing powder. I ask a young man with a nice face, who has just come into the laundromat, and he is very forgiving of my halting French and shows me how to get the laundry powder from the vending machine. It turns out his English is much better than my French. I put my clothes in the machine but it doesn't start. Il ne marche pas. I ask him again for help and he doesn't know, but helpfully rings the number on the wall for me. The manageress is very apologetic, but she is out of Paris, and if I come back after the 3rd of September she will refund my 4 euros. I have to pay again, but the machine still won't start, so I try a new machine and then the first one starts. My new friend and I crack up laughing. He tries to give me the four euros and tells me he will get it back from the lady when she returns, but I won't take it.

We have a great conversation in both English and French while we are waiting for our laundry. It is so good that the second person I meet in Paris is so friendly and kind and so willing to go out of his way to help me. He tells me he knows what it is like to be a traveller and that people in Paris are not usually helpful, so that is why he tries hard to help people. His name is Florian and he works as an aircraft painter and is training as a cabin crew member, but first he has to learn English properly. He is planning to spend six months in Australia some time and I tell him he must come to New Zealand as well. He is keen on snowboarding and I tell him he could probably get a job as a lift operator on the ski fields. I get such a good feeling from talking to him, and feel that it's no coincidence that I couldn't do my washing in Maastricht and that we both came to the laundry at this point in time. He adds me as a friend on Facebook on his phone.  I show him facebook photos of my family and he tells me that he will take me to ride a bicycle around the city some time if I want. I think I will take him up on that on Tuesday morning.