Cheese Thief

            So Amiens is a pretty cool place.  I adore food shopping here.  There is a supermarket within walking distance I did eventually find, no less than three “Bio” grocery stores (biologique=organic), a large, local market called Les Halles downtown that is even open on Sundays (that is a huge deal because only Mickey D’s and kebab shops are typically open on Sunday), and there is even a bio co-op!  My little hippy heart is all a-flutter!

            Oh sweet baby Jesus, the food.  Not only can I get my hippy-dippy stuff I’m used to (quinoa!) but now there is ever-plenty, deliciously produced, French style dairy products.  It’s not just the cheese people!  The butter, the milk, and oh god, the yogurt!  It’s like they’ve been brought down from on high by bovine angels.  My vanilla yogurt has real vanilla in it-little delicious flecks throughout that not too thick, not too thin work of dairy art.  The wine is also dirt cheap.  You can get a decent bottle of table wine for a euro.  A euro.  Are you listening?  That’s less than two bucks!

            Anyways, I have had to put off buying things that spoil because of my lack of fridge situation.  But we’re in France and my roommates and I want to eat all of the delicious goodies that France has to offer us.  Our solution?  Well, since it has cooled off here significantly recently, we decided to leave some cheese and yogurt on the windowsill in a feeble attempt to keep things cool.  For about a week this worked.  We are on the first floor and when this first started happening I just knew that some punk high school kid would find it funny to steal it or chuck it a his friend, or something.  I wasn’t entirely wrong, but what actually happened was scarier.

            I was reading in my room minding my own business when Gwenola comes bursting in all of a sudden, flustered, saying that there was a man who was stealing our food. I got up and followed her into the kitchen.  There was, in fact, a young man just munching on our camembert just outside of the window.  We opened up the window and asked, “Why are you eating our food?”  He replied, ever so nonchalantly, “Oh this is your food?  M’excuse.”  To our disbelief he continued to eat the cheese.  We were utterly confused.  It wasn’t even the fact that he was stealing, but that he was so friggin’ cool about it.  Well that and also he was essentially eating a strange bit of cheese found on a windowsill.  Gwenola, puzzled, asked again, “Well yes, but why are you eating our food?”  And what did this young man do, ladies and gentleman?  Come to his senses, apologize profusely and offer to replace the cheese? No.  He threw the cheese at us and said “If you are going to talk to me like a dog, you can have your ***** cheese back and if I ever see you outside I will punch you in the throats!”  You know, a normal response when caught pilfering from others. 

          We called security and they just told us to call the police if we saw him again.  I wasn't too rattled as he looked like he was probably on drugs and just wandering through campus on the weekend, but Gwenola and Marilyn were concerned.  We used this in our favor though.

After already having had to wait about two weeks for a fridge, after this incident, we demanded and received our fridge over the next few days.  Victory is ours!