Village of Culture

By Jens Smærup Sørensen

Far away. At last. Perhaps, even there on the platform, I had counted on finding myself, if not definitively transformed, then back to the same old, stable - to the point of characterlessness - equanimity with which I usually carried myself - which I was. Not so long ago. Now, apparently, I would just go on and on being someone different from yesterday, who was different from the day before, an entirely involuntary experiment bordering, at the least, on the perverse: today, in fact, I could even think well of a scam, of being scammed myself!

Certainly cost me only just enough to be aware of it. In the pocketbook, and, of course, a little in the gut area, where being scammed makes a certain holes. At any rate, I liked it. I appreciated it, suddenly, here today, and still do, and must say that, on the whole, this is how I see it: despite everything that has gone wrong, my arrival in Paris has come off perfectly!

First, I was straight out conned. Taken by the nose by a taxi driver. And even then, I can´t be absolutely sure. And even if, in fact, I had been as royally conned as I believe, you would undoubtedly think it was too banal to write about. If indeed you were capable of thinking anything at all. If you, for example, were to believe that all taxi drivers always try to scam anybody who does not seem entirely local. But I would not myself ever believe such a thing, not just yet. I would rather believe that taxi drivers are, on the whole, thoroughly honorable human beings. And as a consequence thereof, it must be worthy of mention that, nevertheless, one of them scammed me today. Indeed, more than just I think so.

Translated by Russell Dees