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Romantic Paris Pickup?

By Madelyn Miller

I extended a trip to the Christmas markets in Germany and France with a few days in Paris. My first morning, I took the metro with three changes to a famous flea Market, Clignancourt. At my third train change, I studied a map on the wall.

A well-dressed Frenchman came up to me (he had on a blue pressed oxford shirt and a nice leather blazer)

He was dark and spoke excellent English. He asked if he could help me.
When I said I was going to a flea market, he said he could show me the way.

We talked a bit and he said he was an accountant

I told him I was a travel writer

He was VERY interested

He asked if someone traveled with me, if it would be free?

I said, no, they had to pay their own way.

He asked if someone stayed in my room if it would be free

I said yes, my mother or daughter could stay in my room for free

Then he asked me to dinner

And wanted to have coffee when we got to the station

I told him I wanted to do the flea market first since I was writing a story.

He wrote his cell phone number in my guidebook and told me to call him when

I was done.

His name was Hassan

(nice Arab name)

He was sad to hear I only had two more days in Paris

He said we did not have much time to get to know each other.

He asked what I most wanted to do in Paris

I said "get online"

he did not understand

I explained I wanted to check my email

He invited me to his apartment to use his computer and said I could sleep there if I wanted

I had visions of the story where they slip you a micky and steal your kidneys

or some Arab terrorist trying to find a woman to get him into the states

(a fear that came to mind when I heard of the Arab looking man with

explosives in his shoe on the Paris flight)

He urged me to come to coffee

and warned me about pickpockets at the markets and said he could protect me

Then he said he wanted to kiss me goodbye.

I politely declined and dashed the other way

On my last day in Paris, I went through that station again

I noticed another nicely dressed man with the same blazer standing by the map

Are they brothers?

Is it a franchise?

Or is this merely the newest French pickup outfit?

I'll never know

When I told this story to my friend travel writer Brooke Cunningham, she replied with another story.

She said perhaps there is something to the jacket. “My brother used to live in Taos. When I went out there for his wedding someone told me that he was wearing "the wedding suit". I asked about it, and it turns out that many years ago a very wealthy visitor to Taos held his wedding at The Sagebrush Inn. One of the guys that worked at the Sagebrush commented that he really liked the groom's suit, and since he was approaching his own wedding day wanted to know where it came from. After the wedding the groom gave him the suit so that he also could be married in it.

In fact, the groom said he felt so lucky that perhaps everyone should get married in the suit. My brother was something like the 10th person to be married in this "wedding suit". I believe it is still circulating around Taos and going to lots of weddings.

So, maybe the blazer was like the wedding suit. A  guy, looking for a little sweetness in his life could wear it and it would deliver. I am glad that you were a wary traveler and did not become victim  to the white slave market or something.”

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