Letter Of The Week
FRENCH TOAST

(My letter to Mark Steyn was chosen as letter of the week here.)

I was in Paris for the "the brutal Gallic summer" , and just thought I'd write a brief note about my own "Paris Experience". Due to physical limits of time and space, I will limit my comments only to the heat wave and the medical attention, and not mention the extreme hostility of the French people in general.

I had the pleasure of staying at the Hotel Andre Gill, a "hotel" (really a hostel) that was “hotel of the year”, or some such thing, in the 1930's. At night in bed, wearing no clothes, or sheets and with the window and drapes wide open, the tiny flat roasted for the few days I was there, chiefly at night. During the day, Paris sizzled in a way that Texas simply cannot. There is no breeze, there is no reprieve or escape and there is no air-conditioning in Paris.

After one day wandering around in this special hell and at the time approaching the Eiffel Tower when I suffered a minor medical emergency (I fainted). After being rushed to the hospital, I waited two and one half hours only to be told that a doctor would be along in 5 hours. I did not really mind, as I suffered more embarrassment than anything. The octogenarian woman waiting in the gurney nearby for two hours, and barely breathing, might have been a little more peeved, however. I was not there long enough to find out what happened, but I can guess.

So why Paris and why France? Why did the neighbours (Germany, England), who had similar or (hotter) temperatures suffer from no more than a hundred deaths apiece?

1. No air-conditioning. Why is Gare Du Nord built like a giant greenhouse? Breathing in all the exhale of other people was quite disgusting in the Metro as well.

2. The French apartments are built to keep in the heat. Nice in the winter I suppose, but when the summer is hotter than Dubai, it’s not great.

3. Doctors were on holidays. August is not the month to get sick in Paris.

4. A thick layer of smog covers Europe. The Greenhouse effect is not limited to Paris rail stations.

Anyways, it’s a terrible tragedy, but yes it was very avoidable. The answer is simple for Paris: if the people are warm, move them inside the Printemps department store - the only air-conditioned building in town.

Patrick McClarty