Je ne parle pas Francais

That's the French sentence I remember the most. I trained myself to say that over and over again before I was even off for France. It means: I can't speak French.

The other day when I was taking pictures on my own in the Petite France, downtown Strasbourg, I was standing in front of a building and drinking my Fanta orange. A middle aged lady came to me and started to speak in German.

"Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah... Blah blah blah blah blah blah?"
It sounded like she was asking for a direction.

I let her speak some more.

"Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah?"

I said, "Do you speak English?"

She said, "Ooh, only English?"
And then she left.

The next day I was walking around the Capucins neighbourhood near Vincent's apartment. I felt a little tired after a while but I couldn't see any benches around for me to sit on. There was no park in sight either. So I went to this bus stop and sat there while examining the bus routes.

An old lady suddenly turned to me when a bus stopped in front of us and asked in French, "Blah blah blah blah blah?"

"Je ne parle pas Francais," I gave her a little smile.

She just waved her hand and left.

And last week, Vincent and I attended a barbeque party held by his friends, most of whom I happened to know because they were in Bali when I met Vincent. And still, a lot of them had trouble communicating with me.



But one of them, named Nicole, I guess, came to me, laughed and kissed me and spoke in French delightedly, "Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, Carla!!!!"

My magic sentence: "Je ne parle pas Francais."

This time the reaction was more pleasant than the other previous experience, maybe because they knew me already.

As soon as they heard me saying that, everybody cheered. And one of them who could speak a little English remarked, "Carla, you can speak French now!!!"

I thought Je ne parle pas Francais means I can't speak French. Hihi...