A strong euro and an honest waiter

Late yesterday afternoon, we drove over to Tours for an 8:30 p.m. show at the Vinci theater in the middle of the city. It was raining off and on as we made our way over there through Montrichard, Amboise, and Montlouis and then along the Loire into the centre-ville. The drive takes about an hour.

We arrived at 7:15 and found parking on the street about 50 steps from the front door of the Vinci. We had an hour to kill, and it was still raining. We walked over to the train station and then up a pedestrian street where all the shops and cafés were closing their doors for the night. I guess Tours is not a late-night town.

Still, on the big place adjacent to the Palais de Justice and the Hôtel de Ville, we found a couple of big cafés that were open. We decided to sit down at one called the Univers, which had an awning-covered outdoor seating area out on the sidewalk where we could watch the people walk by. It was still spitting rain.

A gray, rainy May evening in Tours

It was nice to be in the city again — we don't get out that much. Walt remarked that being in town made him realize that we really are in France. We each ordered a beer, and in a few minutes the young waiter brought our two demis (half-pints). That'll be seven euros, he said, waiting for his money.

He wanted to collect right then; that always makes you think the waiter doesn't trust you to pay before you walk away. I mean after all, we were almost alone. There were four other people there, at two other tables. We weren't going to get lost in the crowd.

I fumbled to get my change purse out of my front pocket. That's where I keep change but also some paper money all neatly folded up. I opened the little purse and pulled out what I thought was a 10-euro note. I had several crisp new ones that I had gotten out of a distributeur at the bank in Saint-Aignan the day before.

As I fumbled to get out a bill, the waiter plunked three euro coins down on the table — my change. I handed him the 10-euro note, and as I did I thought to myself, "That felt thick for a single bill." The waiter turned and walked away. I watched him, wondering what had just happened. He retreated with his shoulders hunched and his arms invisible in front of him, as if he were counting the money I had just given him. But what was there to count?

The café-brasserie de l'Univers on the place Jean-Jaurès in Tours

I looked in my change purse again. I knew I had a twenty and three tens when we left home. Now I had a twenty and one ten. Merde, I said to Walt, I gave that waiter two tens, not one. He just pocketed the extra one.

"If you're sure you gave him 20 euros, go inside and tell him," Walt said. But why would the waiter admit it, I thought, and probably said. I got up anyway, and went into the big café. There was a man behind the bar who seemed to be the cashier or manager. He had a large wooden till in front of him and a collection of receipts.

"I gave the waiter two 10-euro notes instead of one for my seven-euro tab," I told him. "They were stuck together." They were brand-new bills, and you know how that happens. The waiter was nowhere to be seen, but another waiter walked by and the guy behind the bar told him to go get Christophe. In a minute, our waiter came out and I explained to him what had happened. "I know I had three billets de dix in my wallet, and now I only have one. I'm sure I gave you two by mistake."

The waiter looked at me with an expression that mean either "you've got to be crazy" or "I know you're right but I don't want to admit that I was going to keep the extra money." There was an awkward silence, and I realized there was nothing more I could say or do, so I shrugged my shoulders, said "merci quand même," and went back outside to finish my beer.

"You need to be more careful with your money," Walt said, repeating something I'm sure I've said to him a million times over the years. "Always throwing it around like it was play money..." He was rubbing it in, and I wanted to kick myself.

Three or four minutes later, the waiter came back out to our table. "Show me how you fold your bills in that little wallet," he said. I took out the remaining tenner and showed him. He produced a folded tenner too, and said he had found two stuck together in his cash pouch and folded the same way I folded mine.

In Tours, the Hôtel de Ville (city hall)

I went and counted all my money and receipts, he told us, and I think I'm ten euros over. I hope I counted right because if I didn't it'll be money out of my pocket when I cash out. I assured him I was certain I had had three bills and only one was left. He looked me in the eyes intently to see if he believed my story, and then he gave me the extra ten-euro note back. I was floored, if you want to know the truth.

It's a little thing that renews your faith in human nature. I gave him a two-euro coin as a tip and thanked him, explaining that with the current lousy state of the dollar, which is now worth about 72 eurocents, I needed to be careful with my money.

"The euro is too high, isn't it?" the waiter said. I said it certainly was in terms of the U.S. dollar. "It was better when we used francs, n'est-ce pas ?" he continued. Yes, I said. "It was better for us in France too," he said. "All our prices jumped sky-high when the euro came in."

I never thought about it that way. There's a lot of talk right now about how the euro is trop fort — too strong, too high. Sarkozy says he is going to do something about it if he's elected president on Sunday.

But I figured people who don't deal in dollars the way we do wouldn't understand exactly what "a strong euro" meant — or care. But I was wrong. Some do. They know that everything is more expensive now that it's counted in euros instead of francs, and that means that the euro is expensive too.