FAUX PAS!

ONE EURO! THAT'S how much it costs to use a shopping cart here in France. At least that's what we thought until we realized we just didn't quite understand the system.

When you shop at a local Intermarche, Casino, Champion, Carrefour, or Auchan it's nice to have a shopping cart so you can have a place to put all your things. But imagine our surprise when we arrived and discovered that shopping carts are chained together and the only way to get one out is to deposit 1 Euro into the coin slot that sits atop each cart. One Euro, just to use a cart? Yet another way the French are screwing us, we thought.

Our first few trips to the store included a careful calculation: do we need a push cart this time or can we cram everything into a hand-held basket -- you know, in order to save one Euro. More often then not we opted for the hand-held. Every once in a while we would 'splurge' for the push cart, often hoping that if we loitered around the cart-return area for a second or two a nice person would simply let us use their cart. But it never happened. Everyone was careful to return their carts and lock them with the chain.

How odd. Either the French are downright unfriendly or they are sticklers for the rule of law. So we were left with no choice but to insert our Euro, take the cart, and continue with our shopping. And when we were finished we dutifully returned our cart -- just like everyone else.

Then one day an acquaintance of ours gave us a weird little device: a key chain with an attachment that included a place to store a one Euro coin. We were told this would be handy when we needed a cart at the supermarkets. A nice gesture, to be sure, but how much of a pain will it be to constantly have to make sure you have a coin in this little holder? Wouldn't it just be easier to keep the Euros in your pocket? Our friend didn't understand our questions. "You just keep the same Euro in there all the time," she said.

We were still very confused.

Then the explanation came: when you return the carts and plug in the chain YOU GET YOUR EURO BACK!! The 'pay for your cart' system is really just designed to make sure that people put back their carts, that way they are not spread out all over the parking lot. A brilliant concept that total escaped our line of thinking, and a concept that we figured out about 15 Euros too late!!!

So not only did we miss out on reclaiming our Euro for the first few weeks we were here, but whoever happened to use our carts right after us found our Euro waiting for them in the coin slot.

Faux Pas!