Bar des Familias

I will never forget this bar, an American student living in Paris trying to find a place he can call his own. The owner a thirty something French man who calls everyone his friend invited into his Paris, different from anything else I experience in France. My classmates and I visited two to three times a week, with .50 euro shots of Jose Cuervo how could you not. It was back in 2004 when we visited him so often, but those nights come back to me when I long to be in another country. Twelve people would crowd in around the bar and the same amount around the old wooden tables. This bar you see was his, he was the barback, the bartender and the owner and he liked it that way. He had no wife, but as the name so subtly suggests, when you enter your are part of his family. After the first five shots, I will never forget he threw the bottle on the bar and said "You might as well give the shots out yourself, I did, and paid him for everyone. After that he spoke little English, as I so perfectly remember he would always say, "Andy, tu parle Frances, you speak French now, this is my country." And so we did, but warned him each night, when he comes to America, he would have to speak English. And so the nights passed, even when the Irish came to France to watch the World Cup Prelim game, he buzzed each of my friends in, clutched us with hugs. For those weeks in Paris that fall, he befriended a bunch of Americans and treated us like a friends and student to his culture and to his language. I will never foreget his hospitality and mentorship, if you run across someone like this in your travels, relish the moment, they are rare. Only once in a great while do you run into someone so open and tolerant of others that they allow you to embrace there culture that you get to fully embrace it, and feel its beating heart, but it is only then that you can say, "Yes, I understand ..." and mean it, and know you aren't telling a fairy tale. I am indebt.